Deliberations and Solicitations

Previously on Saga of the Jewels…

The life of seventeen-year-old RYN, bookish son of a wealthy landowner, changes forever when his hometown is destroyed by the EMPIRE and everyone he has ever known is killed. Ryn discovers that the Empire are seeking TWELVE PRIMEVAL JEWELS which grant the power to manipulate different elements, and that his father had been hiding the FIRE RUBY. He sets out to take revenge on the Imperial General who killed his family and retrieve the Fire Ruby, and along the way meets NUTHEA the lightning-slinging princess, SAGAR the swaggering skypirate, ELRANN the tomboy engineer, CID the wizened old healer, and VISH the poppy-seed-addicted bounty hunter. Together the companions decide to find all of the Jewels in order to stop the evil EMPEROR from finding them first and taking over the world. They have thus far succeeded in retrieving the Fire Ruby, borne by Ryn, and the Lightning Crystal, borne by Nuthea. They have now come to the land of FARR where they intend to compete in a hand-to-hand fighting tournament in order to attempt to win its prize, the EARTH EMERALD…

EPISODE THIRTY-ONE: DELIBERATIONS AND SOLICITATIONS

One week until the tournament.

Ryn paced his room.

It was a nice room, to be fair. Spacious, with a rug on the floor, a low, many-cushioned bed and a desk adorned with a vase of rainbow-coloured flowers. The nicest he had stayed in for…well, maybe ever. It was 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 repeated out loud 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?

Of course, 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 for her accidental part in 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 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 at which 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?

It was an acceptable age-gap for a romantic involvement.

Wasn’t it?

He felt about her the same way he had felt about Carlotia, his most recent crush in Cleasor. Mother. Father. Hometown. 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 lent 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 loved to lecture people–somehow at the same time he found them bizarrely endearing.

And now he 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 (much…). He just wanted to know her and be close to 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 time? A ‘naive greenhorn pussywillow farmboy’. What did ‘pussywillow’ even mean in that context? 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 country town that didn’t even exist anymore, in Efstan, a northern Dokanese island that nobody cared about all that much, who hadn’t particularly made anything of himself.

“No,” he said to himself, turning to take yet another lap of his well-paced 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 Vorr, for goodness’ sake.

The more troublesome problem was that even though he had done all those things, he 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.

And when he thought about what he was presently trying to summon up the courage to go and do, butterflies collided in his stomach, his mouth went dry, and a strong pressure in his groin told him he needed to pee even though he hadn’t drunk anything in a while.

He stopped his pacing.

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 to a tavern 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 sense of direction. 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 a reply 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, pup. 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 slightly weak to his fire. The pirate had got here first, to be fair, but why should that matter?

“Sagar? Ryn? What are you doing here?”

Ryn whirled on his heel.

Nuthea.

*

Ten minutes earlier.

Sagar was frustrated.

He felt strongly as though he was not making enough progress in bedding either the princess and/or the engineer-woman.

Never mind that he had never actually bedded anyone before. He was convinced that all he needed was a little wine, a little moonlight, a little Captain Sagar charm and then they would be putty in his hands—he would be able to get one or both of them into his quarters.

Except 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.

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.

The princess. This was all her fault.

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 cabin.

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, and their generally tremendous proportions. But how many of them had been assigned to him in polygamous marriage, or given to him as bedslaves for his new harem as a reward for his safe delivery of the princess to Manolia?

Exactly none, that’s how kufeing many!

Instead, he had been offered the choice to stay in Manolia with the many beautiful warrior women, but with no guarantee of bedding 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 completely honest, was no less appealing.

The problem was, there was no particular guarantee of bedding 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; he just hadn’t specified what he wanted to be able to do with 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 a successful bedding 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 left his room 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 be bedded by him, just too modest to have mentioned it yet, would be relieved and thankful that he had come and only too happy to oblige him.

Wait.

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

Alright. Instead, he would knock on the door, ask that she open up, request that they have intimate relations, then, when she probably agreed, he would make sure that the door was shut, discretely make his way with her to the bed and start kissing 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 encouraging and she had done things like place her hand on his arm while she laughed along with one of his jokes, and he was dashingly handsome, he knew that much, but he didn’t have any solid evidence that she actually 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 going on, which probably made her a prude and uptight. And er, well, there was still the small matter that he had never actually been with a woman in that way before... (There had been that one time with the serving wench in Marisel, but she had turned out to be a boy dressed up as a girl, so he had run away. He didn’t like to think about that too much.)

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

He was in front of her door. How long had he been here? 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.

What’s wrong with me? I’m the great Captain Sagar Edbini, Scourge of the Imfisi Skies!

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

Kufe! 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 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 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. Be the skycaptain you are. “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 blanket 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; they just looked at the princess.

Then both he and the pup spoke at the same time so that neither of them 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.

“Iwaswonderingifyouwouldliketogotoatavernwithmesometime!” said Sagar extremely fast. 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 sometime 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 still further.

“Why?” she said.

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 had been quite weird. That must be a point in my favour.

“Oh,” said Nuthea when he had finished, and took half a step backwards. She looked from Ryn to Sagar and back again. Then 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 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 am very flattered, honestly, but it 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. 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 bedding will happen spontaneously. 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, just one eyebrow raising this time. “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. “Not at the same time.”

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 whole 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 any kind of 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, and I want to do it first!”

The princess put her face in her hand.

“What’s all the noise out here about?”

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

“Nothing important,” he said. A thought occurred to him. “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 the 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 open-mouthed 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 bask in his success at finally asking out a woman.