Dododex

ARK: Survival Evolved & Ascended Companion

The Arks: Over Heaven

Chapter 20: The Book Club

Original Post Date: Feb 4, 2024

Note: Story starts in Wyvern, Aerial ABC backwards filter and has a Prologue. Last chapter in Ichthyornis, next chapter in Griffin. The next chapter will be a “decimal” chapter (20.5). This means it does not exactly fit on the timeline, but still has relevance to the plot.

~

The raft sailed smoothly down the river, carried by a gentle current. Neddy and Ruby still seemed content about chatting away, but there was a clear, awkward tension between Aurora and Samuel.

“I really hope she isn’t too upset about how I feel about… Life,” Samuel thought as he looked onward into the peaceful day. Despite being on an island filled with bloodthirsty creatures out to get them, he found it quite peaceful. These mindless beasts were no smarter than a chicken, all they did was hunt or flee constantly. It was like they were built to be this way. In a way, this was like a break for him from school. In school, people were unpredictable. Irrational. And Samuel felt as if that just made life more complicated.

“But here, I don’t really need to worry about any of that,” Samuel thought with a smile.

And steering the raft was Ben, who had decided to take the wheel, or in this case, the lever, in turn of Samuel as he would know where to go from there. But Ben, who was usually a lot chattier than this, was awfully quiet on the way there.

Neddy seemed to notice his unease, so he decided to lighten the mood.

“What’s wrong, bro?” Neddy asked Ben as they traveled upstream.

Ben didn’t respond for a second, but after a minute he finally answered his question.

“The problem I’m facing isn’t for you to solve,” he ominously said, “You don’t have to worry about me. Only about yourself.”

“Ooookay, dude…” Neddy murmured, turning away.

Ben looked ahead for a moment, and he spotted a standing torch that was lit ablaze.

“Ah, here we go! That torch over there marks the camp of the Book Club!” Ben grinned.

~

The group soon docked near the river coastline, where a row of lit standing torches paved the way to a small cluster of huts made of thatch. A perimeter of wooden spike walls surrounded the camp, and stone irrigation pipes ran from the river into the camp’s entrance. One of the three obelisks floated in the sky eerily nearby, its green glow humming so intensely that the friends could hear it from here. It almost sounded like the bellow of a beast. Creepy.

“Wow, you’ve got a lot set up,” Samuel stated with suspicion.

“I didn’t think they’d progress so far,” Ben replied, “I have been gone for pretty much the entire time here on the Ark, though, so I can’t really blame them.”

“This place looks really cool!” Neddy commented happily.

“I agree, this is like a cozy little village,” Ruby replied with a smile while looking around.

“Where’s the leader of the Book Club’s camp?” Aurora asked while crossing her arms. She seemed cautious of the place, still believing Ben and his Book Club to be untrustworthy.

“The leader is right this way,” Ben answered, waving his hand at a thatch hut that was guarded by Raptors.

The five walked down the pathway and up to the thatch hut. One of the Raptors had a significantly more muscular body than the others, including Samuel’s Raptor. Samuel’s Raptor snarled at it, and the big Raptor snapped its jaw at it, causing it to leap back.

“Hey! Knock it out, Special Raptor!” Ben scolded the Raptor. Neddy looked at Ben with a weird expression.

“Really? Special Raptor?” Neddy asked.

“I’m starting to reconsider letting you name mine,” Samuel admitted to Ben.

“Hey don’t blame me! I’m not the one who named her anyway…” Ben said with squinted eyes, “The leader did.”

Ben looked back at the door and knocked on it softly. Footsteps approached the door, and it creaked open, revealing a girl with flowing white hair that seemed to emit a subtle ethereal glow. Some of her white hair had dark spots, it was almost as if she was wearing the Moon atop her head.

“Skyler,” Ben said grimly.

“Hey Ben, I’m glad to see you’ve returned safely!” Skyler chimed cheerily. She looked at the friends Ben had brought eagerly, “And I see you’ve brought more members!”

“Where’s Tiffany? And why are you in her home?” Ben asked immediately.

