"What you need isn't a sword, it's combat discipline." Yaga started. "Your usual method of fighting is to disregard your own safety, using your limbs and vitals as bait, and luring the opponent into an attack where you can finish them off. It's barbaric, and there are more efficient ways to bait out openings in a fight. There are more to battle than simply making sure you deliver the finishing move--- wake up!"
"Wah?!" Ikky's eyes suddenly snapped open as he and Yaga sat on a floating cloud.
"You bastard, I know you can't sleep in here!" At Yaga's scolding, Ikky nodded an apology, but grumbled under his breath.
"How about a shield, then? But like, a really sleek and cool-looking one?" He suggested, assuming Yaga's lecturing was about her trying to tell him about other ways to keep enemies away than simply with a cool sword.
"Huh?" He had a large open smile on his face, his eyebrows raised as if he was offering a great suggestion.
Already having enough with that stupid face, Yaga took a deep breath, locked her fingers in front of her face before pointing at him, "Make me a body."
Ikky copied her actions, thinking for a few seconds before pointing back, "You wanna beat me up?"
"Yes."
"No."
"By the fowl house!" Yaga cursed? She proposed. "I'll teach you how to fight. Easy steps! I folded as much muscles as there will be memories in the thousand years of life essence I used to make this body for you. So help me, child, if you don't use it well..."
Ikky gestured for her to calm down, chuckling nervously. "I was joking, I was joking..." Ikky stood up, taking a step back to get a full view of Yaga's shadowy form. An image flashed into his mind, one of a really pretty woman he'd just thought up. But that image was too vague, and he didn't want to do too much imagining a woman's body— something he had very little idea of anyway. So, he thought about someone he knew clearly: a young woman with sly eyes like emeralds when in focus, like burning ambers in fascination, and brown in rest; a woman whose lilting voice was all that guided others to listen despite the hypnotizing movements of her dewy red lips; a woman endowed with remnants on her toffee skin, carved from conflicting blades and teeth, callus hands wrapped around her badass katana and—
"Nox!" Yaga brought the man out of his daydream. "I've been standing here without a chest and a backside for three minutes!"
Ikky looked at the woman in front of him, her words making his face flush brightly like there were tiny stars in his cheeks.
Yaga looked at him in disbelief, "Oh, don't tell me you were just acting like a degenerate? I still remember when we first used the Totem."
Ikky puffed his cheeks, "I make corny jokes to lighten the mood, take a hint!"
Yaga raised her head high, "Pathetic. Follow my lead, you untouched runt."
"Aww man." Ikky's shoulders dropped. Yaga had hit him where it really hurt.
With guidance from Yaga, Ikky helped make a form that was comfortable for her and not too weird for him— weird in the sense that he did not want his Augur spirit to look like a carbon copy Izel, to ease the awkwardness. Now, Yaga was only a seven-foot-tall war maiden incarnate— eleven feet tall counting her wild flying deep red hair. Her entire body had been altered so much, the only resemblance she has with Izel being their skin looking like hot brown sugar.
"You can bite me if you want." Yaga's blind eyes squinted at the gawking young man, moving her fingers through the loose sand-like black fabric around her form. "As a matter of fact, I implore you to try, I dare you. Just once and I'll take you seriously."
Ikky scoffed at her provocation. "I'll show you!" So, he braced himself before charging into a genuine one-sided embarrassment.
———
It didn't take any time at all between seeing the disembodied spirit and immediately torching it. The others looked towards the direction of the burning, now feeling the intense heat from Fiachra's flames.
"What in the world was that?" Aodh yelled. "Did someone split the torso off that thing?"
The rest stood silent, all eyes fixed on the burning spirit. There was no logical explanation they could think of as to why that thing was still standing in that fire. Sweat from the heat slid down the sides of Fionnuala's head. And just when she had the idea of backing up a bit, the spirit took a step as well.
