The soft whirr of propellers is the only sound that stands out in these enormous sand-colored halls. The sound of even softer humming is entirely lost under their oscillating tone. Teri allows himself to sit back, tapping a few buttons on his bracer to spray himself down with just another touch of water from the collar of his helmet on the way out of the buried ruins. Not even out into the sunlight yet and already the heat of the jungle creeps back in.

A recent quake caused part of the mountainside to slough off, uncovering yet another sprawling ancient Serene complex. By now, all the easy pickings had been looted or “procured” depending on how benevolently an organization tried to present itself.

Teri has long been done with corporations and guilds and anything of the sort; he has been freelance for some time. And as a Benthic, his small size, small enough to stand on a human’s upturned palm, allows him to access areas that many others would not have even thought to look. Calling it looting has always been just fine by him, and he always considered himself to be quite good at it.

Despite his intention to sell most of this to curators, he always keeps a few gadgets for himself. Having found a rather unassuming object that turned out to complete a set of four, it is the last component needed for his ongoing experiment; a special harness worn around the outside of his armor. He would give it a test run once he got home, but before any of that, he’s got so many potential new wares to sell.

The hovercraft even heaves slightly under the weight of his new collection; the initial wave of delvers was sloppy, by his standards. So many places others simply couldn’t look; tiny vents or passages for long-decayed biological circuitry. Anywhere has its own various dangers for someone his size, but the variety out here could be staggering. It was enough to deter many his size as well, so his reward for braving the jungle was, more often than not, as bountiful as he was equipped to reap.

Eventually, the hovercraft - one could call it a drone if not for its pilot - comes back into the threshold of the sunlight, an inverted conical thing with burgeoning nets drooping from myriad compartments as its lone passenger stands up with a slight squint, his teal scale coloration more apparent in the light of Ystraka’s blue sun. Beyond the broken arch demarcating the edge of the ruins, the jungles of eastern Kulasht sprawl out as far as the eye can see, even from this great elevation. A crumbling complex litters the incline, its strewn components now a motionless reminder of when the bulk of it spilled into the ethylene mist below.

To the newly-arrived this would appear foreboding, no doubt, but to him it signifies shelter. At least, relatively. The wildlife on the ground has thus far proven itself easy enough to avoid but the creatures in the sky are bold enough to heckle airships much larger than themselves. A couple of times nearly being plucked out of the sky was enough for him, and so he begins his descent down the mountainside.

Another spritz of water from the hydration collar; just something to keep his gills wet after being snapped shut for so long. With the sun beating down like this it’s easy for one like himself to dry out. It would explain why he so rarely saw others like himself working solo, to begin with.

Or rather, it would be just one explanation.

The air crackles audibly behind Teri, and his horn-like sensory cones twitch in fine adjustment as the rest of him begins to react. “Oh, not today…” he half-grunts, exerting himself.

Pulling his machine into a sharp right drift, he’s too slow to do anything about the incoming forking bolt as it glances into one of the propellers, which proves more than enough to send him into an uncontrolled spin against the slope.

Before the first impact with the earth, he quickly hits a button on an external collar; it expands and separates from his exosuit, unfurling into a proportionally-large halo, hovering above him and allowing him to suspend himself in the air. It was probably something he should have tested out earlier but at least his runes seem to be working right. He doesn’t get to bask in satisfaction for long before remembering his situation and turning around with his fangs bared. On most worlds, one could safely assume an attacker would be of human size or about half again their size, but not here. With that in mind, the sight of a bipedal dragon in a tattered poncho large enough to conceal a house under comes as no surprise. At least not beyond the initial attack.

His lithe, white shape, marked with irregular purple that follows the contours of his body begins to slide down the cliffside on taloned feet, but Teri doesn’t back off. In fact, he even reorients himself to speed forward, and why not? The two of them recognize one another.

“Satsa,” he broadcasts from the speakers embedded into his suit. “Nice of you to drop by but maybe you noticed I’m a little busy?”

The dragon digs his claws into the mix of soil and rock, kicking up a wake of dust before coming to a stop and falling into a crouch.

“That’s the point, little guy. I knew you’d be coming by before long,” the dragon says with a guiltless smile. “So nice of you to bag all this stuff for me.”

Teri has no desire for banter, and no patience for Satsa’s antics. “You really think I’m just gonna let you take my haul?”

“You’re smart, so… yeah.”

At that, the Benthic raises a hand, a rotating housing around the wrist clicking once as a flare loads, meant for his assailant’s eyes, but before he gets a chance to fire, the dragon’s palm effortlessly swats him aside. A lazy motion for one of them, and a high-impact strike for the other that immediately sets his suit’s hazard notifications off as he careens away. His halo trails behind, its top speed not quite matching his uncontrolled launch, but as his momentum dies it catches up and stops suddenly, halting him as if stuck to an unseen spiderweb, shaking him a few times as it rotates slowly.

