Chapter 50: A lecherous voice

Sylph’s gaze strolled around the small cell once again. Every notable scratch had been named, every bit of rust been scraped at out of boredom, and her claws had never been sharper thanks to the stone. It had only been a few hours. A prison was not meant to be entertaining, but surely the inmates found something to do. She could not imagine doing well after a week.

Nahana took no chances. Nothing in the cell could be used to escape, not even a bowl and spoon for food, or a bucket with a convenient handle to break the lock. Digging was not an option as beneath the pfod deep layer of sand was more rock. It sloped downwards to the back, ending in a somewhat deeper crevice, but there was no hole or crack.

She still had not seen a guard, either. If the layout was as maze-like as she remembered, there was no need to be close enough for someone to grab them with their tail through the bars, choke them out and snatch their keys.

The sound of faint steps dragged her out of her thoughts. Half a minute later, Elina and Biscuit emerged from the unlit bend down the corridor. “Tell me,” Sylph said, “why me?”

Elina neatly folded up her night-black wings and sat down on in front of the bars. “Simple. We could get out of town, but then what? Just look at you, you can deal with whoever we could run into and you are not from the great desert. You know how to get beyond. We do not.” The answer barely satisfied her. Even they must have enough money to make the trip to the kingdom by ship. If they knew such routes existed, which may not be the case all the way out here.

“Is the entrance to this prison guarded?” Sylph asked.

Biscuit nodded.

“Then how did you two sneak past?”

Biscuit shook his head, and his gaze went back to Elina. “No need for sneaking. The tunnel branches into a slim path that opens up to a cozy and very private get away grotto,” she smirked.

He continued: “All staff knows about it, so us heading down here bothers nobody. We even have a list to queue up.” He leaned into Elina.

The secret love cave in the prison was not what Sylph expected. “Nahana doesn’t know about this?”

Elina broke away from Biscuit and huffed. “Of course she does. She approved it. Most of us share a single open dormitory. Sometimes you want to go out of your way in your break to read a book for a few hours or take a nap in peace, or spend some quality time with somebody else. She’d rather we irritate the prisoners than bother any important guest by accident.” Her gaze shifted around and her ears spun towards the corridor. “At the end of this month, she will realize that we switched with two others on the exact day that you got imprisoned. She probably won’t like that.”

Sylph stared at the taunting lock. It was all that kept her in here. “I don’t plan on staying that long.”

“So, you have an idea?” Elina’s eyes lit up with a glitter, and she started to intensely stare at Sylph.

Ideas spooked around her head a lot, but they all needed an open door. Perhaps asking the servants what they knew first would help. “Let’s say we get out of this cell. Are there any hidden ways out of the palace you know of? A private escape tunnel or something near the underground river?”

Elina’s eyes lit up around the last words, but Biscuit shook his head. “You don’t need an escape shaft if you have wings. And the river? Which one? There are two. The entrance to our fresh water is heavily guarded, day and night. The sewage is accessible from the same place, so it is guarded as well.”

Sylph straightened her neck and lowered her voice. “Depends on how long you can hold your breath.”

“What do you mean?” Elina cocked her head and Sylph remained right in her assumption that nobody was stupid enough to swim through a drain, otherwise the servants would surely know.

“You can dive through the drains.” She looked up at Biscuit. As the largest of them, being slightly higher and wider than Sylph, it would be a tight fit.

“What?” Biscuit nearly jumped. “How do you know that?”

“I was curious in the bath. I’m not a good flier, but I’m an excellent swimmer.” Sylph waggled her sorry wings. “But I am not sure if Nahana figured that out already. She stood exactly in front of the drain when she punished me, as if to announce that she did.”

Elina started a tiny snicker. “Don’t worry about that. It’s a very popular spot to stand if you are large enough to reach the floor. The current tickles your belly and wings most comfortingly.”

“It feels good?”

Elina’s giggle intensified. “You are right that Nahana would announce things she found out rather subtly if she can, but sometimes she also just stands in the bath. If she knew, they would have sent us servants to fetch somebody to install steel grates into every singular one.”

Biscuit nodded along. “So we have to reach a bath, or washroom. But what after that? Where does the river lead?”

Sylph hesitated. “It’s a river, pretty sure it has to lead somewhere. There must be more than one drain outside the palace. And once we are out, we slip away into the desert. But we have to hurry. I don’t know how much longer Nahana will keep us down here. Tomorrow could be too late.”

Biscuit and Elina nodded in agreement. “And now you need us to get the keys? If that’s all it takes, I know how to do that.”

Sylph eyed Elina with suspicion. She was maybe two years older than Sylph, but about as mighty and slim as a wet noodle. Her wide smirk, however, extruded more confidence than it should.

“You have a plan?” Biscuit turned to face her, just as confused as Sylph.

Elina reached for his pfod, closing hers around it as she lifted it up. “I know who’s on duty tonight.” She flicked Biscuit lightly with her wing and her smile turned coy as could be.

“I see, seduce the guard, yeah that’s easy,” he said.

