I saw Trel cross her arms over her chest and actually angle her nose up in the air, but the other women looked a bit worried that I was going to get mad. Even Emta had her fingers wrapped around her wrists, and her eyes darted to the ground when I looked at her.
“Well?” Trel said after I didn’t speak for a few moments.
“Where is Gee?” I asked as I looked through the group. Everyone was here except for the purple-furred Zoru, and the onyx-skinned fire-woman.
“She is in the fire,” Tannin said as she pulled back her thick orange hair away from her face and then nodded to the flames.
“Yes,” Trel said. “That was my plan. She is able to--”
“I think it’s done!” I heard Gee shout, and we all turned back to the flames.
“Good!” Trel shouted in return. “Bring it out and put it in the mold!”
“Sure thing!” Gee replied, and I saw the fire born woman exit the wall of dancing flame as if she was stepping out of the shower. In her hands, she held what looked like a five gallon clay jug, and she quickly walked over to a series of holes that I saw were dug out of the ground some twenty feet from the side of the flames. The jug looked like it was just a few degrees away from melting itself, and it glowed orange in her hands almost as intently as her green eyes.
“What are you--” I started to say, but Trel cut me off.
“Galmine and Youleena made moulds for plates, bowls, cups, and jugs in the dirt. Gee will pour the copper in, and it should fill it all.”
“Then we’ll smooth out the connector joints,” Urka said in her high pitched voice.
“Sounds like Victor is here!” Gee said over her shoulder. “Let me focus on pouring this, and then I’ll come say hello.”
“That’s fine,” I said as we all walked a bit closer to the hole so we could see her pour. “How did you figure all this out?”
“I will let Urka explain,” Trel said. “It was her idea. Of course, my genius promoted it, but she is also very smart.”
“Thanks Trel,” the short azure-haired woman with the four eyes laughed. “It’s not really that great of an idea, though. I just figured that we were waiting for the copper ore to cool before pulling it from the charcoal. Then we took the kernels of metal, heated them again, and then poured them into a mold. It was taking too long, so I wondered if Gee could stand the heat and do the middle part while the copper was in liquid form.”
“I can always take the heat,” Gee laughed as she tipped the jug over a bit more to pour the steaming metal out. The jug was starting to cool a bit, and I could see that it wasn’t actually made out of clay, but a green rock that reminded me of the inside of the cave where the orange birds nested.
“Should I put out the fire?” Adella sang with her musical voice.
“Yes,” Trel replied, and then the redhead ran her hands over her rainbow scaled legs before she held her fingers out toward the well we had dug some thirty yards away.
A wide pillar of water rose out of the well opening like a cobra from a charmer’s basket, and then it leaned through the air and kind of slinkied on top of the massive flame. For half a moment, the fire seemed to increase in size, but then it puffed out with an angry steam-engine hiss, and I figured that it was just Keefaye’s alcohol getting spread around from the sudden jet of liquid. As the steam cleared, I could see several large stacks of adobe bricks and tiles cooling near the kilns, and I guessed it was enough to pave a walkway between Hope’s doggie door and the huts of our interior fort.
“That was clever,” I said as I glanced at Adella, and her cheeks turned a bit red as she blinked her big green eyes.
“It was what we planned,” Trel said. “I am happy to see you, husband, but had you shown up a few minutes later, you would not have seen the fire and thought that I didn’t know what I was--”
“Hey,” I interrupted her as I pointed to the sky. “I’m just worried about the smoke.”
“Pfft,” Trel raspberried. “We don’t need to worry about the smoke. Who can stand against us? We have fifteen intelligent and capable women and one incredible man who can control the beasts of this world.”
“Actually,” I started with a sigh. “We do have a problem.” I turned to glance at Liahpa, and her red eyes met mine.
“What is wrong?” Sheela asked.
“We need to have a meeting,” I said, “but let’s unload the stegos while we talk.”
