The eight year old orphan ran for her life. Despite using stapha, the infusion of mana in one’s body her parents had taught her, the shopkeeper was barely a block behind her even though he had to plow through the crowd and obstacles with his massive body. How long does that crazy man plan to chase me anyway? the girl thought. She dashed across a busy street toward tall buildings, one a full twelve stories. Glyph powered vehicles braked, swerved and honking at her passage. As it was a couple hours till noon, the sun shown on the upper alley wall.

Cutting down one of those allies, the child skidded to a stop at a dead end, breath heaving from both exertion and fright. “Wha? No, no, no,” she gasped. She had scoped out this route. She closed her eyes, trying to remember. Dread filled her as she realized, “Ah, I crossed an intersection to late. Stupid storekeeper.” She looked around frantic, but this really was a dead end.

A man appeared silhouetted at the end of the alley. Sammy darted behind some boxes, but the man yelled. The boxes partially blocked an old street drain. Sammy hesitated for but a fraction of a moment, but she absolutely did not want to be caught by that shopkeeper. Her social worker would definitely send her back to Mr. and Mrs. Hast. They would beat her to death if that were to happen, she was quite sure.

Pulling out her small penlight, the small girl tucked her three prizes into her shirt and lay down to take a look.

“I know you’re there, you little thief,” the man growled as he cautiously moved down the ally, angling toward where he had seen the shadowy figure dart.

Sammy did not have any more time. She turned off her flashlight and flipped over to squirm feet first into the drain. Her small body slipped through the drain entrance with room to spare, but she lost her grip despite her empowered body and fell for a heartbeat into darkness.

A gasp of pain escaped as her ankle twisted and collapsed under her. She fell sideways even as she jammed index and middle knuckles into her mouth, biting down hard so as to not cry out. Staring up at the light from the drain above her head, she listened as pain surged through her whole body. Only the gentle burble of running water filled the darkness for a moment.

“Dammit. Where’d he go?” the shopkeeper’s muffled voice came from above her then. But after that only the sounds of that flowing water continued to break the deep silence.

Sammy sighed in relief, but then shuddered. That had been too close. She would have to be more careful in the future or she wouldn’t stay free for long. She was sure Ms. Damkir, her social worker since her parents’ death, had a personal vendetta against her.

Thankful she had not lost her flashlight in the fall. The small girl turned it back on and flashed it around as her ankle hurt to high heaven. She was puzzled a bit since it did not smell nearly as bad as she thought it. Did not smell bad at all in fact. But that aside, she had never been in a sewer before, and certainly not this city’s having only run away from that awful place jonly a few days ago, so she was quite curious.

The tunnel wall arched high over her head with rough sides. “Er,” she murmured under her breath as a particular dilemma occurred to her. “How do I even get out of here?” But the sound of flowing water solved the dilemma, at least in her own mind. She just needed to follow the flow to find where it left the sewers, right? Using the tunnel wall, she scrambled to her good foot, trying to spare her twisted ankle any weight.

Sammy paused to look at the wall more carefully. The rough looking texture had a deliberate feel to it, instead of just rough hewn stone. Indeed, upon inspection Sammy could see that someone had carved a design there.

Hopping on her good foot to get some distance from the wall, she shown her light over it. A simple, yet elegant scene of a savannah with a rising, or perhaps setting? sun touching the horizon. A single man stood with hands clasped in front of him overlooking the scene.

As Sammy hobbled along the walkway next to the flowing waste water, she continued to look at the walls and the ongoing mosaic inscribed upon them. Scenes of cities, both healthy and ravaged by war, soldiers, priests, crowds, barren wilderness, all inscribed by some past artisan for some reason the child could not fathom.

“Omph,” she gasped, stumbling into a small depression in the walkway. Pain shot up her leg as she put her full weight on her bad foot. Tears beaded in her eyes and she bent over with hands on her pant legs for a long moment to recover. Finally she used the wall to lower herself to her knees, ultimately shifting to sit with her back to the wall. “Break time,” she declared to the darkness hovering at the edges of her flashlight.

Dropping the draining power of stapha, she pulled out her primary loot, that which she had risked so much to obtain. She took a big, delicious bite of roast beef sandwich. Several minutes later, she threw the wrapping into the free flowing water with just a bit of contentment going on in her heart.

Stomach not quite full, but much more better all things considered, Sammy investigated the other two objects grabbed incidental to her primary target. Both were small, black jewelry boxes with soft covers. Upon opening the first, she discovered a pair of gold stud earrings, adorned with fiery red gems that caught Sammy’s light and threw it out to bespeckle the whole tunnel.

