Eight Intertwined

86 - Aeber

The next time Aeber slunk out of the shadows, it was just behind Olberic. The warrior let out a gasp of shock before pulling in his arms and rolling off to the side, carefully maneuvering his blade so as to not hurt himself along the way. Aeber, who had been stabbing downwards at his prey, was left staggered for a moment because of the shift of momentum caused by Olberic evading the strike. It was a small opportunity, but it was all that Primrose needed to send out a quick blast of dark magic, hitting Aeber in the chest and sending him backwards. 

Unfortunately, this meant that Aeber was once again out of view, slinking through the shadows even after the blow he had sustained. Ophilia raised the Ember to try and catch a glimpse of him, but she wound up hooking the lanthorn back on her belt when she was able to find him. She raised the Illumination Staff, and a column of light exploded from the shadows to cover the entire room. 

Aeber was hit by the attack, but he didn't seem to mind it at all. In fact, he simply laughed it off, and Therion immediately knew why. Light attacks were effective in helping them find Aeber, yes, but as long as their eyes were adjusted for the darkness, the explosion of illumination was going to be detrimental as well. Therion stumbled backwards because of the light, letting one hand come up to press at his right eye. He couldn't help but wince, and his grip on his dagger threatened to loosen to the point of dropping it. Aeber was certainly a tricky one, and Therion couldn't help but think that perhaps this was some kind of trap. As long as Aeber had full visibility of them but the travelers couldn't return the favor, he was going to win. 

In other words, they were going to have to get creative. 

Right off the bat, fighting with physical weapons wasn't going to get them anywhere. Aeber was too evasive, and he was hiding in the darkness on top of that. As far as magic was concerned, fire was out of the question given that Aeber could freely control his element and would find a way to turn it against them. On top of that, fire, thunder, and light magic all presented the same problem of likely ending with blinding everyone who wasn't properly defending themselves from the onslaught of an explosion. That took out half of the common elements from the group's option pool, and that was already a bad sign.

Ice magic probably wasn't going to be a good idea either. Therion briefly entertained the idea of using the ice to trip up Aeber and potentially mitigate his stealth advantage, but that wouldn't work if his element was there to defend him, which it unfortunately was. Wherever he stepped, the ground caught fire, and that would immediately melt the ice. The nature magic provided by the Rose Axe and Dohter's blessing wasn't going to help at all given the lack of plants in the shrine. Wind magic would probably just come back to bite the travelers since they wouldn't know where to aim, and dark magic was much the same. Aeber's offensive strategy involved stealth and surprise attacks, so they were going to have to use some strategy that would take that benefit out from beneath his feet. 

Luckily for them, Therion had the perfect idea.

He knew Aeber was behind him, so Therion sent himself forward in the direction he thought the other travelers could be found. He summoned a small orb of fire magic that fit neatly into the palm of his hand so he could guide himself as to where he was meant to go, but he extinguished it as soon as he had an idea of where everyone was. He didn't want to accidentally give away everyone's positions to Aeber and take away what little blessing they had. He didn't know how much visibility Aeber had of the travelers, but Therion wasn't going to give him anything more, so he used as little magic as he could and started weaving towards Olberic. 

Aeber took this chance to strike at Cyrus, and the scholar turned around in the nick of time to blast the god back with wind magic. Aeber's shoes slid across the ground as he was sent backwards, and the sound of smoldering earth echoed throughout the shrine. Cyrus retreated a moment later, going to where he suspected the other travelers were for the sake of watching his own back.