AN: Woo-hoo, update! Well its a little shorter than my usual quota but what the hey, at least I updated shomethin'!
On a side note, don't be confused by anything confusing that pops up, all will be revealed eventually!
Nathan sat down quietly, his body assuming a state of meditation. Several times the guards passed by him while giving a quick glance. Many prisoners were quiet, but they were all more miserable than they were hinting on. That was what they felt at least, however they didn't get the same vibes from Nathan, who outwardly just looked like he was sleep-sitting. After an hour or so, he had gained more attention, for none of them had seen him move the entire time, not even a twitch. He became a mostly gossiped topic for the guards, some even betting with each other if he was dead or not.
Truth be told, however, Nathans insides were burning like hell. Trying to drive out spirits tends to do that.
It should be noted that in their (the Mangangaso, the organization to whom he and his Lolo were previously affiliated with, and now on the run from.) teachings, there was a difference between soul and spirit.
A soul was like an ID card, giving acknowledgment of your existence to Mother Earth and the Plane of Souls, it kept you from being a simple object and was your ticket to the afterlife. What happened from to your soul from then on, no one could say for sure, whether it you be judged for heaven, hell, or even set for reincarnation, no could say for sure. It was up to what the bearer of that soul had done in life.
Another aspect of souls is that it generated spirits, a feat which could be done by no other spiritual aspect.
A spirit was the life force of all things, even inanimate objects, which were created from a part of nature. After all, ore and rocks contained spirits, which could be turned into a blade. So even that blade would have the spirits those rocks once held. It was just a little harder to bring out.
According to doctrine, spirits came in two types: ambient and active.
Ambient spirits were, put simply, leftovers, created when a soul leaves the physical plain. The ambient ones were the leftover amount in the air and in objects, created by nature spirits, who had no physical bodies to hold the actual spirits that they created. They were also made when souls left the physical plain; the energy generated by the force of a soul leaving the body could create spirits as well.
Active spirits were the ones that resided in physical, living bodies. They did not keep the body alive as with ambient spirits, but rather, provided resistance towards things that could damage the soul. Acting as a natural barrier, the active spirits stopped possessions, curses and others of their kind. The more spirit a person has, the stronger the resistance. Needless to say, when a person learns how to tap into and control their spirits, they are welcomed into the realm of the supernatural.
In the case of inanimate objects, they kept things from 'dying' or deteriorating. However, spirits in themselves had finite lifespans, so as the number of spirits in an object slowly dwindles down, so does the object, different from living things, whose survival depended on the physical shell that housed the soul.
So, coming back to the situation at hand, the current ritual that Nathan was trying to enact and cannibalize was a ritual usually used to drive away possessive spirit-based creatures, like the Batibat. The key signal that the ritual usually worked was that a piece of the wood-work would rot away, in this case, Nathan hoped that the wood would weaken enough for him to break through it.
With his current lack of tools however, it is significantly more difficult to enact the ritual, leaving it up to his (lack of) talent in spontaneously activating a ritual, which also required a huge amount of chi reserves, something he was also lacking.
If there was one thing he had to his advantage, it was that he at least had a natural connection to heat and flames, which scared or killed off wood attributed spirits easily. It was still a pain in the ass trying to generate the ritual in the fist place though.
"All right, just a little more to go . . . " thought Nathan after a quick run-through of his ritual. "Preliminary steps achieved, main phase has set base properly, skipping natural pollution phases, entering natural restructure phase . . ." He thought a little more mechanically.
Finally, after one last run-through, he poured his chi out into the set ritual field. "Activate purging ritual" The temperature of just his cell shot up by several degree's. However, Nathan's eyes widened as the unheard out-pour of chi broke out of the ritual zone, effectively tearing apart the spirits inside outright instead of scaring them as planned.
A popping sound could be heard coming from inside the wooden walls, and all of a sudden, the walls exploded with the force of all the panicking spirits writhing within their home. As Nathan was thrown back by the force, he heard startled shouts from the other prisoners. As well as several other voices nearby, probably the guards.
"Ah shit that wasn't supposed to happen," he thought as he got up shakily. "Rituals were never my thing in the first place"
Standing fully to his feet, Nathan heard voices directly behind him and the sound of steel hitting steel. Turning, He found himself face-to-face with a group of guards trying to break open the cell, apparently after finding out they couldn't open it the usual way, so far though, they've had as much luck of opening it as with the latter.
"Of course, I enchanted the damn thing to make sure that nothing from this cell gets in OR out, at least not from the front" he added as an afterthought.
Running through the hole in the wall, Nathan had expected to be home free and was already planning a way to escape through the woods. However, his plans backfired the moment he stepped out into the sun.
"Fuck"
Nathan was originally under the impression that the prison was rather low on maintenance, and wondered why the other inmates had not tried to escape like him, they were certainly capable of it, if the scent of bull in the cell next to him was anything to go by, but in the end, he had rather arrogantly chalked it up to his own initiative when it came to these things.
He was dead wrong.
The reason why the other inmates did not try to escape was not because the prison itself was special or even that they lacked the initiative or ingenuity to escape. It was one simple thing that kept them at bay. The overpowering guards that managed the prison.
And so, Nathan found himself surrounded by a rather large force of youkai dogs and crows, brandishing rather malevolent looking spears and broadswords at him.
" . . . Fuck"
So, waddya think? I would have made it longer, but I feared that writers block would return with a vengeance if I did, then I wouldn't have ended anywhere at all.
PS, Any tips, notifications or consructive critisism would be warmly accepted. So cilck that little button down there called "Review" go on, you know you want to.