Then he honked again, and it sounded kind of terrified.
“What’s wrong, buddy?” I asked as let go of his neck and looked at his face.
He was looking behind me, and I turned around a second too late.
The big fucker with the black wings and tusks was flying across the clearing. His fist slammed right into my stomach, and my body went numb as I tumbled away from him. It was the fall from the pteranodon all over again as I rolled across the grass, but this time my entire body was numb with pain.
“Hmmmm,” I heard him rumble after my vision cleared. “I’m surprised you are alive.”
I felt something press on my chest, and I looked down to see that his black taloned foot was pretty much the size of my rib cage. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t do anything, but look up at the big asshole who was about to crush my chest.
Then the pteranodon slammed his sharp beak into his face.
The man growled and stumbled off me as he brought his massive hands up to cover his eyes. I still couldn’t seem to force air into my lungs, but I managed to ignore the agony in my body so that I could scurry to my feet.
The pteranodon poked at the big fucker’s face again, but the winged man had his hands blocking his eyes, and I think the attack only made contact with the palm of his hand.
I sucked in a painful gasp of air after I stood, and the darkness at the edges of my vision cleared a bit. I ordered the pteranodon to stab at the big man’s crotch, and the asshole let out a bark of anger when my dinosaur stabbed his beak into the big man’s groin area.
Then he brought one of his hands down from his face so he could cover his vitals, and I commanded the pteranodon to stab him in the face again.
The man staggered away from my dinosaur, but I knew that the victory was only temporary. Yeah, my new dinosaur was about as tall as a horse, but the black winged asshole was probably eight feet tall himself, loaded with muscles, and he probably weighed three hundred pounds.
As soon as he got his wits about him, he’d go on the offensive.
So, I couldn’t let him get his wits together.
I sprinted toward the man and tucked my left shoulder down so I could slam into his stomach. He grunted when I hit him, and his bare feet stumbled back, but he didn’t go down. Instead, he thrashed out with the ham sized hand that had been guarding his groin, and I had to duck down to avoid getting clobbered.
Then, without really thinking, I twisted up from my duck and slammed my right fist into his groin.
He gasped with shock and staggered back again as he swung out with his arm. The man’s wrist was probably the size of my knee, and I knew that he’d knock me out if he managed to hit me in the face.
I jumped away from his next swing and then kicked him in the groin again. He took another three steps back from me, dropped his hand from his face, and then aimed a punch at my new pal. The strike might have hit the pteranodon, but I ordered the flying dino to hop away, and the creature let out a honk at the big winged man which sounded all sorts of mocking.
“You control the creatures of this world?” he growled as his three eyes turned to glare at me. The big man was all sorts of ugly, and I might have made a comment about his looks if I wasn’t struggling to breathe or worried that he was about to kill me with his ham-sized fists.
Instead, I ordered the pteranodon to jump into the air, open its wide wings, and then start to fly away. The ugly man with the three eyes watched it go for a few seconds, and then he turned his attention back to me.
That was exactly what I wanted since the pteranodon was just gonna circle back around in order to try to come and dive bomb him from behind.
I just had to survive the big asshole’s attacks for a few seconds.
“I changed my mind,” he growled as he stepped toward me. “I will take you with me. She will reward me for bringing you to her.”
“Who are you talking about?” I tried to say, but I was still wheezing, and it came out like “Ohhh youuut?”
The big man dived toward me.
I expected the movement from the way he set his back leg against the grass, and I rolled to the side just as he dashed forward. My bruised shoulder took the hit on the grass, and I gasped, but his arms also missed me, and I managed to complete my roll and end up on my feet.
Then I was running.
I couldn’t really think of anything else to do. This guy was two feet taller than me and twice my weight. He had claws on his toes, teeth on his wings, and tusks on his face. I doubted even having a spear would do me any good, but my eyes still searched the ground for some sort of weapon as I ran.
I didn’t see anything, and I heard his wings flap behind me.
I juked to my right and then rolled left as I ran. His wings passed over me, and he let out an annoyed growl. I was back on my feet, but as I spun around to try to run, his hand came out to grab the front of my shirt.
My body acted without me thinking, and I knocked his hand aside with my forearm and kicked out at his groin again. The toe of my work boot slammed right into what I guessed were his nuts, and he let out another angry shout as he doubled over.
His wings spun around, and the teeth on the outside rim of the limbs tore across the shoulder of my shirt as I spun away at the last moment.
“I have changed my mind again,” he growled as he spun in a circle and extended his wings out to their full length like some sort of demon. “I will kill you.”
He flapped his wings again and then crouched down a bit. I knew he was going to try to pounce on me, and I realized that there was no way I’d be able to escape his wide wings and long arms if I tried to flee.
So I ignored the terror in my stomach and charged him instead.
My movement forward caught him off guard, but then the pteranodon slammed its beak right into his back as it swooped in from the sky, and the asshole’s three eyes opened impossibly wide when the beak punched out of his chest.
