Chapter 1: The Throne of Gluttony
The air in the Obsidian throne room was thick, warm, and carried the permanent, cloying scent of rendered fat and honeyed wine. Sickly amber light wavered from a hundred fat-lamps suspended from the vaulted ceiling, each one a captured wisp of damned soul burning in a cage of gold. They dripped steadily, plink-plink-plink, into a shallow moat of warm grease that circled the dais, the liquid surface reflecting the grotesque architecture: pillars that were not stone, but lattices of colossal, bleached ribcages, their hollows whispering with the memory of screams swallowed by feast.
At the room’s heart, upon a vast basalt slab, Lamashtu, belly vast and pregnant, held court from her throne.
Her throne was Pazuzu. Her husband. A once-terrifying king of wind demons, now a quivering mountain of feathered flesh. He was barely recognizable as a humanoid form, just a titanic swell of blubber she straddled, her sharp knees digging into the soft rolls of his winged back. He emitted a low, constant wheeze, the sound of bellows buried in mud. He could no longer stop her plans, or resist her forces. Her last major hurdle not only conquered, but turned into a luxurious plaything that could only obey her desires.
“The problem with your traditional methods,” Lamashtu said, her voice a dry rustle like scalps sliding over stone, “is that they’re predictable.” One long, black-nailed hand patted Pazuzu’s vast flank. It jiggled for a full ten seconds after she stopped. “Consumption, gluttony, it’s always been a vice. But it was private. Shameful.”
Before the dais, three figures knelt on the polished fat-slick floor. It was warm under their knees.
“But humanity,” Lamashtu continued, a grin splitting her jackal-like face, “they’ve lost the shame. They celebrate it. They photograph it. They call it ‘softness,’ ‘comfort,’ ‘a dad bod.’ They feed their males until they sink into their sofas and never rise, and they call it love.” She leaned forward, her eyes like smoldering coals. “The sin isn’t in the eating. It’s in the worship. The deliberate, adoring creation of uselessness.”
Vespera, kneeling at the front, lifted her chin. Her raven hair fell like a shadow over her shoulders. “You want us to adapt our craft.”
“I want you to weaponize theirs,” Lamashtu corrected. “Seduction is about taking what you need. This… this is about giving them everything they think they want, until it becomes a cage they polish themselves.” She gestured to the wheezing form beneath her. “Pazuzu wanted dominion over the eastern winds. I gave him endless feasts instead. Now the only wind he commands is his own digestion. He’s my most cherished possession.”
The massive body let out a wet, sighing groan.
Lilith, the platinum blonde, shivered with something that wasn’t fear. Her wide blue eyes were fixed on the trembling lard. “It’s… intimate.”
“It’s ownership,” Carmilla murmured, her voice a warm, husky contrast. Her copper skin glowed in the lamplight. She watched the way Lamashtu’s fingers traced possessive circles on Pazuzu’s skin. “Not just of the flesh, but the will. You replace ambition with appetite.”
“Exactly.” Lamashtu settled back. “You have a subject in mind.”
It wasn’t a question. Vespera’s lips curved. “Malachar.”
A chuckle rippled through the trio. Malachar was infamous. An incubus of the old school, vain as a peacock, with a sculpted physique he maintained with obsessive rigor. He seduced by showcasing power, agility, predatory grace. He collected souls like trophies and discarded them without a glance.
“He despises gluttony,” Lilith whispered, almost lovingly. “He calls the corpulent demons ‘bloated failures.’”
“Perfect,” Lamashtu hissed, Placing her hand on her bloated belly. “His vanity is the lock. Your feeding will be the key. I want to see that arrogance drown. I want to see him struggle to reach his own toes. I want every mirror in his palace to scream his failure back at him, while you three convince him it’s triumph.” Her glowing eyes pinned them. “Make a god of indolence out of him. Make him believe the expanding horizon of his own belly is a crown.”
Lamashtu shifted her weight, and the mountain of flesh beneath her shuddered in a wave that took seconds to settle. “You need the method,” she said, her voice now conversational, as if discussing a recipe. “The technique. It’s not magic. It’s patience. It’s understanding the currency of a man’s pride, and then bankrupting him with it.”
Vespera tilted her head, a smirk playing on her lips. “We’re listening.”
“Pazuzu was wind and wrath and sharp edges.” She dug a finger into the softness beside her thigh; it left a deep, slow-filling indent. “He lived for the sky. So, first, I clipped him. Not with chains, but with concern. ‘My love, you push yourself too hard,’ I’d sigh. ‘Rest here with me.’ I made his aggression seem vulgar. Unbecoming of a king.”
