Chapter Text
A halfling sits on the ground of a dirty, dank prison cell. She fidgets with the chain that connects her right ankle with the stone wall behind her. The quiet clinking of the chain is the only noise besides the echoing of a distant drip of water. She pulls on her chain one more time, testing the strength of it and feeling it rub against her raw ankle.
She hears footsteps making their way toward her small cell. With her head down, she listens to the approach of heavy boots. This was a large person, probably a human man, and most likely one of the guards. She keeps her gaze down until she hears the footsteps stop in front of her cell. Finally looking up, she sees the man, staring directly at her. The dungeon is dim, and at this distance his expression is unreadable. His body is lithe, he is probably young. Not as stocky and brawny as the soldiers that wrestled her into this cell.
She holds eye contact with the guard for a while. He seems uncomfortable holding her gaze. On closer inspection, she can see that he is definitely new and inexperienced. His uniform looks fresh, it’s starchy fabric still creased where it was folded, and the blue of it is still rich, not faded from years of patrolling in the hot sun. Despite her being the one chained to the wall here, he seems, nervous. He fidgets in place, shifting his weight from one foot and to the other.
“Can I help you?”
He startles when he realized she is speaking to him. He must not be used to being addressed by the prisoners.
“What I do is none of your business, prisoner!” His words sound authoritative, but his shaky voice suggests otherwise.
She stares back at him disinterested, “Fine then,” and puts her head back down to continue thumbing the chain around her ankle. But the footsteps don’t start back up.
After a short minute, she glances back up, and the boy is still there.
Now she is losing her patience. “Do I owe you money or something?” She doesn’t need some greenhorn gawking at her like an animal in a cage. The least he can do is leave her to serve out her sentence in peace.
“What? No, I, you, it’s just… You must have done something pretty terrible, to be so small and locked up in here and everything…”
She’s heard this before. People don’t expect her line of “work” from someone like her, especially one of her size and stature. She’d be lying if she said she doesn’t wish for some recognition every once in a while, but in situations like this, it can come in handy. Which story should she go with? The abusive husband who framed her for infanticide? The traveling nun who was robbed of all her belongings, and then arrested for panhandling and homelessness? The widow of a soldier from the last war with five children?
“My mother,” she starts, “she’s sick.” This is a new one. The kid seems innocent enough, no need to go into detail. Just make up some sob story, a sick mother, a young brother, some bread stolen from the wrong person.
“Wow…” Looks like the story had worked, “And they really locked you up here for that?”
“The world is full of injustices.” And that part was true.
“See?” she says, pulling back the metal clasp around her leg. It’s red and raw, and some blisters have started forming around the bony parts of her ankle. “It hurts real bad. I haven’t gotten my release date yet, and I’m afraid by then I won’t be able to walk on this foot. And since they don’t give you a ride back to your home once you’re released, I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it back on my own.”
Now the boy is looking at her concerned. Her ankle is indeed rubbed raw, and it does hurt like a bitch, but she had escaped with worse.
“Well,” the boy looks around quick, over his shoulder and into the hall. “I’m the only one patrolling this wing today. Would it help if I took off the brace? Just for a couple of hours.”
She gives him a big, fake smile, “That would be wonderful!”
The boy smiles back at her. He leans over, and she sees him pull an iron key out of the pouch on his right hip. There is only one, so it must be the master key. Once it’s off, she makes a show of rubbing her ankle, thanking him, faking teary eyes, and even going to hug him. He seems pleased with himself as they share their moment, and she makes sure that he does not notice as she slips her hand into the pouch and takes the master key for herself. By the time she is done, he won’t even notice its gone.
----
About ten minutes had passed since the young guard had left. It had been a couple of days since she was locked up in here, so that had given her enough time to figure out when the guards would be making their way past her cell. She knows that if she acts now, she would have enough time to get out of her cell and on her way before the boy notices that she’s gone.
She is no stranger to prisons, she has broken her way out of many over her 10 years of thieving. But this one is new to her, and she has a stop that she wants to make along the way. The locations of any nearby exits are unknown to her, and she can’t make the assumption that all the guards are on the same schedule as the boy. Her sentence here was only a couple years, but if she was caught trying to escape, that could easily jump up to ten, maybe more. She also runs the risk of being put in higher security lock-down, which would make a future escape attempt even more difficult.
She looked down at the key in her hand, spinning it between her thumb and index finger. What did she know about this prison? She has a general idea of where it is, somewhere not far from the seafront city she was caught in. She knows it is near a body of water, she can hear waves hitting the walls of the prison at night. And she knows what’s in the prison. More specifically, who’s in the prison. Someone she knows from a handful of raids, someone she heard from rumors has been locked up in here before. She saw him, as she was being dragged to her cell when she first got here. He will be her ticket out.
She grips the key in her hand, slides her arm through the iron rods in front of her cell, and quietly lets herself out.
