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Shadow (27 days after)

"You smell that?" I called back to him, since he started trailing behind. A strange aroma filled the air, sort of like a mixture of honey and rotten flesh. Amberclaw sniffed the air, then frowned.

"Heck yeah I smell it," He gagged at first, before the smell finally resorted back to a honey scent in my mind, "It's an actually weird bad-like scent." I sniffed again, then began following my sniffer a bit farther. My legs dragged in the snow, piling the white flakes into small mounds where my clawed feet stopped.

"We're following it now?" Amberclaw groaned behind me with twitching claws, "We don't even know what it is!"

"You never know unless we find out for ourselves," I growled back with a playful hiss. The Deinonychus twirled his tail anxiously, flared his nostrils, then shifted his feet and toe-claw a bit wide in preparation to follow, but something held him back.

Was it fear?

"I'mma.....I'm going to catch up, be right back."

"Where?-" I began to call, but his body quickly vanished into the dead bushes. I lifted my leg and turned around to face where Amberclaw originally was, then sighed, shaking my head. The silence was impending in my ears, and before a ring could scream in my noggin, I shook my head again with a growl.

"It's just me, myself, and I then."

I turned my head and continued to follow the eerie stench that could my mind minutes ago, and crunched my tiny arms in joyful anxiety. The wind breathed on my back irritatingly, bending some still-standing trees all around me. The Mountains whispered to my right and left as I strolled along, trampling on some skeletons and bones nearby. At first, I felt as if I was on a nature walk through an incredible sight-seeing adventure. Then, the day became evermore stranger.

A black shadow flashed past my eyes in the trees, which I mistook for a mammal, but as it sprinted right before my face, my heart skipped a beat.

"Holy...." I jerked up from the ground, stopping hard in the snow. I flared my nostrils, still locked on the scent, but tried to find some other scent that could picture out what that black figure was.

But there wasn't any scent.

Was I day-dreaming? I thought at first, shaking my skull hard.

Nope.

Another swish took my attention away as it zipped straight into the darker portion of the forest. My heart froze quick, and for seconds, I held my breath, awaiting a new presence to appear from the shadows.

At that moment, a memory of my previous horror nightmare flushed in my eyes, and I pulled away from following the inconspicuous creature.

"No...no..." I trembled, my eyes widening as the forest got bigger and bigger.

And then a silent whisper began to thunder in my brain like burning hail...

"Not again....It's just a dream....a stupid vision....wake up Shadow!" I bit my tail and squeezed, screeching at the pain, "Wake up!" A sharp jolt of pain shattered through my torso and hind, and even a speckled drop of blood sprouted from the bite. I pulled away from my large tail, blinked once, and everything spun back to normal, with just a regular forest glowing with snow. My heart was pounding as I stood there for a few minutes, taking in the colors of the world.

"Just a dream...." I repeated with a painful nod, "Just a dream."

I must've been losing my mind.

I trailed away from the maleovent sightings and reset myself, focusing my mind on the scent of my previous track, and followed onwards, stomping downhill and back up again. I slipped a few times in the cool frozen undergrowth and my claws didn't really provide enough traction to carry me safely uphill.

And eventually hitting my destination.

My eyes widened even more as I gazed upon what had wrenched of the aroma. And at first, I thought I was still dreaming.

A huge lake of water, clear as daylight, sat still and silent, surrounded by a wave-like rock formation, a crescent is the name. The water bubbled a bit, and felt warm from afar, but never mind the scent or its look, it was water!

Without thinking twice, I began thundering towards the strange smelling water with open jaws and a smile on my face. Was it a hot spring then if steam uprose from its deep roots?

Perhaps the better question was, how did nobody see this?

"I can't believe I found water!" I grinned to myself, proud beyond belief. A fresh new scent of a pure atmosphere and a cleansing feeling filled my lungs, making my grin expand wider on my scales. I heard a shuffle of feet above me, and slowly, I turned my T-Rex self towards the rocks, where the old Amberclaw stood, perched like a hawk with beady eyes of yellow.

"Amberclaw look! I found WATER!" But the response from Amberclaw was just darkened and widened eyes.

Not of relief and excitement.

Eyes of horror.

"Amberclaw?" I called with a frown, "What is it?" My voice was going hoarse for some reason, but I ignored the sign to spy upon Amberclaw's terrified body. I couldn't make out his exact facial features, but they posed something deadly in the whispering wind.

"Shadow...." He trembled, "That's not water."

"What?" I narrowed my eyes, "Look, it's clearly..." I kept talking through my sentence, but my voice suddenly vanished into thin air. Then, out of nowhere, a strange new sound erupted in my ear.

Ticking.

The Ticking of a clock.

My heart skipped a beat as I recognized the noise, the noise you hear when death approaches. The noise that stays with you after you touch the golden charms work.

"It tricked me," I gasped, "It got into my head."

It let me see what I wanted to see.

The blue crisp lake smudged into a dark green and sandy color, with bursting hot bubbles rocketing to the surface. A horrible aroma dug deep into my lungs, and choked me quick.

I tried to scream, but nothing came out of my mouth.

I tried to breathe, but my lungs felt as if they were on fire.

And the muscles inside my plump belly suddenly went stiff and limp.

I was being paralyzed.