Page 48 of Between Soul and Vessel
“We meet again, little god,” the giant said as I approached her, in the lowest tier of the Spirit Realm. She lounged beside a sprawling lake of water, her hand dipped in as she swirled it around.
Ezra trailed behind me, cane tapping the ground.
“And you’ve brought another tiny friend with you. How quaint,” the giant spoke sarcastically.
“Tiny friend,” Ezra muttered grumpily under her breath. Of course,nowshe was insulted. But when the giant had been eating every immortal in sight, she had merely shrugged her shoulders and told me,Good luck with that.
“It’s been a while,” I said by way of greeting, my hands in my pockets as I continued my leisurely pace. I had no idea what to expect from this meeting, although I was more than ready to find out. If I needed to unlock the beast within to attain the information I sought, I would, although I was hoping to handle things a bit more diplomatically.
“A while doesn’t even scratch the surface for how long it’s been,” she stated, flicking the water from her fingers a few times. She tipped her chin up and peered at us down the bridge of her nose. “Why have you come?”
“To have a nice little chat,” I said, the left side of mymouth curving upwards.
“You left me to rot for centuries. What makes you think I would be willing to talk toyou?” She snarled the last word.
I stood about an arm’s swipe away—a calculated position.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Ezra walked up beside me. “In all fairness, youwereeating people.”
“I was sendingsoulsback to the empress,” she corrected. “It is what I was built to do—what we all were.”
“By eating them?” Ezra asked, quirking a wiry, gray brow. “How does that work, exactly?”
Skeptically, the giant looked at us, and for a brief moment, I thought she might not reply, but then she said, “Ah, fuck it.” She leaned back, using her outstretched arms for support. “I will answer your question, but do not mistake my willingness to participate in conversation—something I have not had in a very long time—for anything more.”
“Fair enough,” I replied.
She continued, “To your kind I am known as an Ancient One, but the proper name for my species is venum stoomic, and I was created for one purpose—to harvest souls from different realms, particularly male ones, and send them back to the empress.”
“Poison stomach,” I said, my tongue translating the foreign language all on its own. Where it came from, I did not know.
“Ah, you speak my language. Yet another sign you are not as you seem,” she said with a soft laugh. “Perhaps weshould cut you open again, hmm?”
The memory of her slicing my leg open and peering at my bones resurfaced.
“I’d rather not,” I stated flatly.
“Aww, you’re no fun,” she teased with a coy grin. “Now, where was I? Ah, that’s right. As the name suggests, the contents of my stomach are deathly corrosive. It breaks souls down into such small pieces, the soul can no longer exist here. Seeking to be remade, the soul returns to the Mother Realm, what you call the Ancient Lands. It is where all life originated from and where all life must eventually return to. But before any of that can happen, the venom within my stomach must gnaw through the body. It is so powerful that even the strongest of immortal hides and iron bones don’t stand a chance.” With her eyes on me, she licked her lips. “Yours would be no different. You would be a tasty treat.”
“Eh.” I shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t think I would. I got a lot of muscle—probably be too chewy.”
“Who said anything about chewing?” The giant chuckled. “I’d just swallow you whole.”
Ezra turned to me. “You should probably take her up on that.”
I sighed, knowing the old bird wasn’t wrong. It was one way I could get to where Sage was, albeit I’d rather not be eaten by a giant today. I decided to try another avenue.
“How did you get here?” I asked the giant, trying to recall the events of that day. I had been in my office, signing different documents, when Zahra had come racing into theroom, fear propping her eyes wide open, explaining that a giant immortal had just appeared and she waseatingother immortals.
“With this,” the giant answered as she lifted the blue gemstone hanging from her neck. It looked like a large sapphire.
“See?” I spoke through the side of my mouth to Ezra. “No eating involved.”
“Take a closer look,” Ezra stated smugly.
I studied the gemstone, noting that even when the light hit it, it refused to sparkle.