“Whoa, I might have hit the jackpot loot of loots,” the hungry thief whispered, touching the gems with her fingertips. She let out a squeak and jerked away, dropping the box. Energy tingled up her fingers into the base of her neck as she scrambled to catch the box that had fallen into the water before it floated away.

Clutching the closed box to her chest she started breathing again. “Close.” She looked at the box for a moment, but then stuffed it into her pocket, buttoning the flap. “We’ll wait for a less . . . dark place to look at that again.” She nodded to herself with firm resolve, sure her decision most wise. Looking at the other jewelry box, she stuffed it into her other pocket thinking good for one, good for both.

Due to holding stapha for nearly ten minutes during her escape, Sammy still felt quite drained. Clicking off her light, the girl decided to take a longer break, soon falling asleep for an indeterminate amount of time. Waking groggy, the child looked around surprised it was not pitch dark. Apparently the tunnels had a bit of lighting built into their walls, a fact previously obscured by her flashlight.

Deciding to use that ambient lighting to save her flashlight’s power, the girl starting walking again. An hour of slow, hobbling progress later, Sammy stopped for the umpteenth time and sat against the wall to rest. She clicked on her light to look at the mosaic engraved into walls while she rested.

But then she heard it, voices. She cowered a little then, not entirely wanting to meet strangers in a dark alley, let alone in an abandoned sewer tunnel. She scrambled back to her feet, wincing as she put too much weight on her bad one. “No time for that,” she muttered and as quickly as she could retraced her steps. There had been a pipe draining a stream of water not too far back and she thought it might be large enough for her to hide in.

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Spotting the stream of water arching from the wall, she hurried toward it.

“Hey, there’s someone over there,” a woman’s voice pierced the darkness. Sammy turned to look and saw several lights bobbing in the darkness. “Hey, you, wait right there,” the woman yelled.

Sammy switched her light off and stuffed it down her shirt. Activating stapha, she jumped to the lip of the pipe, fear adrenaline and panic numbing her ankle. Catching the lip of the drain pipe with her fingers, she scrambled up into the barely big enough pipe. Squirming forward into the cramped space, something grabbed her foot, but she squirmed and kicked. Her shoe came off and she kept going.

“Stop it right now. You can’t get away from us, you bastard.”

Sammy ignored the woman’s words and kept squirming deeper into the tunnel. Light flashed past her as the woman peered into the pipe after her. “Damn, too small for any of us. Sanda,” the woman said, but Sammy lost whatever else she said as she continued to crawl further into the darkness.

The small girl continued past several turns in the tunnel, but then stopped to listen. After a few long moments of silence, she relaxed and dropped stapha. At that moment, the weight of the earth above her and below, the confining, cramped pipe and the cold water flowing around her wet body crashed in around her, constricting her throat, destroying her thoughts.

I have to get out of here. I have to escape. Out. I need air. Help me. Somebody, please help me. The thoughts tumbled through her panic stricken mind and she lurched forward. Pain shot up her leg as her injured ankle reminded her of the past few minutes of abuse.

And that pain returned her mind. Slowly she regained control over herself. She began crawling forward again with tear streaked face, now extra careful of her injured ankle. She lost track of time, so she did not know how long she had been crawling when it occurred to her that the water had changed directions and was now flowing from behind her.

Puzzled by this change, she lay thinking for several moments before beginning to squirm her ways backwards. However, this proved easier to think than actually do. “This . . . is . . . bleeding . . . hard,” she panted. “And ouch, seriously, ouchie, ouchie.” More tears streaked her face and she took many a break as she struggled.

However, after some time she got her reward - an opening to her right. In the space provided by the opening, Sammy managed to wiggle an arm down her shirt and retrieve her flashlight, thankful that it no longer dug into her stomach. Equally thankful that it still worked.

The water coming from this new pipe drained into her current one, the water flowing in both directions from the high-point at this juncture. The water flow in the source pipe was of course double what went in the two directions. Still, this new, larger pipe had a different, better feel to it. In fact, this new tunnel-pipe had eight equal sides and a decorative pattern carved into it, similar to the murals in the larger sewers.

Now able to crawl on her hands and knees, the extra space alleviated ever so much of the claustrophobic feel pushing in on the girl’s mind. She was not sure if being able to crawl was better though. It bleeping hurt to crawl on one’s hands and knees for an extended period of time. “Seriously,” she muttered under her breath. Her knees now hurt almost as much as her ankle

Sammy lay with her back propped against one of the walls attempting to get out of the ever rushing water as much as possible for one of her many rest breaks. Her teeth chattered, though she did not think it excessively cold. She idly wondered if she was going to die. She felt weirdly ambivalent to the idea.

