[ tw: gore, torture and the general nastiness that Silent is, I’m not kidding he’s brutal for a reason]

out here in the dunes things were quiet, still in the darkness.

Save for the wet hacking from the throat and frame of a once greater than apex predator.

It’s eyes were rolling in its head, what was left of its head that hadn’t been decimated and smashed to oblivion and back - the once beautifully angular jaw smashed in with extreme prejudice and blackened like the great beast had tried to spew fire but the blow to it had caught it too quickly to stop and thus scorched itself instead

The bubbling meat of its tongue and the blasted teeth added to the theory even as blood oozed from the coughing maw.

It might have continued making louder noises if it’s vocal chords had not been violently stripped from it when the tendrils had choked themselves down its throat to stop the shrieking cacophony that so annoyed its assailant - and alerted anyone else that this was not perhaps a feral dragon

But no one had to know that.

It’s throat sagged from the intrusion, the blood building up from such a violent inward wound that now bubbled up through the remainders of its torn scorched throat and maw, slipping through its teeth and drooling from its nostrils

It would writhe if the creature that had assailed it hadn’t broken its back so throughly - nor its frontal arms lying with bones shattered, one near torn away with only strings of meat still attaching it to its body.

It was agony

Agony being eaten alive,

And it couldn’t even scream as the thing buried itself into a flayed open chest and stomach, the spindly spiked and spines creature twisting around inside it to pull out organs and flesh yet somehow doing so in such a way as to prolong the suffering

Whether it found amusement in it, it didn’t know

Perhaps it just liked its prey still warm to eat - a certain spice to a still living meal.

Needless to say the dying was slow to come, the dragon would beg for relief if he could as tendrils worked into and between bones and flesh.

The night was a long one

But eventually, all things do end - all things come to Silence.

With the dawn left the sad remnants of a once mighty creature, all that was left were the bones lacking a head to stand stark in the dry desert air as the grim visage of its killer shambles back along the endless sands unnervingly somehow knowing the way home despite the surroundings.

With it carried its prize, the skull, horns and lower jawbone complete with teeth of a once magnificent creature, picked clean and spotless

Kydobi wished for trophies of worth on his members? Then so be it

Though silent found it insulting it needed to prove itself to anyone or thing - but it liked the lands soaked in screams and blood of yesterday, of this was the price so be it

It would amuse itself with these little games the fragile ones played - despite how easily it could simply eat them and be done with it.

A low gurgling laughter echoed into the early morning sands, painted red with blood and adorned in the monuments of bone.