Acrid

The bowel of the giant was a nasty landscape of gray tissue, polyps as large as wild mushrooms, and suppurating, cabin-sized ulcers. The spongey floor of the intestine was covered in worms of varying sizes, and varying temperaments. Dolph quickly learned that the thinnest, palest worms misliked being stepped on and would rear back and rotate a slimy ring of bloody teeth in retaliation. Thankfully (inside the giant, seldom could he use that word) they were blind. They hovered threateningly over the segment of their body that had been trod upon, and slashed the air above it, before giving up and descending back into the wriggling carpet.

Dolph held his torch aloft. It was black as pitch inside the giant. Letting the titanic oaf swallow him had not been part of his giant-slaying plan, but if he could find a way out that was not too unpleasant he could probably do much more damage to the monster from within. Though, and he waved his torch over the worms, and the nearest bloody ulcer, the giant was hardly a paragon of health.

An acrid stench blasted past his nostrils. It was awful, thick and deep. Was it the pus? he wondered. It smelled like the cattle fields. It smelled like a solid acreage of cows. That seeping, drifting, flatulent odor of sulfides…

In an instant, the torch became a star in his hand; the floor and walls and bloody ceiling became bowels flambé.

Dolph did not survive his own herculean triumph, but he was celebrated for centuries as the slayer of the ravenous giant, a martyr, a hero, a mensch, and a firebrand. The giant farted an inferno.

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