With a snap of powerful wind, the four examinees along with their three ostriches fell into a mound of deep white snow. Lyrian quickly stood up before digging out space in the snow to be able to breathe.
After taking in a deep breath, he held it as he began to dig through one side with his hands. The more he dug, the denser the snow got, since it was building up when he pushed it forward. After about 20 seconds, or so, he thought to himself, 'Wait... Why am I even doing this.' Before casting a wind spell forward.
In a giant gust of whirling wind, the snow wall in front of him was obliterated at once, clearly a way for him to step out into the open as the snow flew into the air.
His teammates also were free from the snow with the impact of the blast, as they also stepped out. The thing they had exited was nothing more than a pile of unmelted snow that had built up.
Alten became slightly confused at this concept.
"Why would only one place hold the snow?"
Lyrian had already found the answer.
"Lava. This place has streams of lava flowing through it."
Surprised, everyone walked over to where Lyrian was, which was a few feet away on the black stone floor. There, they could see multiple brilliant streams of magma of red and yellow color, casting hues of orange all throughout the walls.
The stream of lava was in the ground, some being 2 or 3 feet in width, and some only a few inches. Looking around some more, Lyrian realized that wherever the lava streams weren't near, the snow from multiple years of blizzards had gathered up.
Lyrian turned around to face the rest of his group, who were wiping off snow from their bodies and re-mounting their ostriches.
"So what was the reason we fell down here in the first place?"
Alten quickly replied, "It's a shortcut to the Tundra Arena. But it is more dangerous as well since this place holds a lot of Magma Dwellers."
Lyrian put on a confused expression, mounting his own ostrich.
"Magma Dwellers?"
Alten cleared up the confusion, "Tundra creatures who fell down into here and survived, slowly evolving into beasts that thrived in hot environments, since natural heat waves are common here. They come from the cracks in the ground, which probably leads to some sort of underground volcano."
Lyrian understood what Alten was saying, but wanted to know more about these creatures who were called dangerous, "I see... so what makes them so dangerous?"
Alten paused, "I... Don't know. To be frank, I only knew of their name, and that they were dangerous. I didn't even know this place held lava. But I guess the name suits the Magma Dwellers."
***
A minute or so after that moment, the group began traveling through the ravine, as the spy suddenly burst out of the mount of snow at once, heaving out a large breath of air as he panted loudly, hands on his knees.
He had fallen into the snow just like Lyrian and the others, but since the snow blocked the noise of his fall, he had to stay in there while holding his breath.
'I survived!' He rejoiced quietly, 'Wait... if the snow blocks the sound anyways, why did I hold my breath?'
***
"This ravine though, I heard it was a shortcut, but I don't actually know what that mean's either."
Hearing this from Alten, Rylan suddenly looked at him confused, "Huh? What the heck are you talking about? You don't know?"
Alten nervously laughed, coursing through the ravine at top-notch speeds with the ostriches, as he replied, "Well, to be frank, I don't know anything about the way to the Tundra Arena anymore, I just know that if you enter the ravine, it will be a short cut to the arena..."
Alten didn't want to admit this, but since they were already here, he thought he would be truthful. He felt quite bad about it though.
"It's fine. As long as this is a shortcut, we will figure it out." Lyrian retorted, not having much of a problem with that.
Without the shortcut, they would have probably been lost by now, so this was better than nothing. Although... they might have still been lost.
***
Another 20 or so minutes of traveling through the ravine passed by. Alten had spoken about the heatwaves that occurred commonly, and how they differed in strength sometimes, but they had yet to experience one.
Still, they could feel the leftover hot breeze that traveled through the cracks in the floor here and there, which were alarming at best. At the mark of the 21st minute, Lyrian suddenly began to slow down, as the rest of the group caught up to him.
'What the hell is that?' A concerned yet wary looked shadowed his face as he slowly approached with his ostrich.
In front of him was a ghastly creature that was knelt over, facing opposite from him. Its entire body seemed to be burnt to a crisp, or made of black stone, and it had hundreds of streams of lava flowing through it as well.
Its body was odd to look at, like a human's but with incorrect proportions, more similar to a gorilla's. it was seemingly knelt over another one of its kind, except the one laying down was much larger than it was.
The larger one even looked to have a different body then the smaller one, as if they were different creature's altogether. Alten and Leon lined up beside Lyrian. Alten's eyes widened in shock.
"Thats it... a Magma Dweller."
This suddenly alarmed the creature that was kneeling over, as it jerked its body suddenly before slowly turning its head around. It finally revealed its face, enough to cause shivers to run down Alten and Rylan's back.
The face was extremely distorted and odd looking, but more then that, the beast looked to be crying tears of magma, which trickled down its sorrowful face.
Follow current novels on (f)reew𝒆bnovel