Part VIII: Sky's Secret
Littlefoot was so agitated he didn't even notice his fatigue as he finally topped the wall of the basin that held the Verdant Valley. He made a breakneck pace in the direction Petrie alluded to and the flyer was with him, keeping up and occasionally guiding on. The great circle was just beginning to rise, reminding them both that they had stayed awake all night chasing their friend. Once the Verdant Basin wall was behind them the flyer and longneck continued onward into a near desolate span of land known as the Steppes. Here, the poisoned gases spewed by the Black Mountain deposited often and excessively making it difficult for plant life to grow. Fortunately these emissions were not immediately toxic to living things, so a simple passer through could expect to come out as healthy as they came in… provided they made it out that is. The Steppes was known for its sharpteeth, and though Tyron held no sway here in the best of times a herd could only hope to avoid attack by sticking together. For a small group of adolescent dinosaurs, venturing through such blasted lands could be the last, fatal step they ever make.
"Me soo tired," whined Petrie as he landed on an outcropped rock, and flopped onto his stomach.
"Me too Petrie," agreed Littlefoot, "but we have to keep going… we have to find out why Sky left us."
Admittedly, the task was a daunting one. The Steppes were a massive rocky place with any form of vegetation few and far in between, but…
"Hey," thought Littlefoot out loud, "since there aren't many trees… there aren't many places he could land. Petrie, fly up and take a look at all the trees you can see, he has to be around here somewhere."
It was good thinking, but Petrie didn't care as he was so tired the only thing he could think about was curling up and going to sleep. Reluctantly, the flyer obeyed and after a moment or two he was back up in the air, scouting for their friend.
Just as Petrie had all but disappeared from sight, Littlefoot had another thought. He remembered when Ali and him had looked for Sky before… and they had found him on the Great Wall, overlooking the sunset. Since it was just breaking dawn, it would make sense that the blue wingtail would be resting in a place where he was facing the exact opposite direction – towards the retreating night. A place kind of like…
"That spire right over there," finished Littlefoot as he his eyes met the greatest likeness of the Great Wall he could hope see.
The rock was shaped similar to a rough cone emerging from the rocky desert like a needle piercing the heavens. While it was certainly imposing enough, the dull orange of the dawn light portrayed it as probably the last place a young and alone longneck would want to go. Nonetheless, Littlefoot walked onward cautiously in case there might be any lurking sharpteeth or other enemies. A dull roar rang out through the air from far away, as if the death knell of some distant and forgotten leaf-eater had come, and it certainly didn't help calm Littlefoot's nerves.
Overall the longneck found he was liking this setting less and less the deeper he travelled into it… it reminded him of the Mysterious Beyond back home he had ventured through time and time again on his past adventures. More specifically though, this place reminded him of his mother… and the sharptooth. There was no more hurtful memory then that, and yet there was something else he remembered too – fear. Littlefoot just couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen, but what it was he could only guess.
…
It took Littlefoot an hour to reach the rock, and fatigue was really starting to set in. The great circle had almost completely risen over the horizon, and he hadn't had a minute of sleep. Fortunately Petrie had seen him and caught up with his findings.
"Me not see him anywhere," sighed Petrie, just barely keeping aloft.
"I think I know where he is, follow me Petrie," Littlefoot proclaimed.
The pair rounded the rock until they were facing the side bent towards the darkness. Littlefoot narrowed his eyes, and eagerly scanned the ledges towards the top. The light from the dawn was so bright and it was getting brighter by the second, making it almost impossible to see.
"I see him, he up there… look!" shouted Petrie.
At that moment Littlefoot noticed Sky too, resting near the top far out of reach of any potential predators. He couldn't tell whether the large flyer was still sleeping, or staring down at him intently.
"Sky, Sky we're down here!" called out Littlefoot.
Up above Sky yawned, breaking out of a thankfully dreamless sleep. To his dismay, the longneck was down below, calling up to him. His heart sank… Littlefoot had followed him. Silently the blue wingtail lamented the adolesant's loyalty – he was so naïve to think that he could leave Littlefoot and his friends so easily. With a depressed look, the blue wingtail glided down to the ground, and landed in front of Littlefoot.
"Finally, we've been looking all over for you," said Littlefoot with a smile, trying to look to the positive side of the situation.
Petrie on the other hand, cowered in fear behind one of Littlefoot's back legs afraid that Sky might start yelling at them again.
"What are you doing here Littlefoot, why have you followed me?" the blue wingtail questioned without anger, but with what sounded like regret.
"Because we're friends," answered the longneck without hesitation, "and friends stick together, always."
Sky sighed, and rubbed his head briefly.
"You shouldn't be here," he concluded, "do you have any idea how dangerous this place is? If you had, then you would understand why I had to leave you and your friends back in the Verdant Valley, where you would be safe."
"That's it?" questioned Littlefoot, "we've come all this way just because you wanted us to be safe?"
