«I… wanted to have a talk with you, if it’s not too much of a problem.»
«Of course!» the man said happily, quickly ushering Zorian inside. Zorian recalled from last time that the temple didn’t receive many visitors. It must be a pretty lonely existence to serve as custodian of this place. Before long they were both seated in front of a small table in the kitchen-like room that Batak used to receive visitors, a prepared tea pot steaming in front of them.
«So… What did you want to talk to me about?» Batak said after some small talk, raising his cup to his mouth and taking a long sip.
«I wanted to ask about primordials,» Zorian said.
Batak promptly choked on his tea and spent the next few seconds coughing.
«Why *cough* would you want to know about them?» Batak asked incredulously.
«I’m… not sure I should tell you. I don’t want any trouble.»
Batak gave him a curious, impassive look, but Zorian sensed a note of worry in his mind.
«Well, I’m not sure whether you know or not but there is a rumor spreading around that some people are going to try to disrupt the summer festival,» Zorian began.
«I’ve heard about that, yes,» Batak sighed.
«Well, a few days ago I went with some friends into the upper levels of the Dungeon to do a job for a client. A simple find and retrieve job, but we ended up running into an underground base full of war trolls and nearly died in the process. The police are keeping it very hush at the moment but I understand their investigation revealed it wasn’t the only base down there. Somebody had spent months preparing a beachhead for this attack and they have a lot of assets to burn…»
After more than an hour of explanations and clarifications, Batak seemed to accept that the attack was something a lot more serious than he had thought and (more importantly) that it was just a distraction for an attempt at primordial summoning. Thankfully, everything Zorian was telling him was totally true so whatever method of truth detection the man was using returned his explanations as genuine. The fact that Kylae had a prediction blackout around that time probably did a lot to legitimize the claim in the priest’s eyes, since the successful summoning of a primordial could be the reason for her divinations failing. Which was actually why Zorian came to this temple in particular, rather than, say, the main temple of the city.
«I’ll notify the church hierarchy, they should be able to spare a squad or two of investigators to check it out,» Batak said. «Especially if they have solid proof rather than just an anonymous tip. Do you have anything in writing, perhaps?»
«Here,» Zorian said, retrieving a stack of documents and notebooks from his bag and handing them over to Batak. «This is everything I have about the invasion. I tried to be as thorough and methodical as possible. I’d really prefer if my name was not mentioned anywhere, though.»
Batak eyed the stack speculatively. «I cannot guarantee that. If your name comes up during the investigation—»
«It won’t,» Zorian interrupted.
«Well, then I don’t foresee any problems,» Batak shrugged. «A bit odd of you to have so much information on this group if you’re not a defector from their ranks.»
Zorian said nothing.
«Alright,» Batak said, perking up and shaking his head slightly as if to clear it. «Are you still interested in hearing about the primordials or was that just a ploy to get my attention?»
«I’m still interested, yeah,» Zorian said. «I’m really curious why they felt the need to organize all this just to summon one.»
«To be fair, I don’t think knowing more about the primordials will satiate your curiosity in that regard,» Batak said. «Anyone who wants to summon one of these things is clearly insane. But no matter — tell me, what do you know about the primordials in the first place?»
«They’re some kind of powerful spirit hailing from ancient times,» Zorian tried. «Like fey or elementals, only older, weirder and far more dangerous.»
Batak sighed. «I knew you were going to say that. In the future, when you’re interested in some aspect of the spiritual world, please consult religious texts first before delving into mage-written works. I know the church can be a little biased about a lot of things, but we really do know our stuff when it comes to the spirits and everything related to them. Ever since the gods fell silent, spirits are the only thing we have left, so we have done some extensive work on them. And we don’t hide it much either.»
Zorian nodded sheepishly. It never even occurred to him to look at religious texts on the topic. He blamed his town priest back in Cirin, who was a bigoted old hypocrite that kept making problems for Zorian whenever they crossed paths and consequently soured the Church as a whole for him.
Batak drummed his fingers on the table for a few seconds, gathering his thoughts.
«Alright. First, let me tell you something about actual spirits. I’m sorry if this is already familiar to you, but I need to get it out there to explain why primordials absolutely cannot be spirits.»
Zorian motioned for him to continue.
«Spirits are, from a practical standpoint, divided into two main groups: outsider spirits and native ones. Outsiders spend most of their time in their own spiritual worlds and can only ever enter ours if summoned by someone from this side. Demons and angels are the most famous of outsider spirits, though lumping all demons into a single group is mostly done by humans for human convenience — there is no demonic equivalent to the angelic hierarchy and two demons are as likely to fight each other as they are to cooperate on a common goal. Native spirits are a multitude of spirits that exist on the material plane by default — you already mentioned elementals and fey, which are the two most common types of native spirits. It is likely that native spirits were once outsider spirits that gradually adapted to life on the material world, as they share the key feature that all spirits have. Namely, that they don’t really have bodies the way humans and animals do: they are disembodied souls that need some type of vessel to contain them and allow them to interact with the world around them.»
«So spirits are soul entities,» Zorian mused. «Like liches or body snatchers.»
«Yes, very much like that,» Batak agreed. «In fact, some spirits are very much body snatchers and prefer inhabiting bodies of humans and animals. And it’s likely that the process of transformation into a lich has been developed by studying spirits and the way they interact with their vessels. Anyway, primordials. Primordials have bodies. Actual, flesh and blood bodies. Most people, even mages, assume they’re spirits because of their strange forms and great resistance to damage, but they really have more in common with dragons and other magical creatures than with spiritual entities. Spirits tend to be weird because their bodies are usually just ectoplasmic shells, which they can twist into whatever unnatural form they feel like taking. Primordials are creatures of the material world, just like you and me.»
«But wait,» Zorian said. «If primordials are not spirits, but some kind of strange magical creature, how are the attackers planning to summon one?» asked Zorian.
«They don’t,» Batak said. «I didn’t want to interrupt you while you were talking, but you almost certainly misunderstood something there. Primordials can’t be summoned, since they’re down here with us already. Bound, forced into sleep and locked away, but still with us. What they can be is set loose.»
Zorian felt a shiver run down his spine. The primordial wouldn’t disappear, he realized. The Ibasan invaders thought they were summoning a fancy demon to go romp over their enemies, but that thing was never going back to its home plane on its own. It didn’t have one.