Chapter Text
In the weeks following the deaths of nearly every Lennox-Hall and and the half-destruction of the manor, Hazelthorn was surprised to realize that his hunger was slowly fading. He kept his mouth shut about it, for fear that naming the horrible hunger would invite it back to full force. It was a relief, yes, but a very curious one.
It isn't until the dead of a particularly still night that the realization creeps into him. He's nestled in bed with a deeply sleeping Laurie, as has quickly become normal for the two of them, when Hazelthorn realizes that he is tasting rot. Rot, and the remains of blood, and gradually desecrating flesh. But there's nothing in his mouth. There can't be. He winds his tongue between thorny teeth, then licks his lips, just to be sure. Nothing. And yet he still tastes it, clear as day. He feels a strange pull, the sort he knows means the garden wants something of him.
Detangling his limbs from Laurie's without waking the sleeping beauty proves a slow and difficult feat, but eventually Hazelthorn is free. He creeps from the room with perfect silence like the monster he's no longer scared of being. This little section of the house was left more or less unscathed by the garden's grand reclamation, and the further Hazelthorn walks, the worse the damage is, and the more it seems like one giant, incredible conservatory. He walks on with purpose, though still without knowing what the purpose is.
He finds himself in the banquet hall.
The room is somewhat physically intact, but it's perhaps the most overgrown part of the entire manor. The table is still there, covered now in a faux-banquet of vines and mushrooms and fresh green shoots. The bodies are still there, too. All of them are completely woven through with rot-loving plants and fungi, slowly but surely reducing them to nothing but desperately-needed nutrients. Satiating a long-held craving.
Each of those spring green and off-white tendrils is a part of Hazelthorn. He knew this before, but he knew it the way he knew about the outside world, a sterile, feather-light fact. Now, he suddenly knows it viscerally. He is, at this very moment, eating the human monsters named 'Lennox-Hall'. He is tasting their rotting bodies not with his tongue, but with his roots. And oh, how delicious they are.
This truth doesn't scare Hazelthorn in the slightest. It's a thought he'd been waiting a long time to finally think. Some part of him knew that another part needed it.
In the banquet hall, he finds himself.