The cabin was small, but surprisingly cozy. Thankfully, the rational part of his brain had intervened in time to remind him to grab as many debits from his chambers as he could, before running back down the stairs and out the door. It was thanks to this momentary spark of brilliance that he could currently afford to be in the best passenger suite on the ship - right next to the cabins of the senior officers and the captain herself.

Pyrome Flaim was very close to the Imperial family during her service as Warden, before she decided to retire and take up her other passion - seafaring. But she hadn’t seen him since he was five and he was pretty sure she wouldn’t recognize him now, especially not without the traditional mask and makeup, customary for the unmarried princes of Magmalia. Despite this, he still paced around the cabin a good half hour in the restricted space, all wired up and unable to completely deal with the new wave of fear which took him over.

His mother had surely found out already that he was gone. Knowing her, she would’ve surely mobilized a whole squad of Wardens to go looking for him already. Not because she missed her only son, mind you. No, Tyrannis Pyre was anything, but sentimental. Her one true love would forever remain the rule of Magmalia. She was more likely worried about the tension this would cause between herself and the royal family of the Earth nation, when they found out that the trophy promised to their little princess would not be available for the ceremony of his official enslavement as an earthly husband.

For a very brief moment, his face flashed a smug smile. He imagined those barbarians from the South with their crooked swords and unpleasant thick accent, as they would swarm around the Palace of Undying Flame, screaming of Sacred war against the infidels to the North. His mother would be furious and mobilize the army immediately. For her, problems were solved either with force or with greater force...

He had always found women’s innate aggression both fascinating and terrifying. The way they always seemed to manage to turn to physical altercations, instead of diplomacy, disgusted him. They were like rabbid, feral beasts, fighting over a piece of dead meat...

They were so drunk with their powers that they seemed to always be looking for a new challenge, a new way to reach the limit of their abilities. Yes, they were powerful - the Goddess had granted them unique strength and ability, while the men were left powerless, capable of developing at the most some weak form of energy healing - shamanism as it was called. He himself had considered a few times joining the Practice. But the choice for that too was not in his hands. Not all men could become shamen. And even the ones who showing promise for such an ability, had to spend years in isolation and excruciating daily physical and mental exercises in order to master the Craft. And last, but not least - shamanism required one to denounce all worldly posts and titles. His mother would never allow it, no matter how much he wanted it. In her eyes, he was no more than a bargaining chip, a piece of merchandise she could sell the Southerners on, to calm a bit their nasty tempers.

Although he understood all of this perfectly, he still couldn’t bring himself to hate her. Instead, he hated himself and his weakness with a passion and intensity which seemed to paralyze him at times. In such moments, he thought of his father. Now him he hated from the bottom of his heart, because the prince-consort was the epitome of everything that Fye hoped he would never become, but to which he was getting closer and closer each day. His father had died when Fye himself was just a small boy of no more than six years old, from some illness which his descendant hadn’t even bothered to remember. But what he did remember of his dad filled him both with despair and blind rage.

The prince-consort was, by Magmalian standards, the perfect husband - always quiet, always meek and docile. Yet somehow what others saw in Fye’s parent as virtues, he himself saw as weakness. Kye was too passive in his eyes, more like an attachment to Tyrannis than and actual separate being with his own thoughts, goals and abilities. It was precisely this which terrified him the most - to lose himself so much in his family that he becomes part of the background, doomed to forever remain close to home, to take care of the children and… to be a man.

It was perhaps precisely because of all this that AWA attracted him so. Women over there had apparently managed to retain their galant ways in their relations with the weaker sex, but at the same time had reigned in their savage need to dominate the men in their lives at all cost. It would take hundreds of years, for sure, but most likely one day the Twin-continents would be the first to successfully reach equality of the sexes, where women and men would be free to realize their full potential and work to better society and civilization as a whole.

This thought seemed to calm him a bit. Whatever his mother had planned for him, no matter how hard she tried to get him back to the palace, just so she could discard him like a useless piece of decoration for the Earth princess’s amusement, he was already one step ahead of them.

He had just managed to make himself comfortable on the small bunk, bolted to the floor and was already slightly drifting off to sleep, when he thought he heard something in front of his cabin. He jumped up and stared intently at the fogged up circle glass in the door. Nothing… Most likely his mind was playing tricks on him, but nevertheless a nasty feeling tied his stomach in a knot and all of a sudden, the cloak of sleep he had so meticulously tried to wrap around his wound up brain vanished in a huff. He remained sitting in the bed for a moment, eyes still on the door and ears straining to the point of popping.

Still nothing… Did he really become so paranoid all of a sudden? Completely possible. Still, it wasn’t completely out of the question that someone had noticed him on the docks, despite his efforts to keep his hood over his face at all times. Even so, women from lady Pyrome’s crew who were checking passenger boarding passes had seen his face… But even if someone else had seen him, the chances of being recognised were close to zero.

