A fire-furred fox carrying the girl in her hands saw that the blue mist continued into the wall instead of following the tunnel causing the woman to rub her eyes in the hope she was seeing things.
"Hello, Guardian? Your thing is broken I think." The shaman fell silent to listen for a sign but nothing happened.
"Why did you stop?" The curious human asked with a sleepy voice.
"The path leads us through this.." The fox replied as she observed the wall, looking for a sign.
Nakatei lifted her left hand to call on nearby spirits for help. She was offering 0.2 mana per second with twenty-five mana points as a down payment, it was one six of her entire mana supply and she hoped that a spirit will quickly answer her call thanks to this generous gift. She hoped for a level 2 or 3 spirit to show up and maybe fix the path Guardian had given to her.
"A summon shouldn't take this long to manifest," The human scrutinized the shaman causing the woman to look down and stare at the bored looking human. "Why are you creating a summon now? Summons have their knowledge passed from the summoner so they can't know more than the person who summoned them knows unless they have access to additional sensory abilities which the summoner might not have like Mana Sight or Thermal Vision."
"Why are you calling spirits, summons? I'm a shaman and not- never mind." The beast woman stopped as she heard her system notify her of a call being answered.
The flame of her torch almost died as it pulled itself free and fell onto the floor. The flame shrank drastically as something pulled it off the tar soaked cloth and onto the ground. The liquid flame created a small vortex no higher than Nakatei's knee in which black dots began to appear. With a crack, the vortex stopped shooting small droplets of liquid fire everywhere around it, as a small fire spirit revealed itself accompanied by system notification informing the woman that she had summoned a level 2 fire spirit.
The fire spirit appeared very excited as it jumped into the air with its fist above its small little head made from fire encased in some sort of black rock without which the spirit would appear like ordinary flame. When the spirit landed on the ground its large eyes excitedly looked around. The black rock around the socked acting as the spirit's eyes appeared to be the only part of its body able to move as its face with sunken cheeks didn't move at all. The animated speck of fire and rock hopped backwards in shock before it rushed towards the shaman.
"Thanks." The demi-human said as the fire spirit extinguished the small droplet of fire which had landed on her dress, singeing a small spot into its red fabric.
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The fire spirit looked up and waved at Nakatei. She waved back at the spirit, she never managed to summon a fire spirit before and it appeared that everything she heard about them was true, that they are boundless balls of energy waiting eagerly to do something but she wasn't sure if having a fire spirit answer her was a good thing as they are infamous at being little hollow headed and tricksters but of more destructive veracity then wind spirits.
"Do you have a way to call Guardian of the nearby Spiritpool?" Instead of responding, the fire spirit began to shake in fear while moving its head from side to side. "Can you then see what is wrong with the path the Guardian had given me? It's going straight into the wall."
The spirit crawled up into a small ball and shook its head in uncertainty as if asking the shaman to rethink. Seeing that its temporary master couldn't be swayed the fire spirit jumped back onto its feet leaving a scorch mark on the stone where its little stick legs touched. It placed its flaming finger free of the black stone on its sunken cheek as it walked toward the blue mist.
Nakatei let out a sigh of relief as the fire spirit appeared to be able to see the path unlike anyone else, even the cold mage in her hands describe only a faint awareness of it. The fire spirit touched the mist causing it to move like a rope connected on both ends and the spirit tried to push the rope in the middle.
As the spirit was hard at work trying to fix the path, the fox noticed that the girl was trying to watch the fire spirit. Helping the out of breath human, Nakatei lifted her left arm a little where Kia was resting her head.
The two women watched as the fire spirit flew backwards as the path snapped violently back into place sending the spirit into the air. The fire spirit slide down the wall before standing up while holding its head with both of its hands as it stumbled from side to side.
"Hhhmmm?" The young woman ignored the spirit which weaved in between her legs and walked up to the wall seeing deep cracks appear in its surface. She pushed the wall with one hand but nothing happened. "Give me a moment." She said to the pale human as she put her down and pulled out her fragmented sword.
Chunks of rock shot into the air as the fox hit the wall with her weapon. Even with her embarassing low level, her tribe's weapon dug deep into the rock and as she twisted the blade out of it, the rock crumbled down.
"Well... that's embarrassing," Nakatei whispered as she stared into what looked like a newly dug tunnel which went further down. She turned around ashamed of thinking the Guardian was fooling her and waved her hand to dismiss the fire spirit slowly eating at her mana. "Huh?"
[System Notification]
[Fire Spirit you are currently bonded with is asking you to lower its mana cost to 1 mana point per minute.]
"You want to stay with me?" Nakatei asked as the spirit beside her had its hand raised as high as it could with its fingers interwoven with each other. Hearing the demi's voice the magical being nodded vigorously causing the flames on top of its head to almost be extinguished. "How much mana do you need a day?" The spirit stopped and scratched its head before counting its flaming fingers, taking a concerning amount of time to go through them. "Four?" She asked seeing that the spirit had held up its four-fingered hand toward her. "I guess you can have this much." She said as she lowered her mana expenditure to six points a day.
The fire spirit jumped up and extended its arms at the demi. Before she could react the fire spirit hugged her ankle.
"Ahhhh... huh?" Nakatei screamed before the spirit touched her before realising the magical being made from flame didn't hurt her. Its body was still uncomfortably warm to the touch but lifting up her dress, her ankle didn't have any burns on it.
"Summons can't hurt their summoner." Kia's voice reached Nakatei as she picked up the ice-cold human.
"I will carry you for a bit more before I have to take a rest." She said, the necromancer appeared somewhat hostile to her today unlike before when the girl treated her with either boredom or curiosity. Kia even murmured under her breath annoyed at something.
Leaving the grumpy necromancer alone to pout at the grey rock above her, Nakatei turned around and walked into the new tunnel illuminated by her torch and the fire spirit skipping beside her.