Soul Weaver by Eric Vann

Author:Eric Vann [Vann, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781513645285
Publisher: Independently published
Published: 2019-09-15T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 16

It took just over four hours of heavy marching to reach their destination. Unlike Griff, Melody had been kept alive for now. During their march, she even briefly regained consciousness, only to lose it again when her Grauda minder ruthlessly struck the back of her head. Celia didn’t know why, but she was certain it wasn’t for some merciful reason.

The location the convoy led them to was what could only be described as a large hole in the ground. The female Grauda pointed toward it, indicating that Celia follow her in. Reluctantly, she did.

The ground the tunnel had been carved from seemed to be mostly loose soil. The whole colony, Celia discovered, was just a maze of tunnels which opened into larger open spaces from time to time. She did notice some interesting things as they descended, however.

The first was how much smaller the males within the colony were than those she had fought against on the surface.

The second was the sheer number of male Grauda who worked on the inside. Whether digging or tending to white slimy eggs or a strange-looking fungus, it was the males who did all the work with a few females supervising. There was even a section dedicated to Alchemy. Celia watched as a Grauda male gathered several herbs and what looked to be some animal’s dried out innards before tossing them into a large pot. Celia gagged as a whiff of whatever he was making reached her nose.

Her explorations were abruptly interrupted when the female she had been following stopped in front of a set of rather ordinary-looking wooden double doors. It was the first door Celia had seen in this whole colony.

The female turned and looked her straight in the eye. “Queen,” she said, before knocking on the door.

The double doors swung open to reveal a large chamber containing more than a dozen female Grauda, some of whom looked pregnant. They were milling about, carrying clay plates and other assorted items. But as soon as Celia made her presence known by stepping inside, they all spun to look at her.

There was a moment of tense silence before the females rushed toward the walls, where they stood in a row like statues. Their eyes followed Celia’s movements as she slowly made her way toward a throne made of hardened clay at the far end of the chamber.

The throne had two females standing to attention on either side, each were very similar in appearance to the one who had guided Celia here, but these two actually wore armor made of an assortment of hides, and wielded metal-tipped spears and a small shield.

It was the queen herself that was the biggest surprise. Celia had imagined her to be a huge egg layer, just like their Critter-ranked ant equivalents. But the creature before her looked remarkably human—a Greater Enlightened, she figured.

Curly black hair tumbled all the way down her chest and back, falling over golden brown skin that sparkled in the light of the braziers, like armor.

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