The Wyvern in the Wilderlands: Planeswalking Monster Hunters for Hire (Sci-fi Multiverse Adventure Survival / Weird Fantasy) (Monster Hunting for Fun and ... Hunters and Mythical Monsters) Book 1)

by Eddie Patin

  In time, amazingly enough, the man found himself close to the young beast. Jason was close enough to see its dark eyes moving around in its skull as it scanned its surroundings in between bouts of grazing. He could feel the creature keeping an eye on the adults—almost imitating them and looking to them for reassurance every once in a while.

  The beast was food. But it was also a living creature. Jason would have to kill it to make it into food...

  He found himself closer to the young duckbill than he thought he’d be able to get. Maybe these herbivores weren’t accustomed to evolved ape-men slithering up to them in the grass...

  From fifteen yards away, Jason positioned himself behind a bush that would let him get up to his knees without being seen. He slowly made his way into a good position to throw his spear...

  But once Jason knelt in the grass, his right knee complaining, hefting the spear horizontally and preparing to throw, he paused. The spear didn’t feel right; it didn’t feel confident in his hand. The man suddenly had an almost certain feeling that throwing a sharpened stick at the creature would fail.

  Jason quietly lowered the spear into the grass and pulled his Glock 26 instead.

  He took careful aim with both hands, placing the front sight on the young duckbill’s broad and colorful side behind its front shoulder. Were dinosaur hearts in the same place as elk and deer hearts? It had to be somewhere around there—at least its lungs should be there...

  Almost tasting the roasting meat in his mouth, Jason focused and let out his breath. He squeezed the trigger, watching the blurry haze of the creature move a little behind the crisp visual of his front sight dot...

  The Glock popped in his hand, throwing an empty shell casing somewhere off to the right. Jason didn’t see the duckbill react, so he let up until the trigger reset then fired again at the same place. He fired a third time.

  The pistol shots cracked across the entire valley it seemed, and Jason heard them echo like thunder through the sky...

  With the third shot, the valley exploded into movement around him. Flying dinosaurs and bird-like creatures bolted into the air everywhere, flapping their wings. The huge herd of massive duckbills—close to Jason again—burst into motion, thundering away and shaking the ground. Jason felt a sudden panic that he might be crushed underfoot, but they all ran away from him.

  The young duckbill let out a long, grunting cry and collapsed to one side.

  "Yes!" Jason exclaimed.

  A fire flew through his soul, and adrenaline pounded through the man as surely as it had when predators of all sorts had been trying to eat him these last few days. Feeling alive and full of energy, Jason reached down to grab his spear and ran toward the downed dinosaur.

  He crossed the distance quickly, plowing through the grasses and underbrush, and approached the moaning and writhing body of the young duckbill on the ground. In that moment, Jason saw that it was helpless, lying on its side, trying to move its arms and legs and tail and neck to no avail. It cried out in long, low groans. The young creature's eyes were full of stark fear and Jason became distinctly aware that he could feel the beast's spirit through those dying eyes—he could feel its pain and terror and it broke his heart.

  Brimming with unexpected feelings of despair, relief, sadness, fear, and desire, Jason felt his eyes spill over with tears, and he approached the creature. He saw that all three of his shots hit in a tight pattern where he was aiming, and bright red blood bloomed from the three holes in the dinosaur’s hide as it weakly thrashed on the grass below him.

  It was still alive. It wasn’t instantly killed. Maybe he did miss the heart. If he just nicked it in the lungs or something, it might be dying, but it was clearly in pain...

  Jason aimed the Glock at the bleating creature’s head and looked at one fearful, dark eye as his own eyes became bleary again with tears.

  "I’m sorry," he said, then, "thank you..."

  Jason shot it in the skull behind its eye. When it didn’t immediately drop, he shot it again, and the duckbill’s head dropped to the ground. Its body relaxed as it let out a long, buzzing exhalation of breath.

  "Goddamn it," Jason said, looking at the pistol in his hand.

  Five shots, he thought. Down to ... ten?

