Dinosaurs! (Forger of Worlds Book 3) Read online

  Mama-saur was tall enough that I could still see her head and neck as she paced back of forth on the other side of the moat. After a few of those blue-jay shrieks of hers, she seemed to realize that the “threat” to her and her babies was neutralized. She reached up a sword-laden foot and used it to pull down a branch with three-foot-long reddish leaves. After munching smugly for a few minutes, she then turned and sauntered off into the forest, leaves still dangling out of each side of her mouth.

  “Well,” I shrugged and turned around, “I guess that’s… Uh, what are you doing?” Fraggle-dude was on his knees facing me, head bowed. I could see now that the fur-looking stuff was some type of wispy feathers, and he wasn’t wearing them. They were growing like hair, longer on his scalp and in patches on his cheeks, and more like sparse down on the rest of his body. He had normal, human-ish hands, no dagger-like claws, and right now, his hands were clasped together and raised above him, like either he was praying or hoping I didn’t stab him. Maybe both.

  “You’re… you’re an Earth Shifter! I am not worthy to be in your presence. Forgive me,” he squawked.

  “Dude, come on. I’m not a god or anything.” Well, not on this world, anyway. “It’s just a, well, it’s a thing I can do.” He didn’t move. “Really, you can get up.”

  He remained motionless, and I sighed.

  “Look, I command you to get up.” He slowly rose, head still bowed, arms still raised. Which, at least, that meant he didn’t see me roll my eyes. “I, uh, command you to treat me like a normal person.”

  I thought for a minute that I’d broken his brain, but he finally lowered his arms, then looked up just enough to meet my gaze. He flinched a little, and I smiled as encouragingly as I could.

  “So, anyway, I’m Garrett. You got a name?”

  “I am Kanil, of the Blue Palm clan,” he whispered.

  “Cool. You got any water in that bag of yours?” I didn’t actually need a drink, but it seemed like a good way to seem like a normal guy and to let him feel like he had something to contribute.

  “Y-yes.” He pulled out a canister that looked like a Thermos, only made out of something like bamboo. The cap came off with a slight “pop,” and he handed me the canister. There was a thin sheet of cork-like material wrapped around the top of the canister which apparently made a tight seal with the cap that fit over it.

  I took a long draw of water, making sure to leave him plenty, which took some willpower because once I got a taste, I realized that yeah, I might not have needed it, but it sure as hell felt good.

  “Thanks, Kanil. You know, this is really nice workmanship.” I nodded to the canister. “Truly top notch.”

  “Th-thanks. I made it. I make them for all the clanspeople.” He paused. “I, uh, came up with the design myself.”

  “Wow.” I wasn’t just being polite. It was actually really cool, and far beyond anything that I’d have found on Amorphie. “You must be a pretty popular guy in your clan.”

  He smiled sheepishly. “I am, but my sister is also the leader, so people have to be nice to me.”

  “Well, any chance I could meet your sister? And the rest of your people. I’d like to get to know the folks here if that’s okay?” I shot him a smile.

  “It would be a great honor.” He bowed his head again.

  I grinned and nodded. “I’ll make sure to tell them how helpful you were to me.”

  “Helpful?” He gave me a curious look. “I did nothing.”

  “Sure, you did.” I waved in the direction the Mama-saur had gone. “You stopped me from ignorantly killing your guardian. Even in the middle of a life-threatening crisis, you put aside your fear to protect her. There aren’t a lot of men who’d have the presence of mind to do that.” Yeah, I was stroking his ego, but it was the truth, too.

  “Y-you honor me too much.” He swallowed nervously.

  “I just call ‘em like I see ‘em.” I took one last swig of water and handed him back the canister. “Okay. Take me to your people.”

  18

  “Queenie, have you about wrapped up your survey?” I asked the Ant Queen over the link as I followed Kanil.

  “Yes, master,” she replied quickly. “I have taken samples of each item Scout expressed interest in, on the forest floor and in the canopy, and have run out of containers.”

  “Uh, didn’t Melanie give you two hundred sampling jars?” I took a deep breath. That was quite the divergence of life.

