Metal shrieked and so did Metala. Pain, indescribable and horrifying, wove its way through her body.

A voice spoke, whispering soothing sounds between the cacophony of twisting metal. She couldn’t understand what they were saying but the tone of the voice made her feel… insignificant. The pain made her head fuzzy. Her vision twisted with each torque of the tools.

“Why?” she croaked, unable to fully articulate her words due to the straps holding her mouth closed. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Acidic tears dripped down her metallic face. Beakers caught the tears as they rolled off of her grooved maw, hovering just below her jawline. The tears had created smooth grooves running from her tear ducts down the side of her face. The grooves deepened and widened with each tear that fell.

Metala’s mind fizzled as another one of her scales was pried away from her hide. The humans had a hard time detaching the scales due to a skill that boosted her regeneration. So, they had to work quickly, snipping the sinews that held them to her body. She could feel each and every cut they made. The pain was maddening.

No matter how she struggled, she couldn’t free herself. The only parts of her body that were physically restrained were her mouth and tail. The rest was held down magically. A force crushed her into the ground. It forced her to lay flat, legs splayed out to avoid accidentally breaking them.

They took scales from every inch of her body. For days, weeks, maybe even months, they harvested her. They worked on different parts of her body, rotating as her regeneration replaced the scales that were lost. They measured their progress based on how much of her tears they could collect. Usually, they were done as soon as they filled two beakers. But today felt like they were working overtime.

All she had to keep her mind occupied was the beakers. She forced herself to cry as often as she could manage. She dug deep into her old memories. Anything to help her long days of torture go by just a little quicker.

Her name was Jasmine back then. Her parents had always called her ‘Little Min’ as their personal nickname while those closest to her had called her ‘Jazz.’ Every time she thought of her parents and friends, her heart broke. She hoped they were ok. She hoped they didn’t take her passing too hard. Most of all, she hoped they would never end up in her situation.

For whatever reason, she’d been chosen by a God she didn’t even believe in. Sure, she had grown up with some religious teachings, but her parents had never pushed it on her. The ‘God’ of her homeworld was in constant debate. Plus, there were plenty of other ‘gods’ to choose from despite the overwhelming majority choosing to believe in the one. So why had she been chosen by some strange deity from an alternate reality?

Pain interrupted her musings as another scale was unceremoniously lifted off of her flank. She tried her best to ignore the sound of their sharp clippers hacking away at her exposed skin. It was nauseating. The way the sharp metal slid back and forth as they cut. The way her sinews and tendons snapped away from the scales. A pitiable moan escaped from her maw as more tears ran down her face. They stung, sizzling as they dripped into the beakers. Pain ran up and down her body. She’d long given up on trying to block it out. What was the point? It was just going to come back, as intense as before. She tried to stoically sit through the torture the first few days but that quickly wore thin. She wasn’t tough and she knew it. All she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry. But that wasn’t a possibility, not where she was.

As the pain subsided, Metala let her mind wander once more. She thought about her short life. The little time she’d had with her family now seemed like little more than a dream. Had she always been a dragon? Maybe it was all a grand delusion that she’d come up with.

No, that was wrong. Her name had been Jasmine. Her parents had loved her, even if they struggled to take care of her. She remembered those last few months they’d had together. After her diagnosis, after she’d started the aggressive chemo, after the doctors had told her that the cancer had gone into remission. Those few months when they’d all believed she was going to see adulthood. Those had been the best. The love that her parents and friends had showered her with had been something else. Her heart broke again as her memories ran wild.

Tears flowed, acid continuing to chew deep grooves into her face as they fell into the beakers with loud plops. The dripping sound brought her back to her cruel reality. She braced herself, expecting the flood of pain to occur. Any moment and the humans would surely be tearing into her scales.

She waited. And waited. She strained her ears and extended her senses. She sniffed and caught a whiff of tangy body odor and dried, acidic blood. She couldn’t hear anything. Not the usual commotion of the humans bustling about, readying her scales for excision. No voices, no shuffling feet, nothing.

What was going on?

Metala tried to move her head. Her metallic scales creaked as she fought the inexorable pressure that held her down like the helpless animal she was. She groaned between her clenched teeth as she strained to look behind her. The best she could do was a piteous half-turn that gave her no information.

The sound of high heels tapping against the hard stone floors of the dank dungeon filled the room. Her head snapped back into position, chin smacking the ground as she gave up on trying to look about. Whoever was walking around the room, they were making an awful lot of noise. Metala wanted to know who it was. At the same time, she didn’t want to know.

Was this a new torturer? Were they here to take over the arduous work of farming her scales?

Fear spiked in the dragon's gut as her mind ran wild. She shut her eyes tightly and urged herself to float off into another memory. Anything to take her away from the coming pain. She thought about Mr. Sepeti, the bland looking Speaker of Boba. Part of her blamed him for where she ended up. It was his spell that had sent her here, wherever she was. The last thing she remembered was being beaten to a pulp by the frightful human woman, Malia. When she awoke, she was already in this dungeon. The other part of her was worried for him. He was the first person she had been able to talk to. The first one to learn of her real background. Yeah, he’d been rude and ignored her and had given her a condescending name, but it had felt nice to have someone to talk to. The shadow monsters were too fanatical and weren’t the most intellectual company.

In her heart of hearts, she hoped he was ok. She hoped he hadn’t ended up somewhere as frightful as she had. He might not consider her so, but she considered him to be her first and only friend on this new world.

