Beyond the Legend
Elaine balanced herself on Doc's back as Sharptooth began to stalk towards them. The T-Rex was like a lion closing in on his prey. A very cocky and savage lion at that. His back was arched, his jaws were open to reveal large teeth dripping with saliva, and the talons on his feet dug into the soil of the earth.
It was now that Elaine was more grateful than ever to have mastered the art of fighting on the back of a sauropod. It was also a good thing that Doc could read her foot movements just by feeling them on his back.
This was where their teamwork and fighting prowess was put to the test. They blocked out all distractions around them, focusing only on the each other, and their opponent.
Sharptooth moved in. Doc noticed his actions and moved as quickly as his large body would allow him to. To keep Sharptooth at bay, and to keep Elaine safe, he faced Sharptooth. This wouldn't allow him to attack, but it kept Sharptooth within his line of vision. Doc slowly backed away as Sharptooth began to make mock lunges towards him.
"You running away already?!" Sharptooth roared. "I thought you were tougher than that!"
What Sharptooth didn't know was that Doc wasn't backing down because he was afraid. He was waiting for a signal. Shortly after Sharptooth taunted him, Doc felt Elaine's foot quickly jab twice into the base of his neck.
That was the signal.
Before Sharptooth realized what was going on, Doc quickly turned to the right so that his left side faced the monstrous T-Rex. Elaine already had an arrow on the string of her bow. She pulled it back as soon as Doc turned, and took aim. With her expert marksmanship, even in the heat of battle, she released her arrow and struck her target.
Sharptooth felt the arrow pierce through the flesh and muscle in left his flank. He gave an agonizing howl that sounded almost like a dying elephant. He reeled back, his eyes shut from the pain of the injury in his side.
Doc and Elaine braced themselves for Sharptooth's counterattack. However, nothing could've prepared them for what was going to happen next.
Sharptooth's growls quickly began to grow into something more menacing and ferocious, as if they were losing sanity. He then stood up tall. This made Doc take one nervous step back and Elaine brace herself. After an injury like that, the T-Rex shouldn't be able to stand like that. It was like the monster had completely forgot about it. Or like he had completely neglected his sense of pain.
Things only got more intense when Sharptooth's whole body tensed, and his eyes snapped open.
Doc and Elaine both froze with fear when they saw Sharptooth's eyes lock straight onto them. His eyes weren't humanlike anymore.
They were blood-shot red, and full of soulless vengeance.
Doc and Elaine had heard enough rumors around on their journeys to know what those eyes meant. This was no doubt caused by Elaine's shot to the leg.
Sharptooth had gone insane. Insane and dangerous.
With an angry roar, Sharptooth charged towards the Lone Wanders. Because they were distracted, neither Doc nor Elaine noticed him rushing towards them until it was too late. When Sharptooth came within three feet of them, Doc backed away hastily. However, the mad T-Rex moved faster than Doc could turn.
With his vision crimson and hazy, Sharptooth aimed for the human woman on the Diplodicous's back. Somehow, his current state of mind remembered that she was the one who had caused him injury.
When Elaine finally realized what was happening, Sharptooth came to slash at her with one of his talons. Elaine screamed and hurried back, causing her to trip and fall on Doc's back.
Sharptooth closed in for the kill.
"ELAINE!"
If that talon had reached Elaine, she never would've breathed again. However, Doc, acting purely out of instinct, swung his head around in an effort to shield Elaine from the devastating attack. He knew he would very well end up hurt, but he did it anyway to protect his human friend.
Even though Doc had braced himself for the pain that was to come, that didn't stop him from roaring in agony as Sharptooth's talon drove itself into his skin, just barely missing his right eye, and slashed down his neck.
"DOC, NO!" Elaine cried when she saw her friend attacked.
Doc, disoriented and in stinging pain, staggered back for a few feet. Elaine hung onto the fold of the skin on his back, trying to keep herself from falling off. If she was knocked off of Doc from this height, she would no doubt break some kind of bone. And that was only if she was lucky.
