“That’s cool,” I said as we finished loading the last of the containers. Then the Emerald mounted on Nicole, handed me The Cricket Bat of Doom, and I spun it around in my hands as she gestured to her clean shirt and then the river behind us.
“Yeah,” I laughed. “We should probably clean up quickly.” I nodded to the Emerald with the bloody shirt, and then we both walked to the edge of the river to bathe.
I realized that fully submerging my bloody torso in a slow-moving river filled with prehistoric super fish probably wasn’t a good idea, so I just splashed some up on my chest and tried to wipe as much as I could off while I carefully scanned the crystal clear water for what I imagined giant piranhas would look like.
Then I saw Emerald pull off her bloody blouse out of the corner of my eye.
The beautiful green-skinned woman’s body was shaped like a long hourglass, and her C-cup breasts stood pertly from her chest as if she was wearing an invisible push-up bra. Her nipples were a light green, and her stomach had the tapered indent around her abdominal muscles. She did have scales, but they were small and looked less like a lizard’s and more like the kind of creases that normal mammal skin would have under a microscope.
Even though Emerald was covered with red blood, she still had a perfect supermodel body and a face that could have easily graced the cover of Vogue magazine. Hell, the gems on her forehead and her eyes made her super exotic looking rather than appearing alien.
She crouched down to put her blouse in the water, and my eyes drifted down her bare flanks and settled on the curve of her tight ass. She still wore those form fitting yoga-type lycra pants with the slight bell bottom, and I realized that the garment looked completely undamaged.
Then I recalled that her once white shirt had looked gray a week or so ago, but now it seemed to be a bright white under the red splotches of blood.
“Did Kacerie wash your shirt earlier?” I asked, and Emerald turned her head away from the water and raised an eyebrow at me.
“You blouse is white,” I explained as I tried to keep my eyes from focusing on her pretty green nipples. “I remember that it had some abuse a few weeks ago. You had to carve up one of those allosauruses, and your shirt was stained red with blood then. We also had all the rains, and I could have sworn that it had faded to gray.”
Emerald smiled at me, and then she raised a hand to point at the sun before she made a wide sweeping motion over the beach.
“Ahh, sun bleached. That’s smart.”
Emerald’s grin grew wider, and then she tapped on her temple.
“Yeah, you are pretty smart.” I laughed.
Emerald gestured to the giant corpses behind us, then to the sand, Bruce, and Nicole.
“It was the best idea I could come up with,” I began. “I’m just glad it worked out.”
Emerald nodded and then tapped her chest over her heart.
Then she pointed at me and bit her lower lip sensually.
“Uhhh, yeah.” I cleared my throat, turned back to the water, and continued splashing my chest clean. A few moments later I figured I was as spruced up as I was going to get, and I grabbed The Cricket Bat of Doom’s handle, stood up, and stretched.
“You almost ready?” I asked Emerald as I turned my eyes slightly toward her.
The green-skinned beauty nodded, and then she began to button her wet white blouse over her chest. Her breasts and nipples pushed eagerly against the thin wet fabric, but this time I did a better job of not gawking.
We returned to Nicole, and the Emerald on her saddle reached down to help me up. Then we both grabbed the other Emerald, and I found myself sandwiched between the two of them.
I tied down The Cricket Bat of Doom, whistled for the troodons to stop their feasting, and then nodded at Bruce. The Pteranodon let out a happy honk before he took to the air, and I commanded Nicole to cross the river and continue south.
As we forded through the water, Nicole hit a small dip, and both Emeralds reached down to grab onto my leg. Neither of them let go once we had crossed, and then they both turned toward me slightly so they could flash me half-smiles.
Then their fingers gently began to massage the muscles on my legs.
Yeah, it was going to be an interesting trip.
Chapter 8
We made it to the base of the mountain at around what I guessed was two or three o’clock. The sun was still high in the sky, but the day felt at its hottest point, and the rocky formations in front of us reflected the heat like asphalt.
