Chapter Text
“Leave.” The scar on Heket’s throat pulses as she seizes another breath. “I want…no part of your sordid.. schemes.” She thrusts her fork into a viscera-vibrant hunk of follower flesh, then turns to depart.
“Even if I offered you another meal?” Her ear-slits flare, but she continues trudging. “A festive feast, even, for the former numen of famine?” Nothing. “My followers aren’t the keenest of blades, and if a few vanished, they’d blame the wolves beyond the fold.”
“Why?” Her voice is a sonorous, splintered hum, raking over your wool like a rusty dagger. A cacophonous, caustic caress. She peers down at you, and her eyes are dark pools of ichor. “You cade-converts always leave stingers in your sinews.”
“Well,” you coo, “I might just need some information first.”
“Smithville.” Her tongue swipes her teeth. “Who.. told you?”
“Kalli, of course. We all know he can’t keep his beak shut.”
She snorts a grim mockery of a laugh, then beckons you to the kitchen. “Read my mind…if you must. Easier than speaking.”
The rook went to Leshy first, craving a curtail for chaos. Moments later, it seemed, he was cowering in his temple, decrying the worship of worms.
Then he sought me. I didn’t know he had scoured the soil for my brother’s eyes yet. If I had known of his knavery, would I have spared him? Mayhaps. (Don’t we all strive for stability, even as we near stagnation? Only our oldest brother strove to warp those laws).
But I blither, and time is no longer my cully. Smith asked for a boon, begging to bequeath his followers a hunger for righteousness. Abundant harvests and banishing the bugbears of unwanted cravings. Starvation comes in myriad mantles, Lamb. He ached for adoration; none of his kin lavished it.
You can call loneliness a plague, a pest for the prince of penury. It’s just another form of famine.
Then his yen for yes-men caught up to him, he renounced my reign and my brother’s, and he lacked the puissance to prevail.
Many others have striven to snatch divinity. Only we have captured it.