by Simon Archer
That’s when I felt the earth feeling me back.
I could almost hear it. I’m not talking about a voice. It was more like when there’s a car coming up your street with a kick-ass stereo system, and you can feel the bass before you actually hear the music. Only this bass was alive. No, it wasn’t alive, but it was aware. It knew what I needed to know without my even knowing how to ask, and it showed me the answer.
I opened my eyes, and in front of me, one single set of tracks stood out. It was like when I pictured the framework of something I wanted to build with Earth Magic, except I wasn’t the one picturing it. I stood slowly, careful to not break the connection, and began to follow the tracks. I trusted that Thera would follow me, but I didn’t look up to check.
At first, it was slow going, like the tracking I’d done earlier in the day, and I could only see three or four footprints in front of me. But each footprint was easier to see than the one before, and the number of tracks I could see at a time grew, and soon, I was almost running. I darted easily around a dung pile and could feel the steamy warmth of it as I passed. I was close. I was really close.
The bass hum seemed to rise a tone, like a warning, so I slowed to a jog, then to a walk, before I stopped altogether. As the bass faded, I looked up, and thirty yards away, a real-life Hadrosaur was chewing a vine without a care in the world. Thankfully, its name was green, indicating that while it was big and all, it wasn’t too high level for me to deal with.
I’d encountered Hadrosaurs once or twice in Terra Forma, but the VR simulations didn’t do them justice, maybe because they didn’t play an important role in the game. I hadn’t really paid much attention to them other than thinking, “Oh good, big-ass food source,” and killing them.
Also, while this guy had the same brindled green-and-tan coloration as the game version and a similar duck-bill mouth, the crest on the top of his head was about three times as big, with turquoise striations. If it sounds like I’m describing a platypus with a bony mohawk, that’s because he looked like a platypus with a fucking mohawk. Unaware that I was silently laughing at him, the Hadrosaur reached out a front foot, grabbed another vine between his hoof and thumb, and pulled it toward his bill. As I stared at the creature, I saw a couple of messages pop up.
You have learned the skill Tracking. Increasing your skill will increase your ability to track creatures as they move throughout the world.
You have learned the skill Auric Tracking. Increasing your skill will increase your ability to track creatures as they move throughout the world.
Well, that was cool. It didn’t take long to see the difference between the two skills. The first was, of course, a general tracking skill, which evidently I hadn’t had cause to learn just yet. The second was exactly what it sounded like. A way to infuse my Aura into tracking to make it more effective.
I was so engrossed in looking at my skills that I didn’t hear Thera, but I felt her presence as she came up beside me. When I glanced at her, she was staring at me with a mixture of awe and bewilderment.
Very softly, she whispered, “What. Was. That?”
“I just asked for a little help from the earth,” I whispered back nonchalantly.
“There are stories of Earth Movers in Kanil’s scrolls, but he has not shared any stories of feats like this.” I thought I detected a hint of fear in her whisper, and while fawning admiration is cool and all, I didn’t really want everybody freaked out and afraid of me, so I just shrugged.
“Well, the earth didn’t give me any pointers on how to take this big boy down and turn him into dinner, so let me know what to do to help,” I whispered back.
“The easiest kill spot to reach is his side behind a shoulder, low.” She crouched slightly and mimed a stabbing gesture upward and forward. “One of us needs to distract him from the front. When things go smoothly, a Hadrosaur will back away from the hunter in front of him, virtually impaling himself on the weapon of the other hunter.”
“I’m great at distracting.” I smirked. “What happens when things don’t go according to plan?”
“Well,” she continued, “when things do not go smoothly, the Hadrosaur charges the hunter in front of him.”
“I’m great at dodging.” I might have imagined that she smiled a tiny bit. “Either way, I should be the frontman because you know exactly where to hit to kill him, and I don’t.”
“Sensible,” she whispered and then immediately started making her way to approach the Hadrosaur from behind.
