The beginning of a beautiful relationship - Part II

Sleeping on the rafters in the large room had become a rather safe hiding place and not entirely unlike the tree branches he would occasionally use. Climbing the cracked walls of the room were as easy as climbing an everbloom tree. Skeetr was fearful at first when someone had first come into the room, but he'd known very well that people never looked up, especially in a place familiar to them. He'd heard shouting for a while (after he'd narrowly escaped being fried to a crisp) and they had searched this very room, but things had quieted down and he assumed that they were searching for him elsewhere. Skeetr did not know that the mages simply stopped caring about his presence. At first he was thought to be a spy, but the man Skeetr had delivered the note to assured everyone that he was merely a boy caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. He would either be eaten by the rats that infest this place or be found. Then they would dispose of him properly. Besides, they had other problems to concern themselves.   

Twice Skeetr had gone out exploring the nearby rooms and both times had run back into his hiding place up on the rafters. The walls in this place let every sound carry through so he had no way of knowing if people had really coming his way or if they were in nearby corridors, but bravery and death were not two things Skeetr cared to experience right now. His third venture out, Skeetr inspected four of the nearby rooms. Finding some food in the trash of one of them and, not knowing how long he may be in this place, he added it to the stores in his travel pouch. After finding a bottle of holy water for drink (assuming the Gods would forgive him), Skeetr figured that he now had three days worth of supplies. Hopefully he would need as little of it as possible and would find a way out of here soon.  

A full day went by without incident and Skeetr had explored quite a bit of the dungeon surrounding his hideout. He had found a few small tunnels that the rats had created and used them to his advantage. People who heard his scurrying within the walls paid no attention, they were accustomed to sounds of this place. Skeetr managed to avoid conflict with the rats by imitating their screech. They did not treat him as one of their own, but they did not attack him either.  

Skeetr had decided it was time for him to cover more ground. He would need to find hiding places on the move. It was taking too much time sneaking back to the room with the rafters where he would sleep. The safety of a proven hiding place was becoming less important than the urgency to find a way out of this place.  

With some confidence from having learned a few tricks and also learning some patterns of when and where the mages moved through this area, Skeetr quietly stepped out of 'his' room and crept down the hallway and up the nearest set of stairs.