"!!!" Aodh immediately made a translucent wall of air, dividing the room into two zones of air density and pressure, the spirit standing in a zone of crushing force. Fionnuala turned towards the others, "Kalu, can you get that Seer to safety?"
Kalu nodded, rushing over to grab Ikky's unconscious body and throwing it over his shoulder. However, as soon as he was about to activate his powers, he remembered, 'Oh right, what got me stuck in the first place is how I couldn't figure out how this guy's particles work. If we teleport, I'll at most end up killing him. Crap!"
Fiachra noticed the problem. The passage was at the spirit's half of the room, so Kalu had nowhere to go. He pointed his finger at the wall, ready to blast a path through when Fionnuala with her eyes fixed on the now kneeling, full body spirit asked him to wait. Fiachra halted for a bit, then Aodh gave a signal, "Winds checked, no one's there... blast away."
The instant he got the okay signal, Fiachra placed the backs of his hands against each other, his fingers burning blue before releasing extremely concentrated heat forward. The large vertical lasers guided by his hands opened up like a gate, completely eviscerating everything in its path to create a massive passage.
When he was done, Kalu could only stare, completely stunned by the exaggerated show of force. There were other rooms in this direction, so surely the man could have simply blasted a hole through one wall, and he would make his way into that room and out the main passage. In his awestruck state, Aodh's wind suddenly launched him down the dark tunnel, the siblings now turning to face this spirit. To their surprise, the spirit had also managed to start brushing off the immense pressure going down upon itself with ease.
Fiachra launched a concentrated beam of blue into the spirit's bare stomach. It connected, however amounted to nothing, the spirit seemingly absorbing the attack. Noticing this, he stopped, the three watching as its new upper body spread the external energy around itself to obtain a more defined body. Its blank face grew one eye and black hair appeared on its head. It continued to absorb from Aodh's ability as well, growing another eye, nose and a mouth. The man also freed the spirit from his power, now stepping back towards his sister.
"Is this thing a calamity spirit?" Aodh had to ask.
"Don't jinx it." Fiachra joked.
Calamity spirits are the last thing any prophet should wish to find in a dark underground space like this. Apart from the fact that they also could have minions just laying around, they cannot be killed by conventional means. Without the possession of an Absolute Edict that negates the existence of Calamity spirits, these annoying harbingers of doom and despair are immortal. The only way to get through their immortality is by fulfilling some kind of criteria that is set along with the existence of that calamity. Only those who meet those criteria could even hope to damage these beings, then attempt to kill them.
It would be an incredibly bad news should this spirit be what Aodh had asked. It already seemed like it was using their own powers to heal itself and grow, so it definitely did not even need that immortality.
The spirit continued to walk towards them, clearly unfazed. It rose its hand as if to attack, however it didn't. It tilted its head, as surprised as they were.
"Burn...survive!!!" It screamed at the three, the trio clearly feeling its spit on their face, and smelling its mouth which had the odor of rotten corpses.
"More like, brush... us survive. Yee!" Fiachra gagged, grabbing onto Fionnuala's shoulder to support himself.
The spirit's grotesque human-like face scrunched up in anger, its head coming down with full force to smash into the siblings. However, with Aodh's masterful control over the atmosphere, the three shifted just enough to dodge, and close enough for Fiachra and Aodh to throw kicks right into the stomach of the spirit to launch it into the air. As the spirit hit the ceiling, Fionnuala shifted her feet on the ground and took a firm step, while Aodh used the air to pull the spirit back down at an incredible speed to collide with Fionnuala's fist.
Fionnula gritted her teeth, summoning as much strength into her arm as possible, black flames igniting from the point of contact with the spirit. With her entire body in sync, she let loose, launching the evil creature through the ceiling and straight into the sky of the dark forest along with a massive beam of black fire.
Looking at the now clean hole to the overworld, black feathers floating down, Fiachra whistled in awe. "Think that got it?"
Fionnuala surprisingly replied, "I'm not even sure."