Sparks Of The Spirit

"There are crows following us... Or are they ravens?" Sylvia mused.

Above them, she noticed that a small group of black birds had been flying circles around them. She kept her eye on them, and realized that they had not gone away.

Gilgamesh was now walking with Marshall on his back. Though the boy was now fully unconscious, his right hand still firmly held onto his sword. As for the wound, though it was tied up it never stopped bleeding.

All down Marshall's arm, greenish-red blood could be seen. It even ran down the length of his sword, staining it.

"They're crows; I noticed them too. I don't sense anything odd about them, though."

Gilgamesh finally saw the condo in the distance thanks to the dim lights escaping the windows. As soon as he saw it, he felt a tightness in his chest that just barely constricted his heart.

He adjusted Marshall's position on his back, and increased his speed.

"What is it?" Sylvia noticed the change and asked.

"I don't know. Something odd."

As they rushed toward the house, he felt something tickling the back of his mind. Having grown used to this sensation by now, he allowed Samael's spirit to transmit its message.

"Did you feel that?" The sword asked, though its voice was vaguely different than it had been before; Gilgamesh did not notice.

"I just barely felt something when I saw the house. What did you feel?" Gilgamesh was mostly confused, but not really worried. After all, when he left Ishtar she had still been armed with a powerful spirit.

"The energy coming from the house is... empty."

"Completely void."

Hearing that, all manner of thoughts filled Gilgamesh's head, each of them adding to his confusion until he gave in and started running.

"Gilgamesh? What is it, what's wrong?"

"Just hurry!"

His tiny frame seemingly struggled with holding Marshall while full-on sprinting, but he managed to keep it up until he arrived at the front door.

Above them, the crows flew in random directions until finally deciding to land on the house itself, scattering a number of black feathers in the process.

They watched with empty eyes as Gilgamesh and Sylvia entered the house with Marshall. As soon as they walked in, they saw Ishtar.

Or, what was left of her, at least.

Her physical form was fading away, due to the fact that there was no longer any substance to her. As far as the Laws holding The Collective together were concerned, Ishtar no longer existed.

The minute Anu reabsorbed the spiritual power he had used to create her, she could no longer carry on existing on her own.

So, now, most of her body was gone. All that was left was her semi-transparent torso and head, but even those were rapidly fading.

"Inanna?" Gilgamesh almost dropped Marshall to the floor when he saw her. Sylvia's hand immediately covered her mouth as she gasped, then she hurried to help Gilgamesh with Marshall.

They quickly lay him on the floor, and Gilgamesh rushed to Ishtar's side.

"What is this...?"

He tried to reach out and touch her, but his hands went right through. Seeing that, he immediately reached out with his spirit, but he could not even feel her presence.

"She's... fading?" Sylvia spoke in a soft voice, unsure of what she could even do in this situation.

"Samael! What is this!?" Without bothering to speak the words in his mind, Gilgamesh brought the sword from his inventory and spoke directly to it.

'I don't know what's happening,' the spirit's voice echoed in his mind. 'All I can tell you is what I feel: her energy has become entirely void. She's been completely emptied somehow, and this is the result.'

Gilgamesh looked around for any kind of sign, but there was nothing he could see that would help him understand.

All he could do with the frustration he felt was to repeatedly try to touch Ishtar's face. The more he failed, the less he was able to keep the emotion inside.

Throwing his head back, he roared to the sky in an attempt to release some of it.

"AHHHH!!!"

"YOUR OWN DAUGHTER!?"

"ANU!"

He did not know how it happened, but he knew Anu was to blame.

There was nothing else he could think of to do but lean over Ishtar's fading form, and stare at her face as she vanished. Tears fell from his eyes and passed through her face, hitting the ground.

Sylvia held her brother close. She had started crying at some point; she did not even know when.

As Gilgamesh wept out of pure discontent, his spirit shifted on its own. He noticed the movement immediately, and gasped.

Once again, it shifted, this time heading directly for his eyes and gathering there. In his head, he heard whispers that were not whispers, coming from a voice that was not a voice.

Through some mystical manner of subconscious suggestion, his spirit was guiding him-- showing him what he should do.

He winced due to his eyes suddenly started to burn, and he realized that he had ignored an instinctive feeling to close them.

Once he shut his eyesband the burning stopped, he saw an image in his mind.

It was the image of a flickering flame, emittimg a soft, blinking glow. Seeing it, Gilgamesh recalled where he had seen it before.

'The Obscure Spark skill?'

As soon as he saw that image, it shattered into millions of tiny sparks that faded from his sight. The burning returned and he opened his eyes again, then a single tear instantly fell from each of them.

In those tears were contained those very sparks; as they ran down Gilgamesh face, they even left traces of spark behind. Eventually, they fell from his face.

Gilgamesh just barely noticed something odd about those tears, and when he looked down he saw that they did not pass through Ishtar's ethereal body.

They landed on her face, and permeated her skin. The sparks from his tears exploded to life under her skin-- which Gilgamesh could see due to her transparent state.

In a matter of seconds, all of her remaining body was filled with those sparks, then something even more incredible happened.

"She's being rebuilt?" Gilgamesh's soliliquy reached Sylvia's ears and she raised her head to see what was happening.

She had averted her gaze a short while ago, not wanting to keep looking upon such a sad scene.

