Janet thought about how people dealt with uncertainty, and wondered whether anyone other than herself had ever landed themselves in as perilous a situation. She doubted anyone else had ever been faced with impending death or a lifetime locked up in a research laboratory having her limbs and organs lobbed off and fed to swine, with no food available to her other than the nibbles she took off of people’s souls. And maybe, in the worst-case scenario, not even that.
It was a jarring juxtaposition to how she’d felt just moments ago, ready to face the world and equipped with righteous anger and indignation at all the injustices she’d suffered thus far. She had felt completely capable of getting rid of the stain on society that was the cult. Now, all she could do was sweat and tremble futilely.
As her doom slowly approached, with the cultists seeming more and more likely to overcome their fright and gang up on her very frail self, she thought back towards her life on the streets and how easy it had been to trick her to deliver herself to the cult, all accomplished with a few loaves of bread and some clean water.
She really couldn’t help it this time when her stomach rumbled with hunger. Even though her wounds had closed up without blemish or scar, the lifeforce she stole only went to catalyzing the healing, like heat from flames sped up the process of cooking. The fuel itself, the firewood, or coals, came from her fat reserves and flesh. This meant that not only was she thinner than she had been prior to her ordeal, she was even more hungry, the biting pangs of starvation burning through her belly and eliciting another unsettling gurgle.
“My, my… aren’t we hungry tonight?” a sickeningly sweet feminine voice carried directly into her ear, as if the speaker were standing right behind her.
Towards Janet’s back lay the altar, still dripping with Gerald’s blood. Anyone speaking from that direction…
Janet scrambled to her feet, feeling her joints creak with the pangs of weakness. A quick turn that took away her breath and – right behind her was a divinely beautiful woman. Her appearance gave away the image of a young woman in her early twenties, yet her casual bearing emanated a sense of power that could only have been derived from years upon years of accumulation. She was garbed in green silks that billowed in a nonexistent wind, and somehow, despite being fully conscious and uninjured, Janet could sense her soul. And it was MASSIVE.
Words failed the young girl, even as her shins burned with the sheer effort it took just to keep herself upright. There was one thing of which she was certain, and it unnerved her, maybe even more than it terrified the cowering fools at her feet. This woman, whomever or whatever she was, could obliterate her and vaporize her soul with naught but a sneeze.
Oh, and she was levitating above the altar, as if her austere self were separating herself from the muck and bloody grime of the cavern, yet demanded she take the most prominent position in the cavern.
Janet wished she could levitate. Her atrophied muscles were burning with exertion now, so even that much would bring her great relief. If only she knew more about magic, and her frailty wouldn’t be such a bother anymore.
“You really are a fretful one, aren’t you, dear?” the woman questioned thoughtfully. “It’s almost as though you grew up the polar opposite of your father.”
Now that… that was a statement with which to grab her attention. Nobody, not a single person ever, had known who her father had been. All signs pointed to the conclusion that Janet had been born to a prostitute from one of her clients. Nobody she had questioned had any idea who either of her parents were, but she had been brought up in an orphanage that catered mostly to the abandoned children of dead adventurers, dead prostitutes, and other dead forgettable cogs of society. Dead prostitute had fit the bill best.
Driven by curiosity, Janet had on one night stolen into the town library in an effort to research her [Talent], and only one man in all of recorded history had matched her proclivity for contactless death: the infamous Demon.
“You…” she faltered, unsure on how best to phrase question in a way that would not draw the ire of the powerful woman. “Did you know my father, umm… Lady?” She had heard the richer folks in town refer to themselves as Lord so-and-so and Lady this-and-that, and she figured the title could apply even to this situation.
All she received in reply was an amused chuckle, then a scrutinizing glare so sharp, she felt her intangible soul quiver.
“So, you inherited Daemon’s [Talent] as well?” the Lady began, completely ignoring Janet’s question. “And managed to eat that pest Marius?”
It had been framed as a question, and eager as she was not to offend, Janet replied as fast as she could with a frantic affirmative nod, only for the weight of her own skull to send her arms flailing in search of balance. She was indeed that frail.
“Good job, child!” the praise was genuine, though the pain in her knees prevented her from enjoying this very rare occurrence. It might have been the first time anyone had ever praised her for something she had done. It felt nice.
A wince here, an unsteady bob there…
“Why aren’t you using Marius to recover your Stamina?”
“Huh?”
“Your Stamina, little one. Assign some of his resources to recover your energy reserves. You’re almost completely depleted,” the Lady calmly explained. Janet, on the other hand, had no idea what the woman was speaking about.
