The four of them only managed to cover a short distance before the horde was on the move and gaining rapidly on them, as the wolves, after breaking loose of their impediments, gave chase.

As fast as the four of them moved, which was way beyond the capacity of an ordinary human, the wolves were always going to be faster, aided by the use of all their four limbs. Soon the monsters were on their tails, while their destination remained further beyond.

“They are going to catch up,” Rok warned as he sneaked a look behind him.

“Just keep running. If they do catch up, I’ll stay back to delay their advance,” Roan replied.

“No! No one’s dying here, in this curs’ed place. You hear me, Roan?! I order you to live,” the lady demanded in a stern voice, but with a hint of desperation hidden within.

“But, my lady, the…” Roan tried to protest, concerned about the lady as the wolves continued to gain on them but then he remembered something and he stopped. “Ofcourse, my lady.”

The brothers were disposable and they were reminded about that very fact on a regular basis. Roan was not used to someone worrying about him personally, so when he had proposed to remain and fight, knowing well he was about to sacrifice his life, he expected little in the way of resistance but then the lady quite adamantly told him to survive, and he was instinctively taken aback.

He needed to confirm her sincerity in order to quell his own insecurity about the value of his life but quickly accepted her order as he remembered the events of the past few days.

From the brief amount of time he got to spend in her company, Roan had come to adore her. She was kind and caring, unusually so for one of her kind. He had not expected that from her, with all he had heard about the girl having a sacred bloodline.

He had assumed her to be colder and more conceited than the usual, and he was pleasantly surprised to find a person who exuded so much warmth and genuinely cared, even about one as lowly as himself.

‘Is this how it feels to have a wife and family that cherish you?’ he thought as a smile lined his face while running with all his might. He really did not wish to die. He wanted to continue having this feeling of what he considered to be ecstasy, and so he ran.

They ran for a while longer and when no vicious monsters gnawed their backs they stopped to check if the wolves were still following, and they were surprised to find themselves in the clear.

“Huh… They gave up easy. Never seen them do that before,” Rok spoke scratching his head in disbelief.

“It’s the power being emitted by the artifact. It has the same effect as the spell I was casting to keep the wolves at bay which required me to remain in a suspended state of being. This artifact, however, is much more powerful than any magic of my design,” the lady explained as she walked up to stand beside him.

“I… I was worried, my lady. I thought you would never wake.” Helik expressed deep concern.

“Oh, my sweet, Helik! Worry not, I am fine now,” the lady replied in a kind voice, caressing his beautiful face with her with her left hand as he blushed.

“Lady Liara, what about that man?” Roan asked, standing behind the lady.

Liara looked at the man on Helik’s back. “Wake him. We’ll be needing him.”

Helik placed the man gently on the ground, before shaking him awake. He was in quite a miserable state of being, with his gray hair dyed red from his own dried blood sticking to it, the same blood coating his face and staining his clothes, and with added dirt and sweat mixed within, it created a ghastly combination to make him look even grimmer.

The old man’s eyes snapped wide open and he sat up in a hurry, looking like he had just risen from experiencing his worst nightmare.

But the nightmare wasn’t over for him, he realized after noticing a stump in the place where his right arm used to be, and then the hellish pain returned, crashing over his body like a tsunami. He screamed in horror as his mind recalled the events of the previous hour.

Liara felt a deep sorrow rise within her heart watching the man wail in agony as his mind shattered like a broken glass, unable to comprehend the horror of his situation, and she knew that it was her selfish desires that had led to the man’s current state of misery and suffering as she was the one who had forced him to partake in this suicide quest.

She steeled herself. She had come too far and sacrificed too much to waiver on this quest now. Crouching in front of the man, she grabbed his face with both her hands and turned his head to look in her direction, and her eyes locked on his.

She was now too close to the man to not notice the smell of his blood as it enticed her beyond usual, reminding her to satiate her rapidly developing hunger, soon.

‘The least I can do is grant the man some relief from his pain and calm him down,’ she thought as her emerald eyes locked into his, and within a moment the man stopped wailing and a calm washed over him as he stared at the direction of the stump which use to be his right arm, but all he could see was the pitch black of the forest.

The light of the full moon was not able to reach these dark recesses of the forest, vaulted by the unyieldingly dense canopy.

“You're going to be fine, professor…Right?” She tried to check on the man and see if her magic had worked.

“Yes… I am fine,” he replied after taking a short moment to gather his thoughts. He turned his head to look in the direction of Liara’s voice, “That is some impressive magic you have there, girl. Mind telling me what school it belongs to?” he asked in his usual humorous tone, bringing some much-desired relief to Liara and a smile lined her face, which wasn’t visible to the old man.

“Will you be able to stand?” she asked.

“I think I can manage with some help,” he replied.

“Helik,” She commanded, and the young warrior gently guided the older man upright, offering the man his shoulder to lean on.

“Alright then, gentlemen. This way,” She said after the professor was on his feet and able to move, and started walking towards the supposed direction of the artifact but the professor spoke and interrupted her movement forward.

