The First Night Continues: Survive
A stalemate was met here, but would it really last?
They circled each other, a pair of impossibly intelligent eyes filled nothing with hate glaring down at three other pairs that conveyed nothing but solid resolve. Like duelists of old, they began circling each other, neither force willing to show the other their flank.
One man in a heavily damaged leopard fur cloak with tattered feathers, ever so subtly lagged behind, he was the lithest of the three, and it was clear he was sneaking from the main mass of his foe's attention.
As he instinctively cradled one limp arm with bleeding knuckles, it could be taken as an attempt to disengage.
However, his other two cohorts have no such reservations, they were loud, full of challenging vigor, hooting war cries right back at the raving mass all around them. One of them brandished a club made of… something, something so incredibly solid-looking that it was a wonder he can lift it, being almost the size of his arm.
"Hooo! HOOO! HOO HOO HOO!"
The man adorned with amulets made from animal teeth and long colorful quills brought his blunt weapon repeatedly onto the floor with the ease of hitting a drum, scattering what remains of the tiles around him to the four winds and marking spider webs in the concrete. Even his bare hairy chest seemed to serve to contrast him from everything of all sides.
It was immediately apparent that he was making himself a distraction. For a split second, the crazy bastard even succeeded.
The biggest thing in the room glared even more balefully than it already was at the noisy human before it, trunks curling under great pressure like the clenching of an impromptu fist. But in doing so, it fell right for it.
Everything blurred.
The one manning the rear, in a mighty twist of his massive torso, hurled his spear like a bullet backed with the sudden cry of a booming cannon-fire. It soared swiftly and true, needle-precise trajectory straight for the eye of the beast.
Yet it too moved, and the massive tusks on the sides of its head bashed the projectile away in a feat comparable to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer. Its head whipped completely to the right from the force of its own strength, only to swing back with many times the intent in fashion with the motion of a wrecking ball.
It scraped the ground like a plow on the slightest impact, a wave of shrapnel and keratin intercepting two shapes that trailed right after the thrown projectile like shadows.
It only stopped one of them.
"Aaarg-
The bulkier of the pair was the first to halt, but not to retreat, instead, his calloused heels dug up the ground to become new foundations themselves, barely holding the might of his swing that carved up the mangled terrain even more, just to go under the mammoth gargantuan tusk, sending it upwards in a spray of force, broken concrete, and dust.
Almost comically, the Mammoth, despite many times his size, flinched as the force traveled straight into its face and rattled its teeth.
RaaaaGH!"
The split-second opening in its guard was all needed, all it took for the spearman to slip past. Like a screaming, human-shaped velociraptor, he scaled its entire height in one mighty leap to grasp onto its thickly furred hide. The comparison held especially as he started to jam a jagged stone knife onto its back as if clawing himself a grip on its body.
The massive elephant did not welcome the intrusion, it made that very clear. It shrieked in a way only an animal at that size can and began its own assault to eliminate the annoyance lodged to its backside.
Before, the 17ft tall behemoth carried the foreboding movement of a rock tumbling down a cliff, but now it was a living earthquake, tremors created and guided with animalistic fury. Several pillars were sent flying in tiny pieces as it grinds through them like paper mache, some dangerously close to being major supports. The thing barely seemed to care if it would bring an entire floor onto itself.
Neither did the spearman, for that matter. Whether through sheer madness, desperation, bravery, durability, or all of the above and more, he held on. Against pressures that would kill any normal man, he came out bruised, bloody, and covered in pulverized cement dust, but still clinging and kicking and stabbing.
In the end, it was his weapon that broke first, the barely bloodied knife that found itself enduring an impossibly thick hide finally crumbled away like pebbles between his fingers.
!-
He reacted fast, faster than many can take credit for. The immediate second he found himself without his initial leverage, all effort went into the defensive. Bare hands and feet in place of claws buried deeply in the woolly layer separating him from 11 tons of rampaging flesh and muscles.
