It would be laborious and risky, but it would prove worthwhile.
Runevas, a black and blue anthropomorphic betta fish, had been terrorized nonstop recently by a new school of bigger fish in his area, and the constant hiding and swimming away from the mouths of fish who didn't even belong in his area was getting on his last nerve.
He did, however, make a new friend recently: a large brown western dragon named Keith. It was a reluctant friendship, given the isolationist nature of both species, but they did enjoy spending some time with each other- so long as it wasn't on one of their personal territories.
Recently, Runevas had complained to the dragon about the dangerous newcomers, and Keith mumbled to himself, "I don't think I've had fish in a while…" Noticing Runevas' gills flaring in alarm, he quickly added, "Oh, not like you! You're too small for me to really want to eat!"
Yeah, what a big relief, Runevas thought to himself sarcastically, but then perked up with an idea, "I think this school might be more to your taste then,"
"What do you mean?"
"If you eat them, you'd get a meal while saving me from the trouble they're causing,"
"Oh! That's a good idea! But how would I know if I got them all?"
Runevas paused, thinking. It would be risky and stupid, but the benefits would be excellent: "I could try to lure at least most of them to you. You could be waiting by a spot near the water while they chase me to you."
"But… what if you're not fast enough?"
"I've made it this far, right?"
 
 
All the same, he was awfully anxious as he spotted the school of fish. Hiding behind fronds, his gills flared hard as he braced himself for this plan. Indeed, what if he couldn't swim quickly enough? What if he fell straight into the hungry maws of one of those fish, never to be seen again? Keith would probably think Runevas had bailed out from cowardice, not knowing he'd been gulped down by the food he'd been trying to serve to his friend.
Then again, that would happen anyways if he didn't get rid of these fish now, and Runevas was no coward. He swam out from his hiding place, exposing himself to the dangerous open waters he had been avoiding for weeks now. The colorful swishes of his tail eventually caught their attention, and they began to swim over. Immediately, Runevas darted west. The fish, likely having hoped for an easy meal, sped up and gave chase to the betta. Unfortunately, the fish were indeed faster in open water. The smaller fish found a tunnel through a rock to go through, This should slow them down enough!
The fish stopped for a moment, inspecting the tunnel. Runevas, having exited the tunnel, noticed he had lost the fish, and had to swim above the rock with a flourish of his tail to catch their attention again. This time, the fish were not slow in their approach and Runevas immediately started towards the shore. It wasn't long now until he reached Keith, and once the fish were in his possession, they could both relax. He could feel them close to his tail, but they were fast approaching his friend.
He could see Keith's shadow growing larger above the water, he had seen them. Now, I can just jump out of the water onto the shore and rest! Before the closest fish could nip his tail, he shot upwards and into the air, leaving them behind. A rush of success, until the world around him turned dark again. He landed on something soft and slimy, and with a tumble he felt himself getting pushed around. Where did I land? He only had a moment to think this before he felt a wash of water and scales hit him, and suddenly he and the fish were being pushed back and down into a hot tunnel.
It was when he felt the walls of the tunnel pushing him down its path that he had guessed what had happened: He had jumped straight into the maw of his friend, who had just swallowed him along with the very predators he'd been trying to get rid of. In trying to avoid getting killed and eaten by them, he had been eaten alive by his own friend, who had been trying to help him.
This made Runevas freeze for a moment - not that he could do much else anyways as he coursed through Keith's esophagus, its muscles kneading him down to the doom he had tried so hard to swim away from. He hadn't considered that Keith could prey on him just as easily, if not easier, than the invading school could, even though the dragon had mentioned it in their recent conversation. He must be thinking I swam away, or that I'm hiding somewhere…
The rest of his life, he realized, was about to be extremely short and painful.
He wanted to blame Keith - why hadn't the dragon noticed Runevas in his mouth before swallowing? Did he do this on purpose, was he just biding his time until he could finally eat him? It was irrational: Keith would likely be searching for him, he would have noticed he was missing. And maybe, just maybe, he realized where he'd gone. Runevas knew deep down that it was his own fault - his excitement and pride had led him to celebrating prematurely, straight into the gullet of a different predator.