A bell chimed, pulling her out of her reverie. A soft hand stroked the back of her neck as the most wonderful scent filled her senses. The rank, acrid scent of the dungeon had made her nose go numb. It was refreshing to smell something sweet. Refreshing and alarming.

“You’ve suffered, my child,” a woman’s sensual voice filled her head. It felt like the voice was simultaneously in her mind and right next to her ears. A warmth blanketed her hard metal body as she listened to the woman. “It’s so sad to see the evil’s you mortals can dole unto one another.”

Metala didn’t need to ask who was speaking to her. She knew. She remembered that saccharine voice, so sweet it was liable to cause diabetes in the unaware listener. The ‘woman’ speaking to her was Milque, God of the Middle-Path. She, or they depending on how the deity felt like presenting itself, was the one who had plucked Jasmine out of Earth’s reality.

The dragon whimpered. A fear deeper than what she’d had to endure for the past however long slithered through her body. It filled her with its toxic touch. She wanted to shy away from the God’s grasp but was unable to. She wanted nothing to do with the deity.

“You shiver so, my child,” Milque said as she stroked the nub of a scale that was slowly growing back. “Your beautiful skin, marred by the tools of the trade. Oh, how I want to weep for you.”

A sob filled the room. It felt like the whole room was crying as a fluctuating weeping emanated from where the God stood. It made Metala’s stomach squirm. Had she not been pinned down she would have heaved up what little she was given to eat.

“Oh, you mortals. You never learn your lessons.” Something pricked Metala’s neck. Something sharp slid between a couple scales. Blood trickled but she had yet to feel the pain of the cut. “If they weren’t such brutes, they would be able to make the incisions properly. This is how you truly harvest the precious living material without damaging it. Brutes, oafs, fools, all of them.”

The sweetness in the God’s voice faded as Metala’s thick blood began to flow. She shivered as she felt the warmth of her own blood but was unable to feel the wounds being opened. A semi-formed scale, still in the process of regrowing, thudded against the cold floor.

“Beautiful, just beautiful,” Milque said, clapping happily. “Hopefully they’ll see my magnificent handiwork and follow along. This is how you’re supposed to do the fine work. This is how you cleanly harvest that which is most precious.”

Metala felt the God’s lips brush by her ear before it appeared in her line of sight. Milque was as radiant and beautiful as the first time she’d met the God. She wore a tight fitting coat that accentuated her curves while also making her look like the epitome of a professional working woman. Of course, Metala knew that Milque wasn’t exactly a woman. She was a deity and they rarely conformed to mortal restrictions. As before, the God’s face was ever shifting. Sometimes she would have three eyes, sometimes her lips would be too big for her face. Whatever form her face took, it still felt beautiful to the brain. Everything about Milque oozed beauty, no matter what the standard was.

The dragon wanted to look away. She couldn’t stand looking at the God. It reminded her of her final moments on Earth and her first moments before arriving here. But she couldn’t turn her gaze. As with her body, a force kept her eyes locked on the numen.

“You poor, poor thing,” Milque mewled as she patted Metala’s nose. “If only you hadn’t denied me. If only you had joined the rightful rulers of this mortal plane. If only… Alas, now you’re stuck here. Fodder for my true children.”

Milque’s beautiful, ever-changing face turned into the ugliest sneer imaginable. The God spat on her face before rubbing it in. The spot where the glob landed began to ache, radiating pain like nothing Metala had felt before.

“Let this serve as a reminder. A warning.” Milque lifted her hand and revealed an engraved symbol that glowed a deep, menacing red. Metala was able to understand the symbol but couldn’t find the words to describe it. Every time she tried to pin down a description, the words slipped away from her.

“Suffer here. Ruminate on your sin. Die, for all I care.”

Milque flashed the dragon one more hateful look before winking out of existence. The God simply wasn’t there anymore, leaving no traces other than the brand on her face and the excised partially grown scale. The clanging of tools and the shuffling of feet filled the previous quiet as time began to move once more.

One of the human’s snatched up the scale and looked it over. They said something to their companions before tossing the scale into a bin filled with chemicals.

Metala bore down, gritting her teeth as another scale was forced away from her skin.

She wasn’t sure how long had passed but it felt like hours. Numbness had wrapped her in its sweet embrace, insulating her from most of the pain. Something kept her from losing consciousness during the sessions but she wasn’t experienced enough to know what. The beakers were gone but her tears continued to drip, slowly whittling divots into the ground beneath her head.

She could feel her scales growing back. And it made her cry some more. Her intrinsic regenerative properties were a curse at this point.

“To whoever’s watching over me,” she began, able to speak properly since the humans had undone the binding around her mouth. “Please help me. Please.”

She said the same prayer every night. She assumed it was night time but had no real way of knowing. It gave her a smidge of comfort. Just a tiny sliver.

She wasn’t sure how long she could hold out but she could feel them. The cracks were beginning to form. Her mind was slowly slipping. She didn’t want to give in. She wanted to live and be free and do the things she’d never gotten to do back home. She wanted to learn what it meant to be a dragon. She wanted to grow up and make friends.

But it was getting harder and harder. Her days were little more than long, arduous tests of endurance. And the visit from Milque only confirmed that the God had something to do with her predicament.

“God Boba, if you can hear me,” she said between sniffles. She wasn’t sure why she was crying again but an intense sadness crashed against her like a tidal wave against a beach. “Please help me. And please take care of Mr. Sepeti. I hope he’s ok.”