The Night Circle inched closer to the world to admire the dinosaurs there. Suddenly...something strange happened. The Night Circle began to...bleed? Soon, the white orb was covered entirely in red.
A quick pass through the Great Valley, beyond to a crater. A dinosaur of every kind, even sharptooth, but surprisingly no flyers, surrounded the crater. Their tails faced in, pointing at the crater's heart. Their heads faced out, their teeth bared. Some of the faces of the leafeaters were immediately recognizable.
Sharpteeth charged at them from all angles, and following them, a wave raced along, coloring the ground red...
Bron woke up with a start. He hadn't had a sleep story of this nature since the time the Bright Circle almost fell from the sky. It was troubling, to say the least. The Night Circle was known to occasionally get close to the world so it could look at the dinosaurs below (as it should, it was the reason longnecks even had their trademark long necks and tails after all), but never had someone tried to hurt it. And what could possibly hurt something as powerful as the Night Circle? Worse, if such a thing existed, would it come for the dinosaurs next?
"Bron?" Bron was shaken from his thoughts by a voice from below him. He looked down to see Shorty, his adoptive son. The Time of Great Growing was upon the young longneck, and the top of his head now reached the top of Bron's thigh. "You okay?"
"Not really, Shorty," Bron replied wearily. "I had a bad sleep story where the Night Circle bled."
"Me too," Shorty replied. "Did it...tell you to go to the Great Valley, too?"
Bron nodded. "Yes, and I think I saw Mr. Threehorn among the dinosaurs at the crater. We need to go to the valley and warn them."
"What about the herd?"
Bron shook his head. "Shorty, I haven't been the leader of this heard since Isram took over." Isram was a bigback longneck with a strange way of speaking, who'd usurped Bron's position as herd leader two warm times ago. "I don't think he'd notice or care if we were gone."
Shorty understood. "Then perhaps we should leave."
As they walked through the forests, Shorty spoke. "Did you see that big longneck in the dream?"
"The green ridgehead? Yes, I did. It was odd, he looked much like you."
"I know. He...looked like my uncle."
Bron stopped momentarily. "Uncle?"
Shorty sighed and explained. "Before you found me, I lived with my parents, my uncle and aunt, my cousins, and my brothers and sisters. But one day Redclaw came and attacked us. He separated me from my family and then set to...work on them." He shuddered at the memory. "My uncle managed to escape, as did I, but Redclaw killed everyone else. Then–"
"You found the baby longnecks, and then I found you," Bron finished. He smiled. "Well, if your uncle's still alive, I think he'd be very happy to see you." Something caught his eye in the bushes. "Hello? Who's there?" Bursting out of the bushes came a forest hidden runner. It looked awkwardly at Bron and Shorty, screeched, and ran away frightened.
"Would a hidden runner hurt us?" Shorty asked quizzically.
"I don't think so. They may eat red food as well as green food, but their teeth and claws are too small to take on a dinosaur. Don't worry Shorty, we'll be safe."
"I wasn't worried," Shorty replied, coolly and honestly.
Then another hidden runner came from the same bush and ran after his friend. Bron frowned. "That, though, may be troubling."
"How? Even two hidden runners can't hurt us."
"No, but many hidden runners together usually means there's a sharptooth nearby. Many times, hidden runners will follow sharpteeth to steal meat from their kills as an easy meal. Sometimes, though, they'll work together with sharpteeth: in exchange for food, they'll find weakened herds for the sharptooth to chase." Bron raised his head higher. "Stay close, Shorty, and stay alert."
Luckily, those two hidden runners were merely looking for a drink, so Bron and Shorty had nothing to fear. However, far away in a desert, others had more sinister plans.
A big brood of desert hidden runners, their feathers colored sandy orange with black and brown streaks, crouched behind a large rock. The leader of the brood, a wizened male called Gorb, easily distinguished by his tall crest of green display feathers, looked into the distance intently.
The stomach of the hidden runner behind him, Thinbeak, growled. "I'm tired of waiting! Can't I just eat a lizard?" he complained.
"You could, for that would stave your hunger for now," Gorb replied sternly, "but others have more needs than you, lieutenant. Besides, a lizard would only last you until nightfall. Need I remind you we have a brood of twenty-seven hidden runners including ourselves, and an adolescent sharptooth in our care, to feed over the next few days?"
Thinbeak groaned. "Don't think that I don't. Can we really be sure Agilis is rationing herself? I mean, she is going through puberty."
Gorb sighed and put his hand on his lieutenant's shoulder. "She's doing her best to fight her appetite, but she can only do so much. Look, this hunt will most likely work, and soon we'll have enough to last all of us past tomorrow. I know you're upset that our cavern was destroyed by the most recent earthquake; you don't know how much that burden weighs on my tail. Rumor has it the age of the dinosaur may soon be over, even, and I fear those rumors may be correct. But right now, I need you to sit back and trust Agilis to do what she was born to."
"Okay, but I'm not gonna like it..." Thinbeack said.
Gorb smiled. "That's the spirit."
Agilis sighed in boredom as she watched the herd she'd targeted. Manyhorns, an uncommon type of hornface with a horn over each eye, coming from each cheek, one on the nose, and ten growing out of their frills. They were light blue in color, with white stripes and markings.
Hornfaces were not among Agilis' favorites. Not that she didn't like the taste, but she preferred other game. Longneck, spiketail, even a quick turner would do for the pointsnout sharptooth. Still, the brood who'd raised her since the terrible great murderface, Yrannos the Ghastly, slaughtered her parents needed food. Food she would provide.
