Content
This one will be easy- it can’t get much easier than this, Max assured himself. He hadn’t been in the best of spirits lately, and he needed something easy for a change. Though things had been going well enough in this new town, he just couldn’t shake those ever-present “storm clouds” from his head. It was that time again, time for Rust to feed, and his inner unease just refused to leave him alone, no matter how straightforward he knew this next target was going to be- things still didn’t feel easy.
The pair had been in this new settlement for weeks now. It was considerably larger than the last one, with congested walkways and busy trade stands; the kind of place where it would be hard to notice one or two people disappearing. In this case, however, Max didn’t really have to worry about that, because the town had one particular custom that couldn’t have been more convenient if it had been created just for them.
This town, as one of its harshest punishments, brought criminals out into a secluded clearing, tied them to a post, and left them to their fate. Of course they had their line that “if the villain were to find freedom and return, then he must have been granted pardon by the gods,” but from what Max had heard, this hardly ever happened. And with Rust around, he doubted the gods would be granting any pardons any time soon. Today would be the first time since their arrival that such a punishment would be carried out. From what he had overheard, a thief had picked the wrong man to steal from, gotten caught, and killed a number of guards while trying to escape. The perfect candidate for Rust’s next meal, served up on a proverbial silver platter.
So Max did his best to focus on the task at hand, after all, the sooner he got this over with the sooner he could relax. Currently, that task was weaving through the thick patch of forest with Rust in tow, making their way to the clearing. He had noticed the dragon’s ears perk up not too long ago, but was only now beginning to hear the faint sounds that occasionally made it through the light din of the woodlands. Every now and then, Max could hear a distant grunt or an exasperated sigh as their target grew closer, still out of sight.
It wasn’t until another minute or two that Max was able to make out the clear break in the trees that marked the clearing and could start to make out the figure struggling upright a few paces beyond. “Looks like we’re here. Make sure no one else is around, and I’ll go out and cut him loose,” Max said. Rust sniffed the air. There had definitely been a few other humans there earlier, but their scents were faint now; only Max and his next meal remained. The dragon motioned for the boy to go on.
Max nodded in response and began to push his way through the last of the brush, emerging into the clearing and looking over his target for the first time. It was a woman- quite obviously a slave woman- dressed in tattered clothes and bearing a few bruises. The boy hesitated for a moment, caught off guard by the unexpected sight.
“Who’s there?” she asked in a frightened tone, turning her head in the direction of the rustling trees. When she caught sight of Max, her expression changed to one of relief, and then quickly to one of surprise. “How…? It’s you… Oh I can’t believe it!” At first Max was confused, but then he realized that this woman looked strikingly familiar, and it didn’t take him too much longer to place her.
She had been a fellow slave. She had been there the day he met Rust, the day their master had met his fitting end. She had fled with the rest of the company and must have somehow made it all the way out here. “I never thought I’d see you again, boy, after that dragon attack. How did you manage to make it so far in one piece?!” Max opened his mouth to respond, but the woman cut him off. “Oh, never mind, why question a miracle? Just get me down from here so we can get away from this dirty town!”
Max kept a straight face and started towards her, not speaking a word. To her this must have looked like a clear sign of aid, but inside Max’s intentions were quite the opposite. With every step he took, he thought back to another moment when he had been abused by their former master, another moment when no help- no comfort- could be found. Regardless of the circumstances, none of the other slaves had ever shown a hint of sympathy to him, no matter how cruel their master had been.
He walked up behind the woman- to the ropes that bound her tight to the wooden post- and drew the knife that he had fastened to his belt. Their master’s old knife; still polished to a shine. He put the blade to the first rope.
But despite the anger that silently bubbled up inside him, he couldn’t help but start to feel a bit of… remorse? After all this was another slave just like him. Sure she was much older, but that just meant she had been in their former master’s service for that much longer. Perhaps she had had all the empathy beaten out of her in that time? No! It didn’t matter now anyway, she was a criminal, tied up to die at the hands of the wilds, she deserved her fate!
Max cut through one of the lines.
But wasn’t Max a criminal himself? A thief just like her? A killer, just like her, feeding his victims to a hungry dragon to hide the evidence? And did he ever show any sympathy to his victims? Had he had all the empathy beaten out of himself too?
Max grunted in frustration as he made it through another one of the ropes. Damn it! It doesn’t matter anyway! She’s going to die whether I cut her free or not! If I don’t feed her to Rust, something else will get her instead! he told himself. That’s when his mind was pulled back to that one night, the one he had so desperately been trying to forget. He had used a similar bit of reasoning then too, to justify almost feeding that little girl to her doom. He didn’t have any control then, and he didn’t have any now.
A soft thud filled the clearing as the woman dropped to the ground, Max having severed the final line holding her in place. She got to her feet, rubbing her wrists. “Man, am I lucky you showed up, boy! Now let’s get out of here before someone else does!” Max remained still, prompting her to look back at him more closely.
“Say, isn’t that our master’s knife…? But, he always kept that on him… and that dragon…-” The decidedly unfortunate woman had caught this minor detail a bit late. “You’re wrong,” Max interrupted in a quiet voice, “You would have been better off if I hadn’t found you.”
