Chapter 2:

Oviraptors and Murderers

The sharp-beaked dinosaur stays on her nest constantly while her mate is away. She is an Oviraptor and an upset one at the present moment. The Tarbosaurus and Quetzalcoatlus have since moved on, but their scents are lingering. This has left the Oviraptor mother on edge. Despite what other dinosaurs instinctively think about her species, she and all other female Oviraptors are good mothers. If the species existed in this part of the world, she would think of herself being a better mother than Maiasaura are and their name literally means "good mother reptile."

Her mate is away at the moment, hunting smaller prey like lizards and birds. When he returns, it will be her turn to go on the hunt. It is risky, but not as risky as leaving their nest ungraded is. They must take turns hunting their own prey if they are to survive or they will return to the horrifying scenario of their nest having been destroyed by other dinosaurs. Velociraptors have become more prevalent in the region as of late. The Oviraptor wishes she and her made had been able to move to the peninsula where many dinosaurs migrated before she laid eggs. She is more than a match for one Velociraptor, but if an entire unit of them finds her, they'll easily kill her and take off with the eggs.


Another hour passes before her mate returns. Orius has caught a Protarchaeopteryx, which is dangling lifelessly from his beak-like jaws. A light trail of blood tells the female which we he returned from. She throws a fit. Orius knows that region to the north is far too dangerous for them to hunt. It was taken over by the Velociraptors when they were only hatchlings themselves.

The female tears out the Protarchaeopteryx's liver and eats it in one big gulp. The liver is the most nutritious part of anything on a carnivore's menu. She will need the energy it gives if she is to bring back her own catch today. She makes sure her mate understands he cannot leave the nest unguarded no matter what, then heads south to hunt. She will not risk their safety by hunting the northern wasteland where the Velociraptors live like Orius did. They cannot keep taking risks like that. It will be the death of them and their eggs.

It has been a hard time for carnivores living in this wasteland ever since the volcanic eruption and its aftermath destroyed much of the forests in a two-week period the year before. Fighting over prey among species that never interacted before kills more dinosaurs than the intense heat and scarcity of food and water does. In her travels to her chosen hunting ground, she witnessed a lone Velociraptor female fighting with a female Airakoraptor over a half-eaten Tsintaosaurus carcass. She chose not to get involved in their skirmish, knowing she could catch her own food without risking her life in a fight between two raptor species.

She finds the only lake anywhere near the nest. There is a Linheraptor drinking at the lake's edge. It is on guard, but it doesn't seem overly concerned. But that is not the case for Ovina. Oviraptors are good mothers, but they are also one of the most skittish dinosaur species. It is this paranoia about their world that makes them good mothers. They won't let anything foreign near their nest, even if it appears harmless. Ovina's unspoken motto would be It's the quiet ones you have to worry about around your nest if she had an understanding of spoken language.

The Linheraptor looks up at Ovina. She snarls, as if to say, "This is my drinking spot at the lake. Keep your distance," then she resumes slurping at the water. The water is still cold despite the desert climate. She's not going to pass up this rare opportunity at a cold drink. Neither is Ovina.

Carefully, just to avoid provoking the Linheraptor, she approaches the lake at the opposite end. Her secret intention was to hunt the Linheraptor, but that was before she realized how thirsty she is. She, at least temporarily, has pushed the thought of her hungry to the back of her brain. A Linheraptor won't be too much of a threat to her. They are equal in size and weight, but Ovina has the advantage of more life experience. She has three years on the Linheraptor. She is at the end of its juvenile years, as far as Ovina can tell. Hardly ready for mating, but she is old enough to travel without its parents anymore.

Ovina drinks her fill of water. She turns to resume her hunt, but then she remembers the almost juvenile Linheraptor isn't focused entirely on watching for threats. It will be an easy kill that can keep Ovina and her mate well fed for a while, not even considering the Protarchaeopteryx her mate captured earlier.

