NaNoWriMo: Return of the DinoKnights (Day 23)
Te journey to the meteor impact had been slow, the human roads took them only so close, but Brach’s roadster, forged in the image of a Monoclonius, was adept at off-road travel, its independently moving treads carrying it to the edge of the cliff Sheriff Horne, Gloria and Brach stood upon.
The monsters had seen them.
The cloaked skeletal figure was already moving away from his own immense effigy. Despite his hunched and awkward appeance he climbed the cliff face with shocking speed.
“Get Gloria back in the transport.” Cora said. She nodded, and her armor extended a helmet over her head, blue metal framing her skull, her horns coated in silver, and her face protected behind a transparent shield.
“What are you going to do?” Gloria shouted.
“You’ve gone mad.” Brach said.
A fossilized claw gripped the cliff’s edge,
“I’m the only one in armor. Get the transport running. At the worst, this will buy you some time.” Sheriff Horne said.
Brach looked at the rising Death’s head beyond the cliff and his hand grabbed Gloria by the shouler and yanked her over his shoulders like a sack of tubers. He ran toward the safety of his vehicle, as ordered.
The skeletal thing rose to its full height.
“You are afraid.” It rumbled. “You are smarter than the mammals.”
“I am Sheriff Cora Horne, DinoKnight of the Order of Scales and Hands.” The armor amplified her voice. With a thought she activated her weapons, a glowing sword of red light and a shield of blue forming in her hands. “I wish to speak to you, but I will defend myself.”
“You will try.” The creature laughed.
“If our technology brought you here somehow, we want to help get you back to where you came from.” She said.
“I am that which I bring. I am Extinxion, Lord of the Entropy Legion and servant of Apothis, the Ceaseless Hunger.”
“Smarter than the mammals indeed.” Extinxion clicked his jaws. “I have no interest in your help, Sheriff. But I can feel your crimes, your guilt, your evil, and that interests me.”
Cora felt the creature’s eyes burning in her mind, digging for secrets long hidden, seeking something in her, something in the cold, frightened places. Those eyes grew larger, closer, they burned and screamed in her thoughts, and she screamed back, swinging with her sword of light.
The blade cleaved into Extinxion’s head, stopping just before the bottom of the blade reached the tops of his fangs. He froze, and Sheriff Horne did as well. After a short moment, she breathed a sigh of relief.
But the creature’s eyes flared.
“A noble effort, but it is my turn.” Extinxion whipped his head up and to the side, and Sheriff Horne gasped in surprise as the energy blade, which had no mass of its own, yanked her from her feet, lifting her into the air as the blade snapped free of the creature’s head. The world seemed to slow down, as she watched the wound seal itself, leaving no trace of its existence.
The creature’s other hand snapped free of its robe, and caught her, in mid-air, by the tail. In a split second she was snapped into the air, snatched, and smashed into the ground like a sledgehammer, the force sending her bouncing along the ground.
Cora gasped. She had felt the impact through her armor, and the the list of damaged systems scrolling in front of her eyes was too much to take in. She glanced back. Brach was helping Gloria into the transport.
“More time.” She gasped to herself.
“That’s the problem! You’ve stolen too much time!” Extinxion reached down, grabbing her by the throat and hefting her aloft in a stone claw. “You were supposed to feed my master millions of years ago, but your kind had the arrogance to fight back. And so you brought us here, to this place.”
His other hand grasped her right arm, he pulled, and twisted, and wrenched, and she felt metal groan and pop, the sword flickering out of existence. She focused her will, and magnetic locks popped, seams split, and the creature tore free merely the armor from her arm, rather than the arm from its socket.
“Clever, courageous and determined. “Sheriff Horne felt the claw crushing her throat, air coming in short, quick gasps. She concentrated on her right hand, moving it toward the storage pouch just over her hip. “But it means nothing. Your evil will be harvested, the humans will be harvested, and we will burn this world to a cinder!”
Sheriff Horne gasped, the scraps of a word escaping her beak.
“What’s that?” Extinxion reached up with his other claw, the talons closed around her helmet and he wrenched it free. Her fingers almost slipped from the pouch, but the closed around her prize despite the scratches left on her skin by the torn helmet. “Last words?”
He released his grip, enough for her to draw her breath in. She focused, the armor surged to life, despite its damage, and she opened her mouth to respond.