I spread my Auric Sense in a wide path between where I was standing and a cluster of bushes well in front of the Hadrosaur. That let me easily avoid stepping on any twigs or other stuff that would make a loud enough noise to tip off my duck-faced prey. Once I was in position, I drew my sword out of my inventory and waited until Thera gave me a signal. Then I lunged out of the brush toward the Hadrosaur waving my sword and bellowing, “FREEEEEEEDOMMMM!” like Mel Gibson in Braveheart.
The Hadrosaur reared back on its hind legs, and I remembered that, oh yeah, they can be bipedal when they feel like it. I hoped Thera had a backup plan on where to hit him because that sweet spot under his shoulder was now about ten feet off the ground. A low-pitched noise emanated from his mohawk like a foghorn married an elephant and had a kid. Kanil had said he’d seen at least two Hadrosaurs, and I had a suspicion this guy was calling for backup. I had zero desire to take on two Hadrosaurs at once, so this guy needed to go down pronto.
Thera swung her club into his back leg, and as it struck home, she pulled her weapon back toward her so that the Stegosaurus scales inflicted maximum slicing damage. Then she spun around three hundred sixty degrees and bashed the club sideways into the back of the same leg.
The Hadrosaur stumbled and went back down on all fours, or all threes because his injured back leg hung limp. I guessed that Thera had cut through the reptile equivalent of an Achilles tendon. He turned his head to try to reach her, so I lunged forward and lacerated his neck with my sword. He swung back toward me, and in a flash, Thera was at his shoulder, and the spike on the end of her club completely disappeared into his side.
As she withdrew the blades, a gush of Hadro blood poured from the wound like a fucking fire hose, coating Thera’s left arm from shoulder to fingers. The beast was still as a statue for a moment but then slumped to the ground like a punctured Thanksgiving Day parade float.
Thera calmly shook her dripping arm and began primly licking the blood off her fingers and palm.
I was pondering how fucked up it was that what she was doing was sexy as hell to me when I heard a foghorn-elephant bleat coming from not too far away. Thera ran her tongue one last time along her middle finger and hoisted her club again, testing it to make sure her hand was dry enough to have a good grip. I followed her lead and squatted down next to the dead Hadrosaur, with the body between us and the sounds of the incoming animal.
Except it wasn’t just one animal. A frantic Hadrosaur crashed into view with a rust-colored miniature feathery dragon dangling from its flank. It raked the Hadrosaur’s hide with a four-inch curved talon on each hindfoot. The miniature scythes stuck up away from their feet like the pinky finger of a fancy lady holding a teacup. It would have been funny, except for the streams of blood running down from the Hadrosaur’s shredded side. The name Troodon appeared in my vision, followed by the word Troodon, and Troodon, and then Troodon.
The same fucking word repeated so many times that I started to feel like I was in The Shining. I almost hoped it was a glitch in my vision, but no, two more little bastards hung onto the Hadrosaur’s tail, several more on the ground beside it tearing at its feet, and another half-dozen in close pursuit. Their names were all displayed in yellow-green, but there were still nearly twenty of them, so while they weren’t much higher level than me, I didn’t think they were going to wait their turns to be picked off one by one. To make things even more fun, they were all shrieking like tomcats arguing over a calico in heat.
“Shit,” Thera mutter
ed as she gripped the club in both hands. “We do not have time for this.”
“Oh, come on, there’s two of us and only eight of them.” I readied my own sword. “That’s not even that bad of odds.”
She rolled her eyes and leapt over our Hadrosaur corpse, screaming in a disturbingly good imitation of the Troodons. The little lizard bastards actually shut up for about four seconds before the ones that had been trailing behind their prey changed course and darted toward her.
By the time I vaulted over our dead Hadrosaur to help, she had already nailed the first Troodon so hard that a couple of the club’s stegosaurus plates embedded in its cheek. The body stuck to the club through her backswing, only falling off when she connected with the ribs of a second Troodon.
