The Fear Gorta crawled up the side of the caldera. It was a pathetic, terrifying thing—a skeleton wrapped in ragged grass, holding an Alms bowl that could never be filled. Beggar's Boon. It brought famine wherever it walked.
It reached the summit. It sensed a massive source of energy within. Heat. Life. Fuel.
Volcan, the Roman god of fire (an aspect of Vulcan), rose from the lava lake. He was made of obsidian and magma, his hammer dripping with liquid rock.
"You seek charity?" Volcan rumbled.
The Wrong Meal
The Fear Gorta extended its bowl. "Give," it rasped. All-Devouring Hunger.
It tried to drain the heat from the god. It tried to eat the fire.
For a second, the lava around Volcan's feet cooled to gray rock. The hunger of the Fear Gorta was absolute.
Volcan frowned. "You are a bottomless pit. I am an overflowing cup."
"Let us see which wins."
The Eruption
Volcan slammed his hammer into the crater. Mantle Tear.
The mountain exploded.
It wasn't a trickle of lava; it was a pyroclastic flow—a superheated avalanche of gas, ash, and rock moving at hurricane speeds.
The Fear Gorta opened its mouth to scream, but there was no air, only fire. It tried to eat the blast, but you cannot eat a tsunami. The spirit of famine was overwhelmed by the sheer, devastating abundance of energy.
The grass rags burned. The bones turned to ash. The Alms bowl melted into slag.
The Fear Gorta was vaporized instantly, its hunger finally silenced by a feast it couldn't survive. Volcan sank back into his lava bath. "Too greedy," he muttered.