And on we go with the story of Anna…
Day 54: Anna slowly began to make those adjustments to her shield.
Anna slowly began to make those adjustments to her shield. It took a little longer than she liked, but she told herself she had time. It needed to be done right even if she needed to stay here another night and enter the city in the morning instead of today as planned.
‘I would have been waiting inside on the other side for the right moment to leave anyway,’ she reminded herself. ‘She knew the wait would not be long after she got through and then scried the landscape ahead, but it was something.
When her shieled were in place she again checked those over the city. Her own personal protections hummed in tune with those around the city and she knew she could slip through without even a ripple of awareness to let anyone know she passed.
Anna knew there was nothing more that she could do. She swallowed hard and stepped forward. The first step was the hardest. She knew that if this didn’t work she would be caught. Given the direction she was returning to the city, she suspected Marcus would know exactly where she went and would not be pleased. There were no official laws about the city, but she knew the protections were designed to make people forget that it ever existed.
Anna shoved such thoughts out of her mind as she moved forward. Her first step was hesitant but the others were rushed as though her body decided to get it over with before fear could return. She held her breath as she stepped through the shields, as though an exhalation would give her away.
She felt the shields as she passed through. They were like a blast of warm air. Insubstantial yet markedly different from the rest of the air around her. And then she was through. No alarms sounded. No warnings registered. In fact the shield didn’t ripple, her own shields preventing the ripples that would have radiated through the shield and let Marcus know that someone passed through his shields.
It worked.
Anna hurried forward wanting to get further from the shields as fast as possible. Her protections worked but she didn’t want to push her luck. Anna entered the small hidden entrance to the city and slipped inside the forgotten building. She was still too close to the shields to risk lowering her own.
‘And without lowering them I can’t scry to see where Marcus is.’
The risk of being caught by the shields was greater, especially as she still had her protections making her invisible, even to those with magic. ‘And if I can flow into the existing pattern I wove for myself there will be no disturbance and I should be able to get to my apartment.’
Anna judged it worth the risk. She slipped out of the building and moved further away from the city’s edge, nearing her normal path to and from the archives. She watched the sun and waited at the edge of her normal path. The city looked the same as it had when she left. After the silence of the Lost City, there was a relief in those that passed by. Hearing their noise and chatter.
It was strangely comforting.
The time was right and Anna slipped into the stream of people un noticed as she moved towards her apartment. Anna watched the crowd and saw nothing and no one out of place. If Marcus was searching the city then either his search passed by this area or he was good enough to leave no traces.
‘Sadly I think he is good enough to leave no traces,’ Anna thought as she walked. Still it was reassuring not to see anyone noticeably searching for her.
Ten til Midnight 