I leapt into the fray and hacked clean through a Troodon’s neck before I had even finished calling on Aura Infusion. Another one launched itself at my face, but all I had to do was raise my blade a little and the critter impaled its own fucking self like the universe’s worst sword swallower. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Thera bash her club down on one’s back while sidestepping another one’s talon. By then, both my sword and my body had received their Infusion, but it seemed like overkill now, with only three of the pathetic little bastards left.
I sprinted toward the cluster and bisected the first one almost perfectly. My high school biology teacher would have been impressed. The second one actually managed to nail me in the calf before I took his leg off at the thigh, and even as buffed as I was, it stung like a dire-hornet. I only cut the tail off the third before he skittered out of my reach. I would have followed him to finish him myself, but his skull was crushed by Thera, so I headed to the beleaguered Hadrosaur.
I hope it didn’t think I was coming to save it because I punched my sword into its side in the same place where I’d seen Thera take down the first Hadrosaur. A gush of blood coated my pants from the knees down, but the Auric Armor I’d imbued my clothes with was waterproof, so I wouldn’t need to do laundry tonight. The body fell on its side, crushing one of the Troodons. The two on its tail turned their attention to me for a moment and then fled into the forest.
I took a breath and surveyed the scene with satisfaction as a bunch of messages flashed before my eyes. After reading them, I used Auric Extraction on the downed dinos but found that they barely had any Aura. Still, I got a few messages I’d been looking forward to since the moment we’d arrived on this world
Pattern: Hadrosaur has been learned. Would you like to create a Hadrosaur?
Pattern: Troodon has been learned. Would you like to create a Troodon?
You have leveled up. You gain three stat points and one skill point to distribute.
Congratulations! You have reached level 55! You have learned the skill Auric Polymorph. You may now use Aura to disguise yourself as one of your patterned creatures. This skill will last for one hour for every skill point invested.
Well, that was a new skill, but I couldn’t say I wasn’t pleased by it. There would definitely be situations where being able to appear like one of my enemies would be helpful, and you know, being able to swim around the oceans of Ares looking like a Sharktopus had a certain appeal. I quickly distributed my stat points, opting to put all of them into Charisma because I was dealing with a new tribe, and well, it never hurt to be liked by people. Then I was torn. Part of me wanted to add my skill points into Auric Polymorph, but at the same time, I could do that anytime, and who knew what other situations would come up? So, I just banked my skill point with the others for later.
When I finished, Thera was still checking for any other combatants, so I called out, “All clear,” and strolled back over to her.
She picked a couple of chunks of Troodon flesh from her thigh feathers and popped the bigger piece in her mouth. Still chewing, she said, “Those were just the youngsters.”
“Whaddaya mean?” I scanned with my Auric Sense, and sure enough, Troodon and Troodon, one in orange, one in orange-red were visible in the bushes. “Oh, fuck me.”
Thera moved so that we were back to back, close enough that sometimes her hips brushed against mine. It was a little pleasantly distracting for the minute before the first adult Troodon sprinted into view.
Okay, it was twice as tall as the kids. And twice as long. The feathers on its crest and the underside of its were scarlet, so it clearly didn’t care about sneaking up on its prey. Who needs to ambush when you can run as fast as a giant ostrich, and your mouth was big enough to bite off a human head at the neck?
When the slightly smaller one started to circle around us, I understood why Thera had moved into her position. I spread my Auric Sense a full three hundred sixty degrees around me, concentrating on what was now behind me out of view of my eyes.
In the split second before the raptors charged, I strengthened and extended the Aura Infusion in my armored clothes to include Thera’s body. As long as we stayed this close, it would give her extra protection from their teeth and claws and jaws.
Then they were upon us.
