Chapter 41: The Endless Feast
The stairs into the central pit descended in a slow, indulgent curl, like the tongue of some ancient beast unfurling to taste the air. Each step sank beneath my heel with softness, plush enough to make one forget they were heading deeper into hell.
The banister—gold-veined mahogany, warm beneath my glove—guided us toward a floor that shimmered like the promise of a dream and stank like a trap set by gods with a sense of humor.
Below us, paradise waited. Or at least, the kind of paradise that might greet you after death by gluttony—a place too beautiful to trust, too rich to be clean. Lush grass carpeted the ground in living green, freshly damp with dew that didn’t belong indoors. Tropical trees burst from the floor, and waterfalls, yes waterfalls, fell from the ceiling above.
Between marble arches wrapped in flowering vines, long banquet tables stretched into the horizon like decadent rivers—groaning under the weight of meats glazed in honeyed oils, fruits cut to bleeding ripeness, pastries steaming with sinful heat, and fountains of cascading wine bubbling like blood in candlelight.
It was a cathedral of hunger, and we had arrived for communion.
The scent alone was dizzying—spices I couldn’t name curled through the air like whispered spells, heady and thick, made only worse by the low sound that hovered beneath it all: chewing, slurping, moaning, feasting.
A dull, constant murmur of endless consumption. Everywhere I looked, guests were eating—not delicately, not with etiquette, but with a desperate, trembling urgency that bordered on grotesque.
Willow sighed like she’d just walked into a boudoir with silk walls and no rules. "Gods, it’s like an orgy got swallowed by a vineyard."
Miko, already looking suspiciously intoxicated, rubbed at his temple and murmured, "I think I just climaxed from the smell of a roast pear."
Leo said nothing. But his eyes—those watchful, wounded eyes—narrowed with silent unease.
We barely had a moment to breathe before a figure materialized before us like a butler conjured by courtesy.