Dragons

Part 2

Hybrid Class - Kaprosuchus (17 - 22 feet long)

I don't care too much for the war...

A "log" partially popped out from the surface of the murky waters. Though this "log" was no log as it was armored with rows of dorsal spikes on its back that had chainmail-like, pebbly, dark swampish green-yellow scales. The creature's head had an elongated tapering snout with its nostrils positioned on top of its tip. There were pronounced scaly ridges over its sallow, evil slit eyes and its slit ears. It also had a pair of sharp teeth stuck out from the water's surface.

I was never too idealistic to care enough about the landlubbers' cause for it.

A herd of recently arrived Parasaurolophus carefully walked a distance away from the swamp's edge where the Boar Croc was in the water.

As far as I was concerned, the war is the land's problem, not mine.

The toothy crocodile was sleeping at the bottom of the river until his eyes opened wide with his pupils contracting into slit when he picked up vibrations...unusual ones.

That was until those accursed humans decided to build a dam in the river.

The Kaprosuchus snuck close enough to the humans undetected. Sure enough they were constructing a wooden dam for irrigation of their crops.

Then they built more of those things to the point that MY territory was slowly being drained away of its life source.

The Kaprosuchus was dragging his kill, a dead horse, across dry land with his powerful dog-like limbs until he saw how the water levels were lower than usual when he saw his underwater den was sticking out from the water.

The next month proved horrendous as the dry season came with the usual water holes shrunk to unhealthy levels. Tensions were unbearably high as he had to fight off other desperate Boar Crocs over whatever water or living space was left, which was basically close to being an oversized mud puddle.

The rains failed to come for months, and the rivers that were supposed to fill up my swamp were continuously blocked by the dams.

Fish skeletons littered around his territory with flies buzzing all over. The very few animals that arrived to the dried up swamp soon died of thirst and heat exhaustion. The Boar Croc ate them, but was unsatisfied with the growing lack of meat in them. He himself was slimmer than he used to be as he had found less prey to hunt.

The croc hissed hatefully and hungrily at the sight of the rice fields being harvested by the human farmers being vibrant and rich. And the humans and the cattle were plump and well fed compared to him.

That proved to be the last straw for me.

The Boar Croc snuck up onto an unsuspecting rice farmer at the edge of a rice field. A hiss was the last sound the farmer heard before the reptile lunged at the man. The farmer screamed bloody murder when the Kaprosuchus shook him around in his jaws. Bones and flesh were eviscerated and next, limbs were ripped off when the beast performed the vicious death roll. Other farmers fled at the sight with the wet fields now gradually stained crimson.

Now I am on a warpath.

Five Knights were on a boat carrying prisoners of war through the riverway of the Myre. None of them suspected a thing when their vessel was suddenly turned upside with all of the occupants falling into the water. The Kaprosuchus let out a furious roar after flipping the boat before it went after the Warden, who tried to swim fast, but proved to be painfully inept and slow in the water. Reptilian jaws of the Boar Croc engulfed the armored warrior before he could even scream.

I had it with these humans. It's one thing when they cut down the jungle, and that's already bad enough.

A Lawbringer was rammed from behind by the Kaprosuchus' armored tapering head rushing out of the bushes. He tried to bring up his poleaxe to fend for himself, but the semi-terrestrial croc pounced onto him so fast with doglike ferocity that he could only thrash about helplessly as the reptile's boar-like tusks and sharp teeth penetrated through his armor and into his flesh. The Lawbringer's subordinate attempted to attack the Kaprosuchus from behind to save him, but the prehistoric monster's tail lashed out, knocking him out with the animal ignoring the subordinate.

But messing with my swamp…is another story.

A Kaprosuchus swung its paddle-like tail, meant to bludgeon the Samurai soldiers, but the Nobushi sacrificed her live pushing them out of the way. However, that meant taking the hit and it proved to be fatal because the Nobushi was sent flying into the wooden dam. A wooden stake poking out from the structure skewered her right in the chest with the nearby female Kensei horrified of what had happened.

