And here we take a moment to check up on Will in this chapter as he goes about an eerie journey in the mountain's depths-and finds a few secrets.
Will.
Will jammed his makeshift torch into a natural crevice. Trying to keep the feathers on his arms from getting too wet, he gathered up a backpack-sized mass of soft roots, moss, and leaves soaked in the water from the stream, then walked back up the tunnel toward the dim glow filtering out from the top chamber.
Balin and Dwalin were standing just a few yards into the tunnel. On seeing Will, they each gave a rolling cluck of alarm and ran inside towards the top end.
Tink though, was nowhere in sight, although he'd seem her on the other side of the opening a short time before.
(Hey, Tink!) he called. (I've got something for ya!)
A low groan reverberated down through the tunnel as Balin and Dwalin gave slurred clucks and ran about.
(Come on,) Will sighed. (I'm not gonna hurt you! Any of you!)
The grown rose.
Like a curious hawk, Will thrust his head through the opening. Then he gave a hoarse yelp and pulled back like a darting lizard. He was just fast enough to avoid a blow from a heavy forepaw.
Tinkerbell had been suckering him!
Water dripped from the mass of leaves and roots he'd painstakingly collected. With a low growl and a hiss, he tossed the whole wet mass into the cavern and stepped back into the darkness, where he sat down and began preening his arm feathers, gently clopping his teeth.
Tink strode forward, sniffing the leaf sponge. She went for them immediately, devouring the lot, then licked the wet stone where they'd landed. Her next act was to raise her head, meet Will's glance, and growl.
(Yeah, you're so welcome!) he sardonically, bitterly growled back. (And don't forget to vote either. Go with what you know.)
He scrabbled in the dust with his hands as he stared at the plant eater. What an ungrateful bitch. It had actually been hard work getting back up to this level. But did she appreciate it? No. She tried to pulp his head! She was just as bad as any member of the Wetherford student body!
Will had been trying not to think about the disappointing results of the election. But the defeat still gnawed at him.
Along with something concerning that Lance had said…
I've invested-we've invested too much to let it end here.
Will had been too bummed and shocked to pay much attention to his pal's remark at the time. But the more he mulled it over, the more suspicious and edgier he became.
He considered Leiman, and how he had known so much of what was really going on. All of that talk about being clear where you stand with people and not leaning on others-had he been trying to warn Will that his "friend" might have been manipulating him? Or had Leiman been trying to drive a wedge between Will and his good friend?
Tink bellowed and tried to squeeze herself into the tunnel to get at what she only saw as a hated enemy.
Will sighed, crestfallen and lonely. He was trapped. But hey, at least Balin and Dwalin were gentle towards him. And at least he knew where he stood…
Will turned his back on her. After gathering new fuel for his torch, he fed it to the fire. Then he went exploring around the tunnels.
He descended down into the cockroach pit again, then chose a branching tunnel at random. He used his right sickle claw to mark X's on the wall as he went, rubbing his cheeks against the stone to provide scent sign posts as well.
Even with his incredible new sense of smell, able to distinguish easily between a thousand individual raptors, and even to tell what they'd been eating recently, the network of tunnels soon became confusing. He then went with Y's, Z's, and then began with A's, marking every branch in the maze separately but in a recognizable order. Sometimes he ended up in huge chambers with high ceilings. Other times he had to crawl to keep going, jagged bits and spurs of stone raking feathers from his skin.
He was definitely descending into the lower depths of the great mountain. Passages twisted and wound about, but even the ones that were level for a time inevitably led downward.
How far down? How far had he traveled from Tink's chamber? It was impossible to say. Will certainly hoped that he was now at ground level with the outside world, but he had no way of knowing for sure. The air was thinning, and his torch was flickering.
In one chamber, he stumbled over a fallen stalactite. He cocked his head to look up at the array of shattered stalactites above, and the new cracks in the cave floor. Will tried to fight back the mounting sense of unease, even panic, that came as he thought again about the earthquake that must've hit this area recently. If an aftershock happened again while he was inside this mountain, he could be buried alive, or crushed like a bug!
Will couldn't help but think of horrific stories he'd seen on the news and in magazines, of cavers, miners, scuba divers and others who'd had the same nightmarish thing happen to them. Some had been rescued. Others hadn't been so fortunate, dying slowly in what must've been unimaginable terror and despair and suffering. Just like he probably would!
Chill out, he commanded himself. Freaking out over 'what ifs' does absolutely nothing constructive. Besides, it's not like a new tremor is going to happen just because you came inside the tunnels. Quakes don't work that way. He had to find a way out, and so he would. That was all. As long as he stayed calm.
