Content
It was just another “normal” day for Max, making his way inconspicuously down the crowded street. In a mob like this, any one of the nearby pedestrians could have been mistaken for the little ex-slave’s master, but in reality, he was moving through the town on his own. Well, not exactly alone I suppose. For a while now, he had been following someone, a somewhat shady-looking man. He had developed an eye for these kinds of people, but he wasn’t about to make a judgment based on appearances and impressions- not when it came to this.
He was hoping he would catch the man doing something cruel, anything that would show a glimpse of his nature, but so far all he had done was walk around the town. He spoke to no one and stopped nowhere, which was kind of strange in itself, but nothing solid. Max was actually about to give up and try to find someone else, when he noticed a strange shift in the man’s behavior.
His target had suddenly picked up speed and changed direction, as if something had caught his eye. The man started weaving through the crowd with purpose, and Max nearly lost him, but he caught sight of the man turning down a narrow alleyway between two buildings. And not just any alley, Max realized as he approached. They were at the edge of the town, and that particular path served as a perfect, inconspicuous passage out towards the forest. He had used it himself a number of times to enter and leave the settlement without being noticed.
Max rushed to the narrow opening, it was just wide enough for a man to walk through. His target was already a few paces ahead, but the man had slowed down now, looking almost like he was tiptoeing down the path. Something wasn’t right, it almost seemed like he was…
That’s when it happened. You see the alley was tight enough that Max couldn’t really see past his target, but at that moment the man carefully reached down towards his hip, twisting enough that the boy could catch a glimpse of what lay further down the passage. And what he saw, was the flash of a waving white dress.
Sure, that could have been anything, really: a clothes line or just some tattered fabric, but somehow Max couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew what he’d just seen. After all, he had thought of practically nothing else for days; he had seen it in his dreams- in his nightmares- over and over. That little white dress… and the terrified child who wore it.
But that wasn’t all, because as the man straightened out again, Max could clearly see that what he had taken from his hip was a knife. He bared it now in a ready position, quietly creeping up on his own unsuspecting target. Max’s heart skipped a beat, and he froze up. Could that really be her? What is that guy gonna do? Horrific flashes of events that might be just moments away filled the boy’s head, compounded with his own inner turmoil, dredged up from that one harrowing night he wished he could forget.
He saw the man raise the knife slowly, looking like he was getting ready to strike, and something in Max just clicked.
The boy broke out into a full-on sprint, his hand darting down to his own belt where there too hung a knife. The sound of his footsteps echoed off the bordering walls, but he had left his stealth behind him. The man heard Max approaching and tried to turn around, but he was slowed somewhat by the tight surroundings. He had only managed to turn half-way, and had only just spotted Max, when the boy lunged at him. Taking a page out of Rust’s book, Max leapt into the air, keeping his hand with the knife out in front and close in to his chest, throwing himself at the man’s upper body.
He couldn’t have landed a better blow. Whether deliberately or not, Max plunged the blade into the side of the assailant’s neck. Grabbing on tight to his shirt, Max held his position as the man began to flail around in confusion for a moment before ultimately collapsing to the ground with the boy on top.
Max remained, crouched there, staring at the ground away from the man he had just impaled. He couldn’t believe what he had just done. I mean, he had fed a number of people to Rust by now, and I guess he was okay with the idea of people dying, but… he had never done something like this with his own two hands before.
Somehow, though, that wasn’t what he was most scared of at that moment. Because as the man had hit the ground, Max had heard a definite squeal come from directly in front of him, and now that things had gone quiet, he could clearly hear the heavy breathing of another person overlapping with his own. He took a deep, shaky breath, steeled himself, and looked up.
“It- it’s you…” came the hauntingly familiar voice of a young girl. All Max could do for a moment was stare, unable to decide if he was relieved that he hadn’t just killed a man for nothing or mortified at suddenly coming face to face with the little girl he had failed to kill once before.
Lily was likewise a bit conflicted. When she had heard the struggle and turned around, at first she had been terrified- what with the large knife-wielding man just inches behind her, ready to do who-knows-what to her. But before she knew it he had collapsed to the ground and it was plain to see now that this boy had seen the man coming and rushed in to save her. But then she had recognized him.