The mountain looked a bit like the ones back in Southern California, the spread down from the tip to the base like soft-serve ice cream, and I could make out the cuts that ancient water flow had made into the side of the foothills. The surfaces near the top of the peaks looked bare, but I quickly realized that they were just speckled with chaparral that had dried to be almost the same color as the dirt beneath.
I couldn’t guess at the height of the mountain, but I did notice a cut about half a mile to our east that looked at bit like a trampled pathway. It seemed to weave in between the lower angles of the dirt foothill slopes at an upward angle, and even though I couldn’t see its exact destination, I figured it was our best shot for getting up and over the crest as quickly as possible.
I hadn’t said anything to the Emeralds since the river fight, but both of them continued to keep their hands on my legs as if it was a natural position.
“I’m thinking that line up there is the path up,” I said to them as I mentally commanded Bruce to do a fly-by of the mountain.
The Emeralds nodded, and I commanded our small herd to head in the correct direction. A few minutes later, Bruce glided back over our head, and he gave me a single happy honk that indicated that I was correct in my assumption about the path.
The jungle had fallen away a bit to the north, but I was still on edge from the giganotosaurus attack earlier, so I still imagined moving shadows under the scattered tropical trees, and kept expecting something with a hundred massive teeth to jump out and attack us at any second. The activity was making my shoulders tense, but I didn’t actually notice until one of the Emeralds ran her hand up my arm and began to rub at the muscles there. A few seconds later the other Emerald joined her activity, and I felt the tension begin to relax.
“Ahhh, that’s really good,” I sighed, and the Emerald who had come down to wash her blouse with me at the river smiled and nodded. I was kind of referring to her as “Original Emerald” in my head, and I referred to the other one that filled up the basket with sand as “Clone Emerald.”
Clone Emerald was sitting on my right, and she raised her right hand and pointed at the hillside while she continued to rub my shoulder with her left hand.
Original Emerald and I tuned to follow her finger, and we saw a group of about three dozen bipedal dinos with bowl-shaped bone growths on their heads running along the side of the hill eastward toward us. It was a bit hard to tell their exact size because of the distance, but I guessed that they were pony-sized. As we watched, a few of them split off from the running pack, slammed the sides of their heads and flanks together like demolition derby cars, and then ran back into the group.
“They look like they are running fast,” I commented as I watched the herd blaze across the side of the hill. They also looked really sure-footed, but I didn’t know if it would be worth taming a few, since it meant I would have to take them with me to the coast and worry about feeding them.
Still, I did really like taming dinosaurs.
“Let’s hurry up and see if we can intercept them,” I said a moment before I sent the command to Nicole, the troodons, and Grumpy. The trike let out a snort of agreement, and the troodons all hooted, but Grumpy just groaned with displeasure at the thought of running, and I turned around once we got going to see that we were quickly leaving him behind.
“Catch up later!” I called back to him, and then I directed my attention forward and tried to estimate Nicole’s speed versus the speed and distance of the do
med-headed dinos.
A half a minute later we were at the trailhead, and I swerved Nicole up onto the path and urged her to push a little harder up the incline. She did so without complaint, and I smiled when I realized that we were going to make it to the interception spot in time.
I was also smiling because both Emeralds had their arms wrapped around my chest to keep from falling off Nicole’s saddle.
I blinked my Eye-Q on when the pack of dome-head dinos got closer and focused my eyes on the lead animal. It was about two hundred yards away from us now, but the pack was starting to shift so that they would run around Nicole and the gathered troodons.
Pachycephalosaurus wyomingenis
My Eye-Q read, and as the pack got closer, I realized that they had all sizes present. Some of the bipedal dinosaurs were about the size of one of my troodons, but then others were a bit larger than a pony. They were still a lot smaller than Nicole, but I still ordered Scoob and the Gang to dart over to the east side of the big trike so that they wouldn’t accidentally get trampled when the herd came through.