Carmilla’s warm eyes were fixed on the massive form, analyzing. “You shamed his strength.”
“I reframed it. Then, I introduced the feasts. Not as gluttony, but as celebration. Every minor victory—a conquered realm, a whispered prophecy—was met with a banquet. I served him the riches of the earth: mammoths stuffed with succubi fruit, their juice fermenting in the gut, breads risen with spell-laden yeasts that whispered ‘more’ to the belly. He ate to be polite. Then he ate because the food was divine. Then he ate because the act of eating became the only victory I allowed him to have.”
Lilith inched forward on her knees, fascinated. “How did you get past his will? He must have known.”
“Oh, he knew. And he fought. For the first century, he’d fast, try to exercise. That’s when the pampering began.” Lamashtu’s claws traced a lazy circle. “After a day of futile strain, he’d be sore. I’d have my handmaidens bathe him in oils that relaxed muscle into fat. I’d massage his wings until the tendons loosened permanently. He’d wake from a nap to find a caramelized sun-dragon flank, still sizzling, beside his bed. ‘You need to keep your strength up,’ I’d tell him. The irony became the cage.”
She paused, letting the drip-drip of the fat-lamps fill the room. “The turning point was vanity. He caught his reflection in a polished shield—heavier, but still formidable. I saw his disgust. So I praised it. ‘Look at the breadth of you,’ I’d whisper, hands on his shoulders. ‘No enemy would dare challenge such a presence. You are becoming a monument.’ I fed the ego to feed the body. I celebrated every new curve, every stretch mark I called a ‘sigil of conquest.’ His war became a war on hunger, and winning meant surrender.”
Vespera’s amethyst glow flickered. “You made him complicit.”
“Exactly. He chose the third helping. He chose the lazy morning in bed. I just made sure the alternative was always humiliation or emptiness. I replaced his armies with chefs, his battle plans with menus. The final step was physical inevitability. I had enchanters weave gravity into his silks. The very floor here” —she gestured to the slick fat— “was tempered to support his weight but also to make movement a chore. One day, he tried to rise for a council that no longer existed. His knees buckled. He fell. And I was there, with a bowl of whipped dream-cream and spiced wine, to cushion the blow. ‘You are beyond such trivial movements, my heart,’ I told him. He wept. Then he ate. Now, he only moves when I want him to. The wind king is a landmass, a proud Falcon turned into a thanksgiving turkey.”
Lamashtu leaned back, the lesson complete. Her jackal smile was sharp. “That is how you make a massive. You find the pride, and you make it the engine of its own destruction. Malachar loves his reflection? Make him love it rounder. Softer. Make his sharp jaw a memory buried in dough. Feed him until his only pleasure is the next bite, and his only pride is the weight of your attention.”
The trio rose, the grease-slick floor clinging to their knees. The amber light caught the dark inspiration in their eyes. Without a word, they turned, their footsteps silent on the warm fat, already weaving their first whispers, their first recipes, for Malachar’s magnificent undoing.
Without a word, they turned, their footsteps silent on the warm fat, already weaving their first whispers, their first recipes, for Malachar’s magnificent undoing.
“Wait.”
Lamashtu’s voice cracked through the chamber like a whip. The trio froze, shoulders tensing, and turned back. The queen was no longer reclining in instructive contemplation. She was upright, her eyes blazing, one hand pressed deep into Pazuzu’s back as if testing the give of dough.
“A lesson is one thing,” she said, her rustling voice now edged with a sudden, capricious malice. “Observance is another. You have the theory. Now witness the practice. He requires maintenance. His humiliation is the polish that keeps my throne gleaming.”
She snapped her fingers. The sound was like a breaking bone.
“Come. Assist.”
Vespera recovered first, a dark smile touching her lips. She strode back, the slick floor offering no resistance to her certainty. Carmilla and Lilith followed, their expressions masks of poised attention.
Lamashtu did not rise from her seated position atop her husband. Instead, she leaned to the side, and with a grunt of effort that was purely theatrical, she hooked her fingers into a deep, swollen roll of fat at Pazuzu’s side. She pulled.
The massive body shifted, a seismic event of flesh. A low, pained groan issued from somewhere beneath the mounds. A winged arm, buried and atrophied, was partially exposed, its feathers greasy and matted.
“He sweats,” Lamashtu announced clinically. “The fat weeps. It must be collected. It is my due.”
She gestured to a small, ornate basin of obsidian that sat beside the dais. Vespera picked it up without a word. It was warm.
“Carmilla. The left flank. Knead it. Work the precious oils to the surface.”
