Reella’s World

By VivettaVenray

(Warning: Contains abstract and normal vore. Soul Vore/absorption. God-play, and abstract lewdness in addition to more normal size things)

Chapter 1: Solutions

They were fighting again.

Macint and Edath were squaring off at their border region; it’s flat plains made for the perfect battlefield. This was the third time this millennia that the nations couldn’t behave themselves, and Reella was getting sick of it.

She saw it from above, below, to the sides: everywhere. She saw how they tore up her lands with marching beasts and rolling carts. She saw how they marred its surface with craters from their catapults. She heard the cry of the tortured air as volley after volley of flaming arrows ripped through it. They were making a mess of things for too long, and it’d seem she’d have to intervene.

Reella was omnipresent on Hotera. As mistress of the world, she was at the dirt beneath the feet of every soldier, the wind overhead, and the flecks of dew on each blade of grass. Naturally, it was a trivial matter to coalesce an avatar, or at least it was for her. For the humans of her domain, it was always an event worthy of stories and statues. Such appearances oft changed the path of Hoterian history.

Today would be such a day.

Macintian and Edathian warriors were engrossed in the fight. The bitter rivalry between the nations trickled down from the ruling classes to the commoners that made of the bulk of the two armies. As such, there was no hesitation here.

Swords clashed and steel clamored. Shields broke, bones too. Blood spurted left and right. Projectiles crashed down to and from every which way. It was madness and rage. Insults flew just as much or more as the arrows.

“Kiss my arse Edathian filth!”

“To Reella with thee swine!”

With all the cacophony, the soldiers on the field didn’t immediatelynotice Reella’s approach. They missed the roaring of the wind and that gentle hum all around, but the bright light that flashed was impossible to ignore.

Reella knew how to get attention: it was just the matter of a good entrance. She started to manifest above the throngs of war. As usual, she heralded her approach with a flash of her holy radiance. The golden light she gave off could outshine even daylight should she please. Air swirled around her body as its shadow fell across the combat zone. Clouds in that blue sky made way for her body as it loomed overhead.

Only loose white garbs covered Reella, and they could hardly be said to have done as much. Impossibly soft and smooth, they draped around her shoulders to half-cover her bosom and scarcely cover her crotch. As she willed the wind to swirl around her, the outfit fluttered gently.

Everyone beneath stared at their Lady: how could they help themselves? She was beyond huge. A foot alone could smother a thousand men, and there one was, dangling above a swath of their armies.

All knew who it was. The statues of their deity were very detailed, though no sculpture of man could ever capture such grace. Any remotely vain woman coveted that impeccable form. The figure was perfect down to each and every curve accentuating her elegant frame. The way the light caught her long, golden locks was sublime. Truly, she was divine.

They trembled nonetheless beneath such resplendent beauty. If there was one emotion they could be so bold to gleam from her bright-blue gaze, it was wrath.

With all eyes on their Lady, Reella began to descend.

The army was quite the sprawl: the biggest she’d seen yet. The mortal’sreactions were mixed as usual. Some bowed, others fled. Most were frozen with shock or awe. A few still fought even, with their hate against one another greater than the fear or reverence for their Lady.None of that mattered. Their prayers reached her: that cacophony of pleas and begs. They were ignored best she could. It was far too late to supplicate.

Reella’s feet touched down right at the middle of it all. She crushedthe warring sides in equal measure under perfect pale soles. A thousand men each. More soldiers began to kneel, even more routed. She felt two thousand or so souls enter her form.

Reella was said to be all-powerful, but she couldn’t hide her sneer as she spoke. “Mortals, you disappointment me. You had not heeded the messages I sent to the priests of your homelands.” She lifted her right foot up and slid it forward. The heel bulldozed the slow while the fast prepared to meet their end beneath its front.

It fell by her next set of words. They were snuffed out in a quaking step. More flickers of yellow light flew into her pale skin.

“This war was to end, your differences to resolve.” she said. Her voice shock the terrain. It rang the core of those who could hear, and theminds of the few deaf warriors on the battlefield. As a god, she could keep attention as well as she could get it. If she wanted people to hear her, they did.

By now, everyone sans the most devout were fleeing. Prayers increased. The more there were, the harder it was to sort through them. It wasn’t difficult in the sense that it was a challenge: just tedious. You didn’t need to be a deity to guess what they were saying. “Spare us.”, “Forgive us”, or even the more pathetic variants of “They started it!”

Reella would’ve rolled her eyes if she wasn’t trying to keep up appearances. Instead, the deity rolled her foot: side to side to beat into the mite-like warriors packed by it. No forgiveness here, if any survived, it’d be by chance or whimsy. The dead would find their placein her body, for the Lady of Hotera was their mistress in life and their resting place in death.

“It’s clear I must directly intervene. A pity.”, she said in that thundering voice.

Her gaze fell to the soldiers running away. It was them that forgot their rivalry the most. They were united in cowardice against the being they worship. Too timid to face her scoldings. She pointed a finger in their direction and a beam of holy light vaporized them. Smoke drifted up with their souls, but only the later was drawn towards her.

She stepped again. More of her subjects trod; more of their souls entered her. Saints and sinners alike dwelled on the battlefield: mostly the latter. She’d judge them all later, but for now they clumped in a sort of ‘purgatory’ of hers.

It was difficult at times to restrain herself. She had plenty of powers, but the feeling of a soul slipping into her was something she couldn’t recreate on a whim. She really did detest having to interfere in mortal affairs like this. It was messy; it inspired fear more than love. She much preferred the more behind-the-scenes methods

Worse still, when stuff like this happened, it proved that wasn’t enough. It hinted that her approach was, at least in part, ‘wrong’. That wouldn’t do for a god.

Yet, when it came down to it, she always had fun dishing out divine punishment. Here was no exception. She hid her joy, barely, as her feet fell down upon the mobs beneath. Every step was a quake that tripped and staggered hundreds. Much of those hundreds fell to the next step, which quaked others and so on and so forth.

Despite the fun of more visceral smiting, she didn’t want to seem a brute. Reella cast her hand towards the Edathian army at her right. She twitched her fingers and beautiful columns of radiant light shot forth. The sound they made searing the air was a divine melody, easily besting even the most famed composers on Hotera. The beauty of those rays bellied a great suffering.

Commanders and soldiers in its path braced themselves for horror. The stories were very detailed. Skin melted in a flash. It was the first to go. Then, every pain receptor on their form was alight with agony. The rest of their meat went soon after. A small mercy was that it happened all in the span of a second.

Reella kept the beams running, wiggling her fingers to keep the mortalson their toes. She was more capricious in her aim than not, but she did take care to handle the archers and catapults towards the back of the Edathian army.

