The Great Escape (1/3)

The girl - Kruchi, her name was – starts explaining, "All of the servants have alarms enchanted into their bodies that alert Father if the servants get too excited, or if they think about calling to him. That's actually why everyone's afraid of startling the servants."

The boy interjects, "Yeah. It's really hard to knock out the servants because when we attack them, they always have a brief moment of panic… but if we don't knock them out, then they'll see us escaping and alert father anyway."

One of the younger girls remarks, "Older sister Talia managed to escape a few hundred years ago because she used her alchemy to turn her own body into ashes, waited for the servants to pass by, then reconstituted her body again. She kept hiding herself as a dustpile whenever she was about to get caught."

There's a snicker in the crowd, and one of the dragon boys chortles, "It's funny how she got out, though. One of the servants mistook her ashen pile for common dust. The manservant swept it up, bagged it up with the rest of the trash, and threw it out of the palace. When she remade her body again, she was swimming in a sea of trash. Haha."

One of the youngest girls butts in, "We never saw big sister Talia again, but mommy said that she found her own mountain to live in."

Faylin asked, "Why don't you all do that? – turn yourselves into ashes, I mean."

"Bleh!" one of the Felkin makes a throwing-up face. "Remaking your own body is really HARD! We try experimenting, but mother always has to come along and fix our mistakes. Besides, ever since Talia escaped, father berated the servants for not cleaning up the dusty floors properly. The next time one of us tried escaping this way, she was caught miserably when the servants found her dusty pile of soot, swept it up, and took it to mother."

"What about you?" Haalfrin pointed at the young dragons.

They all look away uncomfortably. "Eh... The door's too heavy. We can't move it yet. We need at least 3 horns for that one."

"Besides", another one adds, "Father can just smell us better than a bloodhound. One time, I slipped out through the water grate by dislocating my bones and squeezing through. I managed to get about 10 miles away, but Father just snatched me up and carried me home. After that, he had the water grate replaced with a smaller opening.

"Yeah. Father always comes every morning and counts us all."

Resburn is rubbing his temples and mutters, "I heard the stories... but isn't it a little sick to imprison your own children?"

Besides, Lord Fheldin's obsession with keeping his children locked up is no joke.

Haalfrin pauses to look at Resburn. "It would be disastrous for a Felkin or Drakin to go into the outside world if they can't even take care of themselves. Escaping is 'proof' that they're good enough... according to Lord Fheldin, anyway."

"It's still too extreme," Resburn argues back.

"I'm just saying," Haalfrin shrugs, "that dragons think differently than us, and they have different worries to think about. What would you do if every ounce of your children's bodies were valuable treasures, and the world was full of greedy people? Would you let them out if they're too stupid or too weak to even leave home without getting caught?"

"Oh," Haalfrin rolls his eyes, "Now I'm defending that abhorrent practice, huh? I suppose it's not so bad compared to their Ritual Bride Kidnapping."

Haalfrin then turns back to the horde of Drakin & Felkin and says, "Ok, here's how it's going to go down..."

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"Ok, Ok, move it, you little runts!" Haalfrin yells to the horde of… children? "Remember to not pack anything you don't need!"

"Pst!" Resburn whispers to Haalfrin, "are you really sure about this? Releasing a bunch of children out into the wild is hardly responsible."

"It's fine," Haalfrin assures him, "they'll all get caught by Fheldin anyway… barring none of them is actually clever enough to deviate from the escape plan we're giving them."

Indeed, the escape plan they gave the children is incredibly flawed. If they're completely obedient to this plan the humans are giving them, then they still have some growing up to do.

In the end, whether or not any of these kids escape is entirely up to their own strength; he'd hate to break Fheldin's tradition by pulling ALL the weight…

While Haalfrin and Resburn are watching from the side, Haalfrin chuckles and points to the other side of the room. "Look at Faylin! What's she doing?"

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Faylin is off to the side, chatting with the youngest dragon in this room – an adorable toddler with a single horn growing in the side of his head.

"Kid!" Faylin protests, "You should really stay here."

"NO!" the 1 horned dragon stamps his feet. "I really will tell father if I stay!"

*Sigh* "All right. At least put away most of the stuff you're packing. You don't need your picture books."