The big guy’s breath was hot and absolutely rancid, and as he snapped his jaws closed where my arm had been a second ago, I processed that his teeth were fucking serrated. I drove my sword up under his chin, but something bony or scaley deflected it, which was so unexpected I almost dropped my fucking sword. I recovered and slashed his nose, which drew a bit of blood but didn’t even distract him.
With my Auric Sense, I saw Thera raise her club with both hands and plunge the spiked tip into her Troodon’s eye. It honestly didn’t phase the creature that much. Thera seemed to expect that as she immediately pulled the spike free and stabbed again, this time into a spot behind its jaws. I expect the spike to glance off, but it sunk into the side of the head like it was sponge cake. I realized that was where a reptile’s ear is, and she had just punched through its eardrum. Only a trickle of blood came out of the wound, but the Troodon yanked its head away and shook it, so that was an improvement.
I tried the same move on my guy, but his head was straight on, and I couldn’t reach the spot. I pulled my sword back toward me and added Aura Infusion as I thrust it into the fucker’s mouth. I managed to slice off a good chunk of its tongue, which was good. Except now, like the other guy, he was mad as hell.
I drew in a breath, preparing to push more Aura into my sword when I saw that Thera’s Troodon had gotten her on the arm. The teeth weren’t able to bite through the Armor I’d shared, but I could actually feel the crushing force as if it was my own arm in its jaws. I added to the Armor’s strength, imagining a long balloon around her arm that I was inflating, only instead of rubber, the balloon was steel.
Thera pulled her arm free, and I let the balloon deflate for the moment because my creature was trying to slash my chest with the claws in his forelimbs. My instinct was to just slash at the part of his wing/hand with my sword, but I recalled what I knew about bird wings and how they connected to the body. Actually, I mainly just thought about Thanksgiving and where you put the knife to disarticulate the wing. Then I multiplied the size by thirty or so, aimed my sword, and directed an Auric Smash through the length of the blade that exploded from the sword’s tip as I drove it into the Troodon’s side.
Blood, charred gore, and feathers sprayed from the impact site, and the limb hung uselessly at the creature’s side. Its focus faltered, and I saw that I could reach that place behind the jaw. But before I could act, I both Sensed and physically felt Thera’s body get slammed to the ground.
I spun around, trusting that my own enemy was too distracted to try anything for a moment. Thera’s raptor had her pinned under one back foot, basically trying to gut her with the claws on its other leg. Thera was wielding her club as best she could, bashing at the foot holding her down, and the sharpened stegosaurus plates were leaving bloody trenches in the toes, but I could feel my Armor weakening around her with each rake of the claws on its other foot.
I yelled, “Pause!” and Thera apparently understood what I meant t
o do, because she lowered her arm and club. I swung my emerald-glowing sword blade in a sideways arc just above Thera’s body, and while I didn’t cut completely through the Troodon foot holding her down, it was close e-fucking-nough. The shrieking bastard stumbled off her, short wing-hands flapping as it tried to stay upright--
And then I was face-down in the dirt with my own raptor on top of me.
I instinctively wanted to hang onto my sword, but I knew I needed both hands free. I drew a deep breath and imagined pulling Aura into my chest all the way down to my belly. I maneuvered my hands as far under me as I could and exhaled slowly, pushing the Aura out of my chest, up through my shoulders, down the full length of my arms. I groaned with the exertion of doing the hardest fucking push-up I’d ever done in my life.
I could feel the Troodon slashing at me as I lifted my chest and shoulders from the ground. I could feel him faltering as Thera hammered with her club at his feet, his head, whatever she could hit. Her efforts distracted him enough to get him off-balance. As he shifted, I took the opportunity. I let my right arm collapse under me as I pushed the rest of the way up with my left and then rolled over as the Troodon staggered and slipped from my back. Before I was even on my stomach, my hand had grabbed the hilt of my sword, and when the beast lowered his head to get his balance, Thera and I each thrust our weapons into his eardrums. She twisted her spiked club forward, and blood spilled from his mouth as she broke through the inside of his throat.