----
“Sneaky,” she calls in a harsh whisper. The lanky half-elf in the back corner of the cell doesn’t seem to hear her, he just keeps his head down. “Pssssst! Hey! Sneaky!!” She kicks a pebble in between the bars, hitting him in the foot. That seems to get his attention, startling him, apparently waking him from his sleep. “Get up, you idiot, we’re getting out of here.”
Sneaky looks up, blinking, trying to pull himself out of his stupor as she uses the key to open the door and let herself inside.
“What? Who? Bungo? Bungo Bolger? When the hell did you get where? Where did you get that? Why-”
“I’m not playing 20 questions. You’re going to get us out of here. You know this place better than I do. And I know you don’t wanna be napping on a wet stone floor for the next couple years.” Bungo says as she unlocks Sneaky’s own ankle brace.
“Couple years? I’ve only got a month’s sentence. I can make it through that easy, and I don’t feel like risking more charges. I’m not bloodthirsty like you are.”
“Here’s the plan,” Bungo ignores him. “I need you to find us a way out of here. Back door, side door, trash chute, I don’t care. But first, we’re gonna find our stuff. You-”
“Whoa whoa whoa hold on hold on. One: I did not agree to this. Two: we can get more stuff once we get out of here, why would we need to get our old shit back. We steal for a living, it wouldn’t be that hard, and it would make getting out a million times harder.”
“Then you can wait somewhere else, or keep on looking for an exit I don’t care. I’ll go on my own and get what I need, I just need you to take me there. Come on, Sneaky, we can do this, you’ve got the info and I’ve got the balls.”
Sneaky stops and looks down at his ankle, giving it a rub. “...I do owe you for the Ravenport incident, don’t I…” he keeps thinking for a couple more seconds, “Fine. I’ll get you there. But it’s not my fault if this all goes to shit.”
----
It’s a stupid nickname, but he holds true to it. Sneaky has them weaving in and out of dark passages and hiding behind pillars and boxes. Eventually, they find themselves in a much nicer part of the prison. The walls and floor aren’t as wet here, the halls aren’t as cold, and there are more torches lighting the stone passage. The closer they get, the more guards they run into, having to find a quick hiding spot in a dark offshoot of the hall, or in some other unlit crevice. They take it as a sign that they are getting closer to their goal. The closer they are, the more nervous Sneaky gets, but Bungo refuses to turn back now. They are so close and have come so far, at this point, Bungo reasoned, their only options were to keep moving or be captured.
Bungo and Sneaky stop. Ahead of them, they can hear two voices. Both are male but one is much higher in pitch, and the other is deeper and older. The escapees freeze, frantically looking around for someplace to hide. Bungo pulls them into an old closet just as the two footsteps start to get too close. It’s full of old, dull swords and rusted helmets and the two’s hair get dusted in cobwebs.
Bungo leans forward, looking out the door, to see what is going on down the hall. She can still hear the voices and footsteps, but she can’t see anything. After a couple of seconds, a large round figure steps into the hall followed by another.
After a minute of standing there and continuing their conversation, the two turn in the direction of Bungo and Sneaky and start making their way towards them. Bungo quickly and quietly pulls the old wooden door closed, and Sneaky leans back farther away from it.
“... and the other guards just take the prisoners’ old stuff too?”
“Of course, they’re locked up in here, what are they going to be doing with it? Most of them aren’t getting out anytime soon, and their stuff is mostly stolen anyway. Neither of its owners are ever going to be seeing it again.”
“That just sounds like more stealing.”
“You got a lot to learn, kid. Taking from a thief isn’t stealing, its karma. Good people are working good jobs out there, and these idiots are just mooching off their hard work.”
“Yeah… It still sounds like a bad idea to me.”
The conversation trails off as the guards walk past them. Wherever they came from, it must be where they are keeping the confiscated goods. Bungo looks up at Sneaky and points in the direction the guards came from. Sneaky gives a tentative nod back, and the two of them wait a while longer until nothing else can be heard, and slowly open the door and make their way down the hall. Only a handful of yards away is a much heavier looking wooden door, held together by iron bars and bolts. A quick jiggle of the handle proves the door is unlocked, and the two make their way inside.
The room is full of shelves and chests, all holding items taken from the prisoners. Most of the things lying in the open are cheap trinkets and old weapons. Nicer items are kept on higher shelves, and in the back of the room are two locked chests.
“OK, I’m going to scout ahead,” said Sneaky. “Promise you’ll make this quick?”
“I’ll take as much time as a need. Get out of here, I know what I’m doing.”
“Fine, whatever. I thought I heard wind up ahead, I’m going to check it out.”
----
Bungo spends the next couple of minutes rummaging around the room, digging her way through strange bottles, knick-knacks, and stolen jewelry. She can tell that time is ticking away, and her search becomes more and more frantic. Through her rushed hunt, she does not hear the sound of footsteps approaching until it is too late. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she sees a figure outlined in the doorway. She stops and turns, and sees a young man, the guard that was talking to her in her cell.