Stamina? How could life force, a factor of the soul and other deeper mana mechanisms, be used to recover endurance? If she remembered correctly, stamina was supposed to be a derivative of physical resistance and the body’s capacity for effort. Endurance was completely removed from the workings of life force! Was the Lady delirious or something?
“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
Janet shook her head, though she felt immediately afterwards that it would have been better to answer verbally. Her vision was beginning to blur at the edges after all the bobbing and shaking she was subjecting her brain to.
“Oh, dear me, you are priceless. It’s like a newborn voidling!”
After her rather cryptic utterance, the Lady summoned Marius’s dagger to her palm with a swift gesture, where the runes began to glow a dim orange. A few hand gestures and words whispered under her breath later, the lady in clothes so fine they seemed to have been spun from moonlight blew a breath of air over the dagger’s hilt and towards Janet.
At first, nothing seemed to have happened. Nothing happened, at least not physically. In the plane of souls, however, Janet felt herself be infused with an ultra-refined sort of energy, kind of like an already digested soul. Moments later, she felt the same warmth permeate from that hidden plane and into the physical reality, filling her muscles, bones, and even her groggy head with a flush of energy unlike any she’d ever felt.
“There. Now we can talk.”
“What… what was that?” Janet asked. She had been in the business of eating souls and eating from souls all her life, but she’d never managed anything of that sort. It felt like she had eaten an entire pig by herself. Her energy reserves were filled to the brim, with even more stored in her soul for later, and all seemingly without any waste at all.
It was like the Lady had somehow used a more refined, utterly immaculate version of her [Talent] to recharge her resources. That though, was just one of the questions the little demonstration had raised.
“What is that!?” Janet asked, her trembling finger outstretched and pointing warily at the dagger formerly belonging to Marius.
“This? This was your father’s,” the Lady replied. “Or rather, it still belongs to him. Soulbound items tend not to lose their mark of ownership until their wielder’s soul dissipates completely.” She then paused for a moment, glancing at Janet with that soul-deep piercing stare, then at the dagger. “Or if someone else asserts a stronger claim, though that very rarely happens.”
Her father was alive? No, that wasn’t important, she thought. She had lived this long without his help, and could survive the next few seconds with the questions in her mind unanswered. About the dagger though… “It can store souls?”
“Oh, certainly,” the Lady replied, balancing the instrument of slaughter on the tip of her finger like a juggler at the market. “Like I said, it was your father’s. Tool of the trade, and all that.”
It seemed as if she was being goaded into asking about her sire, but the dagger remained of supreme importance in her mind. Souls were non-fungible, transcendent existences. They remained intangible, utterly separate from the physical realm, from what she had read on her many trips to the library’s rafters and cellars. A physical object that could contravene that law, especially one as simple as a dagger…
“Could I perhaps, have it?” she asked, then steeled her resolve and took another shot. “Can I please have the dagger?”
“NO.”
Simple, concise, succinct, with zero subtext or subtlety. But Janet was unwavering in her determination.
“Isn’t it sort of like my birthright? I mean, it was my father’s.”
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“Is, little one. Still is your father’s, and he remains one of very few existences I’d rather not cross.”
The statement was spoken with an underlying tone of finality Janet did not like in the least, but she squared her jaw and accepted that the battle had been lost, at least for now. Maybe if she found out the Lady’s identity, she’d show up at her place after she was strong enough to take for herself the only object that she was aware of in existence whose properties could help clarify her [Talent], and the path she needed to take to master it.
“If it’s not too forward, what may I call you, my Lady…” Janet trailed off as the woman in question arched an eyebrow. It might have been surprise, or maybe even disdain, but Janet maintained her course nonetheless.
“Hmm, you don’t seem to possess any knowledge of me. Not even the slightest awareness that you stand in the presence of a goddess,” she began, utterly befuddling Janet and eliciting pitiful moans from the prostrate cultists behind her back. “Tell me, girl, have you never been into a temple?”
“No,” Janet replied. “I was afraid my [Talent] would leak out, or get noticed by one of the priests. I mean, the books say the church brought down my father. Someone there might understand enough about demons to recognize me.”
“Daemon, not demon.”
“Pardon?” Janet asked, genuinely confused. The goddess was repeating the same term, just with different pronunciations, right?
“Your father’s name was Daemon. He was human, same as you. Or rather just as human-like as you. Demons are altogether another race of beings, and they definitely do not possess abilities such as yours.”
There were more questions there than answers, but Janet wanted to stay as far as possible from any information that would demystify her father’s existence. He had abandoned her, a frail little wolf pup, to be raised amongst very aggressive sheep that had trampled upon her dignity with her every yelp. Death had followed her like an omen, and the humans had loathed her for it. She was too bitter to consider his existence, or what the new information meant for her, so she returned to the only question she could pursue without moral and emotional self-reprisal.
