Prologue: Delicacies

A woman of more than forty springs sat on her knees and prayed. Prayed like she never did before in her life, she cried, she wailed, she filled her ragged dress with tears and snot, but so far, her prayers proved to be as useful as bards on a deer hunt.

Hordes of undead came knocking on the small village’s door after the last drunk was passed out in the tavern, not even giving a chance for the guards to ring the alarm bells.

She watched in horror from her window what made her bowels lose control, people were dying in the most terrifying of ways, buildings were on fire, even cattle didn’t survive the ordeal, the undead did not spare a single soul, be it a child, an elder or even a dog, nothing was spared, nothing.

She plunged back under her window and continued her prayer even louder, she didn’t even dare to open the door to check on her son in the adjacent room, fear just froze her in the moonlit patch under the wooden window.

The wooden door of the room bursted open in a splintry explosion, and undead poured in like the river flood, some were even stepping on each in a race to reach her first like she was some kind of luscious undead treat.

The elderly woman covered her entire head with her hands like it was a divine form of protection. She kept screaming hysterically until strings of blood slid down from the corner of her mouth, she didn’t even stop even when her screams became hoarse and blood gushed out like fish dancing in a pond.

Surprisingly it worked, the undead stood as they were in their graves, they completely stopped moving after backing off to the corners of the room and not even a clank of a single bone was heard.

Moments after she realized that an axe didn’t split her face open yet, she slowly withdrew the meat barrier of arms away from her front, only to find a dozen of skeletons and ghouls standing in the corners of the room, making way for the person responsible for reaping the lives of her entire village.

Under the moonlight her face shone brightly as she gazed at a naked boy not older than fifteen cycles, looking at her with eyes full of unquenched thirst yet somehow lifeless. his black long hair falling down to his bottom, nearly touching the back of his knees.

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The moist cleared from her eyes as the tears dried out, and she saw what drove away the last of her supper away from her stomach, then moved on to her bladder and kicked out whatever resided there as well

She recognized the boy, if not from the tail swaying like a charmed snake behind him, or the pair of horns that were curved on his forehead like an alpha bull, it was from his bulging belly, with an opening the shape of a cross going down from his chest to where his pubic hair should be, full of razor teeth sharper than a butcher’s knife and bigger than an archdevil claws.

A pair of feet were being grinded down the maw in his middle, she recognized the feet, she used to wash them, take care of the cut on one of their ankles, she breastfed the owner of these feet, she raised him to be a fine young man.

The woman finally gave up, she stopped hoping, she stopped praying, she stopped believing that anything could save her from the monstrosity standing before her old creased face.

The boy stepped forward, moving up to the woman whose eyes stopped reflecting light the moment she saw him, he extended his long clawed hand and reached out for her face, he brushed across her face until he reached her nose, and softly plucked out a strand of hair with his thin yet slender fingers.

He lifted the gray strand to his deep blue eyes, looking at it like it was a long-sought achievement, tilting his head slowly left and right as if he was watching a masterpiece by a long dead artist, then he threw it away with a slight look of disgust.

The boy focused back on the woman looking at nothing in particular and slowly wrapped his long tail around her, lifting her up and looking her in the eye.

She still had a grain of sense left inside her and looked back at him, her tears have long stopped pouring. She moved her wrinkled lips, revealing lines of a few old crooked teeth and started to speak.

“I-I I’m sorr-”

The boy didn’t want to hear something of it, and shoved her in his bottomless belly, which gladly accepted her and started crushing the old bones of hers.

Muffled, hoarse screams of agony could be heard coming out from the room, the undead watching the woman intestines nearly dropping out of the mouth, but a huge bristly tongue came out and saved it from spilling, licking the mouth clean,but in reality smudging it with more blood.

The boy didn’t mind the blood, in fact, his mouth opened up in a subtle smile of satisfaction, revealing a pair of sharp fangs that no being should have, he looked down to the mouth and quietly said:

“Slower, I want to savor every bit”