It did all the good it could for but a moment, one less than a second instant, yet all the same that advantage he has fought for with sweat and blood was wrestled from the spearman with incredible, rabid force.
Despite his size, he was lucky he didn't dislocate his shoulder when the rest of his body was sent like a piece of cloth to the unreal strength of his foe. As it was, the incredible might that brought him so far barely helped him hold on at the face of something so many times greater.
Since the very beginning, the fight has been to the strong. It is the strong who can force the tide of conflict to their favor, it is the strong who can weather through the inevitable chaos of a fight, and in the end, it would still be the strong who survive the odds.
The colossal beast leaned back, and with deliberate, sadistic, slowness, rammed its shoulders and the vermin clinging to it through three continuous layers of concrete and rebar like the hammer of an angry god.
The old mammoth was strong, too strong, overwhelmingly so. Far having exceeded the limits of anything remotely natural, it is a venerable monster in every single meaning of the word.
What are three men, straight from the earliest, most primitive cradle of humanity?
Simple.
They too, are strong.
The roar of carnage was deafening, enough to burst some eardrums if one is unlucky, but even then, a still chiming whistle fought to be heard. So soon it became a piercing cry to pierce through the dust like a localized zephyr.
One would mistake it for a silver falcon with how it soared, weaving like the wind itself through the sudden lurch of the hulking mass that once again sought to deny it its mark. But no more.
!
Once more the spear returns to the bloodied hand of its wielder, broken in many places, but yet still powerful with the sheer strength of defiance.
It was miraculous, but the spear was not the catalyst of its own return, far away, a man in leopard skin finally allowed his injury to rest. His arms fell limply to his sides, having exerted heavy strain to pull that stunt he had.
It was miraculous, but the beast did not slip, the earth trembled and cracked beneath it, sending one of its colossal feet the size of a pillar deeply embedded in the ground. Clubman brandished his weapon with a loud cry of jubilation.
Spearman was never alone, and for that, he was always strong.
The beast was cunning, it was powerful, but even it could not comprehend seeing the foe it thought had annihilated crawling his bloody all way up the length of its spine so close to look it in the eye.
Finally, the gaze of a brute that seemed to be all but indestructible then reflected something else but perpetual hatred.
The pointed blade of a spear. In other words, its second touch with death.
It screamed.
!-▄▄▅▅-
It was not a good way to put it, for the force it generated was more akin to an exploding grenade, physical shockwaves punching out in all directions with enough force to be considered an actual solid object. But nothing else can quite describe the sound it made, a noise that should have never been produced by any animal of that size.
-▃▃▄▄-▄▄▅▅-!
A deep, horrible wailing, like the sound of metal clawing its way out of a deep cavern, forced itself into one's skull. A sense of utter, primordial agony seeped forth like thousands of writhing snakes, even approaching would allow them to come crawling down one's spine. It was a flood of malice laced thick with the stench of desperation, seemingly without end.
-▂...
Strangely, a horrific sort of quiet descended onto the scene when it did, the lights flicked and popped, leaving the thick scent of a wounded animal and dust heavy in the darkened air.
Even the rabid noises all around, ever-present, have died down to a solemn silence. Perhaps fear, perhaps respect, or none and all, it could not be told, but the wild animals around them uttered not a sound.
This was what greeted the beast when it emerged from the mound of rubble it was temporarily entombed in. The hatred in its eye was like a spotlight in the darkness, but it was no longer what it was before. Tried as it might, it couldn't open its other eye, nothing but tears so dark it looked black poured from it.
The beast was injured before, now it is hurt.
Once filled with fury, the thing that stood in its place now can only be described as "hysterical", bloody red eye scanned the dim of the halls, it prowled forward in a way so utterly wrong to the frame of a herbivore, ragged slobbering breaths escaped its maw all the while like a starving hunter.
