It is said it's darkest right before dawn. On the Plains Of Warring Frost, the darkness was disrupted by a flash of blue-purple light. Out of the light which was around 30 meters above the ground came out two dark shapes- one small and one roughly the size of a human - which fell down to hit the ground with a muffled thud. The succubus let out a pained groan before she passed out.
When the succubus finally woke up she looked up at the sky and saw that it was already past midday, she called out to the sprite but, as expected, didn't get a response. Her body was painful all over and she couldn't move, seeing that she tried to activate the healing spell in her body but it didn't work.
Frightened, the succubus immediately tried to find out what was wrong, that was when she finally noticed that she was almost drained of mana, bothering on mana deficiency. It couldn't be helped, for the past couple of weeks she had been wearing mana-sealing braces, and when she finally took them off she was in a life or death fight using magical two weapons which were more than her body could handle. A prolonged fight wasn't good for the succubus in that situation, the magic weapons were guzzling her stamina and mana and the only thing that kept her going was the adrenaline and stubborn desperation. That dungeon was almost drained of ether so her mana recovery was slow and she had to feed a boatload of it to the teleport formation. She was lucky to have left alive.
It's common knowledge that when your mana is almost zero its recovery rate is also almost non-existent, so she hadn't recovered much while she was unconscious. Relying on her bodies natural recovery would waste time so she had to do it actively to speed up the process. This was especially important considering the fact that she wasn't sure of her exact location, but she did know it was a danger zone.
When her mana level had finally returned to capacity it was already the middle of the night and without delay she fed mana to the healing-formation to start her recovery. The succubus had chosen to teleport to the plains in order to avoid the whole issue of teleporting straight into a mountain or other things.
The plains were a good solution to the problem, but according to her map, the plains were anything but safe.
She was a mere succubus, a lesser one at that, the denizens of the Plains Shunned by the Heavens were unlikely to need more than a glance to kill her. Saying that the Warring Plains and the Devouring Plains were a good bit safer compared to the Plains Shunned by the Heavens wasn't comforting for the succubus, any area infamous for breeding God eaters didn't make a good basis for comparison. She didn't know which plain she had teleported to, she was in a rush so she only picked the rough direction, the angle and set it at maximum distance the formation allowed, she dearly hoped that it was a safe plain, like one of the Demi-human plains, a peace loving race would be even better.
All things considered she had to leave the plains and preferably soon. Thinking that she took control of the healing process.
Firstly her bones snapped into place, some of the more important torn muscles were fixed, the potentially fatal internal injuries were healed before she closed up her more serious wounds. This was the best she could do, even with top level magic, healing needs energy and nutrients, and she had achieved a lot with the nutrients she had in her stomach.
She silently thanked her former captors for being hospitable enough to give her enough food during her entire imprisonment.
She was nowhere near being completely healed and she needed food and rest before she could continue her recovery. But she couldn't rest easy without knowing the situation she's in so she sat up straight while ignoring the pain in her body and took out her map.
It took a couple of seconds for the map to lock into her position, when the succubus saw where she was she cursed in her mind. The map revealed to her that she was near the edge of the Plains of Warring Frost, near the border with the Plains of Devouring Hellflames around 500 kilometers from the Gorgon Domain which was the closest large human settlements, but it wasn't wise for her to go there.
The succubus decided to immediately start planning her travel route. Generally speaking, weaker beings tend to stick closer to the edge of wherever they live so the succubus decided to stick close to the edge, but she couldn't get too close since borders weren't known to be peaceful.
The little information about the Plains of Devouring Hellflames the map had states that on the 13th to the 15th month the Hellflames were at their hottest to the point of affecting nearby areas, such as warming up and melting snow in the edges of the Plains of Warring Frost. Where she was at a bit 100 kilometers from the Plains of Devouring Hellflames there wasn't any snow but it was still cold. Right now should be around the beginning of the 14th month which means that the succubus had over a month to leave the plains. Succubi aren't elemental demons but they are still mostly considered fire demons so she preferred to be out of the Plains by the time the snow comes back. She also had an apprehension towards devouring elements, especially Hellflames which are known for the innate devouring ability.
She wouldn't travel to the opposite direction of the Gorgon Domain, the Plains of Shearing Storms was not a survivable place, the gusts there are known to cut juvenile dragons in half. Not the type of weather she favors.
Thus, to the succubus' dismay, she had no choice but to return to the Gorgon Domain. She sighed before she checked the state of the alchemical box, she had tried to keep it safe during the fight but the situation wasn't in her control. And she had fell quite a good distance when she teleported so she wasn't too confident about its state. She took out the box from her utility belt and when she saw the palm sized box, she reminded herself to not approach the belongings of the rich and powerful like any other item, the alchemical box had a few negligible scratches and that was the full extent of its external damage. Next, the succubus had to look inside, she opened the box and it was a black void inside, she looked around her for a stick but couldn't find any so she settled on a long straw of grass. Only an idiot would put her hand in a potentially damaged void item, so she used the grass, if it wasn't ripped into shreds by the spatial formations it meant that the it was okay to use, if it was, she'd lost a lot of extremely valuable materials.
The straw of grass went in the box, the succubus stirred it around for a bit and seeing that nothing happened to it the succubus pulled it out and threw it to the side. She put her hand in the box that was barely 5 centimeters thick and pulled out the formations materials and carefully examined every single one of them, seeing that nothing was damaged the succubus was elated and finally placed the box back on the utility belt.
She rested for around an hour before she painfully tried to stand up, groaning in the process. Her bones felt as if they would snap and her muscles ached all over, she stood still for a few minutes trying to get used to the feeling before she looked around her for what ever is left of the sprite.
She instead saw a puddle of reddish slugde just a dozen or so meters away from her landing spot. Slowly approaching the puddle while ignoring the pain, the succubus could safely assume but not certainly claim that the puddle once had the identity of a certain sprite.
'As expected, it didn't make it,' taking a closer look at the puddle she sighed, 'I can't even get any materials from it. What a waste.'
Putting aside the wasted materials for a moment, the succubus was pretty happy with the results. In front of her was a puddle of sludge not dust she wouldn't have even found. Granted, she was nowhere close to understanding the formation but at least the knowledge she had was enough to go from the usual dust in the wind to a puddle of sludge.
With a bit of practice she could possibly figure out how to safely piggyback someone. And then there was the other thing to be happy about.
She pulled out a yellow stone twice the size of her thumb nail and smiled. This was the only reason she decided to involve the sprite, the sprite was dead but she still got what she wanted, she noted the sprite's death but it wasn't too important to her compared to the Oculux stone. She polished the Oculux stone on her rags before positioning it near her head and fed mana to it and pieces of information appeared in her head.