Chapter Text
For Aster, things couldn’t be going any worse. Sure, she was no stranger to the cruel ways of her kingdom and its rulers, and she had been forced to endure countless punishments for her existence from the moment of her birth. She was what was commonly referred to as a Defect, someone whose genes didn’t turn out quite right. It altered her enough that she was used to the abuse by now, but nothing amounted to what had taken place that day.
It was a rare occurrence where she wasn’t gawked at, cursed at, or shoved to the ground once or twice a day. Being homeless in the streets of Vierra didn’t exactly provide much protection, and her shocking violet irises did her no favors. It wasn’t even an hour ago that a group of drunk men found her after exiting a pub. It wasn’t too bad at first until one of them pulled out a pocket knife.
Now, Aster was on the run, and she could only pray that the fear of the dangers outside of the kingdom walls would dissuade her torturers from pursuing her any further. At the very least, it would be difficult to find her with how large the forest was. Given the amount of blood she had lost, however, losing their trail might not be good enough. In her panicked state, she had hardly even spared a thought about what beings reside among the very wilderness she was stumbling through.
Sam couldn’t have been more content with his life. Residing in the wilderness surrounding the kingdom of Vierra, he was one of the strongest nagas in the area. His territory, for the most part, was undisturbed, and there were plenty of foolish humans to sate his appetite. What more could anyone desire?
He was pondering this very question one afternoon as he basked in the bright sunlight. It had been several days since he last encountered any humans, so he was beginning to grow hungry again, but that was his only complaint. A complaint that, surely, would be dealt with in the near future. Yes, Sam’s life was perfect just as it was, and he had no desire to change it.
His enhanced hearing picked up the sound of a struggle in the distance. It was undoubtedly a human, with the way they were foolishly crashing through the foliage. A devilish smile tugged at his lips. Honestly, it was no wonder they were so low on the food chain. It was too easy a meal to pass up.
Thanks to his smooth scales, Sam was nearly silent as he navigated his way through his territory. He usually had to venture out farther to hunt, but he wasn’t complaining. The scent of fresh blood overwhelmed his senses, making his stomach growl in anticipation, but Sam was patient. So far, his prey wasn’t aware of his presence, and he wanted to keep it that way.
Then, at long last, the creature burst through a patch of overgrown brush. She was small, easy to snatch up and swallow down without a care. Sam grinned before lunging forward.
He moved in a blur, capturing her waist in his clawed hands before she had a chance to react. She was barely even the length of his arm. When he got a clear view of her face, however, he froze.
She was younger than his typical prey. While Sam wouldn’t consider himself to be someone with the strongest moral compass in the world, he did try to avoid consuming anything young enough to be considered a child. That wasn’t what made him pause, though. It wasn’t even her startlingly violet eyes. Rather, it was that one of her eyes was completely missing. The left side of her face was covered in blood, and the poor thing looked like she’d been beaten to a pulp. It was amazing that she had even made it this far.
Aster, on the other hand, was too worn out to bother fighting back against the creature that had found her. It was a naga. A very, very large naga with deep green scales, wickedly sharp claws, and a mouthful of pointed teeth and fangs. He had a surprisingly young face, resembling someone who might be in their early to mid-twenties, with curling brown hair and narrowed green eyes. It was mildly disorienting seeing the jarring difference between his torso and, well…tail. She should have been far more afraid of him than she was of the people who were chasing her. People that the creature holding her could swallow whole like it was nothing.
He inspected her curiously, a claw-tipped finger carefully brushing her hair away from the now-destroyed side of her face. What had once been a look of hunger was replaced by what could only be described as disgust.
“What on earth did they do to you?” He muttered.
“P-please-” she gasped, pain tearing through her body in another agonizing wave. At this point, passing out would have been a blessing. “Please don't let them take me.”
Kill me, she’d almost said, but was too afraid of what type of method a naga would choose. Would being eaten alive be more painful than being slowly cut to pieces? The question was enough to make her tremble in fear.
Sam’s eyes widened a fraction when he noticed the sound of more movement in the distance, as well as a chorus of slurred voices. The girl he held whimpered, and he was overwhelmed with rage. She couldn’t be more than seventeen. He’d heard rumors of the horrid things that humans had a habit of doing to their own kind, but he had never seen something as vile as this.
“No,” he snapped, immediately regretting it when he saw her flinch. “They won’t touch you again. I’ll be sure of that.”
As he carefully placed the girl on the ground, he couldn’t help but be startled by his own behavior. She was young, yes, but she was close enough to being an adult that he could certainly come up with a good case for eating her regardless. But seeing something so innocent be tortured in such a way…it was beyond disturbing. Sam, at the very least, would have made things painless for her if he were to change his mind. And he was viewed as the monster!
Glancing down, he took another look at the poor girl’s mutilated face and made up his mind. She had already suffered enough. The thought of causing more harm to the small thing made him feel ill. Her pursuers, however, were a different story.
