Treachery (The Terra Trials Book 1)

by Dan Thomas

  Max took a sharp breath and threw himself into the air, grasping at the thick vine. His arms jerked up as his muscles strained to take his weight as he swung forward through the jungle.

  “Monkey Murf!” Chopsticks giggled. “This should be our new mode of transport.”

  “Don’t get cocky,” Sam warned.

  “But look at him go!” Chopsticks said.

  Max ignored the two other people in the room and concentrated on getting himself off this swinging vine and into the next tree. He hadn’t gotten enough height to make it to the next tree without gaining some momentum. Holding tightly with both hands, he hunched his body before straightening it out and leaning forward. He was rewarded by an increase in height, but as if the vine had heard Sam’s warning and wanted to prove her right, each hard swing was combined with a creak and crack as if the branch the vine was attached to was about to give way.

  “You need to get off there, Max,” Sam said urgently. “Unless you want to be dino fodder.”

  “I’m trying,” he told her through gritted teeth. As the vine swung, a loud crack cut through the jungle. A second later the fierce chattering of the small dinos converged on his position. Max looked down. They were gathered below, waiting for him to fall into their tiny razor-sharp jaws.

  Not happening.

  Max swung back hard one last time. As his direction changed and he rushed forward, the tree branch cracked loudly and the tension in the vine slackened. Still holding onto the loose vine, Max flailed through the air, looking out for another vine, a branch, or anything to grab, or to at least break his fall.

  His forward momentum quickly stalled, and he began plummeting down toward the ground.

  “No!” Max stretched his arms and legs out to make a star shape as he fell through the smaller branches which snapped, splintered, and batted him around as he fell.

  “If you have anything you want to pull out of that bag, now is the chance!” Chopsticks yelled.

  He had nothing. Nothing that would help save him.

  Max grabbed onto thick leaves, but they didn’t stop his downward journey, only snapping and whipping him as he fell through the foliage.

  “The Concealer!” Chopsticks called out as the small silver gadget was flicked off from where it had been stuck to his clothes.

  Max watched the small gadget with resentment as it bounced from leaf to leaf, following him on his fall to the ground. Why had he bothered? He should have just...

  Max’s whole being jarred as he hit the ground. His vision stained red, and he could hear his heartbeat as the game let him know how close to death he was. He let out a hacking cough as he forced his fragile body to sit up.

  “Get up, Max! Get up!” Sam urged him on.

  “Watch out!” Chopsticks’ voice came in shrill through Max’s ear.

  Max caught the movement out of the corner of his blurred vision and cried out as immediately he felt dagger-like claws tearing at his back.

  Max slammed himself backward, yelping as he caught the Coelophysis between the ground and his battered ribs, but he felt it let go, and he rolled away across the spongy ground.

  He bent his arms and dug his elbows into the ground to lever his body up, scouring the rustling undergrowth. He could reach for the laser gun, it might only fire off a couple more shots, but that was it.

  He groaned as he turned onto his side, trying to get his feet underneath him. He could grab his spear, he might be able to fend them off while he dragged himself the rest of the way, he had to be close.

  But even though many had given up the chase, there were still too many Coelophysis. He sank back down onto the ground. He was going to be eaten again and lose the progress he had spent all weekend on. He knew he shouldn’t have even bothered.

  Even over the sound of his pulse, and the roaring sound of the wind, he could hear the heated chirping of the dinos coming in for the kill.

  Max just stared up at the patches of sky visible between the leaves and branches above his head. A leaf was floating down toward him as the sun rays broke down through the canopy. Wait, it wasn’t a leaf. His eyes focused on it, but he realized what it was too late. He put a hand up to catch the item, but it fell straight past his open palm, smacking him between the eyes.

  “Sonofa,” Max lifted his hand to rub his sore head where the gadget had hit him. Only his hand wasn’t there. He waved it back and forth in front of his eyes a couple of times as he tried to figure out what was wrong.