Sharptooth took advantage of his enemy's distraction and moved in. Normally, any dinosaur, predator or prey, would wait until their opponent showed that they could still fight before attacking them again. But Sharptooth had disregarded all rules of combat. He just wanted to kill his enemies by any means that he could.
Especially if it was a long-neck. And he wanted to kill this long-neck purely for the sake of killing it.
Sharptooth opened his jaws wide, and attempted to grab Doc by his neck in the hopes of snapping it with a single, devastating bite.
However, Doc managed to come to a stop, which gave Elaine some time to regain her balance. She looked up to see Sharptooth coming in to end her friend's life. Thinking quickly, Elaine drew another arrow as fast as she could. She pulled it back on the string of her bow, took a quick aim at Sharptooth, and released the arrow.
This time Elaine's arrow shot past Sharptooth, grazing a spot just below his right eye. This made Sharptooth stop in his advance and roar in pain.
That roar reached Doc's ears and snapped him back to reality. He didn't have the time to let his injury get the best of him. The scratch above his eye hurt horribly, but it didn't inhibit him in any other way. He could still fight.
And he had to fight. This wasn't the time to be weak. More than one life was at stake.
Not to mention, Elaine's arrows could only do so much damage. She wasn't the powerhouse of the team, he was.
And it was time he did his part.
Doc came to his senses and responded accordingly. As soon as Sharptooth moved in to attack Elaine again, Doc whipped his long tail around like a lasso and wrapped it around Sharptooth's right ankle. The Diplodocus then yanked with all the strength he could muster. Sharptooth lost his balance and stumbled back a few feet as Doc released his hold on his ankle.
Sharptooth couldn't regain his footing in time. He fell to the ground at the edge of a large cliff, hitting his head against a massive boulder and causing it to break apart into small chunks of rock that flew through the air in random directions. There, the giant Tyrannosaurus Rex laid there, completely stunned.
Doc moved in closer, waiting to see if Sharptooth would get back up. As much as he wanted to get rid of this monster, he wasn't going to be dishonorable. This might have been a fight to the death, but it was still a fair fight, and Doc was going to honor the rules of combat.
Unlike Sharptooth.
As Doc and Elaine suspected, Sharptooth began to get up. He turned his head around to face the Lone Wanders with an even more angry and ferocious look in his blood-red eyes. Doc was close enough to touch the T-Rex, and that meant that Sharptooth was close enough to attack with a single lunge.
Which is what Sharptooth was about to do. He braced his muscles and leapt up towards the massive Sauropod.
But Doc had the advantage. Which was a good thing, too. Because this was his only chance to end the fight once and for all.
Using his tail, Doc whiplashed Sharptooth with all the strength he had. This pushed Sharptooth back again. This time, Sharptooth's foot slipped off the edge of the cliff. Before he had time to save himself, Sharptooth fell straight down the side of the cliff into the abyss below to where a river with raging rapids flowed. The last thing that anyone heard from him was a long roar that was immediately replaced with a loud "SPLASH" the moment he hit the river.
For a moment, silence swept across the whole Valley like a ripple in a pond. All at once, the dangerous atmosphere that Sharptooth had brought with him disappeared. It reached out to all the residence of the Great Valley, who all stopped retreating and turned to look back.
They all fell still.
The long-neck mother and her son, who had watched the entire fight from the moment it began, stared with wide eyes. They couldn't believe what they had just seen.
The Lone Wanders had actually defeated Sharptooth. No one had been able to do that before. But these two somehow managed to do the impossible.
However, they didn't come out unscathed.
Elaine had braced her hand against Doc's neck to steady herself. For a while, she just looked down into the shadows of the deep ravine that Sharptooth had just fallen into. It was too dark for her to see anything. All she could hear was the raging rapids echoing off the walls that led down into the abyss below. She breathed heavily to try and calm her pounding heart, and to stop her limbs from shaking so badly. She had been through many life and death situations before, but this one topped them all.
She was just grateful that she and her friend managed to come out alive.
Upon remembering her dinosaur friend, Elaine suddenly jolted with realization. She turned to look up at Doc's injury, and she gasped in horror.
