The ‘Astral’ World: Rae: No Escape

[k_a_webb]

When the magicians came it was thanks to nothing more than luck that Rae escaped. They had come unexpectedly, and the more she thought about it the more certain she became that someone was giving away the locations of the portals which would lead the magicians straight to the safe houses. She knew she wasn’t safe, either from the people she had once thought of as allies or her enemies. All she could do was keep running, because she knew, at the very least, the magicians would be hunting her. In her mind she had a vague idea how she was going to stay safe, but it meant finding a portal so she could travel to the other world.

No one knew it was called. That was something the magicians had kept hidden from them, because names had power. With the name of the world in their hands they’d be one step closer to making magic something that anyone could use. At least that was what Rae had always been told their aim was. It wasn’t right for the magicians to be the only ones who could use magic, apparently, but she was beginning to wonder how they even knew the other world existed. History wasn’t something they’d been taught when they chose to go to the school, so if she wanted to learn about the two worlds there was only one place she could go.

The only problem was the magicians. On the other world there were houses that belonged to the magicians and that was where they went to steal things that might help them. Unfortunately the magicians knew what they were after, so put useless duplicates in the places of anything useful. That was another thing that made Rae think that someone was telling the magicians when they were going and what they were after. It didn’t make sense for them to simply make the right guesses every time. Although there was the possibility that they had someone who could see the future. None of the thieves knew enough about the magic the magicians had to know for sure what they could and couldn’t do.

What Rae needed to do was enter the world from a different portal and hope that she found a house that she’d never been to before. That way she could pretend that she’d simply stumbled across the world. She’d already been lucky enough to escape when the rest of the thieves in her safe house had either been killed or captured, so all she could do was hope that she’d be just as lucky when she found the portal she was looking for. Of course there was every chance that the magicians shared what they knew about the thieves, because they did occasionally work together, but she had to try. It really was her only option, especially as she wanted to warn the other thieves that there might be someone within their organisation working against them. They probably wouldn’t believe her, but at least she would have tried, and that was better than not trying at all.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.