Chapter 500: Guest Rites
As the last dregs of my essence dribbled away, I gasped in exhaustion, and felt the portal snap shut behind me. There were still countless people trapped on the other side of the portal - countless children, countless adults, countless people who had been fleeing with us and just wanted to live. Countless people that I had failed to bring with us.
My hands shook as I processed the fact that many, many people had just died. People that I had seen around the clan. People I had fought with, talked with, and worked with to keep us alive during this nightmare of an ordeal. I wouldn’t see any of them ever again.
Just like always. We met people, they dissipated like dust in the wind, and only the four of us were left to remember their passage.
I took a deep breath, before I shook my head. I didn’t have time to focus on the ones who were gone. I had to keep moving forward, for the ones that I had managed to drag over here. We weren’t out of the woods yet - even if my friends had said the plants would keep us safe from the lava spewing out of the distant volcano. I wanted to get to safety as soon as possible. After all, I was completely out of essence - I had spent every single drop I had to maintain the portal, and trying to use mana several times beyond my own capacity felt like it had strained something in my mana pools. I had no idea how long it would take to heal, but I got the feeling that at least for a while, I wouldn’t be casting a whole lot of magic, at risk of tearing open my brain or something equally horrendous. Right now, I had no way to fight back against any monster or environment threat, save for my physical strength and speed. I didn’t even have a real weapon right now, and I was tired, in pain, and out of magic.
If another emergency cropped up, I was basically helpless. That, more than anything else, felt terrible. Stuck with no essence at all left me with a sense of vulnerability I hadn’t experienced in a long time, and I didn’t like it.
I took one final look at the refugees that had managed to make it through the portal before it closed. In total, we had about a thousand people who had been successfully evacuated. Ninety percent percent of them were children, and the remaining ten percent were adults. Of the surviving adults, basically all of them were either spatial mages, or the direct family members of the spatial mages, along with a few high-power combatants to keep the group alive. I was relieved that I hadn’t needed to say goodbye to my father yet - and that my friend’s parents had also managed to come along, since I was one of the biggest contributors to the gate and so I’d had a bit more leeway to bring passengers along. Even so, that didn’t mean our situation was great. the adults were outnumbered by the children to a ludicrous degree. It would be impossible for a clan with this age ratio to ever survive in the wild - it would get bulldozed by a monster attack in mere minutes.
I shook my head, and set my worries aside. We would have to handle whatever came in the future, but there wasn’t much we could do about it now besides rush towards sanctuary and hope for the best.
Then, I did my best to raise my voice.
“All right! Sallia, Anise, and Felix have already gone ahead and scouted for us! They found a town of people from this plane. They have agreed to give us shelter, food, and a place to rest for five days, before they will send us away. We should head there first, and take this opportunity to rest!” I said.
My voice wasn’t very loud, but at the very least, it carried well enough in the clearing.
“What about the heat?” asked one of the adults. “I think I can see embers in the distance, too. It’s never been so hot before, goodness gracious.”
“The plants apparently absorb heat as part of their biology. Just ignore it. We do need to get moving, though, or else we might get incinerated.”
I saw a few of the adults squirm uneasily when I mentioned getting incinerated, but I ignored them. Once I had learned that the lava wasn’t a real threat, I had gotten quite comfortable ignoring it. We just needed to exit the area in case other threats appeared, or in case the plants failed and the lava reached us.
“We’ll follow your lead. You’ve done right by us so far,” said one of the combat elites - one of the few adults that wasn’t connected to a spatial mage by familial ties.
With one of the protectors for the ‘new clan’ supporting me, and no reason to oppose my choice of direction, we quickly got moving. We began a steady jog towards the giant pit in the ground that my friends had found.
As we moved forward, I started to see flashes of lava between the giant ferns. This gave me a firsthand view of how the plants handled lava. I realized that the plants were a lot more active about it than I had assumed they were - anytime lava encircled a plant, it would start to gravitate towards the plant, almost as if the plant were slurping it up with a straw. The plant also began to glow a hot orange color as it consumed more lava. If my magically related senses weren’t so messed up from the feats of magic I had just performed, I suspected I would have seen all kinds of interesting bits about how these plants and their biology worked. Sadly, right now I couldn’t even utilize my soul sight without severe pain in my eyes and head.
I looked at the pit in the ground. There, standing just below us, was one of the plant people that Sallia had sent me images of, standing on a giant vine. The vine was nearly five hundred meters tall, and at least twenty meters wide. It formed a gently sloping ramp that would let us easily walk from the surface into the caverns below our feet.
“I have come to offer/lend my assistance in your descent into the caverns. I will show you to your lodgings and bring you food afterwards. Do be careful, for the drop is long/deadly, and should you fall off the bridge I have no way to save you before you die from impact.”
I gave the slowly encroaching lava one last nervous look as it continued to creep towards us, before I helped usher kids onto the vine bridge.
The vine bridge itself proved sturdy enough for easy transportation. I carefully made our way down the vine bride, as I tried to ignore the massive drop that loomed on either side of the giant vine.
The plant people led us down the bridge, before we arrived at two large, communal buildings. They looked kind of like soldier barracks, as long as I ignored the crazy plant biology that went into creating living, breathing houses.
“We have reached your quarters. There are about one thousand of you, so you may find these quarters slightly cramped, but we are not capable of comfortably accommodating such a large group. You have our deepest apologies for our failure to maintain Guest Rites perfectly - we will certainly fix this by tomorrow. Please, enjoy some food while you wait.” The plant gave us a strange half-bow, before it danced to the side. A few moments later, several other plants came, bearing platters of fruits and nuts. They didn’t have very much variety in their offered foods - there was no meat, just berries and nuts. Still, it was at least something to fill our stomachs after the flight here.
I ravenously consumed two plates of food, before I settled into the cramped quarters of our new sanctuary and fell into a deep sleep. It was far from ideal, but at least we had safety, food, and a place to rest our heads for the night. I just hoped that whatever trials came when our Guest-Rites ended wouldn’t prove to be the death of us all.