  “Yes, master.” There was a pause. “For our next excursion, might I suggest a supply of five hundred?”

  I smiled to myself. “You might suggest it, but I’m not sure Mel will be so keen on that many samples to analyze.”

  “If she did not sleep so much, she would have more time to serve you.” It was a fair point, to be honest.

  “I… will discuss it with her when I talk to her next. For now, I’m sure that two hundred will be more than enough to start with. Thank you.” I paused a beat. “Anyway, I would like you back with me, you and Scout both.”

  “There is worry in your tone, master. Are you in trouble?” she asked, and I had the feeling she was about to bolt across all of, wherever this was, to get to me.

  “No, no, everything’s good here.” I glanced up at Kanil a few meters ahead and lowered my voice a little. “I just have this… creepy feeling.”

  “I do not understand, master,” she said hesitantly.

  “Have you ever felt like someone is watching you, but you don’t see anyone, and you don’t Sense anyone’s Aura?” I asked as I tried to put my feelings into words. It was weird. I hadn’t felt it when I’d fought the Therizinosaurus, but with every step I took toward Kanil’s village, the gnawing, unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach seemed to grow. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, with this being a trap world, but still…

  “I have faced many enemies with many varieties of invisibility shields,” she said curiously. “It is something like that? If it is, perhaps I will figure it out when I arrive? None have escaped my notice for long.”

  I shook my head. “This is different.”

  “Different in what way?” she asked.

  I rubbed my temples and tried to concentrate. What exactly was it that I felt? “This doesn’t feel like an enemy, somehow. The problem is that it doesn’t not feel like an enemy, either. It feels like…” For just a second, it felt like my hair stood on end, and then it was gone. “It doesn’t feel like a living presence.”

  “Perhaps there is a necromancer, and you sense one of his risen beings,” she pondered. “You could ask Gobta about it?”

  “I don’t think so. When Gobta raises a zombie thing, it still has an aura.” I shook my head again. “I don’t know, and that’s the problem. That’s why I’d like you to join me, with Scout, and see if you sense something I’m missing.”

  “I am sure that master’s senses are much keener than my own, but I will gladly do as you request. In fact, I am almost there now.” A moment later, Queenie was beside me, and not because I’d summoned her.

  “Uh, that was quick,” I said as she touched down beside me.

  “I was flying to you from the moment you requested my presence, master.” She looked around, already concentrating on the surrounding forest to assess potential threats. Her antennae quivered toward Scout, and his own antennae vibrated in return. For a minute, she was in her own world, then she shook her head to clear it and looked at me apologetically. “I am sorry, master, but I am unable to locate any source of your ‘creepy’ sensation.”

  “That’s okay. Actually, it makes me feel a whole lot better that you don’t sense anything.” I shot one last glance at the forest. “If you or Scout don’t detect danger, I’m confident there is none there.”

  Queenie flushed and looked down. “You honor me with your confidence. Still,” she looked worried, “I can tell I have not dispelled this ‘creepy’ feeling you have.”

  “Don’t worry, Queenie, you haven’t failed me. Sometimes humans are just… w
eird. I’m sure that’s all it is.” I smiled at her, hoping I’d done a better job of convincing her that I had of convincing myself. Because as we walked, the intensity of the feeling kept growing.

  Kanil paused while Queenie and I caught up to him. I was prepared for him to have a full-on freak-out when he saw my part-ant companion, either from her sudden appearance or from her, well, actual appearance, but he just acknowledged her with a gesture that was like a salute, only about collarbone-high.

  “I am Kanil.” He dropped his hand.

  “I am Queenie.” She returned the gesture. “I serve master.”

  He nodded slightly, apparently satisfied, and it occurred to me that he probably didn’t find a compound-eyed woman with a shiny exoskeleton any stranger than a featherless dude with relatively colorless skin and hair, wearing, well, little more than a loincloth.

  “Do you fly, Queenie?” He nodded toward her wings.

  “Yes, I do.” She extended her wings a little as if showing them off. “When it is of use to my master.”

