A Kaiju Roar blast through the house.

Andrew woke up in panic hearing it. Reuben’s head shot up and he started barking in panic and fear. The tv in his room was on and on full blast. He looked in his bed and found he slept on the remote. He grabbed it and looked at the tv. An enormous dragon was on the screen roaring into the air on a mountain. He shut off the television and got up. It was time to prepare for his journey to Sanctuary.

A little while later, he walked into the shed and began searching for anything he could use on his journey. He opened up several boxes and didn’t find much that could help him. He looked at a corner of the room and saw the two large containers with his parent’s names. He walked over to them and grabbed the door to the container with his dad’s name and opened it. Andrew’s eyes widened with awe as he saw first generation Tek gear and weapons. He saw a tek rifle, a railgun, a tek bow and a tek knife. But all of that didn’t interest him as much as the first generation Tek armor sitting on a mannequin.

“That would make my trip to Sanctuary a lot easier.” Andrew said to himself. He could just fly to Sanctuary!!

He immediately took off the helmet and noticed on the chest piece had a switch on it. Andrew with more effort then he thought he needed, he flipped it and the chest piece collapsed into a vest. He noticed that each of the other pieces connected to the chest piece also had these switches. He began flipping them all and they all collapsed into smaller pieces like a belt, fingerless gloves and even ankle bracelets. Once he did so, he began taking each off the mannequin and started putting them on. He stood them for a moment after putting them all on. He had never touched or used Tek gear in his life. He didn’t know how it would feel once he flipped all the switches. He looked at shed doorway where Reuben was sitting. He flipped the switches on the boots and gloves and they began to morph into their proper shape and adjusted to Andrew’s size. Andrew gasped in awe and Reuben panicked seeing what was happening and by the sound Andrew made and started jumping up onto Andrew.

“It’s okay Reuben. It’s okay, it just surprised me.” Andrew said while trying to calm down Reuben.

After a little bit of trying to calm down Reuben and successfully doing so. Andrew flipped the switch to the leggings and chest piece. Both pieces did the same as others did the other pieces. However, once they reached the other pieces, all of the pieces fused together and locked into one piece. Andrew found a mirror and looked at the armor, no seems whatsoever. He put on the helmet and it seemed to begin to do the same as the other pieces. But it partially connected before stopping.

“Retinal ID required.” An autonomous voice said, then a light flashed into Andrew’s eyes. Andrew wasn’t sure what it was, but didn’t dare close his eyes. Then a buzzer sounded and the Helmet detached from the rest of the suit.

“Invalid Retina ID. Limited access to the Tek Armor only.” The autonomous voice said, Andrew was confused by this.

“What does limited access allow me?” Andrew asked,

“Limited Access includes: armor wearability, armor protection, increased endurance and temperature control.” The autonomous voice said. Andrew took off the helmet and groaned.

‘So much for easier. Well, it’s still useable, might as well wear it for now.’ Andrew thought. He put the helmet back on the mannequin and noticed his dad’s name and nickname on the side of it.

Andrew walked outside and noticed that the sun was rising, he didn’t feel like he got up that early. Did he? He went inside the house and grabbed a rifle and a couple extra loaded clips. He went outside the front door and looked around the front of the house for an ATV or vehicle, nothing. He knew the park entrance always had a spare vehicle at the visitor center, but that was still a major distance away. Reuben walked up to Andrew and looked up at him. Andrew looked down and smiled.

“I think we got a long walk ahead of us.” Andrew said, and he and Reuben started running down the overgrown path that was once his parent’s driveway.

Andrew quickly attempted to scramble across his bed and kicked up a bunch of dust making him cough profusely. Dust flew into his eyes and caused him to stop in his tracks. He tried waiting for the dust to settle, but with each cough he stirred up even more dust. He quickly retreated out of the room, as he looked back he saw the room was filled with a cloud of dust.

Andrew decided to open several windows and decided to figure out why the power wasn’t working until the dust settled. He went outside and started walking around the house. He quickly noticed the generator half buried in dirt by the house and checked it. It was powered off with over half a tank of gas remaining. After a little over an hour of trying to figure out how it worked he got it started up running.

Andrew went around the house and went inside. He checked the lights and saw immediately the lights turned on. He pumped his fists in the air and cheered in exuberance.

He went down the hallway and looked into his room. All the dust had settled. He looked through his window and saw his dog was still watching the dinosaur intensely.

Andrew cautiously walked into his room and walked around the bed over to his nightstand. He picked up the clock but couldn’t read it through all the dust. He wiped off the dust but still couldn’t see anything. Looked at the back and saw that the element slot was empty.

“Of course they lied about how long the clock can run on.” He said to himself, he opened the first drawer on the nightstand and saw some clothes. He quickly started pulling out all the clothes and found what he was looking for, a single piece of element. If he couldn’t get an exact date, he could see at least an estimation for how long he’s been asleep. The clock could hold the last date it recorded before it died so it was simple enough.

He put the strange material in the back of the machine and looked at the date it last gave. Andrew looked at date and he was shocked and confused.

‘it couldn’t be right!! Could it?’

The date on the clock was August 12th, 3104. He’d been alsleep for over 700 years. Maybe even longer…

In the shed, the sleeping pod started beeping and the doors opened. Andrew dropped out of the pod and laid on the ground gasping for air. Everything hurt, his head, his eyes, his legs, his stomach, his chest, everything. He tried to pull himself up to the ground, but he collapsed on the ground again. He heard his dog yawn, he heard him get up and walk over to his face. Andrew kept his eyes closed because of the pain but he felt the cold nose of his dog touch his nose. He felt him lick his cheek and his inside ear. This shot Andrew up feeling a cold, wet dog tongue in his ear. Though he instantly regretted it, puking bile and whatever he had eaten before going to sleep.

After a few minutes of being in the worst pain Andrew ever felt and letting it slowly subside. He opened his eyes and looked around. He didn’t see anyone, just dust. A lot of dust. He stood up and looked around. Everything seemed to be the same that it was before he got in, a couple more storage containers and way too much dust. But nothing out of the sort. He went and looked at the sleeping pod, it seemed to have shut down just before letting him and his dog out of it. He decided to go look for his mom and dad and see where they were at. He ran over to the door and opened it. Andrew looked at the outside world confused. Everything seemed normal. He was still in a forest, the sun was setting or rising so it must’ve dawn or dusk, his house was there though it looked run down a little bit.

‘So why was there a dinosaur outside the shed?!?’ He screamed in his head, there standing in front of him was a dinosaur, its head held a weird crest with spike coming off of it and a strange horn off the nose. Andrew had never seen anything like it. He knew the basic dinosaurs like Raptors, Rexes and Trikes of course. But he had never seen anything like this. It looked sort of like a trike but it didn’t have the horn over the eyebrows. But he couldn’t get distracted on how this was here. He walked past it and called his dog. The dog came to the shed door and looked outside. It saw the creature and froze. Andrew called him again and this time the dog laid down and watched the creature. Andrew gave up calling him and left the dog there. He went around the house and walked to the front door and opened it.

“Hello! Mom? Dad? Where are you?” Andrew called out. He didn’t see anyone, everything looked in place though. He continued walking through the house going through the rooms and searching for his parents. Though he didn’t find anything. He wondered if he woke up too early? None of the lights or anything that needed power wasn’t working. He went into his room and looked around, nothing had been touched since he went into the pod. He saw his Element Corp. Digital Clock sitting on his nightstand. And something immediately popped into his head.

‘The Clocks lifespan on one piece of element is guaranteed 750 years. I can just see what year it is right now!!!’

Andrew started cleaning each of the rooms in the house, but their was dust covering everything in a thick layer of it. He went into a closet and found cleaning supplies. Gloves, goggles, masks, brooms, and most importantly a vacuum. He decided to start from the entrance and work his way through the house. Time passed as he cleaned. Yet the time outside seemed to never change. Andrew assumed that he wasn’t taking as much time as he thought.

Andrew got through most of the house and stared down the hallway and to the rooms he had to do next. He looked at the left side of the hall, where his parents bedroom was. He slowly walked over, opened the door and looked in the room. It seemed like it didn’t change at all. Tears began to pour down his cheeks and he felt hopelessly sick to know they were gone. He took a step in and stopped, and with no hesitation grabbed the door handle and locked the door and closed it as he walked away from the door. He wanted to leave it like that. Nothing touched, nothing disturbed inside. He took off his safety goggles for a moment and wiped all the tears away. He put them back on and continued to clean down the hall.

When Andrew finally came to his room and completed the main room. He looked over to his closet and opened the door. He found his school equipment and VR helmet. An idea immediately came to him, his droid ran on element and was only able to be activated by his headset. He could look for others in Arat Prime!! All he had to do was activate his droid at the school!!

He dusted off the headset and hand controllers. He put on the headset and flipped a switch and watched the screen as the screen flickered and saw a blurry picture. Andrew immediately started raising and lowering his hands and saw that the droid was under some sort of clear plastic. He started ripping off the plastic and found he was in a storage area in what looked like the school he attended. Andrew started pressing a few buttons on one of the controller and he began hearing the treads of his droid but couldn’t see the droid moving. He really couldn’t see anything. He quickly took off his headset and looked for a specific button. He found it, pressed it and put the headset back on. A light came on from the droid. He immediately noticed that the camera and droid was smushed up against a wall of the room. He maneuvered the droid around to see where the door was and noticed that he was right next to it. He opened the door and saw debris all over the floor and lockers knocked over all around the hall. Luckily the treads on the droid were built for stuff like this.

He maneuvered the droid through the debris of the halls. Everything was still black. No lights, not even sunlight. All he had was the light of his droid. And that didn’t help much except to see ten or fifteen feet ahead of him. But he began to hear a hissing and clattering sounds coming from the hall ahead. Andrew stopped the droid and turned on his microphone.

“Hello? Is anyone in here?” He said, the noise died down. Andrew decided to continue forward. As he did the noise started up again and began getting louder. And decided to keep moving forward and try in a few seconds again to make contact.

Almost a minute later something shot out of the dark and hit the droid’s camera. Andrew lost all visual, but he heard the droid fall over so he knew he had audio and controls over the droid still. Andrew continued pressing buttons to see if he could catch traction on something. But all in vein. Andrew started raising his hands in the air to attempt to tip the droid up. But again in vein. He must’ve landed on his back and the droid didn’t have articulation for this problem. Andrew suddenly began hearing the weird sound he had heard before and what sounded like footsteps. He then heard static, he lost audio and wasn’t sure if he still had controls. He took of the headset and controllers. From what he saw, Arat Prime was abandoned. That was one of their busiest schools and it was in ruins.

Andrew suddenly felt alone, completely alone and isolated. He didn’t know what happened at Prime or if there was anyone left. He needed to find a way to Sanctuary, as soon he can. As he sat there, he felt completely drained from all that had happened today. He quickly got up and crawled into his now clean bed. There was still light outside, but he couldn’t stay awake any longer. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Andrew stood there staring at the clock. He couldn’t begin to imagine that he was asleep for over 700 years. And since the clock died, he didn’t know how far in the future he was. He was lost in time, and would never see anyone from before. He didn’t even get to say goodbye to Rue. He didn’t know what to think, all of this seemed absolutely impossible.

He shuffled outside and saw his dog. Still staring at the dinosaur. What was it anyway, a Tricycloplots? He still wasn’t sure. He went over and sat next to his dog. And began to stroked him. He still needed to find a name for him. He looked at him and smiled.

“What should I name you?” Andrew said out loud, the dog lifted his head and stared at Andrew. He thought for a moment, trying to figure out what was the perfect name. But all he could think about was his last conversation with Rue. Her trying to name him. He looked up and sighed and then looked back down at his dog.

“How about Samuel?” Andrew asked his dog, the dog looked back at the dinosaur. Andrew took that as a no and continued down the list.

Time passed on and he was beginning to exhaust his supply of names he had for the dog, none of which did the dog seem interested in nor did Andrew.

“Let’s see, Hunter?” Andrew said, the dog still stared at the grazing beast.

“Rex? Rover? Spot?” Andrew sped through, all of which the dog seemed to dislike. He had went through all the names he had thought of since he first got the dog. Except the other name that Rue said.

“Rue?” Andrew said, the dog didn’t look. Andrew was disappointed. He went through all the names he had and couldn’t find one that was good enough. But a name popped into his head and he

“Reuben?” Andrew said, the dog raised its head and looked at Andrew.

“Reuben?” Andrew said again, the dog’s tail started thumping against the floor. Andrew smiled at the sight.

“Reuben it is.” He said smiling. Andrew got up and went into the shed. Everything was off, he walked around and saw the doors were missing on the Tek cabinet and saw all the old weapons and ammunition sitting there. Andrew reached in and grabbed a couple guns from the rack and their ammunition. He wasn’t sure what to expect from this place if there’s dinosaurs roaming around. Who knows what else might be out there? He also saw a couple manuals for the guns he was taking and thought that it was probably a good idea to get those too.

Andrew carried them inside the house, he decided to that if he was going to survive. He was going to use this place and not try to go looking for somewhere else. But he would need to clean it up before anything. He wanted to try to figure out what to do next, but he couldn’t live in a place that was trying to kill him everytime he sat down.

As the flames of the napalm burned the horde of creatures that was in its reach. Andrew looked shocked at Erica's need for his help. But he still didn’t think he had enough Element shards to detonate the jars and clear the horde they had to deal with.

“I need to reserve my shards for my regular arrows, I’m running low. If we’re dealing with th-”. “If we can block the entering horde, we can deal with a smaller amount with our tames. They’re small enough that all of us can fight them, and they would be no threat to us while we are on our mounts.” Erica told Andrew. Andrew hadn’t really thought of that. “— Plus… you have your other bow, and your knife still. If you run out of ammo for your Tek Bow, and we do need to fight any of these with weapons. We got weapons, we’ll be fine to fight them.” Erica added. Andrew again, didn’t think about that as a possibility. He supposed that if he had weapons besides his Tek Bow, he could use what they needed to ignite the napalm that was needed to end this. He looked at Erica and smiled.

“Let’s do this then.” Andrew said with determination in his voice. Erica gave a malicious grin at the sound of this. She turned away from Andrew and looked at Paul.

“Paul, can you help clear some of the horde so we can completely cut them off?” She asked. Paul looked at her for a moment. Mulling it over as though there was something else in his thoughts. Then, he nodded his head firmly.

“Aye, but I wanna ta make sure that Freya is safe. We’ve left her fer far too long.”

“Åh, du bekymrer deg for mye.” A voice said. This voice seemed to have come from a little distance away from them. Andrew turned to see Freya, riding Phil toward their direction. Both were drenched and stained in blood, with Phil having a few good-sized gashes on his chest and arms. Phil held both of Freya’s axes in his hands, making them look like small hatchets in his hands. Meanwhile, Freya had shifted her sword to her hip instead of her back. With her bow in hand, she rode Phil over to the rest of their gathering.

“Freya!!” Andrew shouted excitedly. He was glad to see her make it out of there, though it also made him concerned that she was able to do something, that none of them could do alone.

She smiled at his excitement and nodded in acknowledgment of it. The others immediately turned to see that Freya had indeed made it through her own, violent way. Paul seemed extremely relieved to see her alright, the expression on his face almost reminded him of a facial expression his dad would use when Andrew was safe.

“Glad ta see yer alright las!!! I was just about ta go help ya and yer fight to aid Phil.” Paul said as he rode Grace around. She smiled.

“Jonathan kom deg i forkjøpet. Han kom med Angrboda da jeg var tom for piler.” Freya answered. Paul seemed surprised at whatever she had just said to them.

“Ah, glad he was able ta help ya just in time.” Paul said. Freya nodded awkwardly.

“Ja… kan jeg spørre hvorfor han rir Angrboda? Jeg mener ikke å høres frekk ut, men jeg vet hvordan han rir tamhestene sine. Og jeg er ikke en fan av hvordan han behandler dem.” Freya stated. Andrew was confused about what she was talking to the others about, like he caught a few names appearing here and there. But it was difficult to know exactly what she was talking about, especially when she was saying a lot.

“Sorry Freya, we had to split up to deal with the horde, Jonathan and Paul had the best chance, and they grabbed the mounts. Once we cut off the horde with the fire, we will take care of the few monsters that are cut off. We can get you on Angrboda. But right now, Andrew, Paul, and I are gonna take care of the big horde problem while Angrboda and Jonathan are distracting them.” Erica said. Freya’s face seemed to drop as Erica said this, she seemed somber for a moment, before she twirled an arrow in her fingers at Erica’s words.

“Å, du skal drepe resten av disse syke skapningene? Jeg skal hjelpe disse syke med å få en edel død.” She said as she grabbed the arrow and stuck it on her bow string.

“Great, the more to fight these things off, the sooner we get rid of them. And the sooner we get rid of them,—” Erica said. She looked at Andrew who gripped his bow tight as he prepared for what was about to happen. “— the sooner we can get out of here.” Andrew nodded at Erica’s words, and so did the others. Erica smiled and pointed in the direction of the horde with her rifle

“Charge!!!” Erica shouted. With Paul and Freya leading the charge as they went into the hell horde. Andrew watched in both horror, and almost satisfaction as Grace and Paul devoured one side of the horde maliciously, while Phil and Freya slaughtered the horde so violently. He watched Phil quickly end raptors, carnos and so many other creatures by swift decapitation or violent guttings with the axes he held. Freya was simply decisive with her shots as they rode in: While on the other side, Paul was almost the barbaric one as he rode/tried to control Grace into the horde. Grace though only wanted to ram, and clamp her jaws at any of the countless creatures that ran into her jaws. It was devastating to watch; yet, it was captivating to watch Paul and Grace ride into the fight.

“Andrew!! What are you doing?! Charge!!” Erica shouted at him as she pointed at where they needed to go. Andrew snapped out of his trance. He immediately kicked his feet and had Knight Sky charge in the direction that Erica wanted him to go. Erica seemed to jump as she watched him bolt towards her. Both she and her Smilodon jumped and darted ahead of Andrew and Knight Sky.

As they ran into the heat of battle. Erica launched the first of her Napalm Bombs. The unprepared Andrew soon aimed, adjusting his aim, then holding it on his target as the bomb twirled in the air for a moment until it was far enough out that Andrew fired onto it. Causing a gargantuan flash of light and hellfire to rain down onto the large wave of animals below.

“Do you mind giving me a heads up before you throw another one of those in the air? I need more time to prepare.” Andrew shouted. Erica gave a sarcastic chuckle.

