Dinosaurs! (Forger of Worlds Book 3) Page 12

  “What is it, my liege?” Hudson asked over the link, and his question was immediately mirrored by the others.

  “So, here’s the thing.” I rubbed my neck a bit nervously. “A new world has opened…”

  “I’m sensing a but,” Jodie said curiously. “Usually, you’re all about them, but you seem hesitant this time.” She fingered her gun. “What gives? You decide you don’t like phat lewt and gobs of EXP?”

  “It’s a trap,” I said, and yes, I did have to try really hard not to say it like Admiral Ackbar. “Someone opened that portal hoping we’d go there, presumably to kill us.”

  “Oh, then you definitely should not go there.” Cera nodded. “I’m glad this was an easy one.”

  “Well, while I’m glad you care so much about my wellbeing, Cera,” I shot her a conciliatory look when she flushed a bit which was interesting given her green skin, “the thing is, trap worlds actually give more experience and loot than normal worlds. So, while there will be some kind of horrible thing to deal with--”

  “You mean more horrible than being on a fish world made of monsters?” Gobta asked, which was a fair point.

  “Somehow, yes.” I sighed. “It’s probably a god trying to kill us.”

  “I thought that wasn’t allowed,” Veronica piped up over the link. “Like, the accords say they can’t interfere.”

  “Yeah, well there’s interfering and ‘interfering.’” I made air quotes around the word though I knew most of them weren’t there. Hopefully, they got it from my tone of voice. “And someone is ‘interfering’ with this portal.” I took a deep breath. “And I want to try it, anyway.”

  “YES!” Gobta thundered over the link. “That is why you’re my liege. Fuck death. Fuck danger! I will be glad to join you in this endeavor.” He laughed haughtily. “May we drink soup from the skulls of our vanquished enemies, assuming, of course, we do not crush their skulls into paste.”

  “Yeah, that’s the other thing.” I let out a long, slow breath. “While I am going to go… I need you all to keep doing what you’re doing.” I looked up at the ceiling of the Dyson Sphere’s lab. “Like, Jodie and Cera need to keep working on this Dyson Sphere, and they’ll need Hudson to help with that. After all, who else can do the outside repairs?” I let that sink in for a moment. “Melody is out because she needs to get to adapting bacteria, and Veronica is busy trying to figure out where the hell we can get all the associated minerals and whatnot, both of which are vital if we’re going to attempt to terraform Aphrodite for Cera’s people as I’m pretty sure that’s what is holding up the next actual portal.” I paused a beat. “And Gobta and Crabface are busy creating the dungeon world.”

  “What about me, master?” Queenie’s voice was an almost too tiny squeak of concern. “What would I be doing?”

  “Well, you’d come with me, of course,” I said matter-of-factly. “It’ll be me and you versus a whole world.”

  “Oh, then it’s fine,” Jodie was the first to speak. “Queenie will keep Garrett safe.” She glanced at Cera. “So, back to work while they do their thing in the new mirror world?”

  “My liege,” Gobta said with a sigh in his voice. “As much as I would love to be there with you, if Queenie is there, I will not worry. She is more than capable of protecting you, should you even need it.”

  “While I am saddened by this development,” Hudson added, “I look forward to serving my liege in the way he sees best.”

  “I’m kind of glad I don’t have to go, actually,” Melanie admitted. “Though I am really excited to get information on a whole new world. The more data we have, the easier the genetic engineering becomes.”

  “Yeah, same,” Veronica quickly added. “I mean about the excitement.” There was a pause. “And not having to put myself in harm’s way.”

  “I will do my best, master,” Queenie said after everyone had finished speaking their pieces. “No harm will come to you while I still draw breath. Also, I am honored that you would think to bring me on such an important mission.”

  “I couldn’t imagine having a better partner,” I said with a laugh as I fixed my attention on the Hall of Mirrors. “Meet me at the mirror?”

  “I’ll be there in a jiffy, master,” Queenie said as I teleported to the Hall and stared into the new portal. Usually, I could get some details about the world on the other side of a mirror, but right now, the normally shining surface was murky and opaque.

  “Well, this doesn’t feel ominous or anything,” I said as Queenie appeared next to me. “What say you?”

