Goda's Slave (Lesbian, Dystopia, LGBT Fantasy)

Chapter 14: Body of the Giant

Kanna had been unable to escape the fumes. She ducked her head, and she covered her mouth with the collar of her robes, but still the smell of the exhaust from the military trucks seeped into her nostrils. With her face tilted down, even in the dim light, she could see the script painted in red on the side of the canister as it bounced between her ankles, reminding her once again that what she was inhaling was the waste of Rava Spirits.

She glanced up at Goda. The woman's handsome face had grown a bit twisted with distaste, and when Kanna followed Goda's gaze, she saw that they were pulling up to a small opening between a row of tanks that blocked the road. There were a few trucks ahead of them in line, small ones that looked similar to Goda's—albeit less run-down—and which seemed to carry civilians. Kanna couldn't make out any of their faces, but she could see their silhouettes moving like shadow puppets in front of the bright lights.

There were soldiers as well, dipping down over the doors of the trucks, handing things to the people inside and receiving things in return. Others were peering into the back cabins, poking and prodding at the cargo before letting people through.

"What are they looking for?" Kanna asked Goda.

"What do you think they're looking for?"

Kanna shook her head and sighed as the queue moved and she saw that they would be next to face the first checkpoint. "Don't tell me they're looking for Death Flower—for Samma Flower. All this paranoia over one tiny little plant is ridiculous. Sure, what it does is horrendous, but I still don't understand the obsession."

"You don't yet realize its power, then," Goda murmured, her eyes still straight ahead. "Imagine what happened to you in the cave, but multiplied many hundreds of times. That's what the flower can do if a person can ingest it successfully without poisoning themselves or purging it altogether. It can leave a person empty of beliefs and principles and morals, which makes them very hard to control. Someone who has seen the truth has nothing to lose."

Kanna stared at the woman. She wondered if Goda was talking about herself. "I thought you said that it allows a person to see the Goddess."

"Yes, exactly: The truth, the emptiness, the Goddess—same thing."

"You never make any sense." Kanna crossed her arms. "'Truth,' 'emptiness,' 'Goddess'—I may be no expert in the Middlelander tongue, but these are not synonyms."

"You're right," Goda said. "You are indeed no expert. Either way, it doesn't serve you to get caught up in the words themselves. You'll miss what they point to. If I point to that mountain in the distance, are you going to fixate on which finger I used to point to it, or are you going to look at the mountain?"

Kanna narrowed her eyes. She didn't like Goda's attitude one bit, but before she could offer an irritated retort, Goda had pulled the truck up beside a soldier who was already leaning in their direction with a weird grin.

"Well, well! Hello there, Goda Brahm. Still not dead yet, I see!"

Kanna thought it was the strangest greeting she had ever heard, but Goda did not appear to be offended. Instead, she rummaged around in her robes and pulled out a folded stack of papers.

"This is my prisoner. She's an Upperlander, but she's been cleansed." Goda shoved the papers into the woman's hand.

"Oh, come on, don't be so short with me," the soldier said as she began flipping through Kanna's documents. "We have time. I don't mind holding up the line so that we can catch up. How's the lovely Priestess Rem Murau doing? I heard she's at the desert monastery now; I can't imagine you missed her. You had to go there for the cleanse, didn't you?" The soldier glanced down at the last sheet of paper as Goda looked on silently. "Ah, yes, here is the priestess's personal stamp. Must have been nice seeing that familiar face after all this time, huh?"