--==--==--==--

Aldwin wasn’t one of those enthusiastic for this war. Her was drafted nonetheless. Forced to leave his farm in Edath, he took small solace in that his job in the army was one of the less dangerous ones. As a catapult crewman, his burly build was put to work loading the device with heavy stone. He didn’t much like what he did: helped kill. The poor chap even tried to muck with the device’s aim now and then. He’d oft ‘accidentally’ drop the stones to knock off a chunk before loading. It did wonders to skew the thing’s aim.

He knew Reella was aware of this. Aldwin prayed his story to her when she first showed up, and did so now even. He hadn’t even helped to fire the catapult since then. His superiors didn’t care: the army was chaos now. He had hoped for some consideration, and was on his knees, begging, as singing light enveloped him.

When the pain subsided he was gone. His very body ash. Yet, he felt some control like he could move. It was like the stories. All that was left was his soul. He looked to his hands and legs and saw them translucent with a golden glow. He felt a tug and his heart sank. He tried to swim back to where his body once was.

“No, I can’t die here. I can’t leave Ida alone! My farm!”

Paddle as he might, Reella’s tug was too strong. He joined thousands of other victims in floating towards her body. Drawing closer, he was able to take in less and less of her gargantuan form till at last all he saw was fair skin. He was sucked in at her ankle like most of the others.

His deity’s insides eluded expectations. It was cramped. All aroundwere hundreds of others. Mostly Edathians, given Reella had her focus on that side now. They all lamented one thing or another. “It’s too soon?” “Not like this...” “Where are we going?”

Where were they going? It was hard to comprehend where they even were,let alone what was ahead. There was no ‘flesh’ in her body, only gently shimmering walls of this light-tube. It got thinner and thinner till they were practically squeezed out another end of it.

Aldwin was humbled. This ‘organ’ seemed as the inside of a jug. The walls shone white light and yellow glows abounded. Each such ‘glow’ was a soul, and there were thousands of them tightly packed in here.

The bulky mass of spirits was at the center, nearly touching the bounds of the walls. Aldwin was drawn right into it. The shining walls of mirror-light trapping them pulsed and shifted. The souls got churnedand kneaded now and then within their ‘container’ as Reella made this part of her bigger to handle the new influx.

Aldwin sank into the throng. Allies and enemies alike squeezed at him from all angles. Ida would just have to get along without him.

--==--==--==--

Reella sighed. Souls were so warm on the way in.

The Edathian forces were thoroughly devastated. Only stragglers remained. Prayers reached her from the Macintians. Reella chuckled. Some of the more foolish mortals thought she was actually picking a side here.

Her voice boomed.

“Judgment is not yet finished.”, she said. She turned towards Macint’s forces at her left now. The shift of her massive body sent her feetbarreling into their frontline. Packed tight, the army couldn’t retreat. Trying to only had them tripping over each other. Soft, plush toes claimed them easily. A few lucky ones at the edges of the crowd ran. For the others, the dense formations of Macintian fame were a liability here.

Reella brought her finger tip to her lips and gave it a kiss. A gentle hum rung in the air. Its source? Three diamond-shaped crystals formed then and there. She pointed the trio towards the center of the army.

Those crystals floated down as leaves to the ground and split off solo halfway down.

Each crystal left a glimmering trail of white sparkles in their wake. One fell to the densely-packed army’s center. Soldiers there were increasingly nervous. All heads turned from crystals to Reella, back and forth.

The second crystal flew towards the archers and siege weapons at the back. The last one went straight to the commanders. Every leader of theMacintian army was easy to spot even if you didn’t know where every foot was on every inch of this dirt as Reella did. Their cleaner garbs and dual-horned helms gave them away.

The normal reaction was to get away from the things, but the music they let out was gentle. Their hum a twinkling timbre. The yellow light was bright, but not harsh. It was warm: inviting, even. Through the glowsome could see the elegant structure of those crystals finer than any gem.

Some thought it a blessing even. Could that be what she meant by judgment? Maybe they granted power! Though most froze, one peasant warrior walked up and gave one a tap, then another. The surface was smooth and warm, but not burning. It felt stronger than diamond, something he only got to touch in the mines back home.

Reella smirked, then shattered those shards with a thought.

Ears bled. Heads ached. Three blasts of dense holy energy erupted from the crystalline payloads. It was like being hit by hundreds of her holybeams at once. Hemispheres of golden light blew up in a flash to swallow tens of thousands.

Macintian command was gone. All the archers, the siege weaponry: now but stark-white ash.

Much of the army was caught in the explosions of holy light. To be enveloped was to be rendered naught. The ground it flew over turned to smooth, glassy stone.

One farmer-soldier almost outran the edge of that middle blast. Only his left hand was caught. It was vaporized at once. The heat was so intense as to diffuse throughout his entire body on contact. He burnt from the inside then keeled over as black dust. To even touch this light was death.

Multitudes of souls ascended towards Reella. She took them into her tummy region as she wanted to feel that warmth there this time around. She bit her lip to stifle a very un-divine grunt. Influxes of power felt truly blissful.

Both armies were dwindled to stragglers. Maybe a tenth of what was on each side. She wasn’t actively trying to keep things equal, but it seemed to work out that way. Didn’t matter.

The divine being spoke. Reella made sure that everyone across the world heard her now. She willed storm clouds to carry it and blow the words into cabins and castles alike as it swept Hotera. Those too old or sick to even comprehend words found a moment’s awareness just long enough to internalize her decree.

“Let it be known then the next time two nations fight in earnest, both shall perish by my might. Thus is the will of your Lady, and your god.”

With a swipe of her arm, her garbs fluttered and a great fissure formed right along the border. Her feet no longer touched ground as shefloated upwards.

Their Lady was ascending. To the survivors it meant they might be spared, though they were a bit too focused on the growing rift at the border to rejoice. Some even fell into it, visible for a moment till it spread further, deeper, and then they disappeared from sight. Most fled the direction they came from.

However, something was off. Though Reella floated off into the sky, she didn’t take up any less of it. Her immaculate flesh took up even more of the above. Only one explanation: she was growing.

When requests and orders failed, it was time to get her hands dirty. Reella would set an example of Macint and Edath. She’d not just end their war here, now and forever, but all wars. Enlarging her avatar was as easy as it was fun. A great, big stretch was all it was.

She had shadowed the battlefield on arrival, but now she began to blot out the day entirely. If not for substituting her own incandescence, those beneath her would dwell in absolute darkness.

Macint and Edath were the two largest nations on Hotera, but they were just curious shapes from up here. Masses of brown and green with water around three sides. Semi-squarish. They were torn leaves in a pond to a god like her.

Reella reached down to dig her fingers into the furrow she made at the border. She hesitated and gave a bit more time for the remaining soldiers to flee. She did want at least a few survivors to tell stories, after all.

The soldiers took this gift generously, sprinting fast as they could into the distance. A few with the curiosity or courage looked back to see mountainous digits descend.