Sylph shook her head. “He’s a guard. Trained by Nahana. There is no way he would fall for the oldest trick in the book. That is not a thing that works outside of fiction.”

Elina huffed a scant laugh. “We have confidence in you, so you gotta have a little faith in us. Everyone acts different when Nahana is around. Spend some more time here and you will learn to see through all the fakeness.”

“I am not sure I want to bet my life on something as vague as seducing a guard.”

Elina went silent. “You know what happens to those that break rules, right? Put up for display on the marketplace?”

Sylph nodded. After experiencing the poison, the picture became quite clear.

“Do you think they are fine after that? They receive a jab with the antidote and are told to get back to work tomorrow morning.” Elina’s voice went quiet. “I enjoy helping, Sylph. And I hate seeing others suffer. I am the one that goes to the quarters and helps them get cleaned up and uses her magic pfods to get their muscles back into working conditions.” She exhaled softly and raised her voice again. “They are just dragons, not some faceless guard force. Everybody got their reason to be working here.”

Sylph had exploited their empathy before. They must have gotten some harsh words after that.

Sensing her lingering doubts, Elina continued. “My song can be very convincing if I want to.” She cleared her throat and made a few awkward guttural sounds, then walked up to the bars and fixated Sylph with her two dark eyes. “I’ve seen you looking at me.” Her velvety smooth voice sent a curious shiver down Sylph’s spine like nothing had before.

“What do you think? Will the guard be impressed by the song in my voice? It’s thrilling to speak to another Aer. There aren’t many that can appreciate my voice in this way.” The words floated through the bars like a lecherous grasp that seeped into Sylph’s ears. Like a yearning hunger, it prodded her insides, and like a fever, it set her scales ablaze.

Unlike Nahana’s vile and forced emotions, Elina’s voice promised warmth and comfort and yet the weight and tension in her speech demanded much more. It was not unpleasant, far from it, and Sylph made no attempt to stop, anticipating where and what she would feel next.

“Deep within any dragon lies a very personal melody. Let me help you find yours- Ow!” A tail flicked in front of her eyes and hit Elina in the side of her snout.

“Stop seducing our escape plan!” Biscuit complained, “The guard is not even an Aer.”

Elina cleared her throat and took a step away from the bars. “Right, sorry, I got carried away.”

Elina was somebody she would dread to meet into a night of drinking. There would be ideas and an inability to follow them. Sylph snapped back to reality. “Are you a pathwalker?”

After clearing her throat again, Elina switched to a more natural voice. “No, I am just bragging.” She smiled. “I practiced, a lot. Although some of us seem to have far more potent voices than others. Doesn’t work that well on non-aer, but there is still an effect.” Elina cocked her head and slowly scratched her claw over the rust. “Your voice sounds pretty monotone, you could spice it up. Add a bit of a dominant undertone. It would fit you.”

“I sound monotone?” Sylph was not sure if that was an insult or an observation.

“A given if you didn’t grow up along other Aer, once we are out of here, I can try to teach you the basics. It’s gonna be fun and there won’t be any bars either.” She flicked them with the fins on her tail.

“Why has nobody ever mentioned it? You are not the first Aer I met.” That revelation stung, like not being told that you had last night’s dinner stuck to your teeth. Not that she had ever thought about how her voice sounded to other Aer, but now that she knew, it bothered her.

Elina’s tail coiled up on the bars. “I can help you figure out other things about your body, too.”

“No, no, no,” Sylph answered and shook her head, “That sounds weird, don’t say that.”

Elina kept her tail pushed against the bars and her voice took on another playful tone. “I would never touch you if you didn’t want to.”

“Let’s get back to the escape,” Sylph motioned and stamped down on the sand, “you seduce him, then what?”

“I’ll hit him over the head with a rock,” Biscuit peeked up from behind Elina’s wings.

It came as a relief that they had thought further than beguile a guard. This was where Sylph could shine; hurting dragons. She jabbed the bars so fast that Biscuit flinched in surprise. “Hit right beneath the horns, the place where the skull is the thinnest.”

Biscuit grabbed his own straight horns and felt downward until he curiously pressed down at the very start of his neck. “Further up,” Sylph grabbed the back of her own head and he followed until he had his pfod placed right where he should hit.

“Do not hold back,” she said, every word as heavy as she could, trying to somehow add emotion. “You get one chance. If you mess up, she is dead.” Sylph pointed at Elina. “And so are you.”

They exchanged a wide-eyed glance, as if they had not quite realized what they were committing themselves to. “Once you even say a single word, you are committed. And if you hold back, you will get killed, or worse,” Sylph repeated.

Biscuit nodded. “I understand.”

“Do you really?”

He enveloped Elina with his wings. “I’ll do everything to get us out, for her and our soon to be hatchling,” he half-smiled at her. “I hate it, but I guess we must hurt him to knock him out. Trust us.”

Sylph decided against telling him that the guard might not survive such a heavy hit. In fact, it was more likely that he would die than not. Dragons did not have a convenient nap button inside their head. A dead guard was a thought she did not like, but it was him or them at this point.