HUNGER

Written on October 12, 2024 (♎︎)

Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2024 for prompt No. 12: Hunger (Cannibalism).

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Zalbag existed outside of action, his will and his body having been severed almost wholly from one another. Sensation and sentiment too had eroded; he should have been able to undergo what was happening in a state of detachment–in the same fugue that shadowed over most of the hours of the day.

And yet, the rudimentary mechanics of appetite remained.

In the numbness of everything else, he still felt the pangs of hunger. His broken form still thrilled through with the anticipation that it should feed. It came to him that he had been a soldier once, that he had weathered sieges, that he had foraged in the field. Even as the narrative of his life broke apart and memory failed him, one rudimentary ache persisted.

The particulars of battles escaped him–Viura became Igros became Gulofavia. His new keepers set him to new forms of soldiering. There was a flood of lucidity following each kill, however–moments when his mouth was filled and he could see what a wreck he had made in filling it. The cooling skin, the concealing blood, the bite-crated flesh: these things retained their clarity. In a world of shadows, it was these spectacles that remained unclouded.

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