Fourteen steps to reach the other floor, a few random ones to hide the trapdoor, nearly twenty spent walking around in the kitchen, five more to leave, and it should be…

Sasha held her breath as she listened for the mild whine of a hinge and the ringing of a bell, the telltale signs of the old man leaving the shop. Just as she’d counted, it came a mere twenty minutes after they’d been left behind in the basement, left to fend for themselves until Elijah’s return.

“Do you think you can reenact what you were saying at the laboratory?” Jack asked as she rose from her seat after another thirty minutes of waiting and walked towards the window. There was rust on the sides, but a careful hand would make it open without too much scraping. “I know he said it was all about mental focus, and I’m not disregarding that, but I’m thinking external stimuli might’ve helped as well. This powder certainly did something, but you were talking as well so… Wait, what are you doing?”

“Ensuring my survival,” she replied bluntly. Moss had grown on most of the window’s outside surface, but she could still see plenty of the street through it.

Empty, nowhere near the size of the one on the other side of the house, and with plenty of places to run and hide if anybody recognized her. Enough to work with.

“We were told to wait here until Elijah got the Royal Mage guy out of the way,” Jack said, standing just beside the boxes she was balancing on. Old instinct told her to kick him away before he tried to be funny, but she held back in the vain hope he could wise up. “Are you sure you’re gonna have any bigger chance of surviving out there?”

“Yes.”

“... Oh.”

In spite of years of practice, Sasha couldn’t hold back the eye-roll that came from hearing the man talk. How they were the same age confused her to no end. Even the idiots at the bars usually had some form of ability to spot the obvious.

“Think about why most of the basement has dirt for a floor instead of stone,” Sasha ordered after closing the window again, making Jack’s brows rise slightly. “Look at where the dirt has been dug in.”

It was harder to spot before the window had been cleared a little further, but the difference in distributed and undisturbed ground was clear. The coloring was darker in the spots where it had been dug up from further below, and the slight elevation change was easy to discern after that. They might have attempted to even it out, but it all added up after several repetitions.

“Don’t tell me you think they buried people down here,” Jack said, forcing a low chuckle. “They might be a bit strange, but they’re a little too old for that.”

“The big one could crush both of us if he wanted to,” Sasha replied curtly. “They might not, but I’d prefer to know my options before I settle with this.”

With the remains of her conscience cleared, she opened up the window once again. It wasn’t large enough to make it an easy fit, but she was able to raise herself up and through it within some thirty seconds of careful work.

The breath of fresh air when she got past the trash piled next to the window was dearly needed, her body granting her a moment of bliss. Too much time had been spent without seeing the sun, seeing the clouds, and feeling a natural wind. Granted, it was all hidden behind the taller buildings on either side of the street, but Sasha wouldn’t demand more than this. It was enough for now.

I’m coming as soon as I can. Just need to find my way back.

Her right foot left the ground, ready to take the next towards her goal, but a low grunt from behind her made her face sour. Of course, he would try to follow.

“Give me a second, please,” Jack pleaded as he pushed through the half-open window. The rust stopped it from going all the way out, complicating the man’s attempt, but he was steadily succeeding bit by bit. “I’ll come with.”

A day before, Sasha would’ve already started walking, not caring about whatever he had to say.

That wasn’t the case anymore, no matter how much that frustrated her. Something close to pity invaded her, as she looked at that weak excuse for a person in front of her. It was sad to look at, to a point where some instinct wanted her to help them like she had the others.

Only, they’d deserved it, not having the gift of anybody else helping them at the start.

“Can you even keep a walking pace?” Sasha questioned, against her better judgment. “I don’t like stragglers.”

“I can walk, I can run, and I can climb,” Jack replied alongside a final grunt as he pushed through and hastily went to his feet. “Won’t look pretty, but I can.”

…

They’ll have somebody else to catch if we’re discovered.

Convincing herself that this was somehow a good idea to allow, Sasha signaled for him to follow as she began the trek down the narrow street. Just as Jack had promised, he kept pace just beside her. He walked weirdly as well, his left foot sticking out to the side a little more than the other, but it looked natural enough to be mistaken for a simple quirk.

Sasha had no trust that the man could run, however. Not with that footwork.

The narrow street swerved a minute into their walking, splitting into a dozen even narrower alleys and blindspots. A great place for an ambush, if any had felt the need, but they’d seen nobody yet. There was shouting in the distance, steps echoing when she strained her hearing, but nobody could be caught within her eyesight. A more well-trekked street was probably behind one of the buildings to their right.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Where do you even want to go?” Jack asked as they stood there, looking at the dark alleys ahead. With the narrower fit, and the rooftops above almost combining into one, the view ahead could be mistaken for one seen at night.

The moon was falling from here, so, if the sun works the same here, it’ll be that direction we came from.

“Home,” Sasha replied, choosing the left-most alley to head down. The stench was putrid, as something had died here recently, but she barely blinked as her feet caused steady echoes. Jack tried to question her choice from behind, yet he had to follow as well soon after to not get left behind.