Finally, he reached a more spacious compartment within the larger being, and the fish and water followed not long after him. The walls were squishy and moist, made wetter with the lakewater that had been swallowed, and quickly became claustrophobic with the fish piling around or onto him. In the dark he tried to scramble away from the fish, not wanting to get his fins caught in their mouths (although, it'd end his misery much quicker), only for his hand to go straight into yet another hole. Am I in the bottom of the stomach?
Runevas was not an expert in biology by any means; however, he knew that stomachs were more complex than people gave them credit for. In some, the stomach has two compartments: the upper part, where food collects to be churned into smaller pieces and melted with acid, and the lower part, where it gets pushed into the intestines. He had once heard of a type of insect that pushed through to the bottom of a frog's stomach upon being eaten so it could go into the intestines and escape relatively unscathed through the typical exit of the digestive system. Maybe, he hoped, he could do just that.
He began to push himself into this tight new canal, pushing his other arm into it, his head, and then let the rest of his body get sucked in. He felt disgusting, diving through the constricting insides of his friend, but maybe once this was all over, they could come to an agreement to pretend this never happened. This canal, he noticed, was significantly tighter, as it would push into him and squeeze the already scant air from his labyrinth lung. Despite this, he tried not to grin at his wit. Although it couldn't make the situation much worse physically, opening his mouth and getting the surrounding fluids in there would be a horrible idea. The canal seemed to feel even hotter than the previous one, perhaps from being even deeper inside than the stomach was.
Much quicker than last time, space grew again around his head, as did a strong, acrid smell that repulsed him. He again figured this was a direct result from being inside the intestines, but as his body finished coming through another sphincter, he fell into another organ. In the short time he felt around, he couldn't seem to find more space to crawl through. Indeed, he couldn't even find much more space except for an upward slant, but climbing this would not lead to anywhere that he could crawl to. Strange, he thought, perhaps Keith was lying down or something. Admittedly, Runevas didn't know much about dragon anatomy. Perhaps intestines wind in different ways for them. He would just have to wait for it to start passing him through naturally.
It was hard to relax with the smell, but as he waited, he felt more fluid accumulate around him. The water from above, he had figured. His fins began to tingle, and though it wasn't terribly painful, it gave him an urgent sense to start climbing closer to his exit. He began to feel around the walls, his hands sinking into folds in the walls and not finding a clear path. His hands pulled away stickily and he realized that the tingling on them had begun to sting more heavily than the rest of his body, excepting the fins that were also touching the walls or the juices that had begun to pool around his legs.
His heart sank with another unfortunate realization: Western dragons have crops, he had completely forgotten about this in his fervent search for an escape. That last compartment, with the other fish, was most likely the crop. If that was the crop… Runevas had just dived straight into his friend's stomach, and digestion had just begun. His escape attempt had only expedited his demise, and he had left his last possible salvation from oblivion.
He couldn't see his fins, but as he reached to touch them, they had already begun to corrode. They were thin membranes, they wouldn't last long if he didn't get out of here now. He finally decided to open his mouth and, for the first time in his life, beg for help: "KEITH, GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
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Keith had waited long enough for Runevas to resurface, and was starting to get worried. Keith called out the name of his friend, padding around the edge of the water for any signs of him. He decided to expand his search options and took flight, swooping over the surface of the water.
Nothing.
He perched on a rock nearby, lying down in a sunny spot, Ugh, his full belly wasn't helping him feel any less lethargic-
His heart stopped. The fish. Had... had the fish gotten to Runevas before he could? Oh no. Oh no, oh no, no, no!
"Keith, throw me up or something, just get me out!" This was accompanied with a pain to his stomach, though Keith couldn't tell if that was from his own guilt and nervousness or the betta fighting from inside.