It's as if it twisted itself into a completely different creature while wearing the same old skin.
Still, it never forgot.
A slab of concrete shifted and stood, sliding off the buried body of Spearman.
At this stage, it was somehow possible for him to look worse than he already was. Bleeding wounds all around leaked bright red blood into the concrete dust, the combined results of lacerations, welts, and hemorrhaging. It wouldn't be exaggerating to say that out of his entire body, only his eyes seem to work right.
It would be enough, the madman didn't flinch when he locked his gaze with the giant looming above him like an executioner's ax.
What he expected to find in that hell blazing frenzy of its gaze, whatever he would have wanted staring death in the eye would go unknown.
For it is not the time to die.
Click.
The vengeful being's lone remaining eye dilated, as it swiveled in its socket to look down at its feet, where a bright, cylinder object was still clattering loudly on the wrecked floor. It was an object it has never before seen, of plastic and glass and metal, all out of its time. Mammoth didn't even realize that the strange object had hit it in the first place.
On the other hand, Larry realized he just threw his flashlight.
Larry then also realized how utterly and massively screwed he will be.
In no time at all the monster in elephant skin - that Larry knew all so nauseating well could separate two halves of his torso much more easily than it snapped concrete and steel - turned to look at him. When its eye scanned over him, he saw no confusion on the acts of a stupid human, only raw, undiscriminating contempt to all like him.
Larry was well and truly, terrified. Already did he feel the spine chilling touch of death worming down his back, reaching its tendrils around his hysterical, screaming heart. Standing at a distance that should be basically nothing to a monster of that magnitude, the sense of numb, dawning horror that assaulted him was nothing short of knowing you have stepped on a landmine and is watching the mechanism slowly move to end your life.
So, naturally, Lawrence just had to make it worse.
"Hey, Jumbo! W-why don't you take on someone your own size eh?"
Larry did not feel the words coming out of his mouth as his own, they bring nothing but a foreign choking sensation from within even as he uttered them.
He wasn't brave, he knew he wasn't brave, just earlier he ran away screaming against something that didn't even want to kill him merely because it looked scary. This was not something a smart one-liner can defeat, it would kill him the moment it even noticed he exists, and he just freely signed up for his own death.
He was stupid, he could've hidden and nothing would blow over, not even the gallery of wild animals around him even gave him half a mind. He could've just slipped away, utterly unharmed, alive, to see his family again if he would have just…
…If he would've just left that man to die.
They weren't real, merely exhibits in a museum, given life again by some means he can't even begin to comprehend, this he had told himself plenty.
But Larry knew well enough that anything he can say was excused at best, watching even giants like them struggling to cling on, watching them bleed... He knew that despite their unbelievable ridiculous strength, they too, are alive.
Before he realized it, his body acted on input that wasn't his own. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Whatever sort of shock that the mammoth went through to allow him his thoughts soon passed, the glare it sent him, in particular, was literally glowing. Whether it has enough in its head to understand human speech as Prince did, it certainly caught the taunt for what it was.
Its previous incapacitated victim completely forgotten, the cyclops began honest-to-goodness prowling towards him, mouth unnaturally wide with pearly white teeth pushing out from deep within its maw, and quite likely brandishing claws it did not have, yet.
At least it gave him plenty of time to notice - beyond the menacingly advancing giant harbinger of destruction- a boulder of concrete that has been slowly inching forward overturning itself, revealing Clubman and LeopardSkin underneath it. They scurried to their fallen comrade to pull each of his arms over their shoulders, hauling their collective asses out of the scene as fast as possible.
They didn't even look back, Larry was in this alone.
Contradicting, Larry realized with a certain kind of calm, that unlike the last time, he wasn't cowering. Sure, his heart was still trying its best to tear itself out of his ribcage, and he has long lost sensation of his limbs to the sheer frigid touch of fear.
It was not courage that brought him standing here, quite the opposite, it's the frigid weight in his legs that kept him from running.
