Ten minutes earlier.

Ryn paced his room.

It was a nice room, to be fair. Spacious with carpeted floors, a low, many cushioned bed and a desk adorned with a vase of rainbow-coloured tulips. The nicest he had stayed in for…well, maybe ever. It was even nicer than his bedroom had been at home. But that had been different, more special, because that had been where he had lived with his…Mother. Father. Hometown.

But he wasn't really interested in the niceness of his room right now. What he was interested in was the next part of the sequence of words that were forever running through his head, that had changed recently, though the last bit had remained the same:

Find the Jewels. Save the world. Bring them back. Stay with Nuthea.

"Stay with Nuthea," he whispered to himself. But what was the point of staying with Nuthea if all he was to her was just a travelling companion, or a fellow-Jewel-hunting-party-member, or even a friend?

Ok, being her friend was a big deal in itself, to be fair–she was a lightning-wielding crown-princess from a faraway land, after all. But, Ryn had realised again, especially after he had forgiven her and Vorr for what had happened to his hometown, that he didn't just want to be her friend. He wanted to be more than her friend.

Was he deluding himself in wondering if he ever could be more than her friend? He had been seventeen when he had met her, but he was fairly sure that his birthday had passed sometime since he had been traveling with her, even if he had lost track of the months a while ago. That meant he was now eighteen–the age that boys traditionally came of age in Efstan and became men.

Nuthea was a bit older than him, he reckoned, but probably not much older. She was probably in her early twenties, Ryn reckoned–unless Manolians had some strange ability to look much younger than they actually were, which for all he knew could be a thing, though he hoped to the One that it wasn't.

If she was in her early twenties, she wasn't too much older than him.

Was she?

That was an acceptable age-gap for a romantic relationship.

Wasn't it?

He felt about her the same way he had felt about Carlotia, his most recent crush from Cleasor. Only not exactly the same way. She had been beautiful too, though nowhere near as beautiful as Nuthea. But she had been someone he viewed from far off, glimpsed across the classroom, and occasionally exchanged pleasantries with, which had given him fuel for the fire of his boyish, immature fantasies.

This was different. He knew Nuthea; he had lived and travelled and fought alongside her for the past however many months, and grown with her too, and although some things about her irritated part of him no end–like the way she always spoke down to everyone and loved to lecture people–somehow at the same time he found them bizarrely endearing.

And he now found that not only could he not imagine never being with Nuthea, he was finding it very hard not to imagine being with her in a romantic way. It wasn't even that he was hopelessly attracted to her–he didn't even think about her in that way (most of the time…). He just wanted to be close to her and to know her. Perhaps even to…marry her?

The problem was that she was a lightning-wielding crown-princess from a faraway land. And he was a…a what? What had Sagar called him that one time? A 'naive greenhorn pussywillow farmboy'. What did 'pussywillow' even mean? It didn't even make sense; it just sounded vaguely insulting. Stupid Sagar.

Ryn was just the bookish son of a reasonably wealthy farm-owner in Cleasor, a backwater town of Efstan, a northern Dokanese island that nobody cared about all that much.

"No," he said to himself, turning to take yet another lap of his well-furnished room. I'm more than that. I'm Ruby-touched. I have the Gift of Fire. I'm capable of great things. In fact, I've done some great things already: I escaped from an Imperial skyship. I rescued Nuthea when Vish poisoned her. I defeated General Vorrr, for goodness' sake.

The more troublesome problem, however, was that even though he had done all those things, he still felt like a scared, traumatised orphan boy who still often woke up from nightmares of his parents being murdered and his hometown being destroyed and who was still plagued by intrusive images of those things at all hours of the day.

Which is also what I am, he thought.

And when he thought of what he was presently trying to summon up the courage to go and do, butterflies fluttered in his stomach, his mouth went dry, and a strong pressure in his groinal area told him he needed to piss, even though he hadn't drunk anything in a while.

There was only one thing for it.

He was going to pray.

Correction. He was going to try to pray.

"One God," he said very quietly, staring at the grey stone of the room's wall and feeling very foolish, hoping and trying to believe there was some 'One' out there listening to him, "please help me. Please give me the courage to speak to Nuthea and invite her to go and visit an inn with me."

He fell silent, still staring at the wall.

Was something meant to happen now?

He didn't feel any different.

He didn't feel anything at all.

