[Seed Of Nyx - Man was made from clay, you were made from sins. The essence of Sins nourishes you like water, and there is hate you must bare. Hate that will shroud you like deep sand, as it buries you deep.]
Every living being has a soul. For evil spirits, that soul is usually just an infeasible portion of spiritual essence buried within a condensed layer which creates the crystal.
When prophets kill evil spirits, and absorb their essence, they are actually taking out of that condensed layer of spiritual essence and absorbing a part of it. But if another spirit or sin kills them, they absorb the entire layer, shattering the crystal, and letting out the souls to incarnate the Lokahs.
But, souls were also just a mass of spiritual essence— even half of the entire crystal, so why do Sins not absorb those? That was simply because those souls escape as soon as their shells are shattered. So it wasn't that Sins did not want to eat the souls of their kind, but that they couldn't.
———
No sooner had the white flames started settling in her stomach, than the wraith herself plunged her hand into her body to rip it out. For a reason that Yaga was about to explain, the wraith did not want to eat the trees' essence.
"It is because they are human sins. So obviously... their souls taste like humans."
The tree people were once human sins, but with no crystals— no shells to be absorbed. They were just plain souls, somehow bound to wooden bodies. And apparently, the wraith had just dug into one to feed on it.
After learning of this, Ikky nodded in approval at the wraith's choice to spit the essence out. Eating people, or at least those that looked like humans was where he drew the line of his humanity. He had even chosen probable death over eating the crystals of the knights in his first omen.
"You'll have to go rest soon, so let's make this one count." Ikky said to the wraith.
Jumping down from the tree he sat in, Ikky's body suddenly burst into black mist before reforming into his beautifully eerie living totem.
Cold wind blew quickly out of his body as he struggled to keep his form active, making his dark clothes and long silky hair flutter and sway gently as he moved forward.
"I'll create an opening. Use it." Stopping right in front of the circle of destruction the rampaging troll was causing, Ikky gave the wraith an order to follow his lead.
Realising how close the meddling prophet was, the troll suddenly paused and immediately threw its palm down at him. But with an easy leap to the side, Ikky evaded the strike.
Calming the cold wind from within his body, he clenched his fist and threw a full strength blow straight into the troll's elbow joint.
With a loud painful crack, the elbow of the troll bent in the opposite direction, making the creature lose balance and fall on the ground.
Quickly scaling the fallen beast's huge body, the cold air surrounding Ikky's ensemble soon blew off, leaving both arms wreathing with it instead. With the rest of the night mist poured into his arms, he opened his palms wide before digging his sharp fingers into the scar on sprite's neck and forcing the wound open even further.
No sooner had Ikky opened the wound than the wraith suddenly came down with her scythe, hammering her weapon's tip into the spread wound.
With both its edges sharpened, the scythe found little resistance digging into the creature's comparatively soft internals, tearing every vein and muscles it met apart.
Alas, the sprite was not completely done.
Even with its neck half punctured into, it roared into the sky and shook off the two figures on top of it. The wraith had to leave her scythe inside its throat as she fell back, while Ikky had to relinquish his totem before he got burnt out.
Nevertheless, the creature did not have much time left anyway, so it could only continue with its rampage, this time, reducing its own life as its loose head swayed around from its rough movements, and splattering black blood everywhere. All that was left for it now was to become dinner.
And right on cue as the troll fell limp, the chef called.
"Bring your pet, heathen!"
"Hey! That is very offensive!" Ikky yelled back into the sky, before finally nodding to his wraith to find Ivan and assist him one more time.
———
Two days had passed since Ikky and Ivan had been told of the impending doom sleeping right on top of this strange world. There were only eight days left, meaning, Ikky's ragtag crew only had one more day to get a new teammate, otherwise they would still be here when hell breakes loose.
Ivan had already spread the news to the prophets who had finally gained consciousness after being infected by the crimson leaved trees, so multiple groups of people had begun to find and gather themselves with the sole purpose of escaping the haven, rather than finding strong members. They would try the exams next year to gather good partners... if they were alive until then that is. Because whether they knew it or not, the omens they would enter after this had the possibility of being infinitely worse.
With the prophets come together and the lake zone as their base, life in the crimson forest was comparatively easier.
Under Ivan's straightforward, and trustworthy leadership, the tens of prophets they had encountered were organised into multiple functional roles. There were those who had good scouting virtues like Ivan did, so there was no shortage of sprite sightings; there were those who were more suitable at subjugation to catch tree people and save them; and there were those who took care of the less risky but not the least important task of cooking and distributing meals.
There was this much harmony amongst twenty eight people in the span of just thirty hours, but obviously a few disputes here and there as teams soon began to covet certain prophets after getting glimpses of their potential. Some people had even challenged Ivan just for a chance to have him with them, only to realise that he was apparently part of a group already.