Keith panicked upon hearing his smaller friend’s voice coming from his stomach, he had swallowed his own friend! And if he had entered his stomach... Much like their other reptilian cousins, dragons had potent stomach acid, though much more potent than a crocodilians'; Runevas would be completely gone in little time at all. He had to think fast...
Magic, that's it! Maybe some sort of magic to teleport Runevas out of there, but if the digestion had already begun... Keith shuddered thinking about the sight of his agonizing, half-eaten friend. No, reformation magic would be better. The process of finishing digestion would be painful for the betta, but Keith would do his best to give him comfort, even if the other couldn't hear him.
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Digestion, Runevas learned, felt much longer as the food than the consumer: the agony made every second drag into minutes in his mind. His tiny body was thrown around with the flight of his predator, exposing him to much more acid than when he had been still while also preventing him from retrying his original plan of finding the pylorus and escaping when he still had most of his body left. His tail had begun to develop holes already, it’d hardly be usable in the water if he got out; he couldn’t stay still long enough to cling onto the stomach lining nor avoid the fluids that threatened his life. He couldn’t see it, but he assumed that the fluids were already mixing into the thick, liquid melt of what they had taken from his body, and he was correct. His teeth were tightly clenched, trying not to have his insides melted too, though in the back of his head he knew it wouldn’t really make a difference.
A new sound arose in the cacophony of organic noise: amidst the quickly beating heart, the fast breathing that bordered on hyperventilation, the roar of blood coursing into the gurgling stomach’s blood vessels to fuel it into breaking down Runevas, he could distantly hear the voice of the dragon that ate him. He couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, though he did catch Keith saying Runevas’ name. Maybe he finally noticed he was missing, or maybe he was taunting him for being so dumb as to trust him. He couldn’t tell, and frankly he couldn’t care at the moment. He was coming to accept that he was most likely going to die, even if he did manage to escape, for the damage was likely too extensive to overcome. He would likely die of infection, or blood loss, or some other wretched and painful aftereffect from being half-eaten. He was going to die, one way or another, but whose fault was that?
The moment everything was still again, he slid to the bottom of the stomach, as did the rest of the fluids, which were up to his waist now. The light tingling of earlier had disappeared, and the stinging phase was reaching its closure as everything felt like it was simply burning. The pain overwhelmed him: his scales, if they weren't pineconing and leaving white spots, had largely melted off, and his agony could no longer be contained. He screamed, "I DON'T WANT TO DIE! PLEASE, PLEASE I DON'T WANT TO DIE! HELP ME!" The pain blinded him to any remaining reasoning. He was already digesting much faster than he anticipated. It was pathetic, he wasn't even a decent or filling meal, his life would end as garnish at best.
Again, he heard the rumbling of Keith's voice, but couldn't understand anything. The dragon could definitely hear the fish's cries, but Runevas would melt away curious about what his so-called friend had to say, probably calling him foolish for believing in him or something to that degree. The more the pain overtook him, the more that these thoughts of his friend's supposed betrayal filled his mind. His body tried to flare his gills in anger, but they were mostly gone already, only leading to another shriek of sharp pain as muscles failed to work in their destruction. Soon, his voice would be gone too, with the rest of him.
All the same, the stomach churned and sloshed with the accumulation of acids and his half-melted body. Runevas didn't know that its owner was desperately trying to save his life through magic, or about the reassuring cooing that everything would be okay. Runevas didn't know that Keith was also distressed, almost in tears as he completed the spell work to ensure his friend's reformation into his original state, or how he let out a sob of guilt and apologies as he listened to his friend's suffering. All Runevas knew was that his bitter end involved blinding pain in a dishonorable fashion, without a wound-riddled body to prove his valiant protection of territory. It would be as if he never existed, his fins definitely didn't exist at all anymore and his legs were melted to semi-solid mush and gave way beneath him.