No voice from the sky. No emotional impression. No quivers in his liver. Nothing.

The only difference was that now he left the room and went to go and talk to Nuthea.

Perhaps the One helps those who help themselves, Ryn thought as he walked down the corridor to the stairs.

His booted feet felt heavy as he took the steps one at a time, as if his body was trying to hold him back and prevent him from doing what he was doing. But he took the steps all the same.

When he got to the upper floor, someone was already standing outside the first door, facing it as if waiting for an answer from within.

"Sagar?!" Ryn said. "What are you doing here?"

"What does it look like, pup?" Sagar said with a sneer. "I'm here to talk to the princess."

"No, you're not; I'm here to talk to the princess!"

"Well I was here first. I beat you to it. Bad luck. Now run along."

Heat rose in Ryn's chest. He weighed his chances. He liked them. He had bested Sagar in a fight before, after all, as apparently Sagar's air alignment was weak to his fire. The pirate had got there first, to be fair, but why should that matter?

"Sagar? Ryn? What are you doing here?"

Ryn spun on his heel.

Nuthea.

Ten minutes earlier.

Sagar was horny.

He was as horny as a horny toad. What a weird expression. Do toads get horny? Damned if he knew. He was a skysailor, not a seasailor, damnit. He didn't know poodoo about toads.

He was just desperate to have sex. He felt as though if he did not have sex soon he would die. Never mind that he had never had sex with another person. That had never stopped him before–having sex with himself, when he could sneak it in in secret aboard his ship, had always had to suffice until now, and on an all-male ship he had just had to make do with it–becoming Captain and getting his own quarters had been very…handy for that.

But he had lost those. Somehow, inexplicably, he had lost his quarters when the princess had demanded that she and the engineer woman sleep in them instead, for 'reasons of modesty', as she had put it. And with them Sagar had lost his privacy.

Such were his thoughts as he sat on the bed in his room in this weird lodging place the Governor of Farr had put them in.

He glanced down at his crotch in his fetching piratical pantaloons. He could just take care of things himself again now. He had his privacy back in here, after all.

But for some reason he found that part of him didn't want to do that any more. Now he found that he wanted to be with a woman instead. And not just a pretend woman in his imagination or on one of the filthy playing cards that he had 'confiscated' from Arf, his now deceased first mate, but a real woman. A real, living, breathing woman who would feel things in reality in response to him. Of course, it wasn't like he hadn't wanted to be with a real woman before, the option just hadn't ever been available…

The princess. This was all her fault. It was her fault that he had lost his privacy aboard the Wanderlust and gotten out of the habit of taking care of things for himself. It was her fault that as a result of that he was so incredibly horny now. It was her fault that he was feeling so generally frustrated in this area.

The princess had promised him 'gold, gemstones, and beautiful women'. Fair enough, she had delivered on two of those, giving him an enormous chest of Manolian-minted gold pieces and precious non-magical gems as a reward for his safe delivery of her to Manolia and as a deposit to guarantee her further monthly payments while on this 'quest'. He kept the chest under lock and key and slept above it in his hammock in the common sleeping area.

But the 'beautiful woman' part she had just outright tricked him about. True, there had been many beautiful women in Manolia, just like the princess had said, many beautiful warrior women, and Sagar had not failed to notice their excellent breeding, their strong and toned physiques, their disproportionately wide hips, and their tremendous breasts. But how many of them had been assigned to him in polygamous marriage, or given to him as bedslaves as a reward for his safe delivery of the princess to Manolia?

Precisely none, that's how kuefing many!

Instead, he had been offered the chance to stay in Manolia with the many beautiful warrior women, but with no guarantee of compulsory sex with any of them, or to enlist his services and his ship for the cause of this quest, where he could be around just two beautiful women–Nuthea and Elrann.

And they were beautiful, to be sure, each in their own particular way. The princess in a very obvious, proud way that she wore like he wore his Captain's Coat, and the engineer-woman in a more unconventional, less direct, way that made him feel a bit uncomfortable but, if he was honest, was no less appealing.

The problem was, there was no particular guarantee of sex with either of them either. Maybe he should have been more specific in his original clarification of the terms of his reward. The princess had placed him around 'beautiful women', the term they had used in their original bargain; there was just no guarantee of his having any kind of intimate relations with any of them. And now he was beginning to question whether he had made the right choice or not. Maybe there would have been more of a chance of successfully having intimate relations with a woman if he had stayed in Manolia. The initial monetary reward had been sizable enough, after all…

Rrrrr, he growled inside his own head. Well I'm not going to stand for this! he thought, standing up. Wait. I mean, I'm not going to sit for this! I'm going to stand up and go and get what I want!