“Ummm… My lady, I can’t see,” the professor complained as he struggled to move forward in the dark.

“Oh!… Yeah, ofcourse,” Liara spoke, before motioning for Helik to aid the man and just like before the professor was once again perched on his back, resulting in Helik having a particularly distasteful look on his face, and before long they all resumed their journey, this time albeit in a more unhurried pace.

“I can’t see the floor below, it’s too dark,” Rok remarked as he peeked below from the edge of a crack in the ground into what looked to him like a bottomless pit of darkness. In their search of the artifact, they had found this unusually large fissure in the ground as the forest cleared up a bit and moonlight finally graced their eyes.

“I can see it, there is definitely a surface below,” Liara confirmed as she peeked into the darkness below.

“And you are sure the artifact is below there?” Rok asked, sounding a bit worried.

“Yes,” Liara replied in a confident tone.

“Well then, now it’s only the matter of how to get down there. We’ll need some source of light for starters and maybe we can build some rope for the professor and then…” Rok was suggesting before Liara cut him off.

“I’ll go first and I’ll take the professor with me. I’ll…” Liara was speaking but Roan who stood behind her objected to her proposal, cutting her off mid-speech. “No my lady, it’s too risky. We don’t know what dangers lurk down there. Maybe one of us can…”

“I am the only one who can do this. No one else would be able to descend in such darkness while carrying the professor. Besides, I see that you are in bad shape,” Liara interjected and reminded Roan of his injuries, which she hadn’t failed to notice even when he had tried to hide them from her, making him grit his teeth in frustration and anger at his own inadequacy.

“We have come too far and risked too much for me to back down now,” she continued, looking determined.

“How in the name of, the holy, are we supposed to get down there, then? If it’s that deep. We’ll need ropes and other equipment and I am an old man if you haven’t noticed,” the professor whined after he found about the crack that went deep under the ground.

“Relax, professor. I’ll be making sure you remain unharmed. All you need to do is put your trust in me. Can you do that?” Liara asked in a serious tone, standing beside him at the edge of the crack.The professor remained in the dark about his surroundings as he was guided along by her.

“Ofcourse, my lady. I trust you,” He replied somewhat earnestly, trying to hide his obvious fear.

“Good,” She replied and without giving any more warnings lifted the professor in both her arms like a baby with such ease that he looked to be made of feathers, and then she jumped off the edge into the darkness below.

She landed gracefully on the surface below, her dark power aiding in the process, and let go of the man in her arms, who stumbled aimlessly in the dark.

She unfurled the cowl of her cloak and looked around studying the narrow corridor formed inside the cracked earth and found nothing out of the ordinary. She sensed the power of the artifact coming from somewhere along the path that led to the origin point of this massive fissure but the search could wait.

Her eyes glowed more brightly for a moment before a bright green globe of light manifested over the palm of her raised right hand, starting from the size of a peanut and expanding into a ball five times the size of her fist, illuminating the dark surface and also her face.

She was a woman who appeared to be at the peak of her youth, her oval face radiating youth and vitality. Her luxuriously long and luscious raven hair perfectly complimented her spotless pale skin and her dark green eyes added an ethereal quality to her already beautiful features.

The globe of light moved off her hand and floated above her head, as she moved off the hard and rocky ground to a softer, earthier portion of the surface floor. The illumination had also finally allowed the old man to stop struggling in the dark.

“Can you see us?” Liara asked looking up.

“Yes,” Rok replied, peaking at her from the crack’s opening above.

“The surface here is softer, it’ll cushion the impact of the jump,” she advised and Rok nodded in agreement and retreated from the edge.

Soon the brothers leaped off the edge, one after another, landing on the softer, illuminated area of the floor as dirt flew in all directions and a crater formed on the surface from the impact of the jump.

Helik was the first to make the jump and he barely managed to make it without crashing to death, landing on all fours. Rok, who jumped after him, was much more poised in his landing.

Roan also made the jump quite successfully but after landing on his feet he failed to remain upright and crashed to the floor, and then got back up without much delay and dusted himself off, refusing the help offered by Helik.

“Follow me,” Liara ordered after allowing the men a moment to collect themselves before she started moving in the direction where she assumed the artifact to be.

The corridor became narrower the further they went until they reached the end of the fissure only to discover a cave opening which would lead them deeper underground.

“Stay on guard, men!” Roan barked as they entered. The atmosphere around them continued to evolve the further they went, the air becoming more oppressive and it got harder to breathe.

These caves were home to an entire ecosystem, various kinds of mushrooms and other vegetation growing aplenty. All kinds of small critters scurried away in caution at the sight of the alien creatures invading their domain, flashing painfully bright lights, harming their highly sensitive eyes unaccustomed to its radiance.

Where most people would get themselves lost within the maze of pathways, which was this cave system, Liara was managing to navigate through it quite effortlessly and soon they reached the supposed end of the narrow passageways and were awestruck at the sight which graced them.

The small caves opened up into a massive cavern, the size of a lake. When they peeked below from their position on a platform above the surface floor of the cavern they discovered an entire city at its center, clearly ancient in age by all the visible degradation.