The wound above Doc's eye and down his neck was bleeding. Deep crimson blood was slowly seeping out. Doc had shut his right eye tightly to keep any blood from trickling into it. His blood slid down the rest of his neck and dripped down onto the ground below. Elaine looked over at her hand and saw it was stained red.
Red with her friend's blood.
She pulled her hand away and stared at it for a moment, her eyes full of terror.
"Doc, we must clean that wound!" Elaine said urgently, turning up to look at her friend's face.
Doc just responded by quickly glancing at Elaine with his left eye. Silently, he turned away and began to lumber off towards the opening in the Great Wall they had used to enter the Valley just minutes earlier.
Seeing his heroes going, the young long-neck dinosaur set out running after them.
"Wait!" he called out. "Come back! Come back!"
Doc stopped for a second to look back at the young long-neck, who came to a complete stop and looked up at the large Diplodocus with pleading eyes. Elaine also turned her head towards the little Sauropod with a clear expression of regret. She then looked back at Doc. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he felt the same way that she did.
Neither one wanted to leave the Valley, but they couldn't stay here. They had done the mission they had set out to do. Now they had to return to the Mysterious Beyond.
Without another word, the Lone Wanders turned away from the Great Valley, and disappeared just as quickly as they had appeared.
Back to the present…
"After that," Elaine said softly, "Doc and I found a spring where we could recover. I tended to his wound, and we continued on our journeys. For a while, we thought that Sharptooth's terror had finally been put to rest. However…"
Elaine paused. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap.
"He wasn't defeated." Derek said seriously.
"Right." Elaine replied, opening her eyes. "Turned out that we didn't defeat Sharptooth. We just injured him in battle. What's more, he was mindlessly rampaging across the land."
Aylene frowned at that statement. Because of of one of her adventures to a certain Mysterious Island, she knew the reason why Sharptooth acted that way.
"As soon as we heard that," Elaine continued, "Doc and I immediately began to think of a plan to stop him once and for all. Unfortunately, before we could put it into action, I had to go back to my world to resupply. When I tried to come back to this world, the Time Stone, for some reason, was unable to take me back."
Everyone stared at Elaine with sad and sympathetic expressions. At the same time, the Gang all lowered their gazes towards the ground for a second. They then looked at each other, knowing they were all thinking the same thing.
At the same time, hearing about Elaine's fight with Sharptooth made them think about their own fight with the monstrous T-Rex. It was a long time ago, but they still remembered every single moment. They remembered how terrified they felt, but also how brave they were when they stood up to him. They also remembered the relief and joy when it was all over. They would never forget the happiness when they managed to all come out of it alive.
That fight also strengthened their friendship. Ever since that day, they had become inseparable.
The Gang came back to reality when they heard Elaine give a sad sigh.
"I never saw my friend again," she said bitterly. "It's been so long. He probably wandered around the world, alone, waiting for me. I don't even know if he's still alive. I wish I had seen him, one last time."
Elaine remained silent for a moment as she forced back her emotion. She took in a deep breath and held it for a second. Then, she gave a soft smile and looked up at her grandchildren and young dinosaurs.
"Sorry," she apologized. "I don't mean to get so downhearted. If nothing else, I am glad that the Stone was able to work for my granddaughter. I can see she made some wonderful friends. And I'm so glad my grandson can share this world with his sister, too."
"And we're very grateful, too, Grandma." Derek said, giving a big grin. "I gotta way though, it was quite a shock."
"At least you had a warning." Aylene smirked. "I was sent to another world out of the blue. Seriously, I had to do a double-take."
That comment made everyone present chuckle.
"Anyway," Elaine said with a shrug, "that is my tale."
"That was a great story, Elaine." Littlefoot complimented.
"Yeah, thank you for sharing it." Ducky said innocently.
"I'm glad you liked it." Elaine smiled. "I was hoping I could share that story someday."
It was then that Grandpa Longneck lowered his head down to everyone's level.
"You know, Elaine," he said wisely, "that story isn't quite over yet. At least, not in this world."