He crossed his room and left to go to find the princess.

As he walked through the hall and up the steps to the floor above, imaginations of what he was going to do when he got to her room filled his mind.

He would bang on her door, demand that she open up, announce what he had come for, then sweep her up into his arms, take her to the bed, or the floor, whichever was more convenient, and then ravish her. She, being herself absolutely desperate to have sex with him and just too shy to have mentioned it yet, would be relieved and thankful that he had come and only too happy to oblige.

Wait.

He didn't want to disturb the others and announce what they were doing, as they might interrupt him, and while he was reasonably sure that the princess had the hots for him (come on, who wouldn't?), if he was more honest with himself he wasn't completely sure, and she had been giving the Pup some oddly long glances lately…

Instead, he would knock on the door, ask that she open up, suggest that they have intimate relations, then, when she probably agreed, he would make sure that the door was shut, discretely take her to the bed and have his way with her.

Wait.

As he got to the top of the steps, he remembered that although he had played out these sorts of scenarios in his head thousands of times before, he had never actually succeeded in putting any of them into practice… And if he was completely honest with himself, he was no longer sure that the princess was into him in that way at all.

Sure, they had shared some banterous and flirtatious conversations in which her body language had been warm and she had done things like place her hand on his arm while she laughed along with one of his comments, and he was dashingly handsome, he knew that much, but he didn't have any solid evidence that she fancied him.

Who knew, the princess could just as well have been laughing at him as much as with him. And she had all that Oneist religion nonsense, which probably made her a prude and uptight about sex. And er, well, there was still the small matter that he had never actually been with a woman in that way before, other than in his head.

Instead, he would tap on her door, suggest that she open up, then as politely but confidently as possible request that he go to a tavern with her so that they could become better acquainted, while personally harbouring the intention that this be with a view to them becoming romantically involved with one another and perhaps, one day, eventually, having intimate relations.

He was in front of her door. Its oak wood stared at him like a monster from the Earth Temple he could not defeat with his wind powers. The knots in it seemed to contort into mocking faces before his eyes.

Sagar shook his head to clear it.

He raised his finger to tap on her door, then lost his bottle and found that he could not do so. His throat was dry and his palms were clammy. He could not even move his index finger to tap on the door.

Damn! he thought. His crew, when he had been alive, had all thought he had been a serial womaniser, or at least he had hoped that they had based on the reputation that he had cultivated. Why can't I live up to my reputation, or at least the reputation that I want to have? I bet Dad never had these problems…

"Sagar?!" someone said behind him. "What are you doing here?"

The skypirate started, then turned. The Pup. This just got worse.

"What does it look like, pup?" Sagar said with a sneer. "I'm here to talk to the princess."

"No you're not. I'm here to talk to the princess!"

"Well, I was here first. I beat you to it. Bad luck. Now run along."

The boy bristled, and for a moment he looked like he was considering fighting. In spite of himself, Sagar's stomach gave a little lurch. He had been licked by the boy's flames before, and he didn't want to be again.

The princess came up the stairs behind the pup.

"Sagar?" she said first. "Ryn? What are you doing here?"

"I came up here to talk to you," Sagar announced, getting there first again. Be confident. By the pirate skycaptain you are. Don't let them see how you feel underneath. "I don't know why the pup's here," he lied.

"I wanted to talk to you too, Nuthea," the pup said, like the wet little schoolboy he was, using her proper first name like some sort of manipulative sap.

The princess frowned, appearing genuinely puzzled. Is she so unaware of her own glory? "Oh?" she said. "What about?"

This was it. This was the moment. Neither of them said anything for a heartbeat, just looked at the princess.

Then both he and the pup spoke at once so that neither of their words were audible. Sagar didn't even hear what he said himself, he just spoke automatically. Their sentences fizzled out simultaneously like the dying fumes of an airship crash.

"Pardon me?" said Nuthea, her frown deepening.

"I was wondering if you would like to go to a tavern with me sometime?" said Sagar. Yes! Got there first again! Death and glory!

"S-so was I!" stammered Ryn. "I was wondering if you like to go to a tavern with me too!"