Carmilla’s warm, nurturing hands found the vast, pillowy expanse of Pazuzu’s side. She pressed in with her thumbs, not with brutality, but with a firm, practiced rhythm, as if tenderizing a giant cut of prize meat. Her touch was gentle, loving even. Beneath it, the pale flesh blotched red, then began to glisten. A clear, oily fluid beaded up, tracing the rivers of stretch marks.
“Good,” Lamashtu purred. “Now, Vespera. Collect.”
Vespera knelt, the basin poised. She scraped the edge of the vessel along the shuddering skin, gathering the demonic sebum. The smell was musky, sweet, and profoundly intimate. Pazuzu’s breath hitched; a single, rheumy yellow eye cracked open, fixing on Vespera with a depth of silent, cataclysmic shame.
“He was so proud of his wings,” Lamashtu mused conversationally, as Vespera worked. “They could churn hurricanes. Now, they’moldering under all of this. Lilith. Attend to them.”
Lilith moved to the tangled, exposed primary feathers. From a fold in her gossamer dress, she produced a delicate brush and a small pot of infused oil. She began to groom the feathers with absurd, meticulous care, as if dressing a bride. But the oil wasn’t for flight. It was heavy with a scent of vanilla and decay, designed to further weigh them down, to seal them to his body.
“Does that feel better, my lord?” Lilith whispered to the exposed ear, her voice syrupy with false concern. “We must keep you presentable.”
Pazuzu’s only response was a shudder that took nearly a full minute to travel through his system.
“He hungers, of course,” Lamashtu said, watching the process with a critic’s eye. “Even now. The metabolism I forged for him is a furnace. It craves fuel. Watch.”
She reached over to a standing tray that hadn’t been there a moment before. On it was a single, perfect donut, glittering with a crystalline sugar that seemed to hold galaxies within each grain. She held it before Pazuzu’s face.
His nostrils flared. A pathetic, desperate sound escaped his throat. His tongue, thick and pale, licked his cracked lips.
“You may beg,” Lamashtu said softly.
A tear welled in that yellow eye and traced a path through the grease on his cheek. A wet, mangled syllable gurgled from deep within him. “P…pl…”
“Pathetic.” Lamashtu smiled. She didn’t give him the donut. Instead, she dipped it into the basin of oil Vespera had collected—his own expressed essence. She let it soak for a moment, heavy and dripping, before bringing it back to his mouth.
“Feed yourself, my heart. You have the strength.”
With a trembling, Herculean effort, Pazuzu tried to lift his head. The cords in his neck strained, bulging against the fat. He managed an inch. Two. Lamashtu waited, holding the treat just out of reach, forcing him to sustain the impossible strain. A choked sob escaped him. His head collapsed back onto the fat with a sound like a wet sack, making the whole dais tremble.
Defeated, he opened his mouth, a helpless chick.
Lamashtu placed the soaked donut on his tongue. He closed his eyes as he swallowed it, another tear falling. It wasn’t pleasure on his face. It was the utter relief of a need being met, a circuit of dependence completed. The humiliation was the price, and he paid it. Willingly.
“You see?” Lamashtu said, wiping her fingers on his hair. “The vanity is gone. Only the need remains. The humiliation is not an event. It is the environment in which he exists. It is the air he breathes. When you have reduced your Malachar to this—when his greatest moment of agency is opening his mouth for a treat he cannot reach—you will have succeeded.”
She settled back onto him, a queen upon her most conquered land.
“Now go. Begin. Report his first hundred pounds to me with a celebration. I expect poetry in his decline.”
The succubi left again, the lesson seared into them. This time, Lamashtu did not call them back.
Out in the obsidian corridor, the air felt cool and thin by comparison. The three demons walked in silence for a long moment, the rhythmic drip… drip… from the throne room fading behind them.
Vespera finally spoke, her eyes glowing faintly with amethyst inspiration. “We start tonight. Not with force. With concern.”
Carmilla nodded, her warm hands still seeming to feel the texture of that living blubber. “I’ll prepare a welcome feast. Something rich, something comforting. To ease his fatigue after a long... reign.”
Lilith hugged herself, a small, secret smile on her lips. “I’ve already designed the first dessert. A mousse of shadow-berries and condensed cream. It will whisper to him in his sleep.”
Vespera looked at her conspirators, the vision clear. “We won’t clip his wings. We’ll just make him forget he ever wanted to fly.”
Ahead, the glowing spires of Malachar’s prideful palace pierced the subterranean gloom. He was waiting, unknowing, ripe for their particular paradise.
Lilith’s whisper was almost lost in the cavern’s breath. “Do you think he’ll like the mousse?”