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The villagers wouldn't say much about the tower. Just the same, you learned a fair bit by dressing up as an out-of-town farmer and simply listening.

What you knew from distant rumors: an old, run down stone tower, formerly the home of a small religious order. Supposedly the clerics are long gone, leaving some sort of guardian and, if the rumors could be trusted, a religious relic or two.

Relics fetch good money. You sit hunched over your cups in the inn, pretending not to listen. That's how you learned about Quozl.

"...Chess game this weekend," one villager said two tables away. "He and Clack and two and two."

'Clack'. That would be the local brass dragon. Not an especially large or formidable one, but not worth the risk to hunt down. You've met some dragon hunters. It is a profitable enterprise as long as you stay outside of the scaly beast. Most don't. The average novice dragon hunter's career lasts about as long as it takes the dragon to digest them.

"And fireworks the day after," said the second villager. "My daughter loves going to those. Quozl has the best pyrotechnic spells."

So. A mage. Probably one who moved into the tower after the clerics left.

A third villager shoots you a glance and they shut up. You need more info. An hour later you get it.

"Please don't hurt me," the peasant spitted on the point of your dagger blubbers. "I have a family."

"A soft word and a knife in the back gets you more than a soft word," you say, quoting an old thief parable. "Tell me about Quozl."

"He guards the old tower," said the peasant. "Hardly every leaves it. Teaches us local lore, he's been there a while."

"That's nice," you say, sliding another quarter inch of blade in. "Powerful spellcaster?"

"I don't think so," whines the peasant. "How would I know?"

He flinches, thinking to run away, and you reflexively drive the knife in to the hilt. Darn it all, that's a bad habit. Now you have to hide another body.

It takes an hour of hard work to bury the peasant in the town midden. By the time he's found you'll be long gone. At least you know what trail leads to the tower now. Just after midnight you're staring up at mossy stones and considering how best to break in.

There is only one door, thick bronzewood bound with actual bronze. There is no sign of a lock, so it's likely barred from the other side and it'd take an axe, a lot of work and even more noise to get through. There's an easier way.

From your pouch you take the spidersilk cord and steel treble hook. A minor magic on the grapple renders it silent and it only takes two throws to get it through one of the slit windows. No one sees you climb the tower wall, needing only the occasional toehold to help you up. Soon enough you're in a narrow spiral stair that runs inside the window.

You pause to take in your surroundings. All is quiet. You are between floors, looks like. Up or down? Where is the mage most likely to be?

You're not here for a fight. The stairway is a safe place to gather your wits and recover from the climb. At least, it should be safe. Turns out it isn't. A sudden pain in your calf makes you swear and jump halfway out the window. By the time you look down two beads of blood stand out of your leg a hand's length apart.

What just happened? A trap? But you were standing still. There's nothing in sight that could injure you.

Suddenly it's hard to even stand. Poison! Some sort of weakening agent. Best to retreat and fight another day. But you don't even get to do that. As you pull yourself onto the window ledge a cool scaly bulk squashes you against the wall. The venom and surprise are all it needs. Whatever it is came right out of the wall and before you can squirm free you're lying in the narrow stair, wrapped in the coils of a great serpent. There isn't even a hole! It passes through hard grey stone like a ghost, only solidifying to coil you up.

A feathered serpent. The guardian. "Quozl?"

The couatl, resplendent in multicolored feathers, says nothing. Half its length is occupied in squeezing you into submission. It uses the rest to drag you down the stairs. As you enter a room on what must be the second story of the tower a magical light blooms. The altar room. This is what you were after. The glitter of gold from religious trinkets that rest on the altar draws your eye.

Unfortunately you are in no position to pilfer them. The couatl considers you out of dispassionate slit-pupiled eyes, then bites you again where your arm protrudes from its coils. More venom. More weakness. With a brush of a wing, using only the stiff feathers, it forces the dagger from your hand. You don't remember drawing it and never had a chance to use it. That hand sticks only a few inches past the strong feathery coils wrapped around you. Under those feathers are the cool hard scales you felt first.

Couatl. You try to remember what you've read about them. They are creatures of the upper planes and can travel ethereally. That explains how it surprised you.

It has you cold. You can't reach your other weapons. It could squeeze you to death right here and now. Instead, it relaxes a portion of its coils until your legs are exposed. Lacking hands, it noses over you until it finds the dagger you had hidden in your boot. That coil clamps back down and the next relaxes. One coil at a time it exposes your body and searches you.

It is very careful. It's done this before. It doesn't need to be. Two doses of its poison and you can barely move. You can talk just fine, though.

"I wasn't going to hurt you," you whisper. It's all you can managed with a thigh-thick coil of feathered scales wrapped around your chest.

It grips your gloves between its inward-hooking teeth and pulls them off, one and then the other. It already has both your daggers, your pouches and now your magic gloves off to one side.

It shoots a glance at the altar and the light there begins to intensify. Soon it glows like an indoor sun. You can feel the warmth where the cool scales don't press against your leather. This place must have been a sun temple at some point. Pelor maybe, or a lesser sky god.