Almost everyone could see a part of her. Even far on either end of Macint and Edath one saw the sides of her hips. The northern nationscaught a glimpse of hair that made their sky blonde. The southern countries a got a peek at toes past layers of clouds.

Reella’s voice had a brass timbre to it now. She no longer needed herpowers to make it heard everywhere. Now, she instead used those powers to stop her volume from ripping civilizations to shreds.

“Let this split reflect the wounds of war. When it heals, the scar a reminder of my scorn.”, she decreed.

Fingers tensed. Hotera groaned. Reella was parting the two nations at the border.

Web-like cracks surged from her finger pads as they settled. She focused hard. An observer might think she strained to split the lands. In actuality, she was straining not to over do it. She didn’t want to crumble the two nations, just separate them.

The fissure was torn open. The wound was wide, and deep to the ocean’s floor. Working her powers, she fixed its depth there. Her will fortified the rock and sand in the depths, and on either side of the crevasse. Water poured in, flooding the canyon it became with just a little more tugging.

Macint and Edath were wracked by quakes. Reella decided not to stymiethem save to prevent complete annihilation of the people. Buildingscollapsed; lesser splits formed and swallowed hundreds. More souls for her. What could they expect? War hurt more than those on the battlefield.

With one more flex of country spanning-arms, it was complete. The nations were now hundreds of miles apart and separated by ocean. She finished by searing the newly torn rock face clean and sleek with some holy light.

Reella struck a divine pose, hands at her sides.

“It is done. Let this separation be a mark of shame for the two nationswhich failed to heed their loving Lady. In time, I will help you all move forward, as I always have. For now, contemplate and rest on this day, and let it be known henceforth as Reella’s Sundering of War.”

That done, she vanished back to her incorporeal state. As the straggling souls flew into her through the planet’s crust, she began totend to all the work she just made for herself.

Chapter 2: Handling

The mortals of Hotera were very busy those first few days after that cataclysm. There was lots of devastation to clean up. The ground-quakes from the sundering were fierce. Millions of silver in damages hit both nations. Macintians and Edathians were busy mending their broken homes and lives. They had no time to think of those grudges that had them at each other’s throats just days ago.

It was exactly as Reella had planned.

The deity herself took things a little slower. There were plenty of souls within her purgatory. They were all bunched up fidgeting and squirming together. A big, warm ball in her planet-pervading immaterial body. It felt nice. It always did. So, she was in no rush to sort them.

Still, souls kept coming in. People didn’t just die from wars. There were diseases and accidents and all sorts of things Reella didn’t prevent. No matter the cause, every soul flew into her by her will, and she made sure they went where she saw fit. It was one of her duties here to be everyone’s afterlife. If a human died, they went into her world-spanning embrace or a physical avatar those rare moments she had one formed.

Souls were power, and over time she grew in her capabilities. They were also invigorating, much like power but at a physical and metaphysical level. Simply put, they felt good.

Thankfully, she had a steady supply from the natural way of mortals. It kept her from just wiping out humanity in one big soul-slurping binge. The urge bugged her on occasion, true, but she thought ahead. If she just wiped everyone out in big destructive orgy, there’d be no more souls in the future. She’d finish her drink but never fill the cup again.

Little sips were the way.

Reella didn’t waste that whole first day. There were plenty of spirits to process and she managed to comb through a few thousand.

Dozens at a time, they were pulled from the mass through shimmering walls. There, out of purgatory, they were alone for a brief instant as she made a decision. It was one based on the accumulation of memories and actions throughout their lifetime.

Were they big liars? How many evil acts did they do? Why did Sabelinea really stab her husband? What was the context for that time Odo punched that other guy at the pub?

One of the first she selected was Aldwin: the catapult crewman from earlier that day. He begged and pleaded with her, trying to explain each and every time he sinned. He missed a bunch, but he wasn’t lying; he was just forgetting.

She never forgot anything though.

The process was silent on her end. It took only a few seconds: to them. If the actual flow of time applied as it did on Hotera, it’d be even less. A few instants really. That’s all it took for her to decide where to put the man’s soul forever.

Reella spoke to him and only him.

“You’ve done well enough. Enjoy a restful eternity in my bosom. Stay close to my heart, and feel my warmth with every pulse of my being.”

She had said that line oh so many times.

Aldwin was still afraid. He knew not what to expect, as stories on the afterlife were vague. His golden glow faded to blue and he was whisked away once again.

Reella scraped another soul from the spirit lump. This one was a quick judgment. One “Millicent the Malevolent”, also known as “Millicent the Malicious”, or “Milli the Macabre” and so forth. The young warrior actually tried to lie about her war crimes. The audacity!

Did she not know that Reella knew all that happened? Mortal minds were like open books to her: while living. As souls in her body, they were more akin to parts of her. Here, she didn’t even have to try to know their entire beings: she just did.

“For your heinous sins, you’ll be sent to your Lady’s stomach. There, you’ll experience dissolution and reformation till time’s end. Take some solace that you serve my fancy even there, wicked one.”

It was the first time Millicent cried in years. Souls couldn’t make tears of course, just the noises and the faces that came with it. The soul’s aura flashed from yellow to red. A moment later and she was off towards her proper place.

Millicent zipped at a speed best described as exhilarating and not the fun kind. It was more like a runaway carriage rather than a sled down a hill. The soul went through quivering tunnels of pulsing light. She went so fast the scenery was all a blur of yellow, blue and red. The soul felt that even if the trip took hours instead of seconds, she’d still not have been able to fully comprehend what was around her. It was clear she was at the mercy of something greater.

Something with little mercy for her.

--==--==--==--

Millicent made it out of those light-tubes and immediately her senses were assailed with wailing. Like purgatory, this part of Reella was a giant divine organ of some unnamed shape. Its magnitude was enough to make her old holding area seem less than a thimble. She could see its end far in the distance: so far that she knew it unreachable.

The walls were towering. They shifted and undulated. Millicent’s translucent form shifted with them. The wrinkled walls leaked red light into this sack of suffering. The light stung and burned. She could feel her soul dissolving here. Bits and pieces of her. Her memories faded one by one. The sensation of her ghostly fingers gone as they digested away.

She quickly found herself joining the chorus of screams around her. Some souls were free floating, others clumped in balls not unlike the one she just got out of. The lumps were millions strong. The souls on the surface tried to peel themselves off, but they were stuck through either pain or some sort of tugging.

Millicent’s mind wracked with rage now. Why did she have to be here? Why was she some fucking toy or trifle to that ‘Lady’ of theirs? The agony and humiliation was ruining her. She was feared on the battlefield, but just another snack in here. She roared as the last flicker of her soul melted.

An instant later she was reformed; her memories too. She was in one of those soul boluses now, right at the center. Millicent heard the sounds of this place at work. The warbling and churning louder than the voices of souls by her ears.