At that moment, just like so many times before, Rust made his move. Blasting out of the tree line and flattening the woman to the dirt with his impact. Max might hardly have blinked if not for the dust that had been kicked up. Now she lay flailing on the ground, pinned once again against an unyielding mass, but her new imprisoner wasn’t content to simply let her waste away. No, she certainly wouldn’t be going to waste.
This time, Rust began with his prey’s feet, skillfully guiding them into his maw with his flexible tongue, as a powerful clawed limb kept her legs in place. The woman screamed. “What’s going on!? What is this thing!?” Another set of claws on her back prevented her from twisting around to get a view of what was holding her down. Normally, Max would have insisted on the dragon starting with the head to keep things quiet, but they were far enough from the town that no one would hear her. After all, that’s why this clearing was used.
It wasn’t long before she started to feel the warm wetness of the dragon’s insides creeping up over her shoes and covering her lower legs. Her eyes went wide as she felt the wicked tongue working its way over her thighs, her new confines pulsing and rippling in an unmistakably live manner. She tried to kick, but her feet were held firm.
“Why are you just standing there, boy!?” she yelled, doing her best to look up at him. Max put his knife back in its sheath. “You should know… it was me who brought that dragon to the camp that day,” he said quietly. The woman was so surprised by his lack of fear- or lack of almost any expression- that for a moment she could hardly even speak, though her body still struggled almost like it had a separate will of its own. “I let it follow me back from the woods… I watched it swallow our master whole…”
As Rust’s jaws made their way up his meal’s slender frame, the beast released the pressure on the woman’s back, opting instead to hold down just a single arm, allowing him to begin lifting her torso off the ground. For the first time she was able to look back and see in horrifying detail how half her body had disappeared into the maw of the hungry dragon. Her best attempts at struggling producing only minor bulges in its undulating neck.
She turned back towards Max and started clawing at the ground with her one free arm. When it became clear that this wouldn’t do any good, her head shot up to look at Max, desperation clear on her face. The look in her eyes struck a noticeable crack in his stoic facade as Max’s eyes widened slightly and his lips parted.
That look, it was the same expression that had been on Lily’s face, just when she had realized the part that Max played in Rust’s meals.
Before she could say anything though, she felt her pelvis slide in over the back of her predator’s throat, his slimy saliva soaking through to her skin. She didn’t have much time left. He couldn’t tell exactly what was going through her head, how much she had actually figured out, but she must have put at least some of it together.
“But why me!? WHY ME!?” she screamed, now crying. Max closed his eyes for a moment, his face twitching. “What did I ever do to you!?” she demanded. Max finally snapped, “Nothing! You did nothing! No matter what he did to me you did nothing! Just like everyone else!” he shouted back. At this point the line between being angry at her and being angry at the truth in her words was blurred at best, but he kept going anyway, tears beginning to fall slowly from his own face.
“Would it have been too much of a risk to comfort me even a little?! To help me up when he kicked me to the ground?!” The woman, now swallowed completely up to her breasts, stuck her arms into Rust’s maw in a desperate attempt to somehow push herself out of the beast’s throat. But to her alarm she found her hands sucked into the slippery opening around her and pinned before she even knew it, reducing her struggles to mere wriggles as the boy in front of her continued to shout. “Would it have killed any of you to fight back even a little against your master!? Just enough to help me?! Maybe if you had, I wouldn’t have had to feed him to a dragon and you wouldn’t be next!!”
Max finished his tirade, breathing heavily, as he watched the woman become enveloped in glistening red flesh up to her neck. Her expression was a whirlwind of emotions: desperation, terror and panic. But in that final moment, all of it seemed to fade away, leaving behind only a look of deep sorrow. And then, Max heard the words that would haunt him for the rest of his life; a quiet statement, whimpered with a final breath. “I’m sorry…”
Max watched the red folds envelop the woman’s face, sealing her away inside the dragon’s hungry gullet, Rust’s muscles quietly working her down into his belly. Max looked away as the dragon closed his mouth, realizing suddenly that Rust had probably been able to understand everything that they had said.
The boy wondered if the dragon realized he had been struggling over whether or not to go through with it the whole time. He had never said it outright. It might have just looked like he was angry at the woman and that was all. Max might have feared what the dragon would do if he showed even a hint of unwillingness to continue their deal, but at that point he was too emotional to care. He sobbed quietly behind closed eyes, his fists clenched as he tried to get a hold of himself.
That’s when he felt something warm and wet brush across his face, something that definitely did not feel like a tear. Max opened his eyes and inhaled sharply in surprise, only to find himself face to face with Rust. The dragon stared at him with a somewhat uncharacteristic look in his eyes. They were far from the innocent gaze of a puppy, but they shone with a gleam of sympathy, of concern even. Max was so surprised he almost forgot he was crying.
“You- you don’t usually lick me unless you’re threatening to eat me,” he said with a sort of morbid humor and a half-formed chuckle. Rust just held his gaze for a moment longer, then motioned back towards the trees, no doubt seeking a place to lie down and digest where they wouldn’t be interrupted.