Her answer came in a torrent of flame. Cora felt the aegis’s power flow into her cells, the dinobond unleashing the fire in her gut, turning it into a column of fire that engulfed the monster’s head.
Startled, Extinxion stumbled back, losing his grip. She swung her arm in a wide arc, the shard of chronite crystal catching Extinxion in the shoulder. It slid in deep, a surge of electrical energy rippling through the monster’s body, sending it stumbling to its knees at it frantically clawed to remove the weapon in a stuttering, uneven slow-motion.
Horne landed hard as Extinxion rose. He tore the shard from his shoulder and tossed it into the valley behind him. “For that, I’ll have Yorik forge a monster out of your scraps.”
Sheriff Horne struggled to her feet, despite her wounded, unarmored arm and the constant flicker of power through the shattered remains of her aegis. She kept her eyes on the thing before her. She could hear the engine of the transport roaring to life. Brach and Gloria would soon be safe.
Extinxion swung his cloak open wide. Within it, folds of the ragged material formed a sack. Horne watched in shock as fossilized bones began to fall from the sack’s mouth, rolling to merge with Extinxion’s form. Already he was building a tail tipped with the spiked thagomizer of a stegosaurus, as massive hands with foot-long claws scuttled over him like spiders. He stomped forward, growing more massive with each step.
“Two for the price of one..” Horne said said, as the creature, a tower of crystalline armor and mis-matched fossil weaponry twice as large as it had been before, leaped forward, claws, horns, and fangs bared for the kill.
Only for the horned front grill of Brach’s transport to slam into the creature’s midsection. The beast glanced off the grill’s side and plummeted gracelessly into the valley below. The vehicle skidded to a stop inches from the cliff’s edge, the cockpit hissing open.
“Don’t just stand there with your teeth showing, get in!” Brach shouted, extending an arm to catch Horne’s undamaged limb. He pulled her into the cockpit, and was already speeding away before the hatch closed.
“I told you to run.” Cora began releasing the locks on her armor, peeling the damaged plates away carefully. “As a civilian, you have to follow my orders in an emergency situation.
“Make me.” Brach shouted in glee. “You spit fire in Death’s face, and I, wham! Rammed him right off the cliff! BAM!”
“I was lucky.” She gasped. “He dislocated my shoulder. The sword is supposed to just be energy, but he threw me with it. Impossible. And if he could do that who’s to say he couldn’t just tear you apart, you should have followed orders.”
“I’m a civilian, and there’s only four of us left, which means I’m a town elder and a de-facto member of emergency services so stop trying to be the big hero and be glad you’re alive!”
Gloria tried to find a hole in Brach’s logic. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one. “Alright. Thank you for coming to my rescue, Elder Longstride.”
“Back to the important issues! You can breathe fire?” Gloria shouted. “You’re an honest to goodness dragon?”
“Only in the armor.” Horne gasped. Her ribs were bruised, if not cracked. “The Dinobond... enhances natural ability, certain percent get special abilities. I won that raffle.”
“Armor that unlocks superhuman, er... superdinosovian potential.” Gloria said mostly to herself.
“At least we learned something. The crystals hurt this... Extinxion... too, just, not as much as I’d like.”
“I think I preferred it when he was Death.”
“Me too.” Sheriff Horne looked behind her. “Get us home.”
Yorik looked down into his lord’s face. Extinxion lay on his back at the bottom of a shallow crater, his battle form already disassembling and crawling back into the bag of bones he hid under his cloak.
“Not one word, Yorik.” Extinxion growled.
“You’re too humble, Boss.” Yorik cooed, helping Extinxion stand. “You tricked the saurians into showing off the strength of their weapons, such information is invaluable when smithing an army, your strategic brilliance is humbling.”
Extinxion stopped, his frustration and embarrassment fading. He was fortunate to have such a dull, easy-to-please subordinate. He almost felt pity for the fragile toady. “Do not expect praise for noticing the obvious, Yorik! I trust you have all you need now!”
“Yes, Lord Extinxion.” Yorik said. “Of course, I will need your approval to find the raw materials needed to make your army. I can lay out my plan step-by-step, it should only take a day to expl-”
“I care not for the details! Do as you have been ordered!”
“Of course, I serve at your whim, master.” Yorik bowed low and slipped into the shadows, the flesh clinging to his beak curling ever so slightly.