She couldn’t move, all around her were other souls, screaming into her senses. The heat was sweltering, but that digestive light didn’t reach as well here. She’d have to wait till the outer layers melted away before getting her chance to dissolve. She’d take that fate again over this slow, shifting torment.

It happened eventually, and she reformed again, in some other part of Reella’s ‘stomach’. This cycle was her eternity now.

--==--==--==--

Aldwin’s journey was similarly disorienting. He was wracked with dread and despair. Mortal desires and regrets clung to him. No matter how fast he flew through Reella’s ethereal veins, he couldn’t shake them off.

Unlike Millicent, he’d find a peace of sorts. An endless ocean of dim blue light awaited him. There was a rhythmic pulse. Gentle in its thooms, it stirred the never ending waves he and the other newcomers hovered over. It must’ve been Reella’s “heartbeat”. There were no walls in here for him to see: just a dim blue horizon over this sea.

He was drawn towards the waters. Closer, Aldwin realized their true makeup: souls, billions of them. He was afraid. There was something wrong about being a literal drop in an ocean like this. Yet, the closer he got the warmer it felt. The more he listened to that heart thump, the more it drowned out his concerns. Soon, he yearned to reach the others and join the waves.

In time he did. Settling down into the fluid mass, he was awash in tranquility. He bumped into countless other souls, but it didn’t bother him at all. Thoughts of Ida drifted from his mind: almost all thoughts did. He just stared wherever the currents had him face. Relaxed and at peace, he relished every beat of his Lady’s heart.

--==--==--==--

After the first day, Reella picked up speed. Still focusing on judging, she started sorting thousands of souls at a time instead of just dozens. She was still very busy. Souls filled every vein of hers with how much dead the war, and her resulting response, had brought.

Almost everyone was sent to either her bosom or her stomach. Most people were either evil enough for damnation, or good enough for some rest.

There was a third location in her doctrine of the afterlife. She kept it secretive, known only among the priests of Hotera which devoted their lives to her. Even then, details were non-existent. All that was known was that the most devout of her followers, free from sin, would be granted sacred tasks and a holy existence. It was a most enigmatic aspiration for the clergy class.

These most treasured souls were a rare sight indeed. At the end of the week of her great sundering, she finally found one. A meek priestess of hers: Goda. The woman’s spirit was pure, her life sin-free. Every possible second the woman could spare, she devoted to praise of Reella.

“Goda, your devotion has not gone unnoticed. A high honor awaits you. You’ll serve as an angel in the most blissful, sacred spot of my body.”

The priestess’s yellow spirit glowed to a golden shade. She began to transform. Wings sprouted upon Goda’s back: useless to a floating specter, but there nonetheless as a mark of honor. There were other changes too. A bit of heightened comprehension and awareness: a level to better understand Reella’s form. Angels needed it for their task.

This transformation came at a price. It was a dire one, but one Goda wouldn’t even notice. Lady Reella reached into Goda’s mind to mold it. She had to make sure the soul would be incapable of thinking a single bad thought against her. The Lady would loathe to elevate a soul without such insurance.

One more modification, another change to the way Goda thought. Now, every act in service to the angel’s Lady was not only the highest honor, but the highest joy as well.

With that, the new angel was whisked away for the most holy of duties: that of Reella’s pleasure. Even an incorporeal form had erogenous zones. Even a god had needs.

Goda found herself in a chamber of golden walls, each lined with nubs. Other angels were there too, and flew about freely. They diligently tended to those pulsing walls, and were rewarded with a shifts in the ubiquitous, sublime tone that permeated the ‘organ’. They basked in her voice as well: the Lady’s moans of bliss echoed in here. Each one nectar to their ears.

The new angel got to work right away. There were only tens of thousands of spirits in here. It was a most exclusive afterlife to enjoy. Dwelling in such divine passion, motivated by the song of Reella’s lust, Goda fit right in immediately with the others.

It was these souls within Reella that treated her to a symphony of stimuli. The songs of bliss, relaxation and agony echoed through her at all times, even when she made an avatar to interact physically.

With the melodies in mind, she devoted more of her time to helping rebuild.

Reella didn’t work as directly here. Her physical appearances needed to be special. Nevertheless, prayers were getting answered. She enriched the soils of Hotera to make the harvests plentiful. She clumped and dissolved the clouds to provide rain when needed and avoid floods where they’d devastate. The sick were getting healed, and things were looking up.

It was important the people moved on, and that all of Hotera had faith in her and her decisions.

Chapter 3: Origins

It was almost a year since the event that came to be known as “Reella’s Sundering.” Colloquial tongues had shortened the title from what she wanted, but she let it slide. She only ever sundered the one continent, after all.

The important thing was that war was over, and it seemed to be so. Hotera knew she meant business now. She watched over everything, and there were no signs of escalating conflict. Things were settled with trade or compromise. One year was hardly any time, but she gleamed prevailing sentiments world wide from all the talk she listened to.

It was ingrained in her people now that war an egregious sin. From experience with similar edicts in the past, she probably wouldn’t have to remind them for 10,000 years: if even.

Thus, she went back to status quo.

Reella answered prayers here and there, but it wasn’t as easy to curry her favor anymore. Peasants rebuilt their cottages and small towns. The Lady of Hotera was hardly interested in the whinging of nobles about broken castles or other more fanciful things.

A distant approach was always best, she found. It kept expectations low. She didn’t want a high workload after all. Besides, even if something was trivial for her, her people needed to be strong.

The theology of Hotera was simple. Reella was everything and always was. She stewarded the planet and watched over the humans that called it home. You did the least amount of evil possible, visited her churches often, and you’d be rewarded. The wicked would be punished. Eternal life was promised within her.

She knew better and was better. If something bad happened it’s cause she chose not to prevent it, and thus probably had a good reason. All punishment was just in that sense. Yet, one could still pray for her aid. In Reella’s mercy she might make an exception for you. If she didn’t, well, maybe you did something wrong? Maybe you had a dumb request?

She never answered those questions, but rather let them stew in mortal minds and be topics of debate.

Even her priests believed all this, despite being the few living mortals she spoke with directly on occasion. They knew about an even higher fate for the best of them, sure, but there was nothing else hidden.

That they knew of...

Reella had secrets. Like how long ago she was much like them. A lost, scared young human who abandoned her tribe at a time when the world was young. Back when grunts and hand signs were the way to talk, a slim blonde woman stumbled upon a hole in the ground.

There was a great yellow glow at the hole’s center. It came from something amorphous and fluid that floated in the middle. It gave warmth on a chilly night. Reella was cold. So, she slid into the hole and embraced it.

Reella was not prepared to become what she did. This was back before swords. It back when humans hid from animals and not the other way around.

She felt strange. There was bliss, but also dread. Where was she now? She couldn’t pin it down. It seemed like she was all over the place: even places far away she had never been. Places with white cold fluff for miles, or places where the ground was mud and the trees shadowed all. If she focused too much, her senses kept zooming in on things till was looking at single fibers of bark millions of times over.

