Jailbreak

Vanim paced.

There wasn’t much else to do while stuck at the bottom of a ravine. Kratti had told him he would have an audience with the queen soon, which meant one of two things: the queen would be coming down to see him personally, or there was some way to get out.

He had a suspicion; while there was little at the bottom other than tightly-packed dirt, and the walls were meticulously smooth, up on the ridge, there were a few long, broad logs, stripped of their branches and leaves. If someone rolled one down and propped up at just the right angle, it could serve as a bridge to get back to the surface… but Vanim didn’t have a way to reach them.

And his fellow prisoners weren’t much help. Most of them had accepted the futility of attempting an escape, and settled into the monotonous routine of eating and sleeping. (Vanim dreaded the thought of becoming so despondent.) Some were less easy to settle, but they were so worked up it was impossible to talk to them.

So Vanim paced. And paced.

It must have been the better part of a day before he heard activity on the surface. Voices. Hushed, so he couldn’t pick out the words, but he knew they were there—two of them, at least. And they were coming closer.

“…is where they keep prisoners,” one whispered.

“For what crimes? Getting lost?”

That second voice… sounded very familiar…

“I wonder if any of them could help us,” continued the voice.

“How would we even get them out?” said the first. “No, don’t bother. Let’s look around some more. And let’s hurry, or we’ll be joining them.”

Vanim hadn’t heard that voice in a long time, but he was certain who it was. “Kyrien?”

The pair went quiet. Then a familiar face peeked over the canyon’s lip. He’d grown since Vanim last saw him. He’d lost the too-long snout of his adolescence and grown into his adult proportions nicely, his crest a bright gold. Vanim knew that the cryo would continue to grow up when he wasn’t around, but seeing him so different from how he remembered made something twinge in his chest, wondering what else they’d missed of each other’s lives.

“Vanim?!” Kyrien shouted, cartoonishly loudly. “What are you doing down there?”

“I-”

“Shut up! Both of you!” Kyrien’s companion appeared on the ledge. She was a cryo, too, about Kyrien’s age—and clearly irritated. “Or every iguanodon in the city will know we’re here! Kyrien, we have to go.”

“Sorry!” Kyrien glanced between his old packmate and his new friend. “But we can’t just leave him down there, Jolene.”

Jolene, looked down at Vanim for the first time. Her emerald eyes were narrow and harsh, but Vanim supposed he would be on edge if he were sneaking through Atlantis’s oasis, too. After a moment, she sighed, her features softening. “I guess you’re right. Vanim, do you have any idea how to get you out? The walls look too steep to climb.”

Vanim nodded at her assessment. “The iguanodons keep logs on the surface. I haven’t seen the iguanodons touch them, but I think they must use them to let prisoners out of here.”

Jolene nodded, slowly, and turned to Kyrien. “Let’s see if we can knock one down.”

“Right.” The pair disappeared again, though Vanim could still hear their footsteps. Or, really, he could still hear Kyrien’s footsteps. Evidently, he was just as antsy about their reunion as Vanim was.

It left Vanim with more time to speculate. So much had changed since Kyrien left them. Fainel and Frasil were fully grown now. Fainel had hatchlings! Could Kyrien have any of his own now? Where on Earth had be been all this time? And why hadn’t Kyrien said goodbye?

Vanim found himself pacing again while he waited for them. A few of the other prisoners had begun to take notice, having overheard their talk of escaping. As long as they didn’t get into a fight over it, he would be happy to help them get out, too.

“Vanim, over here!” Kyrien called his name, and Vanim ran several feet down the canyon to find him. Kyrien and Jolene had managed to loosen one of the logs from its hold, and when they saw him coming, they began to roll it forward. It took a great deal of strain and grunting (mostly on Kyrien’s part), and other dinosaurs began to crowd around the steep slope, eager for a chance at freedom.

“Watch your head!”

With a thud, one end of the log landed on the bottom of the pit. Now that he saw it in front of him, Vanim realized that the log was even more massive that he’d thought from glancing at it—even an iguanodon would be able to hike up its length and make it out.

Jolene looked disapprovingly at the number of dinosaurs that were gathering, and whipped around. “Hurry up, Vanim! You too, Kyrien. Someone’s bound to notice what’s going on here…”

Not wanting to keep her waiting, Vanim quickly set a foot on the log. It was so large that it didn’t even wobble from his added weight.

“You heard her!” shouted a styra from behind him. “Faster, faster!”

With everyone pushing at his legs, he didn’t have much of a choice. He was practically carried out of the ravine. And he barely had time to catch his breath before Jolene ran off, shouting at Vanim and Kyrien to follow her.

“Kyrien, I-”

“Let’s get out of here first and talk later, okay?”

Reluctantly, Vanim nodded, and the two went after her. The scene behind them dissolved into chaos as dinosaurs scrambled to break through to the surface.

At least Vanim had managed to get out, and not been eaten by the crowd. But he still had plenty of questions for his rescuers, which he was certainly going to ask as soon as they settled somewhere safe.