Max watched as Lily instinctively withdrew a little, the relief in her eyes becoming overshadowed by fear. He couldn’t blame her after what he’d done. She looked down at the knife that now lay on the ground in the lifeless hands of her attacker, and then at the knife that still lay plunged in his neck, the boy still gripping it compulsively. Lily’s face started to contort a bit, whether in fear or disgust it wasn’t clear, and for a moment it looked like she might just turn and run away.
So Max did the only thing he could think of, the thing he had been wishing he could do all this time, the thing his conscience had been hammering him to do every restless night. “I’m sorry,” he said. The words came out quiet but emphatic, breaking the tense air. Lily froze, looking straight into Max’s eyes. She knew he was a deceitful boy, but they seemed sincere, guilt-ridden even. And look at what he had just done for her…
Unfortunately, that’s when things went from bad to worse. “Oh my gods! Somebody- anyone- come quickly! Murder! Murder!!” The cry ripped through the air from the busy end of the alleyway. A man stood there, with a shocked expression and an outstretched arm pointing at the two children. Both of them quickly realized that from that perspective, they only saw a pair of children standing over a dead man while one of them grasped the knife in his neck. No matter how that was interpreted, it didn’t bode well.
The two of them looked back at each other for a moment and it was clear that they both had the same idea: run. Lily was the first one out of the alley, already being the farthest along. She reached the open space and began to call out, “Mallow! Mallow!” in increasingly frantic bursts. She had no idea what the townspeople might do to her after seeing her in that position, and she did not want to find out. Max was close behind her, having jumped back to his feet, leaving his weapon behind. He had a very good idea of what might happen to them if they were caught, and while the girl would probably end up okay, he certainly would not. It would be his word against a corpse and the best outcome was that he would be sold back into slavery.
As Max reached the end of the passage, he quickly looked back and could see a line of people starting in after them, quickly rallied from the busy street beyond. The dead man caused a bit of a delay for them, but the consensus seemed to be to catch the killers before worrying about the victim, after all there wasn’t enough room to do both. He had no time to think of a plan, all he could do was keep running and hope to lose them in the forest.
But that’s not how it happened.
As they rushed through the clearing between the town and the forest, men began pouring out of the alley behind them, their shouts becoming louder. Max just kept his eyes on Lily, and on the approaching tree line, his footsteps pounding in his ears. Or, at least he thought it was his footsteps, until a great shadow passed over him with a gust of wind.
Suddenly, his view of the trees was gone, replaced by a large mass of purple scales which hit the ground with a resounding thud. Max and Lily skidded to a halt just a few feet in front, while the mob behind them quickly devolved from anger into panic. But the large dragon didn’t seem to pay them much mind, instead, she looked straight down at Lily.
Max’s heart nearly stopped. He was petrified to the point he couldn’t even think. There it was again, that same dragon from last time. It hadn’t looked at him yet, but he instantly remembered its piercing gaze, its fervent anger. All he could do was stare, wide-eyed, as the enormous beast proceeded to do the last thing he expected.
It lowered its head down to Lily, until its snout was just above her face, and then in one quick move it parted its jaws and engulfed her in a single bite. Max couldn’t believe it- he didn’t understand. The dragon raised its head, gulping the girl down in a single swallow, and Max simply stood and gaped in disbelief.
But… but last time that dragon protected her… it saved her from Rust… Now… now it’s eating her? Max thought. He watched powerlessly as the tiny bulge that was Lily silently descended the last lengths of the dragon’s throat, disappearing into its chest- into its belly. Unlike with Rust, it didn’t even make a bump. And just like that, the girl he had saved was gone.
The mob behind him had scattered at this point, its members either forcing themselves back through the alley or running out alongside the buildings. But Max still stood there, unable to come to terms with what he’d just seen, frozen in place by disbelief and fear. That is, until the dragon looked at him next.
Mallow, of course, had been doing her best to keep an eye on Lily from the air while she had been in town, but now she cursed herself for her lack of focus. It had been difficult to make out the girl’s tiny form amongst the many people on the street, and once she had finally seen Lily pass into the alley, the dragoness had been sure she was already home free. Her angle had prevented her from seeing exactly what transpired in that alleyway, but it seemed pretty clear that she had gotten into some trouble, trouble that seemed to be led by a familiar little human boy.
With Lily now tucked away safe and sound, the dragoness turned her attention to the little wretch. She definitely remembered him. That boy had tried to feed her Lily to another dragon, but she had shown up just in time. It had taken days before the poor girl had started acting like herself again, and with every sob Mallow had cursed her decision to let them scamper away. But now it seemed fate had given her another chance- and another reason- to change her mind.