But perhaps, a little part of him agreed that it wasn't for nothing.
Larry knew hardship, not the kind that had you battling giant mammoth monsters with nothing but brawn and a few sharpened sticks. The kind of hardship Larry knew would rather crush him gradually, breaking down each and every attempt he makes with clinical precision, withering down his drive until nothing remains.
The only thing he can do is suck it up and move on, even as his marriage falls apart and his careers lead to dead ends or him moving away every few months, he could ever pick up the pieces, and try again.
He ran away once, and now he didn't. For what little difference it makes, Lawrence can say that at the very least, unlike last time, he was looking his death in the eye.
Larry knew hardship, all his life, but perhaps just this one, he went out having done something to change it like the person he wanted to be.
The slow, inharmonious footfall before became loud briefly, before it slowed and stilled. Stopping right in front of him.
"I'm not afraid of you."
It was a lie, one so pitifully conceived even the illiterate animals in the room would have no trouble picking apart if they were in any sort of state beyond utterly stunned at his Darwin Award nomination. But that was okay, it was never meant for them in the first place.
That's the thing, the most amazingly fabricated lies are the ones people tell themselves. Whether it comforts, assurance, or courage, those feelings and thoughts are often brought to the surface by the pure basis of need. There are few measures of trust great enough to perpetuate it, but all the same, there is always one thing or another any person will desperately want to be true.
It is said, after all, that a lie spoken long enough will become the truth.
Larry didn't so much see the bone rending pressure as he felt it emanating into and through him, an instant so miniscule that it didn't even knock him off his feet, and Lawrence Daley knew no more.
.
.
.
Indeed, like a frame after frame reel, what happened right before his eyes was of such perfect clarity yet felt so utterly out of cognition, he was little more than numb watching it.
The cycloptic mammoth's old and scarred face - marked even through the fur with age and pain and hardship - almost static in the middle of bisecting him with a clean sweep of its tusk, morphed agonizingly slowly into recognition, then raw primordial dread.
The next moment, an extraordinary explosion of force, like that of a shooting star breaking through the horizon just to land squarely on the unfortunate behemoth's head. The pure kinetic energy of cosmic proportions almost folding the impossibly sturdy animal like a blade of grass.
That moment, like the backhand slap of a furious divine protector of abominable power, a watcher who has seen all happen from beginning to end, forced to stay his hand until his anger broke free in all of its power. And coming with his fist was a wordless declaration of "Enough!" in the form of a cascading waterfall of force.
That moment, like mother nature descending to force upon the proud beast the value of "humility" and sent with her the strongest hurricane, toppling all manner of beings or construct no matter how large and strong. Making it for once in its life to truly feel like being utterly helpless to forces that sit far beyond the reach of all living creatures.
Three times, three separate times Larry had to see it in his own head to even believe something that took the span of one second. But by then the impossible sight of a full eleven-ton elephant flying towards the rightmost wall like a boulder launched off a trebuchet was undeniable.
The air was hung with silence, undisrupted even as small, pebble-sized shards - broken teeth of a broken god - began pelting a silent battlefield.
Nothing could've survived that.
The belief came the realization, realization then came pure relief. Flooding into his clammy hands so much like blood to a dead limb it actually hurts much the same. If he was any lesser man, he would have cried.
But this is no time for tears, it seems.
A tremor sets in behind him, followed shortly by another like the beat of an ancient heart. Then came the displacement of air as the being took a deep, controlled breath.
Larry loved dinosaurs, as all kids do. But nothing like that will ever prepare him for the sheer sense of exaltation he felt around something he was so afraid of just earlier the same day.
The massive, burly shape of Prince almost glided into the center stage as effortlessly as a cat a fraction his size. Massive tyrant lizard moved all too casually around the relatively tiny human to advance, but his eyes did land on Larry, for a brief, meaningful moment.