He was too tall to punch in the face, so I went for the balls again, and aimed a jump kick right into the bulge. My boot connected with the combined force of my sprint and the weight of my body coming down from my jump. The big fucker screamed a horrific trumpet blast of anger, and then he spun around in a circle as he tried to dislodge the pteranodon from his back.
I almost got sliced into ribbons by the blades on his wing, but I dove to the ground just in time. I rolled to my right as his foot tried to stomp me, and then I somersaulted across the grass and came up a good fifteen feet away from him.
I ordered the pteranodon to pull its beak out of the man’s back as he struggled to throw the dinosaur off, but instead of ordering the dino to stab him again, I told him to just jump in the air and get some distance, he did so, and narrowly avoided getting sliced up by the man’s bat wings.
“I’m going to kill you!” he shouted as he spun back to me. I would have thought that the whole “dinosaur beak speared through the chest” would have stopped him from shouting, or breathing, or done something to slow him down, but it actually just looked like it pissed him off, so I decided that it was time for Plan B.
I turned and ran away from him as fast as I could.
There was a good hundred yards of the grassy field between the edge of the jungle and me, and the flying fucker probably had a speed advantage with his long legs and wings, but I really didn’t have any other options.
I heard his wings flap, and I fought against the desire to glance back over my shoulder as I ran. Instead, I focused on the distant jungle trees and pumped my tired legs and sore arms as furiously as I could.
His wings beat again behind me, but they didn’t sound as close as they did the first time, and I guessed that I was gaining distance. Then his wings beat again a few moments later, and they sounded really close.
I dove forward across the grass on my belly like I was trying to steal home plate, and I felt the fucker’s thick fingers fumble across my shirt as he tried to grab me while he flew past. I looked up and sa
w him arch his back so that his teeth covered wings would swoop him higher in the sky. For half a moment, it looked like he was actually flying away from me, but then I saw him glance over his shoulder, and he started to turn around in the air.
I sprang to my feet, ignored the feeling of my burning lungs and continued my sprint to the jungle. The good news was that I could see him coming at me now, and I could kind of guestimate how long it would take for him to be able to swoop down on me. The bad news was that I could see him now, and I realized that he flew really damn fast.
I couldn’t tell for sure if I was going to be able to get to the trees before he got to me.
“Ahhhhh!” I seethed to myself as I pushed my legs to run harder than they ever had before. I could see the big asshole preparing to dive, but my pteranodon was a bit too far away to attack him.
Then the big winged man dove, and I turned my full attention to the jungle.
I was about ten yards away.
I poured every last ounce of strength and willpower I had into my legs, and then I jumped as soon as I thought I was close enough.
“Arrrrggghhh!” I heard him scream, and then I heard what sounded like a guitar string being plucked.
I rolled on a ground of dead leaves, bounced off a root, and then came up on my ass. I was inside the cover of the jungle, and I turned my head to see that one of the palm-looking jungle trees at the edge of the clearing had been sliced in half. The top part was toppling over, and I saw the three-eyed asshole float down and land on the grass as if he was a ballet dancer.
Then he ran toward me.
“Fuck,” I groaned as I forced myself to my feet and turned away from him. I wasn’t going to be able to keep this up forever. I needed a way to beat the guy, but I couldn’t think of any plan beyond trying to get some more space from him so I could have time to come up with something.
The jungle was just dense enough to keep him from flying through, but it wasn’t dense enough to snare or hammer the massive man as he ran after me. I was still able to twist and turn around trees a bit faster, but he also used his wings to give him a short jumping boost of speed, and he had started to close in on me after a minute or so.
Then I saw another clearing ahead of me through the trees, and I realized I was fucked. I still sprinted toward it, but dread filled my stomach with every step, and I figured that I was going to have to turn around and face fight him toe to toe as soon as we got out of the jungle.
Then I hit the edge of the trees and gasped.
It was a cliff, and there was a sixty foot drop down to a small valley with a twisting river cutting through the center.
In the far distance I saw a herd of stegosauruses drinking at the river.
My pterosaur pal dived toward me, and I jumped off the cliff edge as soon as the three-eyed asshole broke through the trees.
I made the trust-fall grab for the pterosaur’s ankles, and we found each other a lot quicker this time. He let out a honk of annoyance when his wings took my weight, but then he kind of angled his body forward, and we started to glide down to the valley below.
Maybe glide wasn’t quite the best word.
This was a moderately controlled fall that was going to have a rough landing, so I commanded the pterosaur to aim more towards the river rather than the solid ground of the valley. He complied, and I let go of his legs when we were about ten feet over the water so that he wouldn’t get all caught up with my landing.
It looked like I was falling into a part of the river that was right next to the shore, but the water was deep, cold, and fast moving. My body went into a bit of shock when I plunged beneath the surface, and I had to kick my exhausted legs over and over again until I got to the shore.
Then I looked to my right and saw the asshole gliding down toward me on his black wings.
“Fuck this guy,” I growled as I forced myself to stand. I looked away from him and toward the center of the open valley. The group of stegos were about three hundred yards up river, so I forced myself to run again.