  “Holy shit, get up!” Chopsticks screamed.

  “Go!” Sam yelled.

  The relief, surprise, and shouting from his friends gave Max a second wind. He forced himself up, gasping at the pain radiating from his left shoulder and down his back, but pushed through until he was on his feet.

  The Coelophysis were all around him, chirping warily to each other, clearly searching the area for the prey that had long evaded them. Max glanced up at the direction the sun was filtering in through the canopy. “Northeast,” he muttered and lurched forward.

  He tripped over one of the dinos, which shrieked in surprise, and looked around with wild eyes, but Max had managed to keep his footing and kept moving, limping toward the whooshing sound.

  “Faster!” Sam urged.

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” Max grunted as he tilted forward into a haphazard jog, his left arm hanging limply by his side. He glanced over his shoulder at the group of Coelophysis, running in circles trying to find where their prey had gone, which had been within their grasp only moments ago.

  Max noticed that a few of them did keep glancing over in his direction. Even though it seemed he was disturbing the undergrowth less than normal, which he could only put down to the Concealer in action, they were definitely looking toward him.

  Max staggered on through the undergrowth, swerving when he saw a thick web of vines strung in between two trees.

  “Not up there,” Sam ordered.

  “But I’d be out of their reach,” Max replied.

  “You’ll be out of their reach soon enough, and the high ground hasn’t worked too well so far. I don’t think they want you so badly that they’ll follow where you are going,” Sam said.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. What aren’t you telling me?” Max hesitated. Every instinct he’d honed in Primeva told him to climb.

  “Just keep going.” Sam’s tone overruled his own thoughts, so he kept wading through the undergrowth.

  His health bar, which was not much more than a sliver, was beginning to slowly work its way back up, dulling the edge of the pain. Max was sure that he’d broken his arm, and probably a few ribs. Without any first aid skills or items, he’d probably have his health capped from reaching full, along with a penalty to many actions.

  When he wasn’t running for his life, he’d stop to check his character’s status.

  Up ahead, he could see that the jungle thinned. It looked as if there had been another landslide here that had left a large scar in the forest, which had been cleared of trees. The rushing sound wasn’t far off deafening now, and Max kept glancing up. It sounded as though there was a storm about to break, but the skies seemed clear, the leaves barely moving.

  Max pulled his shoulder awkwardly as he went, sending a fresh bolt of pain through his body. He brought his other arm to hold it, realizing that he could see his arm.

  Then he couldn’t.

  Then he could again.

  He was flickering in and out of sight as the Concealer drained its already depleted battery.

  With another glance over his shoulder, he could see that the Coelophysis had also noticed that he was partially visible.

  Max clenched his jaw, he was hoping that Sam had some idea of what he was going to do from here, hitting a clearing in the trees wasn’t going to—

  “Holy—!” Max almost tripped over himself as he came to a stop, kicking loose rocks over into the abyss below. The clearing of the trees wasn’t because of any landslide, it was because a wide river had carv
ed out a broad, deep gorge. The rushing he had heard all this time wasn’t wind or any storm, it was the water flowing fast through a bottleneck from some five hundred feet below.

  The gorge was carved out of solid bedrock, with rocky ledges and outcrops littered with old nests from birds and Pterosaurs, and the bare bones of dinosaurs who had fallen to their death.

  “Oooh!” Sam breathed.

  “Oooh?” Max mimicked. “I thought this was your great plan!” Max teetered on the edge of the deep valley and looked down the sheer cliff.

  “That’s deep water, a little past that narrow part it gets quite wide, you can make that,” Chopsticks told Max helpfully.

  “I’m basically dead already, Chopsticks.” Max turned and looked back into the jungle toward the sound of the now approaching Coelophysis.

  “Okay, there’s a vine up ahead,” Sam said. “All you have to do is make a run for it, grab the vine, and swing as far out as you can before you let go. You just need to hit a deep part of water, which should be easy if you swing far enough.”

