Velisse

"The serpent hath come, and ye too shall eat." —Beelzebub From a thousand mortal cravings she slithered into form, a woman with the smile of desire, the eyes of a serpent, and fangs hidden just behind her full, hungry lips. Her inevitability was revealed to the gods by way of a dream, always of a garden, black with rot in the endless maw of a serpent. Yet Velisse had not come to Tya's realm to reap ruin, merely to whisper desire into its bones and feast upon the tainted marrow. She was temptation unbound, and her hunger would consume all. When Velisse rose from the mire of longing, the gods were not surprised. Her arrival had long been foretold, and yet she would be no ordinary deity if left to feast at will. Out of fear, they conspired to make her an equal, offering a path to godhood in an attempt to rein her in. Once offered recognition, a seat at the table would be granted, and thus the serpent would have a throne. So she was told. For centuries, Velisse wove famine, indulgence, and corruption with the patience of an adder in the reeds. Mortals turned from kin and hearth to worship her churning, writhing form, only to burst their eardrums with their own screams of agony when she took them in full at last. In time, her base instincts carried her to the point of ascension. She was to unhinge her jaw and become the Goddess of Decay, the serpent who swallowed devotion whole. Yet, before the day of her ascension came, the skies tore open and Ezareth unfurled. He was not shaped by mortal craving, but by something older, hungrier, cosmic. Where Velisse was intimate, Ezareth was inevitable: Consumption stripped of seduction, appetite without guile. In the presence of that abomination, the gods faltered. Why crown a serpent when the void itself had arrived? Denied, Velisse's cold bark split the heavens. The mantle had not been passed, she insisted. It had been stolen. If Ezareth were to mark the world's end, then she would spoil that feast. She would be the sweetness he could not resist, the temptation even inevitability must taste. And when his boundless hunger finally turned upon her, she would let him devour her whole, for what god can gorge upon an apple of the purest venom and come away intact? It must be said that even as Velisse plots to smother Ezareth's shadow, she fears what lies behind it. For in rare moments of silence, Velisse has glimpsed the abyss that compels him, and knows it might one day turn its gaze fully upon her. Now, she coils in false temples, feeding on devotion where she can, amassing an army of tainted souls. Velisse is the goddess-that-should-have-been, the serpent denied her crown, the hunger that will not be sated. And though Ezareth looms vast and unknowable, Velisse bares her fangs in welcome, eager to strangle and claim the end of all things.