Aster swayed lightly on her feet and, without thinking, leaned against the large naga for support. He jolted at the touch, but he didn’t pull back or push her away. To her surprise, his scales weren’t cold. In fact, they felt as if they were radiating heat. It seeped deep into her bones, and her eyelid began to grow heavy. Maybe at long last, she would fall unconscious. After all, he hadn’t killed her yet. That had to be a good sign, right?
Any hope she had for her life, however, vanished as she caught sight of the group of men who had assaulted her. Despite the way her vision swam before her, Aster frantically tried to throw herself over the mysterious naga’s coils, but they were too large, and she was too exhausted. She whimpered, now resorting to cowering as close to the naga as possible. To her surprise, she felt a large, steady hand encompass her back, holding her stable.
She glanced up to see him staring down at her intensely. Strangely enough, she felt no fear underneath his gaze. He felt far safer than the angry group that was growing nearer and nearer.
“Easy there,” he murmured. “You’re only going to injure yourself further.”
All of the sudden, almost gentleness to his actions vanished quickly upon the official arrival of Vierra’s finest. They all came to a halt, although their drunkenness nearly had some of them tumbling onto their asses. There were six of them in total, and a low hiss from Aster’s maybe-savior had them shaking in their boots.
Sam felt nothing but burning hatred as he took in the sight before him. They were a crowd of drunken fools, one of them even clutching a bloody pocket knife in his hand. He held them captive with his threatening stare, manipulating their fear to make it exceptionally difficult to break free from his eventual grasp. There were very few nagas who were capable of such a thing, and Sam happened to be fairly skilled at it. It was one of the things that typically led creatures to avoid his territory.
He could devour them all right there, making them endure a fate far more painful than the one they’d afflicted. That, and it would do wonders for his hunger. Sam began salivating heavily at the thought, his mouth twisting into a wicked smile. His stomach growled lowly as he imagined it. It seemed like the perfect solution. That is, until he heard the small sound of fear coming from the tiny thing cowering against him.
He had expected to find her eye glued to her attackers. Oddly enough, she hadn’t behaved as if she feared him at all. All she seemed to care about was the band of idiots that chased her there. This time, though, her remaining functional eye was on him, and he immediately felt horribly guilty. Did she think that he was about to kill her?
Sam realized then that even if he desperately wanted to, he couldn’t eat them. Not with her watching. She had already faced enough that day, and seeing the thing that saved her devouring six human beings without a moment of hesitation was not going to help. He couldn’t explain why, but something about the small thing was tugging at his heart. She was so helpless. It just didn’t feel right.
That, and she looked like she was about to keel over. If he didn’t do something, she wouldn’t have much time left.
He looked each of them in the eyes, fighting back the urge to snatch up them all. Such a waste of perfect prey, but it couldn’t be helped.
“If any one of you so much as lays a finger on her again,” he growled, “I will take great pleasure in swallowing you alive, and your death will be much worse than the unspeakable things you’ve done to her.”
It did the trick. They fled, screeching like banshees. Fucking cowards.
Sam turned to the girl, whose drastic blood loss was quickly catching up to her. In all honesty, putting her out of her misery could be considered a mercy. He could get her down within seconds, and thanks to his exceptional control over his body, he could ensure that she didn’t feel a thing. It would be like falling asleep, really. Nothing horrific to make Sam question his morality. She was fairly small, but she would at least put a dent into his hunger until he could find something more filling. This made far more sense than trying to save the poor thing.
He swiftly plucked her up from the ground, his mind set, but one look at her face made his stomach twist painfully.
She was even paler now, her breathing noticeably weaker, and he didn’t doubt that she would collapse if he tried to set her on her feet. It would take a miracle to save her life, and it was a miracle that he was capable of giving. But at what cost? What on earth would he do with her after?
Her tiny voice startled him from his thoughts.
“Please,” she all but whispered. “Please do it quickly. Everything already hurts so much.”
And just like that, all of his previous justifications only made him feel ill. He couldn’t, not now.
Sam sighed heavily. Would he end up regretting this? Absolutely, but was he going to do it anyway? Unfortunately so.
“Look…” he started, suddenly all the more aware of how much blood the girl was losing. She was covered in it, and it wasn’t stopping. There wasn’t much time. “I…I’m going to help you. But you can’t struggle, okay? You’re going to want to, but you have to hold still. You’ll only hurt yourself.”
He contemplated saying more. There was so much that should be said, but she was hardly conscious as it was, and she practically had one foot in the grave. Explanations were pointless to her now. They could wait.
