The Imprisoned Children

We see Haalfrin, Resburn, and Faylin stalking their way through the palace hallways. It would be difficult for anyone to notice them since these halls are designed to be big enough for dragons to comfortably walk through.

At least these halls ARE so huge; there's so much space that nobody will run into them, nor see them in the dark gloom of the unlit halls.

Faylin is going ahead, and she signals to her companions whenever the coast is clear. Only once does she have to pull out her strange needle daggers and stab someone with it.

It was all because one of the Rehkin servants here caught them snooping about. That servant was an Owl Clanswoman with night vision that was too good for her health.

So, Faylin creeps up behind the servant girl and expertly stabs the needle into the side of the woman's neck. The needle is so thin and it has numbing properties enchanted on the knife, so the servant doesn't feel a thing.

On top of that, there are knockout drugs in the needle, as well as healing magic that closes the wound and undoes any damage done by the weapon.

As the servant falls unconscious, Faylin catches the girl effortlessly and yanks her up with her levitation magic.

While Faylin is looking for somewhere to stuff the unconscious body, she looks up and sees the air vent on the ceiling. "Haalfrin," she nudges him in the ribcage. "these ceilings are way too high. I'm not strong enough to lift the body up that high with my magic."

To be more specific, Faylin CAN lift the body up with levitation magic. However the further away something is from your body, then the harder it is to manipulate. The ceiling is 5 of 6 hundred feet high… which is far too high for Faylin.

"Got it." With Haalfrin's Dra Name, physical-based magic is trivially easy for him.

The servant is quickly stuffed into an air vent in the wall, and the latch on the vent is shut tight.

Of course, Faylin nods at Haalfrin in gratitude, and they keep creeping along with Resburn right behind them.

Indeed, Jay, and Myra have other things to do, so those two are missing.

In reality, Faylin is all that's needed for the stage of the plan in this section of the palace, but Jay had Haalfrin go with her. Haalfrin is the strongest one here, and this is the most dangerous part of the mission, after all.

Resburn, on the other hand, is a spirit mage, and he can handle a lot of the enchanted traps strewn all over.

They come across the enchanted doorway at the entrance of the east wing, and Resburn gets down to take a crack at it.

After examining the spell on the door, Resburn turns around and says, "Thing thing is enchanted so heavy that only a 2-horned dragon, at least, could push it open."

Other than the weight amplification spell, only a simple alarm enchantment is on the door, which Resburn quickly bypasses. He may not have the brute spiritual strength to tear apart the enchantment directly, but he's still a very knowledgeable and careful person.

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After they enter the east wing undetected, they're immediately greeted by a pair of young-looking dragons, who are crossing their arms and staring at the trio of humans with unfriendly gazes.

Resburn & Faylin draw their weapons warily and look to Haalfrin; he's the strong one here, so he's the one who'd be doing the fighting anyway… if it comes to that.

The only reason Haalfrin doesn't attack immediately is because he doesn't want to cause a scene. Negotiation is way better than fighting.

"Yo! Human!" one of the dragons hollers, "I heard you beat big brother Huroka in a duel."

"Yeah," the other dragon adds, "we heard some of the big brothers talking about how a human was probably going to steal away one of our sisters."

Indeed, one of their adult-sized brothers had heard their father talking about how he thought a human might try to steal one of the daughters.

Feeling that they might have a visitor tonight, these brothers faithfully stayed watch all night next to the East Wing's front door, ready to catch the intruders.

Haalfrin has a brief moment of surprise that these children know the human language.

He then remembers his conversation with Lord Fheldin, where he learned that part of his children's education includes learning all the most major languages - including humans'.

Haalfrin narrows his eyes and says, "Even if that's what we were here for, are you going to try stopping us?"

The younger-looking dragon, who has the appearance of a 5-year-old boy, has a single horn on the side of his head. "Nah. I'm saying that if you don't take us with you, then we'll scream so loud that Father will wake up and come to kill you."

"..." Resburn whispers to his companions, "We COULD just help these two escape. It won't interfere with the plan TOO much."

Before they can open their mouths to agree to the 2 young dragons, the head of a young girl pokes out from the side of the ajar doorway. She leaps out, revealing the stunning picture of a teenage girl with 3 wings on her back.