“Sorry, meant to give you a heads up, but we gotta wait a couple seconds before the next one. We need to give these a good gap between.—” Erica shouted out. Andrew shouted with a quick “Alright!!” back.

“—The fires will spread to each other quickly with how hot they’ll burn the creatures. Soon, there will be a massive wall with only four or five more of these thrown into the wave.” She continued. “Gotcha!!” Andrew shouted again. She looked back at him with a quick glance.

“Alright, pulling!!!” She shouted as she threw the next bomb into the horde. Andrew focused, aimed, and fired as it reached a good distance in. Releasing more unholy Napalm onto the infected creatures.

“Could you give me more time next time?” Andrew asked. But he didn’t think Erica was listening, or she simply ignored it, which, given how she was to him, was probably the more likely thing happening. The flame’s heat was so hot from the new Napalm, that it was almost too hot for Andrew to be riding where they were. But another moment passed and they were at their next target location, far away enough that Andrew no longer felt the unbarring heat.

“Pulling!!” Erica shouted ahead of her action of throwing the next bottle. Giving Andrew plenty of time to draw back and aim with no rush on his target. Unleashing another giant flash and explosion on the creatures, melting the hides of the infected.

“Looks like one more should do it!! We got a cliff coming up on us!!” Erica shouted. Andrew looked at his numbered ammunition. He was surprised to see he had enough for a few more explosive shots. Which would leave enough energy for twenty or so regular bolts of energy. He smiled, then shouted.

“Let’s do this then!!” Erica looked back with a smile.

“Then here, don’t miss!! Then stop or you’ll run off the cliff!!” Erica shouted as she threw the last bomb. Andrew was shocked at the unexpected action. He quickly drew his bow, aimed, and fired as it hit its mark. Then, he yanked on the reins of Knight Sky, and kicked his feet out, fearing that they would have a near-death experience with the cliff. However, Knight Sky was easily able to stop well far enough away from the edge of the cliff face. Stopping so abruptly that Andrew flew off and landed a couple of feet in front of Knight Sky on his back. Andrew groaned as the heat of the fire grew against the left side of his face. Knight Sky let out an irritated groan at Andrew as he looked down at his rider on the ground. Andrew could hear Erica laugh at what had probably occurred with him.

“Overreact much?” Erica said still laughing. Andrew groaned as he picked himself up and got back onto Knight Sky quickly.

“I was imagining a more gradual and suspenseful stop I guess than reality.” Andrew said. Erica continued to chuckle.

“Yeah, I could tell.” she said. Andrew then looked to his left to see how quickly the Napalm fed into the other fires. And created a thick wall of fire that didn’t seem like it was going to fizzle out any time soon. It not only killed the creatures that were in the fire’s area of effect, but the wall had become an effective barrier against what horde was left on the other side. Andrew then looked to his right to see how small the horde they had left to deal with was. There were only maybe a hundred or so creatures left, and it was quickly decreasing with Grace, Phil, Freya, and Angrboda clearing them like they were cardboard targets.

“Well, I think we can join them in the crusade now that we’ve cut off the horde from replenishing.” Erica said as she rode up alongside Andrew. Andrew nodded. He looked in a pouch on his saddle and saw the bow Freya had made for him earlier. He had maybe sixty or so arrows to go with it.

‘Might as well use that before using my Tek Bow, the arrows are easier to get than Element by the looks of it. Plus I can always ask for someone to make me more if I need to.’ He thought to himself. He collapsed his Tek Bow and grabbed the wooden one Freya made, he set an arrow on the string and looked at Erica.

“Let’s do this then!” Andrew said as he then charged into the horde and began to fire his bow at the horde of creatures. He then heard Erica’s Smilodon snarl and then heard its hiss as it started attacking a creature behind Andrew and Knight Sky.

Andrew and the others made quick work of the smaller numbered horde since they could no longer get reinforcements. Andrew noticed how quickly the horde was dying. It almost seemed unnatural with how quickly they seem to replenish their numbers before. Andrew had seen Jonathan destroy with ease dozens of carnos and raptors as he rode Angrboda. He seemed to enjoy killing them with her more than he should have. He could almost hear him laugh as they stomped a carno into the ground under Angrboda’s foot. It kind of concerned Andrew how much he seemed to like killing them this way. So brutal and violent, without any remorse to it.

Freya and Phil were both just as destructive yet simply quicker with their kills. Even more so, less so enjoying it and more doing it because they needed to. Freya kept to a small range around Phil’s flank, killing most creatures riding up on his flank in one arrow shot. While Phil simply decapitated creatures in front of his view. Grace and Paul simply mauled the horde wherever they went. It wasn’t a game of enjoyment. It was just to kill them. Though, Grace did seem to like killing the creatures more than Paul; As he was trying to control her when she didn’t seem to want to be controlled at this time.

As time went on, Andrew and Erica both somehow started competing in who would make the most kills. Andrew was surprised that it even happened. One minute, it was just them taking out creatures as they fought. Then, Andrew said out loud that he assumed he had killed at least twelve creatures since they joined the others in fighting the small band of horde left after allying off and hopefully killed the rest of the horde. Then he heard. “Is that all? I got sixteen!!” He looked over at Erica with confusion written on his face. She simply smiled at him.

“Bet I can kill more than you by the end of this!!” She shouted as she then had her Smilodon grapple one of the creatures down to the ground and execute it with its saber teeth while she guarded him with her rifle. Andrew was just flabbergasted.

“Are you serious!?” He shouted. She smiled at him crazily.

“What, are you chicken you’ll lose another competition?” She shouted. Andrew gave a small glare before grabbing three arrows in his hand. And sped fired them into three separate creature heads.

“You’re on.” He shouted back. She smiled back at him. Andrew was even more confused by this. What was up with her being so… nice or friendly with him? Why under the most stressful of situations was being all game wanting and nice to Andrew? Maybe she was just trying to keep herself calm. Maybe she just liked being in life-threatening situations. Whatever it was, he liked not having her hate him. He thought he did at least.

Now they were neck and neck at twenty each. Erica had the advantage of her sabertooth cat being able to quickly kill. But Andrew clearly had a faster reload speed and kill rate with his bow. The problem now though was that they were running out of creatures to kill. Most of the horde was gone now, with only a few stray stragglers in the midst of the sea of the dead. Andrew and Erica both watched as Paul and Grace took out of the last carnos while Jonathan and Angrboda literally snapped a raptor in half with her jaws.

Andrew and Erica then both spotted one of those Chali—what's it in the middle of the battlefield. Erica's eyes almost bulged as she took aim with her rifle at the creature’s head. But she got cut off from pulling the trigger by Andrew’s arrow going through it first. It jumped and started staggering. Then a second arrow of Andrew’s landed in the skull and dropped the animal dead.

“That makes twenty-one. And by the looks of it—” Andrew said as he looked around the battlefield. Seeing nothing but dead bodies littering the floor, there was not a single corrupted creature left alive. “—That makes me the ultimate victor.” Andrew continued with a smug smile. Erica scowled in irritation.

“I let you win.” Erica said with a tinge of spite. “Oh, nah huh!! I won fair and square!!”

“Dette er ikke tiden for å leke, dere to. Det er forferdelig som har skjedd.” Freya said cutting in. She didn’t seem happy. She seemed somber as she gave glances between the two of them.

“Besides. If that’s all two you’ve killed. Then you lose cause I’ve killed 84 since I’ve gotten on this Rex.” Jonathan said smug as he rode over on Angrboda. Freya looked at Jonathan with a cold glare.

“Hundre og syttitre siden dere fire stakk av. Der, ingen av dere vant dette, og dette var ikke verdt å konkurrere om. Nå, stig av Angrboda og sett dere på hesten.” Freya said, almost spitting the words out at Jonathan. He huffed at whatever she said. Erica’s demeanor seemed to become gloomy as they both watched Jonathan drop a rope ladder from the top of Angrboda’s saddle as he started to go down the ladder. Freya got off Phil’s shoulders. She looked at Phil and smiled as she grabbed something from her pocket and gave it in trade for her axes. It was some purple berries. He looked down at them with a scowl on his face, which didn’t seem like him to do, at least from the shot time he knew him. He dropped Freya’s axes on the ground and took the berries in trade. He seemed less like himself with how he acted, and almost grabbed them grudgingly. She smiled softly at Phil, but he didn’t smile back. He turned his back and started eating the berries as he wandered a distance from the group.

“Takk, venn.” She said as she then turned and walked past the irritated Jonathan. She then climbed her rope ladder up to Angrboda’s saddle. Andrew then looked over at Jonathan, who was getting on his horse in a puff. He looked over at Andrew and glared at him.

“What are you looking at, your next victim?” Jonathan spat. Andrew felt guilty at those words.

“I just wanted to know what she said to you.” Andrew asked. Jonathan rolled his eyes.

“It is none of your business what she said. But if you must know, she said she won. She cheated and kept score from the start.” Jonathan said with his tongue in his cheek.

“Alright, let's get out of here before anything else happens.” Erica said. Everyone seemed to acknowledge, except Paul. He was looking over in the direction of the monster. Andrew then realized it was still there. It was just watching them, its cyan eyes just stared into their soul. Unwilling to look away from them. It looked like it was thinking as it looked down upon them. Andrew had no doubt that it was the leader and commander of the horde who came after them.

“What’s it doin’? Why hasn’t it attacked us?” Paul asked aloud. It almost looked at them with a scowl. Before its eyes flickered back to a deep magenta as it let out a low-toned rumble. Everyone’s eyes widened as this

“What is it doin’?” Paul asked. The fear in his voice loomed. Andrew knew that this couldn’t be good. This was the same thing that happened when the horde of creatures first started attacking. If this god, or even ‘Titan’ were leading the corrupted, it might be sending a message to more of its guards.

“We need to get out of here, now!!” Andrew shouted.

“Why?” Erica asked. Which was answered by an ungodly roar. Alien to anything Andrew had ever heard before. It was a high-pitched, repetitive screech. It almost sounded like an echo as it roared. Andrew looked at Erica, who had fear written on her face. He looked at the others who all had the same expression. Only Freya seemed to be prepared for whatever battle was coming

“What is that?!” Andrew asked with fear building in his voice.

“Jonathan, I thought those lived in subterranean environments!? You said they couldn’t be in light unless raised in the light!?” Paul said exclaiming. Jonathan just looked around as though he had seen something supernatural.

“I—I thought that was the case, but it may have only been a poor assumption.” He said, stuttering as he began.

“YOU ASSUMED!! SCIENTISTS SHOULDN’T ASSUME THING JONATHAN!!!” Erica shouted. Andrew didn’t understand what this all meant that they were saying. The two began to bicker. While they did, Andrew noticed a strange burst of dirt coming from the ground that he noticed was circling them. Andrew didn’t know what it was, but he didn’t like it. He didn’t know what to do though, should he shoot an arrow into the ground? That didn’t seem like it would do anything, but maybe it was worth a chance.

Andrew then realized that Jonathan had said something about subterranean, didn’t that mean something that lived underground?

“Guys, what is this thing?! And is that what you guys are talking about!?” Andrew shouted, pointing at the dirt cloud. This got everyone to quiet down the bickering instantly. It was at this moment that everyone could hear the dirt and rock crumble and crack. Andrew could feel the earth rumble and shake under Knight Sky’s feet, it shook with the force of an earthquake. Phil was a distance away now, but even he reacted to this rumbling with distaste. Pounding the ground with his feet and his fists. Andrew heard Freya say something as she tried to get Phil’s attention. Then, everyone did. They started shouting at Phil to stop, begging him to come over with the others quietly. But he didn’t listen. He snarled and growled at the ground like a rabid dog, beating it senselessly. The dust cloud stopped its circling and made a beeline for Phil. Phil started roaring like a great ape and beating the ground harder with his fists. Freya then had Angrboda charge towards Phil, trying to outpace the dust cloud for Phil.

Paul and Erica started shouting at Freya while Jonathan seemed to be frozen at the events occurring, Paul and Erica were shouting that it was suicide and she’ll get herself killed. Andrew was lost, he didn’t know what was going on. He just wanted everyone to run away so no one would die. He too, tried to yell for Freya to stop. But she didn’t stop, trying to outrun the dust cloud while she shouted at what could only be Phil. She shouted and shouted at him, but he didn’t react. He continued to snarl at the ground, pounding the ground with his hands and feet. Showing his hate and anger at the Earth for its earthquake rumblings.

Andrew watched as Freya tried her best to have Angrboda run faster to outpace the cloud, but she simply couldn’t. Andrew could hear her yell “NEI!! NEI!! PHIL!!!” as the dust cloud made it to Phil quicker, then, disappeared. Along with the quaking. Phil stopped with the roaring and the attacking of the ground. For a moment, silence consumed the world for that moment, but only that moment.

Andrew watched in horror as a monster came from out of the ground, snatching Phil by the legs. Phil let out a roar of agony and fury. Freya and Angrboda stopped dead in their tracks, frozen and shocked at what was happening in front of them. Andrew drew his bow on the animal and fired. Just for the arrow to bounce off its hide like rubber. Its hide was too thick to be penetrated by his bow. He looked at the monster to see what was up with it, hoping to spot a weak point to hit through.

The monster was just as big as Freya’s Rex, with large long back legs as though it walked on two legs like a carnivorous dinosaur. Its head was completely bizarre, almost like a triceratops with fins and spines, its jaw was that of a carnivorous mouth. Its forearms were long and extraterrestrial, thin and long with large claws on its three fingers. Spikes and barbs covered the rest of its body, and tail, but some parts of its body are missing just like with other corrupted. Its body was covered in the corrupted Element that had covered nearly everything on this planet, much like the creatures, this monster was being eaten away by the element, parts and pieces of its body missing. Only being supported by the element in those holes.

As it got to its feet and Phil started attacking its face, crying out in pain as he did so. The monster then reached its forearm upwards and lowered its head towards its claws. The claws reached for Phil and… Andrew watched in horror as Phil was dismembered limb from limb by the monster. The sound of bones being dislocated, broken, and flesh being torn filled the air. Phil screamed out in pain the loudest Andrew had ever heard him scream. His scream almost sounded like he was human. Blood dripped from Phil’s dismembered arms, and it poured from his body as the blood was being pumped through the body still. Phil screamed and roared before the monster dropped his arms, reached up for his head, and twisted…

For what seemed like a lifetime, silence engulfed all of Sanctuary. No shuffling sounds, no gust of wind, no brush rustling, no fire crackling, not even a breath was taken. Andrew and the others watched as the monster swallowed Phil’s body whole. Then the creature looked at the survivors and smiled. Its smile was demonic, blood dripping from its mouth and claws. However, its eyes were what attracted Andrew’s attention the most. They glowed purple magenta, the same color that the eyes of the raptor that killed Reuben and the one that tried to kill him, they glowed the same color just like the monolithic beast that stood above them this very moment. Then Andrew realized… This wasn’t hunting, this wasn’t an order to attack at random, this was a message, one with thought and malicious planning.

“Oh my— it’s— it can control them.” Andrew whispered. The silence was broken, but Andrew didn’t notice that someone had heard his statement. But only one. As he wasn’t the only one who broke the silence. Atop Angrboda roared Freya with a barbaric roar. It was true emotion. Angrboda followed with a roar of her own as they charged the monster. The monster roared back with its hellish-pitched sound. That was called a roar, and they began to charge them at a greater speed. The two charged each other; and clashed in what became an incredible fight. Angrboda reared her head back and shoulder checked the monster, absolutely outclassing it in weight, and knocking it back. Then Angrboda pivoted and snapped her jaws closed on the creature’s neck, and just kept digging, although it seemed to do nothing. The monster tried to fight back and get itself free from Angrboda’s jaws, but the Rex’s jaws were locked tightly.

Andrew then watched Freya do the most insane thing he had ever seen. She climbed across Angrboda’s neck and as Angrboda was latched onto the monster with a single sword in a backwards grip, then jumped onto the skull of the monster. Holding the sword over head and turning in the middle of the air. She roared as she shoved it into the monster’s skull. Sticking the sword into the upper forehead of the creature. The monster didn’t react to this. It was like it didn’t feel it. Freya slid as she landed on the forehead. Sliding down and catching herself on the monster’s nose horn. She then grabbed one of her axes and slammed it into the skull as a third fastener to hold onto.

The monster finally broke free of Angrboda’s jaws, and the fight was on. The monster then started its assault on Angrboda. Beginning to use its forearms to swipe at Angrboda with its claws. Hitting her with a few good hits, but Angrboda was able to outmaneuver the monster in the last few attacks. She then rammed into the monster. Freya continued to get jostled on the monster’s head, but she held her own. Andrew’s mind began running with fear and worry about this all happening. That the Titan was able to control the creatures and had done this to torment him. That this was all his fault, and he could get more killed. He was simply frozen in place. Trapped in his own thoughts as he stared down the titanic fight ahead.

~

Roars in the distance caught everyone’s attention away from Freya and her Rex fighting the monster. Erica Paul, and Jonathan then saw a small horde coming through the dying flames. But the animals coming through were giants. Rexes, giant giraffes, Spinos, and giant jumping lizards charged their way. Paul pulled out his pistol and began loading it again.

“Erica, and Andrew, start shooting the Rock Drakes from this distance. Don’t let them make it through the no man's land. Jonathan, you and I will use our guns on the Spinos, Paracers, and Rexes. I’ll get closer in though so Grace can attack them. Make sure none of these creatures make it to that Reaper until Freya can handle it.” Paul said. Jonathan pulled out his shotgun and then both charged into the battlefield. Erica nodded, she looked at and saw that Andrew was still stunned at everything going on.

“Andrew. First thing we need to do is move so we are out of the danger zone before we attack the Rock Drakes.” Erica ordered. But he didn’t answer. He was just frozen in place.

“Andrew?” He didn’t respond. Erica then saw Angrboda throw the Reaper in their direction. She gasped aloud as she yelled out “ANDREW!!”, hitting the butt of her rifle against his horse’s rear. His horse roared out as it began to bolt out of the way. Erica followed and both missed the large altercation that could have taken them out.

Erica noticed Knight Sky slowing down. As Erica caught up and rode alongside him. She noticed that Andrew had snapped out of whatever trance he was in.

“What the H&$# man!!! What was happening out there!?” Erica snapped. Andrew looked shocked.

“I’m sorry, I got stuck in—” “NO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS. YOU COULD HAVE DIED IF I DIDN’T SAVE YOUR A@@ BACK THERE!!! IF YOU DIE UNDER MY WATCH, PAUL AND FREYA WILL BOTH HAVE MY A@@. AND I CANNOT DEAL WITH ANOTHER DEATH TODAY, SO IF YOU DO THAT AGAIN I WILL KILL YOU MYSELF BEFORE YOU CAN MAKE A STUPID STUNT LIKE THAT!!! UNDERSTAND!!!” Erica shouted. Andrew stared at her for a moment and then nodded.