  “Have you flown here, above this forest?” He gestured toward the sky.

  “I did.” She nodded.

  Kanil chewed his lip wistfully. “What does the world look like when seen from above?”

  Queenie paused, then recited back a list she had probably mentally written down as she had surveyed, seeing as I hadn’t watched through her eyes at the time, what with my having been preoccupied with not being eviscerated by a giant, territorial blue jay dinosaur.

  “From here, the forest itself stretches approximately one hundred miles to the west and to the south and approximately fourteen miles to the north and east. The assortment of trees is relatively uniform, with tall conifers dominating, and an understory of palms. There are few clearings, but in them, I could see a variety of scaled and feathered creatures, ranging in size from two to twenty feet tall. I could not ascertain if there were smaller creatures, as the grasses and other vegetation in the clearings were two to four feet tall. The number of flowering plants in the clearings was… unlike anything I have encountered, in every color imaginable.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “It was quite pleasing to view.” Then she was all business again. “To the north and east, there is a large body of water that I presume is an ocean, but I did not travel that far, so I did not obtain samples. To the south and west, I saw what might have been a strip of grassland, and past that, what I believe to be a desert.”

  Kanil shuddered at the last part. “The Saurians live there. They were once like us, but they angered the gods, and they were stripped of their feathers and cast into the Barren. They envy us greatly and raid our settlements, burning all that they cannot steal.”

  “So, evil lizard-men, angry Therizinosauruses… Therizinosauri?” I shrugged. “Whatever, this place is turning out to be a jungle paradise.”

  Kanil held up a hand in protest. “Oh no, the Therizinos are our guardians! They hate the Saurians, and they can smell them coming, so when we hear the Therizinos calling out a warning, we know to be ready.”

  “Ah, so they aren’t just, like, your mascots, they’re your actual protectors.” I considered that for a moment. “Glad I didn’t kill mama, then.”

  “Yes.” He looked embarrassed all of a sudden. “I confess, when I saw you appear, holding your metal claw ready to hurt her, I thought you were one of the Saurians.”

  “Totally understandable.” I started to make some lame joke about not having scales or something, but fortunately, we were interrupted by a sound like if a foghorn and a tuba had a baby.

  Kanil took a small, whitish object out of his pouch and held it to his lips. He sounded three notes, and after a pause, the foghorn-tuba seemed to reply. Within two minutes, we arrived at a ten-foot-high stockade fence, only every sixth or seventh post was a relatively young, but still very much alive, redwood. The trees must have grown naturally because the fence wasn’t a straight line. Instead, it kind of zig-zagged from one trunk to the next.

  I couldn’t actually tell where the gate was until there was a creaking, groaning noise, and a set of six posts slowly rose into the air. The bottoms of the countersunk logs were only a foot above the ground when they stopped rising, and instead, they started swinging outward while the top of the gate swung in, like some huge vertical see-saw. We had to duck a bit to enter, and once we were under the gate, I saw that several horizontal posts bolstered the vertical logs. Also, there was a thick post on each side, directly behind the edges of the pivoting gate, that created a narrower entrance. Those posts were about six feet tall, and the gate’s fulcrum rested across them. Of course, the entrance had its own thick door, which was now swinging outward to allow us to enter the village.

  I wondered just how quickly the villagers could make the gate swing, picturing a party of raiders trying to batter the gate and being periodically swept aside like dust with a whisk broom. If a lucky raider managed to duck under and whump! The gate would swing back down and pancake him against the inner door. It was complete overkill.

  I loved it.

  A half-dozen guards with wooden spears were waiting in a semicircle inside the door, but they lowered their weapons as soon as they saw Kanil. One guard gave him a friendly chest-bump, and an older-looking guard ruffled his head-feathers. Now I understood why they were called the Blue Clan. Unlike Kanil’s neon-green feathers, everyone else sported a similar shade of deep blue with only a hint of green. When they noticed Queenie and me standing behind him, they all tensed for a moment, but Kanil waved us forward with a grin, and everyone relaxed.