What she saw silenced her, and put an end to her tears.

Under the directive of those sparks, Ishtar's body was being rebuilt. Wherever they went, parts of her would return.

Under the shocked gazes of Gilgamesh and Sylvia, Ishtar was reformed in her entirety. The next time Gilgamesh reached out, he could feel her warm face again.

Reacting to his touch, Ishtar's stirred and woke. Once she saw Gilgamesh, her expression came to life with a smile, and she reached out with her own hands to touch his face.

She had been in darkness ever since Anu reabsorbed her spirit, unable to do anything but silently call out for Gilgamesh.

"I knew you would find a way..." Her voice was a bit hoarse, and her eyes slightly red, but she was okay.

That was all that mattered to Gilgamesh.

He helped her sit up, got her some water, and watched as she drank it. Meanwhile, Sylvia was watching with a smile, relieved.

Breaking the tranquility of that little moment were Marshall's dry coughs, coupled with a spot of blood from his mouth. Sylvia sucked in a breath and froze, showing Gilgamesh some of the blood that splashed onto her hands.

It was tinged with that horrible green color; it was obvious that the boy was being poisoned.

"Shit!"

With Samael in hand, Gilgamesh brought the mireling corpse out of his inventory.

"What happened?" Ishtar asked, but Gilgamesh instead told her that he would explain everything afterward.

"Right now I need to create a crude antivenom. I was planning on using your body, but now I'm not sure it can handle it."

Ishtar shook her head.

"I don't know how you did it, but there's energy filling my spirit again, albeit an energy that I do not recognize. I think I may be able to create a spiritual antivenom, at the very least."

"Tch!" Gilgamesh saw how pale Marshall was getting, and also how Sylvia was beginning to panic.

"It will have to do."

He used Samael to cut off one of the mireling's clawed hands, then ensured it was coated with the green liquid that filled those popping veins.

Interestingly enough, what filled those veins was not the mireling's blood; it was a different hue than the poison, and an entirely different consistency.

Once the sword was coated, the wasted no time in piercing Ishtar's arm with it, making sure that enough of the poison ran into the wound.

Ishtar winced, but Gilgamesh did not stop until he was sure she received enough of the poison.

"Breathe, Inanna. Just focus on the poison. The minute you develop enough spiritual antibodies, i'll help you extract some of them."

Ishtar nodded and shut her eyes; Sylvia watched everything with hopeful eyes.

Ishtar started sweating a some point, and Sylvia even started worrying for safety, yet Gilgamesh's expression never changed. His confidence in Ishtar was absolute.

If she said she could do it, then she would. He knew she would never let him down like that. Never again.

"I've become immune to its effects. I'm going to divide some of my spirit, get ready to extract it with yours."

"Attagirl," Gilgamesh shifted his sitting position and gathered his focus. He was prepared to use his spirit to extract a portion of Ishtar's spiritual energy, and did not notice the slight blush that appeared on her face.

Even Sylvia had a reaction to that, and bit her lip.

"Now!"

Gilgamesh took a breath and shut his eyes, then his spirit permeated the outermost layer of Ishtar's spiritual self. He saw her inner self, adorned in endless, cascading sparks that her spirit seemed to breathe to life.

An tiny sliver of that sparkly spirit was passed to him, and he took hold of it. The instant he did so, he could feel the familiarity of that spiritual power. The energy felt astoundingly similar to the feeling he had gotten right when he had acquired the skill 'Knowledge of the Obscure Spark.'

He thought back to how the skill icon had appeared before the sparks entered his tears, and for a moment he felt like he was grasping some kind of understanding.

Then, it slipped away.

Refocusing, he transferred the spiritual antibodies to Marshall, and essentially force-fed them to him.

Though this would not instantly reverse the effect that the poison already had on his body, it would allow his spirit to be able to destroy the poison from the inside, and eventually make his body immune.

Once the energy was passed to Marshall, Gilgamesh and Ishtar both sighed.

"Will that work," Sylvia reached out and touched Marshall's pale face.

Ishtar got up to get a towel for Marshall's forehead, and Gilgamesh answered her question.

"It won't heal him, but it will eventually neutralize the poison. All we can do now is try to help his body heal from the wound, and wait."

Sylvia took a deep breath, and nodded. Ishtar came back and placed the towel on his head, then they carried him over to the couch and started to clean him up.

By the time they were finished, he was bareback, bandaged, and clean. The cool air within the house would surely add to his comfort. Sylvia fell asleep at his side.

Gilgamesh and Ishtar showered and went to their room, and Gilgamesh realized that the crows were directly above their room on the roof. They could hear them.

"They just appeared and started following you guys?"

"Yeah. I'll try to figure it out later. Right now there's something even more confusing going on."

Ishtar placed her head on Gilgamesh's folded legs and stared up at his face. He stared down at her and brought her hand to his face.

"In the moment where I thought I truly lost you, I heard its voice. It spoke to me, as though it was always a part of me-- a part of my spirit itself."

"I thought it was because of the system that I was connected to it in that way, but I feel the system's presence as a separate entity to my spirit, so that can't explain it."

"What spoke to you, Gil?"

Gilgamesh saw scant traces of confusion on Ishtar's face, but he couldn't think of a way to banish that confusion, as he himself was filled with questions.

"I heard the voice of this world coming from within me. It told me that I could save you, and showed me how."