Diego didn't know how long they had been trapped underground, maybe hours. It was impossible to tell as they traversed through the darkness of the seemingly endless cave network, only able to see a few feet ahead of them at a time thanks to Sid's torch, and having to navigate past or squeeze through various rock formations.
Other than seeing the occasional olm scampering around, the cave was entirely devoid of life. Not an encouraging sign. Not only was it unnerving not knowing whether they were nearing freedom or trapping themselves deeper below the surface but it was also frustratingly boring.
Conversing was the only way of killing time while looking for a way out, but when your only company was Sid...well... he had a way of making you miss the sweet serenity of silence, especially after being trapped in a cave brought back memories of the sloth's alleged experience back in the ice cavern.
"I swear! There was this horrifying monster that looked like some sort of fusion between a crocodile and an ostrich, and it was bigger than even Manny!" Sid raised his free paw as high as possible for emphasis.
"Ahah..." Diego deadpanned "...a 15-foot-tall lizard with chicken legs. And where do you presume that thing came from? Such a monster would be hard to miss, don't ya think?"
Sid scratched his head in contemplation and winced when he touched his bump.
"I dunno...it was trapped in ice, so maybe...maybe it comes from a time long before ours? Long before any ice age?" he spitballed while rubbing his chin.
"Like that's possible." Diego snorted. "I think you hit your head pretty hard back there."
"But it could be true? Hey? Maybe there were countless other dynasties of life inhabiting this world long, long, long before we mammals did?"
"Sid, you're starting to sound crazy." Diego jeered in a sing-song voice.
"Hey, maybe you're the crazy one!" Sid shot back petulantly. "For being so close-minded and unwilling to give new ideas a chance."
"Sid, I'm friends with a mammoth and a sloth, I think I'm pretty open-minded." Diego replied nonchalantly, making the sloth falter. Sid just made it too easy sometimes.
"I know what saw, okay!" Sid insisted. "You and Manny never take me seriously but look at this!" he raised his torch. "Who figured out how to make fire, huh, huh?"
"By sheer accident." Diego pointed out. "While drawing an unflattering picture of yourself."
Sid frowned peevishly. "Accident or not, it was me, the Lord of the Flames, who mastered the art of making fire!"
Diego huffed in amusement. "So you're just gonna keep calling yourself that until it sticks, like flies to a hyena's rear end?"
Sid looked confused for a moment before the implication behind that comment settled in and he cringed. "Oh, my...that is beyond nasty..." Even sloths had some standards when it came to cleanliness.
Trying to purge that mental image from his mind, he scoffed and looked away from the tiger. "Keep laughing at me. True geniuses are never appreciated in their day!"
Diego was unmoved. "And speaking of hyenas? If I were you, I'd be less concerned with being open-minded as much as keeping my eyes open. As I said, me and Manny can't be there to protect you all the time, and if you think getting caught by a tiger is bad, to a pack of hyenas, you being dead is optional before they start eating."
"But...but...you told me sloths taste bad, right?" an uneasy Sid asked, suddenly treating his unflattering biology like a godsend.
Diego rolled his eyes, trying not to be offended. "Yeah, for a tiger. Us felines have only the finest tastes in meat, but the opposite is true for those insatiable gluttons. They'll chow down on rotting meat... or their own feces."
Sid grimaced before sniffing and wiping his nose.
"You okay?"
"So that's why nothing was left of my dear Aunt Petunia." Sid sighed sadly. "Fur, bones, teeth, all gone. That pack left nothing for us to mourn."
He pulled on his fungi-infested arm fur. "Even our natural deterrent means nothing to those savages."
Diego thought about expressing his sympathies to Sid, but if his late aunt was anything like the rest of his family, it was probably no great loss. Plus, it felt nostalgic to trash-talk other, inferior predators.
"Yup. That sounds like the work of hyenas alright." he said curtly. "Those gutless, mangy, slobbering curs always go after the easiest targets; the young, the sick, the old, or those already pushing up dasies. They barely even qualify as predators."
Sid looked nervous, all too conscious that his kind very much counted as an easy target, and knowing there were hyenas ahead was anything but comforting.