Nobody messes with my territory and gets away it!

The Kaprosuchus let out a angry guttural roar over a destroyed dam with the river now released and flooding the entire rice fields.

I entered into the fray for two reasons only…

A Tiandu was about to cut the head off of a downed Dakotaraptor only for the Kaprosuchus to charge into the Chinese general, knocking the wind out of him as well as send him flying into the air. The Tiandu landed with a painful crack with several ribs broken and his arm dislocated. The Dakotaraptor looked up to see its savior was the Boar Croc and with his would-be executioner out of commission, it didn't hesitate to flee the battle.

Food…

The crocodile's longer powerful limbs propelled him, galloping onto the road and ambushing a hapless cow, killing it with a strong bite to the beast's neck. The Kensei and the Orochi quickly unsheathed their weapons with the distraught farmer yelling at them to kill the monster. The Kaprosuchus proved to be quicker when it instinctively flung the dead cow within the tight grip of its jaws and slammed it into all of them, knocking them all out.

And payback.

A legless Highlander tried painfully to crawl out of the riverbank, but the Kaprosuchus lunged out and clamped him by the shoulder. The bearded Viking cried tearfully with the teeth tearing deep into the shoulder and chest with life flashing through his eyes. It all ended when the crocodilian beast quickly dragged him back into the water and tore him apart.

I am the Grim Reaper of the Swamp. And the waters are my domain. Abandon all hope ye who enter them.

The Kaprosuchus lumbers out from the water with eerily glowing eyes and then behind it, multiple pairs of glowing eyes pop out of the water as several crocodiles emerge from the water's surface.

Flyer Class – Pteranodon (Males 15 – 24 feet wingspan; Females 10 – 14 feet wingspan)

The world is vast, yet so small for us that soar the skies.

The individual sky-blue bodied pterosaur has the wingspan on par with a small war plane as it soars about through the skies above the war-torn lands.

Its head sported a long, slender upward-curved bill with sharp points with its distinctive backward cranial crest projected upwards and that was almost as long as the pterosaur's bill. The bill was colored orange-ish yellow and the crest had a rusty brownish tinge to its otherwise red appearance.

To those that are completely grounded, the skies are awe-inspiring.

A young girl was playing dolls with her older sister in the wheat fields not far from their house out in broad daylight.

The fields swayed when a breeze blew through. The girls stopped what they were doing when they heard the sudden increased intensity of the wind. They looked up to see the Pteranodon's shadowed form fly over them.

But they forget that the greatest danger sometimes come from above.

A Pteranodon divebombs onto an unsuspecting bishop in the midst of a local sermon and grabbed his shoulders with its foot talons, shocking the audience and bewildering the knight guards.

Pterosaurs ruled the skies long before eagles dared to fly.

Flocks of Pteranodon soared fast on the air currents, flying through the clouds. The clouds gave way to the open expanse of the battlefield down below them.

The Pteranodon circled in the air above the battlefield undetected by the Knights and the Samurai, who were too engulfed in the heat of battle to notice the flying reptiles.

For a very good reason...

The two alpha Pteranodons of their respective flocks spotted their intended targets. Once they got a lock onto their victims, the alphas squawked a command to their flocks. The flocks went into divergent directions as they began to divebomb.

One flock went after the Knight commander situated in his own command camp. The other out for the Kensei's blood.

The Knight Commander was surveying the battlefield ahead of him from his camp when they heard his subordinates scream out. His Warden yelled at him pointing her finger upwards. He looked up and the last thing he saw and heard were angry swarms of Pteranodon screeching out their battle shrieks as they rapidly descended upon his camp.

The commander was skewered by the Alpha Pteranodon's sharp bony bill shortly afterwards.

We have mastered flight...

A Kensei, Shugoki, and Nobushi tried to cut into a Pteranodon, but their ground mobility was ineffective with their weapons only hitting air as the pterosaur easily avoided them by hovering in the sky.

