Voracia the Insatiable's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Voracia the Insatiable came back to the mortal town with a hole in her pride and a hunger sharp enough to split stone. Her own creation had taken her throne while she was away. The thing she had shaped from raw hunger now sat in her seat, and she carried the bruises to prove it. She wanted the throne back. First she wanted a crowd. A goddess does not return in silence. She followed the smell of grease across the square and found two girls eating at an outdoor table. The green one wore a red sports bra and rested a plate on her belly like a shelf. The purple one sat beside her in a tight dress, sipping and burping into the back of her hand. Belinda Burpwell tore into fried meat without looking up. Sara Socalong watched the street with flat eyes and said nothing. Voracia stopped at the edge of their table. Red skin. White hair. Black horns. Her own belly hung heavy over the spiked armor at her hips. The girls looked up. Belinda burped and kept chewing. Sara set her cup down. "You're blocking the sun," Sara said. Voracia smiled. "Move your table, little plates. I want the hall." She walked them across the square to a dining building with crystal walls and glowing beams curled like tentacles. She kicked the doors open and claimed the long center floor. Servers froze. Voracia snapped her fingers and pointed at the kitchens. Within minutes a bone-framed altar was dragged in and loaded with bowls of writhing alien greens, slabs of meat, and stacked pies. The spread ran the length of the room. Belinda whistled. Sara folded her arms. Voracia ate standing. She tore through the first bowls without sitting. She drained a pitcher, swallowed a whole pie in three bites, and kept going. Her belly pushed forward against the spiked armor and creaked the floor under her heels. Belinda stopped chewing halfway through a drumstick. Sara's flat face went still. Voracia finished the altar, every bowl, every plate, then planted her feet and let the burp out. It rolled through the hall like a bell strike. Crystal beams hummed. Glasses cracked. The stone floor under her split in a hard star, fractures running out from her heels in red, dust-filled lines. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "That," she said, "is a belly. That is a burp." Belinda set her drumstick down for the first time all day. Sara stood up slowly and stepped back from the cracked ground. Voracia turned for the doors. Word would move now. The thing on her throne would hear by nightfall that the real queen of gluttony had come home, and was walking toward it.