ButcherPete
patreon
Chapter 68: The Appetite That Watches
🕑 Added 2025-06-12 20:25:03 +0000 UTCThe lanterns of Hazy Mountains City flickered softly against the gathering twilight, casting dim rays on cobblestone streets slick with lingering mist. From the open window of a modest tavern nestled near the foot of the sloping castle walls, the crisp mountain air mingled with the warm aroma of roasted game and spiced wine.
Inside, Salitha and Shela sat opposite each other at a rough-hewn wooden table, their plates half-finished but largely forgotten. The din of quiet conversation and clinking utensils swirled around them, yet their minds were far from the jovial crowd.
Salitha swirled the deep red liquid in her goblet, her eyes thoughtful beneath dark lashes. “It’s not every day you meet someone like Hannya and walk away unscathed.”
Shela’s gaze was distant, her fingers absently tracing the rim of her cup. “Unscathed, yes, but not untouched.” The weight of the last meeting pressed heavy on her chest. “She’s more dangerous than I expected. Not just for her power or cunning, but for how she sees people, as pieces on a board to be moved… and probably sacrificed.”
Salitha nodded slowly, a shadow of a smile touching her lips. “That invitation… asking to meet with you alone. What do you make of it?”
Shela exhaled sharply, her breath visible in the cool mountain air drifting through the open window. “It’s a challenge and an opportunity wrapped in one. She wants to test me, but also to recruit. There’s a hunger in her gaze when she looks at me. Not just for allegiance, but something deeper… maybe respect, or validation.”
“Or control,” Salitha added quietly. “Hannya isn’t known for mercy. Not from what we understand.”
“She wouldn’t need to be,” Shela replied. “Her power bends people before she even speaks. But I don’t intend to be one of those people. Not without knowing what I’m giving up.”
They lapsed into silence, the only sounds the soft clatter of cups and the distant murmur of city life. Outside, the fog thickened, weaving through lantern light like tendrils of forgotten dreams.
Salitha’s voice broke the stillness. “Do you think you can trust her?”
Shela’s eyes narrowed. “Trust is a luxury we can’t afford. But I believe there’s a sliver of truth beneath her veil, something that could tip the scales in this fractured world. Whether that truth helps us or destroys us depends on which side of the veil we stand.”
Salitha reached across the table, her hand briefly covering Shela’s. “Whatever happens, we face it together.”
Shela allowed herself a small, rare smile. “Together, then.”
The tavern keeper approached, setting a fresh plate of steaming stew between them. The scent was rich with herbs and root vegetables, grounding amidst the swirling uncertainty of their thoughts.
Shela took a slow sip of the broth, feeling warmth seep into her bones. “We have a long road ahead. Hannya’s invitation is just the first step. After that meeting, nothing will be the same.”
Salitha raised her cup. “To new beginnings, and to surviving the storms to come.”
Shela mirrored the toast, the glow in her eyes resolute. “To surviving.”
Outside, the city lights flickered as the night deepened, and somewhere up the mountains, the dream fissure pulsed faintly, a silent reminder that the world was on the brink of change.
~~~
The incense curling through Hannya’s pavilion shimmered faintly, tinged with oils extracted from dreamlotus and void-bloom petals. Her veil lay beside her tea dish for once, abandoned on the low table of moonwood. Alone, she did not need it. The room was dim, layered in shifting textures of shadow and silk, and beyond her quiet balcony, the dream fissure glowed with its usual alien rhythm. That wound in the sky had become her ceiling, her compass, and her crucible.
She was thinking of Shela again.
Not the girl’s technique, though Hannya had, of course, catalogued every flaw in her form. No, it was the kind of mind Shela had. Sharp yet wounded. Repressing pain so thoroughly it folded into discipline. Those were the minds that broke beautifully, or bloomed into something rare. And Hannya needed rare things.
A general.
Shela wouldn’t be ready yet, not for the kind of battlefield that would be unleashed once the gates of Hellnia reopened. The deeper cities were already stirring, Old Hunger stirring in the southeast, the Eclipse Concord trading whispers, and the Broken Thirteen leaking exiles into the wastelands. The world thought Hellnia had stabilized.
