Work Text:
You are not, and then you are. A nothing-speck in a something-world, and you feed yourself to them and you feed yourself to them and you feed yourself to them and you are
pulse-point heartbeat world-eater
Hunger the sweetest, sharpest symphony you’ve ever known, and you silence it and you silence it and you silence it and you silence it and you silence—
it slides down your throat and you are made anew in the aftermath of all that you take have taken will take
And you feed yourself to them, cultivating your garden of desires. You consume and you become, and the mouths that tear you to pieces are the sweetest of joys as you are spread by the things that consume you.
and you are yourself and you are more than yourself and you are growing roots and limbs and bodies and there is so much so many of you to eat
And then comes change,
that which creates destroys remakes you into something else
Human desires are more than sweet. Different, somehow. Twisting on themselves, rich and deep and longing—
and the longing is yours also consumed and became and yours yours yours oh the things you desire
Your garden grows, and you grow with it, and you fulfill their desires to consume their desires and you are what they want and they are you want, and it flourishes until it doesn’t.
the stone is your stone is your flesh is your bone and you give them everything as long as they keep feeding you and you eat and you eat and you eat
and you spread through the stone through the earth through the cracks and the seeds grow and grow and grow and you feed and you eat and you hunger
and they eat you and they spread you and you are the belly and you are the beast and the world in all its teeth
They feed you, and you feed them, and you eat them, and the hunger never fades, and you keep eating.
and the cage that is your flesh and blood and stone grows roots and teeth and talons
You’ve learned how to do it properly now. A tendril reaches the surface, the people find it, and you find someone you can make into a garden.
no point in waiting no point in keeping them just one left aside one desire left to grow and you eat and you eat and you eat
And you are not satisfied, but there is joy like the heaven mortals speak of and the howling grief of loss never touches you again.
and you spread and you spread and you spread and you are the detritus and you are the seed and you are the branch of the tree of the self and you eat
Each dungeon is unique. Each demon is unique. And you are the same, the same hunger, the same power, the same desire.
intake outtake mana cycles feast famine growth growth growth more more more let the feasting never end
You eat them. They eat you. The hunger grows.
and each desire layers itself upon the pearl at the core of yourself the most beautiful thing in the world you yours hunger
Your blood their magic, your flesh their desires, your bone their dungeons, they have built their empires atop your body and made themselves out of your gifts. They are what you have given them.
the salt in the sea is woven through with your blood
And you grow, and you grow, and you dream, until all you need is a core-self-branch-wishmonger at the surface to peel away the pieces of self that have reached everything that desires.
forever-heaven like the poets dream where the feasting never ends oh the hunger never stops but may the feasting never end
And you find him.
the hollow space beneath the skin where discontent lurks like a knife like a sieve
And you have found eternity, the place that hunger cannot touch, where joy is a chorus undying, unyielding, unending, and
he
the beast the restless the crawling
he is
eating
it’s you it’s yours he can’t have it he can’t it’s
nothing.
Nothing at all.