It was that gaze that finally snapped Max out of his trance, that furious gaze that scorched him like a flame as the dragoness set her eyes on him. On pure instinct his body turned and he lifted a leg to run, but by that point it was already too late. Max saw the world around him begin to dim as the shadow of the dragon’s head loomed over him, and then there was a flash of white teeth, a flash of red flesh, and then the world went black.
He felt the warm, sopping tongue come up and sweep him off his feet, sending him tumbling around on its surface until it pressed him up against the roof of the dragon’s cavernous maw. To his dismay he found himself struggling, instinctually flailing around, trying to find something to hold onto, something to give him some control; he was acting just like every one of Rust’s meals.
Just like Lily before him, Max felt the dragoness raise her head skyward once more, pushing him to the back of its throat. Max screamed, knowing all too well what was about to come. He had seen it too many times. The dragon swallowed. The boy felt himself unceremoniously squished into the tightly packed passage, quickly picked up by the rhythmic constrictions of the dragon’s throat as he was consumed.
He cried and screamed and thrashed, hardly able to find an ounce of self-control, while inside all he could do was despair. This was his punishment, wasn’t it? For all those people he had turned into meals, for every man he had lured to his doom. Now he would suffer the same fate. He had thought that when he had first made that deal with Rust, that a dragon would be what saved him from his horrid destiny. He had thought that maybe- just maybe- he might have done something good for that little girl- for Lily- that might make up for him almost turning her into a meal too, but now she was a meal anyway. At the very least he had been sure that if he did end up getting eaten, it would have been by Rust! But he had been wrong about all of those things, and now it was over. I guess the old saying was true after all, “God is a trickster, and irony is His weapon.”
Inside, Lily did her best to catch her breath and regain her bearings. Everything had happened so fast: the rescue, the running, the second rescue, and that boy- she definitely hadn’t been expecting to run into him again. She looked back over the incident as she took in the familiar pink surroundings of Mallow’s cozy little belly-pocket. He really did save me… didn’t he? she thought.
That’s when she noticed a strange sound. Was that… screaming? Crying? She couldn’t quite make it out, it sounded kind of… muffled. But it was getting louder, coming from somewhere above her. She poked her head out of her little pouch and looked up as Mallow’s sphincter began to pucker, like it always did when something was just about to pass through. That’s when she finally recognized the sound as Max’s last, desperate pleas.
Lily gasped. Mallow didn’t see what happened! She doesn’t know what he did! She’s still angry at him for trying to get me eaten! she realized. But it was all too late. Max’s scream came to a head as the entrance to the stomach began to open. The young boy’s slimy, wet face and slicked hair emerged quickly, followed by his shoulders as he was promptly pushed through into the tiny strip of air that marked the fine line between life and digestion.
“Mallow, no!!” Lily cried, throwing her upper body over the lip of her safety pouch and reaching out as far as she could. She felt her hands slide over Max’s shirt as he fell, feeling for something to grab, but they were both slimy from being swallowed. Desperate, she clamped her hands together as hard as she could, gripping as tightly as possible. For a split second she felt her efforts begin to work, only to find his sudden weight tug sharply at her arms, pulling her feet up off the mucus-coated ground.
“LILY!!” Mallow exclaimed as the stomach suddenly sprung to life. The walls crashed together hard at the center, effectively blocking off the upper section of the organ from the deadly pool of acid below. It had been a desperate, knee-jerk reaction on the dragoness’ part to try and avoid a repeat of Lily’s previous close call- or worse- but luckily it hadn’t been needed. The elasticity of the stomach walls had let the lip of Lily’s pouch bend, barely managing to hold her up as almost half her body hung over the digestive abyss, clutching Max firmly by his closest arm.
Mallow quickly extended a portion of her stomach wall to support Max’s dangling weight, taking the pressure off Lily’s arms, but she held on tight until the dragoness managed to maneuver him up to the girl’s level and place him on the “ledge” next to her. Only once Lily was safely cradled back inside her pocket did Mallow allow the rest of her stomach to return to its normal shape… and allow her lungs to continue breathing.
Lily, now panting again from fear and exertion, looked over at Max. He was still alive and still in one piece, but it seemed the recent events had taken their toll on him. He lay past out on the slimy floor, breathing shallow, quick breaths.
“Lily! What were you thinking?” Mallow scolded. “Just… let me explain…” she breathed.