Armand and Eris stood in a training yard. The two children wore padded clothing. Sir Felix the Red observed the two.

"There's no tension in the air. I wonder if they're looking forward to this? Maybe Eris wants a boyfriend who trains with her?" the knight thought.

Armand's thoughts were different, "By the gods, I hope he doesn't notice anything. Sir Felix was a good friend of mine, but he's allied with my enemies right now. I can't be too careful."

Eris thought, "Armand's pretty tense, but he's also trying to hide it. I'll prove that he can trust me."

"Let's start with sword practice. On the battlefield, polearms are more important weapons, but you're more likely to get into duels for a while," Sir Felix said.

"I think knights should use guns more," Armand spoke up.

"Is Armand trying to get out of our spar? No, he'd try something more likely to work than suggesting gun practice," Eris thought.

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"Guns, eh?" Sir Felix asked.

"They're really cool! You point them, and they make a big noise! Bang!" Armand said before thinking. "There goes the rest of my dignity. Hopefully, Sir Felix will figure things out. If knights don't change with the times, they might get dropped like a broken blade."

"I understand. Sir Felix was one of Armand's friends. He must be trying to get him to adapt to modern warfare," Eris concluded.

"Yeah, guns are pretty cool," Sir Felix smiled. "Still, I'd rather trust in my lance than an inaccurate weapon that jams a lot. But I do practice shooting just in case I need to use them."

"I have no idea why knights are still important, even if they are a shadow of what they once were. If I need heavy cavalry, I'd rather hire reiter mercenaries than knights any day of the weak. Reiters are cheaper than knights. They're more expendable because you don't have to spend years training them. And they circle enemy formations and shoot them with pistols, making them a more difficult target than knights who charge head-on. And chivalry...knights should take their pathetic, old-fashioned sense of chivalry and shove it in fantasy books where it belongs," Eris thought.

Eris was glad that Sir Felix couldn't read minds. She didn't want to think about what he would do to her if he could.