open hands will open throats - AproposUranism (2024)

Chapter 1: Cahara - Hunger

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It's your own fault that the two of you ended up like this, half-starved and too hungry to muster the energy to uselessly search for more food; you'd gotten co*cky. Well, you had been co*cky, and the girl had followed you like always. The temptation to explore was just too great. You'd been blindsided by the promise of the riches to find in this golden city. Even with the only sign Le'garde was ever here being bloodstains on the floor of his cell, this mission is going to change your life; if the first two maps had led you to seventy pieces of silver and a font of endless wine, you can't even dream of what the third will show. Especially since that guy had been keeping it for himself. Forget paying off her debts, you and Celeste will be able to live like kings, like Gods.

Right now, though, none of that is much use. You're still starving like a poor man, and it's all the more annoying, because you've got the power to never go hungry again as long as you have a crust of bread. f*ck. You should have rationed. You'd thought you'd turn up more food somewhere in this maze of alleyways, but all you've found is tobacco and vials of poison. At least you're set if you want to smoke or kill yourself, you guess.

Maybe if you didn't feel so weak, you'd take a chance, go back to the wolfmasks for a second bite. But the mines are so far away now, and you barely have the strength for what you need to do.

It'll be easier if the girl doesn't see. You dig through your pockets, fumbling for something to distract her. Explosives, probably not a safe bet. Too small for opium. She can't read, you figured that out already; what book has the most pictures? There's a battered leaflet that shows you how to make a pig out of a pinecone, and even if it's not that fun, at least there's drawings with the instructions.

"Here, I've got a job for you." You try to sound upbeat, like you're not both in literal hell.

You lead the girl towards the corner of the room, facing the wall. This tower is the safest place you've seen since you entered the dungeons, separated from everything that wants to kill you by a hundred stairs. There's even a bed. She sits down obediently, fiddling with her creepy doll, and takes the page you offer her, silently staring at it as you dump a handful of pinecones and sticks onto the floor nearby. You can see her hand twitch, like she's fighting not to touch anything. Good. Even if she'll still be able to hear you, hopefully this will keep her busy instead of turning around to see what's happening. You flip a coin in the air to catch it again, and slap a grin on your face.

"You wanna earn some coin?" You ask.

She tilts her head to the side, in what you've come to think of as her 'I'm too scared to ask questions, but keep talking' look.

"See this little pig here? If you copy the pictures and make me a couple of them, I'll pay you for your trouble. Real silver," If only your own mission was this simple. You're kind of jealous, "What do you say?"

The girl nods, and you fight the urge to pick her up and whirl her around. If your own kid has any scrap of you in them, they won't be this easily pleased, but it's nice to imagine. Baby's first paid job. Even with how awful everything is, you can't shake off how excited you are to go home with your pockets lined in silver and sweep Celeste off her feet. How long until she's due? How long have you been down here?

Your smile wavers. "Good kid. And don't- don't turn around until I tell you, okay? I'm making a surprise, so no peeking."

It might not be a fun surprise, but still. It's going to be an improvement over what you have now, which is absolutely nothing, except some whisky you're saving for when you start hearing voices again. Girl's gotta eat somehow, and so do you.

There'd be more calories if it were only you; you and your stupid, bleeding heart.

You don't want to do this.

No, you really don't want to do this. But it's not about what you want. It can't be anymore, not when you have your family to think about, people you love more than saving your own skin. So you sit on the edge of the bed. Place the softly glowing stone on the floor, just in case it tries to protect you from yourself, the same way it did from that harpy in the caves. And you tie the tourniquet around your upper arm, down a vial of wine, and wait for a moment until your arm starts to feel heavy.

Here goes nothing. You press the teeth of the bonesaw into your skin, just below the elbow, and pull it towards yourself quickly.

It cuts through your flesh like it's butter. It's sharp, and it's clean, and it hurts more than anything you've ever felt in your life. Forget the hunger gnawing at you, this is pain. God. You have to do it, there's nothing else to eat. But the willpower you need to hurt yourself like this... Your hand shakes.

"f*ck, f*cking hell," A whimper crawls its way out of your throat. You've got to pull yourself together.

You have just enough presence of mind to wonder if Sylvian can heal this, before common sense kicks in to remind you you're not religious, and your whole train of thought derails abruptly as you yank the saw backwards and it slices even deeper. Is the tourniquet tight enough? There's so much more blood than you thought there'd be, pouring all the way down to your wrist.

The next few minutes are a blur of horror. Whatever it is inside of you that lets you take a blade and chop off your own arm, you've sure as sh*t never seen it before. It's not courage. Just pure, dumb animal instinct, driving you forward before you can back out or black out. You can't stop. You're not numb to the pain, you just can't not push through it. Even as you bite down on your tongue so hard it bleeds, to muffle the scream building in your chest. Your breathing is uneven and heavy, panting with the exertion, the fear. The saw grinds against bone, vibration rattling through your whole body and echoing in your head, as you move back and forth until finally, the strings of skin holding it on snap and your arm falls to the ground. It takes you a few seconds after that to stop sawing.

Slowly, you come back to your senses enough to realise you should try to stop the bleeding. You tear a strip of fabric from the bedsheets and stem the worst of the flow; and then you gain enough sense to realise you're still being a dumbass, and pick the stone up again. The blood stops gushing immediately. That monster fish has saved your life more than once - the last food you'd had was huge, grilled chunks of it, and your stomach growls at the memory. You pick your arm up and put it on the bed, before you haul yourself upright and walk over to the girl.

Your voice is hoarse and strained when you tell her, "You can look now, it's over."

