Dragonira kicked a pebble and watched as it skittered across the floor and jumped recklessly into the massive trench that divided the room in two. After what felt like years of waiting, the pebble finally hit the bottom with a loud thunk that resonated off of the dungeon walls.

She flinched at the sound. In her mind it represented those unfortunate enough to have also once called this place "home" and could not tolerate it – choosing to leap to their deaths through the dungeon’s only true opening.

Dragonira often wondered if she were the reason they chose to leave, but she could never expand on the concern enough to wonder why this would be. As far as she was aware, she wasn’t terribly frightening. She was a short, skinny thing, with long dark hair and bright green eyes. If there was anything negative to say about her appearance, it was that she didn’t take particular interest in it and looked generally unkempt. Personality wasn’t likely a factor either as she was far more stable than the criminals who were sentenced to share imprisonment with her.

Her mind mulled over the disappearances of her “friends” and regardless of what train of thought she chose to follow, she continuously returned to the notion they somehow knew about her father. While his official title was palace magician, she always felt the term was too simple to explain him correctly. He was frighteningly more than the cheap trickster that it indicated and she often suspected he was the reason people wound up down here to be forgotten by the rest of the world.

Deciding that she was tired of dwelling on the ghosts of the pebble, she made her way toward the giant hole that lit the palace’s underground. The cavernous dungeon was built out of the ancient aqueduct system that had been carved into the cliff. This suggested there had once been running water for at least the palace inhabitants. Now there was only a waterwheel and pulley system that brought the life-sustaining liquid up from the floor of the desert ravine. This she could see clearly from the maw of the cavern in which she stood.

“Wouldn’t that be something to have now?” she marveled aloud as she studied the trench.

She walked the edge of the empty channel until she reached the rough rocks that must have once supported the rest of it. There she sat down and let her feet dangle out into the hot desert air. Like so many prisoners who lived here before, she had thought of jumping to her impending doom on the rocks below, but could never bring herself to actually do it.

Reorienting to think on the aqueducts, she leaned against the wall and watched in wonder at the waterfall on the other side of the chasm. Had that once flowed up into the castle? Had it done so by bridge? Why didn’t they rebuild the bridge? These questions were overshadowed by a much larger quandary: “What idiot would think to build a kingdom in the desert, on the wrong side of the ravine?”

Dragonira rolled her eyes and stood up once again so she could lean out and observe the lake far below. Instead of focusing on colors reflected in the cool waters, she noticed the length of the shadows on the cliff face and realized the day was drawing long.

“Shit!” she swore out loud as she dashed back inside. Despite the fact that her father often seemed to prefer she never have existed, he had gone out of his way to make sure she was at least somewhat educated. His lessons were self-centered and often focused on ensuring that she could assist him with his spells and rituals, but she was thankful for the knowledge nevertheless. Unfortunately, she had lost track of the time she had before the lesson scheduled for today.

Her feet thudded on the berm as she charged toward the alcove that shifted the channel upward and carried it into the ceiling. Using the full of her momentum, she rebounded up it and into the tunnel above. She then crawled through the hidden spaces in the walls until she reached the stairs that would bring her home.

Out of breath, she felt that she might have traversed the tunnels fast enough to make up for missed time, but as she pushed open the trap door to his ritual chamber, she found her father waiting for her. He held a scroll that he had mangled by wringing his hands around it and on his face he wore a scowl that could send even a fighting nargazoth crawling back into its hole.

“You’re late.” His fiery eyes betrayed the coldness of his voice. His anger amplified by their slitted sunset hues.

She attempted to apologize, but she got stuck on the words and fell silent. Saying anything would only serve to anger him further. She wanted to drop back down into the hole she had exited but, afraid of the backlash, she instead climbed up the rest of the stairs and closed the floor door behind her.

He placed the scroll on a shelf and turned his back to her as he grabbed something else off of it. His disposition caused her to worry and she tried to see what it was even though it was impossible through the cascade of silver hair that draped around him.

"Come here."

She hesitated.

"COME HERE!"

The shout jarred her enough to take a couple of steps forward, but she froze again as he turned to watch her. Her reluctance set him off and he lashed out, causing her to stagger backward. Dragonira didn’t even realize she had been cut until she looked up to see him holding his ritual dagger and felt the sting of her own blood running into her eyes.

"Be gone from my sight,” he commanded in as much disgust as his voice could carry.

Shaking, she obeyed and rushed to her room to hide from his wrath. She jumped for her bed when he slammed the door, but as she heard the lock slide into place, a strange sense of relief washed over her. He was beyond the need to injure her further and would leave her alone for an unknown length of time. After a few moments passed, she thought that perhaps now was when to put in action the escape plan she had been fantasizing about. But first…

Dragonira ambled over to her tiny washroom – which had once been a closet – and used a wet rag to tend to the cut on her forehead. She flinched at the initial sting of the water against the shallow wound, but after a moment the pain subsided. Once clean, she inspected it in the broken mirror on the wall. It was far less severe than the blood flow had led her to believe, and she was thankful that it would likely be healed by morning.

As she finished washing up, she allowed her mind to focus on the tiny window that sat near the ceiling above her bed. When she was little, she had thought it was proof the castle her father said they lived in was sinking. Eventually she realized the shifting amounts of dirt covering it had been the work of farmhands.

The memory of this discovery always bothered her. While she remembered seeing them pushing shovels into the ground, she couldn’t figure out how she had been able to view them through the window when it was so high up. It was another in a long line of memories that she had forgotten, but it was what fueled her breakout plan.

She dug around underneath her bed until she heard a loud crash outside of her room that caused her to jump to a standing position and hold her breath. After a short while she released it again, having figured out that her father had actually left their apartment and slammed the door behind him.

Not wanting to waste more time, she flipped her mattresses up and fished out the scroll she had been searching for. It contained a simple teleportation spell she had swiped from her father’s journal when he had not been looking. It was apparently such a minor thing to him as he never noticed the missing pages. It’d be nice if he doesn’t notice my disappearance either, she thought as she unrolled them.

It didn’t take her long to commit the spell to memory, but she found she was hesitant of activating it without fully knowing where to go. The stable yard seemed the obvious answer, but she wasn’t even sure it actually existed as she imagined.

Looking up at the tiny window, she realized she could verify her vision if she could look out it at least once. After taking a moment to calculate how far up the window was, she breathed a voice to the magic controls she learned and was suddenly falling back toward her bed.

In the split second it took for her to realize the spell worked, she was able to glimpse the window flying up past her before she collided with the mattress. With a better idea of how to orient herself for the fall, she tried again and was able to see level ground and a wooden structure through the glass during her descent.

The stable! It was there!

Dragonira jumped off of her bed and danced in a small circle as she tried to figure out what to bring with her. When she heard a door close, she looked at the entrance to her own room and realized she didn’t have time to prepare for the outside world anymore. As she heard the lock slide on her door, she repeated the spell and was gone.