“Good, now you and I are ordered to go deal and make sure no Rock Drakes make it to Freya and her Rex, while they fight the Reaper.” Erica said. Andrew looked confused.

“I— what’s a Reaper? And what’s—” “I’m not finished. I’ll answer these small questions later.” Erica said cutting in as she dismounted Ajax and looked through her saddle bags for more rifle bullets.

“Right now, I want you to grab your weapon of choice, get some arrows on the knock, and kill some feathered rex-sized lizards and hope to whatever mumbo jumbo Freya believes in that she and Angrboda can kill that creature of another world. Capeesh?” Erica continued. Andrew looked at her for a moment. Though he looked like he was going to object to something.

“My bow won’t be able to hold back any animals that are as big as Angrboda. This effective range is probably about two times her length. I can’t hold them back.” Andrew answered. Erica glared at him before she loaded a bullet into her rifle, aimed, and fired it within a few moments. She was not in the mood for this crap.

“You still got any juice for the Tek Bow?” Erica asked aggressively. Andrew looked over at her and paused for a moment. Trying to process an answer.

“Yeah… yeah, thirty shots left.” Andrew answered.

“Good. Then switch that puppy on, and kill these overgrown lizards!!” She said as she unloaded her cartridge. Andrew reengaged his Tek Bow, switched it to its normal setting, and drew back on the string. And releasing a bolt of energy.

~

Still holding on to the sword and her one axe as the Reaper. Freya held on for dear life as her Rex drew the attention of the Reaper away from her. She was in a blind spot of the Reaper on top of its head, and the Reaper wouldn’t be able to feel her until it was too late. Its extremely thick hide could even protect it from even her beast’s bites. But one thing she knew about durability. That with enough chopping in the same place, even the strongest of trees could fall to a mere human. And that’s what she planned. To chop away. She grabbed her other axe and used the back of it to hammer the sword deeper into the skull to secure herself for a time. Then, once deep enough to feel okay with. She started slamming the axe into the Reaper’s skull. She chopped and chopped at the Reaper’s skull. Breaking slowly through the tough hide with each chop.

With each chop she made into the creature’s skull, memories of Sylas flowed into her thoughts, and tears for each of those thoughts came along. How they met, the conversation they had, and what he had been through during his three years on the Ark, and how he was imprisoned for most of it. She remembered the two of them meeting Paul and Erica, and joining their crusade, her introducing them to her few other friends, his first time taming, and their many adventures in that place. She had become good friends with him, deeper with him than with the others. Which made her pain all the more rage-filled as she swung her axe. For the last few weeks with everything that had happened, she had been too careless with their… friendship. Was that what he would have called it? Was it a friendship at all? That’s what made it worse of all for her, she never got to say how much he meant to her. He was a beacon of light in her heart when he was around, a man who brought a smile to everyone’s face whether he meant it or not. She wished she had told him he was a friend she never had, and was the first person who had ever treated her as nothing more than a human being. She never got to say any of it though, maybe no one got to say how much he meant to them all. She knew plenty who definitely didn’t, or couldn’t. With how everyone was so preoccupied in these times than in the beginning. She then fought so hard for his pet, his best friend, Phil to live on. She couldn’t lose him, even if it meant killing so many animals who weren’t asked to become monsters. But she even failed that too, she failed Phil, and she failed this beast...

Anger built up in her as she swung the axe harder. She held no fault in Andrew for what happened with Sylas. She could not see a bloodthirsty man in that heart. All she saw was a broken child, that is what she saw in him when they first met, and what she saw when they found Sylas dead. She knew he already felt unnecessary guilt over it, though. No, what she blamed was herself for his death. She blamed her voice, she blamed her inability to comfort Andrew, which led Sylas to do it. She saw he was dealing with unnecessary guilt not saying what the grave was, or even whatever happened with that grave before. She hated that he felt guilty for not telling them this or wanting to even speak of it. It was clear he held honor and love for who or what was buried in that grave. Something he found hard to speak of. She could understand that type of pain, that type of guilt that fills a soul. He was an honorable man for even burying them in this world of the dead.

She wished she weren’t cursed to be unable to speak to this man. She wished she were able to comfort Andrew in his pain before Sylas had died. She wished that she had taken Sylas’s place. It should have been her, it should have been the monster that had slain so many lives, not the light that brought joy… it should have been her. But, the monster had been awakened once again, and she would not let her enemy go alive.

She hadn’t realized that deep within her thoughts, she had made herself deaf to the roars and screaming she was unleashing from her tongue. She hadn’t even realized how many times she had nearly fallen off at this point, and recovered back into position to continue to unleash her grief. The anger and pain of her broken heart for her friend blinded her to all of this. This pain and anger turned quickly into wrath and hate towards the animal she was fighting. She didn’t realize her hand gripped the handle of the sword and axe so hard, that her hands began to bleed. As she broke through the hide, her eyes widened as she unleashed her full fury. Beginning to chop harder into the thin layer of flesh on the skull.

This though, would finally catch the notice of the Reaper, as breaking through its thick hide would let it feel the sharp, piercing pain of her axe. She smiled, good, a fight for her to truly take pleasure in. She whistled Angrboda to attack the Reaper, Angrboda obliged with a sudden and powerful ram to the animal’s side. Causing the Reaper to stagger, Freya was still holding onto her sword, while her right hand switched to the axe that was acting as a third fastener. She smiled. It had returned its focus on the Angrboda.

“Tålmodighet, bare litt til, jente. Udyret vil være dødt om noen få treff til.” She said. She grabbed the axe she was chopping with at the Reaper’s head. And she started chopping into the Reaper’s skull once more. It shrieked in pain as she started swinging again. Angrboda took this moment to grab the Reaper by the neck. Again, most of her bites weren’t getting through deep enough simply because of how thick the Reaper’s hide was. But this gave her an idea.

“Jeg fikk en gang beskjed om at «øye for øye», for noe jeg gjorde, la oss vise deg den samme respekten som mannen sa til meg.” she said as she sheathed her one axe and grabbed the fastener axe, and swung into the eye of the Reaper. It shrieked in pain as it was pinned by Angrboda.

“God.” She said. As she then started swinging again back into the skull. This time in an X-shaped motion with every two swings. As she did, she felt the Reaper fight out of the pin a jostle under her. She grabbed onto her sword as she continued. After a minute, the Reaper broke free of Angrboda’s grip. Angrboda refused to let the Reaper breathe as she attacked it. Freya then felt the Reaper lower itself and saw that its head was moving away from Angrboda. Almost looking as though the Reaper was turning from her. She realized it was about to do a tail attack on Angrboda. She stabbed the Reaper’s hide again with her axe and positioned herself between the three points to hold her in place. She then felt the fast jerk as the Reaper spun, and hit Angrboda in the face with its barbed tail. Slicing through part of her face. The Reaper then started attacking her. And dogged her for a moment before Angrboda shoved her body and knocked the Reaper back away from her. The Reaper was beginning to win against Angrboda. But Freya was close, she just needed Angrboda to hold out a little longer. She yanked the axe out of the Reaper’s hide and slammed it into the skull that was beginning to show. Continue on to chop where she had left off.

Finally, after a few minutes of chopping Freya heard a thunderous crack. She pulled herself up with her sword to the hole she made to see the skull she was cutting into break open in a four-way crack. She gripped the axe tightly and then hit the weak point with the pommel of the axe, breaking the skull more, giving room between the fractured point to reach her hands in. She pulled herself closer to the opening and gripped the fractured bones with her hand as she tore them out of the way. She looked inside to see the brain, her target. It was out of reach for her axe, but not her sword. She looked at Angrboda and the Reaper below her. They were still fighting, and at this point, the Reaper hadn’t even noticed she was attacking it anymore.

She adjusted herself closer to her sword and the hole she made. No longer being able to stand on the nose horn. She hacked into the hide of the Reaper one last time with her axe. She let go of the axe and looked at her sword. It held it with one hand, and blood dripped from the handle as she held it. She grabbed it with two hands and yanked it out of the Reaper’s hide. She held the sword in her hand for a moment before looking at the hole she made, and the brain inside. She held it in a backward grip as she aimed, and then slammed it into the Reaper’s brain. She then twisted the sword in her hand and yelled out in heartaching pain.

“For vennen min, og for alltid for ham til jeg gir mitt siste åndedrag!!”.

Hearing a dull shriek as she stabbed it in the brain. She released one of her hands from the sword and grabbed the axe. As she held both the axe, and the sword; she felt the sudden feeling of a drop, and the sound of a thunderous crash of the animal collapsing below her.

Forest curled up on his ledge after finishing his dinner. He stared at the rune, not everything was bad about the rune. He just couldn’t trust having around him anymore.

He shook his head and tried to think about something else. He began to think about how that adventure changed all of them. He and Crimson probably changed the most. With him, he wasn’t afraid of change as much as he was before. He went from a panicky little drake to well more like an average creature.

Crimson changed the most, she was welcoming, happy, and less tense. Well unless Rust was around her. Then she acts pretty similar to herself when he first met her. But other than when Rust is around, she is fun to be around and is fairly open.

Rust hadn’t changed that much, but he acted more like a big deal than any of the others. And in some cases he would be more than the average pain to Crimson. But they were good friends to each other. He loved the attention being one of The Five got him, maybe just a little bit too much.

Nyx had changed, but in ways that weren’t good. She blamed herself for the deaths of Moonbeam and her brother Orbit. Forest and the others felt they were all equally responsible for their deaths but Nyx believed she was the only one who deserved the blame and a punishment. She worried that it might happen again. To one of them, her Father, her Mother or younger sibling. She carried the burden of Fjordur on her back from that time. With the hardest hitting ones not being her fault or her burdens to carry.

Spark is probably the only one who haven’t as drastically as the others. Spark hasn’t really changed at all. But she has been busy. Since Jethezzar’s defeat, she only done one thing. Looked for her brother, she has been hunting him down for the past year and hasn’t found anything.

To most people’s surprise, Emperor Avalanche was still alive and very healthy and had announced that he was holding a one-year anniversary celebration for the five defeating Jethezzar in two days. Forest didn’t really see why they needed to have a celebration for what they did. Neither did most of the five, Nyx and Rust however were enthusiastic about the idea. Nyx always loves a celebration that has activities to do and is always up for one. Rust was excited only for the reason that they get more of the spotlight on Fjordur.

But Forest had been thinking about it for the past month. If he was going to the celebration, he was going to make sure that Rust would be humble for the celebration. And that none of the five would take any gifts from the people, they would be there only to celebrate and to have fun.

Forest yawned and looked towards his parents' cave on the other side of their cave, this reminded him of the way he left the cave to search for the five the first time. He lowered his head and fell asleep.

Andrew was alone in the house, his parents were outside doing something while he was working on one of his last exam projects for his engineering degree. It was a team project and he was partnered up with his best friend Ruth “Rue” Baker. But because he wasn’t able to be in the room where they were building the project, Andrew was using a VR Droid with speakers and microphones so he could communicate with Rue. Rue looked over at his droid and smiled.

“Gosh, I’m so jealous that you got a dog!! My parents wouldn’t let me get a dog. Let alone a pre-war breed. Those dogs are expensive.” Rue said, Andrew chuckled

“I know, I cried seeing it. I’ve only ever seen one in the movies before and I was so happy to have one of my own!” Andrew said, Rue smirked at the camera before she quickly looked back at their project.

“So have you named your dog yet? My offer still stands if you want.” She said while tightening some bolts.

“Thanks, Rue, but I don’t think your name really fits as a name for a boy dog.” Andrew said,

“Well, then what about my sister’s name Samantha? Just use Samuel, Sam, or Sammy instead.” Rue suggested,

“Rue, can you please stop trying to name my dog after someone in your family?” Andrew asked.

“I’m just trying to help you name your dog, if it so happens that most of my names are my family member’s names. It’s just some strange coincidence.” Rue said with a big smile on her face. She and Andrew both started laughing hard. Andrew could see tears running down Rue’s face from how hard she was laughing. Neither of them had laughed well in a long time. Earth was dying and neither of them at this time could do anything about it. That’s why they both wanted to become engineers, to help in any way they could with either of the main projects. Rue looked back at the droid that Andrew was using. Her laughter ended and she frowned looking at it.

“I miss you, Andy, it’s been two years since I’ve last seen you in person. And I hate that I taped your face to this thing. I thought it would help me not miss you, but instead it it makes me miss you more. You’re like a brother to me.” Rue said depressingly,

Andrew sat there with his headset on. He felt the same way. He thought of her as a sister, he hadn’t seen her since his family lived in Arat Prime. He missed it, he missed her horribly. He started to say something, but the bell rang. Classes were over for the day. Immediately Rue started getting her things ready to leave. She looked over at Andrew’s droid.

“So what are your plans with this degree? Are going to work with the URE when you get older? They need a lot of engineers.” Rue asked,

“I’m not sure what I am going to do with my degree Rue, I think I’ll probably go into the Terran Federation or a company that helps both causes. But I feel the URE’s plan to try to save Earth is a waste of time. The Earth’s dying, we can’t save it from what’s going to happen.” Andrew said, Rue smiled and sighed.

“Never say never, Andrew. There’s always a chance. And besides, if you choose URE. I’d see you more often.” Rue said smiling.

“So you’re going to work for the URE?” Andrew asked, Rue nodded smiling.

“As soon as I graduate.” Rue said,

“Huh, why?”

“I’d rather try to save the place I was born than live somewhere and know I could’ve tried.” Rue said. Andrew thought on this for a moment. He wondered if she was right.

“I’ll see you Monday Andrew!! Have a good weekend!” Rue said as she walked to the door.

“Have a good weekend Rue!! See you Monday!!” Andrew said he adjusted his droid to look at their project. It was a heavily modified exo mek.

“Andrew!!! Can you come out here for a moment!” Kim yelled from outside, Andrew opened up the window and took off his headset.

“Coming Mom, finishing up school.” Andrew said.

“Alright, bring your dog with you. Meet us in the back at the shed.” Kim said,

Andrew quickly shut off his droid and put his books and headset away in his closet. He quickly grabbed a jacket and a leash for his dog. He whistled for him and he came in excitement. He hooked him up and took him outside and both walked to the shed.

The shed was fairly large, about a third of the size of their house. Andrew never had been in the shed, he just didn’t have the urge for whatever was in there. Plus his parents had said to him to not go in unless he had permission. And to which he never asked to go in. He came to the door and opened it. When he did, he was in awe.

~

Andrew saw his Mom and Dad around something that looked like a Sleeping Pod. There were a lot of different things inside the shed. There were several large locker-like containers with his Mom’s and Dad’s names on them, but his Mom’s last name was different. There was also what seemed like a nickname in between the first and last names of both of his parents.

As he continued walking closer to his parents, he saw a tek generator. It seemed that it was powering everything inside the shed. He also saw a tek cabinet with clear doors that were holding antique weapons and ammunition. He saw so many things that were extremely useful to where they were at. He wondered why they kept all of this stuff in here and didn’t use it?

Hunter turned around and saw Andrew and his dog were investigating everything that was inside. He turned to look at Kim but started going over everything they were going to do. Was this the only way to protect Andrew? Could there be something they missed that wouldn’t separate them like this? Kim looked at Hunter.

“Hunter, this is the only way to make sure he’s safe.” She said quietly, almost reading exactly what he was thinking. He looked at her and nodded, nothing else would protect him as much as this would.

“Andrew, come here.” Hunter called,

Andrew walked up with his dog, his mom and dad were working on the sleeping pod. He wasn’t sure why though. He stood next to his dad for a moment, he was looking at a computer, some monitors, and medical equipment to read vitals. Andrew looked at one of the monitors and saw some medical records and a birth date. It was his own, he quickly looked for a name and found it. Andrew Lang, he looked over to his dad in confusion about it all.

“Dad, what’s going on?” Andrew asked, Hunter looked at him and then looked at Kim.

“Is the cryo-engine hooked up? Everything here looks ready for it to start running.” Hunter said, not hearing what Andrew asked.

“Andrew, can you come and take a look at this sweetie?” Kim asked, Andrew walked over still wondering what was going on, and looked at what his mom wanted.

“Can you see if I hooked everything up correctly?” Kim asked, Andrew quickly looked and saw everything seemed to be in place.

“It looks good. Mom, but what’s going on?”

“Okay, thank you, sweetie.” Kim said,

“Hunter, everything looks good!! Start it up.” Kim continued, doing the same thing as Hunter did.

Hunter pressed a few buttons on the computer and lights flashed on and a humming came from the machine. The sleeping pod came to life. Andrew was amazed as the doors to the sleeping pod opened up.

Kim looked over to Andrew, her eyes began to water for what she was about to do. She knelt and looked into his eyes at the same level. His Hazel eyes were so beautiful to her.

“Andrew, sweetie. Something bad is going to happen to us. But we don’t want you to go through this. So… you are going in here and you and your dog will... fall asleep. When you wake back up, the danger will be over and you will see us again.” Kim said, her voice cracking as she held back her emotions.

“But it is your choice, not ours if you want to do this.” Kim added, Andrew looked away from his mom and to his dog and sat there in silence for a moment before looking back to his mom.

“You promise?” Andrew asked, Kim smiled and nodded “Yes, yes I promise.” she said as tears ran down her cheeks. Andrew hugged her and he took a deep breath.

Andrew walked into the pod with his dog by his side. He motioned to the dog to lie down beside where he was standing and the dog complied. As the doors slowly closed to the pod. Andrew looked at his mom and dad’s faces as he stood in the chamber. Both were beginning to cry as the door shut with a sealing sound. Andrew put his hand on the door, and his parents did too.

“I love you three thousand!!” Andrew said, a phrase he only used to get a chuckle from his parents. They both laughed for a moment and smiled.

“We love you too son!” They both said in unison. Which in turn got him to laugh.

“See you soon.” Andrew said, he put his hand back down to his side. Andrew watched as his dad walked out of view and he heard several beeps and a sound similar to a leak, though he knew it wasn’t so. He heard his dog yawn and lay its head down. And he closed his eyes and fell asleep…

~

Kim watched her son go into cryostasis and let all her emotions loose. Falling to the ground with hands on the pod, weeping and wailing.

