“Why don’t you just solve the problem of those two whores the easy way instead of asking me for unnecessarily complex solutions to problems that shouldn’t even be there?” she muttered darkly.
“What do you mean?”
“By all the gods, must I spell it out for you as if you were a child, you foolish mortal?” she hissed. “Give me those worthless sluts’ souls the same way you’d give me any enemy’s soul! Use Grave Oath on them, dump their disgusting bodies, and move on with your own quest! They’re unnecessary baggage, weighing you down and distracting you from your true purpose.”
“No,” I said firmly. Perhaps it wasn’t the smartest idea to outright deny a goddess, especially one I was hoping to bang when she could hold her human form long enough for that, but there was no way I was going to simply kill Elyse and Rami. They were useful to me. More useful alive than dead, anyway.
“‘No’? That’s all you’re going to say, mortal?” she snarled, her eyes shining bright with icy wrath.
“Okay, let me make it a little clearer for you,” I said defiantly, “since your ethereal ears seem to be full of ethereal wax: I’m not going to kill my friends. Get it? Now, you can either help me—and help yourself in the process—or you can be stubborn and limit your own potential. I mean, simply killing Elyse and Rami would get two more souls, yeah, but that’d be the end of it. But think of how many more souls you’d be gaining if you used them for your own benefit. When we get to Bishop Nabu’s, there are going to be hundreds of soldiers around, not to mention that fat fuck of a bishop and his slimy clergy buddies. It’s gonna be a regular bloodbath! You’ll be inundated with souls, so why not make it possible for us—all of us—to maximize your soul count?”
“You insist on keeping those whores by your side, do you?” she hissed. The green light of jealousy gleamed in her eyes, but something else was starting to show itself in those bright orbs too: greed.
“I do. Regardless of whether you choose to help me or not, my friends are staying by my side.”
“Ugh,” she growled. “Fine. Do you have any gold coins on you?”
“A couple,” I said, fishing around in my coin purse.
“Give me two.”
I placed a gold coin into each of her outstretched palms. The coins disappeared immediately into the fog but did not fall to the ground. Instead, it was as if the swirling water vapor and wind had simply dissolved the metal. Then, once more, I saw the anti-light veins of the blackest darkness dart out from Grave Oath’s tip. This time, they shot into Isu’s form, which darkened temporarily.
Bright violet light flashed abruptly inside her form, as if a microscopic thunderstorm was raging within her. Then, the anti-light veins disappeared, and the coins appeared in Isu’s palms again, in a strange process that looked like reverse absorption. I immediately noticed that the coins looked markedly different. Each now bore the same likeness of a demonic head that was on the pommel of Grave Oath.
“If your whores keep these coins on them when they make a kill,” said Isu, “the souls of those they slay will be captured by Grave Oath. This is all I can do for now; I do not have enough power to grant you any more requests.”
“Not even a quick visit in human form behind the bushes?” I asked with a swift grin.
“I need more souls for that. So, go, Vance, and get me the numbers you promised. Hundreds of souls streaming into me. You’ll be possessing me for more than a night if you achieve that.”
“I will do this, Isu,” I said, now solemn. “And I will—”
In the blink of an eye, her fog form dissipated into the night air, and the whirling tornado of air grew abruptly still.
I heard the rumble of the massive wagon growing more distant and jogged out of the cover of the trees. It didn’t take too long to catch up. When I climbed back up onto the front seat, I found Grast roaring with laughter and the two young women glowering at each other in angry silence.
“What the hell happened?” I asked. “I was only gone for two minutes, and you two are looking like you want to kill each other!”
“Ask them… what they… were arguing about!” snickered Grast, between bouts of roaring laughter.
“Go on, tell me. How exactly did you two manage to get into a fight the minute I went to piss?”
Elyse stared at Rami with daggers in her eyes and folded her arms aggressively across her full, round breasts, making them bulge invitingly upward. “She started it!” she muttered, pouting.
I shook my head and rolled my eyes, then looked at Rami. “Is it true? Did you start it?”
Her dark eyes were full of bristling wrath, but her gaze softened when it met mine.
“It was an innocent question,” Rami protested. “I wasn’t trying to start a fight. I just asked her…” She suddenly broke eye contact with me and blushed heavily. “Well, I… I asked her…”
“Go on,” urged Grast boisterously after taking another slug of his Yorish brandy. “Tell him what you asked her!”
“I simply wanted to know,” said Rami, still unable to meet my gaze, “whether or not you have a big… you know…”
“She wanted to know if you had a massive cock!” blurted out Grast before bursting into a bout of raucous laughter, now completely uncontrolled. He had trouble breathing in between the howls, let alone speaking another single word.
I couldn’t help breaking into a smile and chortling as well.
“I told her I’d never seen it!” said Elyse, her eyes still ablaze with anger. “But she insisted that, like some common street abandon or tavern wench, I must have, after spending a single night in your vicinity, already… already…”
“Already what?” I asked, grinning.
“Already had a good taste of your sausage!” roared Grast raucously.
