Kutaeh

Guarding a prison was definitely not the ideal job.

It was an honor, being picked out of so many dragons to guard a prison full of captured and enslaved dragons, but the guilt still weighs heavy on Kutaeh’s back, pushing her down into the mud as she sludges back to the prison for another hourly checkup. She peers her large head into one of the cages, pushing her horns through the bars. The only inhabitant, a fae, scrambles to attention from where she was lying on the ground, eyes closed in a feeble imitation of sleep.

If this was any other flight, Kutaeh might have been worried about a potential illness, but there was no stress here. An infection was a gift from the Plaguebringer herself, a corruption that would take out every unfit dragon. If anything, they should be thanking her for this dragon’s every cough.

Kutaeh’s tail slips through the bars and she roughly smacks the Fae on the shoulder. “Scavenge,” she says, gruffly. “The Mother is displeased.”

She doesn’t wait to see the Fae’s reaction, but the sounds coming from the mud behind her imply that the dragon has heeded her warning. It’s too late. Once the Mother is unhappy, there’s no stopping the coming disease.

Most of the dragons are working when she passes them by, plucking anything valuable out of the bones of their dead clanmates. One is weeping, gentle tears falling down his face and splattering onto the innards. She doesn’t know whether the emotion boiling in her gut is pity or disdain, but either way, she ignores him and walks to the last cage in the row - the only dragon here she’s interested in.

Tocxi is leaning down when she finds him, belly pressed into the dirt, yanking sticks out of the dirt. Behind him is a pile of various items, haphazardly sorted into piles based on worth. Her ear twitches as she approaches him.

“Tocxi.” she says, and he doesn’t hear her, too deep into his work. Not once has she walked by his cage to see him slacking. Every single time she peers in, he’s frantically digging, desperate for anything to get the Plaguebringer to notice him. Not once has Kutaeh felt happy while watching him. “Tocxi!”

He jumps and nearly knocks over a stack of mushrooms to his left, only managing to steady them with a quick paw. “Find anything interesting?” she asks, and he nods enthusiastically.

Tocxi extracts an egg, oozing over his claws, coating them with a green liquid that Kutaeh doesn’t care to learn about. Inside of it, a creature is writhing, desperate to escape its cage. She wonders if it would still want to leave if it knew its inevitable fate, a servant to a malevolent force. “I think she’ll like this one!”

Kutaeh doesn’t have to ask who ‘she’ is. Not with Tocxi. “I’m sure she will,” she says, and the lie slips out from her fangs without any trouble. This interaction happens every day, and Kutaeh says the same thing every time. Tocxi never seems to notice, too wrapped up in his own head.

“Could you take this to her for me? Or have someone do it?” He pleads, and she nods, only wincing slightly as she gently takes the twisting egg away from the prisoner. “Thank you.”

“Of course. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Kutaeh says, and the words are numb, burdened with knowledge that only she knows. Her shift is over; another Imperial will be coming to take her place shortly. She takes the egg where she goes every time; a hollow tree just a mile away from camp, and places it inside the stump, kicking dried leaves over the egg to cover up the evidence of her crimes. Tocxi can never know. The Plaguebringer can never know of his devotion. She cannot let that happen.

She wants more than anything to pray to something to protect him, but the only force that can hear her outside this prison of slaves is the Mother. In this wasteland, no Gods are listening.