Owwwww…

Tender taps across my body inflicted pain without even trying to. I moaned, rolling my head to the side to see where I was.

Darkness. And I couldn’t see through it. Instead, I drifted aimlessly amongst it, feeling it swirl over and around me, even through me at times.

I woke up again.

Now my body was hot. I shifted feverishly. The tender taps continued their touching, but my belly stung with a fierce pain that crawled through me.

My mouth opened, and liquid flowed down my throat. I struggled to open one of my eyes, clenched tight in pain, and saw only blurs.

Then the darkness consumed me again.

For what felt like hours, I drifted in and out of consciousness, in and out of pain. Each time I woke, the taps would continue, and each time I slept, the darkness would absorb me.

I saw a light in the dark, a massive red blast.

A high-pitched scream of pain, and the face of the siren danced before me, melting and turning to ash. Beyond her, the predatory grin of Rexcelsis sucked me towards him. He opened his mouth, chomping down on my body.

Pain erupted once more in my stomach, and as I tried to move, throughout my whole body.

I looked around to see that Rex had disappeared.

“Ho ho ho!” called a jovial voice.

“Santa?” I asked, turning towards the source.

Sir Grenzer rode a sleigh pulled by his two squires, with his black bag slung over his shoulder.

“You’ve been a bad dinosaur!” he said, a smile cresting his rosy cheeks.

Schlack!

A knife pierced my stomach.

“Aaaagh!” I screamed, falling to the black ground in pain. I grasped at the injury, but couldn’t find the weapon, only my hands came away covered in blood.

As I watched, the blood dripped down my hands, coating my palms, wrists, then arms in it. It climbed up my biceps to my shoulders, washing over my chest and up my neck. As the wetness crawled into my mouth, my hands began to change before my eyes.

Savage tips shot out of my fingers, black talons replacing my nails.

The blood seeped into my skin, leaving behind only scales.

I was changing.

I screamed in horror, turning to run, but the blood didn’t care where I went.

As I stepped, my leg changed, sending me sprawling to the ground, the dark blinding me.

The scent of blood clouded my nose, and I blinked, now seeing a corpse laying before me.

A Deotrexaptor corpse lay on the ground, blood flooding out towards me.

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My stomach grumbled, and I opened my mouth wide, tearing a massive bite from the creature’s stomach.

As I chewed, the texture in my mouth rapidly changed.

Now I was crunching, not chewing, and a point dug into my gum. I spit out the remaining food, white pieces of bone flying out.

Dinosaur skeletons, like those you’d see in a museum, climbed out of my mouth, doing battle on the ground.

Then they turned to me, growing in size until they dwarfed me, and charged. Mammoth feet came crashing down from above.

I screamed, waking up, my eyes bursting open wide, my breathing rapid.

I looked around, seeing nothing in the empty cave I thought I’d died within, not even dried blood on the ground.

Before me rested a chunk of unidentifiable meat, and a crude bowl of water made of woven leaves.

Then I realized I was starving.

Slowly, I stretched my stiff neck to reach for the meat, swallowing it in a single bit. My throat was a desert, and I quickly reached out with my tongue to slurp down some of the water.

It was hard to drink as a dinosaur.

But I managed to slurp enough water from the bowl that my thirst was quelled.

Who could’ve possibly taken care of me?

I doubted it was one of the humans. After all, they’d tried to kill me.

I couldn’t believe I didn’t die.

My attention turned to the list of things that had apparently happened while I was asleep.

Your [Health] is critical! [11/200] You are near death!!! [1/200] You have ingested [Crude Health Packet]. Your [Health] is critical! [16/200] You are [Bleeding]. You have applied [Crude Medicine]. Your [Health] is critical! [33/200]

You are [Bleeding]. You are [Bleeding].

You are [Bleeding].

You are no longer [Bleeding].

Your [Health] is critical! [9/200] You have ingested [Crude Health Packet]. Your [Health] is critical! [24/200]

You are no longer [Crippled]

You have ingested [Crude Health Packet].

Your [Health] is critical! [60/200]

Your [Health] is no longer critical. [61/200]

So… that kind of explained everything. I must’ve been treated by somebody almost immediately after passing out. There was no other way I could’ve survived.

And this person was capable of making or stealing health packets… Were those like potions?

Bleeding certainly did a lot of damage, too, but it seemed as though after that effect passed, I was able to regenerate health on my own.

I thanked my lucky stars whoever this person was that had saved me was around at the time.

As my eyes grew heavy, I let myself rest, with the vague sense of being uncomfortable because there was somebody I didn’t know nearby, treating my wounds.

And as I let my eyelids close, I took notice of the chamber. It was much cleaner than I’d left it, with bones and leaves splayed about.

Was there… even a chair now?

It wasn’t that important, I reasoned, as I let the darkness take me once again.

Yes, I needed to rest. Rest and recover. And then I can worry about my caretaker’s identity.

Hopefully I was safe from Savage Santa, though. The image of his grinning face danced in my mind, as the two squires pulled his sleigh, whipmarks carved across their backs.

I shook my head to clear the thoughts.

There were better things to think about, surely?

Yeah… Like my gaming monitor… 4k resolution… 40” screen… curves in all the right places…

And with those peaceful thoughts, I drifted back to sleep.