The Female Necromancer

Chapter 5: Lamia Lagoon

The forest of Ruxmar lies directly below the floating city, the waterfalls head straight down into either the ocean or the river channels that surround the beautiful forest. The city was the lushest, and resource-abundant forest in the entire realm, it had giant mushrooms that were as tall as its trees that would release mana spores that at night made the entire forest glow beautiful shades of blue, purple, and green. However, at night, the forest wasn't just beautiful but housed the most dangerous creatures in most of the realm. Everything from the sneaky fairies to powerful elementals formed from the high concentration of mana that the forest produces. Despite all of these abundant dangers, adventurers and bounty hunters are hired from all across the realm to come to the forest and slay dangers, collect resources, and sometimes go find ancient ruins in hopes of the discovery of powerful artifacts.

To the mage citizens of Ruxmar who could cast powerful magic, this place is used as a place for sweet couples to gather and do as they wish in the quiet beauty of the forest. More powerful or discreet mages use the forest as a well of mana to cast powerful spells or rituals. The forest has been used as the gathering location for suspicious groups or guilds that wish to stay in the shadows due to how hard it is to explore the forest, and the place has even been known to be used as a grueling training ground for brave warriors, and aspiring mages.

Once the kids had paid the sailor of the visitor boat to stay there until midnight they hopped of the ship and headed deep into the forest.

Nayal: "Let's see if we go right around this tree with the warped smile in it, and then turn left past the next red mushroom then we should be close..." he said reading a map he found at the store.

Koreloof: "Red mushroom this, a weird tree that, aren't all the directions the same, to me, it looks like we're just lost, and you have no idea what you're doing, here let me see that map" 

Nayal: "Fine you see if you can make more sense of it than me muscle-for-brains," he said as he handed him the map.

Koreloof: As he looked over the map his eyes narrowed, his face showing a look of pure confusion before handing it back "I-I don't know how to read it"

Nayal: "Wait you never learned how to read Astarian, you're supposed to learn how to read it in your first year of school!" He said as he started bursting into laughter.

Koreloof: "I didn't get to take the first year, I got in trouble from dueling with Sabi at the back of the school for most of the year"

Meli: "Well you two certainly did use to be close, I remember one time she said that she was going to make you her bride since she beat you in a fight at lunch, but when you said that wasn't how it worked she flipped out and threw you out the window," she said before letting out a small giggle at the memory.

Koreloof: "Please, don't remind me we were a thing, she turned into such a bully after the fifth year, after that no one could stand to be with her, except her father's friends and their kids."

The kids followed Nayal for a while longer while reminiscing about the early years of school and how much trouble Koreloof had gotten into as a kid. before Nayal stopped in a wide clearing and looked at the map before tossing it away. 

Nayal: "Time to see if I learned this right," he said before cracking his knuckles. Nayal pointed his hands toward the ground before him as a blue light began to glow from his fingertips to the ground. "Forest of Splendor and Mystery, show me the path less took, the destination I have been seeking be revealed with a shook."

As the light left his fingertips and fell to the ground the clearing began to shake violently before trees fell all around them closing off the clearing. The ground shook some more before the ground started moving in front of them to reveal a staircase lit by a blue glow at the end of its descent. The kids looked at Nayal in shock before following him down the staircase. When the kids had reached the bottom they found themselves in an underground lake, the entire cave was lit by blue mana crystals that lined the walls, and stuck to the bottom of the lake. These crystals had been releasing mana into the lake for so long that it had become a mana reservoir, that glowed blue and had a tremendous powerful aura that could be felt from it.

Emilia: "A mana lake? how in the world did you find out about one that hadn't been harvested for its resources yet, I thought they had all been cleared out way before any of us were even born."

Hawt: Hawt walked in front of the whole group and pressed her palm against her chest as she looked up with a prideful smile on her face. "That would happen to be because of me, you see, my parents made me read lots of fairy tale books and stories when I was a kid, most were boring and about a night and a dragon fighting to save a princess, or sometimes it was the cliche where the dragon was the princess, but one day I stumbled across this book of fables that were said to all be half true, and in it, a knight founf=d a magic pool of mana known as Lamia Lagoon, where the night went in and freed captured Lamia from, and in return, they blessed this place to never run dry of mana."

Korellof: "While it's nice and all that you read a few books and found out about a pretty cool hiding spot to hang out, I'm assuming that isn't why you brought us here."

Nayal: "For once you actually guessed right. When Haet had shown me this story I was intrigued and read up about it for a couple of months and found additional evidence that this place might exist, and that if enough powerful individuals can gather, they can use the Lagoon to cast wherever powerful rituals they want, so long as they provide the other ingredients needed.

Koreloof: "And? I don't know if you have noticed but we just turned 17, aren't really even that strong, and are literally the most cursed people in all of Ruxmar!"

Nayal: "Precisely!. We are going to use the power of our curses to cast a ritual to find all of our potentials, and Break Our Curses!"