The Utahraptor moved to dart at them, but then Tom poked his other horn into the raptor’s other shoulder, and the asshole shrieked again.
The second raptor that had been chasing the male troodons glanced over and then pivoted in his sprint so that he could come to his buddy’s aid. As soon as he did so, I made Scoob, Shag, and Fred bank to the left, and they all dove at the back of the Utah’s legs like angry landsharks. Shag and Scoob closed around the Utah’s right leg, and Fred on the left. The Utah immediately face planted with a shriek of surprise, and then I commanded the boys to disengage and flee. The damage had already been done to that big raptor. He’d just had his hamstrings ripped apart, and the horse sized dino just flopped on the ground while it screamed.
The last raptor caught another one of Tom’s horns to the shoulder, and it suddenly realized it was fighting a losing battle. It turned to run, but I had the female troodons make the same attack that the males did, and they each tore into the back of the Utah’s legs as soon as it left itself open. Then they dashed away before the black feathered raptor could turn around and bite them.
Now both raptors were screaming and thrashing on the muddy ground. They were still plenty dangerous because of their jaws and front claws, but they weren’t mobile, and I ordered Tom to pace around them so he could find an opening. A few minutes later the first raptor flopped his head on the ground with exhaustion, and Tom ended him with a horn to the skull.
The last raptor seemed to realize he was about to die, and he screeched angrily as Tom paced him. Then I saw an opportunity to strike, and Tom flattened him like a train rolling over a can filled with cherry soda.
I called all the troodons back to us, and we all searched the forest for thirty seconds. All the dinosaurs under my command seemed to have calmed down though, and I finally let out a breath and ordered the troodons to come to me so I could pet them.
“Good job, gang,” I said as they all let out happy hoots and pushed their heads into me for attention.
“Damn,” Kacerie sighed. “Those assholes are scary. They actually planned to flank us.”
“Yeah, and they would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for these meddling kids.” I couldn’t help but laugh after I spoke the words, and the women looked at me with confusion plain on their beautiful faces.
“Ahh, nevermind,” I laughed again as I scratched Scoob, and then I gestured back to the tree. “Let’s get that down so we can take this boulder back to the camp.”
Liahpa, Sheela, and I resumed our work on the tree, and cut it down half a minute later. It took us another fifteen minutes to trim the branches and then cut the trunk round that was tall enough for the table to rest on. Then we rolled it under the table, and I commanded Bob, Sonny, and Cher to push on their end again. The table slid off the ledge, onto the log we had just cut, and then rolled the rest of the way so that it was on the other branches.
“Yes!” I shouted, and the women cheered.
“I’ll use the parasaurs to push on it,” I said as I commanded them to descend the step and take their position.
“It must go slow,” Trel warned. “We will pull out the rollers from the back and then place them at the front.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Are you all ready?” They nodded and then I commanded the parasaurs to push the massive slab forward.
Progress was slow, and we hit a few challenges when we encountered slopes that were a bit too steep for the size rollers we had. After the third small ascent that gave us problems. We took a break to cut new rollers, and then the progress was much smoother.
“This is going to be so great,” Kacerie said when we reached the clearing. “It will make our tasks so much--” she stopped talking suddenly, and then a bright light began to pulse and flash from her skin. Her body lit up like an intense light bulb, and then there was a sound like a gunshot. Emerald and Liahpa moved away from the pink-haired woman, but then they froze when the light faded, and Kacerie let out a gasp of pleasure.
“Damn,” she laughed as she wiggled her fingers. “That would have been useful an hour ago, huh?”
“What the hell was that?” Liahpa asked.
“It was my Lance recharging,” Kacerie said. “Seems to be… two days? Three days? It’s way faster than what people on my own world recharge.”
“But you said you never used it before,” Trel said.
“Uhhh, yeah. I never did, but everyone who has used it said that the reset time is about a week. That’s just how it is.” Kacerie shrugged.