For the tenth time that day, she cursed not being awake for the entire duration of their capture. The time in the underground, with the glowing moss, the blue flames, and the robed figures should’ve made it clear where to head, but the entrance where they’d gone out into the city was muddled in her mind. Her body had been too occupied with keeping her alive after the experience, and everything that happened after they’d started walking through the city was too much of a blur to use effectively.

At least she knew the entrance was far away from here. It had been right under a rotting excuse for a house, made of wood and without a stone in sight. A direct opposite of everything around her now, with every building and fixture made out of some stone or another.

A place for the rich and well-off. Not what she was looking for.

And so, she had to find the slums that Elijah had promised would be here.

“Hey, do you smell that?”

Sasha wrinkled her nose as she was reminded of the smell of rot and decay around her, half-wanting to curse at Jack for bringing it up until her senses noticed something new. Something fresh, something… baked?

Sugary.

Her stomach growled more than she had expected, as her nose and ears worked overtime to locate the source. Those whispers of people talking and walking had waned before becoming louder once again. They were close to a well-traveled street again, it seemed, one that contained food of some kind.

“Pastries,” Sasha commented. “Unimportant.”

A lie to him but mostly to herself, as she resumed walking forward. Yet, while she expected the noise to die down and disappear again, that turned out not to be the case. It got louder, increasing as they went further and further down the alley until they could see it open up and allow proper sunlight in again.

They’d been led directly into a crowd.

Not good.

Staying close to the wall, Sasha walked over to the very end of the alley before looking both ways. People filled the streets, wearing all kinds of colorful clothing. Not expensive, certainly not to the level that she’d seen people wear outside the shop, but there was still some extra change to buy half-dirty fabrics.

And from the fact she could see a house made of wood further down the street to their right, she knew they were on the right track.

“Do you want us to go back and try again?” Jack asked, the man hesitant to follow Sasha out into the direct sunlight. “We can’t get spotted. You know that.”

“The closer we are to the slums, the less people will care,” Sasha replied without an ounce of consideration for his fear. The fact that those mere meters away from them didn’t spare a second glance at the two standing in the alley told her all they needed to know. “If you don’t force an interaction with anyone, they won’t talk or look at you.”

“... Are you sure?”

“I’m not stopping you from going back to the basement.”

…

Both of them took a moment to look at a couple of kids walking by with something close to crepes in hand. Sasha felt her mouth water at the steam going off the things, her eyes already searching for the source. It was just her luck they’d been walking in the direction she needed to go.

“Fine,” Jack relented a moment after Sasha had already started walking, the man hurrying over to follow her through the crowd. “But please be careful.”

“If you shut up now, there won’t be any problems,” she replied in a low voice, reminding herself that the man had never spent much time on the poorer streets. From what he’d rambled about, he’d been through periods of poverty in his life, yet never had he tried to be surrounded by it. He’d never been fueled and fed by the poor, forced to do their work, forced to…

A catch.

Twenty meters ahead, she spotted a man lumbering towards them. Not somebody who met their eyes, not somebody she deemed a threat, but somebody that Sasha could see the potential in. He wore a blue puffy coat, had the body type that matched that description as well and looked to have celebrated the day a little early when going by the redness of his cheeks.

A rich man walking through a poor street.

A man Sasha wouldn’t feel bad for.

She adjusted her placement in the crowd, moving into the middle instead of staying on the right where most people were walking in the same direction as her. Jack tried to follow her, but a look made him stay over to the side. Maybe he understood what she was about to do, or maybe her eyes just made him shrink away. It didn’t matter to her.

Twenty meters had become ten, which became five just seconds later, and, with a final flourish to make a convincing act, Sasha slowed down a little to make a passerby stand on the back of her foot to make her stumble into the fat man two steps to her left.

“Agh,” came the dignified noise of the man as her head hit his shoulder while she fought to keep herself upright. Her lower weight barely made him falter but he did stop at the unexpected touch. “Watch where you’re going, godfeed.”

Sasha didn’t look him in the eyes as she hurried to right herself and continued onwards. She heard the customary grumbling of a half-drunk idiot behind her, but there was no chase and she could continue for another minute before joining back with Jack who had been watching the entire thing.

“What was the point of that?” Jack asked as they paused at an opening close to the wall. “You were the one who didn’t want to make people notice us.”

“Drunks don’t count,” Sasha replied as she fished a small bag out of her pocket. By the rustling within, and the fact that the man had possessed several of them, she could guess what they contained. “Rich drunks definitely don’t.”

Losing the string that held it closed tightly, several silver and golden coins were revealed. She couldn't understand the inscription on the sides and neither did she try too hard. She’d spotted the silver coins being used in the stalls they’d walked past already and that was everything she needed to know.

“You pickpocketed someone?” Jack whispered harshly. Sasha nodded absentmindedly. “What if you were caught?”

“If a drunkard caught me, I would’ve deserved it,” she said, her eyes following another group of children wielding the crepes seen before. Yet again, she felt her stomach twist and turn in yearning. It had been years since she’d had one. “If you feel remorse, stop it. I’m too hungry to deal with that right now.”

With that warning given, she ventured back into the crowd.