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The undercroft breathed like a living thing.
Thick, humid air hung heavy with the mingled stench of beeswax candles, damp limestone, old incense, and the sweet-copper reek of blood that had soaked into the stone over decades. Beneath it all pulsed a richer, meatier odor—the smell of a living body already beginning to open, of sweat and fear-piss and the faint animal tang of a cunt that had been used and left wet. The long oak table dominated the chamber, its surface scarred by knife marks and dark stains that no amount of scrubbing ever fully erased. Candles guttered in iron sconces, their flames trembling, throwing the twelve inquisitors, six senior nuns, and Mother Superior Celeste into a shifting theater of light and shadow.
Grand Inquisitor Nathaniel sat at the head, still in the blood-stiffened alb from the morning’s work. His cock was already half-hard beneath the fabric, stirred by the knowledge of what was about to be done. Celeste stood at his right, habit pristine, eyes bright and feverish. The others had shed their outer robes. Some were naked. Others wore only the heavy leather aprons reserved for butchery and the deeper interrogations. Cocks stood thick and veined. Cunts shone slick in the candlelight. The air itself felt greased with lust.
Sister Agnes hung above the center of the table.
Iron hooks had been driven through the dense meat of her shoulders, the points punching out the front so that bright blood ran in slow, sticky rivers down her arms and dripped onto the wood below with soft, rhythmic *pats*. She was naked. Her breasts had been bound with rough cord until they swelled purple-black and shiny, the nipples forced out into hard, dark points. Between her thighs a thick wooden plug carved into the shape of a screaming demon held her open; the base of it glistened with her own juices and a thin trickle of blood from where the wood had scraped her raw. A metal ring gag stretched her mouth wide, forcing her tongue forward, letting strings of thick saliva hang and break. Her eyes were glassy with shock and pain, but she was still very much alive. The feast required freshness. The meat had to scream.
Nathaniel lifted a heavy goblet. The liquid inside was dark, almost black, and left a viscous film on the silver.
“Brothers. Sisters. Tonight we take into ourselves the vessel of sin so that sin may be unmade. Let the flesh of the faithless nourish the faithful. Let every bite be a sacrament. Let every swallow be salvation.”
A low, hungry murmur answered him.
Celeste stepped forward with a long, thin knife. The blade kissed the underside of Agnes’s left breast, tracing a slow circle around the bound, engorged flesh. Agnes jerked. A thin, bright line of blood welled and ran down the curve, warm and sticky. Celeste leaned in and licked it, slow and deliberate, tasting salt and iron and the faint sourness of fear-sweat. Then she set the edge against the base of the breast and began to saw.
The sound was wet and fibrous—*skritch, skritch, skritch*—as the blade worked through fat and meat. Agnes’s gagged scream was a high, animal sound that vibrated in the ring. Blood sprayed in a fine mist, freckling Celeste’s face and the front of her habit. When the breast finally came free, heavy and hot in Celeste’s hands, she held it up for the table to see. The cut surface was a glistening mosaic of yellow fat and deep red muscle, still twitching faintly. She sank her teeth into it.
The first bite was dense, resistant, then yielding. Hot blood flooded her mouth, thick and metallic, coating her tongue and the back of her throat. She chewed slowly, eyes half-lidded, savoring the way the meat tore between her teeth, the way the fat melted and slicked her palate. A soft, involuntary moan escaped her as she swallowed. The second bite took the nipple. She rolled it on her tongue like a grape before crushing it.
The chamber erupted.
Two younger nuns surged forward. One seized the remaining breast in both hands, squeezing until the purple flesh bulged between her fingers, then bit deep. The sound was a wet *tear*. A chunk of meat came away in her teeth; blood jetted across her chin and down between her own bare breasts. She chewed openly, greedily, juice running from the corners of her mouth. The second nun followed, ripping and sucking, until both of Agnes’s breasts were ruined, heavy flaps of torn flesh hanging by threads of skin, pouring blood in steady streams onto the table.
An inquisitor with thick, scarred hands reached up and cut the cords binding the ruined breasts so they flopped free. Another sliced a long vertical line down Agnes’s belly. The skin parted with a soft sigh. Steam rose from the opened cavity, carrying the rich, intimate smell of living viscera—hot and iron-bright and faintly fecal. He reached inside up to the wrist. The wet, sucking sound of his hand searching made several of the nuns press their thighs together. When he found the liver he cut it free with a practiced twist of the knife. It came out dark and heavy and glistening, still warm. He bit into it like an apple. Dark blood ran down his chin and dripped onto his rigid cock; he smeared it along the length with his free hand and groaned.
Agnes was still conscious. Her body convulsed with every new violation. When they wrenched the wooden plug from her cunt, a thick gush of fluid followed—her own juices mixed with blood and the thin mucus of fear. An inquisitor stepped between her hanging legs, gripped the ruined remains of her breasts for leverage, and drove his cock into her in one hard thrust. The sound was wet and obscene, a loud *schlick* as he bottomed out. He fucked her with brutal, punishing strokes, the impact of his hips against her ass wet and meaty. At the same time another man forced his cock through the ring gag, using her throat like a second cunt. Her gagged screams vibrated around the shaft. Spit and blood and precum frothed at the corners of her stretched mouth and ran down her chin in long, sticky strings.