Hunter watched as his wife showed all of her frustration, pain, and sorrow that she had been holding up inside her since she got the email a week ago. She had been strong through all of that as he went through the pain and sorrow he was dealing with. She seemed to have just as much if not more for their son. And as much as he wanted to do what she was doing, he had to do what she did for him through all this.

He walked over to her and helped her up. Shaking in his arms and still sobbing.

“It's gonna be okay, he’s gonna be okay.” Hunter said as he stroked her head. She pulled away slightly and slowly lifted her head to him.

“Will we see him again awake? I mean will WE see him? Will it be us or someone else with our memories, experiences and who looks like us? Did I lie to our son about seeing him again?” Kim asked with a weak, sobbing voice. Hunter looked at her and smiled,

“Calm down, it’s okay. We’ll see him again. And you will keep your promise to Andrew.” Hunter said,

“But how do you know?” Kim said.

“I don’t know the answer to your questions honey. I just know that we will see him again awake and sound. And we will all be united again.” Hunter said. Kim embarrassed him with a tight hug. He started again to stroke her head.

Hunter and Kim closed the door to the shed and began to shut everything off and get what they needed for when they were at Arat Prime.

He shut off everything before he shut off the generator to the house. He thought about everything that happened to him since the war. After the war, he got the position at the Terran Federation as head programmer, he was so ecstatic back then. He never lost that enthusiasm for his job, even when he became a husband and later a father. He still loved his job and had enough time to be a good father and husband. He loved being a dad and husband and loved being a boss to the programmers under him. But both slowly needed more and more time. Both fighting for his attention.

When he found out about The URE’s and Terran Federation’s plan to archive the entire world’s history of human beings. He didn’t trust them to do it to his son, he didn’t care about himself and Kim said she felt the same way about herself. But they both agreed they wouldn’t let it happen to their son. After all people like Santiago were cloned and weren’t being told that they were. Santiago still thought he survived all this time when he-. He was so grateful when Kim was ordered to collect samples of wildlife and study how many were left. But it became more stressful for him to be a father and be the chief programmer. He loved his work so much, but he loved his family so much more.

Hunter walked away from the house with the few hard drives he needed and saw Kim in the ATV waiting for him with her box of things.

“How much Element did you put in the generator in the shed?” Kim asked,

“Every single piece in the house and shed, it’s not going to shut off for eons. I made sure of that.” Hunter said.

He smiled, he knew he would see his son again and that his son was safe until he did. It was a relief that he was finally safe and protected. The only way into the shed was the one door and it was locked from the inside with a DNA scanner, retinal scanner, and voice access keys to enter. No one was getting in there unless it was them. He entered the ATV and looked at Kim. She looked worried, he put his hand on her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek.

“He’s gonna be okay.” He said reassuring her,

She nodded and smiled, a few more tears rolled down her cheek. He hugged her to comfort her and she smiled softly.

“I know, we’ll see him again. I just have a bad feeling that it’ll be a lot longer than we expected.” She said. Hunter didn’t say anything, because he had the same thought in his head. She put her hand on his shoulder and looked at him.

“We still got each other until then.” She said smiling, he smiled and nodded. He took a moment and looked at her.

“Absolutely, and nothing is going to take me away from you.” He said, she smiled and laughed. Hunter was grateful he still had his wife and they had one another until it was time to wake up Andrew. Both were relieved with what they did and if he was safe. Hunter started the engine of the ATV and they drove off.

Year: 2364

Location: Camacho International Forest (The last wildlife park on Earth), 11586 kilometers away from Arat Prime and 8344 kilometers away from Sanctuary

Ultimus Chapter One: Beginning

Hunter Lang and family lived in the Camacho International Forest with his wife and son. His wife Kim was the lead Biologist and was stationed here to take samples and study how the wildlife was affected after the war. He was a major computer programmer and hacker who was the main programmer on a major program that allowed him to work at home temporarily.

He sat at his desk in his home office. He was looking at hundreds of lines of code on his screen. All of it giving him a headache at the moment. He looked to the side of his desk where he had a family photo. His son Andrew is up in front. Andrew was schooling at home by computer due to being stationed. He had turned eleven several months ago and was finishing work on his first degree. He loved his son, but it was getting hard for him to do his work and be a father. Especially with what the Terran Federation pushing him harder and harder. As a high-ranking programmer and lead on the project for them his time away from the project was important time wasted for the Federation. But for him, it was necessary time spent with his family. They were trying desperately to get him to come to the main site but he continued to refuse because he was needed with his family just as much. Looking at all this code made it all frustrating to him.

His computer made a chime sound and He looked up to see he got an email. It was addressed to Kim from the Terran Federation. He was tempted to read it, but he was going to let Kim read it first. The Terran Federation assigned her to this station and they might be requesting a quarterly report. She always has one pop-up around this time of year and she had been getting it ready for their request.

Hunter got up from his computer to go look outside in the backyard. He saw Andrew playing out there with his new Rottweiler pup. Kim thought it was best for them to splurge on getting him a dog, getting a more endangered species of dog felt it would be best for the species survival, plus she didn’t want to empower this whole new trend with domestication of the species of dog that proliferated out of control to all other species of dog on Earth after the war. But in the end, Hunter agreed only for the Rottweiler to ensure the species survival and for protection over Andrew. Andrew hadn’t named him yet, he said that he was looking for the perfect name. He only had owned him for a week and he will have ten years of memories to build with him.

Hunter went to his bedroom and looked in his wife’s mirror in her vanity. Hunter was a tall man, medium build, dirty blonde with blue eyes and glasses in his late thirties. He looked to his left where two Terran Federation flags were folded neatly on the drawers. It had been over nineteen years since he and Kim met as soldiers fighting against the URE. Now he works with them, go figure. He went into the bathroom opened up a medicine cabinet and grabbed some aspirin. He took one and went back into the bedroom laid on the bed and closed his eyes.

The three wandered towards the barren desert ahead. while they did, Forest explained why he thought they needed to find someone.

“So your taking your hunch off a dream?! Why did I agree to helping you. It’s very unlikely your dream will guide us to anything!” Nightfall said with frustration.

“I wouldn’t normally think much about it, but Peeri was the one to tell me in my dream and there was something different about her in this dream than anyone else I have ever dreamed about.” Forest said.

“Do you think that it might’ve been a message from her that she could have placed in your memory?” Crimson asked.

“Okay, first off, who is this Peeri? Second off, why do we care that she was the one who said it?” Nightfall said perturbed.

“Peeri was a Basilisk who spoke of the prophecy of the Five. Creatures on Fjordur believe that Basilisks are able to see the future. She was one of the very few left on Fjordur before her death more than a year ago.” Crimson said.

“Well that’s a croc then. The only creature with mind powers are slugs and have never heard of a Basilisk implanting thoughts or any other creature for that. Now I’ve heard about Basilisk’s power to foresee future events but I don’t get into that mumbo-jumbo. Do really you believe it was what Crimson said or do you believe it was your mind playing tricks on you and doing that. Because if you don’t, please let’s go back to the cooler, more shaded desert by green obelisk where there’s water, this sand is melting my feet and it looks endless to me!!” Nightfall said whining. Crimson glared at Nightfall as he did so.

“I don’t know if i-, Do you hear that?” Forest said.

They all stopped and they heard noise that sounded like a sandstorm. And they saw a spine coming towards them out of the sand. It started circling around them, they saw eyes peaking out from the sand as he circled and it seemed to stare with fear inducing eyes at Crimson. Crimson’s noticed it and looked over at Forest and Nightfall, Nightfall was trembling with fear. His eyes were throbbing and his claws were clattering together.

“What is it Nightfall, we’re new here and you know more about this place than both of us. Plus by all the fear pheromones your making, makes me think you know what this is. Spill it!!” Crimson said quietly.

“Well Cr-Cr-Crimson. Th-This seems to be one of the Apex Predators of Scorched Earth. A Fa-Fa-, a Fasolasuchus. I think we’re going to die.” Nightfall said whimpering, his eyes watering as he started to heave, “Calm down Nightfall, we are not going to die!! It circling, that means it’s curious about us.” Crimson whispered loudly.

“Well Crimson, you say that when a literal Sand Shark that can form a whirlpool of sand that can bury you in seconds is circling you and no one else know what the heck this thing is!!!” Nightfall began screeching.

“Can you please stop talking about what we’re known for, and let me introduce myself?” the creature said as he got out of the sand. Everyone went quiet as the large beast rose from the ground. It’s hulking armored body blocking a bit of the sun as it stood in front of them.

“Howdy, the name’s Methuselah.”

“Ahah, Hello?” Nightfall said, his voice shaky.

“WE’RE DEAD!!!!! WE ARE GOING TO DIE AND ITS YOUR FAULT!!!!! WHY DID I HAVE TO RUMMAGE THROUGH YOUR BAG!!!!” Nightfall screamed as Forest was gliding over the jungles of the Island.

Forest was mainly ignoring his temporary companion on his back. Forest looked over the landscape as he flew passed it. It was very different atmosphere from what he knew of, but at the same time it has the same societies. All the creatures have the same way to living, nothing different from Fjordur except for a large number of creatures were missing from here unless they were tamed.

After some time they got to the to the edge of the swamp on the outskirts of the obelisk off of Forests single glide. Nightfall was shaking as he got off Forest’s back, he stumbled off and fell into the mud.

“Why do you drakes have to be such speed demons and not keep it at a steady pace like most flyers!!” Nightfall said as he was trying to get himself off the ground.

Forest laughed at what he said “I was going pretty slow with you on my back.” Forest trying to stop giggling.

“Well you should have been slower. I can’t even feel my legs from the fear.” Nightfall said.

As Forest was going to say a remark, he heard loud buzzing from what sounded like a single creature. Nightfall’s eyes went wide and he began shaking again as the noise got closer. “GET IN THE SWAMP!!! GO!!” Nightfall shrieked as he started to dart into the swamp.

The buzzing sound was getting louder, Forest quickly panicked and ran into the swamp before turning his camouflage on and stood still. A huge insect with massive wings, claws and singer flew over pass looking down into the swamp, almost like it was staring at Forest, it hovered over them for a moment, spinning around for a complete look as it did.

It flew off in the direction towards the obelisk. Forest took a deep breath, he was afraid that it saw him. He quickly looked over at Nightfall who was just getting up from being under water and was shrieking with terror. As he got up, Forest saw why. Three leeches decided to latch on to Nightfall and he was having a panic attack about it. Forest than tried to calm him down.

Andrew looked up in horror at the monolithic monster. In all his time here, he had never seen a monster like this. This wasn’t a monster, this was an awakened god. It looked straight upon them. It almost seemed to smile at their misfortune as it stared with its alien, cyan eyes. But almost as they were cyan, they turned magenta in the blink of an eye. The monster inhaled slowly; before releasing a roar that sounded as though it broke open the Earth. Andrew cupped his ears in pain as the roar thunderously emitted from the creature. He didn’t know that he himself was screaming in pain alongside the monster’s roar. He looked around him to see the others also cupping their ears in protection. He felt so sorry, he didn’t ask for this. He didn’t ask to lead their friend to death. He didn’t ask to murder his only friend he made. He didn’t ask for Freya to save him, he didn’t ask for Reuben to sacrifice himself for his stead. He didn’t ask to be given hope. He didn’t ask to be awakened, he didn’t ask to be frozen.

The monster stopped its bellowing, but no one noticed. Their ears filled with the ringing of tinnitus. Andrew was now in a mess of tears as he unraveled what was left of himself. The others tried snapping him out, probably to get him to run. But he had no urge, he didn’t want to run. He wanted to die, let the monster just stomp him out. As they grabbed at his arms, he pulled back. He was just like the monster that bellowed above them. He didn’t deserve to go on. He then saw Paul, who was kneeling next to him. Getting down to look at him, face to face. He tried to talk him into continuing on, or at least that’s what Andrew thought. Andrew couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he could guess. That Sylas’s death was not his fault, that it was some unfortunate accident that occurred. Something to just push through, something to live with but not blame yourself. But he couldn’t do that, he could only feel the guilt, the fault. He knew it was to his blame. He couldn’t just admit that Sylas wasn’t his fault. Because it was his fault that he died.

He tried so hard to get to Sylas when he fell and started screaming; but Phil— he was being a good boy for Sylas. He started guarding him, and when Andrew tried to rush to help. Phil saw it as a threat. So he guarded Sylas, even hitting Andrew hard enough to make him fly back. By the time Andrew got back up, he was gone… All Andrew could think of was that he could’ve fought harder, he could’ve tried to get around Phil and saved Sylas. He could’ve done something. Something.

Andrew just watched Paul as he tried to speak to him for a moment. Then, Andrew’s attention was taken away from something glistening behind Paul. The glow of purple caught his eye. Andrew’s eyes bulged as he saw a small group of creatures, enveloped in Element as Erica had said, charging directly at them too. With raptors in the group quickly closing the gap.

Andrew didn’t even realize what was going on next. His instincts kicked in as he shot up to prepare for battle. Grabbing his bow and activating it in the same go. Drawing back and releasing the string. The bolt of energy flew and struck one of the raptors. Andrew didn’t wait to see if the first shot dropped the animal. He just continued shooting. Hitting the same one again, then moving onto the next that was closing in.

Everyone seemed to be shocked or stunned at his sporadic launch of attack. He looked at them with shock and frustration.

‘DON’T THEY SEE THAT WE’RE BEING ATTACKED?’ He thought to himself. They were too busy looking at him when he was in his self-pity fit. Plus they probably were hard of hearing like he was. As he switched to explosive arrows. He yelled.

“LOOK!!!” He said. Which he wasn’t sure if they heard as he aimed, and fired. He then heard an explosion, and the sound of the monster’s shrieks as they were engulfed in flames. However, this didn’t stop the group of corrupted creatures from continuing through, and this small group even seemed to gather more force behind it. He then heard Jonathan and Erica use two completely different curse words.

“Battle positions everyone!!” Paul said as he stood up, grabbed his pistol, and started loading it. Andrew readjusted himself from Paul so that he wasn’t in his firing range as he aimed again and shot another explosive bolt off at the incoming horde with another detrimental explosion hitting the horrific army of creatures coming at them.

He then heard the whispy whirs of an arrow fly past him. He looked back to see Freya stringing up another arrow as she joined the fight. Then he heard Paul fire his pistol, cocking the hammer back and then firing it again. Then he heard the sound of a larger gun firing off. Andrew then noticed Erica loading her next bullet into her single-loader rifle. He then fired off another explosive bolt. He noticed that Jonathan hadn’t done anything yet though. He took a quick glance to see he was holding a double-barreled shotgun and seemed to wait for things to get really hairy.

As the four of them began the firefight, countless bodies dropped. One monster after the next fell as they tried to claw their way to them. But for each creature they killed, three more took their place. From little dinosaurs with two crests on their heads and raptors, to larger dinosaurs with two longer horns and shorter arms he had seen before, weird mammals with long forearms that sort of resembled a sloth and a horse for some reason, and stegosaurs (which was one of the few dinosaurs he actually knew.). He looked at the others and yelled.

“What are those things?!” Jonathan cussed.

“Do we really have to go through this now!?” Jonathan yelled. “The two-legged dinosaur with horns is Carnotaurus, the horse-like sloth thing is named Chalicotherium. Now just shoot them!!” Erica said as she fired off another round from her rifle. Andrew heard but didn’t respond. He was still trying to keep the army of these new animals at bay. It was then that he noticed how fast he was chewing through his Element Shards with the explosive bolts. He knew that going back to the regular arrows would probably be best until he could restock.

He then heard a roar that he didn’t recognize. And out of the corner of his eye, he saw a blur of brown fur rush from down the mountain and straight into the sea of corrupted creatures. It was Phil, who immediately ran into the direct charge of the army of monsters. He threw haymaker after haymaker. Even overhead slams into the creatures that wanted to harm his friends. Andrew watched as Phil unleashed hell against the monsters. Protecting his friends as he curb stomped a carnotaurus head into the ground and let out a roar of fury. Crushing the skull under his foot. He threw a punch so hard into a raptor, that it shattered the raptor's skull into flakes. Paul looked at everyone, holding his hand in the air with a clenched fist.

“Everyone hold your fire!! We can’t hit Phil in there.” He shouted. He looked at Phil in the horde hellscape he was killing. Then he looked over where they had left their tames.

“We need ta get ta our tames. Phil’s holding back the wave enough for us to get to our tames. Then we can help Phil and get out of here.” Paul said.

“Hold on, we’re leaving Phil in there?!” Erica shouted.

“No lass, but we need ta help him safely, and helping him the safest is getting our tames, and bringing the fight animal to animal.”

“Isn’t that risky? Like we can’t lose him too!” Andrew said.

“Why not, you killed his owner. Why not kill his pet too?” Jonathan spat. Andrew didn’t know what to say to that. But he didn’t want his Phil to die, he didn’t want another dead body on his shoulder to carry. He knew Sylas loved Phil more than anything he tamed before. He noticed the other’s reaction to this though. Both Erica and Freya gave Jonathan cold glares. Paul just looked completely disgusted at Jonathan’s words.

“Enough Jonathan. That wasn’t his fault, and we ain’t losin’ Phil today. Now get yer tames as fast as ya can!” Paul said. Erica and Jonathan started running in that direction. Andrew was about to start when he watched Freya walk in the direction of the creatures.

“Freya!! Get to the tames!!” Andrew shouted.

“Nei.” She responded. She continued to walk forward as she gripped her bow. Andrew noticed that she also held her sword in a resting position on her forearm as she began to aim.

“What ya mean no Freya!! FREYA!!” Paul yelled.

“Kom dere til temmene, dere to. Jeg skal gi Phil litt mer tid.” She continued.

“Freya!! This is crazy!!” Paul answered with.

“Kjør! Jeg skal klare meg!! Phil trenger vår fulle hjelp!! Så KJØR!!” She said as she drew her bow back and fired her next arrow into the sea of the corrupted.

“Freya!!” Paul shouted. Paul looked like he was ready to help her, but that didn’t seem to be what she wanted. Andrew stood there for a moment as watched as he saw Paul start to walk over to Freya. There was then the sound of gunfire coming from where they left their tames. Andrew looked over at Paul with concern.

“Come on Paul!! Let’s get to our tames!!” Andrew said. Paul looked at Andrew, then looked at the tames and back at Freya. He groaned as he holstered his pistol, then ran off ahead over to where the tames were. Andrew gripped his bow and followed, soon outpacing Paul.