For once, the night guard couldn't place exactly what the slitted reptilian pupil was reflecting. But somehow, that seemed to be enough.
Because irrevocably, Larry simply just knew that it was going to be alright.
"RUN."
That wasn't comforting at all.
Reality resumed, whether he liked it or not, and the sound of a downscaled avalanche alerted him to a huge shape gradually rising from being a heap of fur and dust, and Holy Hell how is it still alive?!
Mockingly, the creature that had no rights to survive that violence continued to rise higher and higher, parting the dust and the wreckage to reveal-
The security worker no longer wondered how it survived that hit, the palpable truth is that it didn't, not truly.
When the last debris fell, it was like the final piece of the gates of a long-sealed catacomb, finally spilling forth whatever horrors it had suppressed so long. Following it was a draft, spreading a bitter cold across the room enough to make the blood in his veins curdle, yet to the touch, it felt like the clammy contact of a fresh corpse.
A sorrowful howl echoed in the giant chamber that somehow still felt too small, followed one after another by beastly wailing, it was the first form of true harmony Larry has heard in this room, but far from reassuring, it was haunting, fearful as if lamenting for the fall of an old friend.
"-▂▂-" "-▃▃▄▄-" "-▄▄▅▅-"
And then, and then...
Larry actually forced himself to look away until then, but now that he simply had to, it was worse than he thought.
Dark patches have spread across the once rugged but ultimately pristine fur like necrosis, wherever it touches, bleeding gashes and jagged edges of broken bones, even its broken maw absent of teeth, sizzled away with the burning of flesh. To some degree, it almost looked like healing, but the retching putrid scent it emits as acid vapor spoke otherwise.
Hate was what remains of the poor creature now, perhaps before it festered within like a disease, but the wound was opened, and nothing but putrid malevolence oozed out from its every pores like a faucet.
At first, like pitch-black blood from its eyes and mouth, physical, tangible Hate soon stirred and squirmed its way out of its flesh akin to millions of hungry maggots, they rippled in chaotic unison around and around the immense cadaver they hung onto until nothing can be seen but a frenzied mass of red and black so dense, droplets spilled from it like acid rain as if perpetually stuck in a fever to consume.
Only the eye remained, it remembered, that blood-red nightmarish gaze never wavered even as the Hate spilled from it like and the empty counterpart beside it as grotesque mockeries of tears. Any life and purpose except vengeance gone, it expanded to be a burning red tunnel bored straight to Hell itself.
One cycloptic, formless mass of nothing but nightmare made manifest surged forward, without even a cry, sinuous Hate coiled onto each other to form tendrils as thick as tree trunks, sinking deeply into the floor by acidic claws. Six at a time, they shot forward and pulled on their mass in a horrifying fast imitation of an insect, swallowing the distance in a trail of pitch-black malformed concrete.
Seeing it was horrifying in a way that can only be said as sickening, a sense of fear entirely different from the fear of death was made known to the only human in the room. It was the kind that makes one afraid of insects, only a thousand times worse.
The sense of inherent wrongness to something you can't even understand, it was so strong, so raw and visceral Larry was on the verge of vomiting, and way beyond the point of freezing up, his legs failed him and he collapsed to the rough floor in a pile waiting to sob. Not even with contact, the mere sight of the thing he was forced to witness was enough for his body to revulse.
The "courage" that prevented him from running earlier now reared its ugly face, he couldn't even muster the strength to run away if he wanted to now.
This… This is…
A slam equalling a sledgehammer sounded off, raining small debris on him as Prince abruptly reasserted his presence to step forth. Larry dared looked up, into the yet still unreadable inhuman countenance of the other being, scaly aged eyebrows perfectly still and wide alert.
If the megalithic dinosaur was as affected as the human below it was, he didn't make a show for it.
