While Chira lacked magical talent, she had genius level intuitive understanding of people and various languages. This her master found out when she became his apprentice. The workshop had visitors from various cities and countries, and Chira quickly became an unofficial interpreter. Master knew many languages too, but the language of these strangers eluded him. Chira with an intuitive understanding of body language and gestures quickly picked up bits and pieces of this language. Her master quickly made use of this to understand their requests.

Chira caught a few words from the string of sentences the child said and watched the child’s gestures, and generally understood that the child did not want to leave the man, but very much wanted to come with her, now that the child realized that they could move out of the room and Chira meant no harm. The child was panicking asking her to wait, not wanting to be left behind, struggling and failing to  drag the hooded unconscious man.

Shhh!….

Chira urged the child to calm down, worried about the noise and that there may be more guards. She could not understand why the man did not wake up. She could not believe that she had enough strength to knock such a mass of muscles out in the first try. What she did not know was she had a bit of luck there. As the man fell he hit his head on a bulged part of the floor and knocked himself out.

She shrugged at the mystery and grabbed the legs of the still unconscious man. Getting out of here was more important. She gave a nod to the child, to follow her, as she proceeded to drag the man out of the room in a hurry. The child quietly and obediently followed behind. There was no chance of being noiseless any more, now that she had to drag someone with her. Besides, the child had already made enough noise to bring some one, and yet no one had come. Chira could only hope that there were no more warrior monks patrolling this underground passage. She descended further down the passage that dipped downwards, keeping herself on high alert in case of sudden attack. Very quickly they came to a dead end.

A stone wall completely sealed the passage. It was old and cold. Chira groaned. The only escape route that she had meticulously researched had been blocked. The pendent on her neck tugged at her brain insistently, frustrating her and making her thread of patience grow thin. She unceremoniously dropped the legs that she was dragging and waved her hand to tell the child to move back. She took the pendent that was around her neck, and wedged it between the stones, after dislodging a bit of moss that grew heavily, replacing the muddy grout.

There! She said to the pendent in annoyance, do all you can. I can’t break walls or walk through them. Feel free to do something. Something other than giving me a headache.

Nothing happened for a while, except her headache got worse. She cursed in her mind, and then remembered something. She cut her index finger in the edge of the stone, and let a drop fall on the empty socket of the pendent were a precious stone was missing. The drop fell a little above the empty socket as if there was an invisible object wedged in the groove of the pendent. The blood seemed to drop on an invisible stone in the socket, taking the form of an irregular, uncut, unpolished stone, and the pendent started to glow. Her head grew heavy, and her vision blurred. Blood leaked out of her nose again. On the wall, as she and the child observed, the light formed patterns at lighting speed and spread downwards, randomly to the wall surface, looking like giant feelers of a glowing insect. There was a sound like water spluttering on the surface of hot oil, and a small hole the size of beer barrel lid opened on the bottom of wall as the stone and the grout around it seem to melt into a puddle. Chira touched the puddle to find it was cold smooth and solid like an odd shaped river rock. The pendent still wedged above the hole looked innocent, without a drop of blood on it. She unstuck the pendent.

She crouched and looked through the hole to find the passage descended steeply and a dull light reflected on the side walls indicating an opening further ahead, the air was fresh and heavy with moisture. More than the moisture or the scent of the storm, was the tingling of wild magic that nearly knocked her off. There was no doubt about it. This was the way out. She Pulled the unconscious man by his legs near the hole in the wall. Then she crawled on all fours through the wall and pulled the man after her. It seemed safe. Then she gestured for the child to follow her. Though she could not see the child’s face, she felt the child stiffen and hesitate.

She pulled the man by his legs and she heard the child scrambling after her. It was easy to drag the heavy man along as the passage sloped downhill. She also felt more content as she was sure there was on one else beside them here. And if the entrance to this passage, held on for a while they would be long gone before anyone could interfere.

Chira had not predicted that her escape would go this easily even in her dreams. How had her luck suddenly become so good? It was as if the fates were conspiring to help her succeed. She thought back and still felt as if her luck would not last. This was her, Chira, the spirit of bad luck incarnated, she was talking about. She wanted to be far away when her bad luck came back! She was ready to endure a meteor strike later if she could get out of this place now!