The Linheraptor doesn't seem to hear Ovina coming from behind, she is that preoccupied with slurping the cold water. The sand muffles any sound Ovina's bird-like feet make. She stands behind the Linheraptor for a minute before moving in for the strike. But as she leans in, the raptor spins around. She began to feel like someone has watching her.

The Linheraptor immediately attacks. She may be young, but that doesn't mean she's not a good fighter. Her parents taught her well before they kicked her out of the nest to fend for herself one month ago. Her deadly hand claws nearly slice and dice the Oviraptor's jugular vein, but she dodges the unexpected attack at the last moment.

Ovina thinks, Maybe she's a better fighter than I thought. I underestimated this juvenile raptor.

Then she thinks, But I'm still a better fighter than she is. I have more experience than she does. I must be patient, though.

Ovina backs off, as if she is has no intention of harming the Linheraptor. This seems to drag her into a false sense of security after a few minutes. Eventually, she returns to enjoying the cold water. She is no longer paying any attention to the Oviraptor.

It's not like she can hurt me anyway, the Linheraptor might be thinking. They're all beak and claws for tearing at plants and small lizards. Nothing a Linheraptor like myself has to fear.

But she will soon learn how wrong she is to think that about an Oviraptor. Ovina moves in again, this time much more silently than she did before. She is moving like an assassin well trained in the art of being a silent killer.

Before the Linheraptor can react this time, she feels a sharp pinch against its neck, not far from her life-giving vein. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the same Oviraptor that she thought was going to leave her alone. She was tricked. This time, letting her guard down might cost the Linheraptor her life. But she's not going down without a fight.

The raptor begins thrashing around, trying to loosen the grip of the Oviraptor's beak. But it's no use. Ovina is much stronger than the juvenile raptor could ever hope to be. Her beak begins cutting deep into the Linheraptor's neck. Blood sprays her tan face before she drops her prey. The sand runs red, the Linheraptor gasps for her last few breaths. Ovina's beak carved a fatal wound into her prey's jugular vein. It's an injury there is no recovering back from eighty million years ago.

Following a final gasp for air, the Linheraptor is dead after a few minutes. Ovina waits, wanting to make sure her prey is really dead. Someones a "dead" dinosaur has one left fighting attempt left in them after they appear to have died. Ovina finally approaches when she is sure the Linheraptor has slipped away from this world.

She's dead now, Ovina thinks. The Oviraptor puts her beak to work again. This time, she uses it to pick up the dead raptor and carry it like a rag doll back to her nest. A trail of the Linheraptor's blood will mark Ovina's trail back to her nesting area, but there aren't other dinosaurs in this region with enough interest to follow it.

The Oviraptor family will feast tonight.


Ovina is confused. Orius isn't greeting her as she returns to their nest. She knows he is loyal to protecting their nest no matter what while she's away, but it's never been like him to not step away for a second to greet her upon return from the hunt.

But she is pleased nonetheless despite this being odd behavior from Orius. This just proves that he is a loyal father that he won't leave the nest even if he knows she's returned with a successful catch. He'll be happy to see that she caught a decently sized Linheraptor without suffering any injury, she thinks. By herself no less.

Something's not right, Ovina thinks suddenly. The smell of blood reaches her nostrils and it's not the blood dripping from the wound in Linheraptor's neck. It's not the blood of the Protarchaeopteryx that Orius killed either.

Suddenly, Ovina drops the carcass from her beak. There is a very low thud when her body hits the desert floor. She no longer cares about it. Instinct tells her something is really wrong. She has smelled her mate's blood once in the past when he actually ran into a sharp rock protruding from the ground. It tore a terrible gash into Orius' leg, and he almost didn't live to be there when Ovina laid their eggs. The new blood scent she smells now is exactly the same as the blood she had smelled when Orius injured himself back then.

Ovina runs back to their faster than an Oviraptor typically has to. There isn't a doubt in her Dinosaurian brain now that she smells her mate's blood. There is a second scent that she is barely thinking about until her brain tells her what it is: Achillobator.