The two ran over to where the now-frequent gunshots were occurring. He noticed that what started as a small group of creatures had become what looked like an enormous horde of demons and monsters. Andrew didn’t even know where they could come from. There are more of these corrupted animals in this horde alone than he had ever seen before in one area. Even giant centipedes and triceratops began to fill this horde. It was horrifying, how many of them there were. How could they deal with them? Andrew knew they needed to get to their tames at this point. If they had any chance to beat this. They needed the strength and speed of those tames.

Andrew and Paul ran and then stopped suddenly as they saw both Erica and Jonathan shooting their weapons. The horde began to focus on both of them, and they weren’t making any progress toward where they needed to go. They were still too far away to make a run for their tames where they were at. What seemed weird to Andrew was that the horde wasn’t targeting their tames, they were only hunting them.

This wasn’t at all normal for corrupted creatures, they targeted everything. Why weren’t they going for the tames? Why weren’t they going after any of the wildlife nearby? Then, Andrew pieced it together. The monster. It was leading them, calling them in to hunt and exterminate them. Andrew looked up at the monster, this god. And it stares back, almost like it was waiting for him to put the pieces together. It smiled at him, why was it smiling at him!?

Andrew then heard Paul yell, “Andrew, they’re attacking us!!” Andrew shook his head and looked at the horde. They were charging their way at them now. Paul was already shooting at them as they charged. Dropping one after the next. Andrew immediately drew back his bow, aimed, and started unleashing hell onto the horde.

“Go Paul!! I got this armor, it’ll protect me. I have plenty of Element Shards to last. I can cover you. GET TO GRACE AND HELP ERICA AND JONATHAN!!” Andrew shouted. Paul looked at him like he was insane as he grabbed his pistol.

“Look lad, I wasn’t okay leaving Freya ta fend for Phil, I ain’t certainly leaving ya too so ya can fend for yourself and cover me. Yer gonna need me.” Paul said as he started shooting his pistol at the horde. Andrew was about to say something, but he got jumped by a small creature. A small frill appeared around its head and it spat at Andrew. Andrew jumped back and the strange goop hit his chest. Doing nothing to him. Andrew was disgusted for a moment, completely getting distracted by the spit on his chest. He then remembered the strange little dinosaur. He looked back to see the animal charging closer towards him before Paul shot it in the head, which being at close range caused its head to explode.

“Don’t let those pests hit ya in the face. It’ll make ya blind for a spell. Now make yer way ta Erica and Jonathan. We’ll make our way ta the tames together.” Paul said as he turned and shot a raptor that was getting too close to them. Andrew looked over to see how far they were. About 150 or so feet from them. He looked at Paul and nodded in agreement.

The two then fought and worked their way across the 150 feet. The horde was unrelenting as they made their way over, but so were Paul and Andrew. They slew dozens of corrupted as they made slow progress over to Erica and Jonathan. The horde though seemed to close the gap between Andrew and Paul faster; and easier than they had earlier, with several close calls with carnos and raptors. But with Andrew’s bow and Paul watching Andrew’s back with his bear stopper of a pistol, they made light work of them. As they got closer, both Jonathan and Erica had noticed that Paul and Andrew were making their way to them. When they reached an audible shouting distance that both sides could hear each other. Erica yelled out.

“These !&#$@#* started chasing us when we ran for it!!! They cut off out in front of us and got us here. We’ve tried to move forward, but these d@%* creatures keep sideswiping us.” Paul looked at the open area behind them, which seemed to go around the horde on the outside/./

“You can’t run around them or kill them?” Paul shouted back. But with each second they took, they got closer. Andrew heard Jonathan let out a sarcastic “HA!”.

“Are you kidding? If we start to focus on the monsters that block our way for too long, the monsters from the main horde start attacking us.” Jonathan yelled. “And if we run, we leave ourselves exposed to being chased down and killed even faster.” Erica added.

After a few more minutes of both sides fighting, they finally reached each other. As they continued to fight, Andrew looked over to see how far they were from the tames. They were about three hundred feet or so away. Quite a ways a way when they needed to move fast to help Freya and Phil. In a sprinting rush, they could make it. But four of them dead sprinting would not work if a creature comes from behind them. But Andrew had a plan forming.

“Jonathan and Paul. Try again to run and break that wall of creatures. I’ll give you a boost. Don’t worry about what’ll come from behind or from the sides. Erica and I will stay to watch your sides and behind while we stay behind. Keep them distracted while you two get to the tames.” Andrew proposed. He aimed his bow at a Carno coming his way and released the string, shooting the bolt through the Carno’s head. Singeing its skull and hide with the amount of energy going through it. Paul looked at Andrew with concern at his proposal.

“Andrew, I told ya once, I’ve told ya mor-” “That’s genius!” Erica said as she fired her rifle.

“What?” Jonathan barked. She chuckled as she released the hot cartridge from the barrel.

“Look, out of the four of us. The two best for quick crowd control here are Jonathan and Paul. Jonathan has the high spread Shotgun, and Paul’s Colt is the fastest weapon to shoot consistently. And with it having the quickest reloads of the firearms, you're the better choice Paul to rush. Meanwhile, Andrew’s bow can help—” She paused as she fired the next shot, dropping a raptor. She released the cartridge like she had done with the one before. “—Use a special explosive arrow to aid in your crowd control as you go in. Then Andrew and I can keep your blind spots clean. While we both protect each other. It’s the best call Paul, we need to go for it.” Erica said. Paul was also loading his pistol as he listened at the end. He stuck six bullets in the open cylinder as quickly as Erica did with a single bullet. He groaned as he closed up his gun.

“You think this can work Erica?” Paul asked.

“Definitely.”

“Alright, we’ll count to three and do this then.” Paul said.

“One.” Paul counted down. Andrew switched his bow to the explosive rounds once more.

“Two.” Andrew continued. Jonathan tightened his grip.

“Three!!!” Erica shouted. Andrew drew back his bow and aimed for the wall of corrupted creatures. The explosion engulfed raptors, smaller dinosaurs, and even Carnos in flames. Even launching a few of the smaller creatures out of the horde in flames. With the ball of smoke disappearing and the large gap visible. Both Paul and Jonathan charged into the opening. Firing away at the other end of the wall. Erica and Andrew took turns firing periodically into the hole when one of them saw a corrupted leave the horde and try to pick off Jonathan and Paul. While the other would watch their back. Making sure nothing jumped them.

Within a few minutes, there was a light shining from the wall of the horde that Paul and Jonathan charged into. Erica and Andrew watched helplessly as they saw two figures go through it, and the hole closed.

“We can’t do anything now but wait.” Erica said firing her rifle.

“I hope they’ll be okay.” Andrew said as he fired into the horde around them.

“They’ll be fine. They can cover themselves now. We need to worry if we’ll make it out alive until they can get back to us.” She said gritting her teeth as she loaded her rifle.

“That’s only a few moments, right?” Andrew asked as he watched her back.

“Yeah, but we gotta hope that we deal with no issues.” She said as she aimed her rifle and fired. But nothing happened. The bullet was bad. “S*%$, like that.” She said as she tried to unload the bullet, but she couldn’t pull the lever back all the way.

“S*&$!!” She shouted.

“What’s going on?” Andrew asked worriedly.

“The gun’s jammed! Give me a minute!!” She yelled, trying to dislodge the jammed cartridge. She was afraid… and they knew it. Andrew watched in horror as the horde seemed to rally at their weakness. With more beginning to strike them at the same time. Andrew looked at Erica who was still trying to clear the jam in her gun.

“Erica, you might want to do that faster.” Andrew said as he picked up the pace with his firing rate.

“DONT START!!” She said aggressively.

“I’m just saying that they're striking harder.” Andrew answered as he shot a raptor in the skull

“GEE, YOU DON’T THINK I NOTICE!!!!” Erica yelled. “JUST HOLD THEM BACK UNTIL I CAN GET THIS STUPID JAM CLEARED!!” She continued. Andrew nodded, but he wasn’t sure how long he could hold them back. They were getting way too close for his comfort. He was having a very hard time watching all the directions they were coming from. They were especially hitting hard on his side of the horde that encircled them.

A few seconds passed when the worst moment happened. He noticed a raptor was running up on Erica’s flank, but he had four creatures jumping his shorter distance side, with more on the way on his side.

“Erica. I need you!!” Andrew said worrying as he fired at the large convoy.

“I’M NOT READY!!!” She yelled.

“ERICA!!” Andrew shouted at her.

“I’M TRYING!!!” She yelled back. He couldn’t wait any longer, he switched his bow to explosive again and fired into the incoming group of creatures on his side. He looked back to see the raptor in pouncing range of Erica. He didn’t even think about switching back to his normal arrows. He dropped the bow and ran over to Erica’s side.

“ERICA MOVE!!!” He yelled as he shoved her out of the way. Tanking the Raptor’s charge into him. The raptor hissed and snarled as its mouth snapped at Andrew’s face. He pulled out his knife and started stabbing the raptor in the skull repeatedly. Blood and Element splattered all over his face, but he continued to stab it until the animal dropped to the ground. He turned to Erica who looked at him with shock and surprise. Andrew didn’t notice it wasn’t in fear but in the point of being saved. Andrew was too busy with his adrenaline and fear to notice why.

“Get that gun cleared now or we’re gonna die!!” Andrew barked. He was afraid, very afraid of what was happening. He then noticed he didn’t have his bow. He looked back quickly rushed for it and watched his surroundings and got back to firing a few more explosive rounds into the horde to clear them before switching back to normal arrows. He was really cutting it with how many he used.

A second passed when Andrew heard the sound of metal clinking as it hit the ground.

“FINALLY!!” She shouted as she loaded a bullet and fired into the horde on her side.

“ABOUT TIME!!!” Andrew yelled.

“Yeah, I know. Shut up!!” Erica spat as she loaded the next bullet.

Then they heard the bellow of a Rex roar and gunfire coming from their left. Andrew looked over to see a sight for sore eyes, Angrboda. She started charging through the horde, destroying them as she pummeled the horde under her feet, or crushed them with the power of her jaws. Andrew saw that Jonathan was riding on top of her as she charged the horde in front of them. Thrashing her head through the carnos and other larger creatures to them, looked like the small critters to her immense size. He then heard an unfamiliar roar to him as he saw Paul ride on Grace, his spiky two-legged dinosaur with three horns on its head. He couldn’t remember what he had called it earlier. He was just glad to see her. Paul had Jonathan’s horse, Erica’s Sabertooth Cat, and Knight Sky following closely behind.

“Sorry fer the wait ya two. We had some complications and we got over them as soon as we could. Now get on yer tames.” Paul said. Paul then watched as Jonathan charged over in the direction where they left Freya. He looked over at Andrew and Erica. He whistled the horse and Erica’s Smilodon to go over to them. Then Paul charged in and began to crowd control for them. Erica jumped for joy as she got on her Smilodon as quickly as she could. Andrew jumped on Knight Sky, then he looked back at Erica.

“Okay, now what?”

“Now, we can last a lot longer against these things, and we can eradicate them with the supplies we have.” She said as she rode her Smilodon over to Jonathan’s horse and looked through its saddle bags.

“But how are any of the supplies we brought gonna help us? I mean I can understand the ammunition, but what else are your supplies gonna do?” Andrew asked as he watched her grab several clay jars and explain loudly in excitement as she opened them up to find them empty.

“Oh ye of little faith. You're an Engineer, you should know that anything can be turned into a weapon if you really work hard enough. Especially gasoline and cooking oil.” Erica said as she started pouring liquid from a large container into the clay jars. Andrew’s face dropped.

“What…” He said as she added another, new liquid to the same clay jars.

“Add in some gunpowder for good measure. And there you go, homemade Napalm bombs.”

“I’m sorry, WHAT?!” Andrew shouted.

“Paul!!! GET OUT OF THERE!!! We’re gonna do something REALLY STUPID!!!” Erica shouted. Paul looked at her with a very concerned look before getting him and Grace out of there. Letting the horde breathe and gather forces once again. Erica then looked at Andrew. She held one of the jars up as she looked at him.

“Aim with one of your explosive arrows for this once it gets above the horde’s epicenter there.” She said. Andrew looked at her with a crazed look before switching back to explosive arrows.

“Throw it!!” Andrew said as he drew back the string. Erica then chucked the jar deep into the horde of creatures. Andrew steadied his aim on the jar as it flew through the air. Once he was sure he could hit it. He let the arrow fly, which it did.

In that moment, there was a thunderous boom. A gargantuan flash of light blinded Andrew and the others for a moment. Then when Andrew could see again. He watched in horror as hellfire started raining from the sky. The napalm bomb worked and rained onto the horde. Which let out agonizing screeches of pain as the explosion and Napalm hit a majority of the horde in front of Andrew, Erica, and Paul.

“Geez!!!” Andrew shouted.

“What was that Erica!!” Paul yelled. Erica smiled with delight.

“That’s our way of gatekeeping them from us. Now help me do so Andrew!!”

~

Within moments, Erica and the others were in the mansion. It seemed to be back to normal like nothing ever happened. Even the excess weapons were neatly arranged. Sylas set her on the couch where she sat for a time, sore and bruised. She lay there in pain and sighed. She still thought that she had some sort of fracture, no matter what her Tek suit said. Sylas lowered his visor as he stood above her. She saw the Reaper King transform into Drake who stood there with the creatures he aided out of there. Notably, the ones that drained had frozen it’s his breath. Tago and Sheeri, she watched as others brought in the humans or smaller allies that had been frozen too. Sylveevee and Skyocean, Dr. Yang, his strange squirrel Steve, the two raptors Rage and Snake, and Sunny the Fox were all frozen. They all looked either in petrified pain or fear. Erica shook her head in shame. They should’ve got out of there. No one knew what happened to Ben, Neddy, Ruby, and Emma at all. Everyone the

She lifted herself into a sitting position to see who was standing. She could see Aragorn and his wife were still ok, Joe Kong and another Gigantopithecus who she didn’t know. Emerald and Darkhide were ok, the two Shadowmanes Orbit and Moonbeam were there too. She could see Buddy, Star, Drake, Moonhigh and Sunhigh, Sylas, Freya and Nova were all ok. She didn’t see Jack or Jay anywhere, but she assumed they were just in the mansion somewhere since Moonhigh and Sunhigh were ok. Bear was still out there trying to help others get to safety, she was really worried about him. He was incredibly stupid and had an awful memory so who knows what he had gotten into by himself. She just hoped he and the other lost wer-

“Hah!! Told you that we could all help Freya!!” Sylas said lightheartedly, disrupting her thoughts.

“What do you mean ‘We’?” Aragorn said as he looked at the others in Tek armor, Sylas’ eyes widened in fear as she attempted to shoo away the other armored persons.

“Who are they?” Arianna asked, two of the armored persons looked at each other looked at each other before turning off their visors. Jack and Jay.

“Hi, mom and dad!!” Jack said excitedly,

“This armor’s awesome!!” Jay said in awe, Aragorn was also in awe. However, his face’s expression soon grew very angry. Jay and Jack looked at each other in worry as their dad and mom came over to them.

“Go upstairs and take that stuff off. Your mother and I will be up there soon for further discussion.” Aragorn said fuming in anger, but remaining as calm as possible in front of everyone. Jay and Jack went immediately upstairs as he said this. Queen Sylveevee saw Moonhigh and Sunhigh and walked to them and began to talk to them. She talked to them for a moment before they headed upstairs following Jay and Jack. Erica was furious, she got up groaning, and raised the visor of her helmet.

“Sylas, what were you thinking!! You went against my direct orders to not leave the Obelisk room!! ” Erica shouted.

“Look around you Erica, we saved you from dying to a flipping demon the size of a Kaiju!! Your orders would have had you and everyone else killed!! So a thank you would be nice!!” Sylas said. Erica looked at him in irritation and anger.

“If you want a thank you for nearly killing those kids you won’t get it from me.” Erica spat, she then looked at Freya who was getting off of Nova as Nova went to quickly check on her crew.

“Freya, you were in on this too!! What the hell? They’re children!” Erica shouted. Freya shrugged.

“They had heart and determination. If I tried to stop them. They would have just tried without help or behind my whereabouts. So I helped by finding their strengths and weaknesses. I made sure the ones without armor stayed far away from the fight while the ones without armor went in and came out just as fast.” Freya said, Erica's face seethed with anger.

“THEY ARE KIDS FREYA!!! Not soldiers!!”

“That’s right, but they are MY kids. My kids know what they were getting themselves into and that we would never approve of their actions in this, but would try to do something like this. With or without adult support. So I do appreciate your group’s efforts in watching over them.” Aragorn said as he turned to Erica. Erica nodded.

“I’m glad you think this was alright for my group to do, but I still have issues with it.” Erica said staring at Freya and Sylas. A hand grabbed Erica’s shoulder, Erica turned to see Drake standing behind her.

“Erica, I don’t know you, but I can see that you care for people. But it’s okay. The Queen’s children have been caught in battles before. And they are determined to help when they can. So please don’t blame your people for doing that.” Drake said, Erica smiled. However, her smile didn’t seem to be genuine from Sylas’ and Freya’s experience with her. She turned back to the and her face went immediately serious as she looked at Freya and Sylas. Her face basically said it all. This wasn’t over for them yet, but it would have to wait for later. And Erica would make sure it happened.

“Since your strange human tiff is over. What are we going to do about that… thing.” Moonbeam said.

“Right… that thing. Well, I think this place was nice while it lasted. But ah, I say we abandon it.”

“Sylas, shut it. We fight on, we figure out his weaknesses and exploi-” “Face it, Erica, that THING took dragon’s breath, both hot and cold and it did nothing, the only thing that did anything was Nova ramming it at Sub-sonic speeds. And from what it took from humans was numerous tek rifle shots and A FLIPPING RAILGUN to the face and it did NOTHING to it!! The best it did was allow that thing to be pushed over. What are we, squishy humans going to do to that!! Half our allies are down for the count of this fight and some of our strongest with them. Andrew was vaporized in light and his bow was destroyed with it, Ben is nowhere in sight, and goes for the others with him. We just need to take the group that’s down and get out of here.” Sylas stated in a saddened tone, Aragorn raised an eyebrow at this

“Excuse me?” Aragorn said,

“No. We need to fight!” Joe Kong said,

“Sylas, you need to put a sock in it.” Erica spat,

“But he’s right. Leaving is our best hope for survival.” Darkhide said,

“That’s a lie and you know it Darkhide.” Emerald said, the group started fighting about whether they should leave and stay and stand against it. And no one could agree. With Aragorn, Freya, Arianna, and the two Shadowmanes were the only ones not fighting. The female one shook her head as she looked at Aragorn

“This is hopeless, none of these creatures can agree on one thing for more than five minutes.” She said, she looked at the Male and he nodded and then they both started walking away.