Then I planned which pachycephalosauruses I wanted to tame.
The small ones would only be useful as food for the troodons, and I didn’t want to tame something and then feed it to another one of my pets, so I decided that getting a pair large enough for me to ride on would be the only logical choice.
The herd was only fifty yards away, and I focused on the biggest male that I could see in the group. He was still a little smaller than Hope, but his body was lean, ripped with muscle, and I guessed that he could sprint faster than the small parasaurus. He had black splotches on his face, and a line of black scales down his back that almost looked like a mohawk
“Hey!” I shouted over the approaching herd as I send out my Tame ability. “Come here and let me pet you!”
The large male pachy turned his head in my direction, and then he adjusted his run so that he cut through the crowded herd. As he ran toward me, I looked for the next largest male, and saw one with a gold streak of scales down his back, and I called out to him while I tried to send good thoughts in his direction with Tame.
I still hadn’t quite figured out exactly how my powers worked, but they seemed to do better when I complimented the animals, or in the case of Bruce and Grumpy, begged for their help.
Then again, I did feel like I was getting more powerful, so I decided to try a different approach with these two new dinosaurs.
Both of them trotted up to the side of Nicole, and I could almost see the confusion in their eyes. They weren’t tamed yet, but they had obeyed my simple command for reasons they didn’t quite understand.
Now it was time to seal the deal.
“You both are coming with me,” I said as I slid around Clone Emerald and reached out to touch each of their heads. “I’m your master now.”
The first one let me rest my hand on his skull-dome, and I instantly felt our connection spread through my hand like a warm release. The second golden dino actually took a step away from Nicole’s side, but I snapped and then beckoned with my pointer finger.
“No you don’t. Come here.”
The animal lowered his head shyly, and then he stepped forward so that I could pet him. The dome on his head was warm under my fingers as I petted him gently.
I wanted to tell them that they were good boys and that I’d take good care of them, but I also wanted to see what would happen if I just told them that I was their master.
Then my vision flashed, and I opened my Eye-Q.
Pachycephalosaurus wyomingenis tamed.
The part in the Eye-Q interface where my stats were located was lit up, and I felt my heart start to hammer in my chest as I opened the window.
Strength: 6
Stamina: 5
Movement: 4
Special Skill: Tamer -- Level 5
“Yes! Special skill level up!” I laughed as I lifted my hand off the pachy.
Both of my new friends flinched away from me, but then I gasped and gestured for them to step in closer again so that I could rub their heads again.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I just didn’t know if I could tame you this way. Don’t worry, I’m going to take good care of you both. We are heading on an adventure to the southern shore. Should be a fun trip. Ready to go?”
Both the pachys let out sounds that kind of sounded like a stuttered laugh, almost like a car engine was trying to turn over.
“Huh,” I said as I glanced back to the Emeralds. “One of these guys is a blond, and the other has a dark streak. Also…” My voice trailed off as I lightly tapped on the dome at the top of the biggest one’s head. “They use this to butt heads. So I’m gonna call these guys Bevis and Butt-Head.”
Both the Emeralds just shrugged at my choice, but the two pachys seemed to like their names, and they both let out stuttered chuckle-purrs that did remind me a lot of the cartoon characters trying to laugh.
The herd was now a quarter mile or so past us, and I turned around to see Grumpy trudging up the slope of the hill with slow and deliberate steps.
“Grumpy, this is Bevis and Butt-Head,” I said as I gestured to the two pachys.
The big purussaurus surprised me by letting out a growl that actually sounded a lot like a greeting, and the two new dinosaurs laughed in response as they leaned down to nuzzle him. Then Scoob, Shag, Fred, Velma, and Daphne came around from the other side of Nicole, and the group all took turns sniffing and nuzzling each other’s faces.
