Gnag

• Build & height: 2.9 m (ch. 270), slab-shouldered, a great slab of a man, and he grows when he eats: a hand's breadth taller and broader for one cart-sized bite of root-bridge (ch. 270); full of Ferdinand's heartwood, "three metres, five, eight" (ch. 272); shrunk back to 2.9 m mid-swing by DESPAWN (ch. 273); growing again with every root-arch he eats across the clearing (ch. 273–274).
• Face: split down the middle. Left: a man's, bald, sun-split, heavy-jawed, one wet human eye that looks at everything the way a hungry man looks at a table. Right: oak, grey-brown bark for skin, a deep knot where the eye should be. And under both halves the mouth: a jaw that unhinges like a sawmill's (ch. 270).
• Hair: none on the man's half (a bald, sun-split scalp). From the right side of his skull, twigs sprout; full of heartwood they spread into branches (ch. 272).
• Eyes: one human (left), one knot (right). As the heartwood giant his knot-eye is "a hollow you could climb into" (ch. 272). At the end the human eye closes and bark grows over the lid: "Smooth. A knot where an eye was." (ch. 274)
• Skin & sin-mark: the man's half weathered and sun-split; the oak half bark. Gluttony, amber, and it is Codex-written: GLUTTONY · VOLUME X · THE ROOT-EATER. On the page it's an amber light opening under the bark of his oak chest like a book, lines of amber script (ch. 270). It goes dark while Kali borrows it (ch. 271), blazes white-gold with Ferdinand's heartwood in him (ch. 272), and glows through the oak, ravenous, when he's starving (ch. 273). The bark-line is his price drawn on the body: a ridge of bark creeping over the man's skin "like frost", up the collarbone, the neck, the jaw, the corners of the mouth (ch. 270–274).
• Signature item: the iron jaw: two rows of hammered iron teeth, iron so no splinter survives his mouth. Second: the napkin.
• Movement: big, unhurried and courteous. He steps over crew members as if they were puppies and pats Flisa's head with a finger as big as she is (ch. 270). Before he eats he sniffs, names the wood, and bites in four. When food moves he's fast as a dog (turning his head to catch Flisa's arm, ch. 270). 274).
• Variant looks: Yard-boy (flashback, ch. 274: a skinny boy in a queue at a kitchen hatch in a bark-yard wall, hand out for bread) · Oak-armed (before Saga V: only the right arm oak, per Flisa, ch. 270) · Half oak (ch. 270) · Fed (the bark-line high on his neck) · The dark book (ch. 271: jaw open on the Great Root and nothing happening, horrified: "What did you do?") · The heartwood giant (ch. 272: eight metres, pale living heartwood climbing over him, the twig-crown spread into branches, only the mouth and one human eye still a man's, the roots moving with his hand) · Starving (ch. 273: half oak again, his stomach "like a whole forest creaking") · All oak (ch. 274: bark over the corners of the mouth, the iron teeth sinking into wood) · The stump.

He eats wood, and he's as strong as what he ate. (Gluttony X; ch. 270)

• What he eats (on the page): a whole root-tree as tall as a lighthouse, branch by branch (ch. 269); an eight-hundred-year-old root-bridge, a cart-sized chunk in four bites (ch. 270); the Upp Igen's rail, Roffe's ladle, the wooden sheath off Rougeina's hip, a mooring post, a root, a stripper's mallet (ch. 270); Flisa's arm ("Scarwood. Sweet. Like anger.", ch. 270); one bite of the Great Root's bared heartwood (ch. 272); root-arch after root-arch across the clearing (ch. 273); and Flisa's Shard-Storm, fistful after fistful (ch. 274). He lunged for Bror's birch grip ("Birch!") and missed by an inch (ch. 270).
• As strong as what he ate: Krydog's Rising Fist doesn't make the oak creak; he backhands Krydog off the bridge ("He hits like a root-bridge!" / "Because I ate one.", ch. 270). With one bite of Ferdinand he's as strong as the tree that holds nine realms, and the roots obey him as if he were the tree ("The roots think he's Ferdinand!", Kompis, ch. 272): he lifts a hand and every root round the Great Root rises like fingers, and he tears down the root-vault over both crews.
• Iron teeth: a splinter in his mouth dies. Flisa's arm went dark between his teeth and she couldn't step out of it (ch. 270). But a dead splinter is still wood, and still food: "Chew all you like. It's still WOOD." (ch. 274)
• He tastes wood: its age, the way it faced, what it is ("Fallen bark, every plank. Hand-fitted."). He smells it on people, and isn't hungry for anyone without it.
• What it can't do:
  • Gain from anything that isn't wood. Vigolas ("No wood on you. Not hungry for you.", ch. 270) and Mingus ("No wood on that, either.", ch. 272): nothing to eat, so nothing to grow on. Blows as strong as a tree couldn't move the Cave-Bear an inch (ch. 272).
  • Eat while his book is dark. Under Kali's BORROW he can't bite and doesn't want to, for sixty seconds, "for the first time in twenty years", and his oak-strength goes dark with it (ch. 271).
  • Keep a bite DESPAWN sends home (ch. 273).
  • Stop.
  • Eat a soul. Bror is a soul in a birch grip, and must never be eaten.

