Chapter 4

"Hey, we should totally take this quiz!" Kylie told me and Bronte.

She was looking through the magazine as we waited for the next match to begin. The Sorcerer Nala, aka the Crimson Knight, had just defeated the Alchemist Altair Laurent. And before that, the Elf Ainsley Kane had surprised everyone by defeating the Metamorph Jareth Mars. Well, nearly everyone. Bronte hadn't been surprised at all.

"What kind of quiz?" I asked.

Kylie peered over the top of her magazine. "You answer a bunch of questions, and then it tells you which of the Knights' Tribes you belong to. Oh, this is going to be so much fun!" Her gaze dipped to the page. "Ok, first question. You're asked to bake a cake for a friend's birthday. What flavor do you make? A: Chocolate Cake? B: Strawberry Cake? C: Vanilla Cake? Or D: Cheesecake?"

"I'm not sure how this quiz can accurately guess your Tribe if the questions are all like that," I chuckled.

"Yeah, what do cake flavors have to do with magic?" Bronte agreed.

Kylie shook the magazine at us. "This quiz is meant to be a fun distraction, girls, not a scientific study."

"Ok, then I pick vanilla," Bronte told her.

Kylie scribbled down her answer, then her gaze slid across to me. "Savannah?"

"Chocolate," I said. When in doubt about anything, the answer was always chocolate.

"What is your favorite season?" Kylie read from the magazine quiz. "A: Summer? B: Autumn? C: Winter? D: Spring?"

We continued answering the quiz's silly questions to pass the time. At around question thirty-six, the trumpets called out through the speakers, signaling the start of the next match. It was between our very own mentor, the Nymph Eris Bentley, and the Dreamweaver Orion Knox, both eighteen-year-old Knights.

"Hey, it says here that Eris wields the power of air magic," Kylie read from her magazine.

"She can also apparently fly," I commented as Eris shot up into the air to avoid a swing from Orion's staff.

She landed on the far side of the Oval, but Orion was already right there beside her. He swung his staff again, and this time, she didn't have time to fly out of the way.

The audience gasped in awe as Orion knocked her to the ground.

"Orion is a teleporter," Bronte said, eyes locked on the open magazine in her hands. "That's pretty cool."

"Sure, if all you want is to run away and hide," Dutch commented.

"Sometimes, people need to get away to find some peace."

"If you're looking for peaceful, you've come to the wrong place," Dutch replied as Orion landed his third blow and claimed victory. "This is a Knight Tournament, not a ballet concert, princess."

The loud trumpets sang again, and then the next match began. Ainsley the Elf and Altair the Alchemist were on. After that, Jareth the Metamorph thrilled his fans by defeating Orion the Dreamweaver. Despite his early defeat, the Metamorph went on to win many more matches.

Eventually, we finished the Tribe quiz, and the results were in. Bronte would be an Elf. Surprisingly, Kylie wasn't a Nymph but rather a Dreamweaver. And I…well, I seemed to have broken the quiz. There apparently wasn't a place in the Knights' ranks for whatever I was. Dutch found that totally hilarious.

"I think I did something wrong. I'll add up your answers again, Savannah," Kylie said, nibbling on the end of her tiny pencil.

"Don't worry about it," I told her. "It's just for fun. It's not like the quiz means anything."

"Except that you're weird." From Dutch's expression, he genuinely believed he was being helpful. "But we already knew?—"

The Metamorph Jareth, in bull form, smashed into the fence in front of Dutch. The fence held—barely—but the impact knocked Dutch down. Jareth the bull stomped his hooves and charged toward red-armored Nala.

Maybe red wasn't the best color to be wearing when fighting a bull.

Jareth rushed toward Nala like a storm. His hooves shredded the grass, and dust rose up from the ground. His sharp, pointed horns were just centimeters from Nala when she hastily sketched a swirly symbol into the ground with her staff. Jareth ran over the symbol. It looked like his hooves would shred it too.

And then he just stopped. Nala reached out with the tip of her staff and nudged him in the ribs, but he didn't move, didn't react, didn't do anything. It was like he was frozen in time.

When Nala whacked him with her staff, he grunted and dropped to his knees.

Then he was up, and his legs were moving again.

Nala quickly retreated to the other end of the Oval. She was right in front of us now, so close that I could barely see past her bright red armor. She was moving, hastily drawing more symbols on the ground before her. She looked like an artist, the ground was her canvas, and the staff was her very large paintbrush.

Nala must have used her magic to slow down time because the next thing I knew, she was gone, and Jareth was smashing full-force through the fence, crashing toward me.