It’s hard to just shake it off, but out of a blend of determination and necessity, he singles his focus back onto Satsa, who is already beginning to lift the drone to toss it aside. He’s only interested in the nets and their contents, and doesn’t spare even a glance in Teri’s direction. Granted, they were on the same excavation team back in the day, so they have a good assessment of one another’s respective durabilities. Still, the lack of consideration on top of everything hurt. Almost as much as the casual swat.

The dragon hums to himself as he gathers up the absolute smorgasbord of who-knows-what, some of the various doodads don’t even resemble anything they’ve pulled out of these ruins before. His excitement is interrupted as that readied flare screams towards him and bursts into an even brighter flash upon collision, drawing a discordant note out of him, too into his little freeform song for it to be so easily taken over by a proper cry of alarm. Wiping the irregular shapes from his eyes with the pads of his fingers, he’s knocked over by a pulse of force from Teri, who rushes back into the fray, aglow with fury and arcane power.

His small size doesn’t mean he’s outmatched by any stretch. As a Benthic, he comes with a fairly high capacity for radiance, and a simple, self-sealing rip between the here and the void to release pressure sufficient to knock a dragon off their feet doesn’t cost all that much to him. Conversely, Satsa feels it in full, leaving a deep rut the width of his shoulders in the dirt.

The dragon lays in a supine curl for a moment, his own tail coming to rest against the top of his head before he uncurls and leaps to an upright position, wobbling a bit at first before finding solid footing, just in time to jolt in alarm as Teri speeds towards him. Charging up a spell reflexively, he delivers it with another well-timed swipe, he bats his tiny opponent into the ground, carving another streak through the terrain.

Alarms sound in his helmet, and lights flash in infrared as the sky spins slowly above him. His body simply won’t respond, he’s good and stunned, but his heart still beats in panic, waiting for Satsa to appear overhead and finish him off.

He never does, of course, Satsa is frozen with the idea that he likely liquefied his old rival as his instinctive, Necroharmonic flash dumped his remaining energy into a single blow. With neither a blink nor a sound, he turns around and starts to gather up the nets again. It’s a quiet, uncomfortable task, given his current perceptions, but he doesn’t get to subject himself to it for more than a few moments.

“Hey coward,” comes a rasping, labored voice through crackling speakers, “are you really just going to leave me like that?”

As it turns out, Teri is getting his chance to test out the harness ahead of schedule, cylindrical capsules emitting heat as they leak aether in tiny amounts.

Satsa tries to adjust his expression to play it cool before turning around, but his feigned smirk washes away in moments as he watches red lightning identical to his own culminate around Teri for just the briefest interval, before lashing out at him.

And then he’s on his back, watching black steam reaching into the sky as thick, transparent tendrils. Evaporating ectoplasm, mass that used to be his, becoming intangible around him. Which he recognizes immediately. As soon as he can feel again, he sits upright, finding himself small. Smaller than he expected, given his immediate reference point of Teri’s boot, which he is barely even a head taller than as he stands up.

“Test number one,” the Benthic begins, speaking into a recorder in his gauntlet. “Unscheduled occurrence; results offer no clear conclusion under the circumstances, but do suggest a need for dramatic calibration before the next attempt.” He clicks a button to pause the recording, before kneeling down and extending his wrist to the tiny dragon. “How about you? Got any input?”

Satsa only has time to stammer for a few moments before the recorder clicks and Teri pulls it back again. “Interesting, thank you. I look forward to your participation in the future, do take care.”

With no more ceremony than that, he hops down to his hovercraft and begins to make repairs, thankfully the damage isn’t anything he’s not equipped for.

“H-hey, wait, are you just gonna leave me here?” Satsa finally manages to say. He doesn’t actually have to shout to be heard but it’s not stopping him from doing so anyway.

“Well, you were, so that’s the idea,” Teri confirms.

“You can’t do that, I’m tiny! Like, really tiny!”

“Oh, I wonder what that must be like?”

“Seriously, a bird could eat me if it wanted to.”

“Oh, I wonder what THAT must be like?” the Benthic says, more aggressively this time, finally giving the dragon a backwards glance. “Look, you reap what you sow, and what you chose to sow was the full suite that comes with being a two-timing dickweed, so here you are.”

“Okay yeah, yes,” Satsa admits frantically, having lost his devil-may-care demeanor along with the upper hand, “I fucked up. I admit that. And I think you can agree that the mere possibility that I might learn my lesson is incentive enough that I learn something anyway, right?”

A moment of uneasy silence comes and goes as Teri contemplates that. In his head, he agrees, but he isn’t about to take pity on the same person that makes a career out of swooping in on the unsuspecting at the end of their expeditions like this. In the end, he finally voices his decision. “Fine, I’ll take you with me.”