  Jason stared at the body for a moment until the thundering of the duckbill herd running away snapped him back to the moment at hand. Exhilaration flew through him, and a sudden stomach cramp at the sight of blood made Jason queasy. A quick look around through the tall grasses told Jason that he and his kill were being quickly abandoned just inside the valley near the eastern tree line.

  He holstered his Glock and threw his spear to the ground, pulling out his pocketknife.

  What to do? he thought, looking over the body of the beast. Jason didn’t give much thought to what he would do once he actually killed the creature. In video games, he could convert a dead animal into meat ready for the grill with no effort. But this dead animal was real, and still very much an animal. There was skin. Muscle. Blood. He knew he wouldn’t be able to take much before the raptors came in—just like they did with the other kills he’d seen out here—but he could take a lot if he did it right. He could take enough meat for days if he hurried...

  The man's eyes landed on the young duckbill's hind legs. Could he carry one of those legs back across the forest and up the hill to his cave? How much would it weigh?

  It would have to do. He had to get out of the valley before predators arrived.

  Jason got to work. He didn’t really know what he was doing—he’d helped his dad quarter a deer once, but that was many years ago and he didn’t remember much about it. He figured that he’d be able to just cut the entire leg off, circling around the connection to the hip with his knife until he was able to get down to the joint. If he could sever the joint once the skin and muscles were cut, he’d be able to take it and run away...

  He plunged his knife into the creature’s hide near where its thigh and flank muscles connected. The hide was thick—much thicker than Jason expected—and the tough skin resisted his knife very effectively.

  "Shit!"

  He worked at it, sawing with the small, serrated part of his blade. Jason could see that just inside the skin, bleeding from inside around his knife’s blade, the muscle was red and pink. It was covered with white sheathing and tendons and other stuff that he didn’t anticipate.

  Jason was suddenly surprised by a loud, distant call—a deep, bellowing question from a large creature.

  It's not the wyvern, is it?! he thought, looking up and staring across the grass.

  "No," he said, feeling a flush of cold fear rise up his back. Across the valley, he saw one of the great mini-rexes standing in the green grass, eight feet tall on powerful, clawed legs and counter-balanced with a long, horizontal tail that flicked a little from side to side. Its monstrous head—big enough to close its jaws around him—looked straight at Jason. The man stared at the dark feathery quills running down from behind its snout, over its head and neck, down its back, all the way down its tail. Its tiny arms were hidden within semi-wings. The long teeth sticking out of the monster’s mouth in a slight overbite glinted in the sunlight...

  Oh God...

  As he stood in terror looking at the mini-rex across the valley, Jason’s heart sank when he saw the second large one appear from the trees next to it, then the third smaller one emerged from the shadows as well. All three of the huge predators started heading his way, taking long and casual loping steps with their long, powerful legs...

  "Shit!" Jason cried, frenzied by panic and hurry, cutting at the skin of the duckbill’s leg as fast as he could. His knife blade slipped and skipped along the tough hide.

  He wasn't going to make it...

  The valley was almost completely empty now as far as Jason could see, except for him and his kill and the three mini-rexes hurrying his way. They looked at him from across the distance like cats considering something interesting and edible.

  Stark t
error filled Jason.

  He needed the meat, but the mini-rexes would kill him—they'd eat him alive!

  "It’s not fair!" Jason shouted, eliciting a haunting response from one of the adult mini-rexes who watched him with interest as they ran to his position. He could hear the thumping of their heavy feet on the valley floor now...

  Entertaining the mad idea of working harder on the leg for a little while longer—trying to get the meat before he ran for it—Jason stared at his kill for a moment, wracked by sadness and loss and desperation.

  Then he ran.

  Jason turned and sprinted for the trees, immediately targeting a tall pine tree at the edge of the valley with thick, low branches.

  White fear flew through him when he suddenly saw the mini-rexes appearing at the edges of his vision—first one on his right as he sprinted for safety, then another on his left. In a moment of horror, Jason looked back to see the two adults pursuing him on either side, converging on him like two seeking missiles. The smaller mini-rex had broken off to examine the dead duckbill.

