Feather came to and looked around.

Just now she had been dashing through the forest without looking where, and then tripped over a root and fallen.

Her palms got scratched and hurt, but that wasn't her concern.

It was silent.

There wasn't the sound of trees, nor the barking of the hounds. It was only her battered breathing that was resounding through the walls.

The walls were made of some blue crystals which were emitting faint light. It wasn't bright, but it wasn't particularly dim either.

The place she was in was not the forest she rushed across just a moment ago, and that meant one thing: like it or not, she escaped successfully.

Through a hole, that is.

There were crystal walls and nothing else in there.

The place looked like some kind of underground passage, but at the same time, it looked like it wasn't man-made. What could it be?

As there were no indications of any sort, Feather chose a direction randomly and went forth. Anyway, standing there wouldn't help her.

After several minutes of walking, she found that the ceiling started to gradually grow lower.

When it reached the point where she had to bend to go further, she decided to go back.

She walked back, but after some time of walking the floor went up sharply, and almost reached the ceiling. She would have to crawl to explore further.

Feather was uncertain. What should she do? Try to crawl there or go back and try that way.

After minute contemplation, she decided to check this part first. She was already here after all.

Feather crawled inside. After some time the ceiling went even lower, and she could only lay down to continue onward. But just after a few more meters, when she started to consider whether it was time for her to turn back she saw the light to intensify just a bit further away.

She continued, and in a minute reached an opening.

It was a big cave. But unfortunately, Feather found out, that the hole she came out from was just a meter away from the ceiling of the cave, and the floor of the cave was way down. It was five or six meters of a sheer wall.

The cave was big, but most of it was taken by a lake, glowing with the same blue light as the walls of the cave.

At the side of the lake, right under the place she was looking from, there was a patch of land, and there was a big tree standing there.

Looking at the tree Feather shivered.

The tree had a big crown of fiery orange leaves and was emitting a warm light. In a way, it looked like it was on fire.

'I'll go back,' she decided immediately.

If anything, she didn't want to have to do with that ominous tree.

After getting out of the fissure, Feather went by the passage once more and soon was at the place she reached earlier.

She continued onward.

The path curved right ever so slightly and was gradually going down.

The ceiling was fluctuating, sometimes getting lower so that she had to crawl to pass, and sometimes going as high as two full heights.

There were no splittings in the passage, just one long tunnel.

After following the tunnel for half an hour, Feather found out that the exit to the tunnel came to the same cave she had already seen from above.

As it seemed, this place had just this one circular passage and the cave with the tree and the lake.

Feather went around the cave. Except for the tree and a couple of crystal pieces fallen from the walls, there was nothing there.

Thanks to the tree the cave was well-lit, unlike the passage.

Feather looked at the tree more thoroughly.

When looking at it from up close, there was nothing ominous about it. It was just a tree with pointy orange leaves which somewhat resembled ilex leaves. The leaves were moving a little and from afar made an illusion that the tree was burning.

The trunk and the branches of the tree were of the same orange color. They were not as shiny as leaves, but there was also a bit of light coming from them.

Looking at it closer, Feather realized, she knew what the tree was. She read about this kind of trees in one of the scrolls in the library.

It was a very rare Fireleaves Treasure Tree, which only grew in the high-density fire environment. The tree bloomed once a millennium, and the fruits it gave were highly valuable for every fire practitioner as they could enhance fire affinity by almost tenth.

Mind you, treasures which could make one's affinity to grow were rare of the rare. Normally, if mages found some treasures which could boost their affinity by a percent or two, they would already be on the ninth cloud. And to up one's affinity by ten percent at once, you can imagine just how impressive that was.

Unfortunately, there were no fruits on the tree right now.

Not that she had any use for these fruits apart from filling herself.

But a high-density fire environment?

Feather looked around the cave once more.

The walls were the same everywhere, the same blue crystals over and over.

And the blue-light-emitting lake.

Nothing here looked like it had to do with fire apart from the tree itself.

As the leaves of the tree were moving, it was safe to assume that the cave at least had some vent connected to outside.

Feather breathed out. It gave her a chance to find the exit.

What could she find if there wasn't one?

At least now she had a hope.