“We should also celebrate that Victor and Liahpa are back from their journey,” Galmine said as she stepped over to me and traced her fingers down my chin and across my chest. “We all missed you tremendously.”
The other women all spoke at once and apologized for not welcoming us back, and I smiled at them as I gave Galmine a hug and kiss. Kacerie quickly took her place, and then Sheela, and finally Trel passionately forced her lips against mine as her pointed fingers traced along my back.
“Are you both hungry?” Galmine asked once I had finished greeting everyone.
“Yeah,” I said as I set Jinx back down on the ground again. “We didn’t have a chance to eat breakfast.”
“Tannin and I will cook for you,” my gray-skinned lover said with her bubbly smile, and then she gestured for the orange-haired elf-looking woman to accompany her back at the cooking fires.
Jinx chased after the two cooks, and the rest of the group went to work unloading the stegos. Emta, Sheela, Liahpa, Quwaru, Trel, and I were the strongest in the group, but Kacerie, Youleena, Urka, Adella, Keefaye, and Nomi still helped sort some of the better looking malachite rocks into separate piles.
As we started to unload the stegos, I quickly told my friends about the journey that Liahpa and I went on. I left out the mention of us becoming lovers, but when I reached the part where I explained how we got the heavily loaded stegos down the switchback, Trel cleared her throat and raised her hand. Everyone stopped lifting the rocks they were working on, and we all turned to watch her point at Liahpa.
“Are you pregnant?” Trel asked with a raised eyebrow.
“What? No! Why would you--”
“Uhhhggg,” the spider-woman sighed as her head rolled to the side. “Don’t play games. This isn’t your ball lifting field.”
Liahpa tossed two massive chunks of malachite off MCA’s back, crossed her silver arms under her full breasts, and then set her red eyes on Trel. The two women stared at each other for a few moments as the tension rose amongst the group. I was about to tell Trel to leave it alone, but then the athlete's shoulders relaxed.
“I won’t know if I am pregnant for a few weeks. Just like you needed some time to tell.”
“Ahh haaa.” Trel nodded and then smiled as she tapped her fingers together. “Excellent.”
“Glad you approve,” Liahpa said in a deadpan voice.
“Well, I doubt you had sex with him correctly,” Trel snickered, “but at least you are finally realizing how amazing Victor is.”
“Had sex with him correctly?” Liahpa growled. “What does that--”
“Yes,” Trel interrupted her as she gestured to me. “We all need to talk about the proper way to make love to Victor so that our wombs receive the maximum amount of his sperm.”
“Trel,” I said. “This isn’t the time. I have to talk about what happened when Liahpa and I got back to Quwaru’s cave.”
“Pffft,” Trel raspberried. “This is the most important topic. Especially in a tribe full of women who need to bear your children.”
“What happened at the cave?” Quwaru asked, but I noticed that most of the women in the red-skinned woman’s group were staring at Trel with their eyes opened wide.
“We ran into a group that came from the flying man’s tribe,” I said. “There were six of them, and they appeared from some sort of teleportation circle.”
“Teleportation circle?” Emta asked as she turned away from Trel and flung down a chunk of malachite.
“Somehow, they were able to open a doorway that sent six of their men to the beach right outside the
jungle path.”
“Not good,” Quwaru sighed.
“Nope,” I agreed. “Liahpa, the troodons, and I managed to kill them, but the last man had an ability that cocooned him in a magical barrier. He said that their leader knew my name, and they were coming for us.”
“Can you repeat the conversation exactly?” Sheela asked.
“Yeah,” I said, and then I repeated what the dude in the armor had said before Liahpa picked him up, carried him out of the jungle path, and threw him down the cliffs. The women all listened intently as I spoke, and I made sure that my words were loud enough so that Gee could hear me from where she was still pouring the copper.
“Did I miss anything?” I asked Liahpa when I finished.
“That is how I remember it,” she confirmed.
“What is the plan?” Quwaru asked.