“What are you doing?”
What am I doing? Bungo thinks. What a stupid question.
“What does it look like?” Bungo holds eye contact with the kid. Her hand is still in one of the boxes on the shelf. She feels around discreetly until she finds something, something sharp, and grips it at the other end.
The boy yells to alert the other guards to Bungo presence. He goes to reach for the sword fastened on his hip. He’s fast, but Bungo is faster, and by the time the blade is halfway out of its sheath, the sharp object, apparently what appears to be some kind of fancy letter opener, is deep in the left side of his chest.
His shouting stops and his eyes go wide. The whole time, the two of them haven’t broken eye contact, and Bungo can see the shift from fear, to confusion, to shock, and then to nothing. She steps back and lets go, and the limp body of the boy falls to the side with a dull thud. She turns back to her resume searching without a second glance, knowing that someone must have heard that shout and that she would have company very soon.
After a few seconds, she hears someone approaching, but the steps are too light to belong to the heavy leather boots that the guards wear. Sneaky flings himself around the door frame and into the room.
“What the hell was tha-” but what he sees stops him mid sentence. He takes a few seconds to take in the sight of the body. Bungo gives him no mind as she continues her search.
“WHAT DID YOU DO???” Sneaky throws himself into a list of whens, whys, whats, and hows. Over his shrill shrieking, Bungo can hear the shouts of guards.
“SHUT UP!” This was not the smoothest jailbreak she has been in. “Did you go scout ahead?” “Yes-” “Did you find us a way out?” “Yes-!” “Then go watch the exit while I figure this shit out!!!”
The footsteps become even louder, but Sneaky isn’t moving.
“NOW!!!”
He finally bolts out of the room, muttering a chourus of “fuck fuck fuck fuck” under his breath. Bungo is searching frantically, tossing items into the air, throwing things on the floor. The sound of footsteps becomes louder and louder when her hand finally grasps something small, round, and smooth.
“BUNGO COME ON LET’S GO!”
Bungo wraps her hand around the small object and bolts out of the room, jumping over the still bleeding body of the young guard. She runs as fast as her short legs can take her, following the sound of Sneaky’s voice. After a sharp left turn, she finds him at the end of a hall crouching in a hole in the wall that was meant to be a window. Bungo rushes over, practically slamming into the wall on impact and looks down at their escape route. Farther to the left is a beach made of pale white sand, and below them and to the right is nothing but churning gray water.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Bungo snaps. “How far up are we? How the hell do we know we’re gonna make this drop?”
“Listen, we’re only on the second floor, and we’re far enough away from the beach that the water probably deep enough that we won’t hit the bottom.”
“Probably???”
“YES, PROBABLY! So unless you have any other ideas, jump out the damn window!!”
The shouts of the guards are right on top of them, and they can hear a new the sounds of barking.
“Dogs??? They have dogs? Damn it Bungo, they found the body and now they have dogs!”
Bungo looks away from her companion and down the hall. As soon as she turns a crowd of at least a dozen guards being lead by three dogs make their way around the bend.
Bungo turns and grabs Sneaky by the collar of his shirt.
“Wha-”
She yanks and sends him tumbling down in front of her, landing in between her and the guards. Without a second look, Bungo climbs up onto the windowsill and throws herself into the rough tide of the sea below. Her body is thrown into shock on impact with the freezing waves and it takes a good ten seconds of still floating until she can force movement back into her limbs. At some point, she thinks she hears the sound of s second splash nearby, but she doesn’t stop to find out what it is. As soon as she’s moving, Bungo starts making her way away from the prison and towards the shoreline.
----
After 30 minutes of struggling against the waves, Bungo pulls herself onto the shore. She has no idea where she is, but she knows she can’t stay here for long. Even so, she gives herself a couple of minutes to lay on the beach, trying her best to catch her breath and reorient herself. Her chest heaves painfully, and her arms and legs ache.
She remembers the half-elf who helped her in her escape and takes a lookup and down the shore. There is no sign of the lanky idiot, and Bungo can’t find it in herself to care. She made it out, and that’s all that matters.
A sudden shock of realization forces her to sit up. Where was it? Could she have lost it in the fall? In the water? She searches frantically through her pockets and calms down when she feels the cool stone in her left hand. She knows it’s there, but she won’t feel better until she sees it with her own eyes.
She holds the bead in her right hand, holding it between her thumb and index finger. She turns it towards the ocean and compares the two. Now that the sun had come out, the ocean was shining a deep blue, and golden light reflected off of it. The same vision was reflected in the stone in front of her. She had learned its name. Lapis Lazuli.
She lets a small, satisfied smile slip onto her face, and lays back into the sand. Yeah, that is exactly how she imagined it would look.