Desperate, she tried to clench her fingers and toes to find where her body was. This panicked action of hers formed new mountains from all the terrain crushed aside.

The planet quaked as she tried to suss out what was going on. She tried to move her arm like she used to, but stopped as she heard screams. Familiar sounds ringing in her mind. Humans, much like those of her tribe, but coming from everywhere and all over her. They were on her. They were in her.

She was absorbing what was left after they died. They were moving within. She felt others too: they must’ve been there before in that glob of light. Other things were inside her: lesser creatures so small and dim they were hard to feel except in clumps.

Reella was freaking out. Her breath increased and gusts of wind ravaged the land. The rise and fall of her ‘chest’ translated to quakes. Her sorrow and confusion created black clouds which down-poured to flood canyons and wash away islands. One of the first extinction events on Hotera was the novice god getting her bearings.

Thankfully, some wise part of her grew. The boon of power came before that of intelligence, but both arrived in time. Reella settled down and relaxed. The storms did too. She had begun to understand what had happened and what was going on.

The planet’s energy was hers. That light was it, and just there for the taking. She wasn’t the planet so much that she had bonded with it. Subjugated it, perhaps. At the time she was less concerned with labels and more with finding out how to get her body back.

Reella knew moving what she was would only cause more problems. She instead imagined a proper self forming. She thought only of a single finger. That seemed an easy start. She pushed all other thoughts out of her mind. The screams of the people in her were hard to ignore, but the fledgling deity managed.

From the northern lands a pale pillar rose miles into the air. It erupted from a mountain range and took out the high altitude tribes who made the their home. Fur-draped humans lower and safer stared up at the sight, unable to comprehend that it was a finger. They thought it was their end. It might’ve been, had Reella not noticed an influx of souls.

That wasn’t working. She brought the finger back. That was a good deal easier than making it.

Reella was onto something though; if she could just make it smaller...

The planet-woman focused on that hole she fell into out of all the places she saw. She again tried to exclude other sensations. The people within her were getting restless. They were screaming in the dark and vast confines of her body. In her haste, she filled their minds with her desire: silence. They obeyed as it was at the forefront of their being now.

She tried again. A finger, but smaller this time. Then a hand. That small indent in Hotera became a great crater as her arm shot out of the ground in an explosion of dirt and rock.

There was progress: the arm she made was smaller than her finger earlier. This still wouldn’t work. she’d tear the planet open prying herself out. She was just too big to make a small enough body like this.

So she didn’t, and she didn’t think of one part at a time. She imagined her whole self, standing above that crater where she became whatever she was now. She settled on the smallest size she could get, which had her feel a forest beneath her toes. She also felt what that forest did as her immaterial form was still just as pervasive.

Reella knew she was being watched. She was connected to the land now. She never knew the land was so large before, or so round.

The people watching her were her old tribe. Looking down at them, her doubts were fading. She felt the cool wind blow against her naked frame. It was chilly up here, but it didn’t bother her.

They began to bow at her toes. How could they not? They saw everything since her hand burst forth from the land. They saw her might.

The tribe spoke and signed and prayed. They wanted her to lead them. Her old tribe wasn’t the only one. Anyone who saw a part of her, or who witnessed those species exterminating storms prayed to something, begged someone for aid: all that went to her.

It made sense to Reella. She could see, hear, feel, and know everything on this world. She could control everything on this world and a bit more. She even knew mortal thoughts if she focused hard enough.

Some thoughts disturbed her. They came from the tribe below. By now, the whole lot of them were pressing themselves against her big toe as if to please her.

One woman marveled how one they called a friend could become this giant. The tribe’s leader, an older man, thought, “With Reella on our side, our enemies would crumble!”

It wouldn’t work like this. If humans knew she started as one, then there’d be too much expectations. Perhaps they’d even think they could attain this themselves. Both were problematic. She had to have always been here, guiding them.

With few regrets, Reella lifted her foot up and hovered it hundreds of feet above them.

She stomped them out and felt their spirits flow into her. She couldn’t have them sharing what they knew, so she had to wipe their memories as well. They were blank slates, drifting aimlessly in her being. At least they didn’t whine as much the others.

With that out of the way, she reached into every human’s mind to let them know she was watching over them. She gifted them the language she made up for them. She told them the name of the planet: Hotera, which her tribe had used. She told them that it and they were hers. Then, she dissipated her physical body to better explore her new potential.

She mastered that incorporeal form of hers. Reella learned fast now, even the stuff she had to teach herself. She learned to ‘move’ it without also moving the planet. She made it a body similar to her old, with variants of the parts and innards she enjoyed. With that, she figured out what to do with all those souls. Her former tribe become her first ‘angels’, and what little guilt she had for them was assuaged.

That was Reella’s first secret. That Hotera’s god was once mortal.

Reella’s other secret was that she didn’t control as much as they thought she did.

Chapter 4: Problems

It was a year since the Sundering.

Reella was floating in space over the barren ice at Hotera’s very top. She manifested physically here. Monolithic in scale, still no mortal lived close enough to this frigid wasteland to see her. She didn’t want to be seen.

As cold space winds fluttered white divine garbs, the blonde deity stared at a big ball of orange fire in the distant dark.

According to her religion, Lady Reella created day and night to give mortals time to rest and work.

A lie.

Like the planet, that thing was always there. It scared her, as it was huge. It had to be. She knew how distance worked. To look that big while being so far it had to be at least a hundred times as big as she was at her largest.

Although, the scariest thing up here was actually everything else. Or, rather, the ‘nothing else’. All that empty, dark space between her and it. It surrounded the two of them and Hotera itself.

The dark was speckled with lights. The mortals gave her credit for them. They say she even arranged them in amusing shapes. The humans called them “constellations”, and thought they were a gift to give them something to stare at when the day was done. She took the credit, knowing not what they were.

Reella reached out with her incorporeal form, stretching it as much as she could in the great fire ball’s direction. She had grown much this year. All its casualties were quite a boon. Yet, she was still so far: grasping at nothing with invisible, immaterial feelers.

She focused more on that gargantuan physical body still floating above the atmosphere. Why did she come up here this often? To feel pangs of anxiety at the unknown? At least such pangs were dampened by the songs of power, warmth, and pleasure her souls fed her.

No, she was here to remind herself of her goals, as always. With enough time, she’d reach it. Who knows what could happen then? It probably had energy like Hotera did for the taking: maybe more. Who knows what those lights in the void held? Perhaps more worlds. Perhaps more humans to guide and rule.

If only she had known what was really out there, and how small she actually was.

A disturbance wracked space nearby. The dark was warbling to the right of Reella. It looked like all the stars were moving, shaking. The deity was smart enough to know it was something else. The space itself seemed to morph. Invisible windows to the stars, made of paper, being tugged and compressed. It was massive.