There's the ghost of a smile on her face as she turns, holding out a little pig to you, before her eyes land on the bloodied stump of your arm and the last traces of colour drain from her face. She doesn't cry, but you can see her trembling faintly.

"It's okay," You tell her, as softly as you can manage when you're choking down the urge to vomit, "It doesn't hurt. And it means we've got food now, see? We're gonna be fine."

It's hard to tell what she's thinking when she always looks nervous, but after a few seconds, she nods, determined. You hold out the hand that's still attached to your body, and she places her palm against yours for a moment, before she pulls it close to her chest again. She's braver than you were. Still nodding to herself, she tucks the pinecones into the oversized pockets of her dress, and stands.

You might be tempting fate to start a campfire in the room you're staying in, but you're finding it hard to care. You just lost an arm, safety has moved a few steps down your list of priorities. At least you've got plenty of tinderboxes. And tinder, the few pinecones unlucky enough not to have been turned into toys. You jam a stick into the open end of the bone so you can rotate it on a spit. The girl, sensibly, stares at this with wide-eyed horror.

"It'll look better once it's cooked," You lie.

It's nightmarish, turning it over the fire to cook evenly, skin charring. You watch the flames crackle, trying not to drool.

Something nudges your side.

"You okay?" Fear races down your spine as you look down to her, because that's the rational response to anything that happens in this sh*thole.

The girl looks down, hands resting in her lap, with a pinecone pig cradled in them. You laugh without even trying. They're cuter than they were in the instructions, even if their legs are different lengths and they're too wonky to stand up on their own; there's a scrap of twine on one end of the biggest one that you think is supposed to be a tail, and you pick it up carefully. Her almost-smile is back.

"Right, I almost forgot to pay you," You hand her a silver coin, reminding yourself that you'll be rich soon anyway, "Never let anyone get away with that. We'll make a mercenary out of you yet."

Turn. Wait. Turn. Wait. You feel like a wolf waiting for its prey to bleed out, until you can't wait any longer.

"Hold him for a second." The pinecone pig is returned to its rightful place with her, so you can lift your arm off of the spit.

Eyes closed, you take a bite. Your body registers food, after so long without it, and all your inhibitions snuff out. You're starving for this. You eat ravenously, gnawing meat off of the bone like a half-starved dog, greedily swallowing down chunks of fat and gristle because it's so good to eat again that you don't care what you're putting into your mouth. There's grease running down your chin. It's too hot, and you're burning your tongue, but you couldn't stop if your life depended on it. Nothing has ever tasted better.

Your teeth hit bone, and you recoil. That's your arm. It registers all at once, what you just did, how you'd been glad of it. There's human meat in your stomach.

You gag, remaining hand clamped hard over your mouth. You can't afford to throw up, you remind yourself, still heaving; this is the only food you've had in what must be days, and who knows when you might be able to find something else? If you don't eat, you'll starve. And if you die, Celeste and your kid will go hungry without the money this mission will bring. She needs you to buy her freedom, to raise her child, to come home safe. You aren't going to die in these dungeons.

The girl looks up at you, and your resolve strengthens even further; you can make sure she gets out of here, that she won't rot down in the darkness forever.

Nothing has ever been as difficult as swallowing that last mouthful of flesh, and you aren't sure how you manage to do it when every sane instinct begs you not to, but you force yourself to grin at her afterwards. "See? It's not that bad." You tell her, and pass your arm the meat over.

She holds it in her precious little hands. She takes a bite. And then another.

You tip your head back and exhale, so she won't see the tears that threaten to slip down your face. You'll live. You're going to make sure your family survives, no matter how heavy the cost; and really, what's a high price to a thief, anyway?

Chapter 2: Ragnvaldr - Vengeance

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As you unlock the cell which holds the man you came here to kill, you decide how you'll do just that.

This is no hunger. Or at least, not one that you have ever felt before. Your mind is not clouded, the way it was when you and your comrades turned upon the less fortunate among you like feral dogs, or when you fed upon monsters so you'd live to delve even deeper in these dungeons. It's a desire born from perfect, unmistakable clarity of thought; you will eat him.

Call it fate, if you still believed in such a thing after what you've seen. This is justice in its purest form. Rage and terror, fear and loathing, the grief that has driven you to this opportunity and the hate which tells you, 'take it.'

By his hand, you had been forced to sin against men who deserved to be so much more than food. He has taken your family, your honour, everything short of your life. He would have seen you reduced to little more than a savage beast, had your will to right this wrong not kept you sane in the darkness. But you've won. The artifact is yours. These dungeons are awash with the blood of every monster slain. Captain Le'garde kneels at your feet. And by your hand, you will make of him what he made of your people. If you must be a brute, then he will be just another pound of flesh for you to carve.

One last sin. To purify this place, to restore your honour. To avenge your family.

You have never been a religious man, even before you were given reason to despise all things supernatural or occult; but you've always liked to think that if there is a world beyond this, then Hilde and Björn are watching over you, and they know that you fight for them. You don't know whether or not to hope they can see you now.

Le'garde lifts his head as you kneel down to his level, and he meets your eyes with something like hope written on his face. You lay your bow on the ground, so you have both hands free to unlock his shackles.

You lean in, and sink your teeth into his throat.

He falls backwards, thrashing violently to kick you off as you fall with him, as he tries in vain to pull his sword from its scabbard. You catch him by the wrist. He has very delicate hands, you note distantly, below the red mist descending over you; long, slender fingers, and a wrist that you can easily close your own hand around, to break all those long, slender bones inside. It feels almost too easy. The noise he lets out would be a scream, if not for how you've crushed his windpipe. All he manages is a low, gurgling sound, blood staining his pearly-white teeth when you sit back for a second to look at what you've done. His pretty face without a single scar to mar it. You'd been handsome, once; or at least, your wife had thought you handsome, and that was all that mattered. He presses his non-mangled hand to his throat, trying to stem the bleeding. You break that one too, slamming it into the stone wall hard enough to make your shoulder ache sharply; Le'garde cries out in pain and terror, and you can't hold yourself back any longer, so you surge forward and take another bite.