"What do you mean?" Elaine asked, looking up at the elder Apatosaurus with surprise.
"Well," Grandpa Longneck continued, sounding mysterious and ancient once again, "legend has it that a few days after Sharptooth's defeat, a giant, shining rock came falling out of the sky. It illuminated the night sky as it traveled down to the Great Valley."
Once again, everyone fell silent and listened intently as Grandpa Longneck spoke.
"When it struck the ground, the earth shook with a mighty force. Herds scattered in every direction to avoid being crushed by rocks that loosened the sides of sheer cliffs and trees toppled over to the ground. Then, out of the ground where the strange rock hit, a massive rock began to rise up out of the ground like a mountain, sparking with a strange blue energy that was like lightning. It continued to rise up as if to meet the heavens. By the time it stopped growing, it towered over even the tallest of dinosaurs. Everyone stared at it with both fear and admiration. Upon closer look, they saw that it greatly resembled that of a long-neck. So they called it "Saurus Rock"."
Grandpa Longneck then lifted his head and looked over to his left. Everyone followed his gaze. Far off in the distance was a small mountain range that stretched across the Great Valley. It wasn't part of the Great Wall, but it still was a kind of divide from another part of the Valley.
Because of the darkness of the night, and the limited glow of the moon and stars, no one could see anything beyond it. But they could easily assume that Grandpa Longneck was indicating the direction in which this Saurus Rock monument was.
"And it's there to this very day." Grandpa Longneck said. "Sometimes when the wind is just right and blows away the mists, you can see it, watching over the Great Valley just like the Lone Wanders did so many years ago."
"Amazing." Elaine whispered to herself. "I didn't know that."
"They also say," Grandpa Longneck continued, "if you look very closely, you can see a circle of teeth around its neck."
"Real teeth?" Littlefoot questioned, his eyes big with curiosity.
"The story goes that they came from the very Sharptooth the Lone Wanders defeated." Grandpa Longneck added.
Everyone both shuddered and breathed in awe.
"And that happened shortly after Sharptooth's attack on the Valley?" Aylene questioned. "Interesting."
"Does the legend say anything else about it?" Derek asked.
"Well, it is said," Grandpa Longneck answered, "that if anything ever happens to Saurus Rock," the elder Apatosaurus's voice turned grave for dramatic effect, "bad luck would descend upon the Great Valley."
Littlefoot took in a breath of air.
"Is it all true, Grandpa?" he said, mesmerized.
Grandpa Longneck looked down at his grandson and gave a light chuckle.
"Well, given Elaine's testimony, I'd say that part of the legend is true," he said with a smile. "As for Saurus Rock, it is a grand adventure, and a really good story. And it is nice to know that somewhere out there is someone watching over us all."
It was then that footsteps began approaching. Everyone paused and saw that a large shadow was approaching them out of the darkness. In a few seconds, the figure came into view.
It was Grandma Longneck.
"Grandpa Longneck," she said in a lecturing tone, "are you filling these children's heads full of nonsense, and just before bedtime."
Grandpa Longneck looked over at his mate with a startled expression, almost like he was a little hatchling that had just been caught taking the last treestar from the tree.
"Why, no, I was just," he stammered, "I was…ju-, um."
Grandma Longneck gave a soft smile and shook her head.
"Yes, I know," she spoke gently. "But it's late. Time for little ones to be in the nest, resting for another day."
As if by some weird spell that the female Apatosaurus words cast, everyone began to realize just how tired they were. Dinah and Dana expressed their exhaustion the most by yawning loudly. Their eyelids drooped, and they just stared kind of blankly.
"She right," Petrie yawned. "Me pooped. 'Night everyone."
"'Night, Petrie." Littlefoot replied as the little flyer flew off in the direction of his home.
"We should be heading home, too." Ducky said as she climbed onto Spike's back. "Good Night, everyone."
"Good night, you two." Aylene nodded.
As Spike walked off with Ducky riding on him, Cera looked over that the twins. Seeing them both on the verge of falling asleep, she groaned and walked over to them.
"C'mon, you two," she commanded, trying to sound encouraging rather than annoyed.