Something came through: a foot bigger than Hotera. The skin tone was a mix of light-red and light-brown that was equal parts beguiling and foreign. The toes wiggled, jostling a loose, thin sandal strap about.

The rest of the leg stepped through, then another one and this whole being’s body was now intruding by Reella’s domain. A horrible sound rang forth as the entity exhaled a jarring roar.

Reella watched on in disbelief. It was a someone, not a something. It was female in fact, at least in shape. The deity assessed the invader from toe to head. The sandals had a bright-green shade of color she hadn’t seen even among the richest nobles. With just one strap, it hardly stayed on as the invader waggled her foot to and fro.

Slender yet shapely legs were bare up until the thigh region. The invader wore a thick stone-blue pair of super short pants. A smooth and flawless abdominal region was uncovered, but a thin white top of sorts draped over the invader’s bosom via the shoulders. No fabric for the arms or pits.

Then there was the face. Admittedly fetching, with dark brown lips. The eyes were red not just in the iris, but through and through. No pupil or sclera, just a deep, bright red that shifted with light. Her hair too: thick strands of bright blood red covering her ears and a bit lower. The hair was flashing, and the invader’s eyes perked up.

The being’s fingers grabbed a single strand. The megalith brought it to her mouth where it hovered in place. The flashing slowed, giving the briefest moment of respite for Reella’s senses till they were assailed by some harsh, incomprehensible noise louder than innumerable thunder storms.

“Bvzknokfnzzzxkbmtrturktailzkurztak”

Strident and sibilant syllables: each layered on-top the other as though the being was speaking millions of thoughts at once. Reella could gleam the complexity, but not the meaning, and it infuriated her to not understand. Fear returned as the Hoterian God noticed where this great being was looking: the great ball of orange fire.

Reella’s transcendent mind wracked with dread. She had to know this being’s intents. She had to protect her planet.

--==--==--==--

Kay stepped through her warp hole into a spot she deemed ‘decent’. The young adult dressed in comfy party clothes today. The jean shorts and crop top were new; her flip-flops just the ones she liked best from her wardrobe.

No sooner than she released a nice, deep sigh did she get a call from her friend. She lifted a strand of neural-filaments to her mouth.

“Hey Lise! What timing, I just found a star for tonight. It’ll be perfect for the party!” She paused, letting Lise speak while she studied the burning gas-mass in better detail. Always the chattier of the duo, Kay chimed in whenever she could.

“Yeah Lise it should be fun.”
“What, she’s coming too? No way~”

“Oh it’s an orange Dwarf.”

“Yeah I know, they are pretty rare. Usually they have some planets too. Let me see if I can find one.”

Kay looked down and left and, as luck would have it, there was a world right by her toes.

“Neat. It’s one of the best kind Lise.”

She leaned down to reach towards it all languid like. Pressing her fingers into the surface, Kay used her psionic will to stop the thing from breaking completely. Her pointed nails dug into the crust a little. ‘No biggie.’, she thought.

“Yeah it’s blue and green and everything. Looks young too.”

“I don’t know I didn’t check. I guess I can see a few hundred million where I’m looking.”

She straightened up and moved the planet towards her mouth. Kay paused as something pushed against her tummy: something tiny. She dismissed it as space wind or something, idly scratched her navel, and then brought the world right up to her lips.

“No I won’t save you any. I’ll tell you how it tastes.”

A chuckle later and she bit into the thing.

Mouth full with a big lump of the planet, she talked to Lise again.

“It’s not bad!”

--==--==--==--

Reella panicked. The invader was making a move straight for Hotera. It was hard to focus with all that otherworldly cacophony the red-brown behemoth emitted. Reella managed.

Every human’s gaze and every tree’s rustle and every rock and mountain and pebble and grain of sand gave her a most horrifying perspective.

Red-brown digits filled the skies of Hotera. They slammed into the world. Pillars as divine and large as Reella’s form. Her people were confused. They thought it was their Lady, but the strange shade of skin brought them doubts. Then again, what else could be that large?

One of the invader’s fingers took out Edath beneath its soft print. Macint had itself bisected by the invader’s long fingernail. Some of it was still alive, cast beneath continent thick keratin and within Kay’s nail bed.

Reella felt great wounds in the planet. Millions died. She saw them, but the souls didn’t flow into the earth for her ethereal form, or even into her physical avatar: they went right into the skin of the invader.

So quickly Reella’s perspective on things was changing. She went from being the apex to the vulnerable. Vulnerable: she hadn’t felt this since epochs ago, when she was the same as the ‘dirt’ caught in this space monster’s nails.

She had to protect herself first and foremost. She took her incorporeal body and brought it into her physical avatar. She had never done it before, though knew she could. In the moment it was her only option. Reella sucked it into her physical form. At once, her body expanded to the largest it could be.

She was was now twice the size of Hotera, yet still smaller than the invader’s foot.

Such a size was the largest she’d ever been thus far: it was the largest should could be now. Worse, it’d the largest she would ever be if this invader took the planet from her.

Reella flew up to the entity, eager to stop them. She couldn’t lose all those people. She needed to save them, at least some of them. She couldn’t lose her future here.

The deity started at the invader’s foot. She pulled and pried the toes. They were too heavy to move. Heavier than the world. Reella was humiliated here. She was the one to have beings by her toes: not the other way around. She made no progress and flew up to the invader’s stomach.

She pounded and punched. All she got in return was a faint gurgle. That umber-toned flesh didn’t even move. She was small here, but still bigger than a bug was to a human in comparison. Was the invader simply that strong that she didn’t feel her efforts?

The being’s attention was elsewhere, eyeing that planet with flickers of hunger in her monochromatic eyes. Reella was running out of time.

The deity tried using her radiant light. She fired searing beams at the expanse of skin. Wave after wave of crystal barrages exploded over the invader. Reella’s target paused for a moment, eyes fixated on the planet and... just scratched her stomach where the bulk of the assault landed.

Reella saw the invader bite into Hotera like an apple, still unleashing noise from her mouth. She was horrified. She wanted to assess the damage. She tuned into the prayers of everyone on Hotera. Even with her ethereal self disjointed from the world, there was still a residual connection of sorts.

She got back screams. Confusion, horror. Many held hope Reella would save them, but many did not. They gave up. Their Lady wasn’t there.

Reella’s fears disappeared, replaced with incandescent rage. She flew up to the invader’s bosom and yelled. She tried to communicate with the being through all the hissing harsh noises rocking her ears. Reella reached in with her mind to try and send a message.

“By my divine order, release my planet at once!”

It was taxing. It was millions of times trickier than speaking into the mind of a human. She didn’t even know if her message got through. Something must’ve though.

Mouth still full, the invader looked down towards her.

Chapter 5: Dissolution

Kay was swish-sloshing that planet chunk in her mouth, talking to Lise still.

