Glacial dusk 15th
He awoke to thunder and the smell of rain, to the sounds of screams and yells. He’d sailed through more peaceful hurricanes than whatever this was. Unsure of many things but certain of the fact that he must pursue the scream. He was in what looked like a small hospital, others lay sleeping…? Nearby on bunks side by side by side… most wounded… some puzzle pieces had appeared before him but he hadn’t the time or wit to place them.
Through the miasma of his mind, his thoughts faltered but his instincts to run towards danger were firing on all cylinders. Adrenaline dumped into atrophied limbs and dark purple veins swelled as blood flowed through them. It was as if the near destruction of his body had forced it to become more structurally sound in its rebirth.
Into the rain the bedraggled man in linen bedclothes his head whipping about for the source of the sound he’d heard, the shouts were accompanied by a great crashing. Pushing long wet now graying hair from his face he realized he was above the sound in a massive treehouse structure. People below seemed to be running in what looked like at least a couple feet of flood water as they ran towards the mountain behind him and their various tree forts and homes. Through the rain he couldn’t yet make out the source of the sound, but it was enough to see people moving with such haste to galvanize him towards whatever it was they fled from.
Sprinting down the stairs taking them two at a time the man rejoiced at the sensation of movement, his body knowing this was the first time he’d moved without pain in almost a year, his mind still unweighted by that knowledge however, memories having slipped their shelves laying in disarray.
The thudding became louder with the crashing and roaring of displaced water. Through the veil of rain the source became apparent, horns first naturally.
Just the one charging monstrosity, easily taller than the man, with it’s horn leveled directly at his chest. Still something in the back of the man’s mind told him he could handle this. Charging towards the beast the graying soldier side stepped the horn tucking it under his armpit as the rest of him slammed into the wall that the dinosaur called a face. His feat planted in the mud. The wind was almost immediately taken from him and his head smarted where he’d butted it against the creatures forward crest. But his arms were locked around it’s stupid head, his hands locking beneath it’s jaw.
Ten feet, twenty feet it pushed him back, Myles could feel the earth giving way beneath him but he would not bow, the beast was slowing, he was not.
When his feet struck the roots or trunk of one of dratheras great trees the warrior kicked off with all his might twisting the dinosaurs head to the left as hard as he could while yanking down. In doing so he drug the beasts horn into the earth and it’s momentum sent it flying over Myles body before it landed on it’s back behind him.
Scrambling out of the flood waters the man gasped for air, his body hurt from the effort, but it was a good pain, a welcome sensation. Turning back to the dinosaur that was also strugging to it’s feet now sans it’s horn that was nowhere to been, just a wicked stump where one had been. Roaring at the monster as it faced him, he was satisfied to see it run in away from the city.
What he didn’t know, was that, dinosaur, had been running from the same thing the other villagers had been running from, and not, what they’d been running from.
Over the rain, a deep rumbling clicking noise appeared. Like what a mountain might purr like.