Will came to a level area and began exploring, inspecting one chamber after another. He had now gone through the entire alphabet, and was now adding numbers to the letters he carved. And of course, scent marks from his cheeks.
An odd odor caught his attention. Something sour, chemical in nature, almost like a feedlot smell just ahead. It made his lungs ache, his head hurt. His torch began to flicker more intensely. He half-expected to come across a goblin or troll.
He took a moment to lean against a wall, and a figure suddenly sprang out at him. It was a dinosaur a couple feet shorter and about a third smaller than he was, the size of a female cougar with outstretched arms and wild eyes that shone green in the firelight. The smaller dinosaur was also covered with feathers, with a strong, stout serrated beak that made it resemble a gigantic, demented parrot, except it wasn't curved.
It had the scent of another meat-eater, but it most certainly wasn't a raptor. A swift starburst of both recognition and rage, different from the type felt when sensing prey, flared up within his Deinonychus mind at the scent and sight of it.
HATE-THIEF-NO GOOD-KILL-HATE-DESTROY-THIEF-SNEAK-MENACE-WICKED!
His torch was knocked from his hand, struck the ground, and sputtered out.
Will automatically lashed out with a kick of his left leg, sickle claw slicing the air. He felt it pierce flesh, and excitement flashed through the raptor's mind. They'd scored a hit on an enemy!
The other dinosaur gave an agonized cry that sounded like a cross between a raven's croak and the yowl of a startled cat. Then the smell of blood and fading footsteps as she retreated away into the darkness. Whatever she was. Panting, Will got the impression that he'd somehow taken the other meat-eater off guard, frightened her just as badly as her close-quarters lunge had freaked him.
He crouched down, felt for, and found his torch. He was lost in a darkness more complete and terrible than any he'd ever experienced, but some instinct told him not to even dare try relighting the torch. Not that he could've anyway.
The nasty smell intensified. He stalked forward, curiously sniffing the drops of blood from the other dinosaur. The chemical odor got even worse.
Then he realized. Natural gas smelt like this! It sometimes collected in mines. The same thing might've happened here. Maybe that was the bad smell.
Will stood up and broke into a trot. He gently bumped a wall in the darkness and felt about until he was able to find a way out of the noxious chamber. The air, thank goodness, cleared, and Will found himself heading down again.
To be in total darkness like this was soul-crushingly scary. But the raptor's mind wasn't as troubled. While it didn't like the confined spaces, it hunted on moonless nights all the time, when clouds completely blotted out the moon and the stars, preventing the prey from easily seeing their killers coming. This darkness wasn't all that bad.
It helped boost Will's confidence. Still, when he came across some chunks of flint in one tunnel a couple minutes later, he couldn't get his torch relit fast enough! This time, he'd extinguish the flame if he even suspected the presence of gas.
In an amazing irony, the parrot looking predator that had attacked him had actually done him a huge favor, saved his butt. If Will had gone a few steps further with torch still blazing, he'd have never walked out again. He'd either have been incinerated, or found himself lying on the stone with massive third-degree burns, the limited protection provided by his now-charred feathers notwithstanding. Either way he'd soon be dead.
Of course, now he was utterly lost.
Will could only walk on, let his search play itself out as it may. The descent became steeper, but the air became less stuffy, sweeter. He had the impression he was fairly close to the outer surface of the mountain. Then, turning a bend, he was overwhelmed by exciting, delectable smells!
It made him feel HUNGRY again!
It was the scent of Tinkerbell! And of Balin and Dwalin! But how could that be possible? She was back in the upper chamber, with no way out, and Will hadn't smelt any trace of her companions since leaving the cockroach pit behind.
Another step, and the ground gave way beneath him! Will shrieked and spread out his wing arms before dropping down a nearly vertical shaft, hoping his wing feathers would help slow his fall. A blow against the side of the chasm knocked out the flame of his torch. But he kept holding onto it.
When he finally hit the bottom, legs underneath his body in a crouch as he landed in a pile of gravel, he became aware of a dim greenish light. Foxfire! He heard movement, felt the slight air currents and vibrations of other living creatures moving around in the darkness, smelt them. His instincts demanded that he charge forward and kill! Kill and devour!
Instead, he dug both his hands and feet into the gravel and dirt, fighting his urges until he had them under control. He'd already had a good meal of carrion. The scent of prey, some of it bleeding, was strong here. It drove the raptor's brain wild!
