Uh oh. That was the first thing I thought of when I woke up. We were surrounded by palace guards. They all had their swords out and pointed at us. They had a hold of our horse as well.

     I turned towards Markus and started shaking him awake, "Markus, Markus, wake up!"

     Markus jumped awake, "huh? What? What's wrong?"

     He rubbed his eyes and then saw everything I saw.

     "Oh," he said.

     One of the guards, who I recognized to be Benjamin, took out a scroll and started reading it.

     "Prince Markus, you are hereby grounded and is to stay in your room forever. Prince Alex, you will return to the dungeons right away awaiting your execution this Tuesday."

     Markus stood up, "You can't do this! This isn't right and you know it!"

     "Let's go boys," Benjamin said.

     The guards made their way toward us.

     "No!" Markus snapped, "Alex and I will not be going anywhere with you and that is final!"

     "Don't make this difficult," Benjamin told us.

     I stood up right next to Markus, "You heard Markus, we will not be going with you."

     "I'm afraid you leave me no choice." Benjamin spoke, he took out his sword, "We'll have to take you in by force."

     Markus and I took out our swords, we pointed them at the guards.

     "Fine then." I said, "Markus and I challenge you to a duel, if we win then Markus and I get to leave with our horse and you can't follow us. However, if you win, we'll both go back to the castle and I'll die."

     "What no!" Markus exclaimed, "Alex you can't do that. I won't let you!"

     "It's not your choice Markus, I have to do it," I told him.

     I turned to Benjamin, "I agree to your terms." he said.

     He then lunged at me and Markus, and we both rolled out of the way. All the guards came at us, they tried disarming me but I wasn't letting them, I looked over at Markus, he was surrounded as well. I wasn't sure if we were going to win this fight. Suddenly I disarmed one of the guards, then the next one, and the next, and the last one, I looked over at Markus and he had disarmed all the guards as well. We only had one last one, Benjamin.

     "Your turn," I told him.

     He lunged at us again, but this time we didn't move instead we blocked his sword and pushed back, and he came at us again. We stepped out of the way and tripped him. He got up quickly and sliced at me, I dodged his sword and parried it. He slashed at me again but Markus blocked it. I thrust my sword upwards and pushed forward, the sword clanged out of his hand and hit the ground.

     "Looks like we won." I said, "We'll be going now."

     I walked towards our horse and grabbed it from the guards, they looked shocked at us, I brought our horse to Markus and we both climbed on, we then rode forward to my castle. . .