Numb.

If he had to describe the way one felt when the compelling took hold of one’s mind that would be the undisputable term for it. At least then he didn’t have the time to truly feel the extent of the hunger unless his master willed it.

It hadn’t been until he had finally tasted freedom - true freedom - again that it dawned on him how much of a blessing the numbness had been in its own twisted way. He would have guessed he would never miss the empty echo in his mind but it ached. His dry throat ached painfully as the warmth lingered in the air. It was then that he realized this was perhaps the cruellest joke the Gods had planned for him - shackles gone but the true master rearing its ugly horns in unholy claim for his thoughts and actions, making evidence of how he would forever be a slave to The Hunger.

Then, he thought, maybe Numb was better than this Hollow. At least then the touches were easy to ignore, and he didn’t have to feel each one like a piercing dagger, leaving his body heavy with the grime of disgust thick on his skin. How he craved for the sweet poppy milk of his master’s power to finally… slip away into oblivion and just forget the pain.

He was much too aware and that was maddening in itself.

The emptiness, the Hollow as he would call it in his mind, the one that nothing but the life of another could fill, was much too painful. The void that roared inside his body and burned his trachea was constant reminder that he was not in charge. That the reprieve was only momentary and the only way to quieten it was by consuming or death. And death was just out of the question when he was so close.

The air surrounding him was sickeningly sweet all due to the warmth emanating from the body he had used as a tool for protection - the halfwit leader of the group that was all too eager to join him in his bedsheets, now laid resting with slow placid breathing as the camp slept unaware of the predator lurking in the darkness at arm’s length. The pretend tenderness he had mirrored onto the cattle, to the shield, to the tool had given way to breathy moans and pleas of release in his name, successfully signing the unspoken contract of his safety and subsequent protection.

Because that’s all everyone ever was and would be - tools to use and be used and this was no different. At least now, he was the user and such power is addicting. What was one more push towards self-gain in the grand scheme of things? Surely the tool wouldn’t object and it would be so easy to finally answer to the beckoning song coming from the body beside him. After all, dinner was served so prettily in his sheets.

It would have been so easy, but the breathing tensed and suddenly he was all too aware of her eyes staring up at him in fear.