In the Great Valley, five of the seven Gang members sat under a small tree. Littlefoot had called them there for an emergency meeting.

"What is it, Littlefoot?" Ducky asked. The hornhead swimmer wasn't so small anymore, her stature presently half that of her adult height.

Littlefoot, who was about half as tall as the tree itself, sighed. "I had a strange sleep story last night. The Night Circle bled, and sharpteeth were everywhere. A bunch of us were there too, including me, standing around a crater to face the sharpteeth head-on."

"Was Chomper one of the sharpteeth attacking us?" Cera asked bluntly. The greater threehorn finally lived up to her species' name as her brow horns had at last grown in, though it'd be years before they were their maximum length.

"Cera!"

"What? It was a valid question."

"No, he wasn't. He was helping us at the crater, actually. So were a lot of other sharpteeth." This surprised his friends. Littlefoot sighed. "What could make the Night Circle bleed?"

"Maybe someone find Stone of Cold Fire. Real one, me mean," Petrie said. He was the size of his mother now, but as balancehead flyers were sexually dimorphic Petrie still had a lot of growing left to do.

Cera scoffed. "There's no such thing! How can fire be cold, anyway?"

"Fire is never cold," came a gravelly voice, "but it can be less hot than other fire."

That was Spike, the five-side spiketail. The Time of Great Growing had changed him in perhaps the greatest of ways. Sure, his plates had started to emerge and there were more of them, and his namesake tail spikes were finally present, but the change within him was even more drastic. Spike had always been as mature as the other kids, but hadn't ever been able to get his mouth to say what he was thinking. That was no longer the case. Although Spike still preferred to keep to himself, and still had an enormous appetite, he was nonetheless invaluable for his insightfulness.

"How so?" Cera frowned.

"Some fires burn slower and not as hot as other fires," Spike explained. "I remember being caught in one fire that burned red, and another that burned yellow. The yellow fire burned the trees faster than the red fire did. And the flying rock Pterano wanted burned bright blue."

"So we didn't see a Stone of Cold Fire then, no no no," Ducky realized. "We saw a Stone of Very Hot Fire!"

"Thanks, Spike," Littlefoot said. "Now we know what to look for. If a flying rock that burns red comes down, we'll be sure to find it before the sharpteeth can use it to wish for the Night Circle to get hurt. But what should we wish for?"

"End of cold time forever?" Petrie suggested.

"No, cold times are good," Spike replied. "They keep the green food from taking too much green food food out of the ground."

"Maybe wish for Redclaw to never bother us ever again?" Cera snarked.

"That's actually a really good idea!" Littlefoot exclaimed.

He wasn't the only one who thought that.

Macron groaned, trying to focus on eating. He hadn't slept well last night, on account of a strange dream where he and many dinosaurs he'd never met were facing down a horde of sharpteeth. The moon had been close, it had gone red, and that could only mean one thing.

"Sir? You okay?" Tala asked him. Tala was a tallcrest hollowhorn, a type of swimmer with a narrow, vertical crest with a small half-circle at the end of it. Being female, Tala's crest was smaller than a male of her species' was. She was white, with an orange stripe running down the length of her back, with some black stripes on the end of her tail.

"No," the green ridgehead longneck replied. "I had a dream."

"What kind of dream?" a green flathead bigmouth named Quixotic asked. He and Tala were Macron's chief lieutenants, responsible for calling meetings together and calming down rabblerousers.

"Prophetic. You know longnecks are connected to the moon. Any unusual occurrences regarding it are usually an omen."

"But sun-blockings are only dangerous if you look at them directly," Quixotic reminded him.

"Yes, but this one is. For different reasons." Macron plucked an oak leaf off its tree and chewed on it thoughtfully. Oak leaves weren't the classic ten-sided shape as that of maple leaves, nor were the trees as common, but Macron preferred them as the leaves helped settle his stomach. Finally, he spoke. "Get the herd. I need to talk to them."

"Right away, sir!" Tala declared, and she and Quixotic galloped off to raise the alarm.

Macron's herd was just as big as that in the Great Valley, and even more diverse. But strangely, half a dozen sharpteeth flanked them. They were green, with black heads, stumpy and immobile four-fingered hands, and a single horn between their eyes.

Macron stood in front of them. "You may have heard that a sun-blocking is coming. That is not true. It has already come somewhere else in the world. Where we are, though, there will be a moon-blocking. But not like a normal one.

"You know of tag-along moons, when the moon appears four times a season instead of three. And of big moons, when the moon appears bigger than normal. Seeing any of these three in combination is rare. Seeing all three at once is rarer.

"And that is what is going to happen. A summer tag-along moon, big moon, and moon-blocking on the same night. Something many sharpteeth revere as...

"The Night of Blood." His herd gulped. "Folklore states that on a night of blood, all sharpteeth gain the murderface's strength to kill even the biggest, fastest, and heaviest-armored of dinosaurs. They kill more than they need, take down entire herds...and entire kinds. I mention this because there is one sharptooth who would definitely try to use this to exterminate the largest safe haven this side of the world has left.

"I am of course speaking about Redclaw, the first scholar of Yrannos the Ghastly. We call their kind 'murderfaces' because they can kill any dinosaur they want to. Yrannos made that his personal mission, and Redclaw took that himself when the Five Hatchlings avenged the kin Yrannos had slaughtered.

"Wera, you lost your son to Redclaw, did you not?" A brown twohorn looked at the ground, tears cascading down her face. "Flapper, you lost your beloved mate." A blue flatcrest flyer nodded solemnly. "Opa, your grandfather, one of our best teachers of the natural world, was killed in Yrannos' name." A black broadchest clubtail stood taller, as much as her short legs would allow her.

Macron nodded at them. "And I, too, know the pain. Redclaw killed my entire family save for myself and one of my nephews. My lover, my brother, his lover, and several children gone in seconds." He frowned. "Redclaw wants nothing more than the destruction of all lifeforms he feels inferior to himself. So when the night of blood comes, we are going to march on his lair, and we are going to kill him like he killed us!

"Is it dangerous? Of course. But luckily we have some help. The six leaderhorn stumparms you see among us lost their home to Redclaw and they want it back. So much so that they have agreed to cooperate with us. Remember, any creature with my mark," he said of a bitemark on every herd member's left shoulder that he'd inflicted, "is on our side.

"Now who's with me? Who's ready to take back what is rightfully ours?"

His herd thundered in agreement. "I expected nothing more from fine folks like you all! Come, to the Great Valley!"

Guide to dinosaurs:

Sharpteeth: carnivorous theropods

Leaderhorn stumparm: Rajasaurus narmadensis

Stumparm sharptooth: Abelisauridae

Murderface sharptooth: Tyrannosaurus rex

Longneck: sauropod

Ridgehead longneck: Brachiosaurus altithorax

Spiketail: Stegosauridae

Five-side spiketail: Stegosaurus stenops

Broadchest clubtail: Saichania chulsanensis

Twohorn: Nasutoceratops titusi

Greater threehorn: Triceratops horridus

Tallcrest hollowhorn: Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus

Hornhead swimmer: Saurolophus osborni

Flathead bigmouth: Edmontosaurus regalis

Flyer: pterosaur

Balancehead flyer: Pteranodon longiceps

Flatcrest flyer: Tupandactylus imperator