Part XXIII: Freedom

By Kata Nu, the Devourer and Singer of the Great Swansong

My body is stiff as I come to move muscles that I have not moved in millennia. I try to walk, but the thousand legs that slither about do not move as they once did. They are hungry. Starved. But I still need them to work even though I can not feed them yet. I must not. Even though the Priest—his very scent is—mouthwatering. Every one of my thousand mouths readies to liquefy his flesh and I can not deny the temptation is moving, but he has given me the greatest of all gifts: Freedom.

He fears me and I smell it. Intoxicating is the smell of the sweat on his neck as he watches my every movement, wondering which movement will bring about the end of his miserable life, but his fears are misplaced. Though I wish I could allow myself to justify them. Oh how I wish I could. How great it would be to hear the snap of tendons just once more, and I will, but that time is not yet. Not until I come to pass someone—or something—besides the Priest whose flesh would sate this ungodly hunger. Oh, how I can not wait.

The Priest is concerned though. He begs of me not to storm about my mother’s city—the one which she erected over my prison as some form of lock or perhaps as a monument to her victory over me. Every part of me seethes with rage and feels—invigorated—at the prospect of painting her city red with the blood of those who see her as worthy of worship, but the Priest does as well. He sees her as worthy. He tends to her. He is misguided, but he has done me a great gift and so I must stay my rage, even though it is justified. But his gift—it was not done out of kindness, but out of necessity, he says.

He speaks of some ‘destroyer’—some great monster who poses a threat to the land as if it should concern me. It doesn’t. But I do have a debt to the Priest and I do believe that consuming this ‘destroyer’ would put us as even, and then, then I could dine on his flesh. Then I could storm my mother built above my head and I could enjoy their screams, the sweat of fear dripping from their skin, the pain of their bones breaking as the flesh is sucked into my thousand mouths! Ah, the idea, it is—delectable. I can not help but savor it as a beautiful thought that I must help come to fruition, for the idea alone fills me with joy—the realization of it—that—that would be euphoric. So I hope the Priest prays that this destroyer does kill me, because if it does not, then I will enjoy the feast I have long, long awaited.

­-Kata Nu, the Devourer and Singer of the Great Swansong