Chapter 3: The Interrupted Feast
Naoya’s scream was a bright, sharp thing in the dense air. It ended abruptly, cut into a wet gurgle.Sukuna hadn’t moved with any dramatic flourish. It was efficiency, pure and simple. As the priest lunged, sword aiming for a heart that had probably stopped beating centuries ago, Sukuna’s lower right hand shot out. It didn’t grab the blade.It closed around Naoya’s forearm. There was a sound like a bundle of dry sticks snapping in a fist.The sword clattered to the stone.
Megumi saw Sukuna’s expression.It was bored.
With his upper left hand, Sukuna seized Naoya’s other shoulder.He pulled.The rip was not clean. It was a tearing, fibrous sound, a reluctant separation of tendon and joint. Naoya’s right arm came away at the shoulder, a geyser of arterial red painting the obsidian wall behind him in a wide, dripping arc. He staggered, his mouth open in silent, disbelieving agony.
The two cultists with the torches stood frozen, their faces masks of identical, slack-jawed horror.
Sukuna dropped the arm.It landed with a soft, meaty thud. He looked at Naoya, who was swaying, his eyes glazing over. “You talk too much,” Sukuna remarked, his voice a conversational rumble. Then his lower left hand fisted in Naoya’s blood-soaked blond hair, yanking his head back. The mouth on his stomach widened, its teeth glistening.Sukuna brought the priest’s throat to it.The second mouth bit down.
The crunch was audible.Megumi flinched, a violent spasm that locked her spine. The wet, rending sounds that followed were worse.They were intimate. They were chewing.The cultists dropped their torches. The flames guttered and danced on the damp stone, casting lunatic shadows as the men turned and fled, their shrieks echoing back down the passage until they were swallowed by the dark.
Silence pooled back into the chamber, thicker now, flavored with copper and bile. The only light came from the sputtering torches on the floor and the faint, sickly pulse of the bioluminescent veins in the walls.Sukuna let go. What was left of Naoya slumped, a ruined heap of robes and meat.Sukuna turned. Four red eyes found Megumi in the furs.He was painted. Streaks and spatters of dark blood marbled his pink hair, his chest, his arms. A long drip slid from his chin.He walked back toward her, each step a heavy, final punctuation in the quiet. The lower hands that had pinned and torn were slick and gleaming.He didn’t wipe them.
He sank onto the furs beside her, the massive weight of him causing the pile to shift and settle. The scent of iron and something colder, something fundamentally other, enveloped her. He looked down at his bloody fingers, then at her. His upper right hand, clean, came up to push her dark, tangled hair back from her face.The gesture was almost tender.
His bloody lower left hand pressed against her chest, just below her collarbone, and pushed. It was a firm, undeniable pressure. She went down, her back against the soft pelts, her eyes wide mirrors reflecting his monstrous, intent face.
“Now,” he rumbled, his voice a low vibration she felt in her bones.“Where were we?”
His main mouth found the hollow of her throat. His lips were warm, the touch oddly soft against her pounding pulse. At the same time, his bloody lower right hand slid down her stomach, past the marked curve of her womb, through the slight thatch of dark hair, and further.He found her. She was still wet, the slick evidence of her earlier, confused arousal undeniable against his gore-slicked fingers.
A shudder ran through her, a full-body convulsion of terror and something else, something that coiled hot and shameful in her gut.She tried to squeeze her thighs together, a feeble, instinctive movement. The sheer size of his wrist between them prevented it.
He made a sound against her throat, a hum of dark satisfaction.“Mine,” he breathed, the word hot on her skin. His finger, broad and rough, traced her opening, smearing a faint streak of Naoya’s blood against her own moisture.The contrast was obscene.It made her head spin.“Every drop.Every gasp. Every tremble. This,” he said, pushing just the very tip of his finger inside, a shock of stretching pressure that made her cry out, “is all for me. Isn’t it, little rabbit?”
