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"Dank" is the best word Eline can think of to describe her cell.
Cold, dark, and somehow wet in the slimiest way despite Ul'Dah's arid nature.
Just like the residents, she quips silently, and maybe if she had any energy to speak of she would have laughed.
She's hunkered in a corner, nursing the last couple drops of filthy water from an equally filthy iron cup, knowing that this meager offering was all she was getting for the next day. Approximately, that is, it's impossible to tell the time in a basement except by when guards open the slider to shove through some moldy bread.
Eline thinks of their laughing faces, staring down at her in Northern Thanalan line she was an animal in a trap, Ilberd and Yuyuhase's distant laughter ringing in her ears, shaking in her stomach to a point of nausea, the manhandling, the sight of other emaciated prisoners on her way to her cell-
She grips the mug so tight it slices her finger. Eline swears under her breath, clutching the wounded hand tightly. Nobody is coming to help her, that much she knows--but by the Twelve, she won't die here.
She breathes deep, and exhales slow. A guard will arrive soon with her meal.
--
On the other side of the prison, a Gridanian escapee has found herself behind another set of bars.
They took Pawah's bow, but her claws were as sharp as ever. The guard heading off to feed the other prisoners would take her warning for getting too close with her, wearing it in stripes on his cheek.
She plots her escape, so stealthy that it will be grand, the Ghost disappearing once more into the wild... She carves another line in the wall, marking the days.
--
Eline's guard arrives with an injury. She eyes him up and down, checking for any more signs of weakness, something she's learned is useful even outside of physical battle.
Her head is bowed low, perhaps in an attempt to hide the gashes on her cheek though they no longer bleed, and she tosses the tray into her cell unceremoniously enough to knock the new tin of water over. Wasteful.
But this is a chance.
"Ma'am," Eline pipes up, sweetly, softly, "are you hurt?"
"Some stupid cat down the hall got me," she grumbles, so quick to speak to a prisoner. She must be new. "Shoulda trimmed her claws, I say."
Eline holds back a slight chirp of laughter, admiring the other prisoner's courage. She schools her features back to worry, not a difficult task.
"I do know a bit of conjury, miss. And I am unarmed." she near whispers, voice forced to tremble just slightly. "I could make those gashes disappear." A well practiced lie, sliding down a honeyed tongue. She'd spent too long in Ul'dah.
She takes a moment to consider, raking every inch of her face and surroundings for some indication of deciet, and as she looks Eline can see her skate over every clue with unpracticed eyes.
The guard begins to stride towards her, back straight and tall as they are taught in the Flames, but her slight frame gives Eline no reason for alarm. A midlander woman, in her mid-20s at the most. She decides not to kill her.
"Come closer, please. I must be able to touch the wound." she asks, and he compiles, not even reaching for the scimitar on her belt. She has to hold back another laugh at her trusting nature. How had she survived Ul'dah this long?
The cup she had been drinking from earlier is hiding in plain sight, the mottled, rusted old thing blending in perfectly with the bench she sits on. She reaches up to set a long fingered hand on her cheek, looking intently into her eyes, her other hand reaching ever so slowly for the cup.
Three things happen at once: She breathes the tendrils of the most basic cure from her fingers, the guard closes his eyes in relief, and Eline slams the cup against the side of his head.
--
Pawah's ears, ever so sensitive, hear a thunk in the distance.
In my hall, she surmises, they won't be coming to visit me.
A fanged grin splits her face, and she plucks the lockpick pinned into her wild hair from it's hiding place at the base of her ear. Time to get to work.
--
Being back in a Flame uniform is one third comforting, one third revolting, and one third chafing. Slipping down from the prison once she had it on, however, had been like an elaborate jape. She never had put their best and brightest on prison duty.
A nod here, a salute there, and the tired guards let one of their most prized prisoners waltz down to a sewer entrance with no resistance.
Eline was almost disappointed, until an arrow comes flying past her face, so close the wind bites her cheek. She gasps and sidesteps although it's already hit its mark, buried deep in a crack in the sewer wall. Expert marksmanship, really. She wonders when they hired such a proficient trainer.
Slipping the stolen scimitar from her belt loop (rather lacking, compared to her lance), she turns cautiously around.
"Show yourself." she commands, "And I will be merciful." Another lie.
When there is no response, she sighs, taking a few more steps towards the source of the arrow, ever so careful--
And not careful enough, as she feels the very, very tip of an arrow drawn next to her face.
"Show yourself," says a mocking voice behind her. How childish! A Gridanian accent (so the Flames still had no good archers after all), and a very faint lisp. Who in the Hells?
"If you don't want to lose a head, missus, I'd show your ever gratious guest here to the exit. Remember, you've only got one!" the voice, clearly another freed prisoner, prattles on like she's won, punctuated with a chuckle that Eline might actually enjoy hearing under any other circumstance.
"Very well," Eline sighs, making a show of dropping her sword, "But I can hardly move with that pressed to my head, and neither can you. It's hardly a firearm." Though it does just as much damage up close, if not more in the hands of someone skilled.
The voice makes a noise of contemplation, and she hears the creak of the bow loosening. She clicks her tongue, and in one fell swoop spins around to grasp the bow by the shaft, causing it's owner to shriek in surprise, jerking back, and unfortunately only managing to lose her footing on the slick sewer floor and fall flat.
Eline smirks, and looks down at her attempted captor, only to be quite surprised by what she finds.
A Miqo'te woman looks up at her, one of the Keepers, with her stunning white hair and eyes set against grey skin. Her ears are folded back tight against her head, teeth bared, and just about helpless without a weapon or a place to go. Maybe her promise of mercy was not so false.
"What do you want, then? Hm? Gonna take me back?" the Miqo'te snickers, as if realizing something, "As if. That stolen uniform must chafe."
Eline quirks an eyebrow. Smart girl. "Perhaps I just want to leave, the same as you." she shrugs. At this point, honesty can't hurt. Who is a fugitive going to tell? They don't even know eachothers names.
"Not even gonna ask who I am? What I'm in for?" everything she says is tinged with a playfulness, and something in that toothy grin makes Eline's heart skip in the faintest way. Now is not the time!
"Banditry? Murder?" Eline ventures, "Whatever it is, I've done worse. Murder, theft, dabbled in grand treason." an intimidation tactic, she tells herself, and not the ease with which the Miqo'te's jovial tone makes conversation after a couple months in solitary.
"Bit of both, but I can't say I've tried treason yet." she laughs, "I like you, I think."
"Such high standards for trust. It's a wonder you weren't caught earlier."
"Oh, you can't even hold that sword right. Can't treason me to death."
Eline clicks her tongue, "Show some respect to the person holding your weapons."
"Because you definitely know how to use that bow, right?" The Miqo'te quickly brings her argument to a standstill. "I can, though. And we can leave, and never see each other again. Hows about it?"
"You can still shoot me." Eline grips the bow tighter, watching the other woman for any signs of movement, "So we leave, and then you get it back."
The Miqo'te sighs dramatically, swaying like she's been truly wounded. "Fine, fine. Just lead the way, missues."
"Eline is fine." she finds herself saying when she catches the Miqo'te's bright eyes, like a damned fool.
"Pawah it is, then." she beams, very clearly continuing to size up the way Eline was holding her bow--though she hardly thinks it's hers, as it's Flame standard.
"Very well, Pawah. I don't want to spend another minute here, and I'm quite sure you don't either. Let's get moving."
"Ma'am, yes Ma'am." she replies, singsong.
Even if it's a long trip out, it may be an entertaining one.