Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

Once Stephanie had recovered from her memories and was safely in Wolfe's arms, resting on his hip and wrapped around him, the others began to look for a way forward.

"Why don't we send a lightning sprite down every tunnel? We can track them, and if something happens to them, we will know that it is the wrong way." Ella suggested.

"That sounds like a solid idea to me. If we all cast a couple, it will be easier to keep track of them, and we can send them down different exits. I'm not sure if the ones on the second level even leave the structure where we are now, but as we're underground, it's possible that they all lead to entirely different neighbourhoods or challenges." Wolfe agreed.

"Do you think that this place was created just for the challenge?" Ella asked.

"It seems likely that it was. They're mimicking what we did to their people, so logically they would make a whole new place to challenge us."

Cassie sighed, and Ella nodded in understanding, while Stephanie tried to climb up Wolfe's side to sleep on his shoulder, momentarily forgetting that she was in human form.

The others smiled as they realized that she had forgotten about her form, but when she reached his shoulder, Stephanie looked around in disappointment and jumped back to the ground.

"Sorry about that, force of habit. I will take the two upper exits on the left." She insisted, hiding her embarrassment.

"Alright, then the three of you can work your way around the top, and I will send three to check the other three main floor directions." Wolfe agreed.

If you had too many of them out, the Lightning Sprites became hard to track, even at home. In this world, where something was blocking their sense of the earth element, they would likely lose anything more than a general location of the sprite much faster.

Worse, they couldn't actually tell you much about the situation, only if it was harmful to them, or if they were being attacked.

But Wolfe was more interested in the distance that they could go without encountering anything that would attack a Lightning Sprite. It would keep them from wasting time on dead ends, and allow them to spend more time exploring the tunnels to find the way to the portal back home.

The sprites were quickly sent out on their mission, and Wolfe dispatched his three outward to see where they went.

The exits on the left and right immediately turned out to be duds, as they only led to a main concourse that looped around the auditorium. There was nothing there that threatened the sprites, so there was a good chance that none of the creatures had hidden and waited for another chance to attack.

But that meant that the other exit, straight in front of them, was most likely the other main door, and the only way out.

Wolfe sent the three sprites out scouting, and found that the other side opened into a large open area. The sprites extended their magic for Wolfe to sense, and for hundreds of metres in every direction, there were no walls, just an open space, and then something that might be either liquid or plants. He couldn't tell from the Lightning Sprites, he could only sense that some of their magic was reflected and some was not.

"How are the other tunnels looking?" Wolfe asked.

"They don't go anywhere. There are private boxes and rooms of some sort, but none of the other routes lead further out than the main floor loop." Cassie explained.

"Well, the exit in front of us leads to a large open area. I guess that's our way forward. The first bit should be wide open, but the far side of the room might be a waterfall or plants. Not that we've seen either of those things here so far." Wolfe replied.

The lowest realms were a nightmarish place where human life was not intended to survive, and the closest they had seen to water so far were the rivers of lava that they had sensed in the distance when they first arrived.

"Then we refresh our spells and move forward. This whole place is a nightmare, so one spot is likely no worse than another." Ella agreed.

Wolfe smiled as he realized that was likely what the residents of this world thought of his trials. They were filled with Fae and Light Magic, which had no place here. It was likely as hostile to them as this place was to Wolfe and his group.

They just failed to realize that the humans they were sending would be quite familiar with the environment there.

"Alright, are we ready?" Wolfe asked as he dismissed the sprites.

The others released their spells, and Molly gave him a thumbs up. She might not be as capable as the others, but she was fairly confident in her senses, and if they were trying to avoid getting lost, she was fairly certain that she could be of use to the group.

Wolfe led them forward, through the doors at the far side of the room and then stopped in his tracks as he saw what the sprites were unable to relay.

The entire area was some sort of twisted mockery of the Fae Forests. The stench of rot assailed his nose, and sickly looking blackened trees with no leaves extended up from brackish waters that managed to host some sort of green sludge.

It was the first sign of real life that Wolfe had seen here, or so he thought until he saw it coalesce and turn into some sort of sludge monster.

It wasn't a living plant, it was just another sort of monster, and that was its resting form.

"That's not water." Molly whispered.

"No? What does it smell like?" Wolfe whispered back.

"Sulphur. I think it is sulphuric acid." She replied gravely.

That would put a dent in their plans to walk across this strange forest.

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