"Good thing I have you by my side, right?" he tried to be optimistic. "Say? How many hyenas did ya whoop back in the day? Did you ever fight a whole pack by yourself?"
Diego smiled and glanced aside, not even trying to look humble. "Well...I wasn't keeping score but it had to be a few dozen at least. Then again, hyenas have plus-sized heads housing brains the size of walnuts, so besting them is no great challenge. Even Zeke killed one or two."
"Zeke? Oh, you mean that scrawny tiger I tricked into getting himself stuck?" Sid asked.
Diego had his doubts about how authentic Sid's account of his encounter with Zeke was. Then again, the latter wasn't the sharpest tool.
"That's the one." Diego nodded. "I wasn't kidding when I said that they are far more dangerous killers to look out for, like..."
His voice trailed off as he saw a light at the end of the tunnel, as did Sid. Running up to the rays of sunshine, the two walked through a crack in the wall and found themselves in a chamber, this one much wider and better-lit.
Up ahead, they saw the mouth of the cave. The whiteout and roaring winds outside made it clear that another blizzard was ravaging the land, but at least they were no longer trapped, and the duo breathed in and exhaled the fresh air.
"Thank goodness." Sid whipped his forehead. "I was worried we were in for another life-threatening adventure."
"Hope Manny finds his way here." Diego said. "We can weather out the storm here."
"Uhhh! Look, Diego!" Sid pointed at the walls like a wide-eyed child. "More cave paintings!"
Looking around, Diego saw the image of a mammoth painted on the wall, along with a few other animals such as rhinos, deer, antelope, and bison. Nowhere near as extensive as the last cave they visited, but some humans were definitely here at some point and expressed their artistic side.
Looking to his right, he spotted an artistic rendering of his own species, shown in a stalking pose.
"Not too shabby." he admitted before heading towards the mouth of the cave, hoping to spot Manny or call out to him. The mammoth would likely struggle to see anything in this blizzard.
"Still no sloths?" Sid sounded outraged as he looked around. "Why are there never any sloths in these things? Do humans just not find us photogenic?"
"I can't imagine that." Diego snarked as he looked out into the storm, unable to see much of anything, so he let out the loudest roar he could muster, again and again, hoping Manny was near enough to hear him.
"I have to do something against this injustice. Sloths deserve representation darn it!" Sid grumbled as he used his torch to search for any chalk, missing a disarticulated, distinctly anthropoid-shaped skeleton wrapped in animal hides he passed by.
Instead, he stumbled across something else, a single tuber lying on the cave floor. Ecstatic, the starving sloth picked it up with his free paw.
"Yumo! Finally, some real food!" he scarfed it down in one go and hummed in delight. But his nose told him that there was more ahead and it made his mouth water.
A few feet ahead, lying in a shallow depression next to a large boulder, and conveniently illuminated by rays of light from a crack in the ceiling, was a small pile of food. More tubers, along with all sorts of berries, nuts, mushrooms, and other edibles.
"I've hit the jackpot!" Hunger overruling his dubious sense of reason, Sid slid down, kneeled in front of the pile, and started stuffing his face, dropping his torch next to him, and letting it slowly roll away.
"Where are you, Manny?" Diego wondered as he stared into the endless white abyss, his throat starting to hurt.
He worried that his roars were drowned out by the winds, but maybe Sid's torch could be used as a beacon.
"Sid?" he turned around but saw no sign of the sloth.
"That numbskull. Where did he wander off to?" he grumbled under his breath and went back to search for Sid, fearing that the latter got himself lost in another tunnel.
But instead, Diego stepped on a narrow shaft of wood.
Surprised, he looked down and realized that he was looking at a spear, in perfect shape and just lying on the cave floor. Diego cocked a brow. He figured the human inhabitants fled this cave to escape the incoming winter, as any sensible creature would, but why would they leave their weapons behind?
As soon as the thought occurred to him, Diego spotted a femur bone a few feet from the spear. Taking a step towards it, he spotted more scattered bones surrounding it, some showing gnaw marks, and a discarded boot.
He grew concerned and his fears were confirmed by his final find. Nestled between a rock and the cave wall, was a human skull.
Diego's eyes widened as he saw the large crack in its cranium and right next to it, he noticed some huge pawprints with long claws. They had to get out of here!