His actions spoke louder than words, with grim silence, the reanimated giant... Squared up - for a lack of a better term. His two legs easily slid into a wide but ridiculously strong foothold, claws digging gouts on the concrete foundation. Even without any mortar or cement, it was as if a pile of bricks moved on their own to form a fortress that is Prince.
Whatever thoughts Larry was forming promptly discarded itself when the very obvious implication came.
He couldn't be seriously considering fighting that, could he?
If there's anything that Larry can say for certain about his reptilian acquaintance, it's undeniably his strength. The dinosaur's way faster than anything his size has any right to be, likely many orders of magnitude stronger than even those three bruisers combined, much less a scrawny Lawrence.
But standing before the suffocating pressure of a tar-black demon crawling forward from what could only be the deepest, darkest crevice of Satan's nightmare, his vastness somehow became a lot… less.
All but deaf to his internal conflict, one massive tail splintered the floor with a fwip of displaced air to the rex's side. As long and muscular as there were many teeth in his jaws, it screeched out a metallic burst of sparks as every muscle tensed up with unearthly power.
He was…
"You... can't…" If anyone was bothering to look, it would look quite pathetic, Larry admitted. He, barely wheezing out each syllable or on his four limbs, telling someone likely a thousand times stronger than him to just what… Lie down and die? Runaway like he would've?
But… What should be done? What could be done?
'"Run..."'
"Get on your legs and break it can't you?!"
"What?" What?
"Wrong answer." There was not enough time for anything else, a strong grip seized him and somehow got enough leverage to haul the entire of Larry - in a textbook fireman's carry - onto shoulders filled with too many metal trinkets for human comfort.
Maps, silver chains: Recognizable trinkets.
"Rider?!" Larry exclaimed.
"The one and only." Despite not seeing much of the man's face underneath his hat, he can feel a miniscule amount of amusement through the urgency of his tone. His next line quickly extinguished it "Try not to bite your tongue off."
The good news was that Larry didn't do that, though it was close.
Every bone in his body jostled like maracas when the larger man broke into a dead sprint that could've let any athletes in the dust. Around him, everything including the sound of his own muffled screaming, felt like they went through a tunnel.
When the world made sense again, he was still going fast, but no longer alarmingly so. Enough to see broken pillars plus fallen chunks of former walls weaving around him, and also...
Two strands of squirming abomination the color of darkened blood, they shot to walls furthest and pulled, sending the greater lob of itself careening outrageously fast forward.
"No!"
Prince didn't even doge, at the sheer velocity it was going at the wave of red almost splashed against him square in the torso in a flurry of writhing droplets, quickly reforming to undulate endlessly against him like an ocean of blood.
By the testimony of his own strength, the cataclysmic impact didn't topple him, but that red mass almost doubles his volume won't, stop. It kept beating onto his side over and over and over again until he buckled and slid back, slow at first, but distressingly more powerful each millisecond until he had to claw step after step at what remained of the foundations to keep leaning forward.
That's a show of weakness, the first one Larry has seen from something of that caliber, and the mass almost sang with a twisted form of glee across its form, expanding grotesquely at any places as it tried to wrap around his bulk, clearly intent on literally consuming him whole.
"Hey!"
In his urgency, Larry found his hand constantly tapping against the shoulders of his rescuer, Rider didn't seem to notice. "Hey! Hey!"
This isn't right, leaving someone to die didn't sit well with him. But seeing someone actively trying to save him not just die, but literally devoured alive while he just looked back was worse!
But what can even be done?
Up until now, that Thing, the demon that somehow guise itself as an animal has been unstoppable, no matter what sort of lethal force is thrown at it, it just keeps finding ways to slither through the grasp of defeat, striking back with sadistic vindication in mocking of any hard-fought effort to keep it down.
How is that fair? how is that even possible?!
In the end, what could he do?
As if hearing his thoughts, Rider's posture and pace lowered to one that can strangely be called somber somehow, with a level tone he spoke "You've done enough."
No, he hasn't.
"And you are underestimating him too much."