This time, you find yourself with a mouthful of flesh. The taste is familiar, and you would weep for that old grief, if you could feel anything other than bloodlust and triumph. You swallow on instinct. And you bite down again, and again, tearing through skin and fat and muscle, until you reach cartilage below. All the while, his movements grow weaker and his screams more fearful. He tears handfuls of your hair out with hands that no longer work, fighting against you like his life depends on it. It makes you think of a trapped animal, of prey.

It only makes you angrier. Your teeth work against the tough shell of his windpipe, until it yields with a crack that might be the sweetest sound you've ever heard. Hot breath warms your face, as the man who ruined your life - slowly, painfully, without dignity - dies in the dirt beneath you. You watch the life fade from his eyes. The pulse of blood between your jaws begins to grow slower, draining unceremoniously to the ground.

The noise which leaves you is more animal than human, a great, guttural yell of victory. Relief washes over you, cleansing your soul. It's over.

Or it will be over soon enough. The moment of joy passes quickly; your hatred is not yet sated. You swore you would eat him, and if his death has shown anything, it's the strength of your kept promises. What are a few bites of meat, compared to the bodies of everyone you had ever known and loved? You've fed more on your friends. No, you are going to devour every piece of him. There will be nothing left of him to taint your mind; no flesh, no blood, no bone. He will be gone. You won't be able to sleep dreamlessly until you are certain the world is safe, that there is no single trace that remains for some wicked magic to rebuild him from.

Your hands shake with anger as you remove his armour, barely controlled enough to make your fingers obey you. You snap through the buckles holding it in place rather than waste time undoing them, buttons scattering everywhere as you rip his shirt off to reveal more unmarked skin.

The unfairness of it rankles you. How is it that his body hasn't been warped by his cruelty? Looking at him, you'd think the Gods had blessed him; you know that he's fought before, but no sign of it shows here, not a single scar betrays any old sickness or injury. Save for the wounds you've given him, of course. He disgusts you. He infuriates you. You want to tear the skin off of the meat below and wear it, some mockery of the harm he doesn't bear and you do because of him.

While you can still think clearly enough for any sort of finesse, you shove trembling fingers into the socket of his left eye, pulling it free.

It yields easily between your teeth.

The fluid inside is thick and foul, more like oil than water. It fills your mouth with bitterness enough to cut through the blood from before, and it seems to coat your tongue in its strange texture. Something hard crunches as you bite into it. You chew it into smaller shreds and swallow, like you had with the chunk of his windpipe. The inside of your throat feels slimy.

You stare into the hollow space in his skull, and find that the phantom ache in your scar has vanished. You're grateful it hadn't taken your sight. This is a view you would hate to miss out on.

It's easier to eat the second eye. To avoid the taste, you swallow it nearly whole. If you'd doubted your decision for even a moment, this reaffirms that you were right to do this. Your burden is lighter now - you need to get rid of him. You fumble with the scabbard on the ground; and with his own blade, you slice open Le'garde's stomach, to fill your own.

You move like some hulking animal, every action thoughtless, just instinct, as you yank organs free and devour them in bite after ravenous bite. His guts are so hot it feels as though they could burn your throat. It's a mess of textures, all with the same bitter, metallic taste. Everything is fair game. No matter how slippery, how tough, how unpleasant it is to force into your mouth; after each gulp, you pick up a fresh morsel and repeat the process. When his innards are done and you're just pawing through the empty cavity of his body, you wrench his shoulder out of its socket and wrap your jaws around his arm. Sinew snaps between your teeth, so strong and wiry that for a moment, the fear of choking cuts through the thrill of your anger. You know there's nothing to gain from consuming it. But it's part of him, and you want every single piece destroyed completely, no small shred spit out that might survive as mere waste on the dungeon floor; you will have him unmade.

Chew, swallow, reach for another bite. Even as you choke, as nausea roils in your stomach, as shattered bone cuts at your gums and mixes your blood with his own to be drunk down with the rest, you feast. You could no more stop your carnage than you could forgive Le'garde, or even yourself. This is far past your point of no return.

Time surely passes, though it could be minutes or days in this sunless place. Your body must be tired by now. But bloodlust burns all else away, until the only thing left to feel is itself. And fear.

He watches you without eyes, taunting you for your weakness, the pain that lives in the heart of you where rage can't touch. In retaliation, you take his head in your hand and lift it up a few inches, before slamming it back down with as much force as you can muster. His skull caves in. Brain drips from between your fingers as you scoop it out by the handful. Desperate, you lick the thick sludge off of the stones like the mutt he made of you. You eat the evil thoughts right out of his head, the memories of every atrocity, the decision to ravage your homeland. You're human. You're a hero.

More. More meat to rend to pieces. His other arm, his legs, the flesh you flay from his shoulders and back until he resembles that awful, skinless half-man, spinning in its wheels of chain. The padding of fat in his cheeks. The cartilage of his nose and ears. His glowing, wicked smile. You don't know what is edible, and you don't care. You need to rid the world of every body part that once belonged to him.

You lay bare his stark, white bones for all to see, and break them apart to suck the marrow from them.

