Lys woke up, she was hurting all over, and she felt weak. So weak. Slowly she sat up, and saw that she wasn’t bleeding, but there was a small pool of blood beneath her. She had no mana left, and no idea where she was.

Around her was a dense forest, but behind her she could see ruins. Actually she hadn’t propped up against a tree, but the remains of a wall. The mana here was dense, and it had helped her recover somewhat. But the blood would attract monsters she knew.

Ripping of some cloth, she did a makeshift bandage on her leg. Slowly she stood up on her good leg, peering into the ruins. It looked like a small village, but made of stone. The outer walls had crumbled so badly it wasn’t stopping anyone from any direction from the looks of things, and what must have been houses had all collapsed long ago, vegetation growing everywhere.

Lys thought for a moment. She couldn’t teleport without knowing her location, plus, her mana was too low. She would have to recover somewhere. One part of the wall was still kinda holding up, and the side had crumbled into a gentle slope. It would be a decent vantage point.

She slowly pushed forward, wincing every time she used her bad leg, hobbling forward. Soon she could see that the village, or whatever it had been, was small. Smaller than she expected. One of the building had been big however, and some pillars were still holding it up. Could it have been a temple of some kind? It didn’t matter.

She sat back down, looking around warily, a part of her wanted to sleep, but the other was too wary of the unknown surroundings. Lys wasn’t exactly safe where she was. She would have to wait until she could put up some kind of ward that would wake her in case something came close, but she still felt too weak to do it.

So she sat there, looking around, when it hit her, there were no sounds except the rustling of leaves in the wind, no birds chirping, or any other sound one heard in the forest, it was eerily quiet. Lys sat and looked around for a while, how long she couldn’t tell, but at one point she had fallen asleep despite herself.

She stood in front of an army, wielding magic. She felt powerful, oh so powerful, like nothing in the world could stop her. Behind her, the frenzied screams of her soldiers, rejoicing in the coming battle. They rushed ahead and clashed with an army bigger than theirs, but they didn’t stop. She killed dozens of enemies with each spell, and casting was easy as turning her hand.

They were an unstoppable force, plowing through their enemies. This was barely a battle, closer to a one sided slaughter, and they rejoiced in the bloodshed.

Soon, she stood atop enemy corpses, the battle over, enjoying the sun on her face. She felt fulfilled, proud. It had been another good battle, and they had conquered more land in the name of her master.

Her master? Something felt wrong, when suddenly, the moment of glory was gone, and she saw the blood she was covered in, the thousand of corpses from the battlefield all around her, and horror filled her.

Lys jerked awake, cold sweat running down her back. What the hell kind of dream was that? She had never been one to enjoy killing, it was necessary sometimes, but she would avoid it if possible. But that moment of glory she had felt still appealed to her in a twisted way, and she didn’t like that at all.

She hadn’t slept that long, but she did feel a lot better. Looking down at her leg, she regretted not having taken a healing potion with her. Things would have been so much simpler. Alas, but mistakes makes us wiser, as her mentor liked to say.

Ideally, she would need a day or two to rest up. And maybe she had been lucky to land here. Lys decided to try her luck inside the ruins. It wasn’t that big, and she doubted at this point that there were monsters lurking, they would have smelled the blood. Maybe smaller ones hidden beneath stone, but nothing she couldn’t handle, now that she had some mana back.

She slowly made her way inwards, towards the center. It was still eerie, but she had somehow gotten used to it. It was peaceful here. Not one to let her guard down however, she continued on cautiously.

Soon she was in front of the biggest building in the ruins, it had mostly collapsed, but the entrance actually stood, some collapsed stone in the way, but nothing she couldn’t go around. As she slowly walked in, she saw that the left part of the roof and walls were gone, but the right side was holding up.

Maybe she could take shelter here? There were no traces of animals, strangely, the vegetation hadn’t tried to overtake this building, but it was still dusty, and she doubted anyone had been here in years. It would be a good spot to recover.

Feeling better about the situation, Lys quickly set up a few wards that would warn here if anything would come close, and finally set down to sleep, hopefully without dreams.

She woke up, and was surprised that the sun was up so high. She had slept for almost a whole day. Hunger made itself known, a grumble in her stomach, and she felt parched. Her leg was getting better, the dense mana helping her body to mend itself. She truly was lucky to have landed here, but now she had other problems.

Only wincing slightly when using her leg, she slowly made it out of the ruins. She decided to pick a direction and go with it. Lys made way slowly, but she was steadier than she had been yesterday. On the lookout for animals, or the gentle sound of a stream, she continued through the dense forest. With some luck, she would find the end of the forest and somewhere she was familiar with and teleport out of this place.

But she had no such luck, and continued for a long time, but still, no animals were to be found, and she had found no water. Not wanting to lose her only point of reference in this forest, she decided to go back, but to her surprise, she made it back in a few minutes.

Had she been wandering in circles? An uneasy feeling was worming its way up her stomach. Maybe it wasn’t luck that had drawn her here, but something else. Lost in thought, she wandered the ruins aimlessly, and almost fell due to some rocks she hadn’t seen.

“Dammit!” She yelled, frustrated. But then she stopped, this had been a well! She quickly moved towards it, and saw that there was a deep hole, but she couldn’t see the bottom. She cast a light spell to see better, and saw that glorious liquid at the bottom.