“Where are you going?” Aragorn asked, the Male looked over his shoulder at him.

“We need a moment alone to think, it’s too loud over here for anyone to know what’s going on. We’re going to the room where the food is. But we’re on your side of this fight, you seem like you're the only one here who knows what to do.” He said before they both continued to walk off.

“Since it seems like you are the ones with the most common sense. What are we going to do?” Aragorn said, he looked at Freya who seemed quite disappointed with what was happening.

“Couldn’t you just use the Obelisk to destroy them like how they worked in the past?” Arianna asked,

“The Obelisk isn’t working at all. I tried using it, but I couldn’t get it to work. The black fog started coming out of it as I continued trying so I stopped. I was going to say something, but then Erica started going over why having the kids help was against what she wanted.” Freya said, Moonbeam and Orbit shook their heads as they began to walk away.

But Aragorn, Arianna heard a scream coming from upstairs, Freya seemed to hear it too. Arianna looked at Aragorn.

“Go, I’ll stay here and see if I can get everyone to stop fighting.” She said. Immediately, Freya and Aragorn all ran upstairs to find out what was going on while Arianna stayed behind to end the arguing.

~

Jack and Jay went up the stairs to the hallway, they could hear Erica yelling at Sylas and Freya about their decision to let them help.

“I don’t think it’s fair for them to get yelled at. We decided for ourselves.” Jack said as they got into the hall.

“Yeah and look where that got us, in trouble with mom and dad. Hey, look over here!” Jay said as he went into an open door.

“Jay, we can’t go in there. We have to go to our room. Do you want Mom and Dad to get mad at us?” Jack said,

“I know, they won’t even know we were in here. We’ll be in and out just like that.” Jay said and he continued to snoop around the room. Jack looked inward hesitantly before stepping in. The room was odd to them. It was nothing like any of the rooms they had back home, it had a small bed on the fools while another larger bed was on a bed frame. Jack looked at this puzzled. Who’s room was this? It had books scattered everywhere. And a strange thing on one of the dressers in the shape of a large black box.

“What do you suppose that is Jack?”

“I don’t know any more than you do”

“Oh wait I think I’ve heard of this before. It’s like a thing that people in the past used to read books to themselves when they were tired.” Jay said,

“But why though? Didn’t they have parents to read for them?”

“Not as adults, and even when they were kids. The parents could be too tired too. So they sat there kid in front of this thing and it wouldn’t read to them for hours.” Jay explained,

“Wow, they must’ve been really smart people then.” Jack said,

“What are you guys doing in here?” Moonhigh asked as she and Sunhigh entered the room, Jack and Jay both jumped in surprise as they looked at them coming in.

“Uh, nothing. We were just looking around.” Jay said, Moonhigh and Sunhigh looked at Jay with an odd look.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in your room?” Sunhigh said,

“Aren’t you? We’re are, we are just taking a detour and look at this book reader.”

“You mean the television?”

“That’s what this was called? It must’ve been great to use to read books with when tired.” Jack said amazed. Moonhigh laughed,

“That’s not what they did, they had their own entertainments called movies and played something on the screen.” She said as she reached for the machine on the dresser and turned it on. Suddenly a living picture came on the screen as two people talked. Jay and Jack were amazed by it. But Jay’s interest slowly drew away from the screen and to the room again, and he started investigating. He looked at the bed and saw several things on top of it. He grabbed one and it seemed to be a weird glove. He looked at the other items on the bed, one was a broken piece of something futuristic, Jay wasn’t sure what it was from, but there was an odd futuristic cylinder with a clip loop and a big, gray knife and sheath lying on the bed. Jay grabbed it without hesitation and looked at it. It seemed odd out of everything. All of the other items being futuristic while the knife was really old compared to them. It didn’t make sense. Jay looked around the room. He saw the window was open which seemed odd, he stared out at the world outside and saw the strange dark mist beginning to envelop the world around them and slowly coming towards them. But yet the area around the mansion seemed to be getting brighter and the mist retreated away from the mansion. Jay looked up to see a bright light in the sky whirling its way to the mansion. He took a step back from the window and looked at the others.

“Guys, something’s going on.” Jay said, but they were distracted by the screen. Jay looked back out the window. The light got brighter and brighter and almost seemed to get bigger.

“Guy, I really need you to see this.” Jay said, but again they were distracted by the television.

“Guys!!”

“What is it Jay, is it really important? Because this thing is really cool!!” Jack said. Almost directly after saying that, the room burst into light. Soon shrill screams filled the room and Moonhigh jumped a gasp in panic as the room became blinding light. Jack quickly put his visor down as the others tried to cover their eyes with their hands.

“What did you do Sunhigh!!” Moonhigh yelled while looking at her brother.

“I didn’t do anything! I was watching TV with you!!” Sunhigh shouted. Then they all began to see something crazy. A being coming out of the epicenter of the light. The being walked closer to them and then looked around the room for a moment. Jay leaned over to Jack and whispered into his ear.

“Is that God? Do you think we’re dead if that’s God?” Jay whispered,

“I- don’t know, I didn’t feel like I died.” Jack Whispered back.

“But all I can see is white. That means we have to be dead.” Jay whispered,

“Jay, everything is white because you don’t have your visor down. It greatly reduces the light.” Jack whispered back.

“Oh…” Jay whispered as he turned on his visor. Immediately most of the light was drowned out. But still, the being was bright, but now he could see that there was something in the light.

“Jay and Jack right?” The being said, the kids began screaming again as the being said this.

Just as this happened, Aragorn and Freya entered the room. Freya paused outside the room as she looked into the room being blinded by the light.

“A Ljosalfar?” She said lightly as she stood there frozen. Aragorn got in front of the children staring towards the being. His medallion glowed with might and his eyes were black as the night sky. But nothing happened. It was too much light for anything to happen

“Aragorn!!” The being said enthusiastically, something about it sounded familiar to him though.

“Andrew? You’re… alive?” Aragorn said shocked. Freya’s eyes widened as he said this. With hesitation, she stepped into the room. Trying to look at him without being blinded. The being stared at them both. But the kids looked at Aragorn.

“You mean the man that disappeared, the one you thought was vaporized.”

“I am.” Andrew said,

“What happened to you?” Aragorn said,

“We thought you died.” Freya continued

“It’s an unusual story, but we are on the clock. I need to see the rest of the group.” Andrew said,

“They’re all in the main room downstairs.” Freya said,

“Then let's go.” Andrew said,

Andrew and the others left the room quickly, though the others stayed in front of him as they went down the stairs. He could see the others, who seemed like they had been fighting for a bit. He could almost perfectly hear each individual say what they were saying, even hearing two in the kitchen as he walked down the stairs. He began to hear the voices die down as they saw the light coming down the stairway. As he started reaching the bottom of the stairs and the others joined with the others, he began to notice that the crowd gathered around the base of the stairs in awe. Covering their eyes from the light he emitted.

“What is that?” Sylas said,

“A great ball of light?” Emerald said, Aragorn looked at the drake, and gave a smile as he chuckled.

“That is Andrew.” He said, the other’s looked at him in awe.

“That can’t be Andrew though. You said he disappeared.” Erica said,

“That’s right, in a ball of light. I was chosen.” Andrew said,

“Chosen?” Ariana said confused, Buddy came out of the group and looked at Andrew, squinting into the light.

“Chosen by what?” Buddy asked, Andrew looked at him for a moment.

“I am not sure. All I know is a dagger called me and it gave me a test. I chose right and I became the Herald of Light to face the Darkness.” Andrew said,

“The Darkness, you mean that thing? That monster!” Darkhide said,

“The Herald of Darkness, Drain was chosen to become it, I don’t know what it did to him. But if you had known who it was, then I could only imagine his appearance.” Andrew said, everyone was in awe at this.

“Your transformation is… beyond our imagination too Andrew” Freya said, Darkhide chucked at this.

“It is, but what are you going to do against him?! He’s huge and so powerful!!” Darkhide exclaimed, Andrew stood there for a moment in silence. They couldn’t see through the light, but he didn’t know what to do. He lowered his head in shame with his eyes closed, not knowing what he needed to do. He opened his eyes, expecting to see the stair’s floor. Only to see dirt and rubble. He looked up to see he was outside and surrounded by the villains. Though they didn’t move, he looked down at himself and didn’t see his armor, but just light. He couldn’t see his feet or anything. He felt for his face to feel nothing. He was pure light? What was going on? He looked at the villains again who again weren't moving, though they all now were wearing the same type of armor, demonic-looking and black as the abyss. He then noticed a shadow being cast from something above him. He looked in horror and awe. Above him stood a beast or kaiju like none he had ever seen. With the face of a Japanese demon, it was looking on to the others. Andrew stared at it for a moment. Knowing who it was.

“Drain.” He said, suddenly the eyes moved and looked straight at Andrew’s face. A large smile grew on his face and his head moved in super slow motion to look down at Andrew. Andrew gasped as he snapped back to the stairway in the mansion, he could hear everyone’s whispers about him. He looked down at himself Drain had done something to the villains, he gave them power of the Harold in exchange for their allegiance to him. Andrew thought for a moment about what to do. Before it came to him. Fight fire with fire.

He looked up back at everyone, though they didn’t know he ever was gone.

“This.” He raised his hand in the air and six different colored lights began to glow brightly in his hand and strung to life and fluttered around the room.

A light red one sputtered through to its destination, Star. It touched her and immediately as it did. Armor started covering, glowing in a bright red hard light but almost acting as a mek suit made of light, looking like a Terror Bird. A green one landed on Emerald, covering her in a lavishing green armor made of hard light, light but strong and covering every scale of her body. A light of black fluttered and spun around the room before landing on Aragorn. Thick-plated armor started forming around him, shining with a deep ultraviolet hard light with a large Excalibur sword made of the same light. A light of blue fluttered for a moment before landing on Buddy covering him in blue armor, light and covering most of his body and enhancing his claws with this hard light. A ball of yellow light circled the room several times before going to Erica with great force. With a grunt as it hit her, yellow armor resembling Tek started forming around her armor, she felt healed from her bruising, and in her hand formed a Rifle made of light. She looked at the armor and weapon in awe, Andrew could see her mind trying to figure out how this was all possible. He still wondered to himself how it was. He saw another orb of purple light flying through the air and touching Drake. Forming Purple armor of Hard light around him. Also forming a rapier in his hand. Andrew smiled seeing them all in the armor. And for a moment, he thought all of his knights were chosen. Until he saw a small orange light fluttering through the air, looking for someone to call its own. It fluttered around the room before bolting down the hall and into the kitchen. Andrew could hear snarls of shock as the Shadowmanes ran out of the room and down the hallway, being chased by the orb of light.

“What is going on? And what is thi-” Moonbeam said before stopping mid-sentence and seeing Andrew, and the others in the armor of light. She and Orbit stood there in udder confusion looking at this.

“What, happened while we were in there?” Orbit asked, the orb continued to fly around them for a moment before shooting off into the other room. The crowd followed it out of curiosity. They saw that it was going through the frozen. It searched through the many before coming to a wyvern that was frozen with the others, Tago. With a graceful touch, it began to glow brighter as she began to twitch, her eyes moved quickly, and she let out a gasp as she jolted up. Orange armor started forming around her as she looked around her.

“What, what happened? What’s going on?” She said looking at herself in the armor, the others looked at Andrew who was noticeably dimmer with this all happening, but still too bright to truly see him. Jack and Jay both could see him now though wearing their visors. His head and face were only two-thirds visible to them and they could see part of his coming out of his armor, the rest though was light.

“Why did you do this? Aren’t you strong enough to fight Drain on your own?” Emerald asked, the other in a mutter and partly unison agreed. Andrew looked at them with a smile. Though most couldn’t see it.

“I believe I am, but Drain has troops of his own and I am not sure if I can deal with all of them at pounce. I need you, my friends, my acquaintances, my knights to distract and fight his knight of darkness well I deal with the Harald of Darkness.” Andrew said, he held his bow tightly in his hand, the light from it still shined brightly.

“So you need all of our help?” Sylas asked, Andrew shook his head.

“I wish I could have you guys out there, but not this time. I need you all to go down to the White Obelisk room with the injured and frozen while we deal with knights and Drain.” Andrew answered, they all nodded their heads when he said this. “Now please, hurry.” Andrew continued. Erica walked up in front of Andrew as the other began to help the injured and frozen down to the Obelisk room.

“What? How do you know that Andrew?” Erica asked as she covered her eyes from the light of Andrew,

“There isn’t time to explain. We need to get outside now while they get everyone down there now.” Andrew answered,

“Why?” Erica asked, Andrew seemed to point to one of the windows, she looked out and saw the entire outside was dark, she began to feel the mansion rumble and quake as something from above came over and went by and repeated this once more. Almost like something circled the mansion. Then a thunderous boom rocked the house and everyone in it from outside. The children began to whimper and cry as the parents and Drake tried to comfort them as they took them downstairs first with some of the injured. Outside, Erica could see blood-red eyes peer from further in the darkness, and a demonic cruel grin slowly appeared out of the black mist, almost supernatural in how they stood out of the darkness. Erica could feel her heart rapidly beat as she stared out into those eyes. She could feel that they looked back directly at her. Erica thought could the black mist retreat from the window as Andrew walked up next to her. But she didn’t need to squint or even cover her eyes when he came close to this black mist as his light almost counteracted the mist and it just retreated from the window.

“Because, they are here.” Andrew said…

Author’s Note: Typo in the beginning, this is not the Finale!!! This is the SemiFinale!!! 55 will release soon from the ever wonderful Ben!!! I hope you enjoy this Arc of the series so far and our excited for the Finale for it!!!

The hour passed quickly, with most of the time they spent admiring Coral’s collection of trinkets. Some were from human discardings, others were fossils and bones. When it was time for them to leave, Viper and Coral helped carry them all to the meeting place atop one of the mountains near the Scar. With Coral carrying Nightfall and Viper carrying Forest and Crimson. They flew off towards the mountains, North of the Scar. When they got there, a large group of wyverns of all different kinds was talking to Methuselah, and seemingly arguing over something. Viper and Coral dropped off the three. Coral hesitated in the air as she watched her mother land with the other three. Forest watched her hesitation for a moment, before she flew away back in the direction of the Scar. He then looked nervously forward at the large group of wyverns talking to Methuselah. As Forest, Crimson, and Nightfall approached Methuselah to sit by him, the crowd of wyverns began to quiet down. A blue wyvern with white and purple markings stood in the middle of the group. He stared at Nightfall for a moment and then looked at Forest.

“So, this is the Drake. What's your name youngster?” The Blue wyvern asked with a kind voice.

“Forest sir.”

“Forest, it’s so nice to meet you. My name is Kaminari. I am the president of the Wyvern Republic.” The wyvern said smiling. Forest looked at him hard, he seemed genuinely kind and sincere. But he wasn’t yet sure if he could trust him or the others.

“My dear friend Methuselah here, has been trying to convince us that you three aren’t from here. Which we believe. What we don’t believe is that what he says you and Crimson are. He said you two are something called The Five, but from the sound of what he said it sounds awfully similar to the legend of The Wyvern Slayers.” Kaminari said

“But they are, how many Rock Drakes do you know named Forest? And how many times will we have to tell you that a forest refers to a group of trees!!” Nightfall said stomping, Kaminari scowled at Nightfall. Nightfall scowled back in defiance.

“I know his name refers to a group of trees, but I need to see one thing that will make me believe that he is who he says he is.” Kaminari said as he looked down upon Nightfall. Crimson then took a step forward as he finished saying that.

“The rune?” Crimson asked. Kaminari nodded.

“Yes, the rune has a marking that has been passed through generations of both lightning wyverns, and the seers. If it has the markings described by our ancestors, I might believe who you all say you are, but I may need to ask you another question afterward to have my cabinet and myself fully believe you. I’ll need you to hold the rune to let me examine it.” Kaminari said.

Forest sighed and looked at Kaminari. “I have nothing to hide from anyone.”

He grabbed the rune from his bag and let Kaminari examine it. His eyes widened as he examined it for a moment. When he was finished examining the rune he turned and started talking to the other wyverns. Forest sat in angst while watching them talk he looked over at Viper who gave a smile. She looked confident with what was happening. Forest was still worried; Crimson looked worried too. Nightfall was pacing but seemed more irritated than worried.

After several claw-biting minutes of waiting. Kaminari turned and looked at Forest and Crimson. “The rune you have shown me does seem to match perfectly with all the markings that our ancestors said would be on the weapon of the Wyvern Slayers.” He said.

“So that means we’re the legendary heroes of your stories, right?” Crimson asked. Kaminari looked to his council around him. Viper seemed to be the only one leaking into believing that it was the case. Crimson looked at Forest, expressing her deep irritation with this. Kaminari then looked back at the three.

“While I do believe who you say you are, my council has asked that I ask one more question.” Kaminari said. Crimson groaned with the news. Forest stood tall, but nervous as Kaminari told him this. “Okay, I’m not afraid to answer any questions.”

“Now slow down, there isn’t any reason for anyone to be afraid here. The final question is this, how did the wyvern die?” Kaminari asked.

“How did he die?”

“Yes, from our legend. The moment of when he was slain had no onlookers to speak of. And it explicitly mentions how he dies.” One of Kaminari’s cabinet members says. Several others begin to agree with said statement. Forest worried they wouldn’t believe him and they would be stuck here forever, or worse. That they would and consider them nothing more but frauds… either way though. He was going to tell the truth.

“We aren’t sure. He grabbed The Rune away from me. Then, the sky ate him, and storm clouds came down and swallowed him. When the clouds faded away, he was nowhere to be found. It was like Asgard ate him itself.” Forest answered. The wyverns nodded and talked amongst themselves about what they had just heard. Forest stood there anxiously as they spoke in hushed murmurs. Then Kaminari turned back around with a smile on his face.

“Well, it indeed seems you three are who you say you are.”

“Wait, you believe that!?” Nightfall snorted. Kaminari looked at him with frustration.

“Our legend goes, ‘And in secret, there in Asgard, the Wyvern Slayers would face the tyrant. There, they would call upon the weapon of the Rune in their hour of desperation. And the Rune would accept their call. And the tyrant was swallowed by the heavens, never to be seen again. With the Wyvern Slayers were victorious. They would return to their lives, until they were needed again…,’.” Kaminari recited. Forest looked at Kaminari with worried eyes.

“Needed again?” Forest asked.

“How do you know about Asgard?” Crimson asked.