And finally, you cut open his chest and break through the shell of his ribcage, reaching for his heart. You fight against your fury, battling the urge to crush it to a pulp. Some things are bigger than hate. And you have so much of it beating in your own chest, but it's only half of the reason you made it here; the rest is nothing but love and the loss of it, love for the people you have done the unthinkable to avenge. For Hilde and Björn, for Ulve, for the people you killed and the people killed protecting your home. For all of Oldegård. For yourself. And it's with the bloodlust just starting to ebb enough for grief to shine through, that you sink your fangs into his heart. Gore sticks in your teeth and your hair clings to your face all sticky with blood, disgusting and glorious at once. You're Godlike in your violence. The old myth of taking a warrior's courage by eating their heart rings in your head; there is nothing of worth in his, but you drink down his lifeblood, taking back all that he has stolen and tainted and destroyed. When you swallow the last bite, you could swear that the darkness smothering these dungeons has begun to lift.

It's enough to sate you for now. Later, when your head is clear and your hands are steady, you will crush what remains to powder and eat that too. How is it the saying goes? Grind your bones to make my bread? You'll swallow his teeth one by one, burn his hair and clothes, scrub the blood from the floor. There won't be anything for even the maggots to consume. You will find a way to make sure nothing is left of Le'garde. This is your perfect, final vengeance. Your redemption.

You lay down to sleep on the blood-slicked bones of someone who will never bother another soul, and for the first time since he put sin in your heart, you do not dream.

At last, you and your loved ones can rest in peace.

Chapter 3: Enki - Ritualistic

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"Stay still," You hiss irritably, "Unless you want to be next."

The knight winces as you draw your dagger down her arm again, but stops squirming like a child.

She hadn't bled enough when you carved the symbol of Gro-goroth over her heart and between her shoulder blades. Embarrassingly enough, it had stumped you for a brief moment. It's not as though you've done this for someone else before, and you bleed easily whenever you reopen your own wounds, you expected her to be the same. But it's a simple enough fix. A few deeper cuts near the wrist, and the circle of chalk on the floor runs red.

"Are we going to kill him now?" She asks, voice low, as if trying not to be overheard by your captive.

"Soon."

The man of prophecy is dead. Slain and eaten like cattle, all that remains of him is bone. It's not such a great loss for you; though you regret that you didn't get the chance to learn more from him, he can't achieve his foretold, undeserved glory like this, and that works well enough. And you'd managed to convince the knight not to slay his murderer outright, to save him for a crueler fate, one which benefits you greatly. In one fell swoop, you've done away with both him and that brute who fired upon you earlier. All in all, you're quite pleased with how neatly the situation has resolved itself.

Now, you just need to prepare for the outlander's sacrifice.

Around him, the floor is slick with blood. Maybe it will add something to this ritual. Blood of a man who might have ascended to Godhood, holy blood. At the very least, it can't hurt. Even though Le'garde can't have been that impressive, to die so easily to this fool. He struggles whilst bound and gagged, because you can't be sure he wouldn't somehow talk his way out of this situation if given the chance, and a sympathetic ear. Although, with the grim look on her face, you doubt the knight cares much for whatever he might say; there is a hatred burning in her eyes that makes you keep one hand on your weapon.

"Lay him on the circle." You order, and she slowly drags him across the floor. Perfect.

For everything wrong with these dungeons, at least they have proper ritual circles. It won't matter if he smudges the chalk, not when the shape of it is already carved into stone below, channels ready to be filled. And the candelabras are silver, not just iron. Pity no one but you appreciates it.

The outlander makes frantic, muffled noises, threats or pleas for his life or something else that doesn't concern you.

Unlike the knight, you don't have any real quarrel with him, aside from the residual irritation of having an arrow fly past your head. You feel little remorse for his suffering, but you don't take some specific pleasure in it, he's just a stepping stone; his death will make you and your ally more powerful, which gives you a better chance at living long enough to succeed in your quest for knowledge. It's smart.

His fur cloak leaves his chest bare, which makes this significantly less awkward than it had been earlier. Your dagger pierces his skin far deeper than you'd cut on the two of you, and it takes no small amount of effort to keep your sigil neat, dabbing at the wound with your sleeve so you can tell if the three rays of the sun are straight enough. It's satisfactory. With her assistance, you manage to roll him over. He struggles more while face-down, noises louder now as you carve the second sigil, but he still never cries out as though in pain. That's fine by you. If stoicism is what he wants to show in his final moments, it makes no difference for your purposes. All you need is his flesh and blood. So you keep your movements quick and efficient as you turn him once more - you'll take your part next, but you want more blood spilled while he's still alive - and slit him open from sternum to navel. The line cuts neatly through your eclipse.

Hm. He still doesn't scream. Perhaps it's the shock, but no matter, he doesn't fight against you as you dig around inside of him for the necessary parts. The sleeves of your robe are wet with viscera. You have to roll them up slightly so they won't cover your hands as you deftly pull his liver out, handing it to the knight.

"Hold onto this for a minute." It's warm in your hands like the rest of him. She takes it as though she's afraid it might bite.

There is very little you dislike more than trying to break through someone's ribcage. His puts up a valiant fight before you're able to pull it apart, hissing when you cut your hand on some sharp edge that could be bone or your own blade; but finally, you manage to make an opening, and you're relieved to feel that his heart still beats. The longer the fear lasts, the more power you can draw from a sacrifice, but shock kills most outright. That's what his strength affords him in the end. The chance to bleed out on the floor, rather than slip away.

Almost gently, you sever the muscle and blood vessels holding the heart in place, cutting open the pericardium so you can lift it out. You can already feel the itch of fear under your skin, the call of Gro-goroth, as you rise to your feet. Your own heart beats faster. Whatever gift you're given in return for this, you know that it will be great and terrible.