It hadn’t.
And when the seals break fully, when the routes open and the remaining Primordials move again, She would need someone like Shela. Someone to command without hesitation, to wield dread with clarity, to strike at the divine with the conviction of the damned.
If she accepted the offer, of course.
“She’ll want a reason…” Hannya murmured aloud, eyes closed. “I’ll give her a purpose.”
The door to the pavilion slid open with a subtle creak.
She didn’t have to look.
“I can hear you brooding from the hall,” Baku said, stepping inside. His voice was casual, but his presence pressed into the room like smoke, old, sharp-edged, and lazy only because he chose to be.
“You’re here.” Hannya replied, reaching for her tea.
“Was curious,” he said, setting his lacquered black gourd down beside her. “About the pacing. About the waiting. Everything’s lining up… so why haven’t you evolved yet?”
Hannya’s hand paused mid-motion.
Baku folded himself onto a cushion across from her, legs crossed, arms behind his head. “You’ve balanced your mind, body, and soul. Your core's stable. Even the faction heads who whisper about you in private can’t deny it anymore. You could become something more, something closer to the top.”
“And yet,” he added, tapping the gourd, “here you sit.”
Hannya sipped her tea. Slowly. “You’re not wrong.”
“I rarely am.” He postured.
She smiled faintly. “But you are impatient.”
“Kahuhuhu, Guilty. But you’re one to talk, kid.”
A gust of wind rustled the curtains. In the distance, bells began their evening chimes—subtle vibrations worked into the fortress’s bones. She listened. Let it wash over her.
“I don’t want to rush the transformation,” Hannya said at last. “Evolution isn’t a step. It’s a door. Once I pass through, everything changes. Including the alliances I’ve built. The fears I’ve sown. And the balance I’ve cultivated.”
Baku tilted his head. “You’re afraid it’ll unravel.”
“No,” she said. “I’m afraid it’ll be too effective. That I’ll move too quickly and the rest of the realm won’t keep up. I don’t need to rise like a flame. I need to spread like a virus, wrap like a weed.”
She turned toward the balcony. The sky fissure pulsed again. “Shela’s acceptance will be the signal. The final proof that even the old guard is to be broken and reforged.”
Baku was quiet for a while.
Then: “She’ll say yes.”
“I know,” Hannya whispered.
“You’re still scared.”
“Yes,” she admitted.
He stood up. “Good. At least you learned something. Besides, you never make your best plays when you're calm.”
She laughed, low and dangerous. “Calm is for queens with crowns already in hand and her king at her side.”
Baku smirked. “Just don’t keep us waiting. The next time I bring wine, I expect to drink with an awakened young devil.”
He vanished into the shadows before she could respond, leaving only the faint scent of smoke and dreamwine in his wake.
“Kikiki, Responsible.”
Hannya returned to her tea.
~~~
The halls of Hannya’s mountain stronghold were quiet in the late afternoon. The winding corridors of pale stone and dream-infused metal hummed faintly with protective enchantments, their runes pulsing like veins.
Salitha walked beside Shela in silence. The meal they’d shared earlier still lingered on her tongue, a delicate balance of flavor and alchemy, but it was the conversation, not the food, that weighed most heavily on her mind.
“When will you meet her?” Salitha said, breaking the silence as they turned a corner.
Shela didn’t answer at first. Her steps were measured, the scabbard at her hip swaying slightly with each pace. “I’m not sure. She didn’t say when.”
“She didn’t have to.”
Salitha glanced sideways. The girl’s posture was too perfect. That meant tension. Anticipation. Maybe even fear. Shela wasn’t good at hiding her emotions, just at packaging them neatly.
They passed under an arch adorned with woven threads. As they stepped into the next corridor, two familiar figures came into view.
“Oi, oi! Lady Ice Blade and the Fox-Eyed temptress!” chirped a cheery voice.