  "Oh my God!" Jason cried between beating breaths.

  He paused for a half-second to throw his spear at the mini-rex closing in on his left. Its big head and cracked jaws filled him with terror. The monsters' determined footsteps shook the ground under his feet.

  The sharpened stick flew off at the carnivore and Jason didn’t bother watching to see what happened.

  Instead, he drew his Glock again as he ran as fast as he could, praying that he didn’t screw up and drop the weapon during the draw. He didn’t drop it, and he held it out at the mini-rex running in with thumping steps on his right, the sights bobbing all over the damned place.

  It was closer. He might have to—

  The mini-rex on Jason's right closed in with a suddenness that made the man’s heart leap and his body fry with adrenaline. As the huge head full of teeth the size of his fingers rushed in—big eyes wide and focused, dark feathers rustling in the wind of the chase—Jason shot it twice in the face! On his right, the mini-rex that just took two hits to the skull peeled off of its attack, disappearing behind Jason. He decided to not look at the second one—thumping along on his left—and crashed into the tree, climbing it immediately with the ferocity of an insane monkey. Once again, Jason plunged through branches that scratched and tore at his face and hair. He didn’t feel it when the bark dug into his hands and cut up his wrists. He was pretty sure that his bad knee wasn’t happy about propelling him up the tree’s branches as fast as possible, but the stark fear raving through his system was actually enough to make Jason forget about his bad knee.

  Jason struggled desperately to get away from the monstrous predator, circling around to the other side of the tree. He climbed; scrambled up like a monkey on cocaine. As Jason lunched himself up branch by branch, his mind’s eye—operating three times as fast as normal—gave him a vision of the other mini-rex catching up and plucking him out of the branches by one leg before he made it out of reach. When the face-shot monster crashed into the tree for real, Jason cried out in a panic, almost dropping his gun. Then he aimed down at the snapping jaws pushing through the branches at him and shot the huge bastard once in the snout. The mini-rex shook its massive head as if punched in the nose then came after him in a fury, leaping up at the tree, trying to claw its way up the branches with its huge hind legs. Jason stared down into the creature’s massive gullet where bark and bits of tree showered down. Then he kept climbing as the thing thrashed up at him.

  Eventually, after his heart threatened to explode and his vision started dimming around the edges, Jason realized that he was high enough, and the monster trying to power its way up the tree with nothing more than its back legs was no longer a threat...

  Unless it can knock down the tree, Jason thought with a chill.

  "Let’s hope it doesn’t figure that out..." he said, his voice quivering with heavy breaths and blind fear.

  Jason found a thick branch and settled in, holding on.

  He suddenly realized that both hands were grasping at branches. His pistol was gone. He must have dropped it in the desperate climb. Jason's stomach turned cold.

  "Shit!"

  His heart hammered and his heaving breaths started to make him feel dizzy before Jason tried to force himself to calm down. He watched the adult mini-rexes raging around the tree, stomping and scratching and letting out low grunts that gave him jolts of fear.

  Jason looked out at the dead duckbill youth in the distance. The smallest of the mini-rexes was over there, standing bent over, sniffing at the body.

  Shit, Jason thought, despair welling up inside him.

  When one of the adults suddenly slammed into the tree, Jason felt the big branch he was sitting on shudder. He scrambled to hold tighter as pieces of tree and bark filtered down through the air. Looking down, Jason saw the upturned face and big, dark eyes of one of the huge predators staring back up at him...

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit...

  After several more tense and fearful minutes of holding on for dear life as the mini-rexes paced around the tree, huffing and stretching their snouts as close to Jason as they could manage, the carnivores finally lost interest and headed over to the dead duckbill youth.

  "Damn it!" Jason cried.

  He scanned the ground for his pistol but couldn’t see it.

