CW:

Violence, death, soul eating, brief descriptions of slave trading and such. SNEK GOD

DREAMER TIT’S This is such a bad idea! I want to sob at her as I see the towering horrible shape of the god of slaves and slavers.

Tretion had brought out old paintings of this big and wretched thing. But… but I… They could not convey what I was seeing now. Would NEVER be able to show with petty inks and parchment what my Amwella sight bored into my soul.

The temple of the Furthonois is located upon one of the great bridges that span the gap between the two halves of Theradas. Apparently it was once home to another, maybe something that ruled over the city and desert around. But when Furthonois first paved the old road that history was forgotten quickly when they took this place as their throne.

Th– They, Like my Beloved Usete, bear subtle marks of both masculine and feminine things. But that is where the similarities end. Where my sibling is all gentle Fae grace, This being is… overbearing dominance.

Taller than Thendra by half, their thinly clothed upper torso is lazily propped up on a cushion as big as a jungle bear, while the rest of them curls out and behind them. No legs, just… a very very very long tail of scales and rippling muscle.

Four blood red eyes glimmer and dance over the amphitheater that houses a cacophony of flesh and soul trading. A… a bustling marketplace of cruelty and submission. All manner of beings find themselves sold to a multitude of monsters and worse things.

But to one watching with the correct sight, it’s none of these things that grip the throat and cause a heart to thunder in such great fear.

From the god over all this, a writhing mass of horrid soulfire seems to… to pool and wrap up and the room. So large and so everywhere all at once that I can barely fight the urge to just… tear a rift and run as it drips and bobs down from the ceiling.

Run and run and run and hope this thing doesn’t see me, or decide I’m prey worth chasing. Because I know in the pit of my rotting soul I could not escape them.

“Lyra.” Tretion murmurs, but so quietly that only I hear her.

She’d insisted I rest and recover before taking her here. And… as much as I wanted to just avoid all of this and go back to Thendra with the little trinket that now hangs about my neck, she and her manor would not even let me get within ten paces of the exit.

I slept in a lump of pillows and quilts in a hallway though. Still too wary of the odd sense of the place. My stomach ached for food, but… I would not eat the manor’s soul woven gunk. It… it kinda disgusted me the more I considered it.

I still wore the slave attire from before. Blood stained and horrid. But… that was the point. I’m a soul walking in the Furthonois shadow. Here with a prize to ensure this city and her god know that I have earned my freedom, and will pay for it in blood and soulfire.

“Lyra.” Tretion hisses again, a little louder, but without dropping the pained hollowed out expression she’s developed for this.

I swallow, eyes and Naranggas struggling to just… ignore the writhing mass of Amwella that curls around the room. But… I grind my teeth, focus on the steps of the god’s throne, and move us forward. One tendril wrapped around Tretion’s soul as gently as possible, while the others dance and sing a silent harmony of warning around us.

We get about ten steps into the crowd before I have to use them.

A weird… bug thing. A beetle twice my size with wriggling mucky claws moves into our path. Clicks and hisses with deliberate malice and focus. I don’t need Tretion to whisper translations of its words to know what it wants.

Two slaves. One broken and meek, the other small and stinking of freedom sought.

Easy prey.

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I don’t hesitate, just… Whip-crack snap, and the thing is slumped onto the floor. Warm soulfire crunched and shoved into my Amwella. It's hard to continue as the feeding euphoria overwhelms me for a moment, but… I force my legs to keep moving.

This happens twice more before the people around begin to notice us fully. The crowd doesn’t seem to react quickly to a body just… stopping or tumbling away. Doesn’t… doesn’t seem to understand the trail of death I’m leaving until we’re so so close to the throne.

I can sense a rumbling of confusion rolling up behind us, a twisting of fear and curiosity at the little thing that brings soul rending sorrow to any barring her path. Now the crowd is parting, the wonder and fear acting as a blade in the grass, slicing away the chaff and weak. Leaving only three who might challenge me.

One is tall, huge even. Easily Thendra’s size. Covered in scales and spines and even a few extra mouths within… his? I think his overly large hands. Soul is… well not small, but… seems… thin. Gnashing with a few rows of little teeth as its spread too much for the big shape.

The next is a bug, like before, but wrapped in thrice the number of shells with dozens of little legs or arms or… somethings. Soul is much like its body, wrapped in some kind of weird… shell thing. And I feel a prickle of fear as I remember the last Amwella core that bore such protection.

An old Fae soul that now festers with rot maggots.

I shake the thought, and turn to regard the last. She is like the red horned people I killed a few nights ago, but wrapped in cruel spined chitin armor and resting a very VERY large blade against her shoulder. Her soul flickers and dances with red ghost-fire, more erratic and wiggly than the two others.