Measuring nineteenth head to tail, Achillobator is the largest Dromaeosaur species next to its earlier North American cousin, Utahraptor, which measure twenty-three feet head to tail. They are native to Mongolia but some migrate have began migrating to China for its cooler climate, much like how Ovina's species did centuries ago. Ovina knows she is no match for such a large predator and Orius isn't either. They are less than a third the length of an adult Achillobator male. She silently hopes Orius got away with as many of their eggs as possible, not realizing how unrealistic that is for an Oviraptor to do.

Ovina approaches her nesting area cautiously. The smell of a lone male Achillobator becomes stronger as she gets closer. It must still be in the area, if it hasn't left yet. She also smells Orius and his blood. This slowly does away any hope the Oviraptor had that he escaped with their eggs, without serious injury.

More cautiously than ever, Ovina peeks over the hill overlooking their nest. She will wish she didn't. The Achillobator male is still there, and so is Orius. But Orius is dead. Ovina spots his broken body on the ground. It has been half stripped of flesh by the Achillobator. Seeing her mate's bloody, exposed skeleton and chest organs makes Ovina sick to her stomach. It breaks her heart, too, to see her mate is dead. But they have left their eggs alone, as hard to believe as that is.

Ovina mentally screams, No!

There is another predator moving about the nest that she didn't notice before. It is a female Airakoraptor. Ovina has never seen an Airakoraptor traveling with an Achillobator, but there is a species bond between them. They are both Dromaeosaur species. They won't mate because any eggs the Airakoraptor does lay would be stillborn or ugly mutations that even their mother would kill. But they do trust each other enough to hunt together.

The Airakoraptor moves to Orius' body. She would call herself Airia if she could speak, because that is how her brain identifies her species. A starved expression comes over the raptor's face. She let the Achillobator, Achilles, eat first and now it's her turn. She goes for the Oviraptor's stomach, untouched until now. Her killing claw slices him open from the bottom of the ribcage down to his hind legs.

Ovina looks away before her mate's entrails spill out. If an Oviraptor were capable of crying, she would be. The sound of hearing Orius' intestines and stomach spilling out of his belly makes her vomit up what little she has eaten today, quietly so her mate's killers don't hear her.

The Airakoraptor quickly eats up the mess of spilled internal organs. She thinks about resting first, but then she remembers something. The Oviraptor they killed had been setting on a nest of eggs that is now unguarded.

Staring hungrily and vengefully at the nest, the Airakoraptor might be thinking something like, I haven't eaten eggs in a great while. It will be ironic justice for their mother. They always steal and eat eggs from our kind.

She dashes over to the nest, where she examines each egg. She is contemplating which one she should eat first. Ovina is helplessly watching this unfold. She wants to save her eggs, but she knows she isn't strong enough to take on an Achillobator and Airakoraptor. They'll tear her limb from limb before she has the opportunity to save a single egg, or worse yet, they'll eat her alive.

Ovina begins to whimper in a way unique to Oviraptors when Airia snatches up one of the eggs in her hands. The sound of an eggshell crunching hits Ovina's ears. She sees egg yolk and blood from an unborn Oviraptor chick dripping from the raptor's jaws.

Airia repeats the process of crunching the eggs in her powerful jaws, then swallowing egg yolk and unborn Oviraptor chicks, until there are no eggs left in the nest. Ovina wants to tear her apart with her beak for this, but she knows there is nothing she can do to larger dinosaurs.

Achilles trots over to the Oviraptor male's body. He stares at it for a minute, then he decapitates the body with one slash of his killing claw. Much like the Greek warrior of the same name, Achilles would think of himself as a warrior of his species if dinosaurs had such concepts. He is particularly large for an Achillobator, rivalry even the largest species of Dromaeosaur, the Utahraptor. His species' name (Achillobator giganticus), in fact, means "Achilles' hero". It is a combination of the Greek word Achilles, meaning "hero of the Greeks" in Latin, and "baatar", meaning "hero" in Mongolian, and gigantas, meaning "giant" in Greek. So Achilles is "Achilles' hero giant."