The passage opened into a huge ancient underground storm drain. As they neared, the roar of the storm and the sound of rushing water overwhelmed Chira. She found that they had arrived on a cluttered platform, that overlooked the rushing water, that swelled and rushed through old stone archways that supported the ancient tunnel. A few meters to the right the drain opened into stormy daylight that was filled with oppressive raw magic. That was her way out!

The little child rushed over to the edge to eagerly look at the water, while Chira looked around the platform at the old clutter. This place had once been a dumping ground of unwanted stuff. Most of it was broken or rusted. Some broken shelves even had moss and plants growing on them. A loud sound of crashing thunder startled Chira. The little child scrambled back hurriedly with a squeak, to hide near the still unconscious hooded man.

As Chira’s eyes wandered, she found a wooden table that seemed relatively sturdy and clean. She examined it closer and found that the finishing on the surface of the wood had magical weaves on it. It was probably to stain proof it and prevent were and tear over the years. It had a slot to insert a power crystal. As she examined it closer she found that it also had an unbreakable weave on it. The details of the weave were painted on the underside of the table, which being stain proof had not faded. She hurriedly pulled at it and found that its legs had been broken and there was a large axe wedged into it.

It was ironic. An unbreakable object had an axe wedged in the center. Perhaps someone had been very very angry Chira mused as she tired hopelessly to pull it out.

The table had clearly not broken because of the axe, but its legs could not endure the wrath of time! So it was for the axe. The handle came apart but the rusted metal remained wedged stubbornly to the table.

It took a lot of effort to remove it out. Hopefully the weave formation had not been disturbed. There was a small compartment at the center, a place for power stones to activate the weave formation that was now empty. Chira drew from within her a bag. It was a small bag the size of her palm, that she had pilfered from one of the monk guards a long time ago. She mostly used it to store a few pills that she saved and used power stones that were used to activate and power the light panels in her room. She now used two of these stones to activate the weave on the table.

She dragged the table closer to the water. She turned it over so that the broken legs were up in the air. She quickly dragged the man on to the table, and the child scrambled after. She tried to push the table into the water, but the weight was too much. The child got out, and quickly helped her push the man and the table top toward the water. With both their effort they managed to launch the inverted table and scrambled to get on it.

The little make shift table top raft moved in the rushing water caused by the storm, unmotivated by any form of steering, it rushed out of the storm drain entrance into the outdoors, twirling in the swirling currents . The branding in her upper arm burnt intensely. She knew that that meant someone in the monastery knew that someone that should not have left, had escaped. But they probably would not be able to pinpoint any thing with the amount of magic in the air.

It made her breathless with how it overpowered her senses. She would probably feel better in a while. Bodies and minds were elastic like that. One could be shocked by the amount of strain the body could tolerate over a period of time. The water and the wind suddenly rushed at them, drenching them to their bones and making them unable to breath or even open their eyes.

Chira gripped one of the broken legs of the table so as not to be tossed off or blown away, and the child followed her example, while the both of them gripped the unconscious man, who was quickly waking up. Chira was unaware of this because her eyes squinting she looked around at the deluge in shock and her hair stood on end. While she could control her chaotic eye to alternated between normal vision and chaotic vision, fear and reflex made her default vision chaotic.

Normally she would not be able to see the magic in the air, just like a fish will not see water. But the magical hurricane was a concentration of magic that was like a stormy sea. Waves of thick magic made patterns like reflections of water on the shallow sea floor except they were gigantic. What if these patterns were instead weave patterns…. Chira shuddered, then there was no knowing what danger could befall any creature under such a weave formation. After all weaves that humans used was based on patterns in nature!

Large weaves needed soul power to control it. Chira had read that in ancient forests, magical storms with large amount of raw magic in the air, could be turned into weaves by the soul force of the forests. Large areas could be burnt or frozen because of it. There was even a case were a group of hunters were caught in a storm and were lost for more than a year because it. Huge rocks and uprooted trees could suddenly levitate and crash after the magic weave crumbles. But right now, Chira could feel the magical pressure that made her feel as if she could not hear anything. And in this noiseless world large meaningless patters danced dangerously all round her petrifying her.