It was surprising to hear that someone with his much capabilities and prowess had also been conquered, implying that he was under a much more formidable force.
But with his devastating might, the person who had gotten a man like him surely couldn't have done so in a head-to-head combat. Ivan's powers were too much for almost every other prophet to handle.
That was true. Ikky had nearly become cold corpse while dealing with Ivan's inevitable totem.
Speaking of cold corpse...
Since when Ikky had defeated the zone sprite, Ivan finally had the time to be concerned about the behaviour the amber-eyed man had displayed.
As soon as Ivan had arrived then, what he had come back to was a disturbing scene of Ikky rummaging through the corpse of the newly deceased sprite, but not for its crystal.
Ikky would stab his hard, sharp fingers through the open wounds of the creature before opening them up even more and ripping out the flesh within its softening hide. This was also being done with him only splattering some of the creature's black blood off before dumping the bleeding innards of the creature right into his mouth.
The sight of this was mostly frightening, disgusting, and left Ivan with bewilderment at how the amber-eyed man could stomach such food.
Ivan had let Ikky off then without asking him anything about it, but the thought that Ikky would still perform such acts in the future kept beating on the back of his thick skull.
"You know, I was in a pretty good meditation flow before you came along!"
"Well you've been at it for almost eighteen hours, and I'm sure you've made little progress with the crap you were doing."
"Oh wow, even I can't count for that long." Ikky laid down on the floor as Ivan continued to cook.
"Besides, what does it matter to you what I eat? You want me dead, don't you?"
After he made the sauce and spread it lightly across the meat on a thin stick, he held the stick and put it over the burning flame between them.
"I remember that mouth blast you'd used while I was trying to kill you. It was a fluke, was it not?" Ivan started.
It was quite obvious that the night mist blast was a mistake. Why in the world would Ikky expend all of his spiritual essence and practically every drop of night mist on an attack that had practically no chance of hitting the teleporting man? The blast was as a result of his poor spiritual essence control and Ivan realised that.
"I don't know what meditation technique your Augur spirit was teaching you, but the first and foremost lesson about controlling essence is taking care of your body."
He continued, "Essence is created from the Virtues, the Virtues are attached to the Mark, and the Mark is attached to the physical body. In other words, the very foundation of essence control is the well-being of the body.
Even with whatever sorcery you're using to stomach raw food, you still won't be able to draw out enough nutrients as you would have after cooking them. And that's why every part of your skinny body looks like it's failing... that's why your essence won't stay put."
Ikky sat back on his butt as he stared at the meat Ivan was grilling. "How the heck do I get lesser nutrients? I eat from the source— unwashed and unfiltered."
Ivan rose an eyebrow as he was beginning to make little guesses of how Ikky's life had shaped his naivety on basic things.
'He must only see food as something to make his stomach less annoying.' Ivan guessed.
To Ikky food was whatever made his stomach stop grumbling. And the way he had thought that eating food from the immediate source was the better option sounded like something an ignorant mind would come up with. Ikky saw food as food, and nothing else to care about.
Besides, one could only worry about something if they had it. Ikky only ate as edible things came to sight.
Ivan had realised that with that ignorant mentality, and his lack of the basic etiquettes and teaching of Svarga, Ikky couldn't have had people to teach him about those little but important things in life.
Handing over the stick of meat to the amber-eyed man, Ivan lingered before finally letting out a question that had been troubling him for a while now,
"Why?"
"Huhn?" Ikky was already biting into the meat while he listened.
"Why didn't you take my life? My guard was down when that creature of yours stabbed me in the chest. You would have lost your life too if I hadn't loosened that woman earlier. You had all those reasons, and yet—"
Taking the other stick of undone meat in Ivan's hand, Ikky chuckled and referred mockingly to the sky-man's own words,
"You have a Dream Grade Mark, Ivanhoe. You'll live a long life. Fate must have messed with my thoughts"
He tossed the clean barbeque stick over to Ivan.
With that being said, Ikky had walked out of bleeding out most of his blood and suffered pain of getting his neck and heart stabbed and sliced through dozens of times, his cursed body was as persistant as a putrid, undying stink. Or rather worse.
Ivan looked unsatisfied with that answer, so Ikky added,
"Tis but a price to pay... to make a friend."
Ivan squinted his eyes, "I don't make friends with crazy people."
"First time for everything, pal."
'Friends' was now just a term Ikky imposed on the people who were stuck in the same group as he was. And as for his first and second, he was beginning to wonder,
'What happened to those girls anyway?'
However, as Ikky looked up at the abomination in the sky, his question became more focused on the short glowing one he had recently met.
"Shorty?" Ikky stood up in disbelief.
The other prophets back in the camp were also looking at the beautiful night sky; the sky with stars falling down towards them.