The hero collapsed to the ground. The wounds from the battle were, indeed, heavy. Looking at the starry night, the moon was close to her destination. He needed to hurry up and not make his friends worry about him, but he wanted to rest for more. He watched as the beasts blood got sucked up by the ground. Smelling the scent of blood wasn't something he was unfamiliar with after all. A second later the green leaves of the trees lit up red, as if cheering him on his win.
'That's why it's called the crimson forest huh...' he thought while breathing heavily.
Sooner or later, he managed to get back to the camp. The wizard used her herbal knowledge to quicken the healing process and stop the bleeding. After all, she wasn't a healer. "I'll take the watch tonight, you two rest." said the paladin, wanting to help his friends as much as he can. The three of them snacked on their fruits. There was not much time for cooking and they needed to be rested when another one of those beasts show up.
The paladin sat on the makeshift, wooden-carved chairs, looking deep into the forest. Listening to the rather calming sounds of the forest and zoning out before he realized an hour had already passed. Thirstily, he got up to drink water.
Suddenly the leaves around the camp started to flicker with red lights, faster each second. Paladin immediately realized something is wrong. The trees of the Crimson Forest did indeed glow red when introduced to blood, but not like this.
He screamed at the top of his lungs: "Something is wrong here get up!". But it was futile. The ground beneath the camp opened like cotton. The camp began its unconsented descent to the depths.
At the time the wizard and the hero opened their eyes, they were going down in incredible speeds. The hero put his hands on the walls and used his powers to pull the surrounding earth, soften it and used them to slow the crash by pulling the semi-soft dirt beneath them. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but it was better than crashing down at this speed. At the same time the wizard used her power to pull a strong wind upward to slow them down even more.
Even after they drained every bit of magic running through them, consequently puking blood and feeling heavy fatigue, it wasn't enough. Panic and fear shone through their eyes. They had to do something and do it now. The paladin stomped his foot on the surrounding earth and pushed himself across so he can grab both the wizard and the hero, at the same time grabbing anything, beds, tents literally anything he can find that is soft and threw it under them, trying to cushion the fall.
Their painful bawling echoed through a giant cave, as if they were a choir of agony. The fall was heavy but their bones were fine. Though some of them are fractured, it wasn't something a good rest couldn't fix.
Even though they in fact wanted to rest, they couldn't. They were dropped to somewhere they had no clue about after all. Paladin was the first to get up. He looked at his surroundings. The place was, surprisingly, well illuminated. At the top of the cavern, there was a sphere, the producer of sun-like light. It was unclear from here whether this was man-made or not. He looked at this sphere in awe. Even his wildest findings weren't this magnificent.
The hero was the second to get up, his mind felt like mush. First thing he saw, was the ruins up ahead, which were too destroyed to be made sense of. He immediately stood up, ready for another battle. However, nothing was coming. The place was dead silent as though they were in a vacuum, only breathing noises echoing over and over. This made him more uncomfortable than if the place was filled with deafening noises.
Lastly, the wizard got up. She looked at both the hero and the paladin trying to make sense of their expressions. The hero spoke in a low voice, "Don't make a noise, there might still be something here." The group packed up some usable stuff from the pile and started to walk to the point of interest.
Up close the ruins looked like a city. A lot of stone bricks arranged to form rectangles of different sizes, with streets that led to a central place. The group walked on the streets. The supposed houses' paint was decayed many years ago, torn down to an unrecognizable degree. They weren't able to make out what color it was supposed to be anymore and their lungs filled with dust.
The paladin was still in awe; he was a man of exploration after all. He pulled out his notebook from his backpack and started recording what he was seeing. The wizard felt that something was off. She felt less magic than she was used to. By focusing the magic particles on her eye she clearly saw that the big sphere on the top of the cave was sucking nearly all of the magic, converting them from magic to light. The hero, on the other hand was pushing through the pain. The danger wasn't over. He needed to stand tall in order to not let his friends fall into despair.
They walked deeper into the ruined city, to where the main road was leading. At last they saw a great plaza in the center of it, there was a marble made pool and on the top of it there was a sculpture. The sculpture itself was professionally made. It was a fox with two heads pointing at opposite directions and each one of the heads had two antlers near its ears and one horn near its nose.
"The Great Fox..." the hero said in a rather scared voice. "What's its sculpture doing here?"
"Maybe worship." The wizard said. "The survivors said that it looked divine."
"The better question is what happened here." The paladin added, barely containing his excitement. "But questions won't get us anywhere let's explore!"
"It's better to rest here." The hero countered, while looking thoughtfully at the sculpture, "Nearly all of our provisions went to waste, and the fall got us good."
The paladin sighed. He couldn't find any flaw in the hero's reasoning and started to set up the camp to the near of the statue. The hero and the wizard went off to get some edible plants. While looking for the plants the hero found another road leading to a perfectly carved narrow passage. But he returned without going further. He was still wounded after all.
After an hour they came back with mushrooms and edible flowers. The wizard set up the fire and the hero used his cooking skills. They sat down on a few stone bricks that they had found earlier. It looked like they were going to be stuck here for a long time, they might at least be comfortable.