“We didn’t, not even our seers knew what Asgard was. All we knew is something happened there. And that the only the Wyvern Slayers would know this. Which you three have proven to be the heroes of Fjordur, the Legendary Wyvern Slayers.” Kaminari said smiling.

“Yeah, I guess we are. I didn’t know we had such a great effect here along with Fjordur.” Forest said. He didn’t say everything that was on his mind though. He felt concerned about being called a wyvern slayer. Sure they killed Jethezzar, but they weren’t trying to kill him. Forest tried to save him. He was about to clarify that when Kaminari continued.

“And to that. I say whatever you need, we will help you achieve. And we’d like to hold a feast tonight in your honor if you two and your friend are okay with it.”

Forest looked at the president, his smile was as wide as the trench and his eyes as warm as they could be. He looked over at Crimson who nodded her head in approval and then looked at Nightfall who shrugged leaving the decision to him.

“I guess there’s no harm in that, but we have to leave tomorrow and we do need something. We need to know if there are any other ways to go somewhere else besides the Obelisks where tamed creatures can leave from? As we think the Rune will let us leave through an exit like that.” Forest asked.

Kaminari’s grin went away and his eyes softened. “We do, but no one can know of that path. The only few who know of this path are a few select members of the cabinet. We dare not show and accidentally expose it for fear of the gods’ punishments.” Kaminari said before pausing. He turned before getting interrupted by Nightfall.

“If I may, we wouldn’t need a private escort. All we would need is a single wyvern to show us. We wouldn’t even need to go in the day. Anytime would do. If the night is more suited, then we can handle the night. If dawn or dusk. Then we can handle those too. We just need to use that exit to escape. We can’t The Obelisks. So otherwise, we’re stuck.” Nightfall said. President Kaminari looked at Nightfall with annoyance, yet eyes showed deep thought. As he stood there. Crimson smirked at a thought she had.

“And if we can’t leave. Then we can’t fulfill your legends…” Crimson said. Kaminari looked at her.

“What do you mean?” He asked.

“Well, the Rune did send us here for some reason or another. And if that’s the case. Then, there has to be a legend, right?” Crimson said. Kaminari nodded.

“I suppose there might be…” He said softly. His grin came back and his eyes widened in excitement as he stood there.

“I think there is one that is mentioned... yes!!” He said with enthusiasm. He looked at the three of them and smiled.

“We will help you in this endeavor. I will send you tomorrow with Commander Viper, Methuselah, and two of Viper’s best guards to where you can leave.” Kaminari continued in excitement.

“Thank you kindly Mr. President.” Forest said,

“Yes thank you!”

“You three are all welcome! And please, call me Kaminari. Now if you like, you may return to Viper’s nest. You have done what we asked and have proven who you three are. I hope I will see you three at the feast tonight, if you come I will have you seated next to me if you are okay with that? If not, we can have you seated with whoever you like.” Kaminari asked smiling.

“Thank you Kaminari, we would appreciate sitting next to you very much. And thank you again, I think we will do that.” Forest said.

~

The three started walking away as Viper prepared their talons to carry them back to their nest.

“Forest! May I call you Forest? I would like to ask you if you could stay here for a moment longer? If it’s okay with you? I’ll take you myself to Viper’s nest once we’re finished here.” Kaminari requested.

“Uh, yes sir. And Forest is fine.” Forest said, he watched as all the other wyverns flew and Crimson and Nightfall went with Viper. Forest and Methuselah were the last two there with the President.

“Do you want me to go Kaminari?” Methuselah asked. Kaminari shook his head.

“Not quite yet old friend, you should know that you are obviously invited to the feast. But I am going to have you sit with us four at the feast tonight.” Kaminari said.

“But Kami-”

“No buts about it, Methuselah. You never want to sit with me because you don’t feel you have the right. You don’t feel you’ve earned it. Well old friend. You do and you have, you and I have been friends for years and you always refuse. Now you don’t get that opinion now.” Kaminari said asserting his ground. Methuselah grumbled.

“I expect to see you at the feast and I expect you will sit with us four tonight.” Kaminari said kindly,

“Alright… I’ll see you there. Do you have anything else to tell me or can I go?” Methuselah asked in irritation,

“You may leave. But I do wish to say that we miss you around here Methuselah. You really need to come around here more” Kaminari said kindly. For Forest, that was the first time he saw Methuselah angry about anything since he met him. Methuselah walked away down the mountain and after a few moments, it was just Forest and Kaminari.

“What would you like to know from me sir?” Forest asked in slight confusion,

“Oh, yes. Sorry about that. I would like to request that you do something for me tomorrow morning when we take you to the place.” Kaminari said,

“What would it be?”

“That you would take Coral with you.” Kaminari said,

Forest was flabbergasted, he didn’t expect to be asked this as a question or any question for that matter. “Why, wouldn’t her parents have to agree to that before you ask?” Forest asked in awe.

“She doesn’t belong here anymore, her parents and I both agreed on that. They were the first to bring it up to me that she doesn’t belong here. She’s not like us… in a good way.” Kaminari said, “I love her like my own. I’m her godfather and she was always a spunky hatchling. But she was never content with this place, her home, or Scorched Earth.” Kaminari said, as tears came down his face. Forest saw that he cared for her as much as any father could.

“But how do you know it’s with us and not someone else?” Forest asked,

“I don’t, not exactly… You see, it's one of our legends. What do you know of our legends?” Kaminari asked. Forest shrugged.

“I know of one thanks to Coral telling me. The legends of the seers and the legend of The Wyvern Slayers.” Forest said.

“So you already know of the seers?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because this legend is about the seers. You see, it was foretold by one seer that during the last generation of the wyvern seers. Wanderers sent by the gods of a strange land would come, and would need to take the gift of the spirit of foretelling. This would be our payment for the blessing of having the gift for so many generations. As it would become their blessing in their land once they return home.” Kaminari said.

“Ok, but what does this have to do with Coral? She said the seer has been dead since she was a hatchling, and the next one won’t be picked until they reach adulthood.” Forest said confused. Kaminari smiled and chuckled.

“That would be true in most circumstances, but in this. The seer must be announced early. And Coral is the seer, as was told to me by my predecessor when I took office. That was a shock to me to find that my goddaughter was the one who was called to be the next seer. But her time to be a seer here is not what she was called to be. She was called to be the last gift, and so she is called to be the seer of the wanderers. To you, The Wyvern Slayers.” He said.

“But how do you know, the legend doesn’t refer to the wanderers as The Wyvern Slayers. What makes you think it will be us?” Forest asked. Kaminari shrugged.

“I really don’t know, I believe its you. But I don’t know. You on the other hand will be the one to know.”

“Me? How will I know?” Forest remarked.

“Because I am going to tell you what she told me about one of her dreams, or visions as they are.” Kaminari said,

“That still doesn’t how-” “She told me she dreamed about a place where myth and reality are one. Far beyond that of anything we talk about or were told of. Where three supernatural realms exist outside of the domain of their gods. Where the gods and god killers of human myth guard this cold. Yet, a beautiful place. She spoke of mountains of smoke, where fields of lava blossomed; a land of green further than the eye can see. Places with deserts of white cold and water. Trees taller than some of the mountains that fill this world. She spoke of heroes who saved it from chaos. That they were brought together by a spirit of foretelling, and that spirit who brought them together was named Peeri.” Kaminari continued.

Forest was in awe, he didn’t know what to say. What little he described sounded just like Fjordur. Could he be lying? But how could he know Peeri’s name? Forest couldn’t understand it. He turned and started walking away. To where he didn’t know. He didn’t get far though. Kaminari ran up to him and stopped him before he could go further.

“You don’t have to give me an answer now, you don’t have to even say yes. All I want you to do is if you feel that you need to, take her with you. It isn’t a command, it’s a request. Just please give me an answer at tonight’s feast.” Kaminari said in a frail voice.

“Okay. And I promise I will.” Forest said,

“Thank you.” Kaminari said. Forest looked at Kaminari with a puzzled look.

“So, was this something you came to me on the spot with or did you plan on asking me this if we proved to be who we said we were?” Forest asked. Kaminari sighed.

“I planned on asking you when I first heard that The Wyvern Slayers of Fjordur were here. Most of what I did was for show for the other wyverns in my cabinet. They’re a skeptical bunch, but they keep my head on a steady balance. But I believed the same as Viper, who believed you three to say who you were. She was the one who said that it was time for Coral to leave once you three arrived. Why do you think she sent her so soon to stay with you? She wanted you three to get to know her, and maybe wish to take her. But again, you decide on that. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to push.” Kaminari said choking up. He genuinely seems to love Coral like his own daughter.

“Would you like me to take you to Viper’s nest?” Kaminari asked his voice cracked.

“Yes, yes I would. Thank you!” Forest said smiling softly.

Kaminari launched himself into the air, then circled back and grabbed Forest. Then flew off towards the World’s Scar.

~

Within another part of the Scorched Earth mountain ranges. A small pack of Troodons was being led by a basic linguist scout named Butch walked as being led by a large avian bird. The bird rotated its head back looking at them before cackling. He strode along with the group of Troodons following. This bird led them to a gorge. Where a wake of Argentavises had gathered in both the air and on the ground. The sound of the screeches and the rattling of bones filled the air, and so too did the smell of death. The Argentavises were barbarians here unlike other Arks. Other arks did carry some of the traits of brutality, but Scorched Earth’s brutality was on another level. And for all the brutality on other arks, they held high standards of life with speech, food sources, intellect, and nesting grounds. Not with the ones on Scorched. They spoke poorly, they weren’t awfully smart, they nested anywhere, and they hunted anything.

“Hear ye, Hear ye.” The Argent said announcing to the other Argentavises. The others looked over at the Argentavis and the guests he brought.

“Yous see that guests have appeared to Talontooth, guests asked Talontooth to take guests to leader. So Talontooth agreed.” Talontooth, the Argent that took them to the gorge said. An Argentavis landed in front of the group. Bones were messed through his feathers as he stared down the group.

“What do guests want with Bloodbeak?” The Argentavis said.

“Guests say they have offer for Bloodbeak.” Talontooth said.

“Then guest should speak and let Bloodbeak hear the offer.” The Argentavis, whom Butch presumed was Bloodbeak. Butch hated the Argentavis language here.

“What are they saying?” A troodon named Creditch asked.

“They’re asking what we want to offer?” Butch responded.

“Then let's get this over with, the sooner we say and they agree. The sooner no one can corroborate us with this operation.” Creditch said. He began to say aloud what he wanted as Butch translated into avian.

“Oh, Bloodbeak, leader of the Argentavis Mountain tribe. We wish to have you lead an invasion attack into the Wyvern Trench with us for a total and complete extermination of the wyverns. If you do so and we succeed. We will give you the full trench access and control as we only wish for the eradication of the trench and we know that you hold a claim as to the trench being your ancestral home. So we see this for you as a how we’d say ‘two birds with one stone’ proposition for you.” Butch translated to Bloodbeak and the other Argentavises. Bloodbeak seemed extremely interested. And from the sound of the squawking and ragged feather flapping of the crowd. It seemed to be gaining the interest of other Argentavises. Bloodbeak stood tall as he looked down upon the troodons.

“Bloodbeak like this propo-thingy Guests say. When do Argantavises attack with Guests?” Bloodbeak asked. Butch translated to Creditch who told him the answer and why.

“Tonight.” As Butch said the word. The Argentavises went up in an uproar. A mix of fluster and excitement as squawks and screeches were heard from everywhere. But Bloodbeak seemed more concerned with the idea.

“Why attack so soon?” He asked.

“Because the wyverns have a planned festival tonight, as it's the Night of the Seer, the night they were first ble— it doesn’t matter. What matters is they’ll be busy and off guard. Making them susceptible to an easy eradication.” Butch answered. Bloodbeak weighed it and seemed genuinely surprised.

“Makes sense to Bloodbeak.” He then immediately turned to the Argentavises.

“Bloodbeak decided to have Argentavises kill the Wyverns at first light of dusk!!!” He shouted. And he was answered with the cheers and screeches of the Argentavises. They then all flew off into the higher mountain ranges. Leaving the Troodons completely alone in the gorge. Butch then turned to the others.

“They took it. They’re attacking at dusk.” Butch said. The troodons all clapped in success as they stood there. All except Creditch.

“Are we sure they won’t associate us with the inspiration?” He asked. Butch laughed.

“Those thugs?! As soon as they're alone, they’ll forget we even proposed it. They’ll presume it was their leader's plan, and when the Mantises join the attack. They’ll presume they made the pact with Mantises. They won’t correlate us with the idea.” Butch answered. Creditch nodded.

“Good, good. Now lets hope the others had just as good of luck with their operation.”

~

Within the endless dunes of Scorched Earth, a band of six Troodons wandered through them. Being led by the scout who met with the Lords, his name being Heretic. He and the others carried large burlap sacks as they walked through the desert. They only had to walk for a short distance as they could see a large group of what they wanted. Mantises. They seem to know they were coming, as forty or so had gathered in the dunes. Heretic thought this was unusual. But these were insects, they behaved in mysterious ways.

Their group walked up to them finally. But they came to the problem of how to converse. Insects were a difficult kind to speak to. Even with a linguist (which they didn’t have). Because unless insects are bred tamed and raised near other creatures. They had extreme difficulty speaking outside of their language which was difficult for other creatures to understand. So it was a standstill of awkwardness for that moment. Until Heretic finally broke it.

“Are any of you able to speak or under-”

“IIIII AAAAAAAMMMMMM KKKKKKKAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSS. SSSSSSSPPPPEEEEEAAAAAAKKKKKK!!!!!” the front Mantis hissed. Acknowledging that they spoke Carnivore. Heretic cleared his throat as he looked up at the Mantis.

“Oh KARRRRAKIS, leader of the Mantis Dunes. We come here to make the proposition to have you lead an assault on the Wyvern Trench with Argentavises for the reason of complete and total eradication of the wyverns.” The dunes were filled with vicious hisses of the Mantises as Heretic said this. He paused for a moment in fright. “We know-”

“WWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!” KARRRRAKIS hissed with extreme volume.

“Wait, I haven’t even-”

“WWWEEEAAAPPPOOONNNSSS, AAANNNDDD WWWEEE SSSHHHAAALLLLLLL DDDOOO YYYOOOUUURRR BBBIIIDDDIIINNNGG!!!” He hissed. The other Mantises hissed alongside their leader in anticipation. Heretic looked at the other troodons and shrugged.

“Show them the payment.” He said as he dumped his burlap bag. Revealing piles of swords, sickles, axes, picks, and pikes. The other troodon soon followed. Heretic looked at KARRRRAKIS and smiled.

“We brought these in hopes that this might persuade you into joining ‘the cause’.” Heretic said as the rest troodons finished unloading the weapons they brought. And as the last troodon finished unloading their sack. The Mantises jumped upon the chance to grab any and all weapons they troodons had finished giving them. KARRRRAKIS watched as the pile of weapons slowly disappeared and was taken by his subordinates.

“IIISSS TTTHHHAAATTT AAALLLLLL?” KARRRRAKIS asked hissing. Heretic seemed surprised. They had brought enough weapons for an army three times their numbers and they wanted more?

“Was that enough?”

“WWWEEERRREEE TTTHHHEEERRREEE AAANNNYYY OOOTTTHHHEEERRR TTTAAARRRGGGEEETTTSSS?” KARRRRAKIS retorted. Heretic then understood what he meant.

“Make sure if you see a stray troodon and any other strange creatures that are with him… are eliminated completely. And you will be paid greatly for doing so.” Heretic said. KARRRRAKIS retracted his arm closer to his body and lowered his head in a bow.

“IIITTT SSSHHHAAALLLLLL BBBEEE DDDOOONNNEEE.” KARRRRAKIS said. He turned to the other Mantises and let out a series of hisses and other insect noises. Heretic watched as the Mantises began to disperse Heretic was beginning to get confused at what was going on.

“Wait, we haven’t even tol-” “WWWEEE KKKNNNOOOWWW WWWHHHEEENNN TTTHHHEEE FFFEEESSSTTTIIIVVVAAALLL BBBEEEGGGIIINNNSSSS. WWWEEE SSSTTTRRRIIIKKKEEE AAATTT DDDUUUSSSKKK.” KARRRRAKIS said. Heretic stood speechless as they disappeared into the dunes. Then, one of the troodons with them stepped forward.

“Can we trust them to stay to their word?” the troodon named Jass questioned. Heretic scoffed at her questioning.

“The Mantises have a deep hatred for the wyverns that we don’t even know the answer to. They will go through with it.” Heretic said, looking at her. She still seemed to question it.

“Okay, but can they go through with it? Can they eliminate the wyverns and our targets?” Jass asked.

“Ever heard of their attack on Nosti?” Heretic asked. Jass shook her head.

“The city of Nosti was considered one of the most powerful cities of Man within Scorched Earth, and a few small bands of mantises half the amount we saw with minimal coordinated efforts had the city on the ropes for days. With a fraction of the hate the mantises hold for the wyverns to the humans. With their number and their hatred. The Mantises will make sure to coordinate and ensure not a single wyvern escapes.” Heretic answered. Another troodon named Trident joined in the conversation.

“Plus the Argentavises will be aiding the assault on the trench. That means they’ll be an assault from both the ground, and the air.” Trident said.

“Which means the wyverns and fugitives are trapped in the trench. As the Argentavises will attack from the mountain, while the Mantises attack from the dunes.” Heretic said.

“With the odds far in our favor, the wyverns and the fugitives will be completely eviscerated by dawn’s break tomorrow.”

Paul wasn’t sure what was going on with Andrew. He needed to stabilize him first before diagnosing. Having a seizure could mean anything. Although he had a suspicion it was due to his head trauma. But he needed to be sure. And to do that, Andrew needed to be conscious to diagnose fully. The first thing Paul did was observe the symptoms; Andrew was seizing as being the most apparent. But his skin had turned gained blue tint to it, as though he was in cold water, and foam had started coming out of his mouth.

Paul took note of the symptoms in his head he immediately started by turning Andrew over onto his side, he put his leg under his head to cushion it. He didn’t try to top his seizing. He just made sure he wasn’t too much in the way. He counted the second passing, keeping track of how long he was out for. Freya seemed to want to help, she started trying to hold him still but Paul stopped her.