• Burn cost: every bite spends the man. His ceiling is not a heart overflowing but a man running out: the bite of Ferdinand left only his mouth and one eye human ("One more bite. And I won't be like him. I'll BE him.", ch. 272), and the last fistful of Flisa's shards took the mouth too (ch. 274).

He becomes what he eats. (Gluttony X; ch. 270) On the page: every bite, the bark creeps further over the man (ch. 270). Kompis: "Every bite he takes, there's less man in him." Gnag: "And more of everything else." One bite of Ferdinand left only his mouth and one human eye a man's (ch. 272). Flisa's Shard-Storm: Jeppson measures the bark-line "a finger's width. For a fistful", and Kompis counts what's left of him: "About a mouthful." (ch. 274). The last of the man was his mouth, and when it went to bark, the hunger went with it. The price was the cure. "…I'm not hungry. I don't think I've ever… not been hungry…" (ch. 274)

• His own appetite: the reflex jaw. Ysel sees it: "There's one way into him. His mouth. It always was." Flisa's SHARD-STORM feeds him her own body, and Rougeina Swaps the falling shards one by one into the air over his open throat. The one fight in the series won by feeding the enemy (ch. 274).
• Kali's BORROW (ch. 271): Gluttony is a sin she can take. His book goes dark for sixty seconds, and his oak-strength with it, and the crews hurt him for the first time (Bakasura bites his oak half and spits it out: "…Tastes like a ship.").
• Greed-sight: no gold on the oak half, all of it on the man: "The bit he hasn't eaten yet." (Vigolas, ch. 270). Emerald Knuckles land there once his book is dark (ch. 271).
• DESPAWN (ch. 273) sends a bite back to before it arrived. A mouthful is within Vigolas's measure.
• Things with no wood: Vigolas, Mingus. The Cave-Bear holds the roof and doesn't move (ch. 272).
• Svala's Flight-Line cut his strippers' great saw-chain (ch. 271) and their nine-barrel nail-cannon (ch. 274).
• What protected him: while Ferdinand's heartwood was in him, Flisa couldn't hit him: "He's made of my tree now. If I hurt him, I hurt HIM." / "I know." (ch. 272). DESPAWN gave her back the right to (ch. 273).

• The leather apron and the napkin, tucked in before every meal.
• The Barkstrippers (BARKSTRIPPER · K-II MARKED · bark-harvesters): leather aprons, iron-shod boots, iron draw-knives, long iron hooks, mallets, coils of chain, brass-hooped nail-guns firing fat iron spikes, and bundles of stripped living bark on their backs for the Order's bark-yards at Glasheim (ch. 266). Fifty on the bark-shelf (ch. 266); a hundred at the Great Root (ch. 270–271).
• The Foreman (unpowered: heavy, grey-bearded, iron rings in his ears), who carries their licence, CERTIFIED HARVEST · BARK-YARDS OF THE ORDER, under Ingrith's cold seal ("Paper and iron, son. Iron still works.", ch. 266). "Boss?" (ch. 272, 274)
• Iron: the great two-man iron saw on a chain (ch. 270–271), the nine-barrel nail-cannon on a cart (ch. 274), and iron ring-spikes.