"That is correct," answered Sky with a bit of dignity.
"But what about you're far away home," urged Littlefoot, "what about the place where you were supposed to be taking us?"
"The Verdant Valley is your home now," hissed Sky, "and you should have stayed there with your friends."
Littlefoot felt a pang of anger rising.
"But…but… what about Cera and Chomper and the others… why didn't we go back for them if all you wanted for all this time was for us to all be safe?"
"Littlefoot… "
"We could have gone back to look for them… we could have stayed in the Forgotten Forest with the rest of my dads herd… I thought you had a good reason for bringing us along instead of just dropping us off whenever it suited you; I thought we were going somewhere important!"
"I am, but where I am going you cannot come with me," Sky responded hardly.
"What do you mean we can't come with you?" Littlefoot asked, trying hard to contain the feelings he felt inside, "If we couldn't come with you then why didn't you just leave us back in the Great Valley with our families and our friends?"
"You and Ali were stubborn… I wanted to go alone but you hatchlings wouldn't leave me to my own…" Sky countered.
At that moment Littlefoot stopped, this was going too far. He sat in silence to cool off for ten seconds, then twenty, then a whole minute. Finally, he gathered himself to ask the question he had been yearning to ask the entire trip.
"Sky…" the longneck began quietly, without a trace of spite or anger, "what is really going on here? Why are the sharpteeth still chasing us, and why is your own kind attacking us… Why is my father dead?"
Sky knew the answer, and Littlefoot could tell by the way he turned away that he was hiding something… a big something.
"Not us," lamented Sky, "it's… me."
Littlefoot did not respond… it wasn't needed.
"Long ago, when I was young," began Sky with his back still turned, "I did a terrible… terrible thing."
There was another few seconds of silence, as Sky wiped away a small tear and turned towards his friends.
"I was young, and I was angry. All I wanted… the thing I wanted most in the world was to be together with the one I loved… another wingtail named Star."
Sky used his wing to give a remissive gesture.
"But the elders, when they heard about the fights me and her brother got into… they separated us forever. Following this heart wrenching act, they then had the nerve to put me to service for them in a 'quest' without any reward. It was a dictatum, a method to keep me away from that which I desired most… and for that I resented and hated them with every feather on my wings."
The blue wingtail clinched his fists, matching his actions with his words.
"My quest was to find a holy object to my kind, a site of the Creators that had been long lost to us over the generations – a creation with unparalleled power of vision into all areas of the world – a place known as the 'Eye of the World',"
For some reason the words sent shivers down Littlefoot's spine, even though he hardly knew what they meant.
"And I found it," proclaimed Sky, "I found it, but after what they had done to me there was no way I was returning to the Feral Forest with what I knew. For splitting me up with Star and forcing me away I wasn't about to do their dirty work… and so I… I,"
Sky turned away again, unable to complete the thought.
"You told someone else," finished Littlefoot, now catching on to what exactly was going on, "but who did you tell?"
"After all I have taught you Littlefoot, after all the lessons you have learned the answer to that question should be clear…" Sky scolded, unwilling to reveal the truth.
Taking the lead, Littlefoot thought long and hard about everything, drawing on every memory and every thing that had been said and done up to this point.
"I see you are one tooth short of a full set," Sky remarked as he eyed Chomper's missing tooth.
"His name is Tyrus, he is the son of the tyrant king Tyron," Sky said hurriedly.
Redgar paused as the two wingtails sat helplessly before him, yet he had no enemies here.
"Do you understand why I had to leave you and your friends back in the Verdant Valley, so you would be safe!"
… From the sharpteeth.
"You told them," said Littlefoot in shock, "you told the sharpteeth!"
With a look of supreme sadness, Sky shook his head in acknowledgement. It was true.
"You've been on their side this whole time," continued Littlefoot in rage, "you're the reason the wingtails are chasing us… you betrayed them!"
"Littlefoot it's not like that I can explain…" began Sky.
"So the sharpteeth could see everything… they could see the entire world and attack wherever they wanted. That's how Tyron has been taking over… that's why my father is dead and why those fast-biters didn't kill you when they had the chance, because you are on their side!"
"I didn't want any of this to happen Littlefoot, you've got to believe me," Sky insisted.
Littlefoot would have none of it.
"But what I don't understand is where you are going," he growled, "… and why."
There was no point in trying to keep it in now, Sky's secret was out.
"Just before you two children came to me on the Great Wall, I was met by a fast-biter that I had not seen for a long time… a villain by the name of Redgar. He told me, through a translator, that the Tyrant King now had need of my Occular, and that he was willing to forgive my betrayal. I had removed it from the Eye of the World after I saw the terrible, terrible purpose he was using it for. Understand me Littlefoot, I had no choice but to obey or else I would have been killed on the spot."
"So what," countered Littlefoot, "the Occular is gone and you lost it, so what are you doing out here and why did you abandon us?"
"…running," the wingtail whispered.