She couldn’t lie.Her body was doing it for her. A fresh wave of damp heat greeted the intrusion.Her hips gave a tiny, involuntary jerk.
Sukuna laughed, a soft, grating sound.He withdrew his finger, bringing it up to his main mouth. His tongue, surprisingly human-looking, licked the mixture of blood and her arousal from his skin. All four of his eyes watched her face, studying the conflict—the revulsion, the fear, the helpless physical response.“See?” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “You don’t belong to their dead god.You don’t belong in their little stone cages. You belong here.” He leaned over her again, his massive form blocking out the world. The mouth on his stomach was silent now, slack and satisfied.“In my den. On my furs.”
His clean upper hand cupped her small breast, his thumb brushing over her nipple. It pebbled tightly under his touch, another betrayal. “You’re a feast,” he murmured, “and I’m so very hungry. But not for that.” He jerked his head slightly toward the ruin of Naoya. “That was just… tidying up.”
He lowered his head again, his mouth leaving a trail of open-mouthed kisses down her sternum, over the marked skin of her belly.He was cataloging her.Claiming her in increments. His lower hands rested possessively on her thighs, holding her open for his gaze, for his touch.
Megumi’s mind was fracturing. The cult’s teachings were ghosts, drowned out by the visceral reality of his weight, his heat, his absolute control. The part of her that wanted to survive was tuning out the horror, focusing on the strange, alien safety his obsession promised.No one could reach her here. Not now.
“They’ll be back,” she whispered, the first words she’d managed since the altar.Her voice was raspy, foreign to her own ears.
Sukuna paused, his lips against her hip bone.He looked up, his eyes catching the low light. “Let them come,” he said, a slow, wicked smile spreading across his features. “I haven’t redecorated in ages.”
He shifted then, moving back up her body. One lower hand slid beneath her hips, lifting her slightly off the furs. The other rested, heavy and warm, on her lower belly. “You’re so small,” he observed, not with criticism, but with a kind of avid fascination.“A handful. I could break you by accident.”
The statement wasn’t a threat.It was a fact.It should have terrified her. Instead, a strange, dark thrill shot through her. It was the thrill of being near a wildfire, of feeling its heat on your face knowing one errant spark could end you.He saw it.He always saw it. The red in his eyes deepened. “But I won’t,” he said, his voice dipping into a gravelly promise.“Not today. Today, I just want to taste.”
He kissed her then, properly.His main mouth covered hers, swallowing her gasp.It wasn’t gentle. It was consuming. His tongue pushed past her lips, claiming the interior space, tasting her inexperience, her fear, her latent curiosity. It was too much, and yet her body arched slightly into him, a silent plea for something she couldn’t name.When he pulled back, they were both breathing harder. A string of saliva connected their mouths for a second before snapping.
“There she is,” he breathed, a triumphant gleam in his multiple eyes. “The little monster hiding behind the rabbit’s eyes.”
He settled beside her, pulling her back against the solid wall of his chest, one massive arm wrapping around her middle, his hand splayed over the mark on her womb. The other hands relaxed, one pillowing his own head, the other resting on her thigh. He was still covered in drying blood.She was smeared with it.“Sleep,” he commanded, his breath stirring her hair.
“Sleep?” she echoed, disbelief making her voice thin.“The night is long. I’ve waited millennia for something interesting to crawl into my pit.” He nuzzled the crown of her head. “I can wait a few more hours to ruin you.”
Exhaustion, deeper than any she had ever known, slammed into her.The adrenaline drained away, leaving her limp and hollow. The heat of him was a furnace at her back. The arm around her was an iron bar, caging and securing.Outside the chamber, in the dark tunnels, there was silence. The torchlight finally died, leaving only the soft, eerie glow of the living rock.
In the dark, listening to the slow, powerful rhythm of his heart against her spine, Megumi closed her eyes. The scent of blood and demon and her own arousal was her new world. His claim was a brand on her skin and a seed in her mind, taking root in the fertile soil of her desperation.
She slept.