Luck is fickle, luck is Blind

Luck is often quite unkind

But if you know

It’s familiar blow

Would you still change your mind?

-prophecy of the duskbringer

Guppy groaned as her eyelids flickered open, her head felt like the one morning after she had drunk some rather ripe juice fruit and gotten roaringly drunk by accident. Yet another reason she chose not to drink, she had zero tolerance to the stuff, and once experience with a hangover had been all the persuasion she had needed to steer clear in the future.

Guppy pushed past the pain in her head and tried moving, only to find herself spread out and each limb shackled to the heavy iron bed frame on which she lay.

A prisoner again then.

As memory returned Guppy felt teary, she had been so close to her freedom, the last days of suppressed horror not knowing if her siblings lived or not had taken their toll, her plans, those she dared to make, lay in ruins.

She looked around, no bars, but the solid stone walls around her were as much a prison despite their gleaming whiteness. A solid looking door sealed the only entrance. She was imprisoned once more

Guppy did cry then, not even her recent progress with controlling earthen magic comforted her as she quietly sobbed.

Alone.

After a few minutes of indulgent self pity Guppy took a deep breath and started pulling herself together. She had escaped her last prison, this one would not hold her either.

So time to take stock, limbs, check, clothes, some kind of one piece dress, she must have been bathed and clothed while she was out, after that... fiend had taken her down.

Guppy allowed herself a brief sudder and a quick prayer to the Goddess of Luck that she would not have to face that opponent to escape from… wherever this was.

Moving on, whitewashed walls, smooth stone from the look, very smooth, her eyes could barely make out the cracks, only slight dips in the paint even alluding there were different blocks involved.

There were a few small holes though, and she could feel air flow through them, so maybe she could work with that? It bore thinking about. On that note illumination was a singular glow cube inserted into a wall sconce, so her employer was wealthy then, if they could afford the more expensive kind of light source for a mere prisoner.

The door was Iron, a solid enough affair that Guppy figured tunneling out again would probably be a safer bet.

Listening for a few minutes she could hear no guard posted outside her door, unless he was an extremely stealthy one which considering by whom she was captured was a possibility. It was also possible that the room door was spelled to mute sounds, but why they would go to the bother made that line of thought questionable, this was no torture chamber, the bed was even comfortable, if not her manacles.

First test, Guppy strained against her bonds, trying to employ her deceivingly high strength contained in her narrow frame.

A few seconds and minutes of twisting and pulling later convinced her that this avenue would bear no fruit, they must have noticed her unnatural strength in the fight, these bands were no novice cast cankered iron full of integral flaws to exploit, no they were triple forged black iron if her examination held any truth.

Ok then, time for the methods she employed escaping last time, thankfully enough time had passed that Guppy’s mana was topped off and ready to be used.

Guppy drew in a breath and then released it slowly, she would need to focus to use her magic, for all that she had grown better at coaxing it, she had found earthen magic was stubborn. But she was stubborner.

Guppy hummed in long low notes, ponderous and slow, until her will was resonating with the mana contained within her. Then she guided the mana to an earthen gateway that orbited her heart, sending the transformed energy out through her hands to push the closest wall on her right with it, it was more difficult since she could not touch it directly, but persevering allowed her to extend her will and push firmly against it in an attempt to loosen the rocks in the wall and transform some to sand.

“Erosion.” she murmured, letting the image of rocks breaking down to smaller rocks and then sand flow through her mind and into the will of the mana.

Some paint chips fell, but the rocks didn’t budge or wear much.

“Fudgeknuckles those stones are hard. Why the heck does it feel like the stones refused to break down? It’s as if they like themselves as they are.”

In fact it had felt like she was trying to shift a mountain as Guppy pressed her mana against the wall, so well laid were the stones, did they even use mortar? None of that had flaked off. The blasted stones fit so smoothly and tightly Guppy had thought the wall had been plastered then painted.

Well fat chance she was getting out that way unless she got far stronger than she currently was.

Next optio-

Guppy felt a stirring within her, a stretching and rising of some part that had been dormant, and a grumpy voice entered her head.

{Why is it so cramped in here? I feel all stiff and sore, that rest hardly deserved the name.}

Queried Guppy

{Yes, yes. It is I, now hatchling, do you mind telling me why we are presently chained up in what seems to be yet another prison? It’s barely an upgrade over the last one, although they do seem rather more concerned with keeping you here than your last jailors.}

Guppy quickly caught him up on the events of the last few weeks, eliciting snorts and sighs from her soul twined companion over her misadventures.

{How in the Thirteen halls did I have the misfortune to be landed with such an incompetent? And what happened to that big grey fellow?} Bemoaned Batty.

{Why did you not just scour the flesh from your assailant's bones with a fiery whirlwind or five? Or you could have diced them with focus beams from afar if you needed distance? Surely even the weakest Wrath`Ma`kar could have done as such, let alone one bonded with my august personage and gifted my transcendent powers!}

Oh that pissed Guppy off, where had he been while she was holding down the fort and facing dangers all around?

She felt Batty recoil a bit from her railing, shock and an indignant anger filtered back to her across their bond.

{You ungrateful brat, I improved your fragile body and gave you a vessel that could grow and bear my majestic power, transforming you into a Wrath`Ma`kar, and gifted you the seeds of my magic. None Under The Heavens Would Scoff at Such a Mighty Boon. And if I hadn’t had to damage myself so heavily keeping your ungrateful heart beating after what that blood witch did to you I would have recovered weeks ago and we could begin to prepare for…}

Batty’s words and transmitted impressions that battered Guppy’s consciousness died down, the emotions sent giving way from anger to frustration and no small amount of panic. That more than anything worried her. What could cause a dragon to panic?

{I’ve lost...the price was greater than I expec- NO, why can’t I REMEMBER? I SHOULD KNOW-!!} Bellowed Batty

Guppy waded through the feelings that were pouring her way across over their bridge, finally managing to send a sliver of thought back to the dragon.

{I...I am a broken being, my mind and soul are wounded, and my memories hazy, distorted, many shattered or missing. I know I was fleeing something...something terrible enough to cause even I abject terror. But I had a purpose, a mission, a goal. I was... trapped somehow, my being and power increasingly flayed from me...and then I saw a light, an escape, an opening through which I fled...and then I met you, you with whom I had a chance at... I cannot remember, but I must have taken it, though I remember not the specifics of doing so…}

The dragon kept rambling, becoming less and less coherent as time passed, eventually passing into brooding silence. A silence that Guppy welcomed, the distressed dragon’s emotions had been, intense to say the least, and Guppy felt like a dust rag battered and wrung out by the experience.

A puddle of foul smelling liquid lay on the floor from where it had exited her throat a short time past.

Guppy gingerly prodded their shared connection and got a little feedback. While Batty had separated his thoughts somewhat he was still there, sorrow and consternation trickled across to Guppy and soured her stomach.

She curled up and after a time somehow found the embrace of sleep, drifting off to dreams of a flickering, laughing hunter that always caught her; before the dream cycled back to the beginning, and she ran once more.