Alex stood on a cliff, overlooking the city of London. The streets were filled, but with horses and carriages, and people walking in dresses and slacks. She turned to the lady standing next to her. "I don't understand," she said.

The woman smiled. "Of course you don't, that's why I'm here. It's good you're back home, you shouldn't have gone so far away."

"I had no choice, at least I was on the same planet still," Alex replied. "But explain this."

"This will be London in four years. The whole world will be like this. You and your cousin, Queen Adela, must prepare for it. The humans are using up the Earth's natural resources too fast. They have become greedy, not thinking about the long-term effects that will take place in a short while. Go to your Queen, and tell her that I say this. She will not doubt it if you use my name."

"But who are you?" Alex asked as the lady and the dream started to vanish.

The lady laughed. "I am the Mother Goddess. Learn your lessons well, my daughter. Those who learn to use machines will not be able to, but you can always use a sword, or arrows. If you are prepared, there will be no problem." Then, she was gone.

"Forgive me, your Majesty," Alex said as she kneeled, "but I have urgent news for you."

"What is it?" she asked.

"If we may speak in private..." I said, glancing around. Already the servants were walking around. "I don't think it would be nice to have the servants, or anyone else, listen to the secret."

The Queen let her in, and Alex sat down in a chair. "I am Alexander Tirragen, and I just arrived yesterday, but this morning, I had a dream," she started. "I sometimes have prophecising dreams. Six months ago, I had a dream about the discovery of Jagmas, before it was discovered." The Queen nodded, letting Alex continue. "You see, this morning, I had a dream that in four years, all electricity would be gone, the Earth's resources were unusable. I didn't gather this all from my dream. The Great Mother Goddess, whom I know you worship, along with the Dark God, Markanos and others, told me." The Queen started to say something, but Alex stopped her. "You don't have to say anything, I'll keep it a secret. I just wanted to tell you, so you would know that I'm not lying. But she said we must prepare for this, so everyone won't rely completely on electricity and won't know how to defend for themselves when their heater doesn't work, or air conditioning. She also said that the knights had to be prepared. If they were, there would be no problem. I don't know what she meant by that, but I suggest we follow it. It's not every day someone gets a visit by the Great Goddess, even in their dreams." She smiled slightly.

"How do you know about these gods?" Queen Adela asked. "I must know."

Alex shrugged, innocence on her face. "She just came to me with the knowledge. She had to tell me who she was," she replied. "She said it was urgent that I told you, so I did. Why she didn't come to you in your dreams, I don't know, instead of having me as the messsenger."

"Perhaps you're meant to worship her," the Queen said thoughtfully. "Thank you, however puzzling it may be. You are excused. You don't want to be late for your classes."

Alex grinned, bowed, and left the Queen's chambers. Stuart was waiting for her when she returned to her room.

"Where have you been?" he growled.

"Talking to the Queen about an important message I recieved in my dreams," Alex said. "Come on, there's Eddie and Charles."

"The first class is math," Eddie told her. "We're working on algebra."

"But I already took algebra 1 and 2 in school!" Alex protested.

"Well, you'll be ahead. I don't envy you, though. If I were you, I'd keep my mouth shut and not tell them," he advised. "The teacher will just give you harder work, like trigonometry."

"Well, I can handle trig," she said confidentally. "I did a little of it before, but I'm not advanced in it, at any rate."

Eddie laughed. "You're very courageous," he told her. "I don't envy you one bit, however."

They walked in the class, and a grumpy-looking, old professor came up to Alex and Stuart. As expected, he gave Alex problems on trigonometry to work on, and got Stuart working on algebra. Alex got through three of the five problems during class before the bell struck to go to their next class.

All of the teachers were like the first; they were all grumpy-looking, old, stern college professors, but Alex didn't mind them, since they were reported to be some of the best teachers in the world. She was surprised, however, when she walked into her reading class: the students actually looked interested. A young teacher, or at least young compared to the others, walked in. He was in his mid-thirties, short, and his beard and hair were kept shaggy. His clothes were rumpled, but his green eyes twinkled with a high intelligence.

"I'm Sir Otis," he said to Alex at the beginning of class. "I hope you'll like it here, and you'll definitely learn a lot. That is our goal in the classroom."

Alex left that class in a happy mood, but she knew that would not last long. She liked Sir Otis, despite Charles' unkind remarks about him, but history was next. It had always been her least favourite class, and she caught herself nodding off as the teacher droned on and on.

Lunchtime eventually came to the pages, and after was the hands-on training of becoming a knight. First was riding. Alex knew how to ride a horse, and had done plenty of it at the palace, but she did not have a horse, so the gruff-looking instructor assigned her one. She was dismayed to see it when it was brought out: it was a tall, black, ill-tempered beast, which Alex was all too familiar with. She liked horses a lot, but she could never master this one. She sighed, mounted the horse, and started her lessons.

She looked at Stuart and envied him: he got the horse that was Alex's favourite, a nice cream-coloured, sweet horse that would do anything a rider asked of him. Alex then decided that it was not fair, but she had to learn how to ride and handle any horse, and it was obvious she knew how to ride, which was why she got the bad horse, opposed to Stuart, who had never ridden before except a few times.

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