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

  The wyvern wasn’t behind him.

  "Where...?" he started to say, then peered through the sunshine back toward the cave and the dead T-Rex. He could see the monstrous black body near the sacrificial slab—many tons of meat and bones with a heart likely the size of Jason’s chest or bigger. That glorious dark predator would be completely consumed eventually, leaving behind nothing but a monstrous, thick skeleton in the valley near the cavern of the sleek wyrm that killed it.

  Jason had led the T-Rex to its death. A terrible sadness bloomed in him. It was like seeing a hero from his childhood executed. He'd thought that the wyvern would be no match for it. It had felt so obvious to Jason that the Dreadwraith would either scare the wyvern off entirely, or easily dominate it and likely outright kill it in a fight over territory.

  Feeling a strange swell of sorrow and grief for the monster of his dreams, stories, and artwork, Jason took a frantic drink from his CamelBak as he peered back through the bright valley. He gasped and spit out the bite valve when he saw a dark, low shape crawl onto the monstrous body.

  The wyvern had returned to the T-Rex’s carcass, and it was clutching at the body with its wings, digging in. It began eating it...

  In the end, the T-Rex was outmaneuvered by the wyvern. Hell—the wyvern was smarter. It never fought the huge predator without a positional advantage; not for a moment. When the beast was torn off of the Dreadwraith's back, it flew up into the air and waited a while for the poison to take its toll...

  Holy shit, Jason thought. The idea was staggering. The wyvern was smarter. It was probably more intelligent than all of the dinosaurs here; maybe not smarter than the cannibals or the spider creatures, but clearly smarter than the T-Rex.

  Several cannibals suddenly cried out from nearby.

  With his blood running cold, Jason looked at movement in the valley close to him, snapping his attention back to where he was. He had been staring at the wyvern and the T-Rex’s body to the south and never noticed the multiple cannibals sprinting across the valley toward him from the east!

  "Oh, shit!" he cried, running north again even though his legs burned and stumbled in protest. There were at least three or four of the dark, dusky savages running his way. Their long, lean limbs pumped as they dashed through the heavy grasses, two of them holding clubs or axes up in the air. Even though Jason was a little ways into the western tree line, they were all headed straight at him...

  The man pushed his painful body into a sprint, feeling a hot, crushing sense of despair as the cannibals pursued him. Jason could feel his cane and the handle of the stone axe slapping his back and he ran as hard as he could then risked a look back.

  They were right behind him, dashing through the trees. Nearly naked and unencumbered, the savages were far faster than he was, and they were gaining!

  "Damn it! I just want to get home!" he shouted. The cannibals hooted and screeched back at him and Jason ran on.

  He had to get back to the east! Back to his cave where he—

  Something hard and heavy suddenly hit Jason in the right shoulder. The intense, crushing pain in his shoulder blade made Jason lose his balance and he careened forward with widening eyes, windmilling his arms to catch himself...

  The man pitched forward and crashed to the ground, narrowly avoiding an outright face-plant. In his peripheral vision, Jason realized that it was a stone club that had hit him. The bastards threw it at him. As he tumbled through a big fern and felt his head hit a big, knobby root, Jason heard the quick, splattering footfalls of the cannibals running after him. They'd be on him any moment! He rolled onto his back, pointing his Glock at where they’d be charging in at him...

  The first appeared with a loud howl, its finely-scaled skin gleaming in the orange-tinged light of sunset. The savage's dark eyes opened wide and its reptilian lips spread open to reveal a stretched-open mouth that was pink on the inside with tiny, hooked teeth a lot like a small raptor’s. It screeched at him with crazy eyes, rushing in with its empty hands clenched into fists; took one step, two, then Jason shot it once in the center of its chest. The creature collapsed into the underbrush landing almost at Jason’s feet.

  More feet were still moving quickly around Jason, and the man wasn’t surprised when a second cannibal burst from the bush, grunting at him with its teeth bared and eyes narrowed like a savage warrior from the deepest, darkest jungle. It was covered with tiny scales and had a bizarre, inhuman face, and it rushed Jason with an axe held high, ready to fall...