“First, we need to schedule some training sessions,” Trel said. “They will be much like Sheela’s fighting sessions, but much more important, since I’ll be showing you all the proper way of milking Victor’s penis for as much sperm as--”
“No,” Quwaru sighed as she covered her beautiful face with her hands, “I was asking Victor about the--”
“He’ll need to participate of course,” Trel laughed as she waved her fingers at the red-skinned woman in the bikini. “I’ll need to show you all how it is done, but then I’ll coach each of you on your technique with him so that--”
“Trel,” I interrupted her. “I need your beautiful brain focused on the ‘assholes attacking us’ problem right now.”
“Fine,” Trel scoffed as she shook her head and closed her eyes. “This isn’t even a problem though. If those idiots show up here, you’ll just destroy them like you have all of our other enemies. I am focusing on the long term issues of our tribe. Having your offspring is important for the--”
“Do you think they know where our fort is?” Sheela asked me, and the group turned away from Trel’s rant so they would weigh my response.
“Part of me thinks that if they knew where this fort was, then they would have already come here,” I began, “but they could also have sent the men to Quwaru’s tribe’s old fort first because they thought it was an easier target.”
“If those men do not return, they might send more there before trying to attack us,” Sheela said.
“I agree with Sheela,” Gee said as she walked over from where she had poured the copper. Her black body gave off a wave of visible heat that bent the air around her like asphalt on a summer day in Southern California, and Keefaye and Nomi stepped away from her to about ten feet from where the fire-woman ended up standing.
“So, what I know for sure is that the leader of their tribe knows who I am,” I said. “She also knows the location of the cave fort. What we don’t know is if she knows the location of this fort, and we also don’t know if she can send another group after us.”
“What do you mean?” Gee asked. “You just said that--”
“Liahpa and I didn’t have time to talk to the men before we killed them,” I explained. “It is possible that the asshole who had the power to transport everyone to this location was in the group that we killed.”
“See?” Trel laughed. “This isn’t a problem anymore. We should talk about impregnat--”
“I don’t know for sure,” I interrupted Trel. “Everyone on the planet has a special ability. The person who opened the door, or gate, or portal from their camp to the beach could have stayed in their camp.”
“We should assume that they can attack us at anytime,” Sheela said with her stoic nod. “That is the only way to move forward.”
“What does that mean, though?” Adella sang. “Do we always have to be on guard? Do we need to spend more time training? We came over with Victor so that we could have better protection, and--”
“We would be dead right now if not for Victor,” Quwaru interrupted her friend and pointed to me. “Either the Burners would have killed us, the man with the black wings, or the group of six that Victor and Liahpa took care of.”
“I know,” Adella sighed and then turned her big green eyes to me. “Sorry, Victor, I didn’t mean to complain about you. I’m just frustrated that we are always in danger. When will we be safe?”
Youleena, Keefaye, and Nomi nodded at their friend’s question, and I felt the weight on my shoulders increase when everyone turned to me. For half a moment, I wished that someone else was in charge and could tell me what to do. I wanted someone to have the ideas that would save us, but that was the old me talking. Even though my tribe was small, I was King of Dinosaurland, and I knew I was the guy that needed to build this empire with this group of beautiful misfits.
I was the one who had to tell them it was going to be okay.
I was the one who had to protect them.
“Back on my old world,” I began as my mind started to whirl around a new idea, “we had all these war simulation games. We called them ‘Real Time Strategy Games.’ We played them on these connected devices called ‘computers’ against people all over the world. I’m sure some of you had devices like that on your worlds.”
“I did,” Kacerie said. “The computers managed our government and population.”
“We had them,” Liahpa said, “but they didn’t manage our government. It was more for organizing and viewing Lift Ball games and exchanging information.”
“They were also on my world,” Nomi said.
“Same,” Urka replied.
“Anyways,” I continued, “I was pretty good at these games. Maybe not the best alive, but when I was seriously playing them, I beat almost everyone. Except for people from this one country called Korea, who were like ridiculously good at the games, but I won against those guys at least half the time.”