She shifted uncomfortably as her left shoulder began to tingle. She shifted again as the tingle moved to her shoulder blade. Finally she jerked away from the wall altogether and the tingle vanished. She turned on her flashlight, which she had turned off to conserve power while resting.

Running her hand over the engraved pattern on the surface of the tunnel, she yanked her hand back and rubbed her tingling fingers on her pants. “Glyphs? Here?” Curious now, she touched the spot again, but this time did not yank back. After a few seconds, a pattern embedded in the larger tunnel patterns began to shimmer.

“Whoa,” Sammy breathed out, a grin forming as she said, “Glyphs for sure. An honest to goodness glyph buried in the sewers. So weird.” Of course she knew about glyphs, the primary way to store magical energies, but was super puzzled someone would go to the trouble embedding them in a sewer wall like this. Her mother had taught her the rudiments of writing glyphs a few months before being killed, but she never said anything about using them in this kind of location.

Sammy shook her head to clear it of the gloomy thoughts remembering her loving mother brought her. She did not want to go all melancholy in a place like this. She glanced around, the darkness eating her light not very far down the tunnel.

Sammy decided it high time to get moving again. Crawling for another unknown length of time, the tunnel suddenly opened into another main tunnel. Sammy paused in the entrance, surprised and relieved both.

“Gotcha,” a man said, grabbing her by the arm and hauling her out of the tunnel.

Sammy let out a squawk and swung around to kick the man in the most painful place, stapha activating on instinct. The man grunted and doubled over, but did not release her.

Gasping through pain, he held onto the squirming, kicking, biting, yelling and otherwise “raising a fuss” captive with an unbreakable grip. He ground out through the throbbing in his groin, “Stop it right now or I’ll kill you.”

Sammy ignored the threat, sure he was going to kill her anyway. Still no matter how much she fought, she could not break free.

“Having trouble, Sanda?” another man asked, mirth undergirding his words.

Still grating his words, Sanda snarled, “Hell yes, Traise. Help me you idiot.”

Traise laughed openly before moving to grab Sammy’s legs. She caught him a lucky kick to the chin, sending him staggering back onto his butt. Surprised despite everything, Sanda lost his grip for a second and Sammy made a break for it. The man caught her ankle before she could get clear and she fell with a shriek of pain to stun herself slamming into the stone of the tunnel.

A third man standing in the entrance to a side tunnel a short distance observing the altercation turned away and leaned against a wall, his body shaking. His female companion strode forward and caught Sammy by the wrist.

“We aren’t going to hurt you. We just want to talk.” She glanced at the two men and her mouth quirked before she looked away down the tunnel. “What are you doing down here?”

Sammy’s wits were slow to return and she glared at the woman without saying anything, not being able to think of anything to say.

The woman flashed her light into Sammy’s eyes and then away, leaving spots dancing in the child’s sight. “You guys were too rough. I think he’s concussed.”

“Too rough?” Sanda said. “He freaking tried to castrate me. Just give me a few minutes with the little bastard.”

“Enough, Sanda. He’s, what, not even a third your size.”

“Dammit Rava, you know size is irrelevant,” Sanda muttered.

“Not true and far less so considering his lack of training and being a child,” the woman Rava said. “Anyway, let’s head back to the camp. We can question him there once he’s recovered his wits.”

“Whatever,” Sanda said, shooting a glare at Sammy.

Despite her confusion, Sammy had the presence of mind to glare back.

“Why are you limping?” Rava asked as they began walking.

Sammy hesitated, glancing around. She thought she might be in big trouble. She answered in a sullen voice, “Twisted my ankle.”

Rava shot a scowl at Sanda and Traise. “When?”

“When I fell down the street drain. I was trying to escape from someone chasing me.”

Rava cocked her head to the side. “Why were they chasing you?”

Sammy looked down, embarrassed and scared. Should she lie? She bit her lip. “I was hungry,” she said in a barely audible voice.

“I see. Sit down and let me look at your ankle,” Rava said in a gentle voice. Sammy obeyed. “Hmmm, this is really swollen.” Rava looked up into Sammy’s face. “You’re a girl.”

Sammy nodded.

Rava stood and looked down at the sitting youth. “Anyway, we don’t have time for this. Sanda, carry her.”

“What?” Sanda yelled. “Like hell I’m carrying that little monster.”

Rava smiled at him. “Carry her or I’m going to be your sparring partner for the next month.”

Sanda stopped in mid protest, his mouth open. Cursing under his breath, he crouched with his back to Sammy. “Don’t make me wait, you little monster. Get on.”

Sammy hesitated with a glance at Rava, who nodded. Swallowing her nervousness, Sammy climbed onto Sanda’s back and they headed down the tunnel.