No, he wasn-
Larry had to cut himself off before that can be finished because something appeased to his intellectuality otherwise.
"-!"
A silent pressure buffeted the area, but it wasn't oppressive or twisted as the ripples that the demonic animal emitted, nor was it comforting of any sort, it was.
Power.
Raw, unfiltered pressure blew out with a subtle, but undeniable physical force, enough to shift dust and stir his insides. A quiet hum trembled across the whole open air of the chamber, ever-increasing in pitch until it felt like it was next to his ear. And right at the center point of it all, the faraway shape of Prince nearly distorted as he quaked like a jet engine.
Even the Hate, so ravenous in its hunger, reeled back in contact if only a little.
"Uh oh." That wasn't Larry, by the way, it was Rider who said that, and coming from someone like that it somehow made the statement worse. "We may just get caught if he does that here."
'Uh oh', Larry realized, would be an understatement to him.
"Brace!"
Larry didn't have time to brace at that warning at all, but he did have a little bit during the air time Rider threw him. As such he landed quite amicably when he fell at the doorway, only a bit winded.
Immediately afterward Rider slid in, much better conditioned than the human projectile, he halted with one knee bent and one hand on the sheath at his side. Larry almost wondered why he was trying to draw his sword, but then a pillar toppled immediately behind the cloaked man.
Nothing happened, then, everything exploded.
!-■■■■▅▅▅■■■■▅▅▅■■■■▅▅▅■■■■▅▅▅■■■■-!
When he came to, Larry was strangely ok with the fact that he was still alive.
From some of the stories he has heard, walking out of a close-range blast involves a lot more ringing ears, bleeding lacerations, and generally the stuff of nightmares if you aren't lucky.
Yet despite it all, much of what he actually felt of that force was the pure power it released and not much else, as if the only indication that he needed to know it existed was its strength. The flimsy human didn't get so much a mark on him physically, yet for a fact, he still knew that whatever happened was unlike anything he could have witnessed.
It was the strangest thing.
So here he was, coughing a bit from the dust but ultimately alive and alone, except-
"Oh shoot, Rider you alright?" He called into the murky air, hoping for an answer.
Nothing came to him, verbally at least, but a hand shooting up to offer a thumbs-up was very reassuring. How did some presumably historical figure learn of the gesture was unknown to him, but Larry was ok with that.
He was still alive.
Larry breathed in the admittedly dusty and kind of crappy air, but it was good in his book because he could still do so at all.
Something in the fog shared his sentiment, and Larry choked on his own spit out of fear. He watched, still as a statue as the dust around him was drawn inwards so fast it created a breeze before warm air blew it all back out.
The dark shape exerted physical pressure of a primordial sort, air parted around its very mass as it weaved through the dense atmosphere, revealing… Teeth.
Prince's massive, scaly maw full of unsheathed dagger-like teeth emerged from the thick dust of his own making. Like a titan rising above the clouds, some filled after his immense movements in wispy gray trails.
The tyrant lizard king marched from his battle, complete victory in the mere posture he carried.
He didn't just roar, he declared one thing to the world, in the loudest, most window-clattering, earth-shaking way he knew.
"-▂▂-▃▃▄▄-▄▄▅▅-"
Assured-Victory
Then he craned down, so low he can actually see Larry of all people on the floor before him. Those amber visors scanning him briefly, before softening.
He didn't need much to understand that
When the reptilian monarch flicked his tail and cleared the dust in that single movement, it was with a much-needed sense of finality, a declaration of absolute authority.
"YOU HAVE DONE WELL, GUARDIAN.
THE STAR IS RISING, THE LONG DARK ENDS NOW."
Indeed, it has.
A bit contrasting to the dark spots invading his vision, but that is… Okay too...
Real End of the first night.