"Oh! Pretty lady! You saw my picture books!?" the kid squeals with delight. He reaches into his backpack (which is larger than he is), and he yanks out a thin book with the image of a dragon on it.

"Look, pretty lady! That big dragon on the front is the bad guy!" He moves his fat finger over the image of a lady, who is gripped tightly in the dragon's hand. "That lady is the princess! She has pretty red hair, just like you!"

Faylin looks around and notes that all of this child's siblings are busy packing and that they'll take around 20-30 more minutes to finish.

Realizing that she has nothing to do until then, she sits down and lifts the kid onto her lap. She may love killing people with her knives, but all of Lord Fheldin's kids are just too adorable. "What's in the book?" she asks in a cooing tone.

And so, the young child flips open the picture book and starts reading through it, which is surprisingly written in the Brancotte tongue.

Was this book written by a human?

... A book written by a human about a villainous dragon… that's awkward.

Despite looking so young, the child is extremely fluent in his reading, and he flips through the book with fast, methodical speeds as he reads the book to Faylin.

Just as the child starts to read, one of the eldest brothers here finishes packing up early, and he comes to sit down next to Faylin and his younger brother. He's a tall, lanky kid with 2 horns and green spotted scales. He's relatively handsome, compared to the other dragons, though Faylin still thinks he looks brutish.

When the human and the dragon kid look at the 2 horned dragon sitting next to them, the young man shrugs. "Just ignore me and do what you want." He crosses his scaley arms and looks away from them with an angsty attitude.

Faylin thinks the young man is just having an attitude, and she doesn't look at him again. If she HAD looked, she'd see that the man is occasionally glancing at her from the side of his slitted eyes and blushing… (Oh no....)

Anyway, the cute kid in Faylin's arms starts reading his favorite book to the pretty lady.

The book starts out with a young knight who secretly fell in love with the princess he was protecting. The King's daughter was the most beautiful woman in the land, after all, and her temperament was gentle and motherly.

The little boy hugs the book briefly and proclaims, "This princess really is the most beautiful person in the book!"

"Why do you say that?" Faylin asks.

"Look, look!" the kid strokes his fat finger over the princess's long hair. "She has red hair! That means she's the most beautiful!"

"But WHY?"

"She just is!" the kid fights back. "Anyway, pretty lady, you wouldn't understand. I'll keep reading."

Red was distinctly a color that only female dragons had – back before the gods cursed the dragons and prevented women from appearing in their race.

Despite there being no more female dragons, male dragons still have the instinct to adore the color red.

This fixation on the color red is so extreme at times that teenage dragons (who are still not in control of their hormones) will often stare stupidly at red buildings, or even splatter some of their own blood on the ground just so they can see the pretty color.

Even the kids think that red is pretty – hence, why this little dragon child keeps on calling Faylin "pretty lady" … and why another teenage dragon is sitting especially close to her and trying to pretend like he's not glancing at her red hair. Even all the other dragons in the room are shyly avoiding eye contact with Faylin.

And so, Faylin puts away her confusion at the child's strange behavior, and she listens to the rest of the story.

As the story goes, a foul dragon from across the mountains hears of the princess's fabled beauty, and he shows up to the king's palace. He then threatens to burn the palace to the ground and terrorize the kingdom unless the king gives up his daughter.

Without hesitation, the king gave up his only daughter in order to avoid the dragon's wrath.

When the little boy reads this part, he growls with fury, and he scolds the king in the book. "Yeah! That king is so evil, giving up his daughter like that! Cowards should die! I wish the knight would've killed him! I'd hang him by his entrails!" the kids curses.

"Tsk, tsk," Faylin clicks her tongue, "you think too small. You see, that method of killing is too high profile, and the knight would get caught. If his kingdom tries to catch him for murdering the king, then he'd never get to rescue the princess."

"Oooh!"

"Yeah, kid," she keeps talking, "it's not good to give in to your impulses all the time. If you want to be strong and dependable, you have to keep your priorities straight."

The kid looks down, deep in thought. "S-so... the knight shouldn't kill the king?"

"No!" Faylin asserts strongly. "He needs to be real sneaky about it. A douse of poison in his drink would do the trick!"