“No, that’s dangerous to do. Why don’t ya pick up the rocks and sharp objects around his body? So that he doesn’t cut himself.” Paul said, she obliged and started working. Paul sighed as he counted the time. He’d been seizing for about two minutes now, most likely a generalized, most likely tonic-clonic seizure from all symptoms being shown, but he wasn’t sure. If it was, he was most certain it was caused by the Equine kicking him in the head. He would have to do a diagnosis to be a hundred percent sure. He needed Erica to return quickly with his bag. Paul looked to see if she was leaving his tent. No sign yet, Jonathan had come out of his tent to see what was happening, he shook his head at Paul before heading back into his tent. Paul sighed with a heavy heart. It seemed like no matter if this kid failed or tried his hardest to be strong showing or holding on his own. He wouldn’t be accepted by these two.

Paul understood their point of view, no doubt. He was making many mistakes, some even which could be harmful to others. But he wasn’t used to their lifestyles, but he was still willing to give it his all to show he could. And they were in no position to refuse an extra hand willing to help them in their survival. He may be rough around the edges and inexperienced, but he had the potential and had the heart of a man who wouldn’t give up. Lastly, did they forget that each one of them had made mistakes, errors that could have killed one of them? Let alone that any one of their mistakes could be blamed for the death of any of their allies before. However, Paul did see some improvement with Erica's demeanor, even if she didn’t admit it.

~

Erica ran through Paul’s tent, he kept his quarters like a doctor’s office, clean and sanitary. But, he also kept his tent super organized. Which was an issue since she didn’t know where he kept everything in his tent. She opened and scattered things across the room. She couldn’t let Paul down. She finally found it after searching for several minutes of making Paul’s medical room a disaster area. She quickly ran out to see Andrew, who was now conscious and lying at an angle on Paul’s leg. Paul eased him while Jonathan and Freya watched.

“Ah, wonderful. Right on time Erica. Can ya hand me my notepad and pencil?” Paul asked, Erica was confused at this.

“I thought you needed the medical bag to get Andrew up?”

“Oh no las, ya can’t forcefully stop a seizure. They’re usually short enough ta need little medical attention. But I need my bag to diagnose Andrew and make sure he won’t die.” Paul said as he reached over to Erica, she reluctantly handed him the bag. He thanked her for it as he pulled out his notebook and pencil. “Three minutes and forty-one seconds—” He muttered as he wrote down something in his notes.

“Wait, what happened?” Andrew said, slightly slurring as he rubbed his head while trying to get up, Paul held him down for a moment.

“Ah ah, ya need to stay down. Ya just had a seizure, and we don’t know properly yet as to why. Though I have a suspicion.” Paul said,

“Wait, wait. I- what?” Andrew said as he started to began to wrestle again. He groaned as he reached for his head. Paul persisted in holding Andrew down.

“Yer alright Andrew, ya just need to relax. Now is it alright if I can ask you some questions? To see what yer dealing with.” Paul said, and Andrew hesitated.

“Alright…”

“Alrighty. Let’s start with do you remember what happened before you blacked out?”

“I believe so… I, I was riding in on, uh, Kni… Knight Sky. My horse. I wasn’t feeling g-good. I needed you to check me out. I lied to you earlier that I felt fine, thought I could walk it off; but that only made things worse.” Andrew explained,

“It’s fine lad, but what symptoms have ya been dealing with? In what way were ya not feelin’ good?” Paul asked.

“Uh… fuzzy memory, headaches, blurry vision, balancing issues, uh. I don’t remember what else.”

“Alright, don’t strain yerself. Do ya mind if I check yer blood pressure?” he asked as he finished writing down his notes. Andrew obliged. Paul set down his notes and grabbed his crude blood pressure cuff he had made a couple of days prior. He strapped it to Andrew’s arm and started the process of pumping it up. Once he got it to the right and safe pressure. He checked Andrew’s pressure.

“Yer blood pressure seems fine. Nothin’ concerning from that. So I doubt you have swellin’ in yer brain.”

“So what does that mean?” Andrew asked,

“I don’t know for sure, I’m gonna have ta run a couple of small tests for a proper diagnosis, but I can assume ya are dealing with a concussion. If that be the case, I’ll give ya two things to aid in yer recovery. I’ll help ya walk to my tent for proper diagnosis.” Paul said, and Andrew shook his head misunderstanding what he meant.

“That wasn’t a question. I’m telling ya what we’re doing.” Paul said as he grabbed Andrew and helped him to the tent.

Erica stood there watching them go off to the tent. She wouldn’t understand his innate nature to help this man. But she could sympathize she guessed, I mean why did she take the approval of Paul so seriously? But this was more apparent, Freya hit that reason on the head.

He was a father figure for her, and between her dad and—… she just didn’t have good figures or ones she could trust in with her life. For Paul though, it was different; he had been there for her this past year more than her real dad. And she could trust in him with her full heart when she was in need, unlike her other father figure. So she felt she had to show that she cared for his wants too, even if it wasn’t something she fully agreed with.

Though… she couldn’t help but want to give Andrew the benefit of the doubt.

“Do you know what we are doing now?” Jonathan said, startling Erica as she nearly took a swing at Jonathan. He flinched seeing her flinch for a strike. She sighed

“I don’t know Jonathan, maybe we should wait like regular people do.”

“Or, we could plan out our next move while down here. Maybe map out what this place has to offer.” Jonathan said, Erica looked at him.

“That’s not a half-bad thing to do. I think I saw some maps of the city in the back of the building. I saw a holographic map of the city a block away. I’ll take Ajax out and sketch a rough version for us to use. I gotta try him out anyway.” She said, and Jonathan nodded. She looked over at Freya. She was cleaning up everything from the fight and Andrew’s collapse. She looked back at them, she was able to hear their conversation from where she was. They weren’t being quiet about their plan, nor did they have to.

“Why do you two have to go around Paul’s back on things? Wouldn’t it be better if we all plan this together rather than behind Paul’s back and without Sylas being here?” Freya said, and Jonathan rolled his eyes with a smile on his face.

“Sylas is not needed in any adult conversations. Leave him to play with his toys while the adults talk.” He said, Erica nodded.

“Sylas will probably appreciate us doing this without him, and Paul will join us once he’s done with Andrew. So I think it's alright Freya. Just trust us.” Erica said, Freya looked at her with a concerned look. Then it disappeared, and she gave a faint smile.

“Alright, just as long as Paul will get to know when he comes out.” She said, Erica nodded and she walked away to find Ajax, and get to that map to get a full understanding of and a layout of the city and land around them. She was good at drawing and sketching one-to-one so it shouldn’t be too hard for her.

She ran down through the camp to the outside of the building. To where she found Ajax, her new Sabertooth or Smilodon as Jonathan corrected so many times. He was quite large, although Jonathan had said he was a pretty young adult all things considered. He started stroking his head, his grey fur soft and pleasant to the touch. He began chuffing as he closed his eyes, and started acting like an oversized domestic cat. Pushing his head against Erica’s hand and then her chest. She smiled with a slight warming of her heart to this.

“You're not too bad yourself, once I got to know you.— Now if you don’t mind, we need to go somewhere.”

~

Paul looked at a chart he had made categorizing all of the symptoms Andrew had. He had done several cognitive, reaction, and other true medical tests on Andrew seeing if he was dealing with just a concussion, or was there more to the case. Though, from the tests he had performed. It just seemed to be a severe concussion. Paul was relieved that it didn’t seem to be anything more than a concussion, but it still wasn’t good. He still could get severely worse without being properly treated. But first recovery was needed, and he was sure that Andrew would not be a great patient.

“So, final determination Dr. Riddley?” Andrew asked, and Paul started walking towards one of the cabinets in his tent. He looked back and gave a soft smile.

“It seems to just be a concussion. But I still need to treat ya with some medication and ya especially need rest during this time.” Paul said, and Andrew sighed as he lay his head back down on the medical bed.

“Alright” he sighed, Paul looked back as he made a cocktail of medical brews.

“So, where do ya live?” Paul asked, and Andrew glanced over at Andrew while he still lay on the bed.

“I live in one of the last non-ark forests on Earth. To be honest, I don’t even know how it survived if Earth got this bad. Maybe it was why the city is thriving too, but it’s a beautiful place. A couple of lakes within the forest, and the forest is full of life. It’s home for me, in good times and bad. All my supplies are held there too. Although I’m low on Element and Ammunition.” Andrew said, he then grimaced a bit as he held his head as it started to throb.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be asking ya questions and making ya talk. But if ya need ammunition, I can craft some for ya. I learned how ta make most types of firearm rounds up on the Ark so it’ll no trouble ta make ya enough ta last a lifetime.” Paul said, Andrew nodded. Paul walked to one of the other parts of the tent, and looked in another cabinet for sedatives to aid Andrew's rest. He found some narcotics that they used for taming creatures. This would have to do for now. He needed to make sure that Andrew would not try to get up and deny that he was in rough condition. And this combination should let him heal and recover at the fastest pace. He walked over and handed him the medical brew first.

“This’ll help heal ya. Just drink this and it should aid in your natural healing to rapidly heal. You’ll be ready for action in about twelve hours or so.” Paul said, he watched as Andrew guzzled it down. He made a disgusted face because of the bad taste of the medical brew. Paul smiled, everyone reacted the same way to this odd brew. Someone gave him the recipe back on the Ark, and it seemed to work fine from what Paul saw, but something wasn’t right.

After Andrew drank all of the brew, Paul grabbed the narcotic and began to find a good dosage to administer to Andrew. He scooped a couple of scoops of the thick green paste from its container and put those scoops into a bowl. After getting the correct dosage out, he turned and walked over to Andrew and handed him the bowl.

“Eat this, it may not look good, but it’s a sedative. It’ll help you sleep while the brew takes effect.” Paul said, Andrew nodded.

“Alright.” He said, Paul watched for a moment as Andrew ate the Narcotics. He sighed, he didn’t like the name that most people used for this drug. The drug was more of a sedative put into a tranquilizer with no real narcotic effects. So why call it Narcotics? It didn’t make sense to Paul to call it that, so he just said sedative.

Paul watched as Andrew slowly got more drowsy, his words slightly slurred and he started talking about stuff that didn’t seem quite normal for him. He started getting bubbly. Beginning to talk more about the place he lived some more, he got super excited about the animals that they had tamed so far, and being able to tame his own animal. The sedative definitely was beginning to take its course as he started jabbering on about some sort of fictional creature he was seeing right next to Paul and how it wanted a hug. Then he finally started dozing off, Paul was relieved to see he got the dosage correctly as he fell asleep quite quickly once he did start. He checked on Andrew’s heart rate to see if he hadn’t overdosed him. He watched his heart rate over the next few minutes with no effect to his heart rate. He did the dosage correctly. He sighed in relief, he got up and started walking away. He started hearing whimpering from Andrew’s bed. It sounded like he went into a deep sleep, and was beginning to dream.

He started walking out of the room when pain shot from his abdomen, he looked down and lifted his shirt to see a bruise from where Freya had hit him. Deep purple marks started setting in. He groaned as he would have to bandage himself later. He went back and grabbed a medical brew and chugged it down. As he did, he thought about how he bruised so much from one punch. Even if it was Freya who hit her. He could’ve taken dozens of those punches in his youth and never had this type of severe bruising. He sighed, but that was then. Now he was forty-two years old and beginning to feel his body start to break down. He wasn’t getting used to getting old, especially in an environment where he needed to be at his strongest. He looked back at the room Andrew was in. He wasn’t sure how long he would survive in this place. The ark he was just on was hard enough, but this place seemed a lot harsher and deadly. Something his body would not appreciate. But he was gonna make sure he survived long enough to make sure his crew was safe and willing to work together.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been gone from the others, although he could guess that he had been gone for at least an hour had passed. And with how silent it had been worried him. He walked outside to see the camp cleaned up, and no one around their tents. He decided to walk to the food court they created to see Erica, Jonathan, and Freya around the table. Freya was facing the opposite direction from Jonathan and Erica while she sharpened her axe blades. While the other two were preoccupied with something on the table. It seemed to intrigue them greatly. As Paul walked up to the others, Freya looked up and saw him coming. She got up and started walking towards him. She put her one axe back in the belt loop as she came towards him. Paul took a glance over at the other two and gestured his head.

“What’re they up to?” he said, she looked back at them and then back at him.

“They are mapping out the area and pinning down where we are.” She said, Paul gave a light chuckle and smiled at Freya. “Thank you, Freya, lemme see if I can help ‘em.” He said. At least they weren’t killing each other. He walked over to them and saw the map they were messing with. It seemed well done handmade map. The writing seemed to be Erica’s.

“What’ve you two figured out with this?”

“Map-wise, we’re here.—” Erica said pointing to the map. She was pointing to the western side of a diamond in the center of the map. “So this map is somewhat similar to what the environment around us is. From what I’ve seen the vast no man's land there outside the city, the sulphuric fields, and the missing protoark are the only things different.”

“Now, the Bracken Institute here, on Mt. Bracken by the protoark dome in the Northeast. It’s only about a day or so walk out there. This is where we need to go to bring down the Ark. Then we can get onto fixi-” Erica said before getting interrupted by Jonathan pretending to yawn loudly, putting his hand over his mouth.

“Yes, yes. We’ve heard your plan for several months now. However… looking at the current state of us, the state of Earth, and how we have plenty more options currently. I think we should we should ultimately wait on your endeavor to make sure we know what we are dealing with here, and we can deal with whatever meets us on the other side of the Ark dome.” Jonathan stretched out and pointed at the Northeast dome.

“We should go to one of the domes, or at least go on the hunt for stronger tames. We may need a powerful army to ensure that our goals are aligned with those on the ark.” Jonathan said backing up. He took off his glasses and began cleaning them. Erica looked at him flabbergasted.

“When was this planned by you?!” She said,

“Since you had preposed this… how you say? Hail Mary of a plan back on the Ark.”

“Hail Mary?!?”

“Yes, it is simply not viable without an army to better make sure your plan is as effective as possible. And with the additional aid of having our Tek back by then if Sylas robots do the trick. We should be prepared in a few months to bring the Ark down. Then we can force our enemy tribes to help us save this forsaken place.” Jonathan said. Erica began to yell, but for a moment. Paul didn’t cut her off. He sat in his thoughts about what Jonathan said. And while he didn’t agree with everything he said. He had to admit he was right. They had several enemies up on that Ark that were very dangerous and powerful. If they wanted to survive or even get everyone to cooperate. They would need to build a defensive army of creatures to back them up against their enemies on the Ark and aid their allies up there. But to do that, they would need time. He hated to do this, but Jonathan was right about this.

“—AND YOU THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE THE BEST TIME TO SAY THIS?!? WHILE WE’RE PLANNING HOW TO BRING DOWN THE ARK AND WHERE WE NEED TO GO?!!” Erica began shouting, and Jonathan merely smiled and shrugged. Erica began to roll her sleeves before getting stopped by Paul.

“Erica, Erica… I’m sorry… but Jonathan’s right. We need to build our defenses before we go back to the arks.” Paul said, Erica seemed stunned by Paul’s remark, Paul could only imagine that she felt betrayed. She took a couple of steps back, rubbing her left ring finger behind the knuckle. She took a deep breath and looked at Paul with a stoic, disgusted expression on her face.

“Alright, so you're willing to risk our lives in this matter Paul, just for an alleged assurance in case the priests and their allies won’t attack us.— Which Jonathan wants to use for a more offensive approach with them. So you are willing to risk our survival by adding several weeks to side with the one who will try to use them as a weapon? I can’t take that risk, Paul. I have put blood, sweat, and tears into building these arks for this purpose, and I have put my life on the line several times to get down here, I can’t wait longer, and I can’t risk your lives to postpone this plan.”

“They’ll be a weapon either way, and I only stand with him on the idea of getting some creatures for defense. Not for using them as tools of fear. And no one will get hurt. I promise, I—” he paused for a moment, realizing that something he had heard earlier might help them.

“I think that we might even be able ta make that time cut in half. And it’ll be thanks to our new tribesmen.” Paul said, the others look confused.

“Paul, what does Andrew have to do with this? He didn’t know where we came from.” Freya said,

“He doesn’t know how to tame.” Jonathan noted, he looked at Erica. She shrugged.

“He seems more like dead weight or more time added to our time than anything” Paul shook his head at this.

“He might be a small hindrance now, but he seems to be a fast learner from how you described him while he was taming the Equus, and how he built the tent with me. But more importantly, he’s got supplies, specifically the resource we need ta power our suits.” Paul said, and immediately Erica gave a glance of surprise.

“He has Element?”

“He said he had a low amount, but probably enough ta power our suits long enough for the droids ta build a good supply. If we were ta ask him the right way. He might take us ta his supply and give us it if we tell him the situation we’re in.” Paul said, Freya immediately agreed with him, the other two stayed quiet for a moment. Finally, Erica looked back at Paul.

“Alright, let’s do it.” She looked over at Jonathan. He rolled his eyes in disdain.

“If we must, then so be it.”

“Alrightie then.” Paul answered.

“How long will Andrew be out for?” Freya asked, Paul shrugged.

“I gave him a safe dosage, probably for a few hours.”

“Then let’s not waste any time and get packing now rather than waiting until he wakes up.” Erica said with slight angst. Paul looked at her, and so did Freya.

“Shouldn’t we wait though to make sure he doesn’t refuse?” Freya asked.

“With him? Please, he’ll say yes to basically anything. He’s been acting like a puppy trying to earn our respect. For once I agree with Erica, ad like you say. Let’s get cracking.” Jonathan said, pushing his glasses up further on the bridge of his nose before walking to his tent. Assumingly to prepare for the moment Andrew says yes. Paul sighed.

“I guess we’ll prepare before he gives a definite answer... Go on then you two. Best ta do the same as Jonathan, I’m goin’ to my tent to watch over Andrew and pack my own gear. Once Sylas gets back from his run, I’ll tell him to do so too.” Paul said, Freya nodded before leaving. Paul walked off too, thinking that this was such a rotten thing to put on Andrew’s shoulders right now. But it seemed to be the way they were going with things right now.

~

Erica stood there for a moment, most of what happened fell on deaf ears for her as she couldn’t get what Jonathan said out of her mind. Andrew was trying as hard as he could to earn their respect and trust, and even though she heard what he said that night. She couldn’t believe that it was simply the case, she felt there had to be something else he was trying to do. It couldn’t be that he was simply just trying to gain their trust, right? She shook her head. There was always an ulterior motive behind an act. Always. Jonathan had one for his suggestion of why they should stay and gather more creatures. And there was no doubt Andrew had one.

She finally heard Paul saying that they were going to begin to pack for when they ask Andrew for his Element. And everyone else began to disperse to their tents. She stood there for a moment before sighing.

“There’s always another reason…” she whispered before walking away from the kitchen area of the camp, and off to her tent.