Author notes:
Whew, Chapter two up and ready, originally I intended for this and the first chapter to be one full block. But then decided later on to divide this into smaller, bite sized chunks so I don't overwhelm anyone with the events. What are the thoughts of you guys though? Should I extend the chapters or chop it up a bit?
And of course, the events of the chapter itself.
I did say I intended for it to have its serious moments after all. Even though I haven't written fight scenes in quite a while, I think it's not bad meself. Of course, not every chapter will be this exciting, but as you can see, things can be a tad dangerous in the Museum, as evident by the Mononoke Demon Mammoth.
Shoutout to the wonderful reviewers, chrisdiokno117, Ei-Beta, Maxim7, FGOrider23, rc48177 and even Guess.
Especially Maxim7, hope this chapter itself gave you a good enough answer lul.
Now, if you liked what you read, or have thoughts to improve it, or whatever really. Follow maybe, Favorite if you feel like it, but always be free to throw in down in the Reviews and I'll be your gracious host. The reviews keep the story alive after all, so anything is welcomed, as long as it's not baseless flames, that's how you lose your subs bro.
And that is all I have to say now, so until next time.
Yours sincerely, The Indominator.
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CHARACTER BIO BELOW, POTENTIAL SPOILERS
True Name: Undisclosed
-Statistics-
Class: Rider
Strength: C+
Agility: C
Luck: A
Endurance: B
Mana: E
Noble Phantasm: A
-Class Skills-
Riding: B
Magic Resistance: C
-Personal Skills-
Undisclosed
The alteration of a well known historical figure. Originally a scoundrel with only his eyes for conquering and plundering. This figure still embodies many of the core aspects of the original, chiefly among them the conquering of new lands.
Yet, it could be said that instead of a conqueror, what we see here now is the figure of an explorer, one who has ushered forward the creation of one of the most influential nations of the modern world, a symbol of the progress of civilization, for better or worse.
A more heroic and, dare say, celebrated spin of the character to a fragile few.
Alignment: Neutral・Evil - Neutral・Good
Originally impossible to manifest, what little acknowledgment of his deeds and the sentiment that "He didn't know better at the time" was what allowed this gallant figure to exist
True Name: Old Chief - {Once Elder God of the Forest}
-Statistics-
Class: Avenger
Strength: A
Agility: C
Luck: E
Endurance: A
Mana: EX
Noble Phantasm: B
-Class Skills-
Avenger: A
Oblivion Correction: B
Self-Replenishment (Mana): B
-Personal Skills-
Monstrous Strength: A
Cursed Guardian: A
Divinity: E
Lord of Fauna: EX
Massive giants that once roamed the world during the great Ice Age, once held sacred by all beings large and small. Yet when the time came, their inevitable decline was not to the bite of the cold, but the ravenous expansion… of humankind
Their noble blood spilled by the hands of Men down to the last... No matter how many millennia past, the fallen will find no respite from that hatred.
Height/Weight: 1,300cm・14,000 kg
Source: Earth's natural history
Region: North America
Alignment: Chaotic・Evil
Based heavily on the Corrupted Forest Gods from Princess Mononoke.
True Name: Inapplicable (Alias: Spearman, Clubman, and Leopardskin)
-Statistics-
Class: N/A
Strength: C-{B}-[D]
Agility: C-{D}-[B]
Luck: E
Endurance: B
Mana: C
Noble Phantasm: N/A
Quite mundane Neanderthals, they have some impressive strength and inherent mysticism with them still from being merely that. Spearman is obviously the guy with the spear, Leopardskin is the rogue class, and Clubman is the heavy.
Due to their status as nigh-nameless figures, they possess no approximation of a Class, nor endowed with any Skills.
Height/Weight: 158cm・70kg - {165cm・79kg} - [150cm・68kg]
Source: Stone age
Region: Eurasia Continent
Alignment: Mutually True・Neutral
Allegedly never met Mammoth before, they fought it simply because it posed too much threat.
Were the ones to point Rider towards Larry, so yay them?