Agilis had been taught the language of the leafeater by her halftooth fosters, so she could feel less bad about killing the jerks of the world. She saw herself as a bit of an agent of change; she chuckled to herself at this. If anyone was an agent of change, it was Gorb's brood, for thanks to them she knew exactly what she was:
Agilis was a pointsnout sharptooth, a member of the slicehead line closely related to the plated sharpteeth. While they had huge, semi-circular heads and plates akin to a spiketail's, Agilis had a thinner, more triangular face, plus she had a small horn over each eye that her plated cousins did not. But she shared their three-fingered hands and the way they hunted: swinging their heads vertically to peel huge chunks of flesh off of their prey. Whether said prey ended up surviving and healing, or bleeding to death, was strictly a matter of chance.
Gorb's brood had a funny habit of deciding to try and figure out how closely related every kind was to each other. Agilis thought it was very strange, but it was fun to see them look over the skeletons of her kills to determine ancient relationships. And they'd come up with some unusual results. Flyers, it turned out, were not dinosaurs at all; they had a bone in their wings that no dinosaur had, and a dinosaur's hip structure was not the same as a flyer's. Not all the revelations were good, though, and many chicks still had nightmares from when it was concluded that the closest relatives of the hidden runners as a whole were the fast biters.
Agilis forced her thoughts out of her head when she saw that two of the manyhorns, the herd patriarch and a darker-colored newcomer, were fighting. Both were already bloody. Curious, she listened in; for if one left it badly injured, she'd have an easier job hunting...
Byrant smacked his horns into Ngoubou's flank. Unlike tallbeaks, shortbeak hornfaces didn't live in big herds, opting instead to stick with family members they could trust. Ngoubou had approached Byrant's family asking for hospitality, but as Byrant had expected and feared, his guest very quickly outstayed his welcome.
"Why?!" Ngoubou growled as he tried to bite Byrant's tail, but failed and got a mouthful of sand instead. "Why are you doing this?!"
"I think terrorizing my children, insulting my mother, and trying to make a move on my mate is justification enough!" Byrant retorted. He forced his head under Ngoubou and flipped him over. A sickening crack was heard as the edge of Ngoubou's frill was shattered, as were both of his wrists, as the interloper tumbled. "Now leave, and never return!"
Ngoubou struggled to stand, but when he did, there was a feral look in his eyes, not helped by the blood trickling down his face and his destroyed frill hanging over his face, casting it in darkness. "Eo will not like this," he spat.
"I don't care if this 'Eo' person doesn't like you not being able to be a monster," Byrant said firmly, speaking of someone Ngoubou had often mentioned he knew and seemed to be his superior, "but her opinion is useless here." He turned around and addressed his herd. "Come, we have other places to be."
"Agreed," Byrant's mate, Lynlyn, said crossly.
Ngoubou watched the other manyhorns leave and groaned. "A mission failed, and now I'm a not-walker. Can this day possibly get any worse?"
"For you, yes," came an unfamiliar voice.
Ngoubou's tail quills stood on end. Carefully, he turned around. "Who said that?"
He got his answer, but never knew it, as a scarlet sharptooth with black stripes running down the length of its back raced out from the bushes and charged forward. It snapped at him, prying open his skin, the wounds making it easier for it. Although only as big as him, it was able to kill him quickly with a few quick slashes to his exposed neck.
Agilis admired her handiwork. He was, from what she heard, a jerk who'd tried to take over the herd, and failed horribly. Who "Eo" was wasn't important at the moment; what was was her family eating. Agilis whistled, and the entire brood came from their hiding spot.
"Today, we feast on manyhorn," Gorb announced. He took the first bite, as was the custom, tearing off the skin from the herbivore's braincase. Next, Agilis ate, chomping off the muscles attached to the base of the tail, her favorite part of a dinosaur.
Yes, the age of the dinosaurs would soon end, as Gorb had feared. In 310 years a great asteroid would hit the earth, and combined with the already bad earthquakes and volcanism, the ten-thousand-year winter would doom the dinosaurs to extinction. In their stead the mammals would have power over the world, as their ancestors once had until the day the first dinosaur had hatched.
But for now, amid the sounds of bones being cracked between rocks and the smooth muscle of the viscera being shredded, life was good.
Guide to dinosaurs:
Sharpteeth: carnivorous theropods
Pointsnout sharptooth: Allosaurus fragilis
Plated sharptooth: Carcharodontosauridae
Slicehead sharptooth: Carnosauria
Murderface sharptooth: Tyrannosaurus rex
Fast Biter: Dromaeosauridae
Forest hidden runner: Troodon formosus
Desert hidden runner: Gobivenator mongoliensis
Hidden runner: Troodontidae
Longneck: sauropod
Ridgehead longneck: Brachiosaurus altithorax
Bigback longneck: Isisaurus colberti
Spiketail: Stegosauridae
Manyhorn: Kosmoceratops richardsonii
Shortbeak hornface: Chasmosaurinae
Tallbeak hornface: Centrosaurinae
Hornface: Ceratopsidae
Quick turner: Camptosaurus dispar
Flyer: pterosaur
Bron's dream was about a Blue Blood Supermoon, a rare astronomical event where a lunar eclipse, blue moon, and supermoon occur simultaneously.