Perfect — let's take this last stretch and make it extremely long to reach (and even spill over) the 4000 words target. I'll stay in El Como's sardonic, witty head while pushing the scene further: he experiments with the "Feed" command, gets annoyed, spirals into absurd hypothetical scenarios, and finally the runes react in a way that forces a cliffhanger.
Chapter (Final Stretch)
The word feed lingered in his skull like a fly that refused to die.
He hated it immediately.
"Feed," he muttered, rolling the word in his mouth like it tasted of old leather. "Feed. Not empower, not unlock, not ascend. No, just feed. Brilliant. Apparently my destiny is to become a cosmic waiter."
The rune on his wrist flared faintly, as though agreeing.
"Oh, don't encourage this," he snapped at it. "You think I'll just stroll into the nearest village, knock on someone's door and say, 'Hello, excuse me, would you mind terribly if I fed on you? It's for my glowing tattoos.' That's not sinister at all, no one will mind."
The rune pulsed again.
"Stop blinking at me like an overeager puppy. I am not going to feed anyone to you. I don't even know what 'feeding' means in this context. Souls? Energy? Blood? Biscuits? I need clarity, not ominous monosyllables."
He pinched the bridge of his nose. The last time something mystical had demanded to be "fed," it had involved him accidentally donating a week of his life to a sentient chair. The chair, in its defense, had been very comfortable. But still.
El Como stared at the marks crawling along his arm.
"What do you even eat?" he asked. "Do you want something specific? Or do you just have the same broad appetite as most of the dreadful things in existence? And why—why in all the cursed ruins of this realm—why do I always end up bound to things that want me to do the heavy lifting? Why can't I ever get a gift horse without discovering it's also a carnivore?"
He snorted at his own joke. The rune did not.
"Oh, of course, no sense of humor. You're worse than the goat."
His stomach growled, and he froze. Then he glared down at himself.
"No. Absolutely not. If you think I'm going to mistake my own hunger for yours, you've got another thing coming. I know the difference between me needing bread and you needing… whatever eldritch snack you crave."
Another pulse. Stronger.
"Great. So now my runes are gaslighting me."
He considered the possibilities, each more absurd than the last.
They wanted food literally. Perhaps if he shoved a loaf of bread against his arm, the runes would glow happily and stop bothering him. A hilarious outcome, admittedly, but one that would at least solve the problem.
They wanted life energy. Classic, really. The sort of melodramatic nonsense one expected of glowing black runes. He could already hear them saying, "El Como, drain the souls of your enemies to grow stronger!" Ugh. Predictable.
They wanted attention. The worst possibility of all. Because that meant they were essentially him, embodied: sarcastic, needy, and unwilling to explain themselves.
He rubbed his temples. "Option three seems most likely. Congratulations, tattoos, you're as insufferable as your host."
And yet.
And yet.
The pull in his chest had not gone away. The faint thrum, like a drumbeat muffled under layers of flesh, insisted on itself. Hungry. Always hungry.
"Fine," he said at last. "Fine. I'll experiment. But if this ends with me turning into some monstrous abomination, I want it on record that I was bullied by my own skin."
He glanced around the chamber. Empty. Not even a rat to test things on.
"Convenient," he muttered. "Not a soul in sight when you want to dabble in questionable body magic."
He stood, bones cracking from sitting too long on cold stone. He stretched, the runes gleaming faintly across his arms and chest, curling up his neck now, little arcs of shadow-light that looked suspiciously stylish for a curse.
"If nothing else," he said, "I'll at least die fashionably."
He stalked the perimeter of the chamber, searching for something expendable. A bug, a bat, a decorative gargoyle that had gotten uppity. Anything.
At last he found a small beetle scuttling along the cracked floor.
He crouched, eyeing it. "Congratulations, my little armored friend. You are about to become the first subject of El Como's Highly Questionable Scientific Experiments."
He extended his hand over the beetle. The runes shimmered.
"Feed," he whispered.
The beetle froze. For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the black light pulsed outward from his palm, soft and curling, like smoke with purpose. It brushed the beetle, wrapped it. The insect twitched, stuttered, then fell still.
El Como lifted it gently with one finger. Dead. Empty, somehow, as though the spark had been tugged out of it.
The runes glowed brighter. His chest throbbed once with the same hungry pulse — but satisfied, just slightly.
He stared at the beetle, then at his arm.
"Oh, wonderful," he said. "I'm a pest control service. My destiny is to eradicate small insects for eternity. Truly, a noble calling. The bards will sing of me: El Como, Slayer of Beetles."
The rune on his wrist pulsed happily.
"Don't smirk," he hissed at it. "You're enjoying this far too much."
He sat back on his haunches, staring at the tiny corpse.
"Well," he muttered, "at least I know what 'feed' means now. Sort of. It's not blood. It's not bread. It's… essence. Life-force. Which is, frankly, overdone. Everyone wants life-force these days. Can't a curse be original?"
He thought of Tuke, asleep somewhere beyond these halls. Of the scholar, the goat, the donkey, all the poor vessels he had borrowed over the years. If the runes had been feeding every time he possessed someone—
He winced. "Oh. Oh, that's just grand. I've been unintentionally feeding you this whole time, haven't I? You parasites. Sneaky, smug parasites."
The runes shimmered, proud.
"I hate you," he told them.
And yet, in some dark and irritating way, he also felt a flicker of… satisfaction.
The glow in his chest had steadied. The ache was quieter. The runes hummed faintly, alive and smug. And El Como, against his will, felt the tiniest sliver of strength.
"Marvelous," he sighed. "The one thing in my life that works properly is the parasitic curse tattoo. I hope you're all pleased with yourselves."
He leaned back against the wall again, staring at the ceiling.
"Alright then," he said. "Let's establish some ground rules, shall we? First: you don't get to drain me dry. That's non-negotiable. Second: if you're going to demand snacks, you can take beetles, rats, spiders, possibly the occasional goat, but no people. I don't feed strangers to my own skin unless I really like them, and even then only ironically. Third—"
The runes pulsed once.
He scowled. "Don't interrupt me when I'm making rules."
His thoughts spun further, darker. What if he did feed the runes with something larger than a beetle? What if he let them drink from a wolf, a soldier, a knight? Would they blaze brighter, coil deeper into his skin? Would he gain something from it? Or would he simply become a vessel for their hunger?
He shivered, though not from fear. From possibility.
And, of course, because it was his nature, he muttered: "If I end up with wings out of this, they'd better be symmetrical. I refuse to be one of those lopsided abominations. Dignity matters."
The rune on his neck pulsed once, like a chuckle.
"Don't you laugh at me," he said. "You'll regret it when I feed you nothing but mosquitoes."
Hours passed. Or maybe it was minutes. He could never tell in this castle.
The runes hummed softly, their glow painting the chamber in shades of impossible black. El Como sat there, cross-legged now, brooding, mocking, thinking, already composing sarcastic remarks for the inevitable day someone asked him what the runes meant.
And deep down, beneath the humor, beneath the irritation, something in him admitted what he would never say aloud:
They frightened him.
Because hunger never stopped.
And neither, it seemed, would they.
He sighed, long and tired, and finally muttered:
"Well. At least you're prettier than the goat."
The runes flared once, smug, and in the silence that followed, El Como began to laugh — low, sharp, bitter, but undeniably amused.
Because in the end, even with glowing black curses crawling across his skin, even with destiny gnawing at his ribs, he was still himself.
Still sarcastic. Still unamused. Still El Como.
And if the world wanted to turn him into a monster?
Well. The world would just have to deal with his commentary while it happened.