Will knew that back home, coyotes sometimes killed more sheep in a flock then they could possibly eat, and even after they'd eaten well. Weasels and foxes did the same thing to chickens if they got half a chance. Indeed, he'd once seen the results of a raccoon raid on a henhouse at his friend Jake's place. The raccoon had killed eight of the fifteen birds, biting off their heads and eating the necks and the guts, randomly ripping bites out of the breast and back. It had been a gory massacre.
He wondered if this raptor body would do the same if he let it do its thing, just rush in and kill wantonly.
He saw dim forms moving about. Some were as small as Balin and Dwalin, while others were even bigger than Tink!
As he sniffed intently and his eyes adjusted, he saw that the dinosaurs were gathered by an underground stream, about eight feet wide. He heard a cacophony of sounds, trills, grunts, rolling clicks, snorts, growls, coughs, chirps. Lumbering footfalls grew louder. The prey had noticed him now.
Inhaling deeply, Will cast around in the darkness and detected a pair of flint chunks. Braced to leap to his feet and run, he struck them together three times, and by good fortune, a spark got his torch going again! A weak flame leaped into existence, revealing a large, tubular cavern with a domed ceiling.
The arching entrance to the cave had collapsed, forming a great barrier, a vast pile of broken rock and house sized boulders that not even a large dinosaur could possibly break through. Over half a mile in length and a hundred and fifty yards wide, the cave was crowded with dinosaurs, eyes ignited by the reflected firelight.
An entire herd of Tenontosaurus, ranging from greyhound sized babies to hulking bulls that were bigger than Tink by a third, were trapped in the cave. Containing sixty to seventy members, they were the game the raptor pack had been stalking when they came to this valley.
They weren't the only captives in this natural jail cell.
In the firelight, Will also saw a flock of whatever kind of fleet plant-eaters Balin and Dwalin were, two dozen or so of them. His sense of smell informed him that most of them were either hens or well-grown chicks. Three colossal, striped Iguanodon bulls also stared back at him, towering head and shoulders above their Tenontosaur cousins.
Rounding out the group were two weird-looking armored dinosaurs than vaguely resembled the Ankylosaurus Bertram had been sent into when he'd first used the M.I.N.D Machine. These though, were significantly smaller, "only" about the size of a rhino or a hippo, with long tails that had no clubs at the end, and a more pebbly type of armor, with sharp spikes sticking out of their necks and shoulders. With them were five babies, each one the size of a big loggerhead sea turtle.
In the stone all around them, Will saw little crystals shining, especially at the back of the cave, which was just a few hundred feet to his left. Did that have something to do with why they were all here?
But he didn't have very much time to take things in. A trio of massive Tenontosaur bulls advanced on him, and one of the Iguanodons bared his beak and gave a ringing groan, as if encouraging them to kick his ass.
(Whoa! Hold on guys!) Will called out frantically.
All the dinosaurs jerked back in surprise and stared at him intently, almost in a dull sort of wonder and certainly confusion. But then the bulls broke into a canter, right at Will!
He thought of Tink's reaction to having him literally drop in, and with a distracting shout of (Hey! Your favorite show just came on!), he grabbed both pieces of flint with his free hand and placed them in his mouth. Then he wheeled and ran!
Giving them the slip was easy. All Will had to do to stop them in their tracks and puzzle them was sing an enthusiastic rendition of the "Barney Song," as he spied another tunnel, one too narrow for them to move through and promptly darted inside. He ran uphill for a time, then slowed.
Just as his legs started to burn and ache, the ground leveled out. This place smelt somewhat like him…
Will cocked his head about, tail flicking up and down as he scanned the walls, hoping to find one of his marks, whether scratched or scented.
Yes! There was one over there! Now he could trace his way back to the roach pit, and from there he could try the other branching tunnels. One simply had to lead to the outside!
Will made the journey back, walking, clambering, climbing, and thinking all the while about Tink. He'd misjudged her, unfairly. She hadn't been ungrateful at all.
Why, Tink had been noble, had been courageous. She had placed herself in front of the tunnel entrance to prevent a predator from reaching her herd. He wondered if some of the babies he'd seen down there were hers. But what about the other predator he'd encountered? Were there more of her kind in this warren of tunnels, quietly stalking and hunting any smaller dinosaurs which strayed from the group?
Could that herd be connected to the upcoming events at Ground Zero?
Suddenly, Will stopped short. He was just a few hundred yards away from the roach pit. He could hear Tink growling and giving those calf-ish gwaas of fear!
