Hey everyone! So sorry about the wait, I had tons of tests at school that I had to study for, so I didn't have time to finish the chapter until today. Its not as strong as the chapters previous, but its important in its own way. And also, thanks for 1.1k reads everyone! Will be updating soon, starting to work on the last 9 days chapters. And don't worry, the other characters like Blue and Lavender will return next chapter! :D
It's getting cold, I thought worriedly, looking around the desert-like biome nervously. The heat had began to turn down from the blaring sun-less sky above, and the winds changed like tides on a sickened shoreline. My breath had begun to reveal itself beneath its camouflage before me, and shimmered like mist in the atmosphere. The ground began to show frost when the dawn of the next morning came into my eyes with the flush of only one seemingly abundant color: grey.
I think we ate the entire herd by the time we reached a nearby oasis.
Literally.
I was chewing upon some fresh-killed Triceratops meat with Feather in the shade of a dry acacia tree, but for some reason, I couldn't pull my stare away from her. I felt like some type of creepy figure in the shadows who just stalks up upon random dinosaurs just for the fun of it, or maybe, just a thought, because...........I've never felt actual love before.
Not like this.
Her teeth were shiny and pure white, eyes golden like fire. Her voice chirped like a melody, heartbeat stronger than any volcano's heart, or perhaps that's how I imagined it, and the rest of her was to long to describe.
My mom told me to find a mate by my 18th birthday.
I'm way overdue.
But perhaps this could be a promising chance....right?
Feather lifted up from her feast and swallowed with a sigh in pleasure. I pulled slowly up from the Triceratops meat, licked my lips delightfully, then grinned at the Indosuchus that constantly swept my eyes off their feet.
"You must've been hungry," I chuckled amusingly, sniffing with a puff of steam. Feather blushed rolling her eyes.
"Very hungry," She breathed, "Thought I'd never be so stuffed in my life."
"Me either," I muttered, biting back into the soft flesh of the ribs. I felt another cold breeze breath upon my skin, causing me to shiver a bit with a sickening inhale. I couldn't understand why it was getting so cold. Was it me?
"Are you cold?" I asked Feather. Feather frowned, sniffed the air, then came back with a burr.
"Yeah," She nodded, glancing over to me with her mouth full, "It got colder."
So it wasn't me.
I turned my head from her side, spotting Queen and Thunder who were also munching upon some carcasses. Finch, the Lythronax and Everett, the Sinraptor ate together, pulling deep into the red meat that could quench their starvation. As I looked around, Thunder lifted his T-Rex skull to its summit, stared at me silently with a subtle blink, then lowered back down for a chomp into his fair share of the fresh-kill. I sniffed the air again, then caught something peculiar in my snout.
It was blood. Like actual fresh blood.
T-Rex blood.
I turned over to Thunder, still seeing him eat away the herbivore savagely, then called, "Thunder!" The huge carnivore looked up at me with open interested eyes, then slowly stepped over his dinner to stomp over to me. The ground shook as he did, which sort of made me uncomfortable and strangely fearful of his possibly strength, but nonetheless I had to understand the scent. Was it Thunder's?
"Are you hurt?" I asked solemnly. Thunder stopped short and frowned.
"Hurt?" He looked around, locking his eyes on his black-scabbed scars that slashed from belly to tail, then turned to me, shaking his head.
"No...I mean I have injuries, but they aren't bleeding or fresh. I would've noticed by now hence that fact."
"Huh..." I twitched my tiny arms in thought, "Because I caught the scent of T-Rex blood for a moment, I just sworn that it came from you as a guess."
"T-Rex blood?" Thunder's heart spiraled into a jumpstarted race, which clearly pumped itself through his flesh where I could see, "You serious?"
"Yes," I dipped my head with a snort, feeling my tongue dance around between my teeth, "It's a distant scent, but it's fresh. I still think it's you though. I haven't seen a living-" My eyes flashed around, lying low upon the cooling desert horizon, "-Tyrannosaur since impact...beside you of course..."
"You think you could take me to it? To the scent?" Thunder muttered. I turned my head to Feather, feeling a sense of blushing silently as she laid quietly in the shadow of a nearby tree, then looked back to Shadow insecure of myself.
"Okay....but why?"