You plunge your dagger into the organ.

Since the pieces of him meant for your consumption don't bleed as much, this will have to suffice. You cup your hand to catch the blood draining of, dripping it over your heart, so it seeps through your robes to the symbol carved beneath. It stings. It's more awkward trying to reach the one on your back, but you manage.

"You should do the same." You tell the knight, passing it to her.

She turns her back to you.

Briefly, (it's only ever briefly) you think of your twin, how different thinks might have been if you'd buried that blade between her shoulders.

Instead of watching and wasting your time on idle thoughts, you kneel and shove the corpse back onto its stomach. Guts spill out, but you don't need any of those, so you sweep them aside. Your next target is the spinal cord.

The ritual dagger is put aside. With your limited upper body strength, you'll need a bonesaw to get through the vertebrae there, and a good deal of hard work. It's tedious and difficult, all the more so because your reward is a small chunk of disgusting, fibrous tissue, that spills colourless liquid onto your hands as you wrest it free of its broken armour. Sacrifices must be made to attain true greatness. That said, you'd rather still be eating bugs and vermin in the darkness. At least that had built character. But you set aside your petty concerns, and saw in hand, take a swing directly at the skull of the corpse; it only takes a few more to see real progress, the white of bone, and a gleam of grayish, pink mush shining wetly in the candlelight. You can excise it at your own leisure. While the heart and liver are more commonly used for such practices, it doesn't make them any better than the rest. It's just the kind of worshippers Gro-goroth tends to attract. They're better suited to people like the knight, so the brain and spine will go to you instead; for destruction borne of necessity, violence chosen by conscious thought, rather than by emotion. Thinking with your head and not your heart. You doubt she appreciates the finer details of this ritual, but it doesn't matter either way. Now, you eat.

You look up, to see the knight fastening the buckles of her chestplate. You gesture at the ground on the opposite side of the circle, "Sit. It's time."

She does so, an organ held in each hand, but she hesitates rather than pick one.

"Does it have to be raw?" She asks.

"Yes," You huff impatiently, reluctantly adding, as she continues to stare, "It wouldn't be much of a sacrifice if it was pleasant to eat, would it?"

"Isn't he the one being sacrificed?"

Maybe you were better off down that well. "It's more effective this way."

It's such a simple lesson that you marvel at the fact she hasn't learned it, even if she's never studied the dark rites. The greater your own suffering, the greater your capacity to inflict suffering. Pain begets more pain. The sigils carved into his and her skin take the same shape as the ones carved into yours so long ago, wounds you've reopened, thin trails of crimson mixed together on the floor until you can't tell which belongs to you. You've bathed in blood here. It's as natural to you as breathing. Surely she could intuit how perfectly this works? Gro-goroth doesn't ask for willing participants the way Sylvian demands; but the best of blood magic is borne from the willingness to spill your own alongside another. It's why your teeth ache as you ready yourself to bite down. It's why your mouth waters.

Reluctantly, she lifts the heart to her mouth, ripping off a thin strip of muscle. She chews, revulsion on her face. Thankfully, no further comments come.

You choke down the piece of spinal cord whole; there's no point in trying to gnaw at something that tough like a dog, it won't be any easier on your stomach what you do, so you opt to get it over with quickly. It's rank. But it's as you said, or rather, as you thought to yourself; it's a necessary evil. You're no masoch*st, but reminding yourself that it's for your own benefit makes it bearable.

It's with that optimism in mind that you reach for the skull. You prise the crack open wide enough for you to reach your fingers into, pulling a handful free.

The texture is worse than the taste, though you've grown to tolerate it over time. You hate how it sticks to the roof of your mouth. It's unpleasantly damp and gelatinous, like cream that's beginning to curdle, and your teeth mull it to a soft paste; but the flavour is mild, just fat and a little blood.

"Eat as much as you can," You swallow uselessly against the thickness in your throat, voice hoarse with it, "I can feel it working."

The candles flicker, nearly burned out by now. The chalk is all but washed away, the engravings below filled with so much blood that it spills over the edges, runes hidden beneath a red sea. The pain in your teeth sharpens with every mouthful. It burns like a branding iron, fire all the way down to the roots, as if you were growing fangs. You have the blessing of Gro-goroth.

You don't need to wear a mask like those wolves crawling in the darkness below, salivating for just a taste of the greatness you've attained, the knowledge of the darkest arts granted to you. You have no one to hide your face from. You don't need to imagine yourself as some other animal, to which violence comes more naturally; this is what you are, and what you were born to be. Enlightened. One of a kind. Unique in your capability to be something more than mortal, without the fallibility of the Gods. However much knowledge the human mind can hold, you will learn all of it. You're certain that whatever fate this dungeon leads you to, it will be something the world has never seen before.

This is why your sister should have killed you. Why you should have killed her. There's no room for another half, a better half, when you strive to be everything.

A warmth in your stomach is growing that has nothing to do with the meat inside; you can feel some vast, brilliant power that you're just on the edge of touching, through blood and books. You need to pay a visit to the Hexen table before you journey any deeper. But for now, the twin wounds on your heart and spine burn, and you reach for another morsel.

Chapter 4: D'arce - Romantic

Chapter Text

Le'garde rests his head against your chest as the two of you lay in bed together, watching dust motes spin through the air, caught in a beam of late afternoon sunshine. You can smell fresh air from the window, cutting through the sharp odour of blood. It must be lovely outside. It's lovely in here too. Late enough in the day that your bad dreams are far behind you, yet not so much that you're starting to worry about the ones you'll have tonight. The dungeons couldn't feel further away than they do right now.

