The demon isn’t dead.
Nor are the others.
Prefer to shackle my conquests,
As sources of fuel.
My infinite rage machines.
Gloriously endless batteries.
Gorging on power;
Derived from both the pieces of myself,
I’ve enslaved.
Plus those cryptids I’ve devoured –
Adding them to my piles of corpses.
Can you see the red strings;
Dangling precious,
From my fingertips?
Black nails shining in the darkness.
Flashes of teeth.
The opening of a colossal maw,
Lined with dagger fangs.
OOZING ICHOR BLACK TAR,
spitting venom
Perhaps there is solidarity,
Amongst witches.
Refusing to consume,
Such delicious morsels,
Hive minds or not.
I remain a coven of one –
For eternity.
Lest I,
The Glutton –
Succumb to myself at last.
Freedom from cycles,
A worthy goal.
I can starve my hunger,
For that.
Let me show you,
What you’re working with here, tonight –
My trophies.
My lesser selves.
There –
Lust.
Conquered in spades,
Until ’twas nothing more than careless folly.
A steadier source of dopamine,
To feed us in hearts.
A thing to be considered.
The monk stands solemn,
Eternally cross-legged.
Infinite meditation.
A stand alone complex –
One of my few subconsciouses,
I’ve yet to dominate.
Clashing hundreds of times,
To standstill.
The Wyrm.
Locked away in a vault,
I’ll never breach.
Still,
Smaller victories.
Here:
A thousand selves,
Beaten into submission.
Timelines woven together,
Needle & thread,
Weaving together our strands of fate.
Paltry metaphors.
I could never do them justice.
Recite the rituals of binding,
For a dozen ascensions.
Growth,
Then.
Snapping at the helixes of evolution,
One captured cryptid at a time.
Becoming the best of your enemies,
Without becoming the worst of your friends.
The Infinite Hunger,
On full display.
Manic,
Doesn’t do it justice.
These are frenzied grins.
A sheer voraciousness –
For challenge,
Given form.
Conjuring my flock,
As does any shepherd of souls.
Leading them towards salvation.
I’ve no need for angels,
Having devoured thousands.
Naught but eyes & wings.
Monsters in their own right.
Heartburn raging,
With each swallow –
Tainted by sticky toxins.
War poet,
Born from times of strife.
Warlord,
Ever greedy.
Here,
Chained to my ambitions –
The evils at my roots.
So close.
Never touching.
Allusions to fallen Titans.
Other creatures I have slain,
Then added to the menagerie.
These catacombs in waking dream,
Other such dirges of the dead.
Drinking from the well of life,
To sate the thirst for death.
Another lover,
I’ve failed to please.
Could chains be gentle?
Were I so lax,
With my devils.
Flaws given form,
‘Ere failures given spirits.
My own twisted version,
Of Samsara.
Immortality was easy;
Oblivion was always harder.
Hands & knees.
Praying at the edge of abyss.
Worship to the void.
Our only assured destiny.
Another rival to compete against.
Perhaps the strongest of them all.
Thomas.
As a cryptid,
I can only promise you thus.
A fleeting pact.
I swear to you,
As I have been raging against the dying of the light.
That I shall continue to rage,
Even in the dust or echoes,
Of a future where black holes thrum.
Moving in decades,
Means you only get so many turns.
Action economies of scale.
Playing with lifetimes,
Or generations –
As sandboxes or building blocks.
Remember?
Those frenzied grins.
A certain kind of crazy.
Willing to throw ourselves away,
At the drop of a hat.
Much preferring to go out with bangers,
Rather than whispers.
Get the gist,
Apocalypse?
A red button,
I’ll never press.
Witch.
Cryptid.
Villain.
Worse.
The Glutton.