"Sid? Sid." he called out to his friend, trying to keep his voice down before finding a partially lit silhouette of the sloth kneeling over in a depression, humming happily while eating like a pig, blissfully unaware of the big, hairy object right behind him.
Diego watched him with a slack-jawed expression. The idiot had done it now.
"What are you doing, stop that." an angry Diego hissed, barely loud enough to be heard by Sid, who turned around with his cheeks puffed out and his mouth smeared in berry juice.
"Hethhh...Iwthh btthhhnnn..." he swallowed and picked up another berry branch. "I've been starving for days. I'll waste away if I don't eat something pronto!"
"Keep your voice down and get back to me." Diego hissed sternly. "And be quiet about it."
"And leave all these delicacies behind?" Sid laughed and held up an acorn. "You nuts? Huh, get it?"
"Idiot, this is a bear's den!" an exasperated Diego blurted. "Where do you think this stash came from?"
"B-bear's den?!" Sid panicked before hearing something groaning and stirring behind him.
Slowly turning around, he realized that the boulder in front of him was no boulder. The sloth swallowed a lump before he and Diego both noticed the former's torch slowly rolling toward the hibernating giant.
"Oh, no." Sid rushed after and barely managed to catch it before it made contact with the bear, who didn't move and continued snoring peacefully.
Sid and Diego collectively sighed in relief, that was a close shave.
"Move it." the tiger hissed and gestured towards the mouth of the cave. "We have to leave."
Sid was happy to oblige, but just as he lifted one foot, high above him, a single drop slid down a stalactite and fell onto the bear's forehead.
His eye shot open and locked onto Sid, making the latter freeze in terror as the bear rose up. His bone cracked and his muscles bulged as he reared up to his full height and engulfed Sid in a gargantuan shadow.
Agape and letting out a meek squeak, the mortified Sid dropped his torch as he was confronted with the 12-foot-tall, barrel-chested, brown-furred beast with a crescent-shaped marking on his chest and a bulging underbite. He looked down at the puny creature with bloodshot, beedy eyes, and his lips curled into an irate snarl.
"Run, you idiot!" Diego thought but Sid wasn't moving an inch. Diego knew he had to leap in and save the sloth's ass now, but his legs didn't agree with him.
"Is this a bear or a mountain that grew legs?!" Sid thought fearfully before yelping as the hulking giant leaned down and gave him a good sniff.
Grunting, the bear noticed Sid's stained mouth and, to the sloth's dread, glanced aside to see half his stash gone and what was left of it scattered across the floor.
"What do we have here? A trespasser! Think ya can waltz and steal mah food, trespasser?" the beast said in a deep, gravelly voice while glowering at the quivering sloth.
Struggling to find his voice (and not wet himself) Sid clutched his paws and blurted, "I'm so sorry, Mr. Bear! I didn't mean to be a thief! I was just lost, tired and so, so, oh-so hungry!"
"Just look at me?" he pulled the skin on his paunch. "I'm practically nothing but skin and bone! Have pity on a poor, starving straggler."
Diego saw that the bear was unmoved by Sid's groveling, and instead licked his chops. His kind was hardwired to singlemindedly seize any source of calories during the colder months.
"No problem, yall jus' have ta pay me back then." he grinned hungrily.
Naturally, the sarcasm flew over Sid's head and he beamed with joy.
"Oh, sure, sure! I can do that!" he slowly backed away. "I'll restock your stash in no time, make it twice as big! I mean... it will be hard with all the snow and frost killing all the plant life in the area, but Sid the sloth always repays his debts!"
The bear chuckled darkly and rolled his eyes before roaring and lifting his paw. Sid screamed and barely ducked from the massive paw, which grazed his head.
Feeling his new cruise cut, Sid screeched and ran past the bear, only to step on his own torch, scream, and clutch his foot before getting pinned down.
"Diego!" he screamed before both mammals heard a loud roar, and the bear turned around to see a saber-toothed tiger jumping at him, claws and fangs barred.
Swinging his paw, he smacked Diego away, making him tumble around across the rocky floor until he came to a screeching halt, barely conscious. That bear packed quite a wallop.
"Find your own grub, pussycat!" the bear grunted before turning his attention back to Sid, who had managed to slip away.