There was nothing left of what she assumed had been a bucket well, and she didn’t have any container to drop down. She looked around, but the only things to have survived the passage of time was the stone, with vegetation trying to eat it all away.

An idea struck her, and she wobbled towards the forest. She took the biggest leafs she could find and tied them together. This clearly wasn’t her field of expertise, and she would break the leafs, or they would be too loose. After some time, the sun was a lot lower in the sky, and she had given up.

Taking the biggest leaf as is, she used magic to float it down, and then float it back up, trying to keep as much water on it as possible. The first few times were failures, but soon she had enough to sip some water.

Exhausted, she stopped for a while. Still thirsty, she hobbled back to the ruined temple. Still hungry, thirsty, but now tired, Lys wondered how she would get out of here. But she was low on mana, her leg was hurting, and the sun was setting.

That night, she dreamed again, of battles, of magic lost eons ago, of the glory of battles.

She woke up, the sun was peeking through the ruined roof. Begrudgingly, she walked back to the well, the big leaf with her, and started to float up some water. Ever so slowly, she quenched her thirst, Lys was getting better at it, but it was still painfully slow. If only she had studied hydromancy or something.

The problem now was food. She hadn’t eaten in two days, her leg was getting better, but she didn’t have as much energy now. There had to be something edible. Determined, she set out and walked into the surrounding forest. This time, she marked trees as she went, to avoid walking in circles.

She found some plants that might be edible, and decided to pick them up, just in case. There had never been any reason to study these kinds of things for her, having lived in cities all of her life, of course she traveled, but this was a new situation for her entirely. She would have rather had to fight a group of bandits or something at this point. She knew how to do that at least.

Soon, she saw marked trees in front of her, she had walked in circles despite the markings. There was a small pack of plants in her pockets, but she had enough of walking for now. Her leg was hurting a tad more than earlier.

Slowly she made her way back, resigned, and discovered she hadn’t actually gone much further than last time, despite the marked trees. Soon sitting back down in the temple, she laid out the different plants. One felt familiar, and she decided to try that one first, it was a root.

Being hungry enough, it almost looked good, and soon she was shewing on it. Eating only opened her appetite, but she didn’t have more of that root, and tried something else. Hopefully she would still be alive come morning. Having eaten some of the plants, she felt her leg aching too much to continue, and decided it was enough for today.

A week later, Lys was still stuck in the ruins, some of the plants she had eaten had given her severe stomachache. But she had gained 2 levels in [Survivor], along with a skill to help her know what could be eaten. She had even gained a level in her [Mage] class with all the leaf shenanigans. Her leg was almost fully healed now too. It was, better.

But she still had no way out of here. The dreams hadn’t stopped either, and every night had been riddled with glorious battles, enemies laid at her feet, endless magic in her hands. She was still repulsed at the endless slaughter, but the magic. The magic she felt in those dreams. It called to her. She shook her head to put it out of mind.

She had eaten enough, drank some water, and still the sun was fairly high up in the sky. It was the first day when she actually didn’t have anything to do. She had an idea, actually, she had had it a few days back, but now might be the time.

Going back to the temple, she started moving stone about, trying to unearth anything that might be here. She had a feeling there might be stairs going down somewhere here, that led deeper. It was just a feeling, but she had nothing better to do, after all.

She spent most of the day moving rocks about, sometimes with magic, but mostly with her hands. She didn’t find anything. But the next day she continued. At some points, she even questioned why she was doing it, but in the end, why not? She didn’t have anything better to do, right?

On the third day, she found what seemed like stairs down, and redoubled her efforts. Soon, she had cleared the space, and the looming stairs lay ahead of her. Lys could feel it, something was going on, and somewhere deep inside her, a voice was screaming, but the unknown called to her, and she ignored that little voice. She was just being paranoid, what could really be down there? Probably nothing. Or maybe treasure. Or a way out of here. Anything really.

The unknown, it was hard to ignore, when you could take a few steps and see what lay there. And so she did. She walked down the stairs, a light spell illuminating the dark stone. The stairs continued for a while, and she grew anxious, but it had been sealed, what could really be down here? Not really reassured, she continued nonetheless.

As she arrived at the end of the stairs, a big room opened up. Pillars two meters wide holding up the ceiling lined the room, with intricate carvings on each and every one of them. The ceiling was high, and it felt, old, ancient. The pillars were neatly aligned, with something like a throne at the end.

There was something on the throne, but she couldn’t see what from where she stood. She found herself walking towards it, but she was picking up speed, soon almost running. It was some kind of armor. It called to her. Magic. But it was hard to see from this distance. But still, her eyes were stuck on it. She ignored the beautiful carving on the ceiling, the statues in the alcoves on each side, eyes, stuck on the distant throne.

As she was halfway there, she suddenly stopped. Two spears were barring the way. She glared at their holders. They were elves, and she hadn’t even see them move, or heard them appear.

“You are not allowed in here. Go back.” One of them said.

“She is tainted.” The other one said, looking at her with disgust.

The elves had long hair, both with beautiful green armor, with ornamental gold here and there. Their spears were clearly enchanted, with wind blowing around one, and the other glowing blue.

“Move.” She said. Logic and caution had long since left her, her mind only focused on what lay ahead.

“Go back.” One of them repeated.

She looked at them with hatred, and started to cast.

[Shockwa…

Before she could finish, everything went black.