There was a tinge of fear in Sky's reply, and Littlefoot couldn't figure out why until he heard the sound of a dozen, ravenous hisses behind him. Turing around the longneck came face to face with a pack of snarling, hungry velociraptors with their teeth fully bared. At there head was the one Sky had mentioned, Redgar.
The sharptooth approached viciously, stalking towards the now cowering Littlefoot with a sense of grandiose accomplishment. There was no need to rush after all, for Redgar would finally get his wish and remove Sky for his deception, and in the process get a nice feast on longneck flesh.
Littlefoot backed up, holing himself against the rock trying his best to keep away from the slobbering pointed teeth bearing down on him. In a few moments it would be all over. Nobly and defiantly, Sky stepped in front of him and hissed, at best delaying the inevitable.
Redgar cackled at the gesture, and it was a truly menacing sound coming out of a fast-biter. Lashing forward he snapped at the air, just missing Sky's face. The wingtail did not move… surprisingly he looked quite ready to die.
"Come and get us, slaves of the tyrant," Sky proclaimed bravely and foolishly.
With a twitch of his head, Redgar signalled his pack to attack.
Suddenly, their screeches were drowned out by a horrible, crackling boom that shook the ground in its fury. Sky could tell that it was not one of Eybron's false earthshakes… this was the real deal. A flash of bright red illuminated the dawn sky with brightness so intense it even distracted the fast-biters.
One by one they all turned and faced the source of the thunderous roar, and the sight was almost indescribable. It turned out that it was Sky who could describe it best.
"By all the mothers and fathers…"
A mushroom cloud of colossal proportions rose high up into the sky, it's errie red afterglow still lighting up the landscape. The Black Mountain had exploded.
Eybron's goal had been to create an earthshake with the Sonicron, and catch hopefully catch Sky off guard while he was still sleeping and crush him under the weight of wherever cave or tree he had been sleeping. It was a crazy, insane plan that only had the slightest chance of working, but it sure set an impression for those who needed impressing. The wingtails now had a weapon, and they could use it against anyone they chose… the ultimate power over living creatures.
The white wingtail knew that many other dinosaurs would die in his earthshake, but he reasoned that they were necessary sacrifices considering how valuable Sky was to Tyron. Eybron's hate of the Tyrant King was deep and ingrained in his mind, and that the elimination of Sky was only a stepping stone towards a much greater goal – the end of Tyron's domain.
Eybron's plan ended up not turning out as he expected. The sonic shattering wave travelled through the bedrock breaking it up and triggering mass collapse, but the impact was directed away from the Verdant Valley by the presence of the massive volcano – the Black Mountain. For millions of years the active volcano had been building it's energy, readying itself for it's next big eruption within a couple hundred thousand years or so. The earthquake from the Sonicron sped up this cycle exponentially, and the volcanic cap on the mountain was broken, triggering the direct collapse of the eastern face.
The result of this break away was a cataclysm of epic proportions, an explosive outburst that annihilated the mountainside and burst directly up into the air. The residents of the Verdant Valley stopped their daily business to look to the heavens, watching in marvel as the Black Mountain displayed its earthly power like prehistoric fireworks. It would be the last thing they would ever see. The ash cloud soon cooled, and in one fluid motion the pyroclastic cloud fell from the sky and descended down the face at over supersonic speeds. Before the hundreds of dinosaurs knew what was happening, the rolling cloud of death was upon their valley, and soon erased it from existence.
Within a space of only ten minutes, the Verdant Valley and all its inhabitants were wiped off the face of the Earth.
…
The fast-biters fled in fear. The cloud had not only hit the Verdant Valley, but now it was heading their way too, destroying everything in it's path.
"Littlefoot, Littlefoot … what we do?" begged Petrie as the Sky and the longneck continued to stare at the eerie sight.
"I… I… don't know," stammered Littlefoot in fear.
"We won't be safe here Littlefoot," informed Sky, "we have to–"
"Littlefoot, over here!" came a call from the bottom of the spire. It was Ducky.
Ali, Ducky and Spike had followed Littlefoot's footprints, and eventually tracked him to the big rock.
"Oh no…" whispered Littlefoot.
His friends would be killed by the column of rock.
"There is a cave over here," stated Sky hurriedly, "we have to get in here or else we will be at our end."
"Ducky, Ali, Spike… everyone get up here NOW!" shouted Littlefoot, and they obeyed with terrified glances backward as the cloud grew closer.
Barely soon enough, the entire group of them had crammed into the cave that was little more then a hollow in the rock. It was all they could do.
"Brace yourselves!" yelled Sky.
And with a terrible, thundering roar like nothing any of them had ever heard or felt before, the pyroclastic cloud slammed the other side of the spire rock, knocking some of them off their feet.
The combination of the shock of being tossed off his feet, the betrayal of his best friend, and his own fatigue was too much for Littlefoot to bear, and as soon as he hit the rocky ground of the nook-cave he passed out.