  Jason shot it twice in the chest, seeing the hits appear as tiny, dark holes in grey skin as his Glock popped twice. The cannibal dropped its axe—which disappeared into a fern—and took several falling steps until it veered off to the right and collapsed with a grimace.

  Struggling to stand, Jason could still hear more hoots and hollering around him. Quick feet beat the ground and plants rustled as more cannibals encircled him in the shadowy woods. He pulled himself up on his spear, finding his feet under him again, then turned when he heard fast feet pounding through the underbrush behind him.

  A third cannibal was there, charging in to beat Jason with its fists with a shriek. It was dressed in a loincloth and heavily decorated with small dinosaur bones held together by cords made of ligaments or rawhide. The savage's decorations clattered and danced as the creature sprinted at him...

  Jason extended his Glock, went to fire, then noticed that his slide was locked back.

  Shit! he thought. It was finally empty.

  Finally out of ammo.

  In a frantic moment of not thinking, his skin hot and mind whipped into a frenzy of despair and desperation, Jason threw the pistol at the advancing creature, who dodged deftly. His Glock 26 disappeared into the underbrush behind it.

  As the cannibal was almost on him, Jason suddenly remembered the spear and grabbed the weapon with both hands. He quickly pitched the point to intercept the screeching savage, whose expression flashed from primitive fury to intense shock as it impaled itself on the waiting weapon. Jason felt the cannibal’s full weight held up by his spear for a moment and grunted to let the stuck bastard fall to the side, who grasped at its shaft sticking out of its pierced belly with both dusty clawed hands. The bastard clenched its scaly eyelids shut in agony. Somehow, Jason managed to divert the cannibal's momentum off to one side and it fell, impaled, into the bushes

  Jason pulled his spear from the savage's belly and ran on, turning suddenly to cross the valley.

  Have to get to the cave! Jason thought, mind racing with terror and nearly directionless other than a near-insane desire to escape. He still heard other cannibals making their animalistic noises around him in the woods. He heard their feet dashing around in through the underbrush.

  Making a sudden beeline to the east across the valley, Jason left his pursuers behind, sprinting through the grasses and skirting around an area of marsh and cattails. There were no herbivores anywhere—Jason had flushed them out and spooked them away when he ran through here before with the T-Rex hot on his heels. Shit! The T-Rex was dead! he thought. The wyvern was back there eating it! The wyvern was the apex predator here, and nothing would be able to challenge it! He would never be able to get home if the—

  Jason suddenly didn't recognize the forest in front of him.

  As he ran across the valley to the eastern woods, legs burning and heaving lungs on fire, Jason realized that he was running toward an area of the forest the he hadn’t visited before. The light of the afternoon was fading, its bright, shining sunshine replaced with an angry, orange color. In the darkening trees up ahead, Jason saw spots of ... campfires!

  The cannibals! he thought. A wave of sick anguish washed over the man. The cannibals’ camp was up in those woods ahead—Jason could see at least a half dozen fires in the darkness. Those woods must be crawling with them! He was too far north—that ridge would be in the way of getting home if he kept going this way. Looking back, Jason saw the gawky forms of more cannibals standing around and running through the
valley, some headed his way...

  "Please!" Jason cried out to the sky, feeling his eyes well up with tears. "Oh God, please! I need more time!" It was all happening too fast. A buzzing wall of numbness was settling in around Jason's mind. He didn’t know what to do; he couldn’t know what to do! This world wanted to kill him—he’d never make it out of here alive...

  He ran to some bushes and dove into the tall foliage to conceal him for a moment—whatever it was worth—and looked back again to the west. His Glock was lost out there somewhere, dropped in the grass and ferns; a machine made by man on a hostile world that was completely wild and unrestrained. The sight of the sun low on the horizon filled Jason with a horror that turned his breath cold and made him seize up. The light of day was dipping behind the hills behind the wyvern's cave and the infinite woods stretching west from there...

  This was the end.

