“Are you sure it was him?”

“I’m almost positive,” Alyssia Azel, the Princess Heir to the Revanian Kingdom answered her cousin. “I just need to make sure.”

“But,” Gawain said, lengthening his strides to try matching her annoyingly quick speed. “You haven’t seen him in years. He could look completely dissimilar now to how he did back then.”

“Ohh trust me,” Alyssia said, turning the corner of the oversized hallway. “I’ve had that face etched in my mind for years. It was him.”

“C’mon I know you say that, but it’s not like you’ve seen him even once since then. Even with the amount of times you’ve gone to Novan over the years.”

“Not like he showed up there anyways,” the princess answered him. “Trust me, I checked.”

Gawain suddenly stopped as he heard his cousin finish her sentence. Alyssia, realizing what she’d said, also suddenly ground to a halt, wincing.

“You didn’t hear that,” she said firmly, in her no nonsense future-ruler-of-the-realm voice. “None of that gets to father.”

“Oh what,” Gawain said sarcastically. “The fact that you used kingdom resources to investigate him, or the fact that you were so obsessed over him that you decided to look for him yourself?”

They started walking again, this time slower than the frantic pace Alyssia had set the first time.

“Help me understand though,” Gawain said. “All this for someone who basically just escorted you back.”

Alyssia suddenly stopped again, Gawain stopping right in front of her. She closed her eyes for a second, pondering something before opening her eyes with a sigh.

“I may have left out just a little from that story,” she finally said.

He just looked at her with an eyebrow raised so she continued.

“Umm, so I may have also almost gotten robbed and killed at knifepoint before he saved me,” she said in a rush.

“WHAT?! WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY ANYTHING?!”

“You know how father is,” she said, stepping back and wincing. “He never would’ve let me leave the palace again, let alone travel to other cities.”

Gawain put his head in his hands and sighed heavily, still angry, but also understanding that getting worked up like that about something that had occurred years before was a waste of his time.

“I know it’s a stupid question, but do you have any memory of the robbers? Maybe we can still send sketches to Novan and…”

“Oh, don’t worry about them,” she said with a smirk, walking past him smugly. “He took care of them.”

“You’re telling me,” Gawain said in disbelief, following her again. “That a twelve year old boy killed a grown man…”

“Three.”

“Right. Three grown men on his own and then safely brought you back to the castle.”

“Yup,” she said, offering no more explanation, and laughing quietly inside as Gawain fumed.

A few minutes passed as they traversed the gigantic palace, a couple minutes from their destination.

“Fine,” he finally said, deflating a bit. “How much did you find out about him?”

“Honestly,” Alyssia said, “Not too much after the incident. He was one of the guards on one of the merchant caravans that travels south. He had to stay in Novan for a year because their supply warehouse burned down but by the time I was let out of Raiah again, he’d left. Plus, he never did come back when the caravan returned to Novan, which means he was a temporary hire from one of the villages.”

“They really must’ve been shorthanded that year, if they resorted to hiring a twelve year old boy,” Gawain muttered.

She shot a quick glare at her cousin before saying, “That twelve year old boy had mastery over at least a few of the Sword Forms already.”

“Oh, now you’ve got to be pulling my leg. Not only was this twelve year old boy a guard for one of the merchant caravans, but he also had at least some training in the Sword Forms. From somewhere in the southern villages? He must’ve dropped from the heavens or something.”

“Or something,” she said, deciding not to argue with her cousin. “He was definitely something.”

“All right then,” Gawain said after a few moments. “Which one of the competitors was he?”

“Oh, nobody too interesting, just one who won third in the Endurance Test.”

“What?! You’re joking.”

“No Gawain. As I have said before, I’m not joking about him.”

He was quiet for a few moments, before he said, “Well then, just so you know, there’s no information about him at all.”

“What do you mean by that?” Alyssia asked.

“I mean that before he walked through the gates of this city, there was nothing on him. No one had ever seen him before. Reports from other cities will take some time to return but I doubt that anyone there will say anything about him either.”

“You’ve already had him investigated?” She said, glaring at her cousin.

“Of course I did. He beat me by about eight seconds in the test. Of course I decided to check where he’d spawned from since I’d never seen anyone with his appearance before today."

Before she could answer or berate him on his paranoia, she reached the door they’d been looking for.

Knocking on the best guest suite in the palace, she waited a few seconds before a small mousy servant opened the door.

Seeing Alyssia, the servant’s eyes widened and she said, “Your Highness, one moment. Let me inform Executive Yannick that you are here.”

“Of course,” Alyssia answered.

Less than a minute later, the same servant opened the doors once again and led both Alyssia and Gawain to the sitting room, where Executive Yannick was already sitting in his black robes.

The man looked middle aged, with graying hair and a freshly cleaned up beard, with flecks of gray also interspersed throughout there. He had warm brown eyes and an easy smile that exuded calm.

He was the Executive that normally traveled to the Revanian Kingdom every two years to test and pick up the new batch of students, which was why he had such a close relationship to the rulers and nobility of the Kingdom as he’d been coming there for decades.

“Your Highness,” he said, greeting her warmly. “How may I help you today?”

“If possible sir, I’d like to ask you about a certain person that was a participant in the tests today.”

The Executive sighed before saying, “To be honest, from what I’ve been hearing around the city, I expected Lord Gawain hours ago.”

Gawain stepped forward and said, “Please sir, it really is a matter of the utmost importance. We would not be here otherwise.”

He sighed again. “Yes, yes, of course the matter is important to you. And, to be honest, I wouldn’t give his name out but since it’ll come out soon in the last test anyways, I will make this exception for you two. But, I will need your word that neither of you will try to harm him as he is a very important prospect for our School at this moment.”

Alyssia startled as she heard his words. “I think you misunderstand, sir. We have no intention of harming him. We were just curious about someone unfamiliar who’d managed to earn third place on the Endurance Exam.”

“Yes, well I didn’t really think you’d want to do anything to him, I just had to say that.”

“I understand. It truly is curiosity though. We’re both just trying to research this new unfamiliar prodigy. We’d just like to know his name and we came to you because we know you had all of the second test competitors write their names down in their waiting rooms.”

“It’s a conundrum, because just like you both,” the Executive said, gesturing to Gawain. “I was unable to find out anything substantial about him. But anyways…”

“His name,” he finally said, shuffling through a few scrolls in front of him before finding the correct one. “His name is Mordekai Eritos.”