Countdown ✓

Shadow (20 days after)

"There's nothing out there to help the wound," She said to Whiteclaw, "The plants are dying. There's no sap, no honey, no yarrow. Not even anymore cobwebs. Everything is disappearing for some reason."

"Those are all natural stuff," I spoke, realizing what she meant. Nature truly was gone. The plants were all dead. The trees were all dried out. The ground was barren. There really was nothing left. But what scared me more than the condition I was in was Stella's own. She and her herd of 6 especially. They're plant eaters. Herbivores eat plants. If plants die out, they'll die out too. And if they die out...

"Drexel," Whiteclaw muttered, looking at the sitting Utahraptor with his hand over his frontal mouth area, "You're being charismatic. You haven't even said anything." Drexel sighed, then shook his head angrily.

"What is there to say?" He hissed, turning to the Deinonychus, "Literally what is there to say?! Do we not realize what is going on? Everything that was on that stupid clock is coming true! Can't we see that?" Whiteclaw opened his mouth to say something, then went quiet. Surely enough, he did have a point. The clock that I saw last time was edging closer to the 33rd day. Meat was becoming scarce for us. We finished mostly all of it, even the organs of our feasts, except for the scraps that were 'uneatable' or 'indigestible' to us. Less and less herbivores were coming to us, and sometimes, we even failed to take down some. We were truly losing this 'war'.

"So we're all gonna die?" I sniveled. Drexel just glanced down at me from above, sighing. He couldn't say anything. Stella gaped her mouth open a little bit, turning her attention to the Utahraptor. But Drexel just huffed once, snorting hot air into the air, then twirled around, walking away with speed. Whiteclaw licked his lips then dipped his head to Stella.

"I'm going to go catch up with him. I'll be back in a few..." Then his albino body vanished with a dashing noise, then settled back down into sorrowful silence. Stella heaved a sheltered and old inhale, then laid on her chest, splaying her legs forwards to relax herself. I dropped the log from my mouth and pushed it to my right into the searing heat from the darkness above.

"Is it true?" I wondered. I felt kiddush asking a question that sounds cowardly and fearful, but I needed to know. Stella turned her Triceratops head around to me and just smiled.

"I don't know yet Shadow," She breathed, "I don't know. But....it doesn't mean you have to believe everything. I'm sure it's just a misconception."

"But we have to be certain of things," I countered, "Don't we? We don't know which way it could go." Stella tried to reassure me.

"Just because it's prophesied doesn't make it reality. Some things are just there in this world to......well....scare us, and to make us afraid. We have to be steady on what we believe is true, and what is just an imaginative state in our minds." I listened to her words carefully and nodded without question.

"Okay."

Stella overlooked my face, and somehow noticed something deeply hidden behind the pupils of my eyes.

"Is there something wrong? How's the leg?"

"Wrong?" I raised my scaled eyebrow, "Nothing's wrong. What do ya mean, nothing's really wrong, though nothing's right either! Ha ha..."

"You're a very good liar," She cooed. I lowered my playful voice and grin, then groaned, and then exhaled.

"Yes...something's wrong."

I thought back to the battle with me and T-Rex, and the first thought was on the strange vision during the battle. The Clock talked to me. I kept thinking that it was imagined. But I knew it was real. Too real. I didn't know how or why, but it did. And it scared me in a dark and evil-like tone that made me feel like a mouse trapped in eternal darkness, and everywhere you'd look, a face of your past would appear. A face that you'd thought you'd forgotten. There was something in my past that was locked. Something Thunder hid from me.