My little crew showed up to our event decked out. All of us had lamps, a couple of bottles for water, rope, and basic climbing gear to go along with our normal overnight load-out. Some of my companions had brought food and water, but I honestly would rather save the weight. I'd taken to wearing a variant of our armor that had legs instead of a skirt, rather frowned on normally, but if I was gong to be climbing ladders quite important.

Upon seeing us all gathered our professor looked at us, then at the rest of the group of students. "Good work, but to whomever did it, it is of note that one should take pains to hide their footprints in places with loose ground, like stables. Particularly if your feet are smaller than those of the men who tend to work there and you leave a ward obviously drained of mana."

I felt myself blush a bit and tried to hide my face. We might have gotten out without being caught, but leaving clues like that behind had been a bit sloppy.

Regardless, we were shortly split off into groups of three. I was joined by Troy, along with Alli, a girl from my class I seldom worked with, who I knew to be of the 'commoners' grouping. I suspected that I'd been placed specifically with those not too related to the nobility for this, and all of my other groupings after the incidents earlier this year.

We were all piled into one of the carriages, along with our gear. Each of the three of us had our standard issue armor, along with what we considered a basic provisions pack. Those had been part of our instructions, but everyone had chosen their own flair to put on it. It was strange , but the former kingdom's military had been only barely organized from the top down, and we still had a bit of that.

"So, do we have a plan?" Alli asked as our carriage thunked down the road.

"We don't know what the mission is, only where we're going," Troy answered.

That got a raised eyebrow. "Where?"

"Undercity," I groaned.

"I've never been down there. Don't suppose either of you have?" Troy shook his head, but I sighed and took over.

"It's going to be dark, and difficult to navigate. The undercity itself is not too dangerous in most places, but the latter part of that statement is vital. I don't know how deep we're going, but as you go lower and lower the danger level rises quickly. We're likely to see rodents of unusual size, along with any number of other minor monsters that have set up shop."

"Okay, so you've been down obviously. What's our maximum danger look like?" Alli seemed the kind to get all the info she could, which was good as far as I was concerned.

"There are some rather large and extremely dangerous monsters down there, if we go deep enough. We might also become trapped, but I'm guessing Professor Endel has taken some precautions with that. The worst I've seen were not something we could fight head on, but everything has a weakness. If we run into anything too big we'll just need to leave it's territory." I breathed in, thinking on my experiences.

"The bigger issue will be navigation. It is a literal maze down there." I leaned back thumping my head against the wood. I still didn't have a good answer to that problem.

We took the rest of the ride while Alli and Troy asking me a few more basic questions, some of which I could answer, some of which I couldn't. I'd only been to the undercity once or twice before, so I wasn't really an expert on the matter.

When we arrived at our destination everyone got out and followed our professor to a hidden opening from which flowed a creek. The tunnel itself was perhaps fifteen feet wide, with a ledge along one side. He put up a light and shushed our questions as he led us into the darkness.

We didn't walk far before he turned to a sealed door and opened it with some form of key. From there we went down, probably for a good hour we walked, Endel leading as his assistant followed behind to make sure none of us got lost. When we finally stopped it was in a large, fairly empty room, easily big enough for us all to stand in comfortably. All along the walls were doors, far enough spaced that they probably led to very different paths.

"Good day everyone, and welcome to the undercity." Endel looked out at us as he produced a bag. "Everyone take one of these, and then we'll begin."

Each of us got a small item, decidedly magical in nature with a number on it. It glowed faintly as the assistant professor took the numbers down. While waiting all of us checked our gear, by this point experienced enough to know not to bring much, but still nervous that we had everything.

"Alright, now that you have those, don't lose them, each releases a trail that can be tracked in case of emergency or failure to return to the surface on time. They also have a timekeeping function, and will change color at halfway through our exercise. When that happens you are to immediately head upwards. Your goal for this exercise is to go out into the undercity and hunt, you will gain points based on what you succeed in taking on, along with making your way back to the school. Questions?"

"How far down are we?" I asked, since nobody else seemed to know what to say.

"Roughly seven levels, as commoners measure them. This is as far down as they would go, because any lower and magic will be needed to combat what you find. I know for a fact that this section of the city goes down at least twice as deep, but would not advise you to delve too much lower."

"Anything else we need to know?" One of the boys in the class asked.

"Do not split your group. If you come back to the surface without all members, or confirmation that the missing ones are dead, you will be considered to have failed this exercise."