You lift his hand to your lips and kiss it, sighing quietly. It would be so perfect if this moment could last forever. The blood on your mouth is familiar now, and no longer disturbs you. He's yours, entirely.

But you've already decided it must end.

That dark priest - you struggle to place their name for a moment before it comes to you, with a small surge of relief - Enki had complained bitterly that you had no idea what you were getting yourself into. That you were wasting time on a fool's errand, and you wouldn't like the ending you found there. But you had done it. You pieced together the scroll that would bring back your beloved, you'd said your goodbyes, and you had gone back to the cell where Le'garde's remains rested. There had been so little left of him that you were scared it wouldn't work. You'd slit your wrists and watched blood drain to the floor; before it grew solid and warped, creeping over his skeleton, until it knitted flesh and muscle back together into the shape of a man. It was perfect. No, Enki had been wrong. This is the best ending you could have hoped for. You still don't regret a moment of it, even now, as you steel your nerve to undo what you've created.

You're in love, but you're no fool. You can see that you have made him into a monster. Cruelty gleams in his glassy eyes, a disgust not just for Rondon, but for the world and everyone in it, where before there had only been hope. He once sought to become a God, ruler of a world united without bloodshed. He's achieved the former, or close enough to suit him. And much of this land is united now, by the death he has visited upon it.

He razes towns, cities, kingdoms to the ground, without so much as an excuse for why. Or rather, you do, by his wish. There are so few original thoughts he has these days, that you can't help giving him what he wants, in hopes of reigniting some of his old personality.

All he wants is suffering for others, and your love for himself. You gladly give him everything.

With the word spreading far and wide that Le'garde had survived his torture in the dungeons and emerged more powerful than ever, it had been easy to rebuild the Knights of the Midnight Sun. Many of those who had fled at news of his capture returned, assured nothing could stand in their way now, and those who'd never heard of you before lured in by awe of such a feat. It's good for him to have something to do, you think. Even if your goals are less noble than before. As always, it's his charisma that binds your faction together; and so, it requires some trickery on your part to keep the illusion going. You know his clever way with words well enough to write speeches in that fashion, passing them off as his. He recites whatever you ask. The armour he wears covers him entirely, hiding every inch of raw, bloodied flesh from your followers, so he can make brief appearances in public. It's good for morale, for everyone to see him there. It helps to stop them questioning why the missions are so brutal now, why their orders are to kill rather than capture. Really, the hardest part is washing blood out of his wig.

And if he has to be blindfolded beneath his helmet so that he won't draw his blade on the crowd, well, it just means you get to hold his hand when you guide him away.

He may remain Captain in name, but it's you who must command the army now; it's impossible for him to lead face-to-face, to delegate tasks or strategise with others or even plan by himself, not when he throws himself at anyone other than you with a rage as savage as the brute who killed him. You'd learnt that lesson the hard way. It still bothers you, in quiet moments. That young woman had been a very promising fighter, and you wish she had gotten a chance to make whatever suggestion she had for him. You're sure she would have climbed high in the ranks by now. What a waste of potential to smear his blood on her sword and parade her corpse around as a traitor. Such a terrible, terrible waste.

But he loves you. Unconditionally. Le'garde might tear the throat out of anyone he lays eyes upon, but he won't raise a hand to you. He'd smashed her face into the wall over and over, until you had cut it off and swore he beheaded her for treason, finding stray shards of skull on the floor for months afterwards. You sleep next to him at night without the slightest fear of him, faith rewarded each time you wake whole and unharmed.

You'll never know if you could have had this without all the tragedy beforehand. If there would have been a day he saw you, not his right hand. Where he felt the same way you did and confessed so.

It doesn't matter now. This is the fate you've made for yourself.

And if his affection is a brand-new thing, it makes no difference, it's as boundless as you could ever have dreamed of. He looks at you like you hung the moon in the sky. He follows your every word as though he were a zealot - and you, his God. You have never before felt so wanted, so important, so seen. All your devotion has been repaid tenfold. You would have gone to the ends of the earth and back again for a pale imitation of what he gives you now for nothing in return, and you hardly know what to do with all your newfound joy. Killing for him is nothing after what you've done to bring him back. Anything, any carnage to sate his hatred for the world outside the dungeons.

You love him more than anything. It seizes you like pain; the ache in your chest, fire burning under your skin, a lump in your throat whenever you look at him. You love him, and you will never not love him, and you will never love anyone but him.

But he's too different. The illusion is getting harder to maintain, as it hurts more to pretend. You close your eyes to picture his face while it still had skin, how you'd always wanted to run your hands through his hair, see his eyes look warmly at you; and you find that as the days march onwards, it grows harder to recall. You're starting to lose the man he once was. All you can see in your mind's eye is raw meat, clouded eyes, flashes of stark, white bone. And for as hard as you tried to convince yourself that it doesn't matter, you still miss him. You love him as he is now, the one who loves you back. But you don't want to lose the Le'garde you fell in love with either. Perhaps you would be able to live with the change if it was only cosmetic, or if his lust for blood came with the same determination you admire instead of just hunger; if only that and nothing else, you wouldn't mourn him still.

He responds in the voice of your beloved when you speak to him, but he never says a word unprompted. When you make your nervous little jokes, he doesn't offer you that quick flash of a smile anymore, just tilts his head as though listening for an order. You miss the sound of his laugh. How he'd pace on the spot while bored, just to keep himself busy. The furrow between his eyebrows as he read.

So. You want to change your happy ending. And you've finally come up with a way to unmake what you put together, without losing him. He'll still be yours; even more so now, as close as people can get without marriage, one body shared by two hearts.

