As Valar was sprinting between the dark alleyways of his hometown in the dead of night, he thought back on his ´masterful plan´.
Now with a new perspective on the nightlife of Lyndale, which could apparently be compared to a warzone, he had to admit that maybe escaping the orphanage during the middle of the night hadn't been his brightest idea.
As Valar jumped, narrowly dodging a thrown wooden chair, he allowed himself a small grin. This is definitely the farthest I've gotten without getting caught!
He was fast realizing that he needed some space from the chaos around him, as while the people fighting on the street were all awakened… he was not.
The boy turned left on the next intersection and dove, just barely managing to avoid a table that crashed loudly down the road where he had just run. That was a close call…
The almost scarily thin teenager had already tried escaping the Lyndale Orphanage For Unawakened Children three times. The city guard had of course caught the unawakened child with relative ease each time, but his resolve had only increased with each and every failure.
The only reason Valar hadn't been caught this time was the ongoing tavern brawl. These incidents were by no means rare, but the brawl happening directly outside the alleyway Valar was hiding in was larger than most, distracting the guard nicely.
If the boy understood correctly, some monumental idiot had insulted a drunken silver ranked adventurer and practically signed his own death warrant. Who would even be so stupid? Angering someone at silver rank when you've just barely awakened… The warrior could kill the iron ranker in seconds, if not less!
Based on the noise echoing in the dark alley, maybe the silver ranker had done just that. The flashing lights Valar could see were clearly spells, which meant that some mages had joined in on the fun—the fun being a drunken bloodbath.
Valar looked at his hands through his overgrown scruffy black hair and steadied his breathing. This would be the best chance he would ever get.
The guards were distracted by the brawl, so he could slink off into the sewers unnoticed. Valar was sure the city guard had probably been already alerted of an orphanage escapee, but he still had a couple minutes. The teen balled his fists, got up and started running like his life depended on it. There would be no return to that twisted prison, dead or alive.
...
As Valar blazed past the dark alleyways of Lyndale, he had a chance to look around the moonlit city for perhaps the first time in his life. The stone houses were by no means pretty without daylight, as the customary mint green tinted paint decorating most of the buildings was hard to see in the dim light of the city's oil lamps. Still, this was more of the city than Valar had ever seen, as the orphanage's walls had restricted his sight for almost his whole life. He had briefly glimpsed the nearby buildings on his other escape attempts—as short as they were—but this was the first time Valar had a real chance to look around.
The city was impressive even during the night. The main streets were all illuminated by the oil lamps' gentle light, the walled off city taking on a calm appearance despite the chaos on the streets. Every single tavern Valar passed was packed full with all kinds of rowdy people, spending their nights in merriment. Those taverngoers were his reason for picking the weekend for his escape, as he hoped that the guard presence would be lower in the back alleys of the city.
So far he seemed to be right, although the teen spotted a few roaming units patrolling the dimly lit streets. He had of course given them a wide berth, not ready to test his luck. Not even in the dead of night…
Valar knew that he would soon reach the sewer entrance. It was essentially his last chance of escape from the city, every other idea already struck down with prior attempts or just plain common sense. All other exits from the city were tightly guarded, and everyone would be checked at the gates. He would be blocked and escorted to the orphanage straight away, so a normal city exit wasn't an option. He had played around with the idea of finding a hole in the wall or smuggling himself out too, but the boy simply didn't have enough information to go on. That left the sewers…
Even the idea of entering the city sewers in order to exit was absolutely disgusting. Every single ounce of filth the city with a population of one hundred thousand produced went straight to the sewers, where it flowed toward the purification plant outside the city. Valar had heard that the plant employed almost twenty mages to burn and purify the waste that entered the plant. Hiring that many mages was ridiculously expensive, as even bronze rank mages were somewhat rare in a city like Lyndale. The plant had multiple silver rankers on payroll. That meant that the city really needed to purify the waste, and that there was a lot of it…
The teen dressed in ragged clothes supplied by the orphanage turned right to the alley he had been aiming for and finally spotted his only chance at escape. He stopped in his tracks, staring at the looming sewer entrance in front of him.
"This is it, huh?"
The entrance wasn't a normal sewer grate used commonly throughout the city. Those were meant for only the entering waste, so squeezing through the grates of one would have proven impossible for the boy, even if he was as thin as a ghost. No, this was a standing entrance at the bottom of a stone staircase. The doorway was blocked by a reinforced wooden door, so getting through would've normally been impossible for an unawakened child. Valar had chosen this specific entrance for a reason, however.