It was all so fast.
In moments yells boomed in Valthar's ears and a bright light flooded through his eyelids.
Such sudden stimuli only increased the waves of information his mind was already struggling to bear.
Forehead to the ground Valthar grunted as his body crumbled into fetal position.
He tried to suppress the new sense he inadvertently unlocked, but the green lights around him refused to be ignored.
"Are you okay Valthar?" A stupid question reached his ears.
One he would love to bite back at, but knew better than to try.
In this state if he dared let his mouth open for even a second there would be no way to contain the screams that would crawl out of his throat.
In this struggle every second seemed to stretch into hours as he fought to keep consciousness and to adapt to the information overflow.
A fight he was losing fast as his headache only grew.
It was then that something shifted in his body and the green lights from the grass started to gather towards him.
In fear it would only worsen things he resisted against his body and to his surprise the lights obeyed effortlessly
Still his headache grew stronger and his body pleaded with his mind to do something to make it stop.
In a desperate attempt Valthar tried to cycle mana through his head, but unlike the lights that obeyed without struggle the mana didn't budge.
Desperation grew with the pain and soon it overcame his caution.
The moment he changed his mind the green lights started to flow to his body.
Under and around Valthar the vegetation started to wither, though no one had the presence of mind to notice anything right now.
As the lights close to him dimmed down, the lights from plants further away started to travel towards Valthar.
On the ground the withered vegetation spread both fast and silently.
His body drank heavily on what he now could feel was some sort of energy and his headache started to ease.
With ten plus years of magical studies Valthar could easily tell the green light wasn't mana and yet he had no clue what it truly was.
Then, to his surprise, he felt the energy gather towards his heart by itself taking the rough shape ring.
For a moment Vlathar felt as if gods themselves had just spat in the face of all the mana he gathered in the last few months.
Though the process was far from done, Valthar could already tell the energy was forming his own mana ring… Well, energy ring? Green light ring?
Valthar wasn't sure what to call it, but it brought a bittersweet joy to his heart nonetheless.
A joy soon overshadowed by the happenings he could now process without the feeling of a gong pulsing inside his head.
Outside his eyelids the bright light had dimmed and the people close to the firepit had grown from 8 to enough that he didn't bother counting.
At some point the foxes took control of the clearing, surrounding the many humans still in the tents area.
As he opened his eyes Valthar only saw darkness from which screams echoed where he felt the energy from the recruits being snuffed out one after the other.
From the lights could feel their energies pulse in a myriad emotions, confusion, panic, despair, pain and fear.
They wanted to live just as much as himself, but they were not as lucky.
Their only silver lining being the short they took to go from pain to nothing at all.
For a moment the shadow foxes creeped closer, their energy's bloodthirst pulsing loudly in Valthar's mind until suddenly they stopped in their tracks.
In a moment their energies echoed with subservience before the whole pack slowly departed to the forest.
Their feelings of happiness were barely contained, as they dragged away their haul.
Feeling the danger pass, Valthar's body relaxed on the ground.
Before he could stop he was lulled into a deep sleep.
*
It was hours later when Valthar woke up only to find himself lying down on a metal coated floor.
To his side he could see two of the mages of the caravan laid in deep sleep.
In the center of the room the rest of the survivors gathered around another mage as he held two spheres in his hands.
One was a dim source of light while the other consumed mana to generate breathable air.
To say the mood in the room was tense would be an understatement.
Even though most chatted to those around, they only spoke in quiet hushes with a few drops of fear sprinkled amidst every phrase.
Confused, Valthar approached one person he had grown to see as a friend during the journey to Deep Bonfire, Hector.
"Hey man, what happened? Where are we?" He said in a hush, copying the way the others spoke.
Hector looked back with a wide smile, his loud voice filled the metallic room.
"Valthar! You gave me a spook up there, I thought you had a heart attack."
Though that answered neither of his doubts Valthar couldn't help but let a small smile slip at the corner of his lips.
"Yeah, thanks for the worry, but really where are we? How long have I been out?"
Oblivious to the dirty looks the others in the room shot at him he answered in a tone too happy for such a situation.
"We are still in the clearing, but after the foxes went away we hid underground" Then he shook his head. "About the time I have no idea, but you can ask Lionel, he was waiting for you to wake up by the way, it sounded very important."
"Thank you brother." Valthar answered before he looked around the room.
Not a single patch of sunlight could be seen escaping from any walls, shifting his attention to his new energy sense he searched for the closest energy that felt like a tree.
Which he found soon enough up above the ceiling to what he guessed would be at least 200 meters away, meaning the caravan was now 200 meters beneath the earth.
Disoriented by the sudden change Valthar made his way to Lionel.