  There was no way Jason could get south through all of the cannibals in between their camp and the sacrificial slab. He could hear them howling and dashing around down there, as well as on both his east and west sides even now. The savages' sloppy footsteps sprinted recklessly through the woods and valley, all of them whipped up into frenzy.

  Where?! Where could he go?

  Jason's mind immediately went to a dark, painful vision of the cannibals catching him, knocking him down, beating him with their stone weapons and tools until he was too weak to fight back. Then they would pull at him, fighting over his feeble form. They'd bite into him all over with their hook-like fangs as if he was being swarmed by a pack of zombies. He'd be pulled apart as they ripped at his arms and legs, chopping into his shoulders and hips and elbows and knees with their crude, stone axes. He could almost feel the pain: the tearing and bludgeoning of the crude edges cutting him apart...

  Jason felt sick with terror and turned over, vomiting violently into the grass.

  Several savages ran in close to him and—without another moment to spare—Jason burst out from hiding, sprinting to the north along the tree line. He didn’t want to be torn apart and eaten alive by primitive lizard people. He didn’t want to be ripped with claws and devoured by dinosaurs either—he wanted to go home!

  A rushing wind of madness consumed the man's senses and Jason ran, his life at its end, desperate to get somewhere—anywhere—away from the many cannibals chasing him through the grass. More of the bastards appeared in the trees near the camp full of fires, hopping and waving their arms, hooting and screaming and giving chase...

  Beams of orange and golden light crossed the valley ahead of Jason and he felt darkness closing in all around.

  Jason ran. He sprinted like there were demons behind him ... because there were.

  He lost his mind in those minutes that he ran, thinking of nothing more than racing to the north. He was dimly aware that his subconscious was steering him into the forest, then up the ridge in a big, wide circle to bring him around the cannibal camp. He mindlessly fled up to the ridge where he could hopefully reach home in the darkness somehow...

  Without realizing it, Jason suddenly crossed Doe Creek in the darkening woods, splashing through the waist-high water like a wild animal amidst a stampede. His senses were alive with the screeching of the cannibals and stark terror pounded and swelled in his ears. It wasn’t until he was deep into the dark forest trying to scramble up a steep hill like a raving beast that Jason realized that the cannibals weren’t chasing him anymore.

  Gradually, the world came back to him.

  Jason realized that he was deep in the woods somewhere on the east side of Doe Creek, trying to climb up to the top of the ridge, but he was stuck on a steep, scrabbly section that kept throwing him back down every time he tried to climb up like a feral ape, tearing at the ground with the bleeding fingers of his free hand. From up where he was, Jason saw that he was fairly close to the lake—too far north.

  Somehow, Jason still had his spear with him.

  He stopped, suddenly hearing the wind, his own crazy breathing, and the sounds of raptors all around the woods.

  "Shit," he muttered, ripping off his backpack and searching in the darkness for his flashlight. When he it, Jason clicked it on and shined the white LED around him.

  He tried to slow his breathing but still pulsed with naked fear.

  The man caught glimpses of small, feathered dinosaurs rushing around him in the dark, their brown and hawkish colorations startling against the bright green world revealed by the roving spot of his light. Jason looked up at the ridge with his LED, then down toward the valley. He couldn’t believe that he had made it up as far up as he did, but there was no way he’d be able to climb the rest of the way. It was too dark.

  Images of him being overwhelmed in the darkness flooded through Jason's mind. The dangers of the world flashed through his vision, unwanted and numbing his speeding mind...

  "Shut up!" Jason shouted suddenly. "Shut up and think!"

  Following the ridge from where he was to the south would lead him through several forests. There was no way he’d make it back to the cave without running into predators along the way.

  He suddenly remembered the little cave he saw near the shore of Lake Granby. It would be easy to find from here, even in the dark, if he could at least locate the shore. Looking north, Jason saw that the water—still gleaming in the last of the dying light—was a lot closer than he’d anticipated.

  That was the way.

  He needed the cave by the lake.