  “I think I should go through the looking glass first, master.” She looked at me. “Then, if something happens, you won’t be killed.”

  “You know what,” I said as I stared at the portal, “I agree.”

  “You do?” she said, a bit thrown off. It almost seemed like she had expected me to argue. “Very well then,” she recovered before nodding. “See you on the other side, master.” Then she stepped through the mirror.

  “I wonder how long it will take--”

  “Master,” Queenie said over the link, interrupting my thoughts. “You need to come see this world. It’s beautiful!”

  “Well, you don’t need to tell me twice,” I said as I approached the mirror and stepped through.

  17

  The first thing I noticed, as my atoms reconnected into molecules and those molecules reformed into cells and tissues and organs, was the sound. It was like summer nights when I was a kid, when everyone had gone to sleep, and all you could hear were the cicadas and crickets. Only this was turned up to eleven, and instead of hearing it through my one bedroom window, I was in the middle of an empty theater with surround-sound so amazing, it was somehow more real than real life. It was like the sound had physical weight, and while you’d think that would have been oppressive, it was like a blanket wrapped around my shoulders instead.

  I was in a jungle, only with half the trees the size of redwoods, and without the oppressive heat. The humidity, however, was off the charts. It reminded me of the time I spent in the Olympic Rainforest in Washington state, and like that forest, I could almost taste the moss in the air, tangy and just faintly sweet. I breathed it in slowly, letting it roll over my tongue, savoring it like a good beer.

  But this was a rainforest on an acid trip. Including three-foot-tall mushrooms with, I shit you not, cherry-red polka dots.

  “Master, would you like me to take Scout and look around the area?” Queenie asked as she scanned the area. “You know, look for whatever is here that is trying to kill us?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded as I summoned Scout. “Please do that.”

  As she grabbed Scout and then flew off to do a quick scouting run, I pulled out the communication crystal and opened the link to the Halls of Research.

  “Hey, Melanie, you got a sec?” Silence. “Mel?” Nothing, which was weird, because the geek-girl Pussycat had been on pins and needles when I left, eager to get new information on a brand new world. “Jodie? Veronica? Anybody?”

  I was starting to wonder if the communication link didn’t work on this world for some reason when I heard a far-off, languid yawn. I’d never thought a yawn could sound sexy, but then again, I’d never known any catgirls in my “normal” life on Earth.

  “Garrrrrrrett?” I tried to ignore the reaction I felt Down Below hearing the way Melanie purred my name. “Sorrrry, I’m just worn out, and I must have dozed off a bit.” She activated the hologram feature on her crystal, then took a few seconds to run her fingers through her long blonde waves. It didn’t really tame the adorable bedhead, but I certainly didn’t mind. She yawned again, ran her tongue over her full upper lip, and suddenly was fully awake and all business. “Okay, show me the menu.”

  I first turned my crystal so she could see the psycho mushroom, and she cackled with glee. “Oh, yeah, get a sample of that. I’m betting it’s either got medicinal properties or will give a reeeeally good buzz. Maybe both. Well, or it’s incredibly poisonous. Either way, it’
d be worth some gold. Wait, gimme two samples, one from the white, and one from the red bits.”

  “As you wish.” I opened one of the little sampling jars she’d equipped me with and reached toward a dot first before she made a warning noise. “Right. You’d think I’d remember to use the little toolkit instead of just using my fingers, especially since you just said it was potentially poisonous, but, well.” I selected a pair of tongs and took a bit of the red spot, dropped it into the jar, screwed the lid back on, and pressed the appropriate crystals on the outside of the jar to start the sampling process. Then I repeated the process with a white patch of the same mushroom.

  “Okay, Mel, what else looks good?” I asked.

  “Definitely the moss.”

  “Which one?” I looked waved my arm in an expansive arc. There was blue-violet moss dangling in strings from many of the lower tree branches, a neon-orange variety that looked like half-inch-tall pine trees where the palm-looking tree trunks met the roots, a similar moss on the bottoms of the hemlock-like trees, except snot-green instead of orange, grayish-pink stuff on some of the boulders, although I didn’t know if that counted as moss or lichen, and those only the major varieties I could see.