Stupid pup. Now you're just copying me. Get lost, you wretched little scamp.

Nuthea looked from Sagar to Ryn, then back again. Her frown deepened.

"Why? What for?"

Now Ryn and Sagar looked at each other.

Don't make me spell it out, princess. Damnit, I guess they don't do things like this in her country…

This time Ryn beat him to it, while he was still thinking. "We each wanted to ask you to go to a tavern with us to explore whether you would consider starting a romantic relationship with us! I mean, independently! Not like a romantic relationship with both of us at the same time, but with one of us!" The pup had used meaningful words, but he had also sort of shouted them. It was quite weird. That must be a point in my favour.

"Oh," said Nuthea when he had finished. She looked from Ryn to Sagar and then back again. Her frown broke and her golden eyebrows raised high, her blue eyes going wide. "Oh!" For once, she seemed to have no idea at all what to say. "Boys…wow… well that's… that's very flattering of you both… but… but I'm afraid with the urgency and seriousness of our Quest"-she said the word 'Quest' in the sort of way that made it clear that for her it had a capital letter–"I'm afraid there's just no way I can… no way I could even consider the possibility of…a 'romantic relationship' at this time. There is just too much… too much else to focus on and too much going on at the moment… and I only lost my mother very recently… I'm very flattered, honestly, but that is not something I would even consider at present." She said that last sentence with an air of conclusion, as if it had taken her whole answer to get over her surprise and work out what she actually thought.

The wind went out of Sagar's sails a bit. Ah. Well, I tried. We tried.

The pup though, for some suicidal reason, kept going.

"Well what if it wasn't with a view to a romantic relationship?" he said. "What if we just went to a tavern to get a drink together (the two of us, I mean), without any other agenda?"

Clever bastard, thought Sagar. He's luring her into thinking it would just be a friendly meet-up in the hope that sex will develop organically. Why hadn't he thought of that?

"Hey!" he said aloud. "That's what I want to do too!"

"You both still want to go to a tavern for a drink with me?" said the princess. "Without it being with a view to exploring any kind of romantic relationship?"

"Yes," said the pup.

"Yes," said Sagar, not wanting to be left out.

"Independently," the pup clarified.

Nuthea ran her tongue over her bottom lip, then bit it, her eyes going off to the side for a moment. "Well… alright then. I suppose that would be okay. We do have seven days until the tournament for the Earth Emerald begins. Just so long as you both definitely understand that these are drinks in a tavern without any view to exploring a romantic relationship."

"Got it," said Ryn.

"Totally clear," Sagar lied.

"Which one of us should go with you first?" said Ryn.

What a stupid thing to say. "I should go first!" said Sagar, raising his voice. "I was here first, after all!"

"I should go first!" the pup protested, and the air around them grew a fraction warmer. "It was my idea! The whole it-not-being-with-a-view-to-a-romantic relationship-thing, I mean! In fact, Nuthea, forget the whole tavern-thing–I was exploring the city earlier and I found a poster advertising a play by a performing troupe that you might enjoy! Perhaps we could go and see that together instead? "

"Hey!" said Sagar, air rising around him. "You never mentioned that before! Now you're changing the terms! I want to take her to a play without it being with a view to exploring a romantic relationship, and I want to do it first!"

The princess put her face in her hand.

"Hey, what's all the noise out here about?"

Sagar looked round. The engineer woman had appeared in the doorway to her own room.

A thought occurred to him.

"Nothing important," he said. "Hey, woman, would you like to go for a drink in a tavern with me sometime?"

Elrann looked him up and down. "Sure. So long as you finally stop calling me 'woman'. Yntrik knows I could use a drink."

She slammed her door shut again.

Yes! thought Sagar, inwardly celebrating. Still got it! Not that I've ever had 'it' before, but she doesn't need to know that.

Nuthea and Ryn were looking at him, their mouths hanging slightly open, like he had done something odd.

"What?" Sagar said.

"Do you still want to take me to a play that Ryn found?"

Oh poodoo. "Er. Yes?"

The princess turned to the pup. "I look forward to attending the play with you, Ryn," she said, then went into her room and shut the door behind her.

Ryn stared swords at him.

"What?!" said Sagar. "Piss off, pup!"

"You really are a piece of work," the pup said, and walked off, leaving Sagar on the landing to think about his success in asking out a woman.

After a while he went back to his room and took care of himself.