Though our bodies are physically frail…

The Nobushi, by sheer luck, managed to thrust her naginata's blade into the pterosaur's feathery body at its ribs when the creature became too brazen in attacking the Shugoki. The creature shrieked out of pain and shock as the Kensei took the opportunity to slice through the Pteranodon's left wing and arm, immobilizing it. The reptile squawked when it crashed ungracefully onto the ground and it struggled to get up with just one good wing.

It does not prelude to weakness…

The Shugoki was about to smash the Pteranodon's crested skull with his kanabo when he heard cries coming from his comrades only to find a grisly scene.

But rather it plays to our strength…

The Nobushi was pounced harshly onto her back thanks to another Pteranodon swooping in from behind that was now pinning her down with its strong, winged forelimbs. The Kensei had her life ended suddenly thanks to being skewered in the gut by a Pteranodon's sharp bill as it lifted her up into the air with her nodachi lost.

The Shugoki was so distracted that he failed to react properly when the downed Pteranodon took this opportunity to puncture through his armor with its beak.

He screamed with blood leaking through his mask, looking down to see his waist bloodied with the beast's beak coated crimson protruding through outward from his stomach.

Both pterosaur and the huge man grunted with life leaving them with the latter going for a last-minute desperate move. He grabbed onto the beast's birdlike head and with one last surge of adrenaline and fury, twisted it, snapping the pterosaur's neck. The Pteranodon instantly died.

The Shugoki had to grasp onto the dead beast's beak and it proved to be extremely agonizing for the warrior even of his stocky, overweight built. When he finally yanked it out, a considerable gaping hole was left as it exposed the organs that were destroyed by the puncture. The giant Japanese man fell onto the ground nearby to the dead Pteranodon with copious amount of blood pooling onto the ground beneath him. Seconds later, he died with his breath having left him when his arm slowly stopped twitching until it halted its movement completely.

Those who underestimate us…

Other Pteranodons were feasting on the Knight and Samurai corpses in the aftermath of the battle with the Dakotaraptors, T-rexes, and the Eastern Dragon victorious.

…will find out too late…

A grievously wounded Samurai tried to amble away with his right leg torn off and head being split from the morbid battlefield only to stop when he saw a clawed hand in his field of vision. Gulping hard, he looked up that it was attached to a huge leathery wing. He looked up to see the Pteranodon looking down at him with a hungry look in its sharp, eagle-like eyes.

…that we are just as deadly as the dragons.

The Samurai screamed his last before it was horribly silenced when the Pteranodon thrusted downward its sharp beak onto the man's skull, splitting it in half.

There's a reason why Pterosaurs have long ruled the skies.

A Pteranodon stood on its rear limbs with its wings spread out with the sun behind it as it let out a bloodcurdling banshee-like shriek for the world to hear. Flocks of Pteranodons swarmed the air; an ominous sign of things to come.

Lancer Class – Triceratops (23 – 35 feet long)

A burly, stock, barreled-bodied giant of a beast with knobby blackish-gray scales, green stripes and its back decorated with foot long porcupine-like quills rushed through the jungle. Its short, powerful four, rhinoceros-like limbs powered the beast's locomotion through the dense vegetation with branches snapping and brushes being tossed aside by the dinosaur's four-foot long brow horns and smaller nasal horn. The usually dark bony frill was more noticeable in the forest as it was blushing fiercely with blood vessels being pumped into it, making the frill on its head flash a bright orange red.

The reptile was pissed with its beady ox-like eyes seeing red. The target of its ire was a lone knight riding on his horse, terrified for his life. Both the rider and the beast felt the ground shaking the more they felt the dinosaur gain quickly onto them. The knight could practically feel the Triceratops, a lone bull, breathing down acridly onto his neck as he urged his horse to gallop faster.

The ceratopsian, in question, was huffing out angry snorts through his nostrils that flare up with every furious gallop.