"Just for curiousity," Thunder hissed between his teeth, with a hint of pride lighting up on his face. I frowned. Why was he so interested in blood all of a sudden? I shrugged, sniffed the air to obtain the fleshy scent, then moved along, dragging my clumsy and tired feet in the dust and ash, while my head stayed low and steady upon the trail.
The T-Rex's quaking footsteps fell behind my own as we walked, and as I sniffed out the blood, I had a gut feeling as if he was hopeful of what he'd find. As if the blood would spell out 'clue' in the burning earth, or 'relief' in another manner. The sky flowed like ocean waves with an invigorating glow of fire, and a face of evil. Darkness spread across the valley floor as we walked, and the herd's scent began to fade farther and farther away, though the blood scent did increase after a while. I weaved past a blackened tree, that apparently to Thunder after his actions threw me off guard, disintegrated when he bumped it with his huge tail.
"Careful," I moaned, focusing on the scent a while longer. It grew ever more stronger than I'd hope, but eventually, we found ourselves within a huge v-shaped valley, surrounded by dead trees, water-less rivers and cracked pieces of the earth. I flicked my head up in a directional movement, then clicked to Thunder, "It's right over there..."
Surely enough, droplets of blood stains still wet and gleaming in the earth, like jewels brushed away by the changing winds, caught Thunder's attention, and the old carnivore cautiously stumbled over to it. I backed away, turning my huge head left to watch him from his hindquarters; sniff out the blood with a harsh inhale.
A frigid unfeeling wind flowed downhill upon my shoulders, then did a figure 8 between my legs before flowing fast and strong past my face and back uphill. But as it passed, I watched it flutter silently through the outer shell of a forgotten corpse, bending it's lifeless limbs low to its brown skin, perhaps enough to snap a few, and threw up tons of crusty dust and debris into the air and over the horizontal split line. It seemed from my eyes that a huge giant's tail brushed up and cleansed the land of its death-filled atmosphere to at least make it a bit lively. The mountains in the distance stood tall, but a bit ramshackled and impotent to this apocalypse. Matter fact, all carnivores were impotent at this point.
Nothing grew.
Nothing breathed.
Nothing truly thrived any longer. But it didn't really matter to me anymore, I was finally getting used to all the death surrounding us.
"The scent's familiar," Thunder grumbled still with his proud and ambitious look glued upon his bony face, "Its really familiar. I know a scent when I remember it..."
"Who do you think it belongs to?" I questioned, tilting my head a few angles sideways. Thunder sniffed it again, then fixed his eyes hard upon his surroundings, a small twitch building up deep in his tail. He mouthed something to himself that I couldn't quite catch, a mixture of Shadows and You.
I couldn't tell what he meant by this, but it surely came as a flash of surprise to his eyes. Then, before I could ask another question, Thunder started slowly stomping off, sniffing the air with closed eyes like a wanderer, but to me, I had no idea where he was going.
"Uh....Thunder?" I called. He didn't respond, rather kept walking. His body and tail slipped away behind a corner, then led uphill towards a plateau above. I frowned again, feeling my scales fold over in a face, then slide back when the feeling drowned inside of me. I followed behind in confusion, slipping on some rocks from time to time, until I reached the summit.
"Thunder?" I called again, seeing the Tyrannosaur seemingly walk trapped in his aroma trackings, flaring his nostrils at some points to engulf more of the smell. Abruptly, he crunched his claws into the earth and quickly paused dead in his tracks, with his eyes now wide open and alert. Thankfully I didn't bump into him, and cautiously watching his strange stuck body, I curled around him, swallowing some drips of saliva to the back of my throat.
"Thunder?" I began, "I have no idea what you're doing, but we should head back. Besides, we didn't really find anything besides rocks...trees....blood..." Then I trailed off, letting my eyes follow the trail of blood before me into the darkness. I squinted harder, spotting a strange shadow moving in the darkness of the dead forest before us both, crunching some broken sticks and dead bushes. Eventually, his body broke through the forest and right into the clearing where me and Thunder stood, where he too stopped still, eyes widening and locked upon the other T-Rex.
It was a T-Rex too.
And very similar-looking to Thunder.
Both Tyrannosaurs stared at each other silently, engulfing each other's scent for a few seconds. Then suddenly, the T-Rex in the shadows gaped his mouth and spoke a heart stopping word: "Dad?"
