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The drake and the sphinx

By Strega

"Bored," said the drake. "Bored, bored, bored."

When he found the narrow entrance into a section of the castle ruins he didn't know about he thought that exploring it would be an entertaining diversion. There were only a few tracks around the entrance, and none of them recent, so odds were nothing too dangerous lived in there. Nor was there any reek of rotting flesh or monster droppings. Anything he ran into would probably be no match for him; he was a blue drake, powerful and quick, with over thirty feet of handsome scaly body, sharp black claws and a fine set of fangs he was only too ready to show to those he encountered. He was big enough that he could, and had, swallowed humans and other humanoids whole and alive.

So he poked his head cautiously into the doorway, then followed with his body when no threat manifested itself. A dusty corridor with broken statues along one wall lay ahead. Immediately he noticed a series of subtle marks on the floor, and guessed that some previous explorer had marked out traps and trap triggers. Stepping carefully he proceeded in, peeking through one archway after another into what proved to be an entirely deserted complex.

An hour later, having found nothing more interesting than dried bones protruding from beneath a deadfall trap, he was about ready to leave and go back to his own lair. Perhaps boredom led to inattention, because a click from beneath his foreclaw warned him that he had triggered a trap. That claw lurched downward as a trapdoor opened, but though it was six feet on a side it was much too small to take in a large quadruped like himself.

"How cute," he said. "A trapdoor." With nothing else to divert his attention he decided to have a look. Wrapping his tail around the stump of a statue, in case his claws slipped, he peered cautiously into the pit. It was a smooth walled shaft with no sign of spikes or other nastiness, so he extended his neck further down the shaft. Sometimes dead creatures at the bottom of such a pit yielded an easy meal or even loot. Typically the most dangerous thing in such a pit was a few weak undead or a Gelatinous Cube, and he feared neither.

About twenty feet down the shaft took a sudden smooth turn to the side, and in a moment of incaution he would regret almost instantly he bent his neck and stuck his head into the room the room the shaft disgorged into. He caught only a glimpse of a large statue-lined room before fanged jaws snapped shut around his head.

With a startled yawp he tried to pull back, but the jaws were firmly locked around his skull and whatever had bitten him was very strong and not stretched nose-first down a pit trap. A powerful tug overbalanced him and his foreclaws slipped off the rim of the pit, dropping most of his body down the pit shaft. His hindclaws lost their grip as well, and only his strong tail and its grip around the statue kept him from sliding neatly down the pit and into the large room.

Or, rather, into a set of hungry jaws. As he was propelled by gravity into the room, whatever had bitten him took advantage of his sudden forward thrust and yawned wide. Slick gullet expanded smoothly over his cheeks and neck, and in one long slide the creature on the outside of this wet meaty tube swallowed him all the way to his shoulders. The drake's eyes went wide in the dark gurgling stomach his face suddenly occupied, and with panicked strength he began to thrash and claw his attacker.

He got in a few good swipes with his foreclaws, which would have done a lot of damage were his tormenter not protected by some sort of magical shield. Even so he drew blood, and got a good feel of the dense fur around the thing's head (a mane? Was a giant lion swallowing him?). But even ignoring that shield, gravity was working against him, and he couldn't stop the thing from eating him. Despite his best effort to pull himself back up the pit with his tail his own weight helped push him deeper into the predator. Powerful clawed paws wrapped around his scaly rump, pulling him forward, and with a jaw-creaking distention of its jaws his body was engulfed. His foreclaws were pinned to his sides by the muscular gullet now and his neck was bent back on itself by the tight confines of the stomach.

Sticking his head down the pit trap had been a huge mistake, the drake thought. It looked like it would be a fatal one, too; powerful contractions in the gullet walls pushed another foot of him into to the stomach as the thing gulped. Tight as the belly was already, for obviously whatever was eating him wasn't that much bigger than himself, the predator was confident and hungry enough that it kept swallowing. Another great contraction in the throat walls, combined with a mighty backward tug by the mysterious lion-thing, and he lost his tail-grip on the statue.

His tail slipped down the pit after the rest of him, and despite desperate efforts to rake the lion with his hindpaws he was summarily devoured. There was a brief moment of hope as he got his claws into the thing's mane, got a strong grip and actually pulled part of his body back out. Immediately after, though, those huge paws pushed his rump back in, and already coated with lubricating mucus as it was the lion swallowed it back down without effort. Before he could get another grip on it the lion gulped again, and his hindpaws were forced out straight as they, and even his muscular tail, slid into the waiting throat.

He kicked and wriggled, but there was no longer any way to save himself. As as a last resort he tried to wrap his tailtip around what was plainly a lion's muzzle. By the time the rest of his body slid into the stomach, though, only enough stuck out to flip back and forth ineffectually. After a moment the lion swallowed one last time and his spade-tipped tail slid down to join the rest of him.

Tightly coiled around himself in the stifling confines of the predator's stomach, the drake still struggled. Even as the muscular belly walls squeezed the breath out of him and harsh digestive enzymes ate at his scales he fought to claw his way free. It would have worked, normally; the walls around him were just meat and his claws were strong and sharp. Whatever magical defense had protected the thing from his claws earlier still worked here, though, and his claws drew little blood as they scraped trails through the thick layers of caustic slime. Even as more and more acid oozed into the stomach to digest him, he struggled.

