[Malloriel]

That would explain a lot. I'll help a bit, though.

He goes down into the earth because frequently, long ago and in some cases still, dungeons, prisons, were placed below the earth. Under a castle or fortress of some kind. That way it was harder for people to get in and out without getting stopped. The same idea is true of a tower prison, though with a tower you can generally only keep a few people locked up, where as below you can have the prison take up as much space as the castle or fortress itself. So there's a prison deep under this local . . . I wouldn't call this necessarily a fortress. At one time it may have been, but it's more like a consulate, a place where visiting dignitaries or important people from other lands might stay safely, or go if they're in some kind of trouble. And the prison beneath it hasn't been used in a very long time, but by the way it's constructed and built up it looks like it was something very serious, the sort of place where very, VERY dangerous people were kept, and a LOT of them. I want it to give the impression that this place has been around a very long time and doesn't get used the way it was built to be used, but wasn't changed physically. Like, they didn't take it down and rebuild it, or change the dungeon prison into storage rooms or anything like that. Just old and mostly unused.

Now, if that doesn't explain the prison scene, I'm not sure what the problem is, but I'll try this: Kale is Ralanir's best friend. He received a letter from Ralanir letting him know that Ral has been accused of attacking an Avatar. An Avatar is a human-like being that has a deep, deep connection with dragons, the most powerful beings in Eleasia. Being so closely connected, the Avatars have a lot of the same power the dragons do, but in a much smaller form, so it's very difficult for anyone to attack or hurt them at all. One really was attacked, though, and Ralanir found her on the road, bleeding. She's an Avatar for a dragon of Darkness. There are 14 elements in Eleasia and a type of dragon for each one. All of the dragons are closely related to those elements, and for a lot of them their blood has special powers or properties too. For Darkness, the blood is not only totally black, but is poisonous too, which is why Ralanir blacked out after trying to stop her bleeding. The cloth he used to try to stop the bleeding go soaked through and turned black with her blood, as did his hands. When he was found, passed out and covered in her blood, the people thought he was the one who attacked her and other Avatars, so while he was harmless and unconscious they brought him into town and locked him up. They live in a state of fear because it's their understanding that NOTHING should be able to hurt an Avatar, but this isn't the first attack they've heard of, so if they can blame ANYONE and deal with the problem then that's what they'll do, whether they're right or wrong because it makes them feel safer. All of that is because they really don't understand what it takes to hurt an Avatar, and so they're really scared. People who are so scared will frequently lash out at ANYTHING to make the fear go away because they don't understand.

Kale promises to help Ralanir in any way he can, and gives him a honey-cake because it's a very special treat and figures that his friend probably isn't being fed well, and even if he is being fed well enough, it wouldn't be anything as good as a honey-cake.

The dragon scene must be the scene with the Avatar woman. She's the same one who was attacked, but they heal very quickly so she was in a bar drinking. She hides inside a dark cloak so people don't suspect what she is when she's trying to blend in and avoid too much attention. They're telepathic so she could pick up on Kale's thoughts. I tried to express some of her personality and some of the automatic abilities she would have, like being able to manipulate shadows, making them come to her or leave at will, making her face look more or less defined inside the hood of her cloak. As she leaves she doesn't actually respond to him, but telepathically responds so others around who might be listening and be bad guys don't know she's giving him any help.

Each type of dragon looks different to reflect the nature of the element they represent, and their Avatars share features. Most people are afraid of Darkness and thing anything Dark is evil, bad, and ugly and fear it. When Kale is talking to the bar man that's what the bar man is referring to. Dragons and Avatars of Light are assumed to be the prettiest because Light is supposed to be everything that's good in the world, as far as humans are concerned at least. So the bar man, and many humans assume that dragons and Avatars of Darkness are automatically ugly and evil and scary. But a lot of people are fascinated by the idea that the dragons have human-like beings that work with them and live really long lives, so they fall in love with the idea of them and want to be taken away to live with them without understanding the reality of the situation. The barman thinks that this is what Kale is going through and tries to encourage him to settle down with a normal human girl instead of pining after an Avatar that he thinks could never love a human, especially one he believes is probably evil or bad anyway.

Does that at least help you understand what's going on a bit more?