The big one is the closest, and the dumbest. He simply steps forward and reaches to try and snatch me up in one of his big meaty hands with the gnashing maw on its palm. Reaver instincts kick in. I shove Tretion to the ground, duck and sidestep, then drag all three Naranggas through his chest and core. To his credit, the monster does not immediately die, nor do I get his soul in one big bite. Just have to… to kind of tear and rend at it while he stumbles and tries to grasp at me a few more times.

But eventually he does fall, and the thump of it punctuates just how quiet the room has gotten.

Ten now? Ten souls eaten and consumed by my Fae soul…. I think?

Did I lose count?

Tretion rises, and when I roll my Amwella drowning eyes over her she lets out a false yelp of fear and runs up to stand by my side again. I try to ignore the mass of onlookers. See the fear and curiosity, know they will keep back as far as possible.

When my senses return to me I turn to the two remaining slavers who wish to bar my path.

The bug seems to have… reconsidered. Moves off to the side and into the crowd. What I think is its head bowed in acknowledgement.

That leaves the horned lady, whose smile glimmers brighter than her eyes as she watches my Naranggas whirl about. She cracks her neck, and twists what I now see is a very long and fairly thin blade into a twisting arch. It sparks with an odd green lightning and–

And my instincts are howling. I shove Tretion away and duck to avoid the woman's strike as she riftwalks into the space beside me. Lash out with my Naranggas to rend her soul free.

But she’s already stepping back and twisting her blade. And my tendrils strike something solid.

BURNING

I tumble back, and watch in horror as one of my limbs weeps soulfire from a long scar that would have bisected it if this woman had been aiming for it from the start.

I hiss and glare at her. She smirks, begins to whirl the blade about again and–

But I’m ready now, already moving and following Bulderii’s lessons.

“When you have nothing but talons and your prey has blade or flame, you must rely on pure speed and aggression. Most will expect you to pull back or run, but you will get close and remove any advantage of reach this weapon might give them. Either disarm them quickly, or end things before they can adapt to your sudden fury.”

The woman’s eyes go wide with delight as I duck and lunge. Left talon shoving her arm and blades aside as the right buries two of its three claws into her eyes and flesh. I ride her to the ground, blade clattering as her own hands with their sharpened nails shoot up to bore into my sides. But before my Naranggas can rip out her soul, her feet are at my chest, kicking and tossing me with strength she should not have.

I land on my feet easily, and am already running at her again. She rises, and I know from her manic expression that she sees me coming despite her ruined eyes. Either from Amwella sight or raw predator senses.

Something screams at me to dodge from the back of my mind, and I listen without hesitation. Dive into a rolling dodge to avoid… something. I barely have time to look back as I lurch to lunge at her again and–

Instincts are roaring now, and I jerk back.

A whistling length of blue pierces the space where my leg would have been, buries itself into the tiled floor. An arm’s length of…

I glance over to see that the bug thing did not, in fact, decide to leave me well enough alone, but just… waited to shoot weird bolts of hard chitin at me?!?

I hiss, and move to charge him, but need to dodge and roll away as the red woman’s blade comes singing from a mass of green smoke to my right.

In the breath between their next two attempts to wound me, I realize they work far too well together. They are adapting to my speed. A knick of her blade across another two of my Naranggas followed by a bolt that clips my calf and reduces my speed.

Dreamer’s Tits I… I can’t beat them! I growl. Not without… without…

As her blade pierces toward my core, and a bolt hisses a breath from a leg, I draw up my Amwella and weave Spite into a song.

No time to flinch from the pain of the curse, no time to growl and gnash at how I am about to announce my Fae nature to a room of flesh and soul eating monsters. Only enough to wail my frustrations and hunger and madness at these two.

And it feels wondrous.

I’d avoided using this since the Rorliras or my attempts to harm Awnya’s father, a fear of such a horrid thing that never seemed to work as I needed. But now I get to watch in glee as the woman’s blade just… stops, and then endures a screaming warble that seems to gather up the lightning that danced along the blade, before twisting it into a whirling mass of returning torments that slams into her own face and chest. Tearing skin and bone and conscious thought from her as she tumbles back and slumps into a heap.

As for the bug, I only turn to watch as it slumps into a heap of heavy chitin. Guided by my horrid melody, their own bolts found a perfect chink in their armor.

I rise and approach the red horned woman. Lean down to take up her sword and scoop up her ghost-flame soul before it fades… and a little coin pouch I am able to see easily.

Twelve?

Or… or is it more now?

I walk back to Tretion while dragging the big blade carelessly behind me as I fight down the smothering of my final feeding euphoria. She’s only just now risen. Eyes wide and… bleeding. I blink, and find my own much more bloody.

Oh… she must have been too close to the Spited melody.

I wipe my eyes clean with my shirt and turn to the steps to see–

Furthonois, The god of the broken and reforged stares down at me with such… amusement.

Eyes alight with hunger and curiosity and… and deeper things that I cannot hope to understand.