The Night Chant is a storytelling Virtue. It makes its pages out of life essence, its writing ink out of spiritual essence and assigns characters that fall within the story's tropes. At its current stage, there are only four kinds of characters: the Humans adorned crowns on their heads, the Haunts that are bound by their necks, the Sinner shackled around his wrists and the Hero bound to the one that sinned.
Apart from the writing material, the pages and characters, there are of course other important aspects of this story. But his Virtue's current level had no access to these other aspects, so for now, he was stuck with those three.
"How did it even work? I'm not a god!" Equinox asked, knowing well that the ink and canvas could only make out stories about the Absolute. Ikky did not fit that criteria, he thought.
Yaga snorted in annoyance. "What exactly do you think Axioms are? If today, you dream up a civilization of creatures, you would be their creator. So, what could be the difference between you and these 'Absolutes'?"
Equinox could think of a lot, but he knew what Yaga wanted to hear. A shockwave spread throughout the landscape, fingers stretching upward from the horizon as the world shook by the grasps of his palm. With the ball in his hand, Ikky turned his head to the word around him. He saw himself an infinite times over, each holding the same thing in their hand with the same expression on their faces as they stood in the dark. There was a difference between himself and the Absolute. He looked down at the ball in his hand, answering to Yaga who was sitting comfortably on the bed as she gazed back at the giant from outer space, "Perspective."
"Smart boy." The spirit praised. "Life really is but a dream--- more so for this mad world. Theirs, yours... the differences between the reality of those aware and you asleep are very little in 'heaven'. At the end of the day, the deciding factor for what I chose to write of, is who I know best; the mythical worm gnawing at the roots of Yggdrasil, or my own mortal extension."
Ikky did not understand. "What story did you write? What exactly can this body do?"
Yaga rolled her eyes, "You're alive, aren't you? That's as big of a feat as I can think of. Making a human body to house a soul is hard, you know?"
Equinox almost passed out from how quickly his adrenaline fell. Nothing. This new body had no new features.
———
"Aodh. Hey, what are you doing?" Fiachra nudged his brother who weirdly enough, was face deep into Ikky's stomach.
He, Aodh and Fiachra had been asked to stay behind while the rest sorted things out with the calamity spirit. They had a Believer with them after all, so the group weren't too desperate for numbers in the simple rescue mission.
Aodh stood straight with his mouth open in genuine excitement, "Breeze! This guy's leaking fresh air!"
"Doesn't mean you should sniff his— whatever. Hand him over. You're gonna give us a bad reputation."
Aodh was suspicious of his brother. Maybe he wanted to steal the breeze for himself. He opened his mouth to bite Fiachra's hand, when Fionnuala suddenly slapped the back of his head. "Rotten eggs! Don't wake him up..."
But even she drew closer to the unconscious body, catching sight of a white sunflower peeking out of Ikky's collar. "Is that what you're looking at, Fiachra?"
"Hmm?" Fiachra acted oblivious, before reaching for the flower and exclaiming, "Oh! Is this what you mean?" He held it up to his sister's face, then took a closer look at it. "What a strange flower, isn't it, my dear sister?" He gently pushed it into her dark hair. "And I must say that it makes you look more stunning.
Fionnuala was as annoyed with his cheeky taunts as ever. She sunk her fingers into her hair to pull out the flower when it suddenly burst into fine white sand, now shifting and sticking to her head. The woman's eyes opened in shock as she felt the thing slowly making its way through her skin, then her skull.
"Crap!!!!!!" She fell on her knees, scratching her hair frantically as she tried to get it out.
Fiachra and Aodh were petrified for a good few seconds before Aodh suddenly dropped the man in his arms and rushed towards his sister. "What's wrong? What's going on? Are you okay? I'll go find Eoin and the rest."
Fiachra held his brother's shoulder to stop him, then reached for his sister who had her face down with her hands on her head.
"Sis?", He called.
The woman went quiet, and just as Aodh's little patience waned, Fionnuala suddenly sprung up to grab Fiachra by the neck. "The gods be my witness, I'll bring misfortune nine-hundred times more on you than whatever this thing does to me!"
Fiachra stepped back with a grimace, holding his finger up to calm her down, "It shouldn't be dangerous, Fionnuala! It was in that man's pockets, so it shouldn't have."
Fionnuala shook his body as she argued, "Hell knows if this parasite is the reason he's passed out in the first place! Who asked you to touch it, huh?!"
"I— I'm sorry!" The man let out a dry-eyed cry, trying to pull his sister's hands from his neck.
When Fionnuala finally calmed down, the three sat in the empty enclosure, the only source of light being a large pot of shifting blue fire. The woman had Ikky's charm stuck to her face, running through her skin like a pulsing tattoo radiant with blue light.
"Well, it's clearly a charm. But what is it doing?" Aodh held his chin in thought.
"It's draining my essence Aodh, think! It's literally so obvious!" Fionnuala yelled, clearly still panicking. "I can feel it under my skull..."
"Hey..." Aodh's shoulders dropped dejectedly, while Fiachra continued to look all over his sisters head for an off-button. But after a while of pressing his fingers into the increasingly annoyed Fionnuala, he soon suggested, looking towards Ikky,
"How about we wake him up? It's his charm. He'll know how to take it off."
Aodh shrugged. "I tried pinching him a few times. He's not responding."
"Is he dead?!" Fionnuala asked.
"Mmm... I don't think so. Still feel his essence so..." Aodh answered. "Maybe we should wait a bit?"
Fionnuala, clearly not thinking that a good idea shot up to her feet and began to walk over to Ikky's resting body. "Eoin is out there, and will probably get into a fight any moment from now. And as much as I'm trying not to let go of too much essence, he's going to find out sooner or later. Besides, we can't be holding his essence back when he's out there fighting."
Kneeling beside Ikky's body, she took deep breaths and apologised, "Sorry. You must have gone through some life threatening situation to end up like this, but we really need to get this thing off."
Fionnuala placed her hand on his chest, attempting to check his heartbeat; then she placed her ears closer to it, and suddenly grabbed her head in horror. "Oh no! Oh no no no no no no no!"
Before her brothers could even ask, she placed both her hands on his chest and began to press with a particular rhythm. "Wake up! Wake up! Pleeaaase!" Continuing with the CPR, she brought her face closer to Ikky's and froze, the realisation of what she was about to do lighting her whole face red.
"Wait a second!" Her head swung back sharply at the cause of this mess. "Fiachra! Exhale! Now! His mouth! This is your fault!"
Fiachra fumbled his words. "Buh— wah I didn't kill him! You do it! Maybe he's been dead for long! What's pumping his chest gonna do?"
"Just get here you piece of— wait, Conn can jump start his heart with electrical—"
Aodh pointed at Fiachra, "We should have sacrificed this ashy piece of shit instead!" Conn was the one with electrical powers, but he was dead.
Fiachra pushed, "I won the random pick fair and square! You should have jumped in the water!"
Aodh and Fiachra were soon pulling their shirts and pushing eachother across the room while Fionnuala continued to scream as she pulled on her head.
It hadn't been long since Eoin and Aobh had left them behind, yet the trio had already fallen into chaos.