Placing the butt end of the torch in his front teeth, he ran forward to the chasm and scrambled up the stone ramp, almost toppling it in his haste. He circled the stone ledge, and after switching the torch to his right hand, ran for Tink's chamber.
He'd covered half the distance when he encountered Balin and Dwalin racing, jerkily on account of their injuries, down the tunnel from the other direction, feathers sticking out in a manner that made them look almost like cotton balls, beaks open and panting in fear.
On seeing Will, they both gave rolling clicks of alarm and practically leapt out of their skins at the sight of him. They turned around, instinctively intending to flee from their predator-but to Will's confused surprise, went into a half crouch for several seconds, wildly and indecisively glancing from him, then to the chamber, then back to him, then back up at the chamber.
(What?) he gently but hurriedly asked them. (What's got you guys and Tink so scared up in there?)
Their only response was panicked chirps as their nerves broke and they fled from him, back into the chamber.
He followed right behind, the fire streaming from his torch as he charged inside, Balin and Dwalin running in opposite directions in an obvious attempt to confuse him. Or whatever was coming.
Tink was standing right in the middle of the floor, directly underneath the crack on trembling hind legs, tail lashing and spinal crest erect as she stared at a figure, covered in feathers and caked in dust and dirt, bursting through the same high gap which Will had entered through.
A growling hiss.
The head of another raptor, its milky nictitating membranes blinking away dust, emerged from the opening, his jaws snapping hungrily and clawed hands extending outward as he sighted Tink and smelt blood from all three dinosaurs.
Junior!
Now Balin and Dwalin were out of their minds with terror, ricocheting off the walls, darting about, eyes so wide that they revealed the whites, willing their crippled legs to work.
The raptor burst from the opening in a great puff of dirt and leapt to the ground, wings outstretched like some dark angel. Will crouched low, clutching his torch and displaying his sickle claws, not all together certain what he might do if Junior attacked Tink, Balin, or Dwalin. Or him.
Instead, the raptor slipped slightly as he jumped off, and hit the ground at a bad angle. He flung back his head and gave a glassy, ear-piercing shriek of agony that exploded in the enclosed space. One of Junior's legs-his left leg-had ended up twisted beneath him. Will suddenly smelt fresh blood, and then noticed something lying close to the left foot. It was one of Junior's sickle claws. Somehow, it had gotten snapped off on impact.
Flailing his feathered tail, panting shallowly and spreading out his plumed arms-for intimidation? For balance?-blood trickling from the claw stump, the Deinonychus rose on one leg and glared balefully at Will as if his unexpected injury-his crippling injury-had all been Will's fault.
The moniker "Junior" no longer seemed like a remotely fitting name for this maddened, hateful, wounded and dangerous creature.
He'd named the Tenontosaurus after Peter Pan's moody fairy companion. Far better for him was that of another character from the tale and Disney movie, the one of Pan's bitter nemesis, also brought to life so chillingly and effectively by Dustin Hoffman in the movie sequel of the same name.
Hook.
The raptor snarled. And leaped.
The other species of theropod Will encounters in the tunnels is known as Microvenator. While Scott portrays them as toothy, large-headed creatures with long, apelike arms, he was way off the mark. In actual fact, Microvenator is only known from a single set of partial skeletal remains. All the same, there's enough material to discern that instead, Microvenator was a primitive oviraptorid, with a stout beak and likely some type of bony crest.
So does that mean then that Microvenator wasn't much of a predator after all? Not exactly, my friends. Turtles have beaked mouths and heads somewhat similar to oviraptorids-yet they are still quite capable hunters. There is also a species of parrot in New Zealand known as the kea, and while it is mostly vegetarian, it will attack and eat other animals if it gets the chance, even tearing chunks of fat and flesh from live sheep! So it's probably not too off base to presume that Microvenator hunted large prey at least sometimes.
One last word on this topic. The only known specimen of Microvenator is four feet long, and that is how Scott portrayed them. It turns out though, that this sole specimen belonged to a young individual, meaning that Microvenator got substantially bigger as an adult, naturally. So I gave Will's attacker a made-up length and weight that just felt right to me. Sometimes that's all you can do when reconstructing the past, go by what makes sense and feels real.
Speaking of which, we are never told in Dinoverse exactly why the heck there was a whole massive herd of Tenontosaurus in the depths of the mountain to begin with. But I've formed my own scenario that makes sense. What is it? Well, that's for me to know and you to guess, lol!
The other kinds of dinosaurs in the cave were all added by me for a bit of diversity, especially since it has something in this version that they all need...
Reviews always light up my day!