Linda realised, with some deeply buried piece of her mind, that perhaps she should focus on finding a way to escape the Wardens who were at this moment still dragging her off to goddess knows where and find Wint. But her body was still stiff with shock and her brain was torn between wondering what in the kriyan demons had just happened between her and that man she had called father and the way the wind storm had winked at her as the armoured women took her away.
So in a way, she had correctly surmised that she was currently inhabiting another body. Not that she was ever too fond of her mother’s ramblings on the topic of reincarnation and such like, but after all, in the strange world she now found herself, that was also an option. And it seemed like the former user was still somehow psycho-somatically attached to the body.
So far so good, but what about Wint? She had looked at her as though she were seeing the girl for the first time and had handed her off to the Wardens with some strange wistful smile on her face, as though she couldn’t believe her luck. Yet, if she’d just wanted to be rid of Linda, surely she’d had enough opportunity to do so by now. Could it be that there really was something important Linda had to do? Something they’d talked about before the foreign presence from her subconscious took hold of her body? Something she’d missed or forgotten?
"Move on, you”, one of the Wardens, gripping her shoulder, growled.
Torn away from her thoughts a moment, Linda looked around and was surprised to find out they’d entered a building at some point, which vaguely reminded her of a castle’s dungeon. True, the corridor was lit by electricity powered fluorescent tubes, but everything else was pretty much directly lifted out of a rather grim fairy tale.
The Warden was pushing her past the threshold of a huge metalline door, whose only transparent piece seemed to be a small square window, reinforced with heavy bars, of course. Yup, t’was a dungeon, alright. And it was up to Linda to find out if it was predominantly inhabited by dragons, or princes in distress. She half turned towards the armoured woman to make a snide remark, but realised it was a mistake as soon as she did so. The other woman just threw her a dirty gaze and pushed her chest so that Linda abruptly found herself lying on her back on the cold stone floor in her dimly lit cell.
She lay there a while, cussing out mentally each and every alaian woman she deemed even remotely responsible for her current circumstances.
"Do you require assistance?” Her inner foul mothed sailor was interrupted by a soft, polite voice with an accent that her current linguistic ability couldn’t quite place.
“Nah, that’s just how I roll – lying on floors and shit...” Linda knew that the young boy who had offered her assistance had nothing to do with her recent misfortunes, but that simply wasn’t enough to stop her sarcasm from flowing.
The only reply she got however was in the form of a condescending puff. Oh, is that so, she thought to herself, still angry at the Universe in general, let us get a look at you, milord, so much higher and mightier than us plebes and our sense of humour. She took a deep breath and swung her feet in the air while at the same time pushing herself off the floor seemingly to stand up quicker, but also to show Mr Arrogant that it was probably a bad idea to piss off someone of her physical fitness. She stood up with her back straight towards the corner where the voice had come from, prepared to read him a very specific type of riot act, but instead felt her jaw slack slightly when she got a good look at him.
He looked to be no more than fifteen or sixteen years old and apparently had spent some time here, judging by the dust covering his face and dishevelled hair, which may have been blond at some point, but was currently matted with dirt. And judging by his half-torn... let’s call them clothes, it looked as though unlike her, he hadn’t gone quietly into the cell.
"Oh, wow, do you work here?” Was all she managed to stammer out.
“Do I work here?” There goes that arrogant puff again! “Do you have any idea where we are? Most men like me are kidnapped and forced to “work” around these parts, if that’s what we’re calling it.”
“So you were kidnapped, huh?” The girl echoed and sat on the floor, leaning her back on the wall, a significant distance from him. “Bad trip, man.”
“Yes, really bad tit, man” , the boy nodded, leaning on the final few words as if he had no idea what they meant, but was too conceited to admit so.
Linda burst out in laughter. She realized he was looking at her as if she’d gone mad, but she couldn’t care less.
"Did I say something funny?” His tone had grown ice cold and for a moment vaguely reminded her of the way Wotar had spoken to her during their first encounter.
“Trip, not... haha, oh dear, not... whatever it was that you said. Alright, alright”, she finally decided to cut him some slack, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to mock you. Real nasty business what happened to you. My name is Linda, by the way.” She smiled and stretched out her hand to him.
The boy studied her hand with knitted brows, but didn’t respond to the gesture.
"Call me Fye”, was all the reply she got.
“Fye...” Linda repeated automatically and gave him another once over. His hair was ruffled, and the dirty rags didn’t suit him one bit, but the golden-brown eyes and perfectly sculpted sharp features stood out, especially from this angle. “Fye... Wait a second... Fye? As in Pyre Fye?”
He took a step back and the line on his forehead deepened.
"How do you know that name?”
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“I don’t think there’s any woman on Alaiah who doesn’t know your name right this second, Your Highness”, she scoffed in response. “You’re the prince of Magmalia, right? The one who ran away from home for some bizarre reason? “
“Bizarre reason?” the grimace contorting Fye’s face was so pronounced now that it positively radiated indignation. “You couldn’t possibly understand... I couldn’t stay there any longer.”
“How so? Did the satin sheets rub your royal bum the wrong way?” Was her snarky retort.
His eyes narrowed and he slid with his back against the wall and a loud huff. This girl had no way of comprehending his situation. She was a woman after all. She never had to stand up to her merciless fate and lose every single time she tried. He knew that he was weak and that thought was eating him from the inside like a disgusting parasite, sucked out his joy and slowly but surely filled him with spite, fuelled by his own helplessness. Did his father feel this way too, before Fye was born? Did his mother do that to his father too? He couldn’t even think about it, the mere thought sickened him so.
