Once everyone felt ready, they teleported down into the next floor. They all had weapons at the ready, but nothing jumped out at them immediately. One thing Tahir noticed about the room was a sickly sweet scent that pervaded the entire space. Ahead of them, the entire room looked like some kind of dining hall. Long tables were laid out in multiple rows, white tablecloths that looked impossibly clean for how long they would have had to sit unattended. Across all of them were the best looking plates of food Tahir had ever seen. Multiple full course meals laid out across the three tables he could see, including an entire table full of desserts.

  Blinking, he found himself taking steps toward the table before he realized. It all looked so good, and after that fight they deserved to have something for their trouble. He thought he vaguely heard a voice behind him, but he ignored it. If it was important they surely would have spoken to him directly, right? He made it until he stood three steps away from the tables, before an hiss echoed in his mind, and he felt a sharp pinch on his shoulder that snapped him out of his reverie. When he looked around, he could see he’d been in the process of reaching for something on the table, and the Winged Serpent was removing its fangs from his shoulder.

  Seconds later, he felt a hand grabbing his other shoulder. “Tahir! Don’t, it’s a trap.” Meti warned, and her eyes moved to the puncture marks from the serpent. Tahir glanced back to her, then to the food on the tables, before he quickly cast a spell that caused a wave of fire to flow from his hand over the food. Immediately, that seemed to stop the unnatural fascination he had over it, and a moment later, Naevys strode up and joined him in casting a similar spell on another table. Between the two of them, they charred all of the food in under a minute, but the tablecloth remained oddly clean underneath.

  “Is that it?” Talibah asked, walking forward after they burned the food. “Just a trap? No one’s mad that we singed their dinner?”

  Tahir mentally thanked the Winged Serpent for stopping him, and asked it to take a look around. After it flew around the room for a bit, Tahir received a mental reply that it detected nothing strange about the space. “I think that’s all, seems like it was just something to deter anyone exploring the ruin.”

  “Nasty. Hate to see what would have happened if you actually ate the food.” She walked past him, on to the teleportation circle at the end of the room. “I’ll take an easy floor, though. We’ll take another short break and let you guys’ mana recharge and then it’s off to our last floor.”

  Restoring the mana only took a couple of minutes, given that the two of them only cast one spell. Meti checked on Tahir to make sure his shoulder was alright - the Winged Serpent bit straight through without any aura protection after all. Thankfully, the thin fangs didn’t cause any lasting damage that his auric recovery couldn’t heal in a hurry, and if the Winged Serpent had venom, it chose not to use it there.

  Mentally preparing himself for the possibility of another trapped room. Tahir stepped up onto the platform when he was ready. The teleportation circle activated, and in a flash of light it transported them through to their final room of the day. This room looked brighter than the rest, and the source of the light was a massive chandelier, shaped like a ball, with what looked to be something moving inside. Otherwise, Tahir could see vines and moss growing around the edges of the room, and the floor looked to be made of dirt instead of tile or stone like the rest that he’d seen so far from this ruin. As they stepped off the platforms, they felt a light tremor, and a hatch at the bottom of the chandelier opened, with the source of light spilling out. Tahir couldn’t see clearly from how bright they looked, but it seemed like there were hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny beings making a luminescent swarm that flew overhead. Once the bulk of the massive swarm emerged from the chandelier, they seemed to lock on the group and fly toward them.

  This caused the group to scatter, predictably. Tahir felt intense heat coming off of the swarm, and heard a cry from Larissa, who pulled back and held onto a smoking fist after an attempt to punch the swarm. With aura, it seemed like the strike had an effect, but continuing to hit it in melee seemed like it would drain aura shields faster than it would actually kill it. As the swarm flew back into the air and prepared to swoop down again, Tahir was presented with another issue. It was so bright that he could look directly at it for too long, which made aiming difficult. He prepared a divine bolt to fire, but nearly blinded himself in aiming, and missed the main swarm when he actually fired it off.

  “We can’t hit it like this, we need to dim the light somehow!” Meti called out. Before it swooped down again, Naevys pointed her wand directly upwards. Tahir heard a hissing sound as steam began to shoot from the wand and cover the entire room in fog. The only thing he could see was the bright light from the swarm through the fog, but diminished enough that he could look at it effectively.

  “Move toward the edges of the room so you don’t hit each other.” Talibah called out. Tahr saw a brief flash of blue from Meti’s magic firing at the swarm, and it swooped down in her direction. He didn’t hear a cry or sound of injury aside from shuffling, so he assumed Meti dodged out of the way. Backing up to the wall, he switched from his fire spirit to his water spirit, and with the Winged Serpent shooting divine bolts from his shoulders, Tahir fired off spikes of ice, which melted on contact and added to the fog around them.

