The griffon brought down the heavy club with a measured force, but his opponent blocked the strike, sending a loud crack across the yard as wood struck wood. His counterattacking strike was successful, and the first griffon clutched his bruised side.

“Very good, Frederick.” Herr Steiner von Falconia congratulated the loser. These two students were experienced enough that he didn’t need to be hard on them emotionally anymore, and if he had done his job right, the one who lost the sparring match would be thinking over where he went wrong before the first words came from the teacher’s beak. It was the victor who really had to be checked. Overconfidence had no place on the battlefield. “Braun, you’re still overextending. One of these days he’s going to punish you rightly for it. And he was wide open on move two, if you had caught it you could have won far sooner.”

The two students looked at their teacher, and back at each other, before automatically re-assuming their dueling stances as they compared what they had heard to what they had done and figured out how to mesh the two. First to figure it out would make the first strike.

Steiner sipped on his coffee. It was a bright and sunny day, a good day to not be wearing armor, and his little plot of land was once again being used as a training ground, which was an adequate source of extra idols when there were no campaigns for the experienced knight to devote himself to. And besides, half of these kids would run into battle without training and get killed if it was more convenient than the alternative, so he was saving lives.

He was not the master of a large school like so many in Griffenheim, and his tutorship was as traditional as it was small-scale. Squiredom and fundamentals were what he was taught, and he passed it down. He wasn’t sure if it made his students survive better than their peers in military education, but he knew that he received compliments from their officers more consistently than any other teacher he could find. When a griffon devoted themselves to his teachings, the only disparaging word he ever heard about them was that they were gone too soon.

It was, in a way, the worst thing he could be told about them.

He heard someone coming to his front door. “I’m back here!” He yelled loudly, keeping his eyes on the two youths in front of him. One of his friends from town came around and walked up to him on the back porch of his house. Guillermo was a trader from Sicameon who had come seeking opportunity and found less than he hoped but more than he had had previously, and thus stayed in and around the Imperial city.

The merchant waved exaggeratedly. “Hail, Herr Steiner.”

“Hello, Guillermo. What brings you here?”

“Have you been following the news out of Equus?”

Steiner felt a familiar pang. “I have not. It doesn’t affect us, and it’s depressing.”

“One of your students has made the papers, you know. I didn’t realize you had anyone who would work for the bugs.”

“Kats was a special case. It was him, right?”

Guillermo picked his words. “They didn’t say a name. All that was mentioned was that he got into a duel with one Captain Ridgeback plus companions a few days ago, and that he mentioned you before it started.”

“Oh, Boreas.” Steiner groaned. “I tried to warn him that the Equestrians never understood honor the way we do, but he couldn’t be talked out of it, he had to know combat alongside his kind. And of all the dishonorable wretches Equestria ever birthed, Ridgeback is the worst I ever had the displeasure of meeting. If it really was Kats, I can think of nothing he would hate more than being felled by such a low being as that worthless ideologue.”

He sipped on his coffee. He knew that his claws were gripping the delicate handle tightly because that was always how he reacted to finding out that one of this own had fallen. As knights, they put themselves in danger often, but no matter how many comrades were killed, peers and students alike, he never became used to it.

He hoped that the faint shaking of the cup as rage began to work through his muscles went unnoticed by the excited trader. “Why did it have to be that dog? He was such a promising young lad, too.”

“But Steiner, your student won!”

Steiner spit out his coffee. “HE WHAT?!”

Author's Note

For his role in the Third Changeling-Equestrian Battle of Canterlot, also known as the Canterlot Siege or the Canterlot Front in the Veteran's Revolt, Kats orn Griffenheim was awarded the Royal Trident Second Class and the Daytime Star of Excellence. Post-war advancements in changeling medicine restored full vision in his left eye (the right had merely had the lenses scratched and eventually healed itself). He went on to finish his service and spend the next few years writing his memoirs. "Berserk: Blood and Fury in Marble Halls" covers the events of the siege itself, while "The Insect Knight" covers the warrior's pilgrimage across the continent he performed afterwards. He now travels the world as a freelance instructor of armored infantry.

Yoro Imina Sorytt was awarded the Royal Trident First Class for his posthumous actions. As the building he died in was destroyed in the conflict, his awards could not be buried with him, and they are instead held at the Veteran's Revolt Memorial in Alvarium. New theories are still coming out as to why such "restless spirit" actions did not occur in the Great War, or of how many truly happened. The fact that most seem to have been on the side of the revolt complicates matters further. Of the "reputable" stories, and therefore of the 12 which were accepted as cause for award by the Changeling state, Yoro has the distinction of being the only changeling.