"You killed a villager," it hisses.

"That was an accident," you protest. How did it know about that? Wait, couatls can read minds. You try to think good thoughts.

"I am the guardian of this tower," the feathered serpent hisses. "You have invaded my domain. You are a thief, a murderer." There was a formality to its words. It had said them before, to other intruders.

"That was an accident - wait, wait!" But the couatl doesn't wait. The coils snug tight around you and a scaly face slides closer, parting into a yawn. Cool pink flesh slides around your head and you see the folded fangs that deliver its venom. The rest of its mouth is a forked black tongue and dozens of small, sharp,teeth that hook toward the purple gullet. A gullet that grows ominously close as the feathered serpent engulfs your head.

"It was an accident!" Slimy throat slithers other your face as it effortlessly swallows your head. Your shoulders are wider but already its jaws unhinge and push forward on one side. Sharp little teeth sink into your leather armor then the other side of its jaw pushes over your opposite shoulder. It's a big snake, bigger than a man. It gets its jaws over your shoulders with no difficulty and they are still working forward one side at a time, pulling it over you. Two rows of sharp little teeth on each side in the upper jaws, one on each side in the lower ones. More than enough.

The good news is that your armor protects you from all but the occasional stab of fang. The bad is the slippery throat flesh sliding inch by inch past your face. You try to squirm free. Hopeless. It has you dead to right in three different ways. The first is the muscular coils that slide down only to make room for its advancing jaws. The second is the dozens and dozens of sharp teeth and latch into your armor. They hook toward the back of its maw and the only way to release their grip is to push deeper. The loose articulation of its jaws allows it to release the grip on one side and then the other, hooking its head from side to side as it swallows you. At all times at least half its teeth keep you from pulling out.

Either the coils or inward-hooking teeth would be enough. And then there is the venom. You lack the strength to do more than squirm feebly. Useless. You feel its scales stretch apart on elastic skin and even through its flesh hear the rustle of feathers as the bulge moves further down its body. Its jaws are to your waist, and still its coils wrap your legs tight. The couatl is taking no chances with its meal. It doesn't need to. If you got your full strength back this second you'd still be bound for its stomach. It's just too strong and it has all the advantages.

"But the villager was an accident!" Using up your last breaths shouting into a feathered serpent's throat may not be the best idea, but it is the only idea you have. It is not an idea that proves of any help. Maybe it doesn't hear you. Maybe it doesn't care. It just walks its jaws down your legs until your feet slide into its mouth.

Up until now its jaws and teeth did all the work. It pulled itself over you as a sock as pulled over a foot. It hasn't even bothered to swallow, but that changes now. And it swallows in a peculiarly snakey way. Its throat tenses down and ripples, sure enough, but you feel the bend it forms in its neck as well. It slowly forces that ess down its neck, and that pushes the bulge that is you along as well.

The thick layer of slime that lines its gullet long since slicked you down for easy swallowing and you slip helplessly down its threat, still squirming with all the strength its venom left you. The couatl is twenty or so feet long and thick as a big man's thigh. Now a great bulge makes its way down the feathery snake, coming to rest in its thickest coil.

You know what's going to happen to you now. You felt the sphincter open, felt yourself slide into the feathered serpent's stomach. It is easily long enough to accommodate you and its stomach acids are ready and waiting. Your leather armor provides quite a lot of protection, but your face and hands start to tingle at once. The long process of digestion has begun and it left that armor on you for a reason. Leather is, after all, just animal hide. Flesh and bone and armor you are on a journey through its guts. A few of the metal buckles may survive the trip. The rest of you won't.

"But you're a couatl!" A last, desperate cry as the gurgling starts. Couatls are rare beasts, but benevolent. You aren't supposed to eat people!"

You feel it moving, feel the great swelling you make in its middle slide over the stones. The warmth pressing in through its cool flesh can be only one thing. The sun altar. A convenient place to curl up and rest after its meal. Sunning itself to speed up digestion. Feathers or no, it is still a snake.

It turns out it can hear you. It grants you just one sentence of its time before settling down to rest.

"You can make that argument to my stomach," it hisses. "Be persuasive."

Then there is just the dark, the growing warmth, and the slow but accelerating gurgle as its body goes to work on its meal. The poison seems to be wearing off. Your strength is coming back. Unfortunately it turns out that being wrapped in a body-shaped scaly coffin makes any amount of strength pointless. You can wriggle all you want, you're still not getting out the way you got in. All it does it make the feathered serpent twitch, as though in sympathy.

In two days the couatl will play chess with a dragon as the villagers watch, then the day after, fireworks. There will still be a man-shaped bulge in its middle then, slowly diminishing as it it digests and passes you. The villagers won't care. They've seen it before.

Half an hour ago you'd have wagered that ending up as feathered serpent shit was an impossibly rare fate for a thief. Turns out you were wrong. The couatl knew exactly what it was going from the moment it bit you. You aren't the first to take a trip down this couatl's throat. You're sure you won't be the last.