  Jason threw on his backpack, gripped his spear and flashlight, and started north as quickly as he dared. The trees were thick and the underbrush was varied, but he was ridge top and the creek, and after a while of crossing through these woods, he’d be able to follow the tapering northern end of the ridge down to the water...

  A large raptor sudden made a raucous, grating sound that reminded Jason of what an eagle or something might sound like if it was bigger. He shined his light and revealed a predator standing close-by as tall as his shoulders. The beast was covered in feathers of various shades of brown and tan. It regarded Jason with its head cocked and blinked its yellow eyes.

  "Get away!" the man shouted, putting his spear between him and the large raptor as he continued hustling to the north. "Back off!"

  A moment later, Jason heard a similar cry on his right and shined his flashlight up there just as another smaller-sounding raptor trilled from directly ahead...

  Surrounded, Jason thought with a stab of fear.

  He broke into a run again, praying that he wouldn’t break his neck plunging through the forest in the blackness of night.

  Jason felt the wind of a large creature flash past behind him and he spun, almost losing his balance, aiming the spear. He dropped his light into a bush.

  "Shit!"

  Feeling a rapid flush of dread, Jason bent over to pick up his flashlight—which brilliantly illuminated a clutch of green leaves on the ground—then felt a small raptor land on his back, staggering his burning legs. Jason fell, rolled, miraculously felt his feet under him again, then detected a large raptor charging in from one side...

  Jason stabbed at the creature in the dark, growling fiercely with his human vocal cords and producing animal sound that he didn’t know he was capable of making. He felt the point dig into something that moved, and a raptor that was much closer to him than he thought made a bleating sound of pain. Jason roared back in his desperate fury, pushing the spear point even deeper into the hidden beast until he felt the creature’s legs give out and its body weight pushed over onto the ground.

  Then, something else crashed into Jason's other side. He half-ducked, pulling at his spear, bringing up the butt-end of it as if it was a quarter staff to deal with the new threat.

  The man fought blindly in the darkness, fried by fear.

  He heard a clack of jaws snapping shut near his left ear, then felt a sudden, incredible lance of pain in his left thigh like a hot knife cutting through his skin. The skin of his leg tugged. The searing pain tore from h
is hip almost all the way to his knee, then immediately turned numb and angry all over.

  Jason screamed. He growled and cried out and swung the butt-end of the spear in a big, sideways sweep, feeling the weapon connect with a heavy body standing at his side.

  He wanted to reach out with his bare hands, find the raptor, and break its neck. Jason yearned to push its eyes in with his thumbs, pull its jaws apart, break its elbows—anything to stop the creature from killing him, fueled by fury and terror. Instead, feeling a very real sense that a soft ape-man would be no match for a similarly-sized raptor brimming with claws and teeth, Jason reached up to find the hook of his cane where it stuck out of his pack. He drew the cane like a sword and began swinging it wildly from side to side.

  The second swing impacted the nearby raptor. Jason’s leg was on fire. That damned thing definitely sliced him with its sickle claw. He had no idea how bad it was, but it had to be bad...

  The raptor squawked and huffed in the dirt and Jason hit it again and again, blindly, until he suddenly felt another weight crash into him, this time on his back. A smaller raptor had leapt up near his shoulders. The instant after Jason realized it, he heard a chirp next to his right ear and felt tiny claws hook into his left shoulder. The little raptor's hind legs were scrambling for purchase, sliding around getting caught up in his backpack.

  Jason cried out in pain and outrage as he looked up into the dark blue twilight sky, slipping out of his CamelBak’s straps. The backpack and the entangled dinosaur both fell to the ground and Jason ran for the nearest tree as best he could with only black silhouettes of branches to go by against the twilight sky.

  He heard footfalls charging up behind him again and spun, swinging his cane viciously. Jason heard a crack as his impromptu weapon smacked into a raptor that was pursuing him. When Jason backed up into the pokey and scratchy branches of a pine tree, he hooked his cane into the crook of one elbow, turned, and climbed hysterically. His left leg was hot with stinging pain, and he felt the sharp agony of his ripped skin trying to tear even further as he scrambled up the black branches.