The cold water had done me a bit of a favor. My legs didn’t quite burn as much as they did when I was running up through the jungle above, and my shoulder didn’t seem to ache as much. I still felt like I wasn’t running as fast as I was capable of, but I guessed that I’d be able to get close enough to a stego to tame it just as the big three-eyed asshole reached me.
Then looked back over my shoulder and saw he was almost upon me.
Fucking shit, he was way faster in the air than on the ground. My mind spun with options, but I could only come up with two: fight him and probably die, or run where he couldn’t possibly follow me.
I chose the second option, and dove back into the river.
The numbing cold swirled around me. I tugged at me. It pulled me away in a swirl of inky blackness.
The stegos were upriver from me, and there was no way I’d be able to get close enough to them with the current pushing me away.
I was just delaying my death for a few more moments. Soon I’d have to come up for air. Soon I’d have to face this fucker.
I did the only other thing I could think to do. It was a shot in the dark, except it was quite literally a dark river that was pulling me tighter into its embrace.
I reached out with my mind and tried to Tame something that could help me.
Then that something answered, and I felt my body slam into its bulk. The creature was dark and brooding, but it had sensed my stress and wanted to help.
Or maybe it just wanted the meal I promised.
I clutched to its top and felt it swim toward the shore.
I came up out of the water first, and the three-eyed winged man stepped knee deep in the water so that he could grab me. Before he could throttle me with his ham-sized hands, he noticed that I was crouched on the back of something massive, and his three eyes opened wide with alarm.
“What--” he started to say, but then the jaws of the dinosaur-crocodile exploded from the water and chomped down on his waist.
My enemy tried to fly, but he only got one beat of his wings off before the croc slammed sideways. I knew he was going to do a death roll, so I jumped off the massive creature that had just saved my life and tumbled back in the cold water as it began hissing and thrashing.
I drank a lung full of icy water again, swam to the shore, and then crawled out onto the gravelly sand. I almost didn’t have enough strength to move anymore, but I still looked back into the water. My Eye-Q said the crocodile I had befriended was purussaurus brasiliensis, and I guessed it was probably longer than thirty feet. I couldn’t really tell for sure since most of it was in the water thrashing as it tore the three-eyed asshole into pieces.
I thought about the crocodile that had tried to eat me when I first came to Dinosaurland. That guy had been about half the size of this one, and he only rolled around two more times before he slowly sank under the surface of the river with his meal clutched in his six foot long maw.
“Damn,” I sighed with relief as I lay back on the sand and closed my eyes. I was tired, so fucking tired, but I felt something poke me in the stomach, and I opened my eyes to see the big pterosaur looking down at me with a concerned expression on his long face.
“I’m alright,” I said as I rolled to my side, pushed up with my arm, and staggered to my feet. “Just need to keep moving. How far away do you think I am from everyone else?”
The pterosaur honked and then turned his head sideways.
“I know you don’t know,” I chuckled as I started to take a few steps away from the shore of the river. “I’m just making conversation.”
He honked again and then made a kind of frog jump on his legs so that he was keeping pace with me.
“Him?” I asked as I turned back toward the river. “I’m not sure if I actually tamed him. Let me look in my Eye-Q.” I opened back up my menus and then toggled over to the right menu to see the list of dinosaurs which I had tamed. Purussaurus brasiliensis was listed at the bottom.
&nbs
p; Did this mean that the giant croc would follow me around? Did this mean that I could tame other large predators? Or had I just gotten lucky?
I focused my thoughts in the water and asked the croc to surface. Nothing happened at first, but then the massive creature surfaced like a submarine and fixed his yellow eyes on me.
“Sorry,” I said, “uhhh, I was just making sure you were okay.” The giant dino-croc made a growling noise that sounded like a tuba making love to a chainsaw.
“Shit,” I laughed. “You don’t have to be all grumpy about it. Yeah, go back and eat. I hope he tastes better than he looks. You can catch up with me later.”
The croc, who I had just decided to name Grumpy, let out another rumble and then sank back into the water of the river.
“Alright, buddy,” I said as I turned to the pteranodon, “my friends are going to worry about me. I have to get back to them, but I have no idea where I am.”
The pteranodon let out a honk, and I rolled my eyes.
“I know I’m on land, silly. Which direction is the ocean?” I looked up to the sun, but it was directly overhead.
The pteranodon looked over toward where the river was flowing and honked.
“Okay,” I said. “So the plan is that we follow the river to the ocean, and then… I guess we’ll pick a direction and just walk that way? I’m thinking we are north of Quwaru’s cave, you don’t know her yet, but she’s great.”
The pteranodon let out a happy honk, and I looked toward the direction where we’re supposed to walk.
Shit. I had no idea how far away I was from everyone. It might take days, maybe even weeks to get back.
How in the hell was I going to survive out here alone?
As soon as I asked myself the question, I started laughing. A three-eyed asshole with wings just flew me up to skydiving height and tossed me out to die, but I hadn’t. I’d survived.
I was on a planet full of dinosaurs, and I could tame every single one.
How was I going to survive? The question was more like “how soon could I get back and how many awesome dinosaurs could I tame while making my way home?”
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