*****

The sphinx let out a mighty belch and regarded the vast bulge in his midsection with amusement and a bit of alarm. Unlike most of his meals, humans and the like, it had been impossible to disarm the drake. He probably should have pulled it into the room and killed it before eating, but the scaly blue head had poked out of the wall opening right next to his resting spot and in an impulsive moment he'd snapped his jaws shut around it. So accustomed was he to eating prey whole that it seemed the most natural thing in the world to pull it down the pit and gulp it down as fast as it emerged into his room.

He quickly realized that the relatively tiny head had fooled him into thinking it was much smaller than it actually was. By the time he engulfed the long neck and forelegs he had eaten the equivalent of seven or eight humans. The slinky lizard body followed and despite the drake's every effort he crammed in and swallowed its rump, though his belly was now stretched tighter than it had been in decades.

There was nothing for it now but to finish, so though he gagged somewhat at the sensation of tail squirming in his gullet he kept eating. A dozen feet of scaly tail were vacuumed up a foot at a time, first thrashing violently and then more and more constrained by his jaws. Finally there was just the spade tip flipping back and forth from his lips. A last gulp, an almost painful distention of his straining stomach, and the drake was sent down where so many had bone before.

The sphinx groaned and belched again. The queasiness caused by such a large and strong creature wriggling around his stomach almost caused him to vomit it back up. Were it not for the Stoneskin spell the room provided him the drake would be clawing his innards to shreds.

But the Stoneskin did blunt most of the damage, and the drake, wrapped tightly in belly, couldn't get enough leverage to strike with full force. Even as it tried to claw its way out the weight of sphinx and the strong acids of his stomach had an impact. Bit by bit the drake weakened, and though he didn't admit it to himself, the sphinx enjoyed every second of the doomed struggle.

Eventually he let out a last burp of the air exhaled from the drake's lungs. After minutes of struggle his meal finally succumbed. With a last few kicks and a long spasmodic twitch the dragon was still.

"Ugh. What a bad idea that was. Next time I kill it first." The sphinx stood up and stretched, trying to get the huge swaying weight of his belly comfortably situated. He pushed the lumpy bulge with a forepaw until the drake shifted in the slippery confines of his stomach. With a bit of experimentation he got the lizard positioned so it didn't squeeze his lungs so tightly. It was a good thing he hadn't eaten for weeks, because every available cubic inch of his body cavity was full of two-thirds his weight in drake, and the ponderous drooping gut that protruded dragged the floor even when he stood up straight on all fours.

"Force of habit is one thing," said the sphinx as he tried to find a way to stretch out on his side without the great lump of belly making it intolerably uncomfortable, "But maybe I don't need to swallow absolutely everyone who comes in here whole." Luckily his magically augmented body was good at healing itself, and already his several bloody scratches were knitting shut. He didn't heal as fast as a troll, but in the absence of ongoing damage he would soon be intact again.

Digesting such an enormous meal taxed even his mighty body's resources, and he blinked sleepily as his belly went to work on the drake. An entire human would make its way through his body in half a day, bones and all dissolved and processed, but digesting this meal would take a week and many visits to the grill in the floor that served as his toilet. His five thousand pounds of muscle and bone were almost doubled by the tremendous bulk of swallowed drake.

But this, too, would pass. Soon enough he would be sleek again. Just as he did not actually need to eat while within his magical chamber, so devouring such a large meal would have no lasting effect on him. He'd put on a mere few hundred pounds of fat as the drake was digested and absorbed, but massive meals like this were used very inefficiently by his body. The main beneficiary of this meal would be the Gelatinous Cube at the bottom of his toilet, which would eat extremely well for the next week. The foolish drake would have little lasting impact on him at all, save the memory of a large and entertaining meal.

He arranged his wings as comfortably as possible as he lay on the stones. As a near-immortal he was good at conveniently forgetting awkward things. Boredom, for one. He was very good at forgetting that. After centuries in his chamber he could while away years in elaborate daydreams, perfectly happy to be alone.

Overly large meals, too, he was good at forgetting. There was the time a seemingly endless stream of orcs entered via a pit trap, and the time not one but half a dozen ogres had appeared in his chamber via a Teleport trap. Both of those encounters had ended with his gut groaning, distended even more than it was now. In the case of the orcs he'd actually had to start killing them with paw swipes, for there was simply no more space even in his elastic gut. He'd been eating dead orcs for days afterward, taking in new meat as fast as he digested the old. Twice he'd coughed up a great mass of corroded weapons and now-empty armor just to make room for more digestible fare.

As he settled down to sleep he finally admitted to himself that he'd grown to love the struggle in his gullet, the frantic wriggling as prey tried to escape his belly. Dangerous as the meal had been, if he had it all to do over the drake would have ended up in the same place and in the same manner. One took one's amusement when one could find it, when confined to a room for centuries.

"Totally worth it," the sphinx muttered before hiccuping, pawing his belly, and drifting off to sleep.