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Near the town of Adelburg in Five Villages County, up atop a grassy hill, stood what the townspeople called the Old Tower. It had stood there since long before the first of the villages was founded. The mossy stones of the tower blended into the backdrop of taller and equally green hills. Only when the clouds rolled in behind would it stand out, little more than a mile from the outermost farms.

A well worn foot trail led to the tower, for the villagers well knew its solitary inhabitant. On Godsdays after services the town priest would lead the children up the path, and the owner - or perhaps tenant, or even prisoner might be more accurate - would answer their questions about the history of the area and regale them with stories he'd picked up over the many centuries of his existence.

Other times the villages tricked ne'er-do-wells into trying to burgle the tower. Or they brought tied-up criminals to the tower and left them on the doorstep. In either case, a bad person would go into the tower and not come back out.

The tenant of the tower was one of the Four. In the Five Villages area with its well patrolled roads and neatly tended farms monsters were hunted, chased out or killed. Except the ones who could be reasoned with. Chief among those were the Four. They were monsters, but they were helpful ones. There was Thistlefur, the local druid's enormous riding badger, Clack the copper dragon who worked with the mages of Otisburg. Hialfi, the huge fox-taur who made a scanty living delivering mail.

And there was the couatl.

Today, the couatl of the tower had a visitor who did not arrive on foot. It was wings that brought this one.

Hook-Beak, Goldfeather's son, arrived at the tower with a thunder of mighty wings. The soft grass around the base of it made an inviting landing spot but he chose to settle on the flat stone roof. Once there had been a parapet of crenels and merlons, and a conical wooden cap to keep the rain and arrows off the defenders, but age and weather had left the once regular barricade looking gap-toothed and topless. It was an easy landing spot, if an altogether rude one. The grass in front of the tower door was well trodden for a reason.

The gryphon landed with a scrape of claws and admired the view. It was a good place for a roost. Recent rains had left puddles on the roof and he turned his attention from the prosaic view of hills to the handsome gryphon in the mirror.

He was young, healthy and strong, if only two-thirds the size of his sire. He was a combination of lion and eagle, with the latter's alert yellow eyes, cruel hooked beak and talons toward the front. Then came great muscular white-feathered wings and sleek leonine hindquarters. His wings spanned more than twenty feet tip to tip and he was easily as large as a male lion. Hook-Beak was handsome and he knew it. Sadly, he was not particularly well-mannered or smart.

"I apologize," came a hissing voice from behind him. "For being inhospitable, but you cannot perch here. If you will fly down to the grass, we may speak."

Hook-beak turned and watched a ghostly feathered serpent rise right out of the roof. Once clear of the stones the couatl solidified and settled onto its coils. Wings at least as broad as his own folded. They had propelled the couatl even when it was in its ghostly state. How that worked, Hook-Beak could not have told you. Nor did he care.

"I will stay," he cawed. "The view is good. I will spot my prey and take it, and perhaps bring it back here to eat. A fat sheep will serve me well."

"The villagers will not approve," the couatl hissed, which brought a matching hiss of disdain from Hook-Beak.

"I will take what I want," the gryphon said with the confidence of the young and foolish, "And I will perch where I want."

"I cannot stop you from hunting where you will," hissed the couatl. "Only advise you against it. But you may not remain here. I am bound to guard this place. I have guarded this tower since before your great-grandfather came to the mountain, and I will still be here when your grandchildren are hatched."

By mountain he meant Rand Mountain, named for the chief of an adventuring band who drove off a green dragon and claimed the territory as his own. Past the sprawling farms of Adelburg down below the tower loomed the Mountain itself. It remained largely forested, and a clan of gryphons had dwelled there for human generations, tolerated much as were the Four due to old treaties. Goldfeather was the current chief of the clan and this was his son. This earned the gryphon more tolerance from the couatl than some previous intruders had received.

But there were limits. "Bah," cawed Hook-Beak. "I will stay. The view is good." And he lifted his tail, unsheathed the tip of has barbed feline penis, and sprayed a squirt of stinking urine onto the stones to mark his territory. Only a swift flick of the couatl's tail kept its own feathers from being fouled.

Manners cost nothing, goes the old saying. Lack of manners, on the other hand, is often expensive. Hook-Beak snorted derisively as he sensed the couatl go ghostly once more and sink through the roof stones.

A more experienced gryphon would consider that he'd just delivered a deadly insult to a being of unknowable age and strength. Hook-Beak was young and full of himself. Confident he was in control of the situation, he realized his error only when sharp fangs sank into his haunch.