  “Oh, you know me, Garrett, I always want one of each from the buffet line.” She grinned.

  I groaned in mock frustration. “You slave-driver.”

  “Mwa-ha-ha!” She cracked an invisible whip. “Snap to it, my manly minion!”

  “If I’m the one paying you, how is it that I’m the minion?” I raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Because I’m the one with the knowledge you need. And knowledge is POWER!” Melanie did her mad-scientist cackle again, and I couldn’t help but smile as I shook my head.

  “Okay, okay, Dr. Mikeenstein, just as long as you stick to plants. No creating monsters.” I smirked.

  “Like I couldn’t create a plant monster if I wanted to.” She gave a shiver and turned serious. “Actually, that’s not outside the realm of possibility there. If you see any of the flora starts, like, walking…”

  “Aw, how sweet of you to worry.” But now I had a creepy feeling, too, even though I had reflexively checked for enemy Aura pretty much as soon as I got there, and Auric Sense was pretty much always on in the background. Still, I pulled the Destroyer King’s sword out of Inventory, purely to allay Melanie’s fears, I told myself, and not at all because I suddenly felt like the trees were watching me. “There, Mel. Feel better now?”

  “I do, actually!” She started to say something else, but we were interrupted by a blood-chilling scream, somewhere to my right, and not far away. “Oh shit, what the fuck was that?”

  “Not a clue.” I tossed Melanie’s sampling jars quickly back in my Inventory. “Plant picking will have to wait, I think I gotta go kill a… something. Garrett out.”

  I tucked away the comm crystal and gripped my sword with two hands while I put Auric Sense into Overdrive. Something small with a green bar, so my level or lower, not a threat, was about two hundred yards to my right, headed diagonally but not quite on a direct course toward me.

  And something big, but also with a green bar, was close behind the first one. That explained why my Sense hadn’t pinged me. The bigger green-bar whatever was in pursuit of the smaller whatever, and since the screaming sounded human-ish, I guessed that Someone was being chased by Something and could use some backup.

  I started running on a course to intercept, aiming to cross paths between the small Someone and big Something. The forest provided quite the obstacle course, but frankly, Donny, one of my Terra Forma trainers, had thrown worse at me. Literally, he set up courses with tripwires that hurled eighty-pound bags of seed-corn at me. Then again, that had been Earth, back when it was just a game I was training for, and where there wasn’t even the slightest possibility that the trees might be able to do a Birnham fucking Wood thing or some shit. For all I knew, the big Something was a tree. Whatever. My sword might be rusty as fuck, but it would still hack a green-level tree into kindling if I needed it to.

  I dodged boulders and vaulted over downed trees, ducking and rolling under the occasional low-hanging branch, readjusting my own course as the Someone changed his. The Something was gaining, not as much as I’d expected, but it was still pretty close behind when I crossed their path, yelling, “Hail, friend!” to a very surprised-looking guy.

  I got a quick impression of someone definitely human-like but covered in what seemed like sparse, lime-green fur or something, then I spun around to face the Big Bad Something.

  I didn’t need Auric Sense to tell exactly how close it was, between the crashing footsteps and a sound like a mad, big-ass blue jay. When it came into view, it turned out “blue jay” wasn’t entirely off the mark. At least, it was blue, a similar color to the tangled of moss hanging from so many tree branches. And its schnoz was sort of like a beak. It was also running on two feet that seemed kinda bird-like. Plus, the blue stuff might have been feathers.

  The body, though, was kinda like a doughy T-Rex, and the forelimbs were similarly tiny compared to the rest of its body. One small upgrade from a T-Rex though: those puny little arms ended in three-foot-long fucking rapiers. Six rapiers, to be precise, three on each hand. It would have been terrifying, probably, except when it paused for a second to assess me, its hands hung limp, and the triple-action swords dangled down like it was a gum-popping store clerk with fake nails, waiting for her manicure to dry.

  “Great,” I muttered to myself. “I’m in an episode of Fraggle Rock,” before I raised my sword and prepared to charge.

  “No!” Fraggle-dude shouted. “You can’t kill her!”

