The central keep's dungeon wasn't as damp as Valey had expected. Cleaner than the tunnels she had just slunk through, it lacked the faint odor of mold and crumbled debris laying on the ground or brushed aside in the corners. The large bricklike slabs making up the walls were finely cut and fitted, and some even had engravings in swirls or patterns she assumed were pointless. Under an arch, around a corner and past two empty sconces, she found light filtering down a stairway, not a guard in sight.
Valey took the steps three at a time, keeping her body low to the ground in case she needed to hide. Now she was in a storeroom of sorts, wide and high with rafters for hanging things and just enough illumination for her to see easily by. The floor was a maze of crates, sacks and barrels, and she skidded through as quickly as possible: no guards meant easy progress.
Her still-wobbly limbs betrayed her, though, as she rounded a corner, tripping over a sack and sending its contents spilling out over the floor as she crashed head over heels into a wall. "Oww..." she groaned, sitting up and rubbing her head. That had made too much noise. Someone would be by to investigate...
Click! Just as she predicted, a door opened, spilling a wide column of light in at the far side of the room. "Oy!" a fancy voice she imagined belonged to someone very fat barked. "Worthington, I heard that! Are you slackin' off in here again!?"
"What?" a further-away voice shouted from beyond the door. "I'm kneading this dough like you started me on two hours ago! Don't point your talons at me!"
"Somethin' must've fallen over, then," the first voice muttered aloud. "It's clearly your fault for stackin' it poorly! Finish those pastry shells so they can chill for tomorrow's banquet, then find what fell and clean it up before you leave for the night! And if it's liquid, oh, you'll be sorry then..."
Amid another shouted complaint, the door shut again, and Valey simultaneously perked and relaxed. Pastry shells? What was this, the kitchens?
Sniffing her way back to where the bag fell, she picked up something tubular and vaguely curved... zucchini? Not something she wanted to eat raw, but cooked into the proper dish... Valey licked her lips and passed on that. Imagining food would only make her more hungry.
Still, she was apparently in the keep's food cellar, and if Worthington got yelled at for her thievery, she supposed that was a price he'd have to pay. A five-minute scrounging session later, she had filled the empty space in her saddlebags with fruit, not nearly as fresh as she was used to in Ironridge but more than enough to keep her going. It was time to press on.
The only ways out of the storeroom seemed to be the dungeons, the kitchens, and a big, tightly-sealed door she presumed led out of the keep to a loading dock somewhere. That was likely to be guarded and the wrong way, so the kitchens it was.
Bright overhead lights forced Valey out of the shadows the moment she slipped under the kitchen door. She was at the bottom of a small stair flight, so no one would see her unless they stood directly at the top and looked down, but now she had to get past ponies and couldn't use one of her primary advantages. Relying on her cutie mark instead, she crept to the top, ensuring no one was looking and folding her ears just in case before peeking into the kitchens proper.
She was at one end of a long, narrow rectangular room that during daylight hours or crunch time could fit dozens of chefs, divided into three main aisles by two rows of tables in the center and a ring of counters and ovens around the edge. The exit door was at the far end, and the tables had gaps between them where she could hide on her way across. Two heads poked up above the countertops; a grandiose griffon in a mountainous white hat, and what was probably Worthington, a harried-looking apprentice focusing heavily on a counter. Two of them, and three aisles to sneak down...
Valey went for it. Worthington was focused enough that he didn't always glance around the room, and his superior was so short that she only saw his hat except when he straightened up to look around. Unfortunately, he was moving busily, so every time she prepared to run another table-length she had to wait for their gazes to pass, then check again to see where he was. One table at a time, she made progress, sliding into safety and passing numerous doors to the sides. Composting, another storeroom, water purification system... Eventually, she passed by the head chef's hat, now closer to the exit than he was. Yes!
"Who comes to my kitchen at this hour!?" the head chef bellowed.
Valey froze. In her haste, she had forgotten to check the chef now that she was ahead of him! She had to bail. Stretching her wings and figuring she'd just outfly the chef, she launched herself into the air, streaking toward... and stopped short. Three blue-armored griffon guards were standing in the open far doorway, and it was they who had attracted the chef's attention, but now all four were staring at her with beaks open. Only Worthington remained diligently doing his job.