“There, see, I knew you were a good guy, Teri,” Satsa sighs, words already beginning to drip with that unctuous personality of his again.

“Climb in.” Teri makes a hand motion next to his visor, causing it to unseal and separate to expose his face. Placing his hands on the edge of the rock that Satsa now stands on, he leans in, opening his mouth, showing off his double-rows of teeth.

This prompts a slow blink, a barely-an-action that Satsa cannot help but feel frustrated by even as he barely does it. Even stepping back a little bit would have been better.

“You’re not serious,” he challenges.

“I am,” Teri insists. “Like you said, a bird could eat you. I’m a lot nicer than a bird.”

“That’s up for debate, I think.”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to debate.”

“...Well, is it safe?”

“I hadn’t concerned myself with that, I don’t usually do this,” Teri admits

Satsa stammers as he tries to articulate his answer. “Theeeeeeen it’s not very safe, now is it?!”

“Do you have anything to make it safer?” the Benthic asks, indicating neither pity nor amusement in his expression or tone. If anything, he just seems irritated.

“Yeah, I’ve got some extract,” Satsa says. “You might find it in the pile of my things you just strewn about the hillside.” His tone becomes more pointed as he directs him.

“Mm, guess we’re even then,” Teri says, glancing over in the general direction for a moment. “You’re not as rotten as I thought if you’re at least carrying some. But it can wait a second, it’s not going anywhere.”

“And neither am I unless I do this, it would seem.”

“Hey, now you get it. Aaaaaahhh…” His violet-blue tongue droops out over his lower teeth, hot breath washing out of a mouth that never before would have been described as cavernous by anybody, but no other descriptor fit quite as well right now.

Satsa stares in, unsure what to make of it. It’s not like the concept as a whole is new to him, he’s eaten plenty of people and all the ones he intended to make it out fine did. Well, nearly all. There was the occasional consequence of forgetfulness during the rowdier nights but it helped keep his thighs hefty even with how athletic his work requires him to be.

He shakes those thoughts off. Teri will keep him safe, at least relatively.

“You’d better know what you’re doing…” the dragon says, finally reaching out to climb in.

“Uh-huhhh…” the Benthic exhales, his tongue suppressed by his passenger-to-be’s hands bearing down on it. Regrettably he doesn’t taste like much of anything, but that’s a flaw he unfortunately can’t blame on moral fiber.

Satsa dawdles a moment to take in his surroundings, eyes darting along the double-rows of teeth and the deeply-ridged palate, before centering again on the uvula-lacking throat before him. Teri grows impatient during this, extending his tongue forward, causing the dragon's hands to slip. His cheek lands with a soft, wet slap against a steadily more glistening tongue, which has found enough purchase against his body to scoop him up with little issue.

"Hey, easy now!" Satsa protests, trying to get his face out of the coating of saliva but it seems impossible to avoid now, only thickening on any part of him in reach.

With a quick backwards tilt of the head, he's entirely at the mercy of his rival's maw, minus a bit of tail, which is allowed to thrash and flick about outside for the moment.

Teri could almost swear it's trying to connect with his snout, but it doesn't quite have the flexibility. Droplets of saliva fly from it periodically; it would be embarrassing for him if anyone was around to witness it, but Satsa gets to bear that for him instead. After all, he's the one absolutely drenched in it.

The tiny dragon tries to brace himself on his elbows, but every upwards press of that thick muscle underneath him flattens him out again, dragging him slightly closer to the back with every release.

"Are you finished playing yet?" he calls out, flipping onto his back and presses his palms into the last stretch of palate above himself, but he's already at the point where the velum begins; it's a softer foundation than he would have liked.

Teri can't help but giggle at it all, and he's completely oblivious to Satsa's attempt to zap him. At this size, his own electrical organs are far more potent than the dragon's entire bioarcane body, rendering him effectively harmless. He throws his head back once more, kicking his prey back another stretch.

Satsa's heart skips a beat as for a moment he feels nothing behind his head, leaning backwards into the smooth drop-off.

"Hang on, gimme a sec to collect myse-- oh, why are you like this?..." He's got too much momentum for what would have been a request to be entertained, and he begins to spill over the threshold.

He needs make no attempt to stifle any further exclamation or protest; Teri's throat closing on his face does that for him, like an unorthodox kiss as the soft tissue slides off of him. He has enough time to gasp for breath, but only just, before the next contraction finds a better grip, tugging him in. Outside, his tail slithers in through those scaly lips just as a somewhat challenging lump manifests in the throat beyond.

Satsa instinctively fights back at the encroaching muscle all around him, or tries to, anyway. He can't find purchase on it, it holds him so much more easily than he can hold it off, even as his entire body vibrates with electricity. His hands slip off in the same moment as one another, and just like that, any sign of him vanishes, with no more ceremony than a humid, breathy sigh rolling out of Teri’s maw.