"Love, would you lay still for a bit?" You ask. He doesn't nod, of course, because then he wouldn't be still. But he'll do it.

You bury your face in the side of his neck, inhaling helplessly, like you somehow might smell anything other than gore. You'd brush his hair aside here, if he still had any. Pressing a kiss to the warm, slick flesh, your lips part slightly, just enough to feel his body against your teeth. It's easier than you'd expected to bite down.

Maybe it's the months spent with him that have let you adjust to the scent, the texture, the taste of human meat; or maybe it would always have been so simple to consume him, because why wouldn't you want him to be part of you? You love him. Either way, you're grateful not to be disgusted. It makes it feel that much more tender. Holding him in your arms as you tear off small, bloody strips, with all the gentleness you can manage. If he feels any pain, he doesn't show any trace of it. His body is lax against yours, and he watches you with the eyes you've grown used to over time, near-white with the fog of death and so adoring your heart could just stop.

Blood spills from your mouth like wine. You kiss Le'garde, and you pause for breath, and you lean in to take another bite. You bite through tendons and swallow chunks of fat, without care for how anything tastes, because you can't imagine wasting any piece of him. His flesh will sustain your flesh, his blood flowing through your own veins, him, fully subsumed into a single being. Death has already failed to part you. After this, there will be nothing anyone can do to separate him from you. No spell, no sword, no force in heaven or earth. You will carry him with you for the rest of your life. It's so beautiful a vision that it makes tears prick at your eyes. Le'garde shifts slightly, alert to your possible distress, ready to slaughter anyone or anything that might stand in your way; you shush him, smiling, and he relaxes instantly. You'd never been much for dolls as a child, but this feels nice. Just your lover, yourself, and a meal shared together. There's nothing more romantic. Every morsel seems sweet to you now. There is none of his violence in your heart when your teeth crack open the innermost part of his throat, devouring gladly as he breathes his last; just love.

You allow yourself to hold him for a while. To miss him, all the versions of him. Leader, friend, lover, corpse. Everything he was, and everything you'll carry in your memory forever.

At last, you pull away from what remains of Le'garde. Something cries out from your soul, and you know at once that he is gone, the threads of magic holding him together unwound. You wonder if Enki grew as dissatisfied with his ending as you did yours; there is no way of knowing, and perhaps, you're better off that way. You do not reach for the scroll locked safely away beneath your bed.

Instead, you gently turn him onto his side, as though he were only sleeping. You wipe the blood from your lips. And you stand.

Though you know he wouldn't want you to worry, you can't help but feel trepidation for the future ahead. It will be so strange without him by your side. He isn't gone, he's closer than you could ever get just skin-to-skin, but it's a new way of being that you must learn to love. What an odd kind of fear. To dread being lonely, even though you've dissolved every last boundary between you and your beloved. This is a day for joy. You do not weep, because this is not a sad occasion, but it's a very near thing. Your face is so slick with blood that you doubt you'd notice a few tears anyway. But you feel lighter, more hopeful than you had before. You have paid a heavy price for the bright future ahead.

It's worth it. The fear, and the grief, and the taste of iron that won't ever truly wash out of your mouth. The weight of his armour as you adorn yourself in it like a second skin, ready to keep his legacy alive now that he cannot. He's yours; and you're his.

Chapter 5: God Of Fear And Hunger - Familial

Chapter Text

Your life begins the same way it had ended, and before that, the way it had begun for the first time; it's dark, and you're alone, and you're afraid.

It's not as bad as it was before, at least. You're somewhere deeper now, away from the sea of bodies. There's plants growing thick enough to cover the earth even if they're dull and strange-looking, and a dim light seems to come from around you, just enough to see it all by. You think you like it. It's warm, in a way the sun in those golden ruins hadn't been. Nothing hurts except the hunger. You're safe here, all nestled away inside the body of your... Parent? You suppose that's the best word for them; you already have your mother and your father, and Cahara too, but you'd been born inside of them, so that needs a word too. You don't have the language for so much of this. Everything you think, feel, know. It's too hard to translate in your new voice. You'd tried to tell him while it was happening, but you didn't figure out how to make him understand until the very end.

He's dead, and he loves you. You couldn't answer, but you heard every little word; the terrified questions about what was happening, apologies for every strike or spell, his goodbye as he lay to rest at the altar of you and never woke up again. There's death in the air and it makes everything quiet and peaceful like fog, without the spores. Are you breathing? It doesn't feel like you breathe anymore. You had watched him die, but it was hard; you can see everything inside of the dungeons, and it hurt to shut everything else out, so you gave up and just tried to ignore the rest.

You saw the bodies of every creature broken and bleeding in the hallways, most of them torn apart, like one of the big dogs had chewed them. You saw a huge man with a fur cloak laying dead inside a ritual circle, and a priest in the big library grabbing dusty books off of shelves. You saw a knight in shining armour kneeling over the bones in your father's cell, blood on her hands.

And you saw the man you wish had been your father instead, curled up so small in the crook of one of your arms, dying for you.

And in his arms, your doll.

Guilt. Grief. You feel a lot of stuff now, but everything's muddled up, just some deep well of bad. You are fear and you are hunger; and you can feel those so sharp and clear, cutting through the knot of suffering you'd grown legs and spun yourself out of like a spider on a web. It's nice to know there's still other stuff. But nice is funny now, like you're hearing something happening on another floor.