“Pardon me for the impertinence, your divine majesty, but which goddess?” she bowed her head in obeisance.
“Gaia, child. I oversee most of life, and this here lies squarely in my domain. As did your father, until he decided to rebel.” Thus speaking, she took to caressing the dagger like a long-lost prized family heirloom, while peeping from the bottom of her lashes as greed mounted on the tiny girl’s heart. The desire to own a piece of her heritage was so evident, it would have shone as bright as a star had it been visible.
“Are there any other…” Janet could not help thinking the dagger would be crucial to her path. For Gaia’s sake, she still could sense a dense cloud of soul matter swirling inside the runed body of the tiny artifact! It was like her [Talent], her abilities, condensed into a scrutable, physical form that she could delve into to find answers about herself. She had to have it.
“Are there other artifacts like that one?” she asked, prostrating her head a bit to insinuate a meek and docile demeanor. She even lit up doe eyes like her hellhound puppy used to make before it grew too large for her to afford to feed, so she let it free in the forests beyond town.
“There exist only two other artifacts in existence that can do what you hope to achieve with [Void], and both are in Daemon’s possession.” As if an afterthought, she added, “But this dagger, [Void], was forged partially from his discarded body. It is magnitudes of scale more powerful and versatile than the other two.”
Discarded body? Someone could do that?
Something occurred to Janet, as she stood around gaping her mouth and wracking her brains on how exactly she’d get the most powerful of the three Artifacts into her possession. It seemed like the goddess had a request of her own, owing to how she kept bringing up her father, as if she wanted her to ask a very specific question. Against her better judgement, she gritted her teeth and did it anyway, completely aware that the information she was about to receive could break her delicate mental state.
“Where’s my father?” she posed. “I mean, Daemon?”
“That old curmudgeon? He’s off-world at the moment,” Gaia supplied with a whimsical tone that rang with notes of triumph and victory.
“Off-world?” Janet asked. That was an entirely foreign term to Janet. The concept that there were other worlds was known to Janet, but that people could travel to them was so far removed from her realms of imagination, it would never have occurred to her in a million years. She’d never left town, let alone the province. How was she to imagine things such as planetary travel or even cross-realm travel?
“Like I implied, he lost his body in a close to permanent basis. He cannot exist in the physical realms, so he currently roams the immaterial planes as a spirit.”
There were no words that could have portrayed Janet’s dismay as well as her blank stare did. Existing without a body?
“So… the dagger is his body?”
“We did not want him returning any time soon, but even forging his body into this,” Gaia started, and extended the dagger towards Janet. She was inclined to reach for it, only to retract her hand in fright as the dagger morphed into a short sword, then a black, unmarked staff. “Even this might not stop his resurgence, seeing as there now exists a human that potentially could house his soul, if he were to possess them.”
Oh, shit! Her father had been the bait, but the catch, as she had suspected was a piece of information so terrible, it upended her world. Her father could possess her. And why not? She possessed a similar [Talent] to his, so he’d serve as the perfect vessel.
To make matters worse, from Gaia’s devious smile, Janet knew the conversation only led one way.
“What do you need me to do?” she asked with resignation. There was no way she could fight away the Demon. Even Marius soul had almost overwhelmed her, and compared to the infamous Immortal Butcher of the Faithful, Marius was a flickering candleflame to the Demon’s raging conflagration. As for Janet? She was barely a sputtering ember.
To add insult to injury, the miniscule amount of power Janet possessed was hampered by how unschooled and inexperienced she was.
“Clever girl,” Gaia praised, as she extended an arm Janet’s way. Surprised at the open gesture, Janet was a second too late to extend her arm in turn, so the goddess resulted to picking her up by one armpit, and effortlessly set her upon the altar, facing towards the still prostrate cultists. Janet tried her hardest not to look down at the corpse she was definitely standing by.
“You just have to swear undying loyalty to me and my Domain, and sacrifice all these sniveling pieces of garbage in my name,” the goddess declared.
“I don’t think I can…”
“Girl, your father probably detected your excursion into the Void as soon as I did. You did well to remain concealed all these years, but consuming a soul as powerful as Marius is an event that surely echoed across that realm. He’s probably on his way as we speak.”
“But I can’t…” She was completely flabbergasted at the request lodged by the Goddess of Life. The Goddess of Life!
“Aren’t you supposed to safeguard life?” she posed, genuinely curious now. It felt stupid to even question, but she felt like a god whose domain encompassed life should be more compassionate, even if the life belonged to detestable gits like the cultists. “They are part of that life, you know?”