That made him jump. Fangs as long and thick as a man's forefinger sank in and by the time he whirled around, sharp black talons ready, the only sign that he'd been attacked was two bright drops of blood on his rump the length of a man's hand apart.

The feathered serpent must have come up from below, ghostly, until it solidified just long enough to bite. Hook-Beak came to that realization just as fangs sank into his other haunch.

With a shriek of rage he leapt upward, catching a bare glimpse of something transparent disappearing into the roof as he sprang. Hook-Beak had been taught a lesson.

"Fine," he cawed. "I will go." And so he did...or at least, so he tried. A strange numbness spread rapidly up his body from the double bite marks and he settled heavily back to the roof, too weak to fly away.

A smarter, or more experienced gryphon would have collapsed limp to the stones and played at helplessness. Maybe he could trick the couatl into showing itself and solidifying before the paralyzing toxin took full effect. Hook-Beak was neither smart nor experienced. He struggled with all his strength to fly on half-numbed wings. Each leap carried him a lesser distance into the air and when the couatl finally did phase through the roof to wrap him in its coils he lacked even the strength to throw himself over the parapet.

The couatl wrapped him in a suffocating hug, squeezing even more of his flagging strength out. Muscular coils of feather-covered scales pinned his wings and forelegs to his sides and once more he was bitten, this time behind the feathery tuft of his right ear. Still more venom entered his bloodstream and Hook-Beak found he was so weak he could barely move. Only then did the serpent's snout appear before his beak.

"I asked you to leave," the couatl hissed. "Now you will stay." And the soft, flexible serpentine jaws slid up over his beak and engulfed his head.

Hook-Beak tried to yank his head out of the soft embrace. It was already too late. Loose and flexible as the couatl's disarticulated jaws were, they were still lined with rows of inward-pointing teeth. It was easy to go deeper, almost impossible to pull out. All too quickly Hook-Beak found soft gullet sliding past his eyes as the couatl set about swallowing him alive.

First one side of the jaws would push forward, pulling their needle teeth out of his flesh and then sinking them back in a few inches further over him. Once they were secure, and only when they were secure, the other side of its jaws would push forward in turn. Without ever completely releasing him, always maintaining a partial grip, the couatl worked its jaws forward. Between the ratcheting grip of the advancing jaws and the muscular squeeze of its coils, poison-weakened Hook-Beak had no chance to escape. First his beak, then his face, then his long feathery neck disappeared into the couatl's slimy gullet.

It was not the feathered serpent's first dangerous meal. It kept its coils wound tightly around him as it fed, not trusting its venom to keep him subdued. It only moved the windings when its snout came up against its own feathers and was unable to progress any further. Bit by bit it worked its jaws over him, taking in his wing-roots, engulfing the upper part of his forelegs, and laboriously stretching its elastic maw over the thickest part of his chest. Hook-Beak could only squirm as the walls of the gullet rolled past.

The muscular chute kept his beak squeezed shut as the couatl's jaws took in his wings, his torso, and finally his haunches. When it finally unwound itself from around him it exposed the vast bulge he made in its slender body. Only a set of padded hindpaws and a weakly twitching tail remained outside its maw.

Five hundred pounds of gryphon made made a long, lumpy bulge in a feathered serpent only half again as heavy. With great effort the serpent formed an ess in its neck and slowly pushed it down its body. Powerful swallowing muscles added to the push, rolling over the gryphon and helping ease him deeper. Hook-Beak could only hiss in frustration as his hind legs were sucked in. Inch by inch his tail followed and as the couatl was finally able to re-hinge its jaws he found himself sliding into its long stomach.

With final effort the feathered serpent managed to push the bulge into its midsection. Even the thickest of its coils was swollen to twice its usual girth and the contours of the gryphon's body stood out through the scales and feathers. Here was the curve of its beak, here the long neck, there the bulge of wing-roots and wings squeezed tightly against a leonine frame in the slimy folds of its stomach. The hips and haunches made their own bulges. Hook-Beak was over ten feel long beak to hindpaws stretched out and made a mighty bulge in a serpent little more than twice his length.

It took more than an hour to swallow Hook-Beak whole and yet the gryphon's feathers trapped so much air that even now the gryphon lived. The couatl twitched where it lay as the desperate gryphon tried to squirm free, to find some escape. There would be none. The couatl would never have attempted such a dangerous meal had it not known the weakening effect of its venom. Hook-Beak squirmed in the long cool pocket of its stomach but lacked the strength to do any damage. He would escape his slimy digestive fate only if the couatl so chose.