My whole life in Dinosaurland was a bit surreal, but watching the various herbivore and carnivore dinosaurs get along because they all had me in common was probably the most surreal part. They all really seemed to love each other, and I felt a bit of warm pride heat my chest and stomach.
“Okay, team,” I said after Bruce had landed and introduced himself to our new family members. “We’ve gotta make it to the other side of this mountain before the sun sets, so let’s get going. Bruce, can we take this trail up and over?”
The pteranodon let out a honk of agreement before he hopped, skipped, and jumped into the air, and I commanded the group to begin the trek up the hill.
The path we followed seemed to be a common game trail, well, less “game” and more “dinosaur” trail, and it had been trampled into a solid slab of mud after hundreds or thousands of years of giant lizard caravans making the trip over the mountain. There weren’t any rocky parts to the path, but the slope did occasionally get steep, and Grumpy had to grumble his annoyance half a dozen times.
Soon the path reached the top of the first foot hill, and it leveled out for about a mile before it dropped down into a canyon between the mountains. There was a stream cutting through the rocky pathway here, and the sides of the slopes were decorated with twisted oak trees that reminded me again of Southern California, except these trees were twice the size of even the largest oak I’d ever seen back home, and I guessed that only a bronto could have reached the lowest branches.
I stopped the team at the stream for a drink break, and the Emeralds and I took a few minutes to sip from our water jugs while the dinos all refreshed themselves. The valley we were in was peaceful, and the wind sounded wonderful as it rang through the millions of oak leaves high above us, but the sun would be setting in a few hours, and I didn’t want to get caught up on the top of the mountain when it did.
So, we continued onward and upward.
The pathway sloped up again after the stream, and we soon found ourselves moving up a series of wide switchbacks on the north face of the mountain. Each turn gave us a good three hundred feet or so of elevation, and I was soon able to see the walls of our camp from the side of the mountain. I could even see the glow of the fires from the kiln, and a flash of pink moving into Hope’s doggie door was surely Kacerie moving inside of the smaller fort to get supplies.
“Another good reason to move,” I said to the Emeralds as I pointed toward our base. “Anyone coming up from the south and climbing this mountain i
s going to easily see us. If they spend enough time up here, and they have sharp enough eyes, they can get an exact count of our tribe and study our habits. Our next fort really should have the high ground.”
Both Emeralds nodded, and then we continued our trip up the side of the mountain.
The switchbacks seemed to be endless, but I wasn’t really pushing Nicole to run up them. She was moving at a brisk walk, and I imagined that Sheela had just sprinted up the side of the mountain without even breathing hard.
Eventually the trail shifted from switchbacks to a level road that was surrounded by hardy looking pines, juniper, and maple looking trees, and I saw that we were nearly at the peak of the mountain. There were actually a few peaks up here that didn’t seem to have trails leading up to the top. After a few seconds of studying, I realized that made a lot of sense. Dinosaurs were the ones that had made these paths with their migrations, and unlike human hikers back in Southern California, dinosaurs didn’t give a shit about the view from the highest peak. They just wanted to get to the other side of the mountain as quickly as possible.
Then we crested the top part of the trail, and I saw that we really did have a great view from up here.
I noticed the ocean first. It stretched across the horizon like an endless stretch of azure glass. It was hard to tell exactly how far away the shore was, but there were four valleys in between us, and each looked to have small mountains or steep hills protecting their perimeters.
I guessed it would take us another three days to reach our destination, and I kind of wished that I had brought everyone so that they could see this beautiful picture of Dinosaurland, but they’d eventually see it when we made the first trip to our new home.
Emerald and I just had to find the perfect spot first.
“Looks great, huh?” I asked as I turned to look at Original Emerald.
She was staring at the ocean, and it almost seemed like the distant azure color was reflected in her eyes. For half a moment, I thought she looked sad, but then she blinked a few times and gave me a shy smile.
“Does it remind you of your homeworld?” I asked.
Tamer- King of Dinosaurs Book 6 Page 12