"No uppies." Dana moaned.
"Dinah, Dana, sleepy." Dinah said, yawning as if to get her point across.
Cera let out a heavy sigh and shook her head. Looked like there was only one way to get the twins back to the nest. She would have to carry them on her back. Luckily, they both small enough that she could carry them at the same time.
"Oh, alright." Cera groaned. "Hop on."
At the prospect of getting a ride, Dinah and Dana seemed to miraculously become full of energy once again. With a jumble of their twin dialect, they quickly climbed up onto Cera's back, much to her displeasure. Once she had the twins on her back, Cera began to slowly walk off towards her nesting sight.
"Ow!" she suddenly exclaimed painfully. "Don't yank my horns! They're attached, you know!"
Seeing her Triceratops friend in discomfort and trying so hard to hold back her frustration towards the twins, Aylene brought her hand to her mouth to conceal her grim smile.
"Poor Cera," she said through a small laugh.
"I think she'll be fine." Derek shrugged. "Well, c'mon. Let's get some sleep."
"Good idea." Elaine said. "But first, let's put out this fire."
Since the bonfire was slowly dying out, the remaining group just had to throw some dirt and soil over it to put it out completely. Since Grandpa and Grandma Longneck were there to help, the process took about two to three minutes at most.
Once they had done that, Elaine turned to the young Apatosaurus who was standing next to her granddaughter.
"Littlefoot," she said with a gentle smile, "why don't you lead the way?"
"Okay." Littlefoot nodded. "Just follow me."
Littlefoot turned to Aylene, and she mounted onto his back. Once she was securely on, he began to walk off towards the nest. Derek and Elaine walked closely beside him, while Grandpa and Grandma Longneck followed close behind.
As Aylene rode on her friend's back, her mind began to drift back to the story her grandmother just told. Although she had known that Elaine had fought against Sharptooth before, this was the first time she had every heard the full story. It was both amazing to hear how the Lone Wanders triumphed over the most terrifying dinosaur in all of the Land Before Time. They might not have defeated him entirely, but they did at least give a small shred of hope that the Walking Terror could be defeated some day.
At the same time, Aylene felt bad for her grandmother. Because of an unexpected turn of events with the Time Stone, Elaine never got to see her friend again. She didn't even get to say good-bye.
Aylene had to bite her lips to keep herself from getting too emotional. Just the knowledge of what her grandmother went through made her think about the first time she said good-bye to her friends after their journey to the Great Valley. Although she later discovered she could come back to this world, she knew she would never forget the pain and sadness of never seeing her friends again.
If that really did happen, Aylene didn't know what she would do.
Aylene shook her head slightly to brush the thought away. She was here with her friends now. That was all that mattered.
And while Elaine might not be her with her friend, she was at least back in the world that had given her so many adventures.
Up along the ridge of the Great Wall, a large silhouette appeared. It wandered silently across the mountain trail until it came to a small cliff that overlooked the Valley. There is stopped and stood under the glow of the full moon.
It was a large long-necked dinosaur.
Over the past few days, this dinosaur had heard rumors that caught his attention. From the very few places he went to that were populated by other leaf-eaters, he heard stories of how Sharptooth had finally been defeated.
And the ones who had defeated him were in the Great Valley.
Those alone would've been enough to catch his attention, but would be it. He wouldn't have traveled to the Great Valley just to see who had defeated Sharptooth. That Walking Terror was gone, and that was all that mattered to him.
However, there was something else in those stories that made him travel such a long way.
One of Sharptooth's defeaters had been a human. A female human. One that was skilled with the bow. And the stories all said that she had brown hair and blue eyes.
There was only one person that this long-neck knew who fit that description.
He just had to find out if the rumors he heard were true.
As he stood on the cliff and looked down on the Valley below. It was bathed in the silvery glow of the moon in the sky, and scattered with dark shadows from the trees and cliff surrounding it.
As he stared down into the beautiful and enchanting landscape, he spoke to himself in a voice that sounded as old and ancient as a graveyard,
"Elaine. Have you really returned to the Valley?"