He fell deeper into the collecting acid and felt his arms go, too, having been melted so thoroughly that his flailing disconnected them from his body even quicker, warranting another blood-curdling screech. Somehow, Runevas had figured that he might at least pass out from pain or a loss of air before being entirely melted, but fate had saved its cruelest sensations for him.
His screams, he realized, were quieter, or maybe that was his own perception as he lost his senses. Truly, his cries for mercy weakened, as did the foundation of his body, until he found that he lost his breath entirely and couldn't regain it. For his final minute of life, he silently begged to be rehatched as a bigger fish, or in a safe and calm rice paddy where nothing could bother him. It was like every regret arose in his final seconds: minute and major decisions he made, his insecurities. He hoped he'd, at least, be a better fish if he could.
His final plea hung in his mind as all sensation finally faded, and the last of his body melted away into goop. He would be taken away and processed through the dragon like the average meal and added to easily lost body mass, something so insignificant and temporary as energy for a few wingbeats and no more. The sludge finally passed into the intestines, unrecognizably him and indiscriminate from the average light snack.
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Runevas' vision fluttered with a haze of lights, meaningless until they slowly came to focus as definite shapes. He was in a dimly lit puddle, and as his hazey, quiet head surfaced, he realized that he was in an unfamiliar cave.
His misery hung onto his mind, tangibly painful to the point he scrambled out of the clean water, in fear that it would be more gastric acid.
"You're awake!" Before Runevas could react, Keith's snout was nuzzling him, nearly pinning him down, "I thought I did the spell wrong or something!"
"Spell..?" He noticed that there was no lump where Keith's crop would be, meaning the fish that Runevas had lured were either currently experiencing or already met a similar fate to his own, though more permanent. He loathed to think about it, having gone through such an ending himself.
"I was able to bring you back with magic. Your clothes and jewelry are gone, though, I couldn't bring them back. I'm so sorry I ate you!"
Runevas was speechless for a moment at the confirmation. It was all real. All that time he spent wallowing about his death and how cruel fate was, and this whole time he was actually going to be okay..?
He scrambled back into the water with awareness of his nude form, though it hardly makes a difference with his species.
His friend… saved him? He really noticed and bothered to help him? He actually cared for him?
Runevas steeled himself, though not enough to prevent his voice from quivering. "Keith…"
"Yeah?"
"I'm never offering you food again."
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Runevas didn't return home for a few days. He had spent that time with Keith instead, who was desperately trying to help Runevas out of the shock. The latter could hardly sleep, staying awake long past sundown and sleeping fitfully whenever he was unconscious, just as panicked and loud as he had been when he was eaten, waking up the both of them. The splashes in the puddle at night would seep into the warm and typically dry nest the dragon slept in.
Keith, naturally, was remorseful to see his friend like this. He had offered Runevas to stay longer, but after two days, Runevas returned home. The night after, though, Runevas returned to the cave, eyes sullen with sleeplessness, body tense from the traumatic stress. Keith learned of the other's presence in the morning when he discovered the fish sleeping near the dragon's back.
He carefully rolled himself away from his friend before using a paw to gently roll him close to his chest. Although he could have gotten up to start his day, Keith decided to guard Runevas like that as the latter lied close to the former's thrumming heartbeat, kept warm by the dragon's heat. He decided to make himself warmer by rolling a small flame inside him without blowing it out so that it could make the other feel more comfortable. He draped a wing over him and his own legs as a blanket, to thoroughly ensure the coziness of his guest.
Indeed, these things seemed to help, as the kicking and twitching of the tiny companion seemed to subside. The larger one dozed lightly, awoken by the movement of the other, who was looking around and wondering if he was dreaming again. Keith's paw brushed Runevas lightly, who recognized the gesture as one of affection, although he hadn't experienced it before. Physical affection was rare to a betta, as most engagements within the species were either of violence or reproduction, so he wasn't sure how to respond.
Keith didn't need a response, and he held the fish closely and caressed him all the same, lulling Runevas back to sleep. He was fine doing nothing today if it meant that he could help his friend catch up on much-needed slumber. That's what friends are for.