When Erik opened his eyes, morning sunlight filtered through the jungle canopy turning the dense treescape into a blend of golden light and heavy shadow. A lazy breeze passed over them, carrying the scent of the swamp and the sounds of the night life were fading. The endless songs of crickets giving way to birds chirping high in the treetops, and the occasional ribbit emanating from what Erik could only conclude were extremely large frog shaped subwoofers.
He pushed himself to his feet and realized his body felt stiff, so he stretched before stopping a moment to consider how remarkable that was. Never had he felt so in tune with his avatar in a VR game. There was no doubt that this technology could blur the line between real life and fantasy.
He pushed the musing aside and stretched, doing his best to loosen his muscles before shaking them out like a dog flinging off water. Next to him, he was aware of Marcus and Sarah going through similar routines, and he wondered if they’d noticed. If they felt how deep the game seemed to have embedded itself into their mind.
His friends began to move around, Sarah taking tentative steps until she was certain her injuries were gone.
“That’s much better.” She informed them, balancing lightly on the balls of her feet. Erik gave a deep huff of approval and turned to look at Marcus who was walking easily, and a quick look over revealed that their debuffs were indeed gone.
“Alright, first thing. We top off on water and we find something to eat.” Erik told them, reiterating the plan they’d worked out before entering the game. Again, drinking directly from the swamp proved to be unpleasant, even though the water tasted fresh and clean.
The three of them set off along the shoreline, far enough back from the murky water that they couldn’t be snatched by even the large kaprosuchus without warning. Though Erik wasn’t even sure if it ambushed prey out of the water like it’s modern cousins.
It didn’t take long before they began to hear chirping and hooting in the distance, and Erik sent Sarah to sneak ahead and check it out. Vanishing into the jungle for only a few minutes before returning to inform them she had found a small pack of adolescent deinonychus.
“It’s a feathery looking raptor,” she said, “smaller than me, but not by much.”
“How many?” Erik asked.
“I saw four.” Sarah told him.
“We can take four,” Marcus said, tilting his head to look down at Erik.
Erik considered the situation for only a moment before he decided. Not only did Sarah and Marcus need to eat, but they needed to engage in combat in order to properly earn biopoints. Since the tournament had begun they had mostly been reacting. It was past time they took some initiative.
“Alright,” Erik agreed, and he saw both of his friends grow tense, their eyes flashing with excitement. “We’re going to set up an ambush. The win condition is killing at least 1 of them and driving off the rest. Killing more than that is a secondary objective. The engagement conditions are 3 versus 4 where we have a size advantage. If that situation changes for any reason, we disengage immediately. Agreed?”
Marcus nodded, his T-rex head bobbing with an almost exaggerated motion, and Sarah clicked her teeth together in a rapid-fire kind of way that Erik took to mean affirmative.
After quickly arranging the order of battle, the trio moved into their positions. Sarah moved to flank the group of feathered dromaeosaurids, while Erik and Marcus made a more direct approach. Marcus fell off to remain concealed in the tree-line as Erik wandered into the open, pretending not to notice the raptors and doing his best to behave like an herbivore might. Sniffing at the ground, as if hunting for food.
It didn’t take long for the small pack to notice him, or to launch their attack. The drum of their footsteps on the jungle soil reached his ears as a series of rapid thuds as they crossed the distance between with startling speed.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Erik whipped around, presenting his horn and crest to the predators. He trumped defiance and alarm at them, pivoting to the left and moving back as two of the four tried to encircle him. It was clear what they intended, to keep him circling until he tired out or one of them was able to strike a fatal blow. Sadly for them, they’d never get the chance.
With a very uncharacteristic degree of sneakiness Marcus crept from the bushes, his rex body crouched low, but moving quickly. Erik continued to book up and move from one side to the other, trying to keep all the raptors on one side of him and facing away from Marcus.
The juvenile T-rex was able to get surprisingly close, and when Marcus finally did spring his ambush, there was no chance. He seized a squalling deinonychus by the neck and gave his head a sharp, powerful twist. With an unpleasant grinding crack, the raptor died in his jaws.
Sarah landed on the back of another while it was still wheeling around, trying to figure out what had happened, her greater weight bringing it down while her sickle claws left gouges in its flesh. The game made the attacks seem more shallow then they should have been, but the visuals did not alter the result.
As the two raptor cousins tumbled to the ground, the smaller one tried to roll in order to throw Sarah off it, but already it’s struggles were weak and any help it might expected from its pack mates was lost, as Marcus dropped his dead prey, charging forward at the remaining two, and Erik coming at them from the other side.
The deinonychus panicked and bolted, sprinting off in totally different directions from one another, but they quickly outdistanced the larger dinosaurs and Erik and Marcus broke off, circling back to the two corpses they had secured, with Sarah’s target having succumbed to her vicious mauling in the few seconds it had taken for it’s siblings to abandon it.
Marcus gave a snort, but said nothing as he began to dig into the Deinonychus corpse and Sarah made no noise at all before doing the same. Erik kept watch, wary that their fight, brief though it was, might have drawn in larger predators looking to finish off a possibly tired and wounded victor. Though even the prospect of that couldn’t dampen the ball of warmth in his chest. They had done it. They had proved they could still do it. They could lay out a plan, and then execute it. Erik was certain if they could do that, they could win. They could win this whole damn thing.
As his friends finished up their… meals, they approached him.
“Smooth little Rik, very smooth.” Marcus rumbled, crimson spots of blood dripping from his jaw.
“Now we need to find one of those angry plants for you.” Sarah said, but before Erik could respond he heard something. No, he felt something. Something he had been fearing since the game began. Like a tickle through his feet, he felt a tremor passing through the ground accompanied by a deep thud somewhere in the distance.
Then it came again, and again, increasing in strength as whatever it was approached them.
“Hide.” Erik whispered, and the three of them rushed into an especially thick patch of undergrowth as the approaching monster came closer.
Boom
The three of them hunkered down together, staring up through the leaves that covered.
Boom
Leaves that seemed like pathetically little shelter as they heard branches cracking as the massive monsters approached.
BOOM
Erik's heart was thundering his chest, as he saw the creature's silhouette appear in the treeline, with the sun behind it, he could see every terrifying inch the dinosaur's proportions and it took everything he had in him not to bolt. To make a run for it. To get as far away from this prehistoric demon as possible.