So, without another moment’s hesitation, he opened his jaws and began to carefully ease her little body inside. The taste of her blood assaulted his senses in a way that had all of his predatory instincts screaming. His mouth was watering excessively, and he barely restrained himself from moaning in ecstasy. He wanted to savor the moment, to keep tasting the hot, addictive blood of his prey that was surprisingly sweet, and it was more than plentiful. It took a great deal of effort to snap out of it, and he swallowed quickly before his focus could slip even further.
The girl was drawn effortlessly into his esophagus, and a few more strong swallows were enough to seal her in completely. To his relief, she didn’t fight against the powerful muscles. Then again, she might have been too weak to even try, but this way, he at least wouldn’t hurt her.
He raised a hand to the lump in his throat, tracing its descent down to his chest. It felt euphoric, but she wasn’t going to the place that his body was craving for. Sam didn’t make a habit of denying his instincts, but this one time, he was determined to make an exception.
- - -
Aster woke with a groan, her entire body aching. The left side of her face was the worst, a startling reminder of the unimaginable torture she’d just endured.
To her surprise, however, it wasn’t only the left side of her vision that was missing. She couldn’t see at all. Her body was in a loose curl, and something had her held snugly in place. Panic began to overtake her as she attempted to push back against the walls around her, and the combination of the soft, slick walls, along with the low groan that echoed around her, gave away exactly where she was.
She was in the naga’s stomach. It had decided to consume her after all, and she was about to die a death more painful than anything those men were capable of.
The wall that she was resting against suddenly pushed back at her, and she shrieked.
“Calm down, child,” the naga said, his voice echoing all around her. “You’re not in any danger. I have no desire to hurt you. Quite the opposite, actually.”
“W-what are you talking about?” She stammered, her heart beating erratically in her chest as she fought to pull air into her lungs. “That’s impossible. This is a trick.”
She felt him bristle around her. “A trick, hm? If I intended to kill you, then why are your injuries miraculously survivable now? You sure sound more alive than you were a few hours ago.”
“Hours? I’ve been in here for hours? How? You ate me!”
“Technically, yes. But you’re in my first stomach, so you’re completely safe. On the contrary, I’ve been healing you.”
Much to Aster’s surprise, this sounded familiar. She thought back on any and all information she’d ever learned about nagas, realizing that she recalled some of the strange details of their anatomy. Nagas had two stomachs. One in their tail for digestion, and another one in their human torso for storage. But healing had never been a part of that lesson.
“How are you healing me?” She asked quietly. “I…I don't understand.”
Sam sighed. “I suppose you could say that I am not your typical naga. One of my ancestors was experimented on by human scientists hundreds of years ago, so now my bloodline is a bit…odd. I can do things that most nagas can’t, like healing things within my first stomach.”
“So…you’re magical?”
Sam frowned. She was much more chatty when she wasn’t half dead, and he wasn’t sure whether or not he cared for it. “I am not magical. I’m enhanced. Genetically altered.”
“Huh,” she mused. She never thought that she would try to have an active conversation with the thing literally holding her within his stomach, but something about the naga felt oddly comforting. “The enhanced naga saved the defective human. Kind of poetic, if you think about it.”
“Defected?” Sam raised an eyebrow. “What is a defective human?”
“Oh…you didn’t know?” She asked, her tone turning wary. What if this made him change his mind about saving her life? He could very well adopt the feelings of the rest of Vierra. “Um…it’s a human whose genes didn’t come out quite right. That’s why they attacked me.”
“What could possibly be so off about you that made you deserving of that?”
“My body is really weak,” she said. “Like, I get sick all of the time, and my bones are really fragile. When you caught me, I had several fractured ribs just from a single kick. We’re considered the trash of society, parasites to the fully functional. Our eyes give us away, so there’s no way to blend in. As you can imagine, we usually don't live very long. I’m practically a miracle.”
Sam peered down at the small bulge in his middle, a look of utter disbelief on his face.
“That’s why they attacked you? Because you’re not as strong as they are? I will never understand humans.” He paused then, overcome with sympathy for the little human who was cast aside simply for existing.
He gently rested his hand on his stomach, a surprisingly protective feeling washing over him as he thought about the frail little body he was currently housing.
“What’s your name?” He murmured.
“Aster,” she said softly. With all of the healing that her body needed, it was surprising that she’d stayed awake this long at all. “What’s yours?”
“My name is Sam. Why don't you rest now, alright? You’ll heal faster.”
She moved around for a moment before settling down again, this time tucked beneath the place where Sam’s hand still rested. “Thank you for saving me. I’ve enjoyed the last half an hour with you much more than any time I’ve spent in Vierra.”
It didn’t even take a full minute for her to go still again, her breaths deepening as Sam’s body did what it could to care for its temporary guest. He let out a sigh of relief, although he wasn’t sure if it was for the silence or for the fact that Aster was all right. He shouldn’t care. He really shouldn’t have saved her at all, but the idea of her being back in Vierra with the people who had allowed this in the first place was far more disturbing.
What on earth was he going to do with her?