“It would have been nice to have with the allosaurus or the raptors, but we lived through it, and now we can save your ability for something else. It’s a pretty good edge to have.”
“Yeah,” Kacerie said as she smiled at me. The rain had started to pick up again, and the water was making her white blouse see through. She raised an eyebrow when she saw me glance at her nipples, but I just smiled at her, shrugged, and then turned back to guide the dinos across the bridge and into our fort.
Emerald and Galmine walked over to us as we rolled the slab of rock toward the inner wall. The group spent about ten minutes discussing the best place to put it, but then I settled the discussion by placing it in between the cooking fires and our trio of kilns. As soon as we removed the rollers and set the long table in place, the clouds seemed to part from the sky, and a ray of late day sunshine descended to warm us. We all stood admiring the table in silence for a few moments, and then I gestured up to the horizon where a rainbow filled the sky.
“That has to be a good omen,” I said, and the women nodded.
“Just another accomplishment for your tribe, Victor,” Trel said.
“It’s our tribe,” I said as I winked at her. “I couldn’t get anything done without you all.”
“Except build the wall with your dinosaurs,” Trel said with a shrug.
“Or dig the trench with your dinosaurs,” Sheela chuckled.
“Or hunt for food with the dinosaurs,” Kacerie said.
“Or gather materials for building huts and clay,” Liahpa laughed.
“Also, you are handsome,” Galmine said, and the group burst out laughing again.
“Naw,” I said as I felt my face heat. “We are all in this--” The words caught in my mouth as a shadow fell across us, and I instantly yanked the axe out of my belt. There was a massive shape in the sky above, and it seemed to be diving toward us.
“Get under the shelter!” I shouted as I moved to push Galmine back from the open sky. She let out a yelp of surprise but I ended up being just in time, and a massive bird-like creature tumbled into the dirt only a few feet from where we had been standing.
The thing looked like a giant eagle, with gray feathers, long curved beak, and broad wings. It had landed really hard though, gray feathers kind of sprayed out from the sides of it as it tried to flap its wings.
“Victor!” the thing cried as its body began to shift and change. I recognized the voice, and I stepped forward so that I stood in front of the rest of the women.
“Will-Lack?” I asked with surprise.
Then I saw the blood pouring out of his chest.
“Hey! Will-Lack?” I ran a few steps toward the eagle creature as his wings continued to shift into thick muscular arms. His face was now the half-human version from when I had first met him a few days ago, and the man tried to push his arm against the ground so he could stand.
But then he coughed, and spit out what looked like half a bucket of blood.
“What the--” I started to say, but then he raised his hand and flopped over onto his back. His chest was riddled with puncture wounds, and blood poured onto the ground in strong pulses.
“Victor,” he gasped as his eyes focused on me.
“What happened? What are you doing here?”
“Quwaru… They attacked us… she begged me to get you…” he coughed each word out.
“Who attacked you?” I asked.
“The Burners,” he said. “We held them o
ff, but they cut the bridge and are filling our cave with fire. There isn’t much time.”
“How did you know where to find us?” Sheela asked as she stepped to my side.
“I followed you back,” he said with a cough. “You knew where we were, so we wanted to know where you were. We worried you were the Burners.”
“How many of them are there?” I asked as I squeezed the handle of my axe.
“Fourteen, I think. We thought we got them all, but those were away on a raid. We were foolish…” Will-Lack started to cough again, and it was obvious that there was nothing I could do to save the man. I didn’t know how many lungs he had, but it sounded like they were all filled with liquid, and his chest was in tatters.
“She said she would give you whatever you wanted,” he gasped. “Please help us. Please help them. They are my friends. My family now.” Will-Lack’s beak began to shudder, and then his large eyes lost their focus. He let out one last sigh, and then his arm fell down onto the grass.
“Shit,” I sighed as emotion tore through my stomach.
