Page 2 of To Trap a Soul

He wished he could do this on Earth – transport himself where the whim to explore took him.

But going there was pointless, and the fact that the world was out of reach was more depressing than he could take. He’d rather not dangle it in front of his eyes, especially as his intangible hands couldn’t touch it.

So, he remained there. Especially as the noises of horror and terror would pervade his mind and ears no matter how far he tried to run from himself, from his own realm.

His consciousness and soul could only freely move within himself, stretching back and forth within his realm and the pockets that connected to it, like his mind chamber he’d been hiding in futilely. In his gut, his main realm, he found the loudest voice, that of a confused woman, and slammed a tendril of essence across her lips. She felt it, but he perceived nothing, and her eyes widened in awareness and fright as tears welled in them.

She couldn’t see him; his mana was so weak and depleted that he had no visible body to offer.

She fought him, reaching out to the nothingness and through his very body, only for her eyes to roll back and her head to fall to the side. Once asleep, the physical reflection of her, which was nothing more than a spectral body, dimmed until it was almost as white as the flaming soul floating within her chest.

His bodiless ethereal form drifted backwards from her, but in her silence, there was no relief. The agony of his thoughts continued. There were so many voices, so many screams, so many who were afraid.

All of them created a sea of warbling groans and wails.

Too many to quieten. As a horde, they were too much for him.

Weldir wished he could make them all stop without withering away what little power he had obtained by consuming them. He wished he could help them feel at ease within his lonely, dark realm, but he could offer them nothing more than shadows. Shadows he sometimes didn’t have the strength to see through either.

They didn’t feel foreboding to him. To Weldir, they were comforting, but to a human...

Darkness only incited confused fear as they sightlessly fumbled through it, bumping into each other, only to weep in each other’s arms.

Tenebris, the realm that lay within his stomach, which he’d had since the moment he was born, was darkness. It was nothingness, just like him. There was no joy here, no beauty, and not a speck of light unless he provided it. He had no spark to give. He was the Warden of Darkness through and through, and what would it be used for anyway? To see further into the shroud?

Any light he made was solely for himself, for wanting to see something other than...this.

But there was nothing to see.

Even his own body had a spectral shroud to it, black as the very night sky; glossy and almost reflective. He knew hecouldhave a physical form that looked solid, but there was just not enough of him.

Not with the mist he laid on Earth, consuming all of him to the brink of near death.

He placed his hands over his face, feeling for resistance where his horns may be, and gripped them with mental anguish.

Behind him, a man yelled out. Weldir silently roared in answer as he slapped a black sandy tendril of magic across the deceased spirit’s mouth. All the colour from his body, from his light skin to his blue shirt, faded.

Like the woman from before, he, too, turned into a white essence as he fell asleep. The flaming soul inside his spectral chest glowed brightly.

Make it stop... please.His bodiless form drew tighter once more, like a ball, as his tired mind and exhausting power weighed heavier on him.Why, Mother? Why give me this task?

How could she forsake him for so many years, locked away inside a box, only to give him freedom with a task that tormented him? He missed his box. His prism.

His fucking prison!

He longed to have the only sounds be her shallow, weak breaths and slow heartbeat lulling him. He no longer wanted to witness the fear and sorrow from those he consumed as they realised over and over again that they were dead. Nor did he want to understand and relive their final moments and their lasting regrets alongside them. And he had no need to be privy to their confusion as to why their gods had forsaken them, or their discovery that their assumptions about there being no afterlife were wrong.

He was a terrible being of death. He was incapable of providing them guidance or comfort or a second life. Just limbo.

There were too many souls here now for him to silence without it enervating him beyond his capabilities, not unless he wanted his limited mist to fade on Earth.

I should let it fade...What use was it for him to collect souls when he’d stopped...consumingthem? He brought them here, but he was too afraid to add their echoing wails to the others already here. Just beyond his stomach, in another chamber of his consciousness, hundreds of souls remained collected but uneaten, waiting for him.

For Weldir.

For him to cleanse them, fix them, and add them to his slow-growing collection of human souls.

Once more, he shuddered, and the world around them all rippled in response, like a minor earthquake. Patient violence once more restrained, Weldir held back the desire to destroy each soul with sharp teeth and claws.

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