"Calling prince charming?” Linda cut his musings short. “What happened? You just shook like someone gave you a good ol’ electric zap.” She scooted over a bit so she was now kneeling in front of him, which made him squirm and instinctively slide sideways towards the corner. “Oh, I apologise, Your Highness, for having the audacity to breach your royal personal space without requesting an audience, but see where I come from, we tend to do this ridiculous thing called caring about others.”
His entire being radiated anxiety and stress as he lifted his eyes to look at her. Linda almost jumped back herself. Not once in her whole life had anyone looked at her as though she were all-powerful, as if she could break him in half with a simple wave of her hand. Her first instinct was to gather him up in her arms, weave her hands through his long blond hair and to tell him that everything was going to be alright, but then she thought that might not be such a good idea. He apparently had a pretty damn good reason to scatter away from any sort of physical contact and if she truly wanted to help him and earn his trust, she had to respect that. She sighed and leant back against the same wall, but once more a considerable distance away from the prince, who was still looking at her like a deer caught in headlights.
"Alright, Your Highness, listen,” she began again, willing her voice to sound as soft as she could make it out. “I guess we got off on the wrong foot, so I suggest we start over. My name is Linda Pearce and I’m not from around these parts, so I apologise if I’ve offended you – it was not intentional. I guess with everything that’s been going on since I got here, I’ve lost some manners.”
“I accept your apology... I suppose” the prince replied, and although his voice still sounded a bit shaky, he slid against the wall a tiny bit closer to her, but still out of arms reach. “Where are you from?”
“Believe it or not, and god knows, I never thought I’d say this, but I’m an off-worlder. I come from another planet.” Linda laughed and looking over to him was glad to see that he was smiling. “I’m not even joking!”
“The scientists on Alaiah have known for many decarotations of at least a few star systems with planets who could sustain sentient life.” The prince nodded. “I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone from these planets came over. Tell me about your home planet.”
Linda was just opening her mouth to respond, when all of a sudden a loud clank sounded off from the other side of the door, as if something rather large and metalline had been dropped onto the stone floor. What the...
"Be quiet there, yerkriyan devils!”
“Go fer it yerself, why don’t ye, yerkriyan...”
The voices definitely belonged to a couple of boys, but that accent... That accent would haunt Linda’s every dream to the end of her days. Eastern-Wind is what the sites she’d sifted through on the alien laptop had called it. She looked over at the prince, to see that the smile had soured on his face as well and his eyebrows were once more knitted on his forehead.
She wondered a moment if she should call out and ask who was there, but judging by all the loud huffing and puffing on the other side, she reckoned she’d find out soon enough. And indeed, less than a minute had passed, before the huge metalline door swung forward. Yet, strangely, not because either of the two raven-haired boys that came into view had used one of the many keys on the chain they were holding. No, Linda mused, as she was coughing out dirt and dust from the sort that was still rising up from the floor. It was rather as if some strange sudden gust of hurricane level wind had just blown the heavy metalline beast directly out of the case.
"There, what did I tell you, Your Highness”, the girl coughed in the general direction of the even dirtier prince next to her. “I told you someone would come get us!”
The pupils on his beautiful golden-brown eyes widened again and he was just opening his mouth, likely to point out in his arrogant tone, that she’d never mentioned anything about a rescue attempt, when the two boys flew into the cell as one and lunged... directly at her.
“Big sis!” They both screamed in perfect unison.
“Big sis?”
Linda finally managed to wrestle their rather strong hands off her neck so she could take a look at them from a distance. At first she thought she might’ve hit her head. A few blinks afterwards, she finally processed what she was seeing. Twins. Identical black eyes, not unlike her own, identical crooked smiles and, kriyan devils dammit, someone had even thought to dress them in identical outfits. Even if it was in the scrappy outfits that the working boys on the Isles wore. If her brain were a computer, it would right now be whirring and wheezing with all its fans, desperate to cool off the overheating chipset. Ah, so that’s what that man had meant when he said “have you come to rescue your brothers”.
"Let me guess – Lao and Lei, right?” She finally asked.
“And why...” one of them started, taking a step back.
“Would you need to guess?” The other finished, stepping back himself.
“Oh dear, you even finish each other’s sentences! I’m done...” Linda murmured and weaved her fingers through her hair, partly to check if her head was still there.
The twins didn’t respond, just held each other's hands and shared an anxious glance, as if someone had just told them their pet had died. Linda spared them an empathetic look, but hard as she tried, there was nothing she could say to make them feel better, least of all that she actually wasn’t their sister. Not psychologically at least. She shook her head and remembered the deafening crash which the boys had produced when they’d blown the door to the cell off its hinges and reminded herself that this was neither the place, nor the time for heartfelt reunions and awkward explanations.
"Boys, listen, I know it’s very hard and strange for you, but I suggest we head out of here as quickly as possible and find a quiet place to talk, because if they find us here with the prince...
“The prince?” The twins echoed.
And for the god-knows which time today, Linda felt her heart sink to her stomach in terror. A quick glance around confirmed her suspicions – while her “brothers” had her cornered, His Highness had sneaked away.
"Boys...” she said, huffing out rather loudly through her nostrils. “We have to find him. Please, I promise I’ll explain everything, but we absolutely must find him!”
The twins looked at each other again, as if having a telepathic debate.
"Alright, big sis”, said the boy on the left.
“We’ll help you find your prince”, finished the boy on the right.