“What do you mean don’t talk with my mouth full? You wanted to know how it tasted right?”

She giggled, muffled. Noisily and shamelessly, she suckled the world against her cheek flesh.

Then, she heard something. A curious noise ringing in her mind: almost like a little squeak. A forced telepathic communication. Curious.

Kay looked down to an origin she discerned in fractions of a second. Cheek bulging with planet, she stared. After a brief pause, she erupted into laughter.

She swallowed that chunk of planet: easier to talk that way.

“Hey Lise, guess what I found?”

“What? No, some Stage One being.”
“Yeah, she looks like the lifeforms on the planet. Must’ve evolved or something. I think I’ll mess with her a bit.”

“Yeah I’ll talk to you later. We can meet up with Emile then jaunt there.”

“Duh, ‘course I’m still bringing the star. That’s why I’m here!”

Kay’s hair cooled down and the call ended. She moved to scoop Reella and pinch her up. The little being tried to run away, but Kay wasn’t moving with languidity here. It was like catching a mouse with three broken legs with how slow Reella could fly.

The little thing was very upset. Held up to her face, Reella was kicking at her fingers and blasting her skin with some golden energy. Obviously it didn’t do much to a truly evolved being like herself.

“Oh, the planet.” Kay chuckled. The little thing probably wanted that, didn’t she.

Kay realized the being couldn’t understand her speech. The tiny thing was covering her ears even, finding it harsh.

‘Lower lifeforms, such a hassle’ she thought. With a sigh, she deigned to mentally link with the thing.

--==--==--==--

“Hello? Helloooo? Can you hear me?”

Reella winced. The voice was so loud. It was much like how mortals heard her words when she wanted them to ring in their minds. This rang in her whole form though, including that inner, ethereal body.

All those billions of souls inside her heard it. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want them to know this. She’d have to wipe their memories if she made it out of this. Could she make it out of this?

She just saw a chunk of her planet swallowed. She heard a few prayers as it went down this invader’s throat. Unable to make them out fully, she managed to gleam the emotions to them: pain. This being was nothing she ever dealt with before.

Now she was in this entity’s hand, pinched tight at her sides. Held like a small doll. The other hand still held what was left of her world. It was wounded, little lights flickering up from it to the monster’s lips.

Reella steadied herself, focused on the hum of the souls in her body. She’d be confident here.

“Y-yes.”, she spoke, mind to mind. “I am Reella” she said. “I am the goddess of the planet you’ve so callously swallowed. Return what’s left to me so I may heal it at once!”

There was silence. The colossal invader did not look amused. Red eyes squinted at her. Reella smothered her pride just a little.

“Please.”, she added.

Kay burst out laughing, both in space and in mind. Reella and her souls were wracked with the loud volume and incomprehensible sounds. More wincing; more writhing between great fingers. Fiery hot breath wrapped around her. The blond deity smelled her planet on the being’s breath.

Kay figured she was too loud, so she mind-spoke quieter. It was hard to deal with such a fragile lifeform.

“Ha, wow that was something. You’re god of the planet huh? I like the costume. Well, oh great Reella, my name’s Kay. Nice to meet you.”

The red-haired being smiled wide, flashing pearly white teeth that could bite Reella in half. A bit of Hotera’s molten core started to drip down her palm.

“Ah fuck,” Kay said, instinctively lapping it up with her tongue.

Reella screamed at her with both voices.

“No stop!”

The invader paused. She chuckled again, but kept it mental. “Oh yeah, you wanted this huh. This snack of a planet?”

Reella mind-screamed, “Yes!”

Kay was feeling mischievous as usual. She pouted, clicked her tongue. Her mind-voice rang. “Well... it only fits in my mouth doesn’t it. Fair’s fair, right~”

With that, she took a bite and relished Reella’s futile squirmings against her fingers.

Kay chewed it nosily: obnoxiously. Kay’s mind sent all the noises over. It even sent the noises of humans in her mouth. Their screams and fears and sights flashed to Reella as they were crushed under incomprehensibly mountainous teeth.

Reella trembled.

Kay gulped. “Ah, yummy god world.”, she chuckled.

There was only one chunk of Hotera left, and Kay moved it towards her lips.

“If you want it, why don’t you try taking it out of my mouth Ms. Deity?”

The invader slid the planet onto her tongue. She lowered the psionic barrier around Hotera. A mere thought and it was gone in a flash. She let Reella know as much. It was faster to explain that bit wordlessly.

“Go on, go get it. It’s gonna melt in my mouth if you don’t.”

Reella was loose and flew forward into the great horror’s maw. She just passed the teeth and got nervous. A pulsing throat, alight with an eerie red glow, stood in the back. The glow added to that of Hotera’s leaking core. Her robes were moist with spittle.

She reached out towards one of her countries. They were still alive, but fading fast. Above her head, a droplet of saliva was falling. It touched Reella’s arm and she recoiled backwards, letting the bulk of it drown the south lands. Millions of lives, nations she helped guide: gone. Monuments and churches washed off in a gooey deluge. The souls of the dead flew down the invader’s throat.

Reella reached down and tried to pry the planet off the tongue: no use. Kay was holding it there with some trick of hers. Reella only ended up mashing towns against the underside of grabbing arms. The planet was starting to melt in her. The invader’s saliva inundated it.

Kay started to close her mouth. Reella felt fear again. She felt more this day than even when she was mortal. Doleful, she fled the mouth and left the last of her planet to doom.

The invader swallowed with her maw open. It slipped past her throat. She cut off feedback from the humans inside. Seems Kay could grasp their senses too: when she wanted to at least. Seeing herself from the perspective of specks was often fun.

The red-haired horror sighed all over the defeated Reella. Then, she smacked her lips with an audible ‘pop’.

“Delicious.” she paused, chuckling again.

Another insincere frown.

“Aw don’t look so glum. You should be pleased oh gracious one, your planet’s nourishing a higher being. Besides, you were really after those souls, weren’t you?”

She pinched Reella back up again.

“That’s not true!” Reella countered back, shouting with the full fury of her mind. “I loved my subjects. I-”

“Were absorbing their souls huh? One of my professor’s was saying how your kind would probably do that.”

Reella’s already fragile perspective broke further. ‘her kind?’, what was meant by that? She only just heard of the concept of biology and a professor now, as Kay conveyed it telepathically. Her and her subjects never thought of these things.

“Let me see what you’ve been up to with them?”

Reella tried to protest, but before she could send a single bit of mind-speak back, Kay injected her body with some sort of presence.

A sliver of Kay’s consciousness infested Reella’s immaterial body. Every ethereal vein had its walls filled with the deep-red glow of Kay’s eyes. The invader had invaded her now, and was peering all around to study her ‘setup’.

Her stomach, her bosom, even the place she sent angels were rife with Kay’s multitude gaze. Those walls of light shifted to that deep red abyss. Reella felt gross; her souls were confused.