“I will get more spears,” Sheela said, and then she pivoted away from me.
“What?” Trel gasped as she grabbed Sheela’s arm. “No. We can’t go. We’ll just put ourselves in danger.”
“They asked for our help,” I said as I nodded to Sheela. The blonde woman gently pulled her arm out of Trel’s grip and then darted into the inner fort.
“Who cares? You don’t owe them anything! You didn’t promise them that you would help them. You just told them you would bring them plates in exchange for salt, not fight a war!” Trel crossed her arms and her spider legs pounded against the wet grass with obvious anger.
“They asked for my help,” I said as I looked at the group of women. “You all don’t need to come if you don’t want to.”
“Bah!” Trel shouted as she uncrossed her arms. “If you die, then we are all in danger. Please think of us, we need you here and safe. You shouldn’t even be allowed out of the walls anymore, you are too vital to our survival.”
“I am powerful,” I said as I met her black eyes. “We all are, and they asked for our help.”
“Ahhh!” Trel stomped with her human foot and then turned to walk away from me.
I turned to the other women, but Kacerie spoke before I could.
“I’m going. You’ll need my Lance.”
“I will go, too,” Liahpa said.
“Victor--” Galmine began to say, but I shook my head.
“You need to stay here inside the fort. I’m going to bring all the dinos but Hope, so keep the door closed in case something gets through the gate. I doubt anything will be interested because we still have the three allosaurus corpses outside of the gate, but you’ll be safer here than in battle.
I turned to Emerald and was about to tell her that she needed to stay with Galmine, but the green-haired woman tapped on her chest and the pointed to me.
I looked to Trel, and she shook her head. “No, I am coming with you. I don’t like this, but I’m not going to let you go without me. I’ll just pace around inside of the fort and be angry with you the whole time, instead of just angry with you for a few minutes.
“I’ll leave Hope inside against the door,” I said.
“Please be safe, everyone,” Galmine said as she walked into the inner fort walls.
As the rock woman began to lower the doggie-door, Sheela ran out with an arm full of spears. She had her bow over her shoulder and a quiver half filled with arrows, and she quickly handed everyone a weapon.
I commanded Hope to lean against the inside door as soon as it was closed, and then I jumped on Bob’s back. Kacerie and Trel jumped up with me, but there was only a seat for two, so Trel used her spider legs to perch on the back part of the saddle where we normally stored the baskets and jugs. Emerald, Sheela, and Liahpa jumped on Tom’s back and we made sure the gates were secure before we turned north past the orange-bird cave and toward the valley west of us.
“Sheela!” I shouted as we rode. “We came through on the south side before. Can you lead us through the path you took to get here last time?”
“I took the edge of the jungle line at the bottom slope of the hills!” She called back, and I nodded. Our group of dinos formed a diamond shape with the troodons at the point, and I debated the risk of traveling out in the open. On one hand, rolling with five troodons, three trikes, and three parasaurs I could control like a tactical military unit kind of made me feel invincible, and I doubted that anything other than a pack of T-Rexes could really fuck with us. On the other hand, I didn’t want my ego to get in the way of sound tactical decisions. The best battles to have were no battles at all. Cutting down to the river bed that Trel and I took during our trip would probably cost us fifteen minutes, but I didn’t have time for that. We needed to get to the other tribe’s fort as soon as possible, or it might be too late for Quwaru and her people.
“We’ll just take the direct route!” I shouted, and then I aimed our group across the valley’s corner toward the northwest.
We cut across the base of the north hill and then angled up and over the slope of our valley, as we ascended toward the crest, I glanced back over my shoulder to make sure that there was nothing amiss at our home. I couldn’t really see our walls from the hills since the redwood forest surrounding our camp was tall, but I could see the top of the center tree where our fort was. I knew Galmine would be okay behind our two sets of walls, I just hoped that we would all return uninjured.
