(Yeah, so I've developed an unhealthy obsession with cannibal jokes lately, and this is the result. This is my first genuine Geldo-drabble, so I apologize if I screw him up.)
The desire to consume was never new to Geldoblame. When he was a mere aide, he devoured the quaestor—his quaestor, his lord—like a parasite clinging to warm, nourishing flesh. He drank in his image, feasted on his very scent and the powerful timbre of his voice. Every day he craved more, collecting what pieces he could snatch to make his little scrapbook. But that was all before Verus fed him a bloody morsel of something far more savory...and addictive.
In some parts, legend has it that if a man feeds off his own kind, his strength will double, and his pains and illnesses will disappear, but his lust for human meat will drive him mad. Verus had betrayed him, but then Geldoblame tasted power, and suddenly the hole in his broken soul vanished. The hunger began anew.
As emperor, he ate as he pleased: dining on pow meat so fresh and raw that it stained his lips with an oily red. For a time, the first sips of Azha's blood were enough to sate him, and when they rebelled against the pull of his teeth on their neck, he cracked their bones and sucked the marrow. Next was Diadem, whose brave soldiers would provide him with a rare kind of flesh. The noble are a delicacy more nourishing than the weary and beaten cattle of Azha. That raven's interference may have cut his feast short, but the massacre on foreign soil was merely an hors d'oeuvre to whet his appetite before the main course.
Melodia fed him ancient secrets and promises—the End Magnus, Malpercio, and endless power. His waistline bulged, but the very thought of what he might one day savor made him feel as though he'd starved for months. Like a ravenous dog, he sat up and begged at her command. Insane with hunger, he took the bait. Only once the dark gullet, so much larger and cavernous than his own, closed around him did he realize that he was the one being consumed.