After hearing the whelp’s words, Ali hesitated. He looked to Tian and Mika but the two of them seemed unbothered by the horrors Qeday spoke of. After recalling his past combat, the teenager never saw either of them exhibit fear.
Maybe the inability to die like humans make them treat death different.
“These horrors will show up regardless if you tell me or not, right?” asked Ali after a minute of silence.
The whelp stated that the horrors would show their ugly faces eventually. The question was more of when as no one could be certain. The timing depended heavily on the power structure within the city between the various factions.
“What are they waiting for?” asked the teenager. “If they are that terrifying, then what’s stopping them from destroying the city now?”
Qeday began explaining that the horrors were evil spirits from an ancient battlefield. The spirits came from powerful beings and were immortal. The only way to suppress them was to seal them away while a toad dragon kept guard. As soon as the guardian of the seal was killed, the spirits were allowed to escape their prison. Yet, they couldn’t achieve much in their ethereal form so they must find bodies to possess. It was their body possession that would take time before the inevitable catastrophe fell upon the city.
“What’s stopping them from just possessing all the powerful beings in the city?” asked Mika.
“Some beings can resist possession and, if they do, there’s a chance for them to harm the spirit. The spirits might be hungry for power but they won’t be so easily blinded to risk permanent harm.”
“If they carefully pick who they possess, they will be unstoppable, won’t they? They can have eyes and ears everywhere.”
The whelp explained that she wasn’t clear on one thing which was likely the root of their confusion. The spirits, despite being sealed together, weren’t on the same side. They belonged to different factions and happened to be sealed together due to them all committing horrible crimes in the same city when they had physical bodies. This was likely a saving grace for the city as the spirits had to fight one another for the control of the city, giving the others a chance to fight back.
“What are the crimes committed by these spirits?”
“Massacres, sacrifices and forbidden rituals. The city we're in now was built over the ruins of the old one Nothing was off limits as long as they acquired the power to stand at the very top.”
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“Doesn’t sound like that changed,” said Ali.
The teenager was well aware of the power struggles that still existed. Cheudal was the perfect example where family members competed for the throne, willing to do anything to achieve that. He had seen Vliland fall and that was one of the many settlements destroyed in the conflict.
Maybe even Naeleph won’t be spared. It’s strong but it’s now facing its own internal struggles.
“What now?” asked Tian. “We know they are freed and we cannot escape the city. What options do we have now?”
“We fight as usual,” stated Ali firmly. “With our backs against the wall, we must at least struggle to the very end. I survived the toad dragon so I might be overconfident right now.”
“We should let Aok know what little we discovered,” said Tian. “That information might do good in his hands.”
Ali agreed with Tian’s suggestion. Out of all the people in Naeleph, he trusted Aok, Lorn and somewhat Ryu. He didn’t have much choice in the matter since he knew so little about the other denizens of the city. There was so much danger surrounding them that a single misstep could be fatal. He knew he could trust his three companions but they, like him, were simply too weak. None of them would survive whatever was about to befall this city, similarly to how powerless they felt in Vliland.
“Qeday, what are your strengths? During combat, what can we expect from you?”
Ali was serious on the matter because he trusted Tian and Mika to aid him in whatever small way they could offer. Qeday was a complete unknown at this point and, with the prompt unavailable in the summoner realm, he had to ask the whelp directly. He wanted to use the rest of the night to strategize on how they could fight stronger foes which were no doubt in no short supply within the city.
“My abilities aren’t very useful right now,” said Qeday who was hesitant to share what she had.
After a lot of encouragement from the other three, the whelp finally shared her two abilities. Her first ability allowed her to create mud walls. The ability cost little MP so she could spam it a lot. However, it did have the limitation of only rising from the ground up to a certain height and it wasn’t possible to make it come out horizontally from an existing wall. Her second ability was even more useless as it allowed her to gather metallic dust to create metal objects of any shapes and sizes. The formation time depended on the abundance of metallic dust and the size of the object. Once completed, she couldn’t do anything with it. She couldn’t even send it flying at her foe.
“You can always create it from a high location and let it drop on your foe below you,” suggested Mika.
While the suggestion wasn’t a bad idea, Ali could see the formation time to be the limitation as it took too long to get one ready to hit someone, especially when Qeday had no way of moving it as soon as it formed.
“When used with Ali’s magnetic repulsion, those objects can become deadly projectiles, right?”
Tian’s suggestion had the teenager thinking. He experimented a bit with some small metallic rods and noticed the incredible piercing power of anything he sent flying. With a 5 minute window, he could work together with Qeday to maximize the damage output. He just needed to train with the whelp so their teamwork would be perfect.