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  The swarm continued flying overhead and swooping down, attempting to envelop whoever fired at it. At one point, while shooting off another spike of ice, he felt a tremor shake the entire room, and while he glanced around to try to identify the source, he all but collided with Larissa, but managed to push her out of the way just as the swarm reached him. He felt an intense heat that likely would have caused heavy burns as the swarm passed around him. It broke through his divine shield, and nearly shattered his aura shield as well, but he managed to hold onto that and keep it from burning his skin. As he dove away from the swarm, another bolt from Meti and an ice spike from who he assumed to be Naevys drew its attention away, and he set to work recovering his aura shield with the aura he had left. Fortunately, he didn’t have much of a use for his aura in this fight.

  “Are you alright?” He called up to the Winged Serpent. He could just barely see black marks along the white of its scales, and some of its feathers had been charred. It gave a reassuring hiss and readied another divine bolt.

  Between Tahir, Meti, and Naevys firing on it while mostly staying out of its reach, they managed to diminish the swarm in a matter of minutes. Once its light dimmed down to a manageable level, Naevys cast a spell that brought all of the fog toward her and condensed it down into an ice spike, which she then shot forward with another spell. The diminished swarm then flew towards her, but was blasted into basically nothing by the other casters firing at it.

  At the end, they were left with individual creatures flying around. They were still hot as they flew near, but not enough to affect anyone’s aura shield, and they could be swatted away. “That was a little intense.” Talibah said, looking around the room, now scarred with burns and punctures from sharp, flying spikes of ice. “And that would have been an absolute pain to deal with on our own with only Naevys actually using magic. Maybe those elves were onto something.” She grinned, putting a hand on both Tahir’s and Meti’s shoulders once everyone had gathered up.

  “I’m deeply sorry about earlier - is your snake going to be okay?” Larissa asked. The Winged Serpent did sustain burns all along its body, and now that Tahir had the opportunity to look closer, many of its feathers had been singed. He couldn’t tell if it could actually fly.

  “Don’t worry about it, I got distracted, and it was a pretty hectic fight to begin with. It’ll be alright. All things considered I can resummon another body, but that would take more aura and mana. Should we go check and see if the guards need any help outside?”

  “Right. If you guys are still good to go, let's get out of here.” Everyone gathered at the teleportation circle, taking them back to the entrance. Moving quickly, they stepped out of the ruins to find what looked to be the aftermath of another siege. The holes in the barrier looked smaller than the day before, which implied the elves had been fixing them, but several of the wooden men and other, smaller plant like creatures sneaked through, and lay on the ground close to the ruin in a variety of mangled states, from burned to cut to smashed. Outside, the shimmering rainbow color of the barrier around the holes made seeing exactly what was behind them difficult, but it looked like a scene of the aftermath of a major forest fire. He supposed the likes of Tsekani and Kazadi would be the bane of any plants with their magic. The tremor he felt earlier probably came from one of their spells.

  A couple of guards came up to them as they exited the ruin and asked them about the status of their delve. Once they confirmed that they cleared their floors, they were asked to return to the embassy for the time being. With that, Tahir let the Winged Serpent rest and recalled it. They all returned to the embassy, and Tahir and Meti split from Talibah’s group, with Talibah wishing them luck on the final floors.

  They met up with Hasio, Theo, and Murabi, who were waiting in the lounge. “How’d it go?” Murabi asked them.” You guys don’t look too worse for wear.”

  “We did alright.” Meti said, with her and Tahir going into what they fought, and the trap that they ran into in the middle of their delve.

  “You didn’t actually eat any of it right?” Theo asked.

  “Almost. Before I even knew what I was doing. The Winged Serpent and Meti snapped me out of it though.”

  “Charm magic’s always something to watch out for. Doesn’t happen very often outside of fey magic though.” Murabi shrugged. “Not a lot that could have prepared you for it, but I’m glad you came out alright. Anyway, I know I said I’d leave you to your own training, but that was before they started keeping us in the embassy so we couldn’t see them struggling with the barrier. If you’re willing, I think we can get started with the techniques I want to start teaching you. The basics at least. It shouldn’t be too intensive, so it won’t impede on our own delve tomorrow, and it’ll give you something to do for the rest of the day. How does that sound?”

  Looking between each other, they couldn’t really say no to that. Even if he felt a little tired after a couple of fights back to back, he’d been looking forward to learning what he could from Murabi ever since he’d seen his demonstration.

  “After a meal, at least.” Meti answered, beginning to make her way toward her room to deposit her things. “That would be fantastic.”