You've been starving. Always starving. Every hour, every day, ever since you came to this place. You roam the castle walls, look out windows to a sky of nothing but black, a horizon of crooked rooftops and rising smoke, the echoes in a house that's not your own, in a form that feels wrong. It's you, and yet it isn't you. The wings on your back are a stranger, the horns on your head a heavy, unforgiving weight.
And your hunger, a claw, that digs and digs and digs. You've never been this hungry. But every sunless day makes it worse.
You eat. It begs for more. You feed it. It begs for more. Your brothers look at you with confusion. With concern. With fear. With disgust. They tell you to stop.
You try, at first. You try to ignore how your stomach growls louder than the people talking at the tables. The digging starts to crawl to your mind. It hurts. It hurts. You feel like you might bite off your own tongue.
Your hand finds something closeby. It hurts. You bring it to your mouth. It shatters between your teeth. You don't care. It hurts. You're hungry. It hurts.
Lucifer slaps it out of your wrist. Control yourself. Control yourself.
But it hurts. And the more it hurts, the more your mind slips. The walls are a space, the voices are a noise, the light is a nuisance, you smell anything and you smell everything and your stomach digs like a swarm of termites begging for an escape out of every pore, and you want, and you want, and you want, and you want, and you want, and you want, and
You feel the crack beneath your jaw, the pressure in your throat. Not enough.
More.
More.
More.
You hear the noise. The smells change, and you tense. You roar. It goes into your mouth. It all goes into your mouth. You follow the scents. You grab what you find. You unhinge. You chew. You swallow. You starve. You chew. You swallow. You starve.
You run out.
You starve. You starve. You howl.
It's agony.
It's agony.
Your space is in the way of the smells.
So you change that. Your body hits the wall. Your mouth tears at the space. You taste rock. You taste concrete. You taste steel. You taste wood. You swallow it all. You free yourself. Your space is bigger. You have to find more.
And you find more. And more. And more. And more.
And...
...
You're on your knees, in a basement library. Your hand is full and pressed to your mouth. Your tongue tastes of leather and paper. You withdraw your hand, and half of a book comes with it. Your brow furrows, as you turn to look at the debris you sit in, as you turn further to see shattered bookcases and a door thrown off its hinges. You see smoke coming from further in the building. You see rubble. You see a hole ripped straight through a far wall, and you see Lucifer's unapproving gaze.
You don't realize that you've brought the rest of the book to your mouth until you're swallowing. You don't know what's happened. You don't know what you are.
TEMENOS - THE FIRST BEAST
You've been starving. Always starving. Every hour, every day, ever since you came to this place. You roam the castle walls, look out windows to a sky of nothing but black, a horizon of crooked rooftops and rising smoke, the echoes in a house that's not your own, in a form that feels wrong. It's you, and yet it isn't you. The wings on your back are a stranger, the horns on your head a heavy, unforgiving weight.
And your hunger, a claw, that digs and digs and digs. You've never been this hungry. But every sunless day makes it worse.
You eat. It begs for more. You feed it. It begs for more. Your brothers look at you with confusion. With concern. With fear. With disgust. They tell you to stop.
You try, at first. You try to ignore how your stomach growls louder than the people talking at the tables. The digging starts to crawl to your mind. It hurts. It hurts. You feel like you might bite off your own tongue.
Your hand finds something closeby. It hurts. You bring it to your mouth. It shatters between your teeth. You don't care. It hurts. You're hungry. It hurts.
Lucifer slaps it out of your wrist. Control yourself. Control yourself.
But it hurts. And the more it hurts, the more your mind slips. The walls are a space, the voices are a noise, the light is a nuisance, you smell anything and you smell everything and your stomach digs like a swarm of termites begging for an escape out of every pore, and you want, and you want, and you want, and you want, and you want, and you want, and
You feel the crack beneath your jaw, the pressure in your throat. Not enough.
More.
More.
More.
You hear the noise. The smells change, and you tense. You roar. It goes into your mouth. It all goes into your mouth. You follow the scents. You grab what you find. You unhinge. You chew. You swallow. You starve. You chew. You swallow. You starve.
You run out.
You starve. You starve. You howl.
It's agony.
It's agony.
Your space is in the way of the smells.
So you change that. Your body hits the wall. Your mouth tears at the space. You taste rock. You taste concrete. You taste steel. You taste wood. You swallow it all. You free yourself. Your space is bigger. You have to find more.
And you find more. And more. And more. And more.
And...
...
You're on your knees, in a basement library. Your hand is full and pressed to your mouth. Your tongue tastes of leather and paper. You withdraw your hand, and half of a book comes with it. Your brow furrows, as you turn to look at the debris you sit in, as you turn further to see shattered bookcases and a door thrown off its hinges. You see smoke coming from further in the building. You see rubble. You see a hole ripped straight through a far wall, and you see Lucifer's unapproving gaze.
You don't realize that you've brought the rest of the book to your mouth until you're swallowing. You don't know what's happened. You don't know what you are.
But you're still hungry.]