After it was just Erik and his allies left, they all turned to him. Astrid had an eyebrow cocked curiously. Although she'd gone along with Erik's action, she didn't actually know the plan yet… because she was sure there had to be more of a plan.
Enkai and Ankhur, however, were frowning, instead—Enkai angrily, and Ankhur with deep concern.
Ankhur was the first to speak up. "Was that a good idea? I understand the need to keep Maghreb standing, but we can't just ignore a massive defensive flaw like this one."
Erik didn't answer immediately. Rather, he stretched his body and sighed, before folding his armour back into the armguard and reverting his body to human form. Eira immediately started restoring the armour back into peak condition.
Now he was back in his wide harem pants and looked down at his body. Lazily tousling his hair with a wry smirk, he looked at the blood and wounds littering both his body and his tattered pants, sighing once again. H+e was in pain, of course, but it was like a dull aching he barely noticed.
Finally, he glanced at Ankhur and nodded. "Of course we can't, but she definitely wasn't going to talk anytime soon. Plus, since she's a third ranker, the only way we can force her to talk is to let Emily enslave her, but that has its own problems."
He shrugged. "Namely, that we'd still need to send her back to Maghreb afterwards. Since she can't stay enslaved to Emily in that time for many reasons, she'd have to be free again, meaning news of Emily's capability would surely spread quickly throughout Africa."
Then, with his brows furrowed, he shook his head. "And I'd like to keep Emily's capability a secret for as long as possible, especially since I still have plans for her in Azania."
As he talked, Elora once again flew out from Astrid's armour, this time landing on Erik's shoulder. Waving her small hand, she send a cascading pulse of green energy across his body, cleaning it of blood, repairing his pants, and then filling his wounds to slowly begin healing them.
Astrid watched this happen with a light, disappointed pout. Seeing this from the corner of his eye, Erik chuckled. He wasn't surprised his bloody appearance turned her on a little…
Focusing back on Ankhur, a mysterious smile spread across Erik's lips. "Fortunately, getting her to talk isn't the only way we can find out a little more about this."—he glanced at the fairy on his shoulder—"As my beautiful partner will show."
Snickering, Elora waved her small, elegant hand, and produced a dark-green magic circle. As she engaged her Seidr magic, a screen appeared floating in the air. "She's still in the city," a satisfied Elora commented. "Wherever this teleport brings them, it's not outside yet."
The floating screen showed a gloomy, likely underground room, with two nervous men talking to each other. Zohran had reverted to his human form, making him look like a slightly smaller, Arabian version of Erik. Erik noted the man's golden earrings had made a seamless transition from his werewolf ears to his human ones, causing him to cock an eyebrow.
Almost immediately after this scene unfolded, the two men turned to face the screen with wide eyes. "Zahra!" the half-naked man cried out. "Where were you?! What happened?!"
The screen, clearly seen through Zahra's eyes, shook a little, as if she was unstable. "I'll explain later," her voice snarled, clearly furious and distressed. "We should get out of here first."
Just as she said that, the screen changed, then shook heavily. Erik quickly realised they were now looking through the lens of something falling from Zahra's to the floor. When it landed, the view turned to show the Maghreb warlords walk up to a wall with a massive sigil. As soon as they came close, the sigil glowed brightly; a portal formed, and they disappeared through it.
Instantly, the scene went silent again. Now, they were merely watching an empty room with an inactive sigil.
"Interesting…" Elora muttered thoughtfully. "That's a fixed-point, long-range teleportation sigil—easily enough to get from here to Maghreb. It seems this sigil is somewhere here in the city, connecting us to Maghreb in a way that circumvents the city's defences. Although, how they got the ability to teleport to that sigil is… unclear for now."
Ankhur creased his brows in concern. "Do you think some subordinate of theirs sneaked into the city during the festivities to create this?"
"Hmpf," Elora snorted dismissively, waving her hand without even looking at Ankhur. "Impossible. Setting aside the skill requirements to create such a thing, which even I can't match right now, this world is also still too young for that. The aetherium in the air is not concentrated enough to create something this powerful—you could only use it."
"In other words," Erik sighed as he shrugged, "this was part of the original city. The builders likely had some reason to have a sigil like this connected to a place in what we now call Maghreb, and this trio is taking advantage of that."
He frowned thoughtfully. "I'm thinking they probably discovered this a while ago already, but simply kept it from you, and only now found a reason to take advantage of it."
"Rats!" Enkai cursed angrily, spitting on the ground.
Snorting at Enkai's outburst, Elora shook her head. "It was a very prudent decision." But then she started to smirk. "Unfortunately for them, they bungled their chance, and now we get to take advantage of this instead."
Astrid walked up from behind, cocking an eyebrow as she looked at the view of an empty room. "Don't we first have to figure out where this actually is? The city is pretty large, you know?"
She waved her hand at the screen with the attitude of an old man seeing modern technology for the first time. "Can this thing tell us where to go?"
Unfortunately, Elora shook her head again. "Not exactly… Right now, I just know the direction this room is in, which is telling me it's underground somewhere. Although, how to actually get there is still unclear."
Erik nodded and turned to Ankhur. "Sounds like the next step is clear. Order your warriors to do another sweep throughout the entire city, with a particular focus on pathways leading down, or things that might be short-range teleportation devices. Focus on the palace and other, clearly important buildings in particular."
Then he turned to glance at the palace. "Tomorrow, after Naeku wakes up, we'll see if her nature sense can help us find the right spot. It seems it's time for us to find out a little more about this city you and your people have found yourself with, Ankhur…"