Young shamans should be careful on the night spirits come out to play...

The tribe lived in the desert, taking advantage of the precious few gifts of nature thye could find. Each member performed his or her tasks to the best of their ability, for the good of the tribe. The shaman's was to tend to their spiritual needs.

One day, a huge metal bird, gales of smoke flying from its wings, flew over their heads and crashed with the crack of thunder a few miles away from their camp. This ominous sign was followed by several tribesmen reporting seeing shadows, or ghosts, while keeping watch over the camp at night. Feeling an unusually high peak of spiritual energy, the shaman confirmed
that the tormented souls originated from the metal bird's crash site, probably having been consumed by it just prior to the accident. As such, he underwent a journey deep into the desert, seeking to appease the spirits once they came out at night.

But he couldn't take it. Their thirst for one last contact with a living being overwhelmed his senses, sending him running back to his family. Defeated, but not having given up, he resolved to try again the next night. It was especially important to deal with the issue on that night, as it was the Night of the Ancestors, during which spirits and ghosts were particularly strong, capable of even cursing the tribe's animals for years to come.
To ensure he'd stay the whole night, even if his body urged to flee, the shaman had his tribe tie him down to the metallic pieces of the bird's corpse, to keep him in place until the souls were satisfied with his sacrifice, his only comfort a small pelt under his knees, so that he could stand on them all night long. Under no circumstances were his friends to interfere, no matter what happened. They set up a small fire away from the camp, from where they could not even see the bondage structure, lest they get tempted to rescue the shaman before the sun was born anew.

They didn't.

Once the sun set and the darkness rose into the sky, the shaman immediately regretted his decision. It was too much to bear. The spirits were far too thirsty. But no matter how much he begged for his fellow tribesmen to save him they kept their distance, his screams frightening them too much for them to even think of getting closer.

The shaman was only released from his bonds in the morning, his limp, unconscious body still feeling the phantom tingling of the spiritual contact.
His task had succeeded, and no spirits were sighted for a long time near the camp. Taking a lesson from the experience, the shaman started the tradition of training any new shamanic aprentices in a very specific new resistance technique....



Art by  impximon