As it recovered from the great effort of swallowing something nearly as large as itself the couatl concentrated, activating its ability to shift through normal matter as though it were mere air. Such was its control that it could have slipped away and left the slimy and still living gryphon lying in a pool of the liquids that slicked Hook-Beak down for swallowing. It could merely have taught him a hard lesson.

The couatl did not do so. The bulge went with it when it sank through the roof, then through the floor below that. It arrived at the heart of the tower, where a gilded altar radiated a sun-like warmth. It re-solidified as it coiled around the altar, letting the heat sink into its coils. Warmth speeds a serpent's digestive process and still-living Hook-Beak twitched hopelessly in its stomach as the acids came trickling in.

It would take a week or more to digest such a huge meal. Some parts of Hook-Beak would survive, his fur and feathers and claw-tips making their way through the couatl's bowels with the digested remains. Like a true snake it did not need to eat often at all. A massive meal like this could feed it for months if no other prey presented itself.

Sustained by the wards of the tower it was pledged to guard the couatl could in fact go years or decades without eating. It had not eaten for half a year before Hook-Beak made a nuisance of himself. But now that its belly was full, its metabolism turned to this source of nutrition. The weakly struggling gryphon would be consumed by the stomach acids. It was only a matter of time now.

Before it settled into a digestive torpor there was one last task. The couatl willed a drawer in the side of the altar to slide open and an oval crystal floated up before its eyes. With a flick of its forked tongue it struck the crystal a gentle blow and caused it to chime.

An image formed in the crystal as the owner of the matching gem accepted the message. Bright feathers and a cruelly curved beak, much like the one that would soon soften in his belly. Hook-Beak's father looked into the crystal and saw the couatl.

"Greetings, Goldfeather," hissed the couatl. "I fear another of your sons has come to my tower. I tried to persuade him to leave." With a touch of a wing the couatl turned the crystal so that the gryphon at the far end of the magic could see the bulge in its midsection. "He was stubborn, and I am bound to defend this place against intruders."

The older gryphon watched as the great bulge twitched. The acids were flowing in, displacing the air trapped in feathers and fur. Soon the last sip of air would be exhausted and the work of digestion would begin in earnest.

It was not too late. If he asked politely, perhaps offered the couatl a future favor, he son might still be heaved back up. It is always easier for a serpent to regurgitate prey than to swallow it. Hook-Beak could wash in a stream, feathers perhaps discolored by stomach juices, and survive.

He said nothing. Goldfeather had a dozen hens, and allowed no other adult male in his territory. When his sons approached maturity, something must be done.

A few attacked him, seeking to take his territory. More than one had gone down his own throat whole after trying that, their feathers and fur eventually coughed back up in a slimy pellet.

The smartest ones left to found their own clans, risking a trip into unknown lands rather than a likely trip through their father's guts. A few meek ones stayed on as his lieutenants. Perhaps they managed an occasional covert mating with one of his hens. He could stomach that. And perhaps one would ally with the hens and one day bring him down. It was how he became clan master after his father, and how his father did after his grandfather. It was a risk that must be taken if he was to have soldiers available at need.

But that left the strong, ambitious and not too smart ones. Those he manipulated into encounters with the Four or other monsters. Thistlefur the badger had burped up feathers more than once. Clack the copper dragon's all-consuming stomach acids had dismantled others. Even Hialfi the foxtaur, a gentle enough soul, had accepted bounties on sheep-hunting gryphons and sent more than one on a tour of his guts.

Maybe one of his sons would overpower a member of the Four, or some other notable enemy, and increase his own influence by that increment. But probably not. The likely result of sending a headstrong and inexperienced gryphon on such a mission was for the encounter to end in a burp.

"I appreciate the call," Goldfeather cawed. "I apologize for the disturbance. The young and foolish will get themselves into these situations. They must learn to get themselves out."

The couatl nodded, expression unchanged. As Goldfeather passed a claw in front of the crystal to end the call he saw the feathered serpent settling down to digest its meal. It had not said what it must have been thinking. What lesson is a young gryphon expected to learn when its teacher is a serpent's belly?

Goldfeather made sure the call was ended before turning to his hens. With a grim slant to his beak he explained the fate of his youngest son. Now, of course, he must turn his attention to replacing him. His senior hen, she of the red feathers was available. His own services would, of course, be required, and would gladly be provided.

The senior hens knew exactly what was going on. Some of them had been mates to his father before Goldfeather killed him. One, his favorite, had been close enough to see the couatl and hear the conversation. She knew that he could have asked the couatl to heave up Hook-Beak.

But of course he hadn't. What would be the point of that when he was the one to send the youngster to the tower in the first place?