Being an angler was to be a master of patience, persevering through hours with a tether extended, bobbing along the tides, and waiting. Lots and lots of waiting.

  Angling wasn't necessarily about the catch. It was a holistic experience; it was about the tranquillity, the endeavour. The zen-like state of stillness.

  Then his tether would catch, and he'd instantly toss all those lofty lies he told himself aside. He'd caught one!

  With a practiced motion, he ripped the hook from the soul sea and inspected his captured prize. It was another painfully minuscule wandering soul, hollow and aimless. Disappointing. As always. He sighed, absorbing it into his massive soul anyway—more out of habit than hunger—then flicked his tether back out with a snap.

  He hated fishing.

  It was all so boring. No matter what he tried to pass the time, he could never stave off the boredom for long. He'd tried singing once. Long ago. He ran out of songs eventually and kept singing until the thought of each and every one of those songs made him sick. Then he got bored of it.

  He tried counting as high as he possibly could. He got to a million and something before he got distracted by his own boredom and lost track. His next best attempt was interrupted partway through when he simply got bored of it.

  He tried not thinking of anything, but then he thought about not thinking for so long that he didn't think he wasn't thinking about not thinking anymore… or so he thought. He got bored of it.

  He tried watching the stalagmites grow around the slow drip of a draining fountain in his tiny cave prison, but even that lost its lustre after a hundred years or so. There wasn't much to do while trapped in this eternal prison with nought but a scant few disillusioned souls drifting by for company.

  The souls were always so faint they weren't even capable of a good conversation. He attempted it a few times but eventually gave up. He got bored of it.

  Soul fishing was the only hobby to survive his centuries of solitude. He didn't stick to the soul fishing because he particularly enjoyed it, but it at least helped him improve on his physique. His vanity was something not even endless time could strip away. It was still boring, though.

  He couldn't quite recall the last time he wasn't bored.

  No, that wasn't true. He remembered it perfectly. How could he forget?

  It was the day he'd had his soul torn out of his own body, ravaged for its secrets, and then—through some idiotic cosmic mishap—shoved into his spear instead of back where it belonged in his actual body. Desperate—and foolish—at the time, he'd turned to the devadoots for help, only to be "rewarded" for his faith with betrayal.

  They'd turned his original body to stone. Then they'd taken his newly sentient spear body, stabbed it into the petrified husk of his no longer sentient human body, and ritually leeched energy from his soul for centuries.

  That part? Definitely not boring. Depraved, yes. Treacherous, absolutely. A vile, unforgivable betrayal of a worshipper's trust? Most certainly.

  The boring part had come later—after every devadoot who knew of his existence had been wiped out, leaving him utterly alone for two hundred twenty-four years, three months, two weeks, and a day. Yes, he'd been counting. What of it?

  At least with the devadoots dead, it left his soul unmolested. Free from their meddling, he finally had the privacy to begin the slow, painstaking process of rebuilding himself.

  It started with pacts—tiny, insignificant agreements with wandering wisps of existence. These souls were so insignificant they barely qualified as entities, but they were all he could manage at the time.

  Over a couple dozen years, those pacts added up. Piece by piece, his soul grew stronger until he could flex his influence and reel in larger prey. That was when his endless fishing began. At first, it was exhilarating—each catch a challenge, each victory hard-earned. But as his power grew, the excitement faded. The hunt became trivial, predictable...boring.

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  He had just reeled in another soul without even realizing it, his boredom so overpowering that he'd caught it on autopilot. That's how easy it had become.

  It might have come as a surprise to most people, but life as an inanimate object was incredibly boring. Some might have even gone as far as to call it painfully boring. Still, it was life. Or, well, technically, it wasn't life—not in any real sense. He was just a disconnected soul stuffed into a physical container, which didn't count as living by any stretch of the term. In fact, it pretty much defined death.

  Life, death—after existing a few hundred years of being a stick jammed into his own heart, it all became semantics. Now, he lived? Died? Now, he experienced the world one mind-numbing day after another in his cramped cave chamber, desperately searching for anything, anything new to distract him from the endless monotony.

  Miraculously, this day appeared to be one of those special exceptions to his dreary eternity. Every now and again, a wild creature would wander into his cave prison, and he always cherished those unique encounters.

  He heard it first—a ripple of panicked footsteps echoing down the cave entrance. His trained soul sense sharpened, honing in on the source. A youthful soul, brimming with a remarkable logoic presence, darted into his domain, pursued by a cluster of larger, heavier souls. Adults, most likely, and of the same species as the child.

  His analysis wasn't infallible, but after centuries of honing his soul sense, it was as close to perfection as one could get. He could feel the raw potential emanating from the young soul—so vibrant, so unspoiled. It was rare to encounter such a beacon in the endless gray of his existence. He wasn't sure if he wanted to absorb the youthful soul or attempt to communicate; it seemed both too delicious to pass up and too rare a find to spoil on a single meal.

  When the soul entered his prison chamber, his excitement surged to an unprecedented peak. A human! There was a human here, and the human was seeing him. No—looking at him. His excitement fizzled into a peculiar shyness. Why was a spear getting shy?

  Of course, he didn't feel like a spear. Spending his entire post-spear existence embedded in his own petrified body gave him a lingering sense of connection to it. He wondered if it made for a decent statue. He really hoped it did. He hoped the small skylight caught his good side.

  This human looked young—very young. Then again, it had been an absurdly long time since he'd seen a living human, so his memory of their aging process was understandably hazy. Still, everything about this one screamed "child." It would explain the appearance of the soul she was housing.

  Although souls could be deceiving. For example, If someone were to sense his soul, they wouldn't see a spear at all. They'd see the remnants of a centuries-old human who, in his prime, had been the most powerful creature to walk the planet.

  The human child gazed upon him, her wide hazel eyes shimmering with awe. For a brief moment, he was utterly speechless—metaphorically, of course. In that instant, he made a decision: he wouldn't eat her. Her soul was too pure, too vibrant, and he was far too overjoyed by her presence to snuff out such a beautiful thing.

  She looked utterly enraptured, her gaze locked on him with a reverence that sent waves of bliss rippling through his being. Oh, the unmatched ecstasy of being seen! Acknowledged by another existence after centuries of solitude—it was almost overwhelming.

  Even the souls he absorbed didn't grant him this kind of recognition, and he was literally absorbing them! They had been consumed unwillingly, rippped apart, remoulded as he deemed fit, and drawn into his spiritual body, all without so much as a glance his way. But this child? She looked at him as though he were a miracle.

  He watched her with as much adoration as she offered him. He couldn't remember the last time he felt this… happy. This human deserved a reward, something to show his gratitude for paying him this visit and acknowledging him after all these lonely years.

  His musings on how to reward the human were abruptly interrupted by the soft chime of a bell.

  "Did you hear that?"

  "It came from inside the cave."

  The voices echoed down the tunnel, faint but drawing closer. The little human snapped into action, her movements sharp and purposeful as she turned toward the sound. He felt the souls of her pursuers breach the cave's threshold, their presence like a rush of cold air against his senses.

  While all this was happening, a small pink rhombus grew out of thin air in the center of the chamber, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other forms.

  Whoa, hold on—hold on. This was far too much stimulus all at once. Sure, he'd lamented his boredom countless times, but he hadn't expected his grievances to be answered by such a whirlwind of activity. It was chaotic, impossible to keep track of all the moving pieces. He needed to prioritize and narrow his focus.

  Primary subject: the tiny human.