  Jason watched as the three mini-rexes encircled the small duckbill then began devouring his kill. The monsters sat around the dead animal and cut it to pieces with their hind claws, tilting their heads back to gulp down whatever chunks and strips of flesh they pulled off with their terrible teeth.

  "But that's mine!" Jason shouted, trying not to cry. One of the predators looked up at him for a moment with its snout painted red then went back to eating.

  Jason watched. His stomach cramped. A crushing weight started in on his chest, and a dull pain pressed in between his eyes. He sipped from his bite valve and watched the three carnivores steal the food that was supposed to be his.

  There was no hope.

  Time passed, and Jason remained stuck in the tree ... again. The mini-rexes stayed around the kill all day, tearing at it until they’d had their fill then lounging in the area, keeping the encroaching raptors away. Later in the afternoon, the three monsters ate from it again, and picked at it until the sun went down as Jason watched the wyvern attack and kill a ceratopsian further south down the valley. He watched the dread beast swoop in and attack with its claws, jabbing the brutish animal with its stinger-tail several times until it fell.

  Jason felt like the mini-rexes were jabbing him with poison. Those bastards stole his kill, and the man might literally be starving to death now. He needed the food.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Staring at the dead body of the young duckbill, now trashed and torn apart—no longer resembling the creature it was before he killed it—Jason felt the slightest glimmer of hope when he saw little strips of meat still clinging to the messy bones that might have been too small for the mini-rexes huge mouths to eat.

  Then, as the sun started going down and Jason heard the trills and chirps of raptors begin in the twilight, he felt another crushing weight of disappointment. It was likely that—if the mini-rexes ever left the carcass alone—the little raptors would probably clean up anything and everything that was left on its bones...

  There would be nothing left for Jason.

  He had killed that animal all on his own—with a pistol; something very difficult to do hunting back on his world—and none of it would be there for him. The meat was lost, and he was down five more 9mm rounds. All of that work and five precious rounds for nothing.

  And he was so hungry...

  Jason settled into the branches as the night came alive with little predators, and he cried.

  Chapter 23

  It was a hard night.

  A damned hard night.

  Jason sat in the tree weaponless, his skin stinging in many places from his scramble up the branches duri
ng the chase when the mini-rexes overtook him. His face hurt and he didn’t know why. Whenever he reached up to touch his cheeks or his chin, he found new raw spots that had been scraped by twigs and bits of bark, which were also all over in his hair. Jason's fingers tasted like blood in the dark and the skin around one side of his face was tender as hell from something—he couldn’t remember what; probably from being dragged into the spider cave the night before. The cuts from raptor claws in his shoulders seemed to have opened up again in the excitement, and even the little bite on his leg from the beginning his nightmare on this world still hurt. As Jason sat with his body on fire from a thousand cuts and bruises, his knee throbbing, he pressed his hands against his empty stomach.

  He was so hungry.

  All night, he heard beasts moving around in the darkness below and he feared that by the time the sun came up behind the ridge at his back, there would be nothing left of his kill but bones and tatters of inedible bits.

  He killed that duckbill—he looked it in the eyes and felt a connection with its fear and its pain and slaughtered the poor thing so that he could eat and survive. Now, those mini-rex bastards had stolen the meat and the little raptors chirping and fluttering around down in the pitch black grass were getting their fill of whatever tiny scraps of flesh were left after the monstrous carnivores had waltzed away across the valley in the middle of the night.

  Jason did his best to strap in with his paracord. He didn’t bother shining the light down to see the dead duckbill or what was left of it. He didn’t want to see. It would only hurt his heart and remind him of how hungry he was.

  Sleep came and went, and the man spent a fitful night trying to rest while tied to branches for the third time. When the first light of morning started to add color to the valley and made the prehistoric world emerge from the inky black night, Jason found himself exhausted and starving.

  By the time the sun came up behind the ridge and pierced the wide grassland and bushes before him with pale rays of morning light, Jason drank some water from his CamelBak, accepting that he wouldn’t get more than a couple of hours' worth of sleep. He rubbed his tired eyes and his raw face until he came back to life.