  “These are new friends!” he called out. “Garrett came to my aid in the forest, and Queenie is his servant.”

  As we all headed into the village, the older guard said, “We heard the Therino’s alarm and worried that Saurians had ambushed you.”

  “No, no.” Kanil looked a bit sheepish. “I was the cause of her alarm. I stumbled upon her nest.” He brightened. “But it turned out to be a fortunate mistake, for otherwise, I might not have met Garrett.”

  The others looked at me, clearly taking in Kanil’s this odd-looking “new friend.”

  The female guard spoke up. “You do not appear to be from this forest.”

  I laughed. “Uh, no. We are… explorers. From, well, it’s kinda hard to explain.”

  Kanil shrugged and said matter-of-factly, “They’re from another planet.”

  I did a double-take. “How did you-- I don’t remember saying--”

  “He is a Reader,” the female guard said with some reverence.

  “He’s a mind-reader?” I asked as I turned toward Kanil in shock.

  Kanil laughed. “No, of course not. That’s a charlatan’s trick. I read the scrolls.”

  “Oh. Whew. I was worried for a second, but that’s a load off my mind.” My lame pun was met with silence, but then Kanil chuckled. I liked this guy.

  A tall woman approached us, and I knew instantly that she must be the leader. For one thing, the guards suddenly stood at attention. But mainly, she just exuded confidence. Shoulders back and chin up a little, but not haughtily, more of an “I’ve got my eye on you.” Her feathers were a deeper shade of blue than the others’, or maybe it was just that they were thicker. And she was built.

  Almost as tall as I was, long legs with calves as firm as if she was wearing high heels even though she was barefoot, she had arms that would make Ronda Rousey’s look flabby and abs that would bounce a quarter into fucking orbit. Plus, all she wore was a loincloth, so while there was a whorl of feathers that partly covered her nipples, I could take in the perfect curves of her breasts, which while not the biggest I’d encountered, were as firm and smooth as the rest of her body.

  I realized that her gaze was resting on me, one eyebrow cocked.

  “I was not expecting guests,” she said when I finally looked her in the eyes.

  “Yeah, I, uh, hope it’s not, uh, an imposition.” Why the hell was I stammering like a middle-schooler who was hot for teacher? That quest
ion led to thoughts of spanking, which had never been my thing, but now, I wasn’t so sure. What the fuck, Garrett? Get it together.

  “Of course not!” She smiled at me, the same unreserved grin as Kanil. “It is always good to see new faces or at least new faces of potential friends.” She put a hand on Kanil’s shoulder and sideways-hugged him like any big sister would. “And Kanil is an excellent judge a character. Kanil’s friends are the Clan’s friends.” She paused thoughtfully. “We must welcome you with a proper feast tonight, but our supplies are low.” She looked at Kanil. “Did you locate any meat-to-be before your encounter with our guardian?”

  “Yes, Thera, just three sprints north of here.” Kanil pointed off toward the north. “There are at least two Hadrosaurs.”

  “Perfect.” She gave him a pleased smile. “Please find Jorna and bring him with you to the weapons hut. You can describe the route to us then.”

  “Um,” I raised my hand, “if it would be okay, I would love to accompany you, to see the lay of the land, and it’s been a while since I killed a Hadrosaur.” Okay, I’d never killed a Hadrosaur, but “never” is technically “a while.”

  Thera tilted her head, sizing me up for a moment before she nodded. “Very well.” She turned back to Kanil. “Come, Kanil, tell me the route as I prepare.”

  19

  I had a feeling Thera wanted some time alone with Kanil to debrief him about his new friends, not just about the location of the Hadrosaur. It was totally understandable, and even though I hadn’t shaken that creepy something-watching-me feeling… if anything, it was stronger inside the village… the vibe wasn’t coming from Thera, so I was pretty sure there was no elaborate plan to take me back into the forest and kill me.

  So when Queenie asked, “Do you wish me to accompany you?” I said no.

  “What I would like you to do is snoop a bit. Or rather, let Scout do it. That way, it’ll just look like a doggie-ant wandering around innocently.”