The bright light from the teleportation spell temporarily blinded the two hence it was quite difficult for them to know where they got thrown into.
When the light ebbed, Briar squinted his eyes but all he could see was pitch black. So instead of forcing himself to see his surroundings he focused on what he felt… which was like floating on air.
Then suddenly, the mana residue that held him up vanished. He felt himself being pulled down by gravity.
"That hurts…" he breathed out as his back hit the hard surface.
He tried to get up but something heavy had landed on top of him and sent him back on the cold floor.
"ooof!" it felt like the air got knocked out of his lungs.
Instinctively, he tried to push the one which was on top of him away, however, his hand had come into contact with something soft and round. He was a puzzled so he gave it a little squeeze.
"Your Highness! Your hand!" Atropa's scream broke the eerie silence and along with it, he felt her slap his hand.
It stung but he managed to apologize quickly. "Forgive me…I didn't know…"
"Your highness… please say no more." Atropa stopped himself from saying anything else.
"such a pervert…" she muttered under her breath.
Briar was thankful of the darkness. She wouldn't see him blushing like crazy. He had a pretty good idea about the soft, round mound that he had touched earlier.
Then Briar felt the weigh had somehow gotten off from him. He was relieved and at the same time saddened that Atropa had moved away a little.
"This place is really dark." Atropa awkwardly changed the topic. "Will it be okay if we produce light? I could not sense any dangerous presence in the area."
He responded. "Producing light may attract other entities. But I would rather take my chance in seeing what we are dealing with rather than navigating this place in the dark."
"I agree, your highness." With that the tear shaped pendant glowed bright and illuminated the place.
The sudden appearance of light impaired their vision for a bit. But when their eyes had adjusted, they both observed the place.
"What is this place?" the maid asked as her eyes traveled through the concrete bricked walls and the high ceiling.
"If I hazard a guess, I say that we are inside of a dungeon." Briar mused as he took note of the darkened passage. The light only reached a few meters so he really couldn't tell.
Getting up, he made his way to the walls and touched the rough surface. When he moved his hand, the dust got wiped away and his hand left a mark. A lot of dust had accumulated and covered his palm.
"This place is quite old and somehow the air is stagnant. Most likely this place had been abandoned for a few decades at least." He deduced.
"Why is that teleportation spell connected to this place?" he muttered. Not really seeing the connection of the ritual ground and this dungeon.
"I think the caster toys with his victims before he subjected them to the ritual." Atropa gave her insight. "Some people with sadistic nature love games like that."
"I don't think that is the only reason. There must be a bigger goal for that caster to do a series of sacrificial ritual." Briar asked.
"I am not sure, your highness." She answered. "One of my hunches is that, this caster had a psychotic breakdown."
"breakdown?"
"There are a lot of casters who had ties with demons and had gone insane. Oftentimes, they do as they please without regard to human life, since they are incapable of thinking properly."
"Well, we really can't know if our deductions are correct. Should we explore?" Briar asked while offering his hand to Atropa.
Taking his offer, Atropa allowed him to pull herself up to her feet. "With pleasure. I mean we can't sit here and wait for rescue."
They were walking inside the passage for quite some time until they have reached an area which was a bit different from where they had been teleported to.
The walls, which appeared to have been sectioned into several meter-wide slabs, had inscriptions on them.
Briar drew near and took note of one of the sections which had the most characters. "These are ancient scripts."
"How did you know>" she asked while holding the pendant to illuminate the wall. The inscriptions appeared to have been carved on the wall by a very sharp chisel.
"I have seen some surviving manuscripts from the age of the Darkness." He said as he touched a series of sigils.
"Are you certain?"
"I saw similar scripts when I visited the ruins of a once glorious empire. They were using these runes." He motioned to the inscription which looked like a combination of several geometrical shapes rather than letters.
"Can you read it, your highness?"
"I wish I could." He sighed in dismay. "But this is a dead language so I wasn't able to study the characters. No one could teach me since it is rare to come across people who study ancient texts."
"Then we won't know what is written here." Atropa seemed to have lost interest and tried to move.
A little further, the inscriptions on the walls had changed into mural paintings. Though the paintings were old and some parts are beginning to fade, it did manage to reveal the story that it held for centuries.
"Wow!" These paintings!" the maid exclaimed as she took note of the huge image which portrayed several young men clad in strange clothes.
Briar's eyes widened as he drank the images of characters of long ago. The first figure was a man with long robes and a staff which had the same height as him.
"a wizard…" Briar trailed off. Then he focused on the next figure, who was wearing a full armor and had a bastard sword. "swordsman."
His eyes feed to the direction of a man who wields a weapon called glaive. "a lancer…" he whispered.
Next to it was a young lad who had a bow and arrow. "an archer."
Briar then focused to the next figure, he has light weight equipment and seemed to specialize in stealth. "a scout ranger".
Then the next one looked like a caster but without a staff. "Most likely this person is a healer."
And last was a rather stout man whose muscles are bulging. "This is a warrior."
He counted them, "seven…Atropa, this painting depicts the heroes and the members of the first generation of Enclave of Kings who defeated the Dark Suzerain."
"What?" she seemed taken aback. "Isn't that just a fairytale?"
"A legend…" he corrected. "Some of the stories were part of ancient history. But the records were not preserved and passed down properly."
"It was passed down through oral tradition, right?" she asked.
"Yes and because of that the surviving tales later on were altered and had been mixed with fictitious elements." He explained. "Therefore, they were handed down as simply tales to teach and sometime scare children."
Curious, Atropa queried. "How do you know all of this, your highness? I don't think this is a part of a royal prince's education."
"I did study history as it is mandatory for a prince's education. But it was unfortunate that only a very few records had the age of darkness."
He chuckled for a bit then continued. "As a child, I have always been fascinated with tales about the Enclave."
"So I went beyond the fairytales and started discovering and rediscovering information across the continent." He confessed. "I got to know certain facts about the forefathers and how far away they are from us, their descendants."
"I see. Learning from the past may have been a great journey for you."
He nodded, it was his passion after all.