  “Oh, I most definitely can. Its only defenses are the claws, so a little dodge and parry to get past those, and--”

  And then Fraggle-dude was standing in front of my sword, arms spread like a kid playing keep-away.

  “You mustn’t kill her!” he cried. “She is the guardian of my clan!”

  “Ohhh-kay, and why is your guardian trying to kill you?” I asked as I raised an eyebrow at him. “Riddle me that.”

  “It’s not her fault,” he quickly explained. “I came too close to her nest, and her saurlings are newly hatched.”

  “Right, got it, mad mama.” I lowered the sword, but I was nowhere near ready to sheath it. “So, what exactly is the protocol for ditching an angry…” I read the creature’s nameplate. “Therizinosaurus?”

  Mama-saur added emphasis to my question by raking one triple-bladed paw across the dead tree to my left, carving off an ominously large chunk because, big surprise, dead trees are not that strong. Her second strike was three inches from my face, but even more fun, the force of the blow shifted the trunk, and I realized from the creaking above us that the whole shebang was coming down. I glanced up, and I couldn’t even see the top of the tree, it was so fucking tall. I had barely enough time to shove Fraggle-dude out of the way. Then, halfway into my duck-and-roll and maybe ten percent into calling up Aura Infusion, I learned that it doesn’t matter how high your Fortitude was, when half a redwood-sized tree lands on your back, you’re gonna fucking feel it.

  I clenched my jaw and concentrated on completing the Infusion so I could obliterate the trunk, but I might as well have not bothered. Mama-saur brought her head around like a whip on the end of that long neck of hers and basically head-butted the trunk to the side like it was a pencil. And then the Infusion I’d used to enhance my Auric Armor came in handy after all, forming a tooth-proof cushion as she closed her jaws around my leg and raised back up again, with me dangling upside-down like a fucking earthworm in a robin’s beak.

  I think this was the first time in my entire life that I held back on an Infused blow, muttering aloud, “Don’t kill the mama, don’t kill the mama.”

  Problem was, I’d already called enough Aura to turn a five-foot-thick tree trunk to sawdust, and while some of the Aura I’d gathered was feeding into my Auric Armor so that her teeth didn’t actually pierce my calf, that left a lo
t leftover. That energy had to go somewhere. Like immediately. I focused Auric Sense for a split-second to try to locate Fraggle while trying to maintain control over the Infusion that was about to go thermonuclear on me… or worse, inside me.

  Finally, with Fraggle-dude located safely to one side, I redirected the vast majority of the Infusion in sorta kinda the opposite direction and released it in what felt like the most satisfying sneeze in the gods-damned universe.

  Mama dropped me in surprise at the explosion of my Auric Smash, or maybe it was just that what little Aura I had directed at her had felt like biting a poblano pepper. I stayed flat on the ground where I’d landed, watching a trench just appear out of nowhere from the force of my attack, five feet wide and three feet deep and growing longer, and longer, trees tilting, clods of dirt and rocks raining upwards, then sailing back down. It was like watching an airplane crash-land nose-first into the ground, only the plane was invisible.

  Mama squawked as debris smacked her in the snout. Probably didn’t hurt her any more than a couple of bee stings on a bear’s nose, but it was apparently enough to send her scurrying a few yards away, diagonally to my right. I looked over my shoulder and motioned to Fraggle-dude, and he followed me as I sprinted to the left, putting the trench between Mama-saur and us. She wasn’t distracted by the stone shower for long, but it was long enough to Fraggle and me to put some distance, and the trench, between us.

  Of course, once stuff stopped pelting her, she was after us again, and I was pretty sure the trench wouldn’t do much more than make her hesitate. So, I dropped to one knee and pressed both palms against the earth and fixed my gaze on the trench. I pictured it deepening, imagined the earth at the bottom shifting, piling up on my side of it, the trench going deeper, the wall growing higher. In my mind, I felt the weight of it, the grit and stones and strands of moss. I took a breath, held it for a few seconds, and then just let my Aura shift the ground to fill in the image I was picturing. A hundred yards of ten-foot-tall earthen wall on this side of a ten-feet-deep dry moat. Okay, maybe only eight feet in places, but I was working under a deadline here.