It might have been stupid to question a goddess, but no reprisal arrived, and no punishment was levied. Instead, the goddess continued staring into Janet’s eyes, and she in turn felt a perturbation in her soul.
“40 pets?” she asked, seemingly having found what she had been looking for. “That’s… impressive. And only nine people murdered, only four with malice in your heart.”
If Janet had been easy to scare, she would have been rolling on the rocky floor like a defeated dog. A single glance, and the goddess had tallied up all her mistakes and loves in an instant. Janet suddenly became very aware of the power difference between the two of them.
If only she had some elemental magic of her own. She could have worked her fingers down to bloody nubs time and again to gain herself more power. Maybe, just maybe, then she would have been better placed to negotiate, even with one as powerful as a goddess.
All thought was wiped out as a searing sensation plunged deep into her soul, branding layers upon layers of soul she felt but could not perceive with an excruciating agony. It lasted for the duration from when Janet decided she needed to scream, up until the breath streamed towards her vocal cords. Barely a second, but it had felt like an eternity.
“Sorry about that, just needed to burn out some remnant consciousnesses that have been sucking you dry. And I of course planted my blessing right inside your soul. You know, so it’s permanent and eternal.”
That… that did not sound good.
The next step after her acceptance into Gaia’s fold was the small issue of a mini-massacre that followed. Like a Valkyrie of legend, she stepped upon the air and descended upon the cowering fools. A carefree swing of [Void] turned it into a halberd with which she lobbed off head after head with casual ease and abandon. Not a single droplet of blood landed on the goddess, all seemingly wafted away upon imperceptible winds, winds that also somehow silenced all the whimpering and screams as Gaia scythed through the cowering ranks.
Janet though, she got her face splattered with more blood than her stint at the altar’s base had marked her with. Now, she was naked, cold, bloody, and genuinely terrified. She had just been violated soul-deep by the Goddess of Life, who had then proceeded to slaughter every other person in the room but herself.
“Here, catch!” Gaia declared, then threw the halberd towards Janet, who scampered away to avoid injury. On the way, the halberd transformed back into a dagger, though this time taking an unassuming form and appearing like a generic knife made out of cheap iron, unlike its former regal, runed guise. A sheath also materialized on the dagger, with fittings that would go onto a belt, had she possessed one.
“Could you please materialize some clothes for me like you did with the sheath, please?” Janet asked. Her heart was already pounding with excitement at the prospect of walking around with clothes personally conjured up by a goddess.
Her excitement simmered down when she looked up from the dagger to Gaia’s face. The goddess was looking directly upwards, her carefree expression replaced by something Janet would one day come to recognize as deep annoyance. Or maybe it was nervousness; not Janet’s place to question either way.
“I need to leave,” Gaia declared, her voice ringing with an echo of anger. So, annoyance then.
In lieu of manifesting Janet some clothes, she levitated some of the spilled blood off the ground and did some muted chanting while the blood turned clear, all the red streaming into her cupped palms. She let the clear liquid splatter back onto the ground. Her eyes remained locked onto her palms.
Three seconds later, a ring, plain and unadorned, was hurled in a dipping arc towards Janet. She leaned forward to let the piece of jewelry land on her palm, only to see it turn into a cluster of ring-shaped scintillating lights that drilled into her arm, then transformed into a bracelet of runes around her wrist.
She was over the moon. She finally had her first tattoo! And one made by a goddess no less!
By the time Janet looked up again, completely naked with a saucy new tattoo around her wrist and a sheathed dagger in her other hand, Gaia was gone without a trace, leaving the lone girl on an altar, surrounded by a sea of corpses.
Do I need to pray to her now, or what?
Confusion about the goddess aside, one thing remained crystal clear. She could never go back to town, ever. People knew she had been recruited into Uncle Marius’s band of misfits, and she knew that nobody in their right minds would ever believe that a goddess had descended and decapitated all of them.
A question did arise in her mind, however. She had been ready and prepared to kill all the cultists a moment before the goddess descended. She had even been planning the path of carnage her feet would weave though their sprays of blood. What, then, had held her back when the goddess had demanded she do exactly as she had originally planned? Was she perhaps more compassionate than even she herself was aware?
All questions aside, the confusion and introspection would have to be tabled for later. Now, while the shroud of night still blanketed the world, she would creep away from the only home she had ever known. Daytime was too busy, filled with hunters, farmers and other people plying their trade. She’d get spotted the instant she went out into the open.
As for her stomach-wringing hunger, her blood-drenched body, and her lack of clothes, those rightfully took second place to getting herself to safety.