CHAPTER 40 :Escape

The shelves to Leo's gratitude revealed several stone steps that led down; which was of a great relief to the assassin, for it meant that there was a huge chance of him not getting trapped by the raging flames above, though the question that remained was where in the realm did these steps lead to.

The question remained at the back of Leo's mind especially when he pushed through several cobwebs and had nearly slipped over what appeared to be a stick.

Going against his first idea of kicking the wood Leo kept it close for he could still sense that a little trace of mana surged through it; which would explain why he had not noticed it at first.

"Anyway I have to get out of here" Leo frowned "And fast".

To his surprise nothing else seemed different in the 'azure eye' and the sight or rather silhouettes of stone steps were getting a bit much which had made him to come to the conclusion that he must be deep underground now.

And what he couldn't shake off was the thought that he was headed towards somewhere dangerous, though one could wonder what could be more dangerous than a murderous demon, a possessed friend and a large blaze of crimson flames.

Regardless Leo's fear was a little bit justified, after all every living thing always have that innate fear of the unknown.

"You have to be kidding me" Leo cursed, leaping of the last steps and changing his eye back to normal in order to conserve the little amount of energy he still had.

His mouth and eye remained wide open as the tunnel blinded him for a brief moment in a series of bright blue lights; coming from the suspicious torches that lined the earthen walls of the little tunnel.

Squinting a little in order to adjust to the brightness, Leo eventually dropped the stick before he sat down out of tiredness and shock at what lay scattered throughout the tunnel.

Parched scrolls along with broken quills, a destroyed chair and a massive oak table with ancient crimson runes covered a great length of the space.

A few cracked shelves to the far right of the tunnel suggested that maybe the place had been organized prior to whatever had scattered it to this extent.

The runes on the floor also told tales of their own from the unintelligent blotches and discontinued lines to the large amount of dried blood that was used to supplement the crimson ink that had originally started the runes.

Leo though an avid reader of ancient cultures, runes and languages couldn't still place a finger on what the runes could mean and more importantly what they had been created for.

Dismissing his initial thoughts on them being demonic, the assassin stretched five fatigued fingers that carefully wrapped themselves round a scroll that threatened to crumble with every movement.

"Finally something I can understand" Leo smiled as he buried his eye into the vast scribbles of elvish.

Eventually the scrolls crumbled in frustrated fists belonging to an assassin that wasn't pleased that all the ancient scroll contained was information on the spells and runes needed to keep the blue torches active.

The question on who had bothered to keep the torches alit all this while was actually a reasonable one but a few glances at the runes (that Leo had missed earlier) on the wall confirmed that they drew power from a nearby mana source, what this mana source could be would have been a good mystery for Leo to solve but unfortunately his body and mind were too fatigued to even bother about moving from his spot on the ground.

"Now to think about my options" Leo began as he started to mull over his next move now that he had found a temporary solace in the tunnel.

The first one would be for him to satisfy his curiosity and scour the rest of tunnel in the vain hope that maybe some ancient treasure could be found but this option could end up with him battling another fiend for who knows whether the mage who created here had put in place golems, monsters or whatever safety measures to prevent intruders from interfering with his work.

Another option and probably the safest would be for him to stay here and sleep in an effort to relax from the stress on his body, after all even Huntrans have a limit on how much mana they could absorb.

Sighing, Leo went ahead with the second option and decided to rest and maybe check the tunnel later when hen he must have regained enough energy.

In the meantime, since sleep had decided not to come, Leo used this short respite to review everything that had happened during this weird night.

The first and most astonishing of it all was him being a Huntran; an ancient race of warriors so gifted that they could absorb mana from the environment.

The pros of all this were quite significant but unfortunately the cons seemed to be a little bit more.

Sure in his last near death experience Leo had learnt to absorb and see mana but that didn't take away the massive con.

The massive con that meant he was to be the one to stop a seemingly immortal scheming dragon that would stop at nothing to achieve his goals of ruling all the realms. And to make matters worse when all of this was over, Draghyr would probably know that the one prophesied to destroy him is alive and kicking and who knows what other sort of information the demon would get from Bethran, who as it turned out lived true to his nickname of 'wolf'.

Which could only mean two things; either Bethran's mother or father were also werewolves or maybe he was an adopted child, one whose origins had been kept secret contrary to his own.

"Could there be more of them out there? Leo wondered, for this night had succeeded immensely in turning everything he knew upside down.

First he was a member of a long forgotten race and if that had not been enough he had seen two creatures of fairytales; one of the forsaken realm and the other being a creature long thought to be extinct from their realm.

"Or maybe they like the Huntrans had somehow managed to escape this realm".

And soon with a drop of his head, the Huntran descended into a long bout of much needed sleep.