Chapter 3: Feast of Fear
The air in the temple still vibrated with the aftershocks. Megumi lay sprawled across the cold stone, her small body trembling not from fear anymore, but from a satiation so profound it felt like a new kind of addiction. Her throat was raw, her jaw ached, and between her legs was a slick, throbbing reminder of the violence of her own release. She could still taste him—ash, ozone, and that dark, overpowering essence—on her tongue.
Across from her, Sukuna adjusted his robes, his movements lazy and self-satisfied. Both of his mouths wore faint, parallel smirks.
“You’re still breathing,” he rumbled, the sound filling the hollow shrine. “Interesting.”
Megumi pushed herself up on wobbly elbows. Her wings, usually frail and listless, gave a feeble but distinct flutter. A warm, buzzing energy coursed through her veins, painting the world in sharper, more vibrant hues. The gnawing void in her gut was gone, replaced by a glowing, dense core of power.
“I feel… shiny,” she mumbled, staring at her hands as if seeing them for the first time.
One of Sukuna’s lower hands snaked out, a single clawed finger hooking under her chin to force her gaze up to his main face. He studied her with detached curiosity, like a child examining a particularly resilient insect.
“You sucked down cursed energy like it was mother’s milk, little parasite. Most things rupture. Their minds unravel first, then their bodies.” He leaned closer, his breath a cold puff against her cheek. “Why didn’t you?”
The question, and the genuine curiosity behind it, was more terrifying than his earlier anger. She was a consumed snack that had, against all odds, given him a moment of amusement. Now she was a puzzle.
“I’m a succubus,” she said, as if it explained everything. Her voice was less tearful now, edged with a dazed wonder. “We’re supposed to eat… cummy, cummy. Life force. Soul-stuff. Yours is just… really spicy.”
A grating laugh echoed from his secondary mouth. “Spicy,” it repeated, mocking and hollow.
The primary face remained contemplative. “You tried to poison me with that pathetic vial. You thought you could feast and flee.” His grip on her chin tightened just enough to promise pain. “That was stupid.”
“I was hungry!” she whined, the crybaby tone returning, though it now lacked the sheer desperation of before. “You have no idea what it’s like, going months with nothing, just fading and feeling cold all the time. I saw you and you were just… there. A big, walking, four-armed feast. It was an opportunity!”
“It was a death wish.”
“But I didn’t die!” she chirped, a sudden, bright smile breaking across her face. She clapped her hands together. “And you came! And now I’m full! This is the best day ever!”
Sukuna released her chin, staring at her in bald-faced disbelief. Her emotional whiplash—from terrified prey to gleeful, chattering simpleton—was absurd. He had leveled cities for less insult than her attempted theft, and here she was, beaming at him as if he’d given her a gift.
He stood, his shadow engulfing her. “Get up.”
She scrambled to her feet, her movements quicker, more fluid. She bounced on the balls of her feet, her luminous green eyes wide. “What now? Are we going somewhere? Do you have more… you know.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively, then immediately blushed at her own audacity.
“We are not ‘going’ anywhere,” he stated, folding his two upper arms. “You are following. I have questions. Your answers will determine if you continue to breathe this ‘spicy’ air.”
He turned and strode toward the shattered temple doors, not bothering to see if she obeyed. The assumption of compliance was absolute.
Megumi hesitated for only a second. The logical part of her, the one that had survived two centuries, screamed to flee in the opposite direction. This being was catastrophe incarnate. But that new, glowing core in her chest pulsed warmly. He was a source. The only source strong enough to finally, truly fill her. Staying near him meant never being hungry again. The calculus of her nature was simple and brutal.
She skipped to catch up, her tiny wings buzzing, and fell into step a few paces behind him, her earlier terror forgotten in the glow of her feast. “So,” she said, her voice echoing lightly in the silent forest path outside the temple. “What do you want to know? I’m great at answers. Top-tier informant, that’s me.”
“You are a leaking sack of instincts and nonsense,” he said without looking back. “But you are a unique one. Tell me of your kind. How many have tasted a curse’s energy and lived?”
“Oh, um.” She chewed her lip, thinking. “Probably none? We usually find humans. Nice, soft, squishy humans with boring, sweet essence. They’re like… candy. You’re like a whole five-course meal that fights back.” She grinned again. “I prefer the meal.”
The path began to slope downward toward a mist-shrouded valley. Sukuna was silent for a long moment, the only sounds the crunch of their feet on the forest floor and the distant call of a night bird.
“That essence you call ‘cummy, cummy’,” he said finally, the ridiculous phrase sounding grotesque in his deep voice. “You convert it. Sustain yourself. What happens to the donor?”
Megumi’s bubbly demeanor dimmed just a fraction. “They get tired. Really tired. If you take too much, they… don’t wake up. It’s not personal!” she added quickly. “It’s just biology. Like a mosquito.”
“A mosquito,” he repeated, the amusement returning. “And if the donor is not some fragile human, but a curse? What do you suppose happens then, little mosquito?”
She hadn’t thought of that. Her feeding had always been a one-way transaction: she took, they dwindled. But his energy was alive, malevolent, and reflexive. She’d felt its aggressive power even as she swallowed it. A cold trickle of dread cut through her replenished glow.
“I… I don’t know.”
He stopped suddenly and turned, his four eyes gleaming in the dark. “A hypothesis. You didn’t just consume my energy. You formed a conduit. A siphon. Your nature altered the transaction.” He took a step toward her, and the playful light was gone from his gaze, replaced by something predatory and calculating. “If I am a well, you have now drunk from it. The connection, however faint, remains.