The women all nodded, and I realized that we had finished off loading all of the malachite from the stegos. I gave the three dinos a quick mental order to go relax in the courtyard, and then I gestured for everyone to follow me back to the cooking fires by Galmine and Tannin.
“When these games started, you couldn’t see anything of the map on the screen,” I continued as we all sat down around the cooking fires. “It was all blacked out by a mechanic called ‘the fog of war,’ and you could only see parts of the map that your troops ended up exploring.”
“That is a term my people used,” Gee said. “When we did not know where our enemies were on the lava seas or the wastelands, we would say our decisions were limited by the fog of war.”
“Exactly,” I replied as Jinx crawled into my lap for more pets. “So the way I look at it, we are at war with this other tribe, we know they have more people than us, and we know their leader is really powerful because the asshole with the black wings and the dude Liahpa threw down the ravine were both terrified of her. Strategically, we know where her tribe is located, and--”
“How do we know where their tribe is at?” Nomi asked.
“Emerald,” Kacerie answered as she pointed to the green-haired woman. “She made a clone and was taken to their camp.”
The women all turned to Emerald, and she nodded.
“Emerald said their camp is far away,” I said, and the beautiful woman nodded again.
“How many hours will it take to reach them?” Gee asked, but Emerald shook her head and pointed up to the sun.
“It will take us days to reach them,” I said. “That’s part of the problem. We know where they are at, and we think they know where we are at, but they can strike at us and we can’t strike at them. If I was playing one of my games, and I knew that my opponent knew where I was, but I either didn’t know where they were, or didn’t have enough offense to attack them, there was one clear option I would always take: I’d move.”
“What?” Trel screeched, and the rest of the women all began to talk at once.
And none of them seemed happy.
“Let me explain.” I raised my hands in the air, and Jinx let out an angry squak, either because I had stopped petting him, or becau
se he was annoyed that everyone had started to shout, and then everyone slowly stopped talking and focused on me again.
“We can’t move,” Trel said as she crossed her arms and stuck her nose in the air. “I’ve worked too hard to make this a perfect fort for us to live--”
“You have,” I agreed with her, and then I looked at the circle of gathered women. “We all have toiled endlessly to build this fort. Sheela and I cut down most of the trees of the inner walls by hand, we’ve dug wells, we’ve made plans, I get it. This is our home, and we’ve built it from literally nothing, but there are some major issues with it, and I think you’ll agree if you let me explain.”
“Fine,” Trel sighed. “I will let you explain why you want to destroy all my work.”
“I don’t, Trel,” I laughed. “I want to give you an opportunity to make even better stuff.”
“Oh?” she asked as she raised an eyebrow.
“Let’s talk about the cave on the beach for a bit,” I said as I nodded to Quwaru. “I’ve been thinking about how great of a location that spot is. First, it’s really easy to defend because they are in the caves, and an attacker can only get inside by either crossing the rope bridge, taking the roundabout path, or climbing down from the cliffs above.”
“That is a good point,” Sheela commented. “Here, we can be attacked from all sides.”
“Yep,” I agreed. “The cave fort is also by salt, and freshwater. There is a small field inside the nook of the canyon that will get enough sun for crops, and the jungle creates a bit of a natural barrier that can keep the whole place hidden. The ocean is a quick walk through the jungle, and we can easily catch fish there.”
“We just left though!” Emta growled. “Are you saying you want to go back there and--”
“No,” I interrupted the olive-skinned woman. “Your old home still has a lot of problems. The major one is that this other tribe knows where it is.”
“Yeah,” Emta scoffed, “that’s kind of important.”
“Secondly,” I continued. “There isn’t any room for my dinosaurs. We could cut down a lot of the jungle and build another wall, which might be worth it actually, but given the first issue, I’d rather not do the work.”
Tamer- King of Dinosaurs Book 6 Page 4