The next valley to the west was the one that was mostly jungle with the dried river bed in the middle. I saw the narrow trail Sheela must have taken around the outskirts of the trees, but the trikes wouldn’t be able to fit. I steered us more on the slope of the north hill so that we could maintain our speed at the cost of some concealment.
The trip felt agonizingly long, but our route was a straight shot, and it probably only took us twenty minutes to make it to the other side of the valley. Then we charged up the hill, and I commanded the dinos to all stop just before we traveled over the top.
“The entrance to the ravine is over there to the north,” I said as I pointed past the blackened river of sand. “Past that boulder at the edge of the three palm trees. There is a trail that leads east through the jungle for a quarter of a mile. Then it opens up in a canyon, and their fort is on the right side.”
“I do not see anyone attacking,” Sheela said.
“They might have pushed past the jungle and into the canyon.”
“Or this is a trap,” Trel moaned. “We should just go home.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t a trap, or Will-Lack wouldn’t have died at my feet. Let’s ride closer.”
I commanded the dinosaurs to power walk down the hill, and then I kept us to the right near the jungle. As soon as we made it to the lava rocks, I stopped our squadron and then moved Tom and Bob closer so that the six of us could talk easier.
“We need some intel,” I said. “I’ll sneak in through the jungle while you all wait here. As soon as I get a visual, I’ll--”
Emerald waved at me, and I stopped to look at her. The beautiful scaled woman tapped her chest in between her round breasts then she pushed her hands together before separating them.
“Yeah!” I gasped. “I forgot about your ability, Emerald. Would you be okay spying for us?”
The scaled woman brushed back her hair from her face and nodded as she smiled at me. Then she wiggled out of her seat, grabbed onto Sheela’s hand for support, and then slid down Tom’s back. As soon as she landed on the sand, she beckoned to me with a green finger. I tapped Kacerie’s hands so that she could unwind her arms from around my stomach, and then I dropped down off Bob.
“Do you need my help with something?” I asked.
Emerald nodded and then she held her hand out toward mine. Her strange white eyes and oval pupil seemed to bore into my own eyes, and I reached out hesitantly to hold her hand. She smiled as soon as we touched, and then she
began to blur. Suddenly there were two Emeralds standing before me, and they both gave me mirror image smiles before the one that wasn’t holding my hand turned around and ran northward.
“Do you need to touch someone to clone yourself?” I asked the Emerald whose hand I still held. The beautiful woman nodded at me, and her fingers squeezed me three times.
We all watched the clone Emerald reach the part of the jungle with the trail heading toward the canyon. Even though she was wearing a white blouse and black slacks, her skin and hair blended in with the leaves, and I almost couldn’t tell when she turned to take the trail.
“Ugh,” Trel sighed, and we all glanced up at her. “We shouldn’t let her go alone.”
“You were the one who didn’t want to come in the first place,” Liahpa pointed out.
“Of course! But now that we are here, I don’t like the idea of sending one of our own out into danger, even if it is a clone. Emerald, does it hurt when the clone dies?”
The woman who held my hand shook her head and then pointed to my hand.
“It doesn’t hurt when you hold onto someone else?” I asked. She nodded, and I looked back down to where my fingers held her. “I won’t let go, then.”
“I just hate waiting,” Trel moaned a few minutes later. “If they are under attack, then we--”
Emerald’s white eyes opened large, and she patted the palm of her hand I didn’t hold to her chest. Before I could ask her what had happened, she frantically pointed to the next sand dune to our south, and I commanded all the dinos to run over so that we wouldn’t be seen. Emerald and I followed, and then we flopped down on our stomachs so we could peer over the edge. Ten seconds later, a trio of muscular men ran out of the jungle. One had wild blue hair and white skin, another had dark brown skin and legs that appeared goat-like, and the last one had dark black angel wings coming out of his back and horns coming out of his shoulders and forearms. The three of them carried bows, and they turned to look around the beach suspiciously.
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