Astaroth ran like a madman, going down the stairs in groups of four, as the dark particles of mana he dreaded thickened the further down he went. He had been down almost five hundred steps when he finally saw the end of the stairs.
He calculated he was about a hundred meters under the tree palace, and by how the stairs spiralled, he was still right under the core. When he reached the floor, his thoughts were confirmed.
All around him, the walls were a mix of compacted dirt, stone, and roots; some thin, some thick. He was in an oddly shaped room, closely resembling an octagon, with a large stone dais in the center.
But his attention was on something else right now.
At the far end of the room, a large red gash in the air itself was spewing out thick red and black miasma. The miasma was filled with the same mana signature he had been dreading finding.
Demonic mana.
