Morne grunted. He had likewise started to put two and two together here.
Geleb wasn't talking about the theme of this trial, though both had guessed that as well. He was talking about the serpent statues.
This was the fourth of five trials, and so far, they had had two where the silver serpent had spoken and two where the golden serpent had spoken.
The silver serpent's trials seemed to rely on cunning and intellect, which was likely why Withering Touch on its own hadn't been enough for the Trail of Dirt, and the same went for Marrow Memory and the trial they had just finished.
Preparedness was an integral part of the first trial. If Geleb hadn't brought his pen, they would've died. For the third, being able to recognize minute differences in otherwise identical Marks was the key to success.
Both required some degree of intelligence to do successfully.
On the other hand, the golden serpent's trials were about raw strength and endurance. The second trial required deep wells of stamina, agility for turns, and speed, and this one looked like it would be one of combat.
Morne eyed each of the five cloud figures, picking out the differences between them.
Though they lacked clothes and facial features, there were some unique traits in three of them.
The first one on the left was humanoid, but only barely. It had powerful limbs, digitigrade legs, a tail, and an elongated head. While Morne had never seen one in person, he had heard enough legends to recognize a werewolf when he saw one.
The next shared the vague humanoid shape of the werewolf, but was closer to man than beast. Still, it had claws over a foot long on each finger, an emaciated physique that was little more than skin and bones, and a hunch in its back that did little to subtract from its towering height of seven feet.
Again, Morne recognized the creature from stories he had heard both as a child and an adult.
This was a wendigo, a flesh-eating monster and the subject of several "cautionary" bedtime stories designed to frighten children into obedience.
Young Morne had had many sleepless nights after his father had spooked him with tales of wendigos that whisked away unruly children in the dead of night to feast on their eyeballs.
The third was almost entirely human, but there was a defining characteristic Morne could see. On its knees, shoulders, and hands were what was best described as plates.
Each hand had a single inverted trapezoid-shaped plate protecting its back, which was clear of the joints and knuckles but covered the majority of the back of the hand.
The knees and shoulders each had 7 hexagonal plates in a honeycomb pattern, with the center hexagon on the kneecap and shoulder, respectively, and the other six around the first.
Finally, there was a small square-shaped plate on the figure's forehead, making it the only cloud figure present to have something on its otherwise smooth head.
Due to the cloud nature of the figure, it was impossible to tell what these plates were supposed to be made of. And Morne had never seen a creature like this before, so he couldn't begin to guess. So, he moved on.
The last two were the most ordinary-looking of the five. Morne actually couldn't find anything that set them apart from humans, which in itself was suspicious. But based on the other figures, he guessed that these two were also cursed humans.
And since there were only five types, that meant these two were most likely the vampire and the ghost, but which was which wasn't something he could figure out with the clues he had.
But what was the cursed human in the middle? He had heard tales of each of the other four creatures, but this plated being was a complete unknown to him.
"Wyrmwolf, Hsthna, Boknul, spirit, vampire," Geleb translated from the Marks above the doors. He pulled his journal out and flipped through the pages, making an "ah" sound when he arrived at the proper page. "Wyrmwolf is the Nasnami's variant of the werewolf curse, Hsthna is their wendigo, and spirit is their ghost."
'So I was partly right,' Morne thought.
These weren't cursed humans, but rather cursed Nasnami. But to be fair, the two species were practically identical barring the scales and eyes of the latter, and those features were removed from the cloud figures.
Now he knew what the middle creature was: a Boknul. The guard at Untelneb had mentioned them when Morne was seeking entrance into the city, asking him if he was one. Other than that, he had never heard of them.
That felt odd to Morne, as the cursed humans made for popular horror stories in his village. Why was the Boknul an exception?
Morne decided to ask the scholar.
"They eat bones," Geleb said simply. "That is, they turn people into bone and then eat that. Not exactly as scary as a wendigo tearing apart your flesh or your closest neighbor turning into a man-eating monster on a full moon."
"And we have to fight all five of these monsters?" Morne asked.
"Maybe," Geleb said hesitantly. "But I doubt it. I think it's more likely that we only have to fight two of them. Do you remember what the prize for these trials is?"
"The 'crimson and alabaster of the Malkurai,'" Morne replied, the solution starting to dawn on him.
Geleb nodded, his next words confirming Morne's thoughts. "I believe that sentence references two of the Dark Gods, namely Ilnchan and Jiklok."
"So we fight the vampire," Morne stated, turning his head to the rightmost cloud figure, then to the middle one. "And the Boknul."
Ilnchan was always referenced as the father of vampires in the stories, Hasthan the father of wendigos, Nedrehk the mother of werewolves, and Insnae the mother of ghosts.
By process of elimination, that meant that Jiklok created the Boknuls, and that this cursed being was their second opponent.
Geleb nodded seriously as he put away his journal. "This is going to be a hard-fought battle," he warned. "I'm not exactly combat-oriented, and these cursed beings' bloodlines start out at the Practitioner Grade."
Morne turned serious as well when he heard that. That was a full rank higher than both of them and as mentioned before, the Practitioner rank was usually twice as strong as the Apprentice rank.
A hard-fought battle, indeed.