“It’s been two weeks, and he has tried nothing. I don’t think he is one of them. It doesn’t match.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Mahon answered.

Jorik and him were talking inside Mahon’s cabin. When they had learnt that Triandal was a sorcerer, they had suddenly remembered Paegis’ last words about them being marked by the Ill Immortals. It was rare to meet sorcerers, and the fact that one acted as a high-class liaison captain was kind of suspicious.

As they learnt more about the man and his ship, they slowly changed their mind, though. The man was more of a prestidigitator than a sorcerer, and his enthusiasm for his ship, his passengers, and even his crew wasn’t faked at all. It wasn’t like Mahon and Jorik knew many Ill Immortals, but from what they felt, the captain wasn’t one of them.

The boat tilted heavily on the side from a powerful wave, and the two men had to grab the walls and fixed furnitures not to fall.

“What shitty weather.” Jorik cursed.

They had been hit by a violent storm two days before, and since then they had been locked up into their cabins. The boat rolled too much to even try to play chogess, their main distraction in their journey up to now.

No cabin was large enough to accommodate all the passengers, and thus the little group had been split in their respective cabins with not much to do. Mahon and Jorik had first spent some time in Nightmare to escape their current predicament, but they couldn’t stay in the dream world for days and had to come back to reality at one point. And Triandal had talked about a storm lasting for a whole week the last time he visited them to bring them food…

“You want to play a mind chogess?” Mahon asked, out of boredom.

“Mind chogess?” Jorik echoed with a questioning look.

“Yeah. We can’t have a board, but do we need one? We just say the moves out loud and play in our mind.” Mahon said with an enthusiastic smile while pointing at his head.

Jorik shrugged. “Seems impossible, but it’s not like I’ve anything better to suggest.”

“I’ll start then.” Mahon said. “I move…”

The two men spent the next hours trying to play mind chogess, but with the moving boat and their still incipient mastery of the game, they didn’t even manage to finish one round before they screwed up everything. After twenty moves or so, they had trouble remembering the position of each piece, and they often disagreed on some, so they had to start over.

As they continued for a bit, they became better, and sometimes by replaying the previous moves they managed to remember their games and correct their mistakes, but it only allowed them to go a bit farther and nothing more. Boredom quickly came back a day later, when they exited Nightmare after almost twenty-four hours fighting with invoked daggers and playing chogess on their made-up Nightmare’s board.

Jorik sighed. “Why is it we can’t stay in Nightmare longer?”

“You can’t sleep forever.” Mahon shrugged. “You could stay in bed the whole day, but in the end if your mind isn’t tired you’ll not fall asleep. So, if your body has got enough sleep, you’ll naturally wake up even though you want to stay in Nightmare.”

“Seems like a strange limitation for such a powerful magic.”

“No. I don’t think so. It’s just that the magic is based on our sleep. The Amentiae wanted to pervert our dreams, and they succeeded. But if you can’t sleep, you won’t dream. It’s as simple as that.”

Jorik sighed again. “Yes. Whatever... We’re back to square one.”

A violent wave suddenly shook the whole boat, and Jorik, caught unprepared, was sent to his knees. Mahon, on the other hand, managed to balance himself and stayed standing.

“And it doesn’t even get better.” Jorik mumbled while getting up.

Mahon didn’t answer anything and kept staring at Jorik with a strange light in his eyes instead. The noble quickly noticed it.

“No. No. No.” He said. “Whatever you have in mind, forget it. Doesn’t sound like a great idea.”

A wicked smile appeared in Mahon’s face and grew larger with each passing second. “Hey. I’ve got a great idea.”

Jorik facepalmed himself. “Yes, sure. And I’m a Fada.”

“Well. Technically, you might be related, so…” Mahon started.

Jorik raised his eyes to the sky. “You know what I mean.”

The ship rolled over a wave, and the ground started to tilt in the other direction. Mahon bent his knees to stabilize himself while Jorik simply stayed seated in his bed while leisurely holding the nearby wall. The floor was so tilted that Mahon almost sat backwards to keep his balance.

As the wave passed, the floor went back to horizontal, and Mahon followed smoothly by adjusting his posture with the motion. He smiled widely.

Jorik glanced at him with a bored look. “You’re a child or what?”

“Fight me.” Mahon answered instead.

“What?” Jorik now had a puzzled face.

“Fight me.” Mahon repeated as he took a fighting stance and drew his sword.

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Jorik chuckled before gesturing to the cramped cabin. “Look at where you are. There is no way we can fight here.”

“You’re right.” Mahon answered without missing a beat. “Let’s go outside, then.”

Mahon pushed open the door of his cabin and walked outside. The cabins were one floor below the deck, and with the storm raging on there wasn’t much light illuminating this floor. Nevertheless, Mahon kept a hand on the wall and followed it.

The waves pushed him from one side to the other as he slowly walked into the corridor. With the most powerful ones, he ended with one foot on the ground and one foot on the wall to keep his balance. He quickly got used to it, though, and reached the stairs that led to the deck.

Without hesitation, he went up in one go and pushed open the doors. A vision of doomsday waited for him outside. He had no idea if he was in the middle of the day or the night, but it seemed it didn’t matter at all for how dark his surroundings were.

A few lanterns were hanging from different parts of the ship, but their light was so dim it barely extended to their surroundings. It was as if the flames themselves were struggling to push back the darkness.