He didn't get far though as he tried to jump between two stalagmites, only for his plump lower half to get stuck between them. Chuckling evilly, the bear zeroed in on him.
"Heeeelpppp!" Sid cried as he was grabbed by the hail and hoisted up, causing Diego to stir.
"That...the best... you got?" he bragged weakly as he got up and charged at the bear again.
"You don't want to eat me! My fur is full of fungus!" Sid frantically begged as the bear's upside-down face met his.
"Mmmmm...I loves me some seasoned sloth shish kabob!" the bear was drooling at the mouth and raised his claws.
Crying in fear, Sid shielded his face, when Diego leaped onto the bear's back and sunk his claws into the giant's face.
With a pain-filled roar, the bear released Sid and the latter dropped on his head. Recovering quickly, the sloth tried to crawl away, while the bear flailed around wildly on two legs with Diego barely clinging onto his back.
Diego tried to sink his sabers into the bear's neck, when his opponent dropped on all fours and reared up with incredible force, knocking Diego off him. The tiger landed on his feet and dodged an incoming blow that reduced half of a stalagmite to rouble.
It put into perspective what Diego had gotten himself into but it was too late to back out of it now. He knew that he could either go for the throat or be torn to shreds, there wasn't a third option with a pissed-off bear.
Using his superior speed and agility, he danced circles around the lumbering behemoth, dodging his swipes repeatedly and running underneath his long legs, much to the giant's frustration.
Hiding behind a rock, Sid feebly tried to support his friend while punching the air."That's it, Diego! Kick his bear butt!"
While the bear was frustrated and disoriented, Diego seized an opening as he jumped against a wall and flew toward the former's neck.
But his teeth only grazed some fur as he felt a crushing grip against his torso, claws digging into his old wound. He saw the bear's smug look as he yanked the tiger back and threw him against the floor.
Shaking himself, Diego reacted just in time and seized the bear's muzzle as the latter tried to bite down on him, barely holding the giant back while also kicking and clawing against the bear's neck with his back legs.
Growling, the bear recoiled, allowing Diego to free himself. Acting quickly, he dodged another swipe and managed to claw the bear's sensitive nose.
The bear roared in pain and shook his head. Diego acted and went for the throat again but quickly regretted his action as the bear managed to slam his paw against him and smack him into a wall.
As the stunned Diego fell to the floor, Sid winced and grimaced before making a run for it, managing to get past the distracted bear and out of the cave. Diego tried to get back to his feet, before getting struck again and hurled further towards the mouth of the cave, claws digging through his flesh.
He faintly heard Sid's voice screaming for Manny repeatedly, as the bear's jaws seized his back and shook him around like a ragdoll. Diego roared in pain before getting tossed high into the air.
Laughing crassly, the bear reared up and hit a home run with Diego, punting the 600 lb sabretooth with little effort and out into the cold.
"MANNY!?" Sid screamed against the roaring winds when he saw Diego's form flying through the air and crashing into the snow.
Seeing the bear's massive form lumber out of the cave, Sid squeaked and hid behind the nearest rock, helpless to do anything but watch as the bear now loomed over Diego.
Diego tried to get up, but as he rolled into his back he was pinned down by the bear's massive paw, pressing him deeper into the snow. Diego snarled and clawed the bear's limb but to no avail, much to his opponent's amusement.
The bear let out a throaty chuckle. "Lil' kitty wants ta fight for the appetizer?" he taunted the squirming Diego as he raised his free paw. "Then ya can be the main course!"
Sid covered his eyes while Diego glared in defiance when they both heard a mighty below and the bear turned around just in time to see a bull mammoth emerge from the blizzard, charging directly at him.
Diego wiggled himself free and rolled out of the way as Manny's head rammed the bear and sent him tumbling and sliding down the snowy hill.
His long hair billowing against the winds, Manny saw the bear stopping at the bottom of the hill, glaring up at them, before turning his gaze at Diego, who panted as he rose to his feet.
"...thanks." he said somewhat reluctantly, trying to ignore the stinging pain.
"Manny, our big, woolly savior! Just in the nick of time!" an overjoyed Sid ran up to them.