Celeste dropped to her knees between Nathaniel’s thighs. She freed his cock—thick, heavy, already leaking—and took him into her mouth while he continued to eat. She tasted the blood and fat still on his fingers when he guided her head. She sucked him with slow, worshipful pulls, tongue working the underside, throat opening to take him deep until her nose pressed against the coarse hair at his base. The wet sounds of her mouth filled the pauses between Agnes’s muffled cries. When Nathaniel came, it was with a low, guttural sound; thick ropes of semen flooded Celeste’s throat. She swallowed greedily, then licked him clean, chasing every drop.
Only then did she rise and claim the heart.
Two of the stronger inquisitors held Agnes’s thrashing body steady while Celeste worked the bone saw. The wet *crunch-crunch-crunch* of rib and sternum filled the chamber. When the heart finally came free it was still twitching, hot and slick in her hands, the cut vessels dripping steadily. She held it aloft.
“This is the seat of her lust,” she declared, voice thick. “We take it so that lust may die inside us.”
She bit deep. The muscle was dense, resistant, almost rubbery, then suddenly yielding. Hot, iron-rich blood filled her mouth in a flood, running down her chin and soaking the front of her habit until the fabric clung to her breasts like a second skin. She chewed slowly, deliberately, eyes rolling back. The taste was deeper than the breast meat—darker, more primal. She swallowed, then offered the ragged remainder to Nathaniel. He took a second bite, blood running into his beard, then passed it around the table. By the time it returned there was little left but a scrap of tough muscle. Celeste forced that scrap into Agnes’s own ring-gagged mouth, making the dying woman taste her own heart before the light finally left her eyes.
They lowered the body onto the table among the plates and goblets. The real feast began in earnest.
Knives and teeth and fingers worked without pause. Thighs were carved into thick steaks that hissed when they hit a pan of her own rendered fat; the smell of frying human meat filled the undercroft, rich and savory and wrong. The soft inner arms were sliced into thin, translucent strips and eaten raw, still warm, the fat melting on the tongue. The uterus was removed intact, stuffed with herbs and the severed, preserved cock of the village boy who had been her lover, then roasted over the brazier until the skin blistered and split. When they cut it open the contents spilled out steaming; they ate with their fingers, praising God between greasy mouthfuls.
Throughout it all, the living continued to use the dead.
An inquisitor bent Agnes’s cooling body over the edge of the table and fucked her ass with long, grinding strokes. The channel was tight and growing colder, the friction different, almost abrasive; he spat into it and kept going, the wet sounds turning thicker as blood and residual fluids mixed. A nun straddled the slack face, grinding her blood-smeared cunt against the open mouth, smearing herself with the mess of spit and semen already there until she came with a sharp cry, thighs shaking. Celeste directed two of the younger nuns to lie on their backs on the table so that slices of Agnes could be arranged across their naked bodies like offerings. The living nuns came loudly as the others ate the meat from their skin, teeth scraping close to nipple and clit.
Nathaniel took his time. He selected a long, thick strip of meat from the inner thigh—still faintly warm, marbled with fat—and wrapped it around his cock like a sleeve. Celeste knelt and sucked him through the flesh, the heat of her mouth soaking through the meat. She bit through it at intervals so that blood and saliva mixed and ran down his shaft and balls. When he was close she pulled the ruined meat free and stuffed it into her own cunt, then mounted him. She rode hard, the wet *slap-slap-slap* of her ass against his thighs loud in the chamber. The meat inside her was pushed deeper with every thrust. She came with a raw scream, cunt clamping and fluttering; Nathaniel followed, flooding her in thick, pulsing waves that mixed with the blood and chewed flesh already inside her.
They did not stop when the body grew cold. Cold meat was still meat. They continued until little remained but bones, scraps, and the heavy, cloying smell of opened bowels and congealing blood. The scraps were boiled into a thick, grayish broth that was ladled into the goblets and drunk as a final blessing—salty, metallic, with a lingering sweetness that coated the tongue and the back of the throat. The bones would later be ground and mixed into the mortar of a new chapel wall.
As the feast wound down, the survivors lay among the remains, bodies slick with blood and grease and seed. A younger novice had been dragged in midway through; she had been used as a living platter, her skin covered in cooling slices of Agnes while the others ate from her and fucked her in every hole. She lay now in a daze, thighs open and shining, a look of stunned, ruined ecstasy on her face. One of the inquisitors was already between her legs again, fucking her slow and deep while a nun chewed thoughtfully on a residual strip of thigh meat and watched, fingers idly working her own cunt.
Nathaniel wiped his mouth with the back of a blood-sticky hand and looked around the ruined chamber with something like contentment. The taste of Agnes still lingered—iron and salt and the faint sweetness of her fear.
“The flesh is weak,” he said quietly, voice rough. “But the spirit is willing. And the spirit, when properly fed, is ravenous.”
Celeste crawled to him through the mess of bone fragments and congealed blood. She rested her head on his thigh, tongue lazily cleaning a smear of fat from his skin. The undercroft smelled of sex and slaughter and hot wax. Outside, the monastery bells began to toll for matins. The common brothers and sisters would soon rise for prayer, unaware of the true communion that had taken place beneath their feet.
In the undercroft, the faithful licked their fingers clean and already began to speak of the next soul that required saving.
The table was never truly empty for long.