Shela blinked at the voice. “...Nini?”
It was indeed her. The petite devil bounded toward them with energetic strides, her twin pigtails bouncing behind her. Beside her, Mirro followed at a slower pace, his expression unreadable beneath a cowl. He held his head low in ominous respect.
But it did not seem like it was for them.
Both wore long black robes stitched with strange thread. The garments were subtly armored, too sleek for ritual wear, but too decorative for battle. A new insignia was etched over their chests, a gold-trimmed symbol shaped like a pink spider trapped inside a delicate golden cage.
Salitha’s eyes narrowed. “That’s new.” She was a noble, if it was one thing she recognized, it was crests and insignias.
“Do you like it?” Nini beamed, spinning in place to show off the full design. “We just got them! For our initiation! We're official now!”
“Official what?” Shela asked warily.
“Worshippers of the Caged God!” Nini declared with dramatic flourish. “We’re going to the Temple of Glorious Despair. It opened last night, sooo creepy, sooo beautiful. Built right near the edge of the fissure battlefield. You can hear the dreams breathing if you listen hard enough.”
Salitha’s brows furrowed. “The Caged God?”
Nini nodded rapidly. “Yeah! He’s new. Or maybe old? Depends who you ask. Mirro says he’s a divine echo from the bottom layer of dreamspace. Or a trapped fragment of a real god that fell into the veil and went mad. No one’s really sure. But he speaks! And when he does…” she leaned closer, lowering her voice reverently, “...you feel like your thoughts and body aren’t yours anymore. Like he’s polishing them. Making them shinier.”
Mirro finally spoke, his voice quiet but steady, quite the contrast from their initial meeting. “He teaches freedom through confinement. Wisdom through agony. Grace through exposure. Yet It’s not blasphemy. Not yet. And the Mistress-sama hasn’t forbidden it.”
Salitha’s frown deepened. “You mean Hannya allows this?”
“Encourages it…” Mirro replied, eyes unreadable beneath the edge of his hood. “She gave the land herself. And the temple’s architect was one of the Painted Devils. A true dream mason. It’s structurally sound… metaphysically.”
“That’s one way to put it.” Shela muttered.
“What kind of god is it, exactly?” Salitha pressed, still uneasy. “I’ve studied Neel’s pantheons, the ancient blood gods, the law-bound deities of the Upper Sky. I’ve never heard of a Caged God.”
“That’s because he doesn’t come from Neel,” Nini said, almost proudly. “He came from between. Between what, no one knows. Some say he was born from a forgotten sin. Others say Hannya found him in her dreams after her second awakening and gave him a name so he wouldn’t vanish.”
Salitha shot Shela a sharp look. Second awakening?
Hannya was a young devil, without a doubt at the first stage.
That could only mean two possibilities to the duo.
Two physique mutations, or…
She formed a Tenet already. A law field.
“Don’t worry!” Nini chirped, misreading their silence. “It’s not like we’re heretics or anything. Yet, Nininini! Come with us sometime! The sermons are amazing. Real mind-breakers!”
Mirro bowed slightly, polite and reserved. “We’ll be late to see god-sama if we don’t go now.”
“Right, right!” Nini grinned, spinning on her heel. “Later, Lady Ice Blade! Don’t get caged too soon, Nininini!”
They trotted off, their robes swishing behind them, black, pink, and gold disappearing into the mist of the corridor.
Salitha and Shela stood in silence.
“A new god.” Shela muttered.
“Or an old one,” Salitha said quietly. “Given shape by someone powerful enough to make others believe it.”
Shela glanced sideways. “You mean her.”
Salitha nodded slowly. “Hannya doesn’t just command. She… cultivates.”
They continued down the hallway. The silence between them now felt heavier, like a veil just beginning to fall.
~~~
The pavilion above The Painted Petal, Noh’s restaurant, overlooked the castle’s northern wing like a courtesan lounging with one bare foot over the edge of a noble’s bed. The restaurant below was freshly built, though its bones came from a ruined shrine and its lacquered arches from three different cultures. It was elegant, but loud, smells of seared root oil, pickled bonefish, and steaming marrow broth clung to the air like perfume. Every tile and paper screen below had been set by “refugees”, those claimed by Hannya’s rise.