"A-a street urchin!" the head chef stammered, pointing an aghast talon at Valey, standing on a table and realizing she had goofed. "Planting her muddy hooves on my workspace! How dare she!? Guards, arrest her for treason!"
"...Treason, sir?" The soldiers blinked rapidly. "She may be a rapscallion, sir, but don't you mean trespass?"
Another griffon cooed at her. "Aww... she looks kinda down on her luck. If I was hungry and desperate, I might try something rash... Maybe we could give her a bite and just let her off outside with a warning, or something?"
Valey blinked. "Hey, that sounds nice. I'm for that."
"Treason! Trespass! Whatever!" The head chef whipped out a cleaver nearly as big as he was. "Defilement of my sacred ovens! You know what I mean!"
"Yeah, no." Eyes widening, Valey took off again, darting toward the nearest side door, kicking it open and slipping through.
Immediately, a wall of frost chilled her wing membranes, causing her to lock up and go tumbling to the ground. Where was she, in a freezer? The plaque on the wall read Cold Storage, and from the icicles growing from the ceiling and frost clinging to the surfaces of nearby crates, she quickly realized this wasn't a place she could stay.
Valey quickly glanced around, trying to find a way out before the door banged open again for her to be arrested. The only things she could see were a pair of air ducts at the top of the room... Those had to be used for the cooling apparatus. Which one was the outtake? Maybe she could follow it and punch her way out in a different room?
Forcing her wings to work in the subzero prison, Valey made it to the ceiling, feeling a chill wind blowing into one of the grates. Fortunately, it was dark enough to shadow sneak, and she easily slipped through, crawling her way through a duct that hurt her hooves from cold to walk on. Her steps were noisy, so anyone with ears would be able to trace her...
"She's in the air ducts?" a confused voice from below shouted, confirming her worry. "Wow, she's desperate! Hey, uhh... That goes to the compressor, I think! Or did it get replaced with a talisman? Or the other way around?"
"You don't want to go that way!" another guard shouted. "You'll freeze! Or get magicked, or something! Seriously, how do the air vents in this place work? This wasn't covered in training..."
"Hey, old Moriarty isn't going to cleave you!" the third assured. "Come back? Please? We can't fit in there!"
Fat chance, Valey thought, crawling forward with determination. She rounded a bend... Another intake! How quaint. Mixing warm air with air that was already cold felt like inefficient design, but maybe whoever had built the castle's heating and cooling system had a beef with the lord and wanted to waste energy, or something. It was good for her, so she didn't question it.
Dropping through this grate into another room, Valey landed expertly upright, hoping she wouldn't just have to go back through the kitchen. But no, this seemed a storage closet filled with long, rolling racks of collapsible tables, benches and chairs. Was there a banquet room nearby? She snuck out beneath the door, deciding to figure out.
This room could have been anything from a reception lobby to a ballroom to her suspected banquet hall, depending on its needs. Over three stories high, it had a checkered marble floor and cavernous ribbons of drapes, with double-door exits in every direction possible. Stairways and balconies ringed the walls, high up and higher still, and to her left she saw the open doors to the kitchen, ajar with warm light. Best to get out of there before anyone saw her.
Spreading her wings again and shaking off the last traces of frost, Valey jumped. She made it to the first balcony up before her cutie mark warned her that someone was coming, and she dropped, hiding against the raised platform as the clack of armored talons sounded against the floor below. "You think that vent led out here?" a griffon's voice asked.
"Of course it did, you incompetent excuses!" the head chef, Moriarty, berated, following the guards into the ballroom with his cleaver. "Stop actin' like my kitchens have not been defiled and do your jobs, buffoons! Bring that urchin to justice!"
"She could be anywhere in here," a guard murmured. "Sarosians are good at hiding when it's dark. If you'd stop waving that thing around, maybe she'd stop feeling threatened and come out..."
"My shift just ended for the night, you know," another grumbled. "Moriarty, if you're going to be rude, we're off the clock and can just go home. It's a lone kitchen thief. You think we're going to be paid more for stopping her than the value of what she steals?"
"My honor is priceless!"
Valey rolled her eyes and sighed, taking stock of where she wanted to go next. Hopefully, the chef wouldn't call for reinforcements.