"Come on! Come on!" The knight yelled through gritted teeth and sweat streaming rapidly downwards from his face when he looked back at the charging Triceratops with the beast's eyes practically glowing with unadulterated fury towards him. The jungle underbrush doing nothing helpful to hinder the giant animal's rampage as the foliage were either trampled or gashed through by the long horns that almost make the rhino-like beast look demonic along with the bright bony frill with spiky studs.

The horse neighed loudly and the knight turned back forward to see light coming from the edge of the jungle. "Good God! Almost there!" The knight's eyes almost shined with relief as he was getting closer to salvation.

However, the Triceratops wouldn't have none of it as he went into overdrive acceleration with his stocky, powerful limbs' muscles now pushed further, increasing his speed. The dinosaur let out a blood-fueled roar from his beaked mouth with the dinosaur now more riled up and wanting the interloper dead for accidentally provoking him as he was in the midst of his musth.

"Oh, Holy Merciful Christ! Save me!" The knight swore when he felt the beast's hot breath behind his back. Before he knew it, the male Trike's horns impaled the horse with the equine squealing in bloodied terror and the warrior hanging onto dear life in between the beast's brow horns as the burly dinosaur lifted them above the ground. With one powered lift of his enormous frilled head, the Trike sent the rider and the skewered horse flying through the canopy and sprawling out into the open grassland in a chaotic mess.

Several sounds of bone being shattered rung throughout the air with the horse instantly dead with its neck snapped in an unnatural angle upon the animal's crash to the earth.

The knight grunted in pain with his shoulder dislocated and his mouth having some rocks. He spit them out, awkwardly trying to get to his feet with his knee badly banged up. The ground shook more vigorously underneath him as the Triceratops stampeded towards him from the jungle's edge until the beast was on top of him. The knight turned his head weakly around to see the creature raise his rhino-like front foot high up. His life flashed before his eyes, muttering his wife's name.

Then it was over with the knight's helmeted head shattered into bloody juices and bits of flesh and crumpled metal by the ceratopsian slamming all of the foot's weight onto him.

The bull Triceratops growled, kicking the headless corpse away from him while he snorted derisively through his nostrils. With his business done, he was about to leave into the forest to rejoin his herd but was stopped when he felt several arrows hitting his thick scaly hide onto his thighs.

Grunting more out of curiosity and annoyance than pain, the Triceratops turned its head to the side to see several Iron Legion archers on horseback having shot their arrows from their bows. Leading them was a Lawbringer with the distinctive headcrest of a Griffon.

"There you are, you bastard bull!" The Lawbringer growled with resentment in his voice as he gestured to the archers behind him. "Archers! Fire more into that demon!"

The archers complied, firing more arrows onto the horned behemoth with many hitting the shoulders and back, but doing nothing more than bouncing off the pebbly scales. Two even managed to hit the horns and frill but missed the eyes. Again, not much damage was done with only minor wounds inflicted, which served to further anger the Triceratops than it already was. Roaring back like a mad buffalo, the bull didn't take too kindly to that, quickly pivoted its body around, and charged at a speed belying its heavy bulk.

"That's it. Men, retreat!" The Lawbringer and his small contingent retreated with their horses galloping in haste with the agitated Triceratops now pursuing onto them.

They hurried through the grassland, holding tight onto their reins with their horses accelerating as best as they could when both the riders and the beasts could clearly hear the dinosaur closing in behind them.

"Sir, the bull's gaining onto us!" One of the archers cried out to the Lawbringer.

"I know that! He's quite fast for his size!" The Lawbringer acknowledged as he didn't need to see that the Triceratops was gradually inching closer to the fleeing contingent with the intent to hurt and maim evident in its bestial eyes. "How far are we from our intended destination?!"

"We're three miles away from the fort! We're not gonna make it!" The archer warned.

"We have to make it, soldier! If we don't take this rogue down now, he'll become only more difficult for us to deal with when he should decide to raid our crops again!" The Lawbringer denied wanting to make sure that the rogue Triceratops bull behind them would be put down for good. The agitated, red-frilled ceratopsian in question didn't care about what the interloper was planning in store for him. Right now, all he wanted to do was to destroy and the horse-riding archer that was the furthest out from the group would be the first target of his ire.