Things don't come to you the same way they used to. What you feel, what you think, what has been done. It's all a little bit muffled this far down in the depths. You know why, automatically, like something just clicked into place when your bones started moving out of place; you know about two nearly-Gods and how much they wanted to help the world, how they'd done that by doing bad, bad things, to you and to a bunch of other people, how you'd been made just for that. You know what's going to happen next, all the cruelty you'll make and all the good that's going to come from it. The dark and the little shining light inside of it; you're going to give humanity the kind of hope you can only get when you're starved of it for so long. You know that you had to be born in blood. That he was always going to die down here.

You'd tried not to kill him and you'd tried to kill him, all torn in a hundred different directions by all the thoughts you had before or the not-you thoughts you'd been given, everything tangled in your head until it'd felt like you would pop. It's confusing to do that to someone, you think. Cahara hadn't known what he was doing either. He'd driven that blade into the crack in your chest like he could cut you out of yourself.

Part of you screams that he should have done it, though you think it's a part that's been shed on the ground. She screams over and over; it's not fair.

There's so much you didn't get to do. This isn't what was supposed to happen, you were meant to have more time. You didn't get to meet his wife and his baby. You didn't finish learning how to pick locks, or to fight with your dagger properly. You didn't show him how to turn a pinecone into a pig.

He's still wearing his pretty crown, the one you'd spent forever trying to find with that treasure map, that he'd been so happy about. He said it would make him rich, so he could help his family. It's got blood on it now. It, and the coins spilling out of his pack, silver glittering in the faint light. You guess there's a lot he never got to do either.

That's one of the good things about who and what you are now. Everyone's going to get a chance to do so much more, to go so far that this place is just going to seem like a distant memory. It will be a cruel, dark time. But then they'll be prepared for anything bad that happens after that, won't they? No more surprises. Never again. You don't know if you can change things for the better; but things aren't good in this world, and you can change things, so you might as well hope. You'll see. You just wish you could change this, that you didn't have to be alone. It might be silly thinking about the past when the future's already coming soon, but you want Cahara back. He won't to see any of the good that'll come out of you. And he's so far away down there.

You lift him up to the place you suppose looks like a head, even though you're just being silly pretending when there's nothing there. All the things you can see and not one eye, like a bird flying over it all. You can taste blood without a mouth.

It's not the first time. He cut off his arm and fed it to you, shaky and pale and smiling at you as if nothing was wrong, and you almost believed him. It just felt true. That everything might still be scary, but it could never be wrong like it was before he was there, because he would look out for you. You know it had hurt. You'd heard the screaming. And he was nice, but you really had thought that it was you who was going to be cut up into little bits when the food ran out and you both got so, so tired; instead, he cut himself up and let you eat most of it. He wanted you to live, even if it hurt him. Maybe he would want you to do this. To keep going, not really without him, because he's what kept you going.

With no mouth, the closest you can get to feeding is just to pretend. Belief makes a God stick around longer right? If believing in something sustains it, this should work for you. So as gently as you can manage with your mangled hands, as gently as you would hold your doll, you take the other arm from him. It's the first time you've ever heard bone break and not flinched.

He'd felt so big before, but he's small to you now. You can hold him in one hand. His arm is tiny in your massive, warped fingers, pinprick worth of blood staining them. You push it into the fracture in the centre of you. There is a vast emptiness inside of you, not even hollowed out, since nothing was ever there in the first place; and it settles with a warm, comforting weight, like when you eat enough that you start to get sleepy, because your body thinks you must be safe if you have food. You're going to miss that. The brief moments when you'd felt safe, in between all the fear. Grilled meat, and sleeping while someone else stood guard, and getting cloth wrapped around your cuts. It was really nice to feel okay for once.

Another crack of bone, and you take a leg from him. Stone scrapes against skin too harshly, turning it bloodied and raw, and that blood warms you, at the closest point you have to a heart. You pause. Look at it closer, with your not-eyes and get sad at how weird it is to see. But it's fine. Delicately - or the best you can do - you pull the flesh from the bone, all gross and red like uncooked meat, marbled with yellowish fat. The part of you that will always be a scared little girl wishes Cahara were here to cook it for you. But you so rarely get what you want. And you do want to do this. So you lay his bone at your altar and you feed the rest into the void of your hunger. It helps. You might be the reason he's dead, but you're too afraid to look as you pick at the rest of him like a baby crow; you keep your sight on the furthest recesses of the darkness, blindly feeling for guts to pull free, gentle enough that you don't mess up any of the fiddly little bones in his back and his ribs. There's more blood now, and it chases away the last memories of how cold it was before you hid the two of you away down here, warm as it was to hold his hand. But you've kind of got both his hands, don't you? It's different, but it's almost good enough. You place his head on the flowers below. You can't touch that, can't bear the thought of breaking it by accident, so him and his crown will just have to stay there. That's okay. He can watch out for anything scary while you figure out if you can still sleep like this. And you don't think you could eat much more anyway.

His blood seeps from the cracks running down your new body, staining the stone forever. It's a happy thought.

You don't know how to feel anything for certain other than fear and hunger, but you try to listen to the echo in the dark, the memory of feeling hope for the first time. The love you had then, at having someone who loved you, enough to feed you. The love you have now, knowing he gave his life for yours, that he forgave you enough to die in your arms as he became the first sacrifice to a newborn God.

For the first and last time in your life, you eat; and for a moment, there is no more hunger. You think he'd be glad of that. You'd do the same for him, if you could.

He'll stay with you. Your father is dead, your mother's reign coming to an end, your parent killed so you could rise from the depths - this is the family you have left. You're no Old God, done with mortals and fading fast, you were born of humanity and you will live an eternity here, long after their worship of you is done. And Cahara will live too. Bones on the ground, blood in your heart, the memory of him in you. Crown and dagger and doll; there is something in the darkness, something beautiful growing closer. You're going to see it together, scared, but no longer alone.