Kay just laughed and laughed, disturbing all Reella’s treasured spirits. This was a game to her, a joke. Like looking under a rock and watching the bugs scurry.

“Oh wow, you are so naughty aren’t you? I can’t believe you put them there. What a bitch too. I’m guessing those ones you keep dissolving over and over aren’t your fav huh?”

The invader’s laughter trailed off.

“That’s ok though. I’m a bit naughty myself.”

Back outside, Kay draped her tongue across Reella’s front, soaking those white robes.

“Mmm~ I hope you don’t mind sharing. I’ve never sucked souls out of a Stage One being before.”

Reella’s legs were slurped into Kay’s maw. It was gross, the tongue slithered here and there. Large, wet, and crimson. It reminded her of some large fish on Hotera. She missed her planet already.

Degrading as this was, the true horror was happening within. Reella’s ethereal body was being siphoned. It was indiscriminate, from all areas of her immaterial form at once. The sinners in her stomach, the billions in her bosom. Purgatory and where the angels were. None safe: all were getting slurped into walls of deep-red light.

The wicked souls were relived at first to be free of Reella’s body, but they were just entering another horrible fate. One their Lady didn’t even know.

All those repose blue souls were stirred alongside their worldly desires and regrets. Lovers remembered each other again. The endless blue tides whipped into torrents. Whirlpools of souls, spiraling down to the unknown. Their last thoughts were not of Reella, but of whatever concerns of their mortal life weighed on them most. That, or confusion at being washed away to some other higher being’s soul-gut.

Not even the angels were safe. That hum of bliss which helped keep Reella sane through all this was gone. With their modified minds, the angels lamented not serving their mistress anymore. They passed into foreign insides. Kay took them all: not a single one left.

All the while, Reella was shrinking to less than half her old size. Without all those souls giving her power, she couldn’t sustain an avatar that large. What would happen if she lost them all? She wouldn’t find out yet, as Kay let up on the souls after just a second: still a long time for two beings with such heightened minds.

Reella could fit entirely in Kay’s mouth now, and the invader was eager to suck her in. As that tongue sloppily tasted her all over, the monster stuck Reella’s head past her lips and pointed at the great ball of fire in the distance.

“It’s funny, I just came here for that. Gonna have to unshrink myself to nab it. You didn’t think this was my real size, did you? This tiny form?” She chuckled, then slurped Reella in to seal her up with only that red light to see with.

“What a lucky day this turned out to be. I didn’t expect some treats as well. Maybe just a moon or something. An organic planet like yours though? Beats the artificial hands down~”

Reella’s robe was loose, the deity didn't shrink it in time, so Kay swallowed it down. Reella was too distraught to think on it much. Her dream of reaching that fire was gone. Her divinity got cut to half or more with just a few suckles. She still felt like a god. Power coursed through her. She was millions of times better than the humans she failed, but it meant nothing here. It meant nothing to Kay. She was nothing to Kay.

“What are you?” Reella asked.

Kay paused for a moment to think of something clever.

“I am Kay: Devourer of Gods.” she mind-thundered.

Kay cut off the communication-link, then swallowed. Right after, she burst out laughing.

What a story to tell at the party! “Kay: Devourer of Gods”

That ‘Reella’, a ‘god’? What a joke. The less power entities have, the more they think they did. That didn’t seem to change based on the reality too much.

Still, Kay seemed partly relieved. ‘What a chore’, she thought. She was tired of squinting with her higher senses to converse with such creatures.

Knowing it was safe, Kay grew to a slightly bigger fraction of her true size, then moved towards a star now smaller than one of her toes.

--==--==--==--

Reella never thought she’d be eaten. She only ever physically ate a few mortals herself, but that when she was new at this and trying out a variety of strategies at divine rule.

Some god she was... She was food, tugged by this slimy throat down to some horrible end. Rolling pulses of deep-red flesh made the scenery. She could see what she thought was Kay’s flesh-veins in here. They were giving this place light. Some bright red-orange fluid flew through them. It made these insides unbearably hot.

Reella slipped down into the stomach among what was left of Hotera. Her body fell down atop the latest chunk of the planet. Only a few thousand people were alive on it. She still felt them, barely. They soon died under her naked backside.

She watched those faint few thousand souls flicker up. She reached out to grab at them. She tugged with her incorporeal being, but Kay’s idle existence had a far greater pull.

This gut was near incomprehensible. All sorts of gases and liquids and things floated around. There was at least one for every color, some for colors she never even thought of till now. The walls of this stomach were great and towering and undulating. They were perplexing to stare at. Wrinkles upon wrinkles into wrinkles. It went on forever infinitely deep. Fractals were all around her in this stomach flesh.

This Kay truly was a higher being.

Reella began to feel pain: bad pain. She wandered around a bit, saw a small piece of Hotera, not yet dissolved. It was close. She zipped towards it, floating through the rainbow clouds of gas and plasma and energies that worked her down her all the while. Still, if she was gonna die, it’d be with a chunk of her home in her hands.

Reella felt her souls slipping outside her body. She was shrinking. Worse still, Kay must’ve grown. The entire gut grew thousands of times larger in a flash just when the planet was within arms reach. That short trip to what was left of Hotera got ever more arduous, but she could still make it. Even as she was now.

Reella kept going, getting smaller and smaller. She was inhaling the digestive clouds. She was bathed in those droplets of fluids. Her skin grew red. She was leaking souls like a squeezed sponge dripped water. But she was divine, at least for now. She’d last.

By the time she got to that chunk, it was mostly gone. Soaked with spittle and slime, it was wet mush. She was small, almost mortal again. She clung to her last few hundred souls best she could as she floated to the world-chunk’s surface. She landed on a piece of what used to be a forest. A few seconds later she was at a mortal height.

Reella relaxed best she could on the moist crumbling ground. Tugging soggy grass, she looked up at at all the colors around her.

Fully mortal again, Reella lasted just one more second before she dissolved. Shortly after, that last bit of planet melted. Her soul whisked upwards to join the others.

Passing through the walls of the gut, she was in what must’ve been Kay’s immaterial form. It was vast: vaster than the space that used to make her so anxious to look at it. She felt herself, her soul, mashed into a tiny dot small as can be. Then, her spirit was shattered and erupted in a great ball of light that fed the invader.

--==--==--==--

The aftermath of digesting a god’s worth of energy hit Kay: a tiny belch. She laughed.

Humming the latest pop song of her kind, she tapped the star and a semi-clear sphere of white light surrounded it.

“Perfect!” she thought.

The being pinched up the marble-scale star and slid it into the pockets of her jean shorts.

She stretched. “Ugh, how constricting here. Time to get ready for that party. It’ll be good to get out of this dump of a reality.”

With a thought, space warbled all around Kay and she left.

Fin