THE Creature drifted closer, the maw yawning patiently at his chest, and he began to eat them at this time even as they roared backwards in horror.
WUU!
He did it slowly, because the lesson mattered more than the meal. The maw took Aurescine first, drawing the Ealdor in by degrees, and the Superbius screamed with a voice that had never once in his long existence been made to scream, watching pieces of his own being vanish into the dark ahead of him.
"Do you feel that?" THE Creature asked, conversational, brutal, watching the horror swim in the Ealdor's eyes. "That is the oldest transaction there is. Before contracts, before your ledgers, before your Houses and your castes and your engineered little Egos, there was only this. One thing eating another thing. Every civilization you built was decoration laid over that truth, and you decorated so well you forgot what was underneath."