Suddenly, he jumped in the bed and almost hit his head on the luggage storage unit. That woman! That woman on the docks he had ran into (literally), minutes before boarding the “Fire storm”. She had looked at him as though she’d just seen a ghost. Could she have figured out who he was? By the demons of Kriya! Fye winced as he pinched his arm as punishment for cursing, even though it wasn’t out loud. Old court habits die hard…

After a brief internal struggle, he threw the blankets from himself and made for the door. He had promised himself to never again let his fears control him and he might as well start now. He grabbed the rounded knob and with a final heavy sigh, swung the entrance to the cabin wide open.

Nothing… He peered his head out of the arch of the door and looked around. Nothing to the left. Some more nothing to the right… The wave of relief that washed over him almost made him dizzy. Now he could finally get some sleep in peace.

He swung the door again on its squeaky hinges and had almost turned completely toward the bed, when the heavy piece of metalin hit something with a dull “thud” and stopped.

“Good evening, sunshine”, a nasty, sleazy voice came from behind his left shoulder. “Why don’t we get ourselves off this rusty old boat, hugh?”

Fye swiveled around on his heels, white as a sheet and for a moment dropped the doorknob. Which in turn allowed the tanned woman to open the entrance a bit wider and get in the cabin, followed by another, not so dark-skinned, but rather tall lady. The second one slammed the door shut and he listened with increasing terror as the key was turned with a sinister click, announcing his only way out as locked.

He felt like a caged small animal - the cabin suddenly felt a lot tinier than before. There was nowhere to run, he could never fight two strong, adult women… There was only one thing left…

“Oh, no, no, no, sweetie, don’t be bad like that”, the first woman had moved so quickly that all he heard was the soft rustling of her clothes and then she was next to him, turning him with his back to her as one of her strong hands planted itself firmly over his mouth. “Because, you see, if you scream, you will disappoint your big sister Mar over here, and believe me, you won’t like that one bit. After all, you know what water ladies do to people who refuse to keep their mouths shut, don’t you?”

The taller woman made a chilling gurgling sound from deep in her throat, like someone drowning, to reinforce her partner’s words. Fye swallowed hard and forced himself to not tremble from fear. He wondered briefly if he were cursed. You know, a bit more than the regular man on Alaiah.

“There’s a good little sunshine”, the woman said approvingly, as she was still squeezing him in her powerful paws, when she felt his slight figure sag in submission against her. “Now let’s get to an agreement as adults, ok? In a moment, the alarm will sound, because your big sis’ Mar over here wants to have some fun, or as she likes to call it - wants to rock our world a little, so all the lovely hard-working officer ladies will go to the command deck and we can all just get out of here, nice and quiet.”

She had barely stopped talking when the other one - Mar’s eyes whitened as they rolled back into her skull while she began mumbling something under her nose. The raw force which filled his cabin felt like a punch to the gut and he was almost certain that he would fall to the floor if the woman behind him wasn’t holding him tight. After all, he had never seen a water lady in action. Actually, now that he thought about it, he had very limited knowledge of the other Gifts, apart from the Fire one and this was mostly because his mother wouldn’t even light her pipe without using her abilities.

He was scared, yes, even more so than a few days ago when the princess had forced herself on him in the courtyard. But soon, something else began to bubble up in his blood. It swept away the irritating, paralyzing voice of terror in his head, like a hurricane would a dry twig and before he knew it, the world went dark again. Although his other senses were sharpened almost painfully, he felt the same confusion and disorientation as that day by the lake. In one moment, the hands of the woman were around him, powerful and inescapable like a vice grip and in the next - he was running down the corridor linking the passenger suites to the metalin stairs which led up to the bridge. The whole way he could hear the voice of the dark-skinned woman, even through the mix of sounds coming from the command deck.

Slowly, but surely, his heart restored its normal beating and the chaotic flurry of colour clouding his vision retreated to the depths of his unconscious, as if it had never been there at all. No matter, the bridge was close by. Surely there was someone out there who would be able to help him. At this stage, even if they returned him to his mother would be a million times better than seeing any one of the two terrifying women… Like right now...

“Oh, little sunshine, why do you force me to be the bad guy, huh?”, the dark skinned woman appeared from the shadow by the stairs so suddenly, as though she had just been part of the wall.

He opened his mouth to scream as loud as he could, for the second time this evening. And for the second time, he could not. This time, because he felt the metallic tang of blood directly in his throat. Everything went dark again, but this time, because there was no one to hold him, Pyre Fye, former prince of Magmalia, currently one desperate, trapped man, dropped onto the hard floor, drowning in his own blood. With the remainders of his consciousness, he felt someone pick him up and heard a distant voice, as though coming from a far away world:

“Your big sister Mar is very disappointed, I’ll have you know…”