The Benthic slurps his tongue back inside, trying not to drool more than he already has; hard polymer and metal plates don’t make for a good sleeve to wipe onto, after all. He shivers involuntarily, but at least pleasurably, as Satsa descends, sliding into his stomach. The dragon rolls over to upright himself as quickly as he can, but there’s so little room that he can only orient himself one way if he doesn’t want his head pushing into the lining.

He’s such a perfect fit it almost ignites conflicting feelings in his already addled heart, but his pride won’t let him resign himself to it. The chamber gurgles softly around him, already reacting to a new, perceived meal.

"It smells like fish in here…" Satsa groans.

"It's what I mostly eat," Teri replies, "but I guess I can add people who annoy me to the list too, now."

His belly tenses up around its new occupant, and remains just as tight as free air is expelled. What would have been a sizable belch catches in his mouth, sealed tightly over it, and comes out instead as a low growl as it filters through his gills.

"Pardon me…" he says, feigning embarrassment. Giving his belly a couple of pats, more a symbolic gesture than anything due to the protective layers over it, he collects himself and hops down onto the loose dirt, returning to the place where he became very acquainted with the ground, fetching his halo and tossing it into the air, rising after it. “Now, let’s find that extract.”

“Yeah, please,” Satsa agrees, back pressed into the wall as he tries to keep himself out of the pooling fluids. “This is all just saliva, right?”

Despite all his concerns, the warmth is… honestly pleasant. 

“Should be, for now. If not, my suit’s got a safety net, not like you’ll die for real.”

“I’d still rather not go through the whole… process,” he objects, even with as much as he’s developed a begrudging acceptance to his new environment.

“What, you don’t think I’d wear you well? I could stand to gain a few grams and, personality notwithstanding, you’re a premium filet.” Teri doubles over in midair only moments after expressing that as Satsa swiftly buries his foot in the lining. “Agh, can’t take a compliment?”

“Just find the bottle… it’s amber glass, label’s really old and faded.”

“Mhm, I take it you’ve never finished one. If I did digest you, would I get credit for all your meals too? I’ve never figured that one out.”

He doesn’t get a response, but can feel the dragon lean back heavily with a shrug, like he’s crossing his arms.

“...Very well, we’ll figure that one out later.”

Teri touches down again, locating a bottle matching the description; there’s more liquid missing from it than he would have initially imagined, enough that he might even be swayed to stop harping on Satsa about his eating habits after all. With little more than a flex of his fingers, he opens up a globe-shaped intrusion into the void, intersecting the cork and glass neck of the bottle, removing a perfectly spherical chunk from them as he dispels the breach.

A translucent fluid, otherwise the color of molasses, begins to trickle out; the smell is astringent enough to be initially off-putting, but taking a deep breath, and much to Satsa’s dismay, tensing his abdomen, Teri steps forward to drink from it. It leaves a film in his mouth as it spills in, and the taste is aggressively medicinal.

It flows down his throat in one hasty gulp after another, washing over Satsa, who initially reacts with relief, but realizes he’ll soon run out of headroom.

“Hey little guy, you can stop now, you don’t need that much!” he says, frantically mashing an elbow into the soft wall beside him. The extract starts to develop a foamy head as it reacts with trace amounts of acid and enzymes, forcing him to crane his neck as far as it’ll go just to keep his nostrils out of it.

“I know I got after you about this stuff,” Teri pants, spitting out the excess as he backs off, “but admittedly, I’m not a fan of it.”

“You’d better develop a taste for it if I’m in here for long,” Satsa retorts.

“I’ll fill some pills with a concentrated version when I get home, or something; you can crack them open yourself,” the Benthic posits, floating over to his crashed rig, beginning to make repairs.

“You don’t need to do that, I mean, how long am I actually even gonna be in here?”

“Depends on how concentrated those pills are, right?”

“Teri, come on… You’re not serious, right?” the dragon asks, trying his best to keep a pleading tone from affecting his voice. It’s not working.

“Hmm…” Teri emanates softly, already mending seared cladding and replacing parts with spares. “Who knows? I think I like the way you struggle better than any fish.”

Satsa kicks the wall again, but Teri expected it, and he tenses up in time to mostly ignore the impact. In no time at all, he fits the last piece he needs, doing the bare minimum he needs to get it off the ground; he can make adjustments in mid-flight.

“‘Don’t usually do this’ my ass; you’ve done this lots before,” Satsa suggests. 

“Nope, first time eating a person, actually,” Teri refutes, clambering onto the hovercraft and beginning to gather up his relics with its mechanical arms. “If I make the first one last, it doesn’t count as making a habit out of it, does it?”

“You’re going to be insufferable the whole time…” the dragon pouts, rolling onto his side.

“I promise I will be. But you know, rather me than a bird, right?”