My eyes widened. Dad?
"Shadow..." Thunder gasped, his mouth curling into a toothy smile, "Shadow!" My head spun to him. Shadow?
Wasn't that the T-Rex that Thunder's been moping about for days? And then that T-Rex turned out to be his son!
"DAD!" I saw both T-Rexs bolt at each other, then slow quickly to embrace one another in comfort. The youngling was growing emotional all of a sudden, his eyes turning red and heart breaking and rehealing like magic. I couldn't help it but let out a smile grin as I watched them reunite in a charming fashion, then pull away in relief and excitement.
To be honest, I've never seen Thunder so happy before.
"You're alive!" Shadow cheered to himself, but expressed his thunderously happy heart towards his father, and since his tail was swinging back and forth with tons of pride, "I can't believe it!" Thunder grinned silently, exhaling hard and just stared at Shadow, swallowing back his image of his long lost son.
"I thought that I'd never see you again..." Thunder muttered, nudging his son. That's when his eyes flashed upon me, glancing oddly at my own different features.
"Who's that?" Shadow asked, pointing his tail to me.
"I'm Atlas," I called from afar. Shadow nodded, then cocked his head, "What species are you?"
"Well, I'm a-"
"It doesn't matter," Thunder interrupted with a smile, "You're okay and alive! That's what matters. C'mon," He flicked his head sideways, "I have this herd of mine I want you to meet." But as Thunder was nudging him along, Shadow pulled away shaking his head. My heart skipped a beat. What was he doing?
"Shadow?" Thunder muttered bewildered, "What are you doing?"
"I..." He turned his head towards the darkness of the forest, then sighed, lowering his head, "I can't.....I..." He sighed again, "...can't leave my friends..."
"Friends?"
"Yeah," Shadow gulped nodding, "I have a few. They helped me.....you know....stay alive. But they need me, so I should head on back..."
"Shadow c'mon..."
"Dad no!" Shadow backed up a bit more from his father, "I'm not abandoning them."
"I don't want to abandon you either!" Thunder insisted moving forwards, "C'mon!"
"No."
My heart skipped a beat. Thunder's face looked a little upset and angry compared to before, but Shadow's face darkened like a burning fire of seriousness.
"I can't leave them Dad. Not even for a moment. I don't even have a choice." Thunder went quiet, listening to his son's words, then closed his toothed jaws and drooped his tail. I could only imagine what Thunder was thinking right now, seeing his newfound son suddenly reject coming back into his arms. Thunder shifted uncomfortably, then exhaled through his nostrils as steam in the cold cloudy air.
"Why can't you come back?" Thunder finally clicked. Shadow looked around, searching for a quick answer, and only came up with: "Can't say....it's a long story. But one of them's injured or perhaps killed. I'm not sure-"
"How could you not be sure?"
"I'm just not!" Shadow growled solemnly, "'I'm sure about any of what's going on. His life is in jeopardy for now unless I figure out how to help him." Shadow lowered his head even closer to the earth with more deep inhales, then rose back up, twitching his arms, "I gotta go."
"Shadow please! I'm your father!" But Shadow just shook his head angrily.
"But he's my friend. And they are my second family. Look....I can't dad. There's more things in your pride now, but this is something that's more important than coming back. I'm sorry." He looked at his father once more, then spun around. Thunder, about to speak out, went quite speechless, unknown as to what to respond with. He glanced over to me, but I only shrugged,
"I think it's fine if he goes. You'll see him anyways, right?" Thunder's eyelids lowered, and his breathing began to slow as he thought deeply, "I'm sure if I'll meet my sweet little Shadow again..."
"Thunder?" I grew nervous as he shuddered, "What are you talking about! He's alive and well, you should be proud-"
"I'm not....." He trembled, "I'm horrified. He's never demanded things to me before. He's never looked so sad and angry in his life, and I could see pain in his eyes. I could see forgotten pain..." Then Thunder looked at me with wide eyes.
"Oh no."
"Oh no what?"
"He knows the truth..." Thunder backed up suddenly, "How did he know the truth?"
"What truth?" I asked. Thunder swallowed hard, his jaws chattering in their own quake.
"About Lily...." He sighed, "My last mate."