  Max would have looked at her, mouth agape, but from in-game, all he could do was gawp at the drop.

  Anyway, he didn’t have a choice. If he didn’t jump, his snappy-toothed followers would soon catch up with him.

  “Come on, Max. Once you’re in the water, you’ll be able to float down the river and you’ll be pretty much on top of Pez. There’s no other way!” Sam seemed to have it all figured out.

  “Go for it, Max. Monkey Murf can do this,” Chopsticks encouraged.

  “What happened to safety first and make sure those vines can take your weight?” Max asked in a high voice as he watched the pack of dinos racing toward his flickering image. “And there’s no way I can hold my weight up in this condition. I think my arm’s broken!”

  “Since when have you and Chopsticks ever taken my advice? And you don’t have a choice right now,” Sam asked incredulously.

  “She’s right. Just do it, Monkey Murf.”

  Max shook his head as he paused. He didn’t have a choice, it was either certain death or only probable death.

  He turned back to the gorge and leaned over it, his head spinning from the height. They were right, he probably had the biggest target he could ask to land on.

  He reached up and took the Concealer off from where it had stuck itself to his forehead and shoved it into his bag. He took a few steps backward.

  He wasn’t even going to attempt a vine swing, he just wished he had a grappling hook, or someway he could use the Strangler he still had on him to swing off of a branch overhanging the river.

  “Arghhh!” With a battle cry Max launched himself forward, not picking up anywhere near the speed he wanted, but before he could stop himself, he was at the edge of the cliff and threw himself at the empty air.

  As he went screaming over the edge, big gray shapes appeared below him. It took Max a second to realize that he had startled a colony of nesting Pterosaurs who had taken flight below him in a flurry of wings.

  The river below was quickly approaching as he sped down the cliffside, and was soon flying with the Pterosaurs, being buffeted by the wind blowing through the valley.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Fly, Murf, fly!” Chopsticks yelled as Max somersaulted in the air and put his hands by his sides, trying to tilt forward. If he didn’t change his trajectory, he would hit the jagged rocks below.

  Something hit him in the back of the head, he turned to see a Pterosaur that had dive-bombed him open its wings and soar above him, watching him intently. Max realized that they must be warning him not to get close to her young which were nestled safely inside their nests on the sides of the cliffs. He could understand it, but while they didn’t hit hard, he couldn’t afford to take any damage right now.

  Max squinted against the rushing air, watching the flying creature as it circled around and came back for another attack. As it swooped in, Max flung his arm out, rolling himself over to try and avoid the hit, but instead felt clawed feet thump on his chest.

  “Bastard!” Max stuck out his hand to fend the creature off. His hand encircled the flying dinosaur’s neck as it jerked away. Max didn’t let go.

  “Ride the sucker,” Chopsticks suggested enthusiastically.

  The Pterosaur was not so enthusiastic. The feathered creature squawked and banked hard to the left and fell into a sharp dive. Max’s stomach flipped and his hold on the dinosaur’s neck slipped, but he didn’t let go. The Pterosaur had one thought, aside from getting rid of the pesky parasite around his neck, and that was to get the creature that fell from the sky away from its nest.

  Well, that and not crashing into the ground. With the way that it frantically beat its wings as they descended, Max got the idea that the Pterosaur, with a wingspan of only a three feet wide, couldn’t support both of their weight and keep airborne.

  With an angry squawk, the Pterosaur swung its head around, its large beak-like mouth snapping at Max as he swung like a pendulum in the wind. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, he clung on around the creature’s neck as they dove toward the river

  Max tried to swing his feet to the side to try and guide the Pterosaur’s descent away from the rapids, where even with their height, the rushing water splashed up and wet him in a fine mist, and farther downriver to a small bay area that he could see, where a few trees grew.

  Max suddenly felt weightless again as the Pterosaur tipped forward into a dive toward the water, and Max was sure it was going to just dunk both of them as a last resort, but just as the broiling surface of the water touched the bottoms of his feet, the creature leveled back out, heading toward the bay. It was looking to land. It was a double-edged sword, though. Max didn’t want to have to fight the thing if it did land.