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Since everyone seemed ready he began by taking the groups one at a time to the doors. Each was quite locked and the group was let out after a word of encouragement from Professor Endel. When I was smaller I would have viewed seven levels as something near legendary, the best rat catchers I had heard of barely touching that. I supposed that the city might well have some more professional non-magical soldiers who could easily go that deep though.

Soon enough it was our turn, we'd been left for last. As our teacher led us over to the last of the doors he opened it with a loud grinding.

"Now, I've got expectations for you lot, since you prepared for the undercity and all." He laughed.

"Professor we... actually, yeah, that was us. Well, not Alli." He corrected himself as he got a glare from the girl in question, I couldn't do anything but laugh.

"Intel gathering is important lad, but so is secrecy. We'll talk about that when you get back, for now. Good luck." As I left the portal he slammed the metal door home with a final *thunk* letting the silence take us.

The undercity hadn't changed much, well, at least as far as I could tell. It was cool, dark, and quiet, and we set out forward, no point in trying to keep back. As we trudged along we ran into other groups once or twice, but fairly little else.

While we found a few monsters, most of those were painfully minor to us. Any of our group could kill a giant rat or the like with pretty minimal effort, even me. We took on about a dozen of those as we passed along. It was hard to gauge, but I was pretty sure that these were bigger than those higher up, perhaps there was more ambient magic down here or something.

"Ugh, more rats, can we get something else please." Alli complained as we made our way into what looked like an old sewer, having just taken out a couple more of the beasts.

We opted to follow this for a bit, it was easy to walk and didn't look like it had any other students going down it. It went on for perhaps half a mile, curving slightly this way and that, but strangely empty. After a time we came to a drop-off, opening into a cylinder of some kind.

"Neat, some kind of drainage?" Troy asked. As he did Alli got close to the edge, looking down.

I nearly missed it as she was grabbed. The reason this tunnel had been so empty feeling but not covered in webs. It was huge, the furry legs snatched her like a fly before a frog, pulling her off to the side of the tunnel opening.

"Alli!" Both of us yelled as she was pulled away.

Troy didn't miss a beat, preparing a spell as he rushed to the side, a flaming bolt swirling around his hand. I tried to stop him but was just a beat behind as he leveled it and let loose, the spear of flame screaming towards the monster and taking one of it's legs.

"You idiot, you can't use fire, it's..." I watched in horror as the worst began.

The spider was as big as a horse, and holding our teammate in two of it's legs, it's face over her body as Troy's bolt slammed into it, taking one of it's appendages. The fire then hit the light coating of webs behind, and began spreading like lit spiderweb always seemed to do. The monster dropped Alli, who was shaking and gurgling, looking like she was having a seizure from where she landed on a much lower web.

"Shit," Troy said as he watched the monster turn towards us, the fire spreading all along the walls in a wave.

"Really! Deal with that thing, I'll get her!" I started singing as I swan dove towards Alli, behind me the spider jumped towards the tunnel entrance, only to be met by a hail of ice shards from Troy.

As I approached her in my dive my speed seemed to drop rapidly, nearly jolting me as I slammed into my companion. I'd have to think about it later, because now I had work to do. On her side, clearly visible through her armor were two largish holes, leaking an angry yellow-green fluid. The wound could wait, I immediately decided as I worked my song into an anti-poison spell.

When I'd come to the academy I wouldn't have been able to fix this, it would have been a death sentence. As it stood the sheer amount of venom in her was giving me trouble, but I was making progress. Bit by bit I was pulling away the killer fluid, yanking it forcefully from her trembling body.

Behind the sounds of battle continued, eventually ending with both combatants flying from the tunnel. Troy was no slouch and was giving the beast a good showing, a blade of ice shoved into it as ichor sprayed. Invertebrates were tough customers though and the spider flailed in rage, trying to get teeth into it's enemy.

As they fought though, the fire spread, and before I was done it started hitting the strands holding our web in the air. One after another they began to burn, each lost letting us droop lower and lower until we swung towards the wall. As we impacted I lost my spell.

"Ice water!" I yelled up at Troy, it would cool the monster worse than it would any mammal, and the water might help with the quickly spreading inferno.

A small mercy was that the fire didn't have too much to burn, while it was going quickly air was sucked from below to feed it, so from my point the smoke wasn't bad. I could see it quickly approaching us though, and that was no good.

I would have liked to keep working on Alli, but there was no time. Soon the web would burn and we WOULD fall, and I had little I could do about that. Instead of healing I wrapped her in my arms and legs and began to sing up my best kinetic shield, trying to make the outside a bit bouncy to act as a cushion when we inevitably tumbled into the darkness below.

I didn't have to wait long, and as we fell I embraced her, singing with all my might as we fell down, down into the abyss.