"Little brothers... I saw you two sneaking out. Turns out you're trying to escape again!" She leaps up in excitement. "I'm coming with you... but first, I need to go tell Ayzee, Kaily, Fallon..." She counted on her fingers... "I'll see if I'm forgetting any."

"Oi! Manda!" the elder of the two brothers growls threateningly, "We can't just help EVERYONE escape! We'll never get out unnoticed if an army of us all breaks out! Father has WAY too many guards! If you're coming with us, we'll leave alone. Forget everyone else!"

Manda just wags her finger at them, "I leave with my best sisters, or none of us leave." As she turns to retreat further into the East Wing, she glares at her little brothers and says, "If I come back and none of you are here, waiting for me, then I'll go tell father immediately."

After she leaves, everyone waits impatiently...

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Meanwhile, we see Manda go and tell her favorite sisters. Those sisters all comment, "What about Lizzi, Karra, and Kruchi?"

In short, all the Felkin sisters have somebody they absolutely they can't leave without - all these hundreds to thousands of years living together and sharing research notes together made their bonds pretty strong.

Of course, in the whole process, all the young boy dragons learn what's going on, so they tag along for this latest "escape attempt."

During this commotion, Haalfrin and the other humans start to feel something is wrong, so they walk into the East wing to make sure nothing terrible is happening.

… And the moment they walk into the main foyer, they see well over 30 young faces looking at the humans expectantly.

Resburn curses, and Faylin suddenly has a rare sympathetic look on her face. "Oh, that poor woman – having to give birth to so many children!" she sputters aloud.

One of the Felkin girls laughs and says, "Nah! Mother studied anatomy pretty well, so whenever she gets pregnant, she'd just analyze the genetic makeup of the child, gather ingredients, and use alchemy to build the child's body from scratch in her cauldron."

"Ya," another sister adds, "then she'd just use Felvar magic to transfer the baby's soul to the new body."

"Mhm...," a tiny toddler no more than 2 feet tall and with only 1 wing chirps, "Mother said that dragon babies are huge, and that it would be inhumane for a tiny Felkin like her to bear them."

Faylin's jaw just drops at this.

Alchemy... could do that? The human alchemists everyone knows in their native world can do stuff like basic chemistry and concocting medicine…

… but creating life?

(A/N: Mistress Arla could've brought the Elric brothers' mom back with her Alchemy...)

Haalfrin is strangely the only one who isn't surprised by this. After all, it was Felkawyn - a powerful phoenix god - who transforms the living into the dead.

At its core, "birth", "death", and "rebirth" are the purest forms of Fel. Not only is this the reason the FEL-kin are reborn in ashes periodically, but it also stands to reason that they prefer to give birth through alchemy – through Fel.

Haalfrin shakes the thought out of his head and says, "Ok, enough chit-chat. So, you all want to escape the palace? I'm not going to bother to ask why, but it does happen to align with my goals to help at least 1 of you out, so mind as well go all the way."

One of the older Felkin girls scrunches up her eyebrows and says, "We've all agreed that we're not going to marry any of you, so there's no reason to kidnap us from Father's house."

Faylin pats the girl on the shoulder and reassures her, "Don't worry! We have some unrelated plans that involves making a distraction for Lord Fheldin. We don't want to kidnap any of you as a bride or something; we just want your father to freak out when he realizes you're missing."

All the Felkin sisters look at each other and smile in relief. It's not like they're particularly fond of their Father's strange marital traditions.

Haalfrin motions with a finger to all the older siblings and gestures for them to come closer to him. "We only have until morning to escape. I want you to tell me about your previous escape attempts. Tell me the security details and also how your father manages to catch you every time."

The oldest girl comes over and sits down cross-legged in front of Haalfrin, while the oldest boy - a 2 horned dragon with the 2nd horn appearing to be brand new - just looks at Haalfrin confrontationally.

"Too slow." Haalfrin uses his magic and yanks the boy across the room and sits him down next to his sister.

The young dragon has no chance to resist and just sits there, shocked.

"This isn't a game," Haalfrin growls at the boy. "I meant it when I said we don't have much time. Maybe you're this old already and still haven't managed to escape your father's lair because you don't take it seriously."

The teenage boy bows his head with shame in his eyes, but he starts listening after that.