  However, he also had too much experience with dying in deep waters and knew the dangers and the creatures that lurked in them.

  “Hold on just a little longer,” Sam spoke for the first time since he’d leaped off the cliff. “The middle of the river runs deep. If you go in there, the current will carry you past the rocks. If you survive, the valley bends around a mile or two and then widens, and you’ll be at the bottom of the Tannika Plains. You’ll be able to swim for shore along there.”

  Max eyed the river dubiously as he skimmed the surface of the water. He was moving away from the white water still, and the river looked fairly slow-moving here, but he knew that appearances of water could be heavily deceiving.

  “Are you sure about this?” Max adjusted his grip on the creature’s neck, which screeched irately.

  “She’s watching a video,” Chopsticks told Max.

  “Right.” Max looked along the river as far as he could where the gorge bent, and the river flowed out of sight. He didn’t rate his chance of survival too highly, but as the Pterosaur shook its body from side to side in an attempt to dislodge its stowaway, he didn’t have a choice.

  His grip loosened as he dangled by one hand, which he could feel slipping.

  “Not yet!” Sam cried, but Max couldn’t keep hold of the Pterosaur.

  He fell like a stone, and as his feet hit the water, his body flipped over, pushing him into a belly flop as he splashed face-first into the water.

  As he entered the murky world of the river, he fought the urge to take a breath as the cold water shocked his body, and he could already feel his limbs going numb.

  “Remember, don’t fight it!” Sam told him.

  Max gulped as his body begged for air, but tried to remain as relaxed as he could, letting himself be carried by the current. He could see the shimmering light becoming brighter as he began to float back toward the air, but it took every nerve he had not to fight the urge to thrash around reaching for escape.

  His lungs burned. He needed to breathe.

  With the cold shock wearing off, he kicked his feet with gentle movements toward the light. A dark shape darted past him, but he ignored it, not taking his eyes off the light, and surely it grew brighter.

>   He reached up, his fingertips breaking the surface of the water and he pushed his arms down hard and tilted his head back as he thrust his face out of the water.

  He gasped for air, taking one large gulp while kicking his legs underneath him and using his good arm to stay afloat. At eye level, the current was more obvious, he could see deep ripples in the water and debris, such as branches and leaves, moving downstream.

  Max gave into the water, feeling the current grip him and pull him along. His smurf character didn’t have the skill or stamina to beat it, especially with his injuries, and he didn’t have anywhere else to go. The sides of the gorge were sheer rock, with only a few ledges higher up, and sharp rocks at the base. All he could do was let the water carry him along and hope he didn’t take any more damage as his health began to creep back up.

  Wasn’t that what he’d done his whole life? Go with the flow. He’d never fought against the flow, never tried to fight the current.

  “Okay, we’re okay,” Sam said soothingly. “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. When you come around the next bend, the river starts to widen, and the sides won’t be as steep. The current should begin to pull you toward the bank on the opposite side of the one you jumped off.”

  “Then what?” Max asked as he bobbed along at a gentler pace.

  “Then you’ll need to find something to make into a raft.” Sam waited for Max to protest.

  “Got any ideas? Or do I need to learn to gnaw through tree trunks like a beaver?” Max asked. “I doubt I’ll be able to make anything that floats.”

  “Nuts.” Excitement filled Chopsticks’ voice. “Kukunuts to be precise.”

  “Ahh, yes,” Sam agreed. “That could work, plus it would probably help get a little dexterity experience and make some more crafting Traits available.”

  The cliff banks above Max’s head were growing farther apart as the river widened and he turned onto his front to take a look at where he was heading. He’d prefer to pick the spot to wash up on rather than the river spitting him out like the rest of the flotsam.

  “Not yet,” Sam warned. “There’s a grove of trees a couple of hundred feet farther along.”