With a thundering boom that shook the whole ship, a blinding flash illuminated the scene as a lighting bolt fell somewhere in the sea. During that short time, Mahon got a better sense of what was around him.

Under a pounding rain, sailors were fighting for their life here and there on the ship. Their faces were soaked by the rain while their feet were drowned by the sea, but they didn’t seem to mind. They were focused on their task, pulling ropes, screaming instructions, and rushing to execute them.

Their shouts were barely audible between the drum of the falling rain, the rumble of the unleashed sea, the thunder of the mad sky, and the squeaking of the poor ship. But they persevered, nonetheless. Devoted to their captain. Loyal to their ship. Faithful to their comrades.

The door opened again, and Jorik appeared beside Mahon. He stopped there, too, admiring the dedication of these men in their fight against mother nature. The two fellows needed a full minute before they dared to speak.

“It’s madness, Mahon.” Jorik shook his head as he eyed the slippery deck. “One single fall, and you’re dead. Even I wouldn’t be able to swim in such a sea. There is nothing to say about you.”

Mahon answered with one of his special smiles. “Then we shouldn’t fall.” He murmured before letting go of the door and moving towards the middle of the deck.

There wasn’t much to do for the sailors at this location as it was the area they used to eat and discuss at with the other passengers when the weather allowed it. They didn’t have to worry about hindering the men’s work at all if they stayed there.

The rain made the whole deck slippery, and with the constant roll of the ship, it was truly a deadly ground. One mistake, and they would be sent overboard.

Mahon hadn’t hesitated in the slightest before Flowing. The magic gave him both a better vision of his surroundings, as he didn’t need any light to see, and a much better sense of balance. If he focused enough, he could even predict when a lighting would fall from a change of rhythm in the air.

Jorik joined him an instant later, clouded in his own Flow, the sword at the ready. The two mad men faced each other with a crazy smile. The sailors barely spare a look towards them, the ship needing all their attention. What would it be their concern if the passengers had suicide tendencies?

A thundering boom announced the beginning of the hostility, and Mahon exchanged a few moves with Jorik. It didn’t last long however before the two had to drop their attacks to stay standing. A high wave passed above the deck and threatened to sweep everything in his way.

It wasn’t the first one, nor would it be the last one, and the sailors had already attached everything they could and hid away the rest. Only Mahon and Jorik stood in the middle of the deck, unprepared.

Without needing to talk, they rushed to the nearby mast and grabbing each other’s hands, they pulled themselves around it. The wave pushed them in one direction before its powerful suction pulled them in the other.

The two men let go of each other once the wave was gone, and they fell on the deck. They exchanged a look before they started laughing out loud like two madmen. A handful of seconds later, and they were back to fighting.

Mahon parried Jorik’s sword by letting it glide along his own and stepped forward to push the noble with his shoulder. Jorik lost his balance and fell on the floor. Before he could even react, Mahon’s sword was over his throat.

A hand replaced the sword a second later, and Mahon helped Jorik rise back up. The fight resumed.

Was it wave, rain or thunder, the two men ignored all the elements, or rather they played around it. With the help of the Flow, they didn’t need much time to get familiar with the unknown. They jumped over waves while dodging low swipes. They glided on the wet deck to take their opponent by surprise. They used thunder and lighting to assist their attacks.

The more they fought, the better they got, and the happier they were. Like two crazy kids jumping into puddles under the tired look of their parents, Mahon and Jorik played together in the worst weather conditions while unconcerned sailors conducted their daily business around them.

Mahon and Jorik weren’t any two kids, though. Actually, they were probably among the best sword fighters in the whole world, not including sorcerers and magicians, and their talents and control shined in such circumstances.

A single instant of carelessness, and they could both get thrown overboard. Yet, they ran, jumped, glided, sidestepped, and rolled as if they were on the most stable ground. At some point, it even looked like they were the one controlling the weather and not the other way around.

Their actions were so smoothly linked to their environment that it seemed they were the ones calling for the waves or thunders. They were so much part of it, that nature itself seemed to revolve around them, as if they were the eye of the storm.

Starting from the deck, they moved to other parts of the boat, following their fighting instincts as much as the rhythm imposed by the unleashed elements. They went as far as to fight on the balustrade, at the very edge of the ship. A twenty-centimeters thin wooden plank, just by the sea, where rain and wind fought an endless battle of will.

A battle Mahon and Jorik couldn’t care less about as they fought on that balustrade with the same ease they had been fighting on the deck. Everything was moving and changing around them, was it sea, rain, wind or thunder. The boat was caught in the middle of all that, struggling to maintain his own stability and stay afloat.

The sailors were above the rest. Used to such a life, they were moving along, but sometimes even they were caught unprepared by a surging wave, or a strong gust of wind. Their experience was the only thing allowing them to survive and resist.

Mahon and Jorik, on the other hand, had become the most stable thing of all. They seemed to ignore everything else. They were the underlying rhythm of the storm. Whatever was thrown at them, they played along.

The elements tried to shut down their impudence, but they evaded every single attempt. As slippery as eels, they used the surroundings forces as stepping stones to propel them in their own direction.

They didn’t confront the elements. They used them to their own means. And the storm seemed to become even more enraged to be played and abused like that, but Mahon and Jorik didn’t pay any attention to its whims.

They danced, instead, mocking its helplessness to make them comply. The duo fought against each other, but in reality it was more of a battle against nature itself.

A battle of will.

A battle that nature was soon forced to concede.