The Draoidh know that which is given holds little weight compared to that which is earned.

~Belenus the Sun God

Hidden Realm - Necropolis

Days flew by, and Kafele swore the old man was a fucking devil. He used to look down on the Tribe as primitive fools, but the old man made him fear. If his people ever really crossed the Tribe, it’d become a massacre. Not only was their cultivation intense, but their physical training regimes weren’t benign.

No matter how much he begged for a reprieve, the old man only cackled increased the intensity. It was perpetual torment, and he could only keep silent to avoid further punishment. Kafe didn’t dislike the feeling of exhausting himself to death because he slept without nightmares and felt a spark inside him. It was like he gained purpose, and that small light was the will to live.

Daily he ran the shore of the necropolis as soon as the monster woke him up. Followed by extreme martial training. The muscle memory in Kafe’s body still held onto some of his previous training. Still, he had to relearn some things since the lake stripped away the actual knowledge.

Snow was crazy. Claimed that if Kafe could walk away from the training, he hadn’t trained enough. Every day, the old man pummeled Kafe until he was putty and forced to crawl the cooling black sands on the shore and collapse for a time.

The sadistic bastard didn’t show his real colors until Kafe sat up and cultivated. While he was trying to use the new method, Old Man Snow stood nearby and practically tortured him. Kafe was never sure which sadistic means he’d use, but it started with the old monster throwing stones at him, some of which were the size of his fist. Next, it was getting smacked with branches, switches, or canes. On his special mood days, it was a whip.

Kafe wasn’t sure why that was happening at first and only held resentment in his heart. However, he gradually realized how beneficial it all was as time went on. He could slip into his meditative state no matter how distracted he was, and further, while in that state, he kept awareness of the surrounding environment.

Once he recovered, the old man let him off the rest of the evening, so he read through the books inside the villa. At night, he cultivated undisturbed until he was rudely awoken and started his daily routines again.

Punished endlessly, he slowly recovered his cultivation or at least a cultivation. It was odd at times and hard to fully grasp. There wasn’t a lot of depth to it because it only showed its true power after he bonded with spirits. Even more concerning was that he could lose those bonds at any given time if the spirit went into the cycle of rebirth.

The initial parts of the method involved cycling Orenda, which was the Tribe’s name for Mana. Like the Astrologers, they used the power of the stars to develop their techniques. By linking them into patterns, or constellations, within the body, they generated a connection between their Spirit and entities from the Spirit Realm. More specifically, they used their Spirit to form those bonds.

Kafe only needed to learn the foundational pattern which allowed him to establish himself as a Spiritualist. He didn’t know it was almost impossible for most people because they hadn’t been marked, nor had they hovered at the edge of life and death. Since he’d come close to experiencing releasing his Soul, the barrier between this realm and the spirit one was thin. He’d stepped over the threshold between realms. Not only that, he’d bathed in the waters of the necropolis which reconstituted his body. Now his flesh was like a vessel thirsting for spiritual energy.

When pushed through the foundational pattern, Orenda easily converted into Spirit energy. In order to perform his first ritual, he needed to expand his energy reservoir so that he had enough Spirit energy to summon a compatible spirit.

A month drifted by, and Kafe was no longer the scrawny blue-skinned Vodun of the past. His body had filled out, and his shoulders, arms, and leg bulked up under the constant training. He’d even started growing hair, which was the traditional snow-white color of his people. Because of the spirit cultivation, the blue color of his skin had lightened. The coloring was no longer like the dark color of twilight but the light blue of a brightly lit sky.

“You’re ready, kid,” Old Man Snow said one morning after Kafe returned from his run. “Come with me.”

The two walked toward a mausoleum in the southern area of the necropolis. Kafe decided the villa was north since there was no proper way to discern a direction. Which meant they were going to the opposite side of the necropolis.

This particular building Kafe had admired many times, but the building was locked, and he didn’t dare break into it. The old man raised his hands above his head and performed a strange gesture that Kafe couldn’t really see. It was like his hands had blurred, and there were hundreds of them. The one thing he didn’t miss was the blue tribal symbols on his arms that lit up before a totem symbol shot out like an attack spell. However, once it hit the door, it stopped and then melded into them. Before Kafe could inhale, the doors swung inward.

“What was that?” Kafe asked, his eyes still locked on the symbol, which seemed to split in half. Each part still glowed on the side of the door it melded to without looking as if it was going to fade anytime soon.

“Guess you’d call it a Rune? My people call them Totems. This one was called the Totem of Unlocking. Once you gain a spirit, you’ll learn some of these, but the Totem of Unlocking is surprisingly a heavily used spell. I’ll provide you with a vestige later with dozens of spirit-based spells you can slowly learn. However, they all require that you have unlocked the Aura of Spirits.”

“Is that what I’m learning now?”

“In this place, it’d be hard for you to notice, but you’ve already unlocked it. Once you bind a spirit, you’ll have completed the first stage, which is considered the small success stage.”

“That’s it?”

“What do you mean ‘that’s it’? Do you know how rare it is to find someone capable of becoming a Spiritualist? Not only that, you’ll have to keep an eye out for apprentices in the future. I’m not one, but it took me over a thousand years to find someone with the ability.”

Kafe nodded. He was used to the old man’s outbursts at this point. When they entered the mausoleum, he completely ignored the old man and stared at his surroundings in shock.