Noh sat alone in the upper loft, knees tucked beneath her in a silken cushion throne, her shamisen resting across her lap. The lantern beside her swayed to the rhythm of her thoughts, tuned by subtle aura to her heartbeat. Mist pooled outside, curling past the rails in slow, whispering spirals.
She plucked a slow note, letting it resonate.
Cieron. The cook with soldier’s hands and a knife that stank of the memory.
Noh’s painted nails slid across the strings.
“I can cook meals that draw out what is buried. Potential, spirit, hidden strength. It works best on demons. And unawakened devils.”
He’d said it so plainly. Not bragging. Not humble, either. Just… like someone reporting the shape of a moon they’d walked across.
Noh didn’t believe in declarations. But she believed in flavors. And that line had the taste of truth.
She let her mind circle back to the room. The scent of him, not his body, but the old salt in his box, the faint scent of preserved fat, the quiet stink of boiled memory.
“I wasn’t always a cook,” he had said, unwrapping the box like a prayer. “But it’s what I’m best at now.”
Not a claim. A decision. Like a sword laid down beside a battlefield and never reclaimed.
She played a single low note, then stilled it with her palm. The shamisen vibrated against her thigh.
And that story he’d told…That wasn’t a story.
“A devil was born in a temple no map remembers. Before she could walk, she was marked. A thread of Greed, slipped into her core like a finger dipped in broth.”
Noh’s lips curved slightly, amused by the poetry. And the truth beneath it.
Of course he was talking about Hannya. But not directly. None of them confirmed it, and yet all of them had understood.
Greed had cursed her, and yet it hadn’t taken her, none had enslaved her. She was born with a flaw, but instead of cracking, panicking, she’d fermented into something far sharper.
Noh assumed.
“Gula’s curse has no fangs, only appetites. It starts with an extra portion… ends with a man eating his own children for profit.”
A delicious line. Too good to be metaphor. Too clean to be untrue.
Noh whispered it again like a mantra, her voice drifting across the lanternlit rafters:
"No fangs, only appetites."
So Gula had gone to war, but not with blades or blood. But in a devil's favorite way.
By curse.
She had sent hunger.
Not famine.
Not starvation.
But cravings.
Craving that bloated the pockets of slavers until they burst. That hollowed out corrupt merchants until they sold their own siblings. A craving that cooked men from the inside, slow and savory.
And now, she had sent a knife.
“You thought I brought food,” Cieron had said. “But I brought a story.”
Noh plucked three chords in quick succession, sharp, rising, stopping short before the final note. A spy’s signal. But she didn’t need spies tonight.
The truth had already seated itself beside her.
Cieron wasn’t here for power. He wasn’t here to fight.
He was here to feed.
To feed the growing vessel that is Hannya.
And if Noh was right, and she was always right, then Gula had predicted her future, and had decided to salt it early.
“Something warm. Something fresh. Something that doesn’t ask permission to grow.”
She grinned at that line. He hadn’t just been describing a dish. He was describing a girl born without permission. Greed’s permission, the noble council’s permission.
Born in silence.
Raised in fog.
And now fed in fire.
She let her fingers dance across the strings, slow and confident.
"You're not here to serve Hannya," she whispered to the steam rising from the kitchen below. "You're here to make sure the world doesn't forget what happens when a starving girl learns to cook. Right, Gula?"
Noh gazed up at the moon, its silver light passing through the mist like a secret whispered through silk, soft, pale, and meant only for those who knew how to listen.
Noh chuckled lightly. “The Queen of Feast seems to favor our little Meiko.”
Comments
Butch Perterson
Yep! And indeed it does 🤭
ShadowTycho
So Cieron is one of the people who could fight that Hans mention to Gula. The Queen of Feasts sending a Chef has a lot of meaning.
