Raptor King (Alien Beast Kings 1)

“Well, I’m not scared. I’m with you.”

He smiles in spite of himself. "You can be quite charming when you want to be, human.”

“That’s not been my experience,” I smile back.

This is hugely romantic. The forest has wrapped itself around us and it is not only full of terrifying predators, but possibility. The shiny thing is our guiding light, clearly visible through and above the foliage most of the time.

We walk and we ride and occasionally we catch something small and become the predators we are so concerned about and we roast and eat them. The days pass by in a slow and steady stream of survival hiking.

“Admit it. This is fun.”

“It is a kind of fun,” Rex admits. “But we cannot afford to let our guard down. At any moment we are going to be assailed by some force of nature intent on destroying us.”

I look around. It is a sunny day. The sky is blue through the canopy above, and there is a playful breeze whispering around the forest floor. If nature is intent on destroying us, it is making it very subtle.

I think he’s paranoid. He’s tried so hard to survive in this place, build his little fortress and his safe space, and now I have dragged him out of it, he’s unhappy. Poor guy. Being such a big, strong, sexy king and being afraid of the world at large. I hope this helps him through it.

The wind picks up a little. Branches begin to sway and leaves tumble through the air. The sun dims ever so slightly as wisps of cloud cover it over.

“Take cover!”

“What are we taking cover from, exactly?”

“It’s coming.” He hisses the words with maximum drama.

His fully dark eyes are always somewhat haunting, but there is an extra darkness there now. I think he might be actually losing it. Nothing is coming. There are dinosaurs around, of course, but there aren't that many vicious predators. Ecosystems, I somewhat remember from documentaries and such, can only support so many apex predators. There’s probably only one or two massively dangerous beasts in this region and they're not really designed to eat us anyway. We’re fine. Or as close to fine as you can be on any planet.

But the weather is turning a bit, I guess, as he hauls me up onto Tyche’s back and starts riding around looking for some shelter. The longer we ride, the worse the weather seems to get. A storm is coming. We look around for some kind of cave, but we’ve been following a river, because rivers have water and we all die if we can’t get a drink, whereas caves tend to be further up toward his fortress, in elevated areas. There was a nice spring running through his encampment. I kind of miss his encampment right now. It has roofs and a bed, and… I’m not going to say any of this to him. He would be so angry with me if I asked to turn around and go home. We have given up everything for this quest for the shiny thing, and we are going to find it, rain, hail, shine, or dinosaurs.

The clouds gather further, like school bullies forming a circle around the pair of us. I know I am being paranoid now, weather does not target individual people. But it really does feel as though this is a storm made just for us. The wind seems to whip icy rain directly at my face no matter where I turn it, and though we are trying to seek shelter, it is as if the forests are closing themselves around us, foliage growing dense and prickly before our very eyes. It’s a trick of the light, of course.

And then the thunder comes. It shakes the ground and reverberates the air, and makes my heart race. It sounds like footsteps, but that is another one of my anthropomorphic ideas, I am sure. The whole world is not turning on us in this moment. It is not…

Lightning flashes, and I let out a scream of pure, primal fear.

I saw an eye. A massive, remorseless, reptilian eye. It was not among the trees. It was not among the trees. It was way up high in the sky, among the roiling clouds themselves. This is not a storm. This is a beast so large it has its own weather pattern.

Hot red flares flash across the sky and explode onto the ground, setting the brush alight. A meteor shower has begun, the eternal curse of the saurian species is being inflicted upon it by this… thing. It can’t be a real dinosaur. There’s no way anything that large could sustain itself through predation. If it ate, it would eat the world.

Rex yells something to me, but I can’t hear him. There’s nothing to hear besides the existence-destroying roar of what surely must be the god of all dinosaurs. Compared to this beast, we are small. We are pointless. We are nothing.