He doesn't fight a battle; he eats it. He opens with a meal (the bridge you're standing on), so his first blow already hits like what he ate. Mid-fight he bites whatever wooden thing a fighter is holding (a sheath, a ladle, a rail, a gun-stock), lets his strippers ring any Scarwood in iron, and keeps her "for pudding". He finishes by pinning his enemy and walking off to the main course. Combo: Gnag + the Barkstrippers: iron kills the Scarwood's doors, the strippers bare the heartwood and saw a step for his teeth, and his iron teeth kill whatever splinters are left.

• Wants: one bite of Ferdinand (ch. 270). Under that, and he never says it: not to be hungry, once.
• Fears: an empty plate; the hatch closing before he reaches the front of the queue.
• Contradictions: a gourmand who has never once been full; courteous to his food ("Pudding's walking to me. How kind."); gentle fingers and an iron mouth; a man who wanted to become the strongest thing in the world and was only at peace the moment he stopped being a man.
• Humour: cheerful menu-talk, belching, fond ("Everyone says that.").
• Habits: tucks the napkin in before he eats; names the wood before he bites it; licks his iron teeth with a tongue the colour of sap; sniffs people for wood.
• Alone: twenty years at the foot of the Great Root, smelling him.

• Flisa: her nightmare, and his "pudding". He bit her arm dead (ch. 270) and pinned her to a root with an iron ring-spike: "Pudding keeps." / "I'll choke you." / "Everyone says that." With Ferdinand in him she couldn't touch him (ch. 272); with the bite sent home she fed him into oak with her own body (ch. 274), then left one splinter in the stump: "There. Now you're mine too." Listening through it: "He's not hurting. Here, anyway."
• Ferdinand / the Great Root: twenty years of smelling him, and one bite. "…Hello, old man." (ch. 271). The tree screamed through every root in Scalelist (ch. 272). He is rooted among his roots now, and the next dawn Ferdinand dropped his first slab of bark at the Great Root in a thousand years, "when it stopped hurting" (ch. 275).
• Vigolas: no wood, no hunger. "Oi. Supper." / "You again. There's nothing to eat on you." / "I know. That's why I'm not scared of you." DESPAWN took his one bite home: "Where'd my bite go?" / "Home." (ch. 272–273)
• Kali: borrowed his Gluttony for sixty seconds, the only minute in twenty years he wasn't hungry, and nearly bit the Great Root with it herself (ch. 271).
• Bakasura: bit his oak half, chewed, spat: "…Tastes like a ship." (ch. 271)
• Kompis & Bror: he lunged for Bror's birch grip; Kompis tore it out of his teeth: "That's my BROTHER." (ch. 270). Kompis watched the man in him shrink bite by bite, and found the bread hatch at the end of his warmest thread (ch. 274).
• Mingus: the Cave-Bear he couldn't move. "No wood on that, either. Fine. You hold the roof. I'll have seconds." (ch. 272)
• Krydog: "He hits like a root-bridge!" / "Because I ate one." (ch. 270). His two blows in one beat would have overflowed the captain; Vigolas took the second (ch. 272).
• Jeppson: two Glasheim yard-boys paid in bread, and one of them never took bark off a living tree. Jeppson measured his bark-line like a plank (ch. 274).
• Ysel: saw the one way into him (ch. 274). Rougeina: lost a sheath to his teeth (ch. 270) and rained shards down his throat (ch. 274). Svala: cut his saw and his cannon. Trollmage: advice for his Foreman: "Sometimes a hundred years… Bring a pillow." (ch. 274)
• The Foreman and the Barkstrippers: "I'm not your boss any more. I'm his." (ch. 272). When he went to wood, they dropped their draw-knives in the moss and walked away empty-handed (ch. 274).
• Natta: Saga V's other Gluttony. Volume VIII ate light and went dark to it; Volume X ate wood and became it. Both paid their book's price in full on the page, and both lived, changed.

• "Fallen bark, every plank. Hand-fitted. And a Scarwood in the hold. Supper and pudding." (ch. 270)
• "Eight hundred years old, that bridge. South-facing. Lovely." (ch. 270)
• "One bite. That's all I've ever wanted. One bite of him." (ch. 270)
• "Pudding keeps." / "I'll choke you." / "Everyone says that." (ch. 270)
• "…Hello, old man." (ch. 271)
• "I'm not your boss any more. I'm his." (ch. 272)
• "THEN I'LL EAT EVERYTHING ELSE!" (ch. 273)
• "…I'm not hungry. I don't think I've ever… not been hungry…" (ch. 274, his last words)