The archer bolted out of his saddle, almost falling off his horse when he heard the Triceratops roaring close to him. He panicked and his fumbling with the arrow to place on the bow while trying to hold onto the reins proved costly to him. Those few seconds lost enabled the Triceratops to get within striking distance and swing his massive head onto the rider and the horse.

"GAAAHHK!" The archer was hit in the side by one of the horns and the horse was slammed in the process as both were sent crashing into the tall grass. Both he and his steed were rendered incapacitated with serious injuries to their ribs and limbs with the horse too stunned to move afterwards.

"Devon!" Lawbringer hollered out in shock, having saw what had just occurred behind him. The Triceratops didn't even briefly glance at what he had done as his glare was so dead focus on destroying everyone in the unit.

"Shit! Faster! Faster!" The Lawbringer yelled to both his steed and his remaining subordinates with more urgency and fear in his voice. He pressed his heel into the sides of his steed with the beast grunting, causing it to gallop even faster.

"CAPTAIN!" The Lawbringer heard more cries of anguish behind him. Then a scream erupted when another one of his archers was gored through his chest with the steed rudely shoved aside without care by the Triceratops' barrel-like body. The poor horse broke his ankle when he inadvertently caught his foot into a snake burrow. The enraged dinosaur flung off the dead knight off of him before he veered his head into another horse, this time gouging the horse's underbelly with his pointy nasal horn.

"Oh God! NO!" The rider yelped in horror as his world was suddenly flipped upside down with the Triceratops tossing both him and his steed with brief, yet powerful ease of his neck muscles. The young man was crushed to death underneath his horse.

The Lawbringer let out an unintelligible sound vaguely sounding like a cuss word with him and his two archers being the only ones left.

Fortunately, the fortress was in sight.

"Keep shooting at the beast!" the Lawbringer ordered; he needed the dinosaur riled up just for his plan to work. The two archers shot two arrows each at the bull's head and they had the intended effect of angering the rogue reptile while one to the eye also slowed it down, setting it back as it was caught off guard by the blood squirting from his wounded eye.

On top of the gateway, a Peacekeeper saw her charge leading the Triceratops towards the fortress and when she saw the signal in the form of a fire arrow fired from one of the archers on horseback, she knew it was time.

"Open the gates!" She hollered out and the guardsmen scrambled opening the gates.

The Lawbringer smiled underneath his helmet, seeing the gates open ahead of him.

The three rode quickly through the gates with the Triceratops thundering behind them now several feet further from them. The beast didn't know, or cared it was stampeding into a trap.

As soon as the horned, shield dinosaur trampled into the middle of the courtyard, the gates slowly closed. The Lawbringer gathered enough distance from the now exhausted Triceratops and initiated the final phase of his plan.

"NOW! TRAP HIM!" The bull couldn't understand what just transpired as heavy nets of thick bundles of rope and boulders descended upon him, pinning him forcefully onto the ground. Then from the walls came a hail of arrows, bombarding onto the dinosaur. Confused, tired, and now wounded, the Triceratops was disoriented. It barely registered that there were now more Knights rushing out with their weapons ready to hack at him as he was now surrounded with no where to retreat.

The Triceratops mustered whatever adrenaline and rage he had left within him, fighting back at the battalion by swinging his horned head sideways haphazardly, taking out several of the armored soldiers. Then he saw the Lawbringer now charging with the pointed front of his halberd now aimed at him with the intention to maim.

Both the Lawbringer and the rogue Triceratops roared with both halberd and horns now unleashed.

A/N: Belated Happy New Year! Sorry I was late in getting this chapter out, but I was busy with my substitute job and had to deal with the severe case of writer's block. It's better for me to take my time to make good quality work rather than to rush my hobby. Anyways, I hope to get back into the swing of things with my fanfics and catch up onto them. Hope you enjoyed this one.

See ya!