While we hadn’t managed to figure out a whole lot about our current opponent, at least not in confirmed facts, we had enough pieces of the puzzle to make some fairly educated guesses about its nature. One, it was wind-aligned, and I was confident of that as I had seen its soul. Two, it was invisible and, likely, intangible, interacting with the world only if it wanted to, though we were less confident about that. Three, it had not yet tried to seriously kill us, either because it lacked the power or the motivation, or there was some other reason for its restraint, possibly that it was planning to kill us, or try to, at the right time or in the right position. Rituals were a thing, after all, and being able to sacrifice beings as powerful as our group would allow for some reasonably large-scale reshaping of the world. Well, maybe not the world, but reshaping a mountain or two should be possible if a complete sacrifice of the five of us were performed. More, possibly, if the sacrificer could somehow tie in our connection to Lady Hecate, but doing so would likely invoke some serious repercussions.

  Not that I considered that last option likely, but it felt a little like something out of a fairly convoluted novel. However, merely because something was unlikely didn’t mean it was impossible.

  Another point we had noticed was that the entity wasn’t using Arcane Magic to manipulate the air, meaning it was something else. Given its invisible and possibly incorporeal nature, it was fairly unlikely that Alchemy was involved, but, again, unlikely didn’t mean impossible. In this case, however, it was a lot more likely that the magic involved was somehow divine in nature. It was not necessarily channelled from a deity; it didn’t feel like that, so maybe we were dealing with something more primal, a force of nature, if you will.

  With our current knowledge, we could form a somewhat coherent model and label our current opponent a spirit of air or maybe an air elemental, depending on your exact definitions, basically a lesser nature deity, with its own innate abilities. Granted, we might just be the first ones to contemplate engaging in hostilities with this particular type of entity, so what exactly the words meant was a little uncertain. We simply used them as labels and to inspire ideas based on what the concepts might have entailed before the change, while making contingency plans, just in case the entity had vastly different abilities from what we had observed and what we were currently hypothesising.

  With our ideas came plans and preparations, as fighting a creature we couldn’t see, hear or otherwise sense out in the open, where it had all the cards in its hands, or whatever passed for hands in wind spirits, would be an utterly foolish thing to do. No, we needed to prepare, to find ways to eliminate the advantages the spirit currently had and, if possible, to capture the entity so we could find out what exactly it was, beyond our current label. Or what the label actually meant, it would be fascinating to see what the system made of it, at least once we managed to turn it visible or maybe use the Observe skill on it.

  Luckily, the first step of our preparations was one we had to take anyway, even without the entity apparently stalking and haunting us, occasionally sending blasts of frigid air in our general direction. Namely, we needed to find a place to hide Lia from the hateful rays of the sun, allowing us to rest for the day. As there was only hilly forest around us, there was no convenient cave to crawl into, so we had to make our own shelter. Usually, I would pull up some stone from the ground, giving us a simple shelter, but with the entity harassing us, I had something else in mind.

  Digging down was a little harder than drawing stones up, as I needed to reinforce the entire structure or it might come down on our heads, which would be seriously problematic. Luckily, I had quite a bit of experience with the process, so it only took me about an hour to dig a nice burrow for us, something any hobbit would be happy to inhabit, at least if we added a door to the front. We deliberately left the entrance open, but I made some preparations of my own, just in case the entity was foolish enough to follow us underground. If so, catching it would be trivially easy, at least if one of our hypotheses panned out.

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  The rest of the burrow was fairly standard, packed earth, some stone for structure and the usual magical reinforcement, making it solid without taking up too much time to create. Similarly, we didn’t unpack our furniture, so doing so would have taken at least another hour. Packing it back up would have taken the same time in the morning, making it simply inefficient. Instead, we used tarps to cover the floor and the fur of various creatures we had killed as bedding, making some comfortable nests for us. Even Sasha had taken to this mode of relaxation and started to bond with all of us, in slightly different ways, depending on the individual.

  Her bond with Silva was by far the strongest, and it might be due to that strength that their actions gave me the occasional headache. It came mostly down to the fact that Silva happily treated Sasha as another canine, a treatment Sasha welcomed and reciprocated. My headaches were caused by the dichotomy of Sasha’s nature. She had parts that screamed human to my mind, but she also had parts that indicated her to be an animal, so whenever her behaviour went too far in one of those directions, I got a little headache. With Silva, she ventured far enough into animalistic behaviour to make that headache pronounced, especially as their actions were to some deeply subconscious level of my mind, utterly indecent. Sadly, I had yet to figure out the right way to teach Sasha, leaving me at a loss.

  My contemplations on Sasha and her peculiarities were interrupted when I felt a change in the air around us, or, to be precise, a change in the air near the entrance. While I couldn’t be completely certain, I was fairly confident that this indicated that the entity haunting us had ventured into the tunnel, possibly trying to scare us. Or annoy us. I wasn’t sure just what the being had in mind; it might even try to kill us, the possibilities were endless.

  Now, it was time to see if the initial hypothesis panned out. The idea was that this was a spirit of air and due to its nature, it would be limited below the ground. Not powerless, the tunnel we were in was filled with air after all, but limited. Additionally, I had heard something about spirits and crystals in the past, though the details were murky, mainly because there hadn’t been such a thing before the change, meaning any ideas from before that time were just fabrications. But, given some of the things we had seen, who knew what stories held kernels of truth?

  With a flex of my power, a few crystal seeds I had buried in the tunnels as I made them fully manifest, forming barriers and protections around the area I hoped the spirit was in, trying to trap it. For these barriers, the crystal of choice was a simple one, salt, mostly because of stories from before, where salt was used to purify spirits or bind them.

  Moments later, I could hear a strange wailing sound, as if wind was blowing rapidly past buildings, though I couldn’t feel the air move; it was quite curious. Even the additional air vents I had dug as a precaution were still, confirming that the spirit wasn’t trying to suck the air out of our burrow in an attempt to suffocate us, but that didn’t completely relax me, something was going on.

  Standing, I walked towards the exit, stepping past my companions as I did, giving a brief nod to Silva, who had been on guard on the way out. Once I stepped around the corner and looked past the barrier between me and the exit, I could see a strangely distorted area of space, bringing a grin to my face. It looked like this had been easier than hoped and, to confirm it, I carefully activated my Soul Sight, making sure not to blind myself.

  Moments later, I could see the brightly shining light from the spirit, its elemental affinity now easily visible as Air and Ice, though its form was quite fascinating. Or rather, its lack of a distinct form was fascinating. It was as if the entity was utterly mutable, only as solid or distinct as it wanted to be. However, it seemed that, regardless of that lacking solidity, the salt crystals I had conjured were enough to trap it.

  Now, I had a captured spirit and needed to decide what I wanted to do with it. This would be fascinating.