Rather appropriately, Achilles, the Achillobator, has fought many times in his life. He thinks of himself as the strongest Achillobator in the land and that no dinosaur is a match for him. Other Achillobator, which are rare in China, respect Achilles for his feats. He has never lost a fight, even against larger dinosaurs. Juvenile, but hardly inexperienced, Alectrosaurus were no match for his pure intelligence and raw power. A young Tarbosaurus wouldn't stand a chance against him either. Tyrannosaur species are no different from each other as far as Achilles is concerned. They'll all fall to his eight-inch killing claw supported by extraordinarily powerful Achilles tendons. Even Male Utahraptors would be envious of a raptor like Achilles and females would be drooling where he walks.

Those who fear him are dead or they have learned to stray away from his and Airia's territory. They cannot produce chicks with each other, being different species, but they think of themselves as the deadliest pair of hunters in all of China. They do not fear Spinosaurus like the rogue Shriker who has begun wandering the desert lately. He is hurt and has never been able to catch them. Achilles and his hunting partner plan to bring that Spinosaurus down one day, when he's no longer strong enough to protect himself.

He's probably dead by now anyway, Achilles thinks. His kind can't thrive if they don't have fish to eat and freshwater to swim in.

Finally, Ovina turns away, weeping like only an Oviraptor can weep. She feels her heart breaking as she leaves everything she everyone she loved behind. She hears Achillobator and Airakoraptor teeth shredding her mate's flesh as she moves away from their kill zone. She knows she can never return to this region now. Ovina was born here and this was where she became pregnant from Orius, so thinking about that only hurts more than it normally would. She has lost her mate, all their eggs that had been days away from hatching, and the land she was born on in a matter of mere minutes.

How could things get any worse? Ovina thinks. She sniffs, blinks, and then resumes walking. There is nothing she can do now but migrate. Other Oviraptors have spoken of a peninsula that is safe from monstrous carnivores like the pair that killed her mate and unhatched chicks. That is her only chance at survive, she thinks.

She does not know the way there, but she remembers the Tarbosaurus and mated pair of Quetzalcoatlus that came all this way looking for the juvenile Tarbosaurus a few days ago. An unknown instinct tells her they are from the peninsula. (Call it an Oviraptor's intuition, maybe, Ovina thinks.) If their scent trails haven't been covered by wind-blown sand, she will follow it until she finds the peninsula they came from. Ovina will die at the claws and teeth of Achilles and Airia if she does not get far away from her birthplace as fast as possible. She is downwind of those murderers right now, but Ovina knows as well as any dinosaur that desert winds are unpredictable. A change in their direction could easily put Ovina upwind of Achilles and Aria, and at their mercy. If they pick up her scent, they will kill Ovina just like they killed Orius and their chicks.

Ovina stops at the top of a hill. The wind is not blowing here. The hill's elevation is low, but it is high enough that she can see a distant green strip of land jutting out into the sea from up here. She knows that is the peninsula her fellow Oviraptors spoke. She at least knows what she must look for now. She also knows it will take her a few days to get there.

However, Ovina only hopes for one thing right now, more than making it to safety, even. That is for Achilles and Airia to not pick up her scent trail, then find and murder her like they did her poor Orius. Ovina has lost everything out here, but her life was thankfully not one of those things. Her parents died long ago and she has no siblings that lived past their first few months of life.

It is up to Ovina to continue her family's healthy bloodline or it will become extinct. She will have to mate again with the resident Oviraptors at the peninsula once she migrates there.


Author's note: A gorier chapter, but I felt like now was time to introduce some secondary villains in the story. I also introduced, following research of course, a lot of other species of dinosaurs this chapter. They are all Chinese or Mongolian species to avoid losing too much realism. (Note: Maiasaura won't appear in this story. They are a North American species, from Montana specifically, and were only mentioned in the first paragraph for comparison.)

I won't be surprised if Achilles and Airia (the secondary villains) and Ovina (the widowed Oviraptor) eventually play a larger role in the story. I may have some surprise twists in store, but its probably best I don't mention things I'm thinking about to avoid potentially spoiling something.