“So this is not the leader of the camp,” Samuel thought as he looked at her, “Something happened while Ben was gone… And I’m assuming that Tiffany is the leader of the Book Club.”

“My my, Ben,” Skyler explained with a sigh, “Tiffany’s deserted the camp. Overnight she had disappeared. We looked everywhere for her, all around the area but she was nowhere to be found. So I took her stead.”

“Skyler it really is great you want to lead us, it really is, you are the president of the Book Club after all… before all this happened, but you haven’t even read the book! How will we know what to do next? How will we know where to go next-”

“You don’t have to worry about it, Ben,” Skyler hissed, “Because last night, I got information regarding this place last night. It turns out that there are multiple books which have this cursed island as their setting.”

“What? Impossible.”

“Completely,” Skyler smirked, “Remember that book that I tasked everyone to read together since I thought it was so good? At the beginning of our second semester, The Obelisk.”

“Really? You think that book has anything to do with this place?” Ben sneered with unamusement, “Yes, there may be some similar aspects, like the fact that that story had ancient dinosaurs too, and humans who tried their best to survive… But other than that that book is too unreliable to use as our source of information going forward!”

“It was revealed to me in a dream,” Skyler stated smugly.

“Oh you’ve gotta be kidding me. A dream?! What is this, the thirteen-hundreds?”

“You don’t believe me, but… the author of The Obelisk herself spoke to me in that dream,” Skyler replied, “She appeared as a beautiful, white dragon with three heads. She called herself Moonflight, and she told me that her story was the key to survival here on this island. She told me that the key to survival was the obelisks on this island… Just like in the story, where that dragon was able to harness the power of the Obelisk…”

“Seriously?”

“Yes seriously… And you know what happened after that? I was awoken to an earthquake, and when I went outside to check on the other members to see if they were okay, there they were. The Obelisks in all of their glory, and one is floating in the sky right next to us,” Skyler boomed as she pointed at the green Obelisk.

“And why didn’t this dragon of yours speak to anyone else except you?” Ben rebuked.

“Because I’m the author’s *biggest fan*!” Skyler exclaimed with a bright smile, “I mean, who wouldn’t give their biggest fan a warning? I’ve read her story since its birth, since its creation on that fanfiction platform… What was it called? The Deck? Dex? I don’t remember. But the last message she sent before she became inactive was… ‘Thank you so much for sticking with me the entire ride. I’ll publish my book soon, and you’ll be on the thank you page. I don’t think I’ll use this platform very often now that my story is finally finished… But I know yours hasn’t. I know we'll meet again some day.’”

“I-”

“If you don’t like that then you can leave,” Skyler said, pointing at the exit. Ben sighed, and shook his head.

“It’s not that, I’m just worried,” Ben responded, “I don’t want anyone here to get hurt.”

“I know you don’t,” Skyler said, “You want people to be safe. We’re your friends. You can count on me. I know what to do next. We will all survive.”

Ben nodded.

“Okay. Let’s just… leave it alone,” Ben solemnly mumbled. Skyler looked at Samuel, Aurora, Neddy, and Ruby with a smile and closed eyes.

“Well I’m glad to meet you all, you’ll have to excuse me and Ben’s argument. Sometimes we don’t get on the right foot because of our ideals, but we’re still friends anyway,” Skyler reassured them. Skyler turned to Ben, whose face had brightened up again, “Ben, I’ll let the new members get acclimated, then I’ll call a meeting and brief everyone on what to do next.”

Ben nodded in affirmation.

“Different ideals, huh?” Samuel thought as his eyes darted around the complex, “I’m sure the others here can give me some clues on Ben and Skyler. What exactly are these ideals? And why did this Tiffany lady disappear?”

Skyler yawned, waved goodbye, and shut the door, leaving Samuel and his allies to meet new people on their own.

“Well, I guess you guys can just wander around and meet my friends,” Ben told the four, “I have to check up on my farm, I need to make sure they’ve been properly taken care of by Sunny.”

Ben trotted off, and with nothing left to do, the allies decided to explore.