Manny glowered at him, 100% certain that the sloth did something stupid to upset the bear but he could reprimand him later.
"Come on!" Manny barked as he hooked Sid with his tusk and threw him onto his back. "We got to get out of here!"
"What?" Diego asked incredulously. "We can take this joker on!"
"Not in your state! You can feel inadequate some other time!" Manny scowled, eyeing the tiger's bleeding wounds. "Now move it!"
Looking down the hill and seeing the bear staggering up it, Diego's common sense won over his pride and he ran after the retreating mammoth as the blizzard intensified.
"Wow, Diego. You really got your heinie handed to ya back there." Sid commented while holding onto Manny's back.
"Shut up!" the surly Diego snapped at him while running alongside Manny, the blizzard making it hard to see where they were going.
"Just saying, that bear is tough." Sid shrugged.
"Sid! If that bear didn't kill you, I'm sure gonna!" Manny said irritably. "What did you do!"
"Hey, why do you immediately assume it was my fault?" Sid retorted but one angry grunt from Manny made him crack.
"Look, I was soooo hungry!" he begged. "Is it my fault for needing to eat?"
Manny and Diego stopped as it simultaneously occurred to them that they had no idea where they were heading. They looked around, trying to find their bearings or any sort of shelter.
"You think we gave that oaf the slip?" Diego wondered.
His question was answered as they heard a roar and Manny turned around to see the bear charge at him from the blizzard, standing on two legs and with his paws raised.
Sid screamed as the bear's jaws missed him by a hair and bit into Manny's neck while his front limbs locked around the mammoth's neck, holding him in a death grip.
Diego watched in disbelief as Sid fell off and barely avoided getting trampled under Manny's feet as the mammoth struggled with the enormous bear. Trumpeting in pain, Manny tried to shake the bear off but he wouldn't let go, biting harder onto his neck.
The bear had set his sites on a much larger meal, one that would last him all winter.
Flailing blindly, Manny found himself sliding down another hill and into a gulch, which the bear used to pin his prey down under his weight as the mammoth squirmed and rumbled, struggling to get his footing and stand.
"Manny!" Sid cried as he saw the bear on top of Manny while Diego roared and leaped down.
Latching onto one of the bear's beefy arms, he sank his fangs into it. Immediately, the bear roared in agony and released Manny as he flailed around. Diego's fangs cut through the flesh as he was flung off and hit the side of the hill.
He knew that he now had the bear's full, undivided attention, as the larger predator glared at him with murderous rage and barred his teeth.
"You're dead, tiger!" he bellowed as he charged after Diego, who had no choice but to flee as the bear swiped after him, roaring mindlessly.
The swifter feline got ahead, losing the bear but soon found himself disoriented in the thick blizzard again.
"Damn it..." he cursed and ran to try and find his friends "...Manny! Sid!"
The only answer he got was a roar as the bear suddenly appeared out of nowhere and swiped at him. Diego jumped out of the way but not before getting slashed across his shoulder.
Hissing in pain, Diego saw the faint outline of trees up a hill and the bear charging at him. Bolting up the hill, the tiger ran for the treeline with the bear in hot pursuit.
Diego cried in pain as he felt claws hooking into his heel and pulling him back but the bear lost his own footing and slid down, allowing Diego to slide between his legs. The bear tried to reach him but Diego curved around and ran uphill again as the bear lunged with his jaws but only got a mouth full of snow.
As Diego entered the pine forest, visibility got better, with the trunks shielding him from the snowfall.
"When ah get a hold of ya, I'll crush your skull!" he heard the bear roaring as he pushed his massive bulk between the trees, prompting Diego to scale the nearest one.
A cat of his stature wasn't the greatest climber but he could do it if he really needed to. Once he was out of reach, Diego panted and reclined on the branch only to feel the tree violently shaking.
Digging his claws into the branch and looking down, he saw the bear shaking the tree with all his might and trying to bulldoze it with his sheer bulk.
"Oh, come on!" Diego lamented as the tree tilted and he struggled to hold on to the branch until the entire trunk fell down the hill, breaking into two as it collided with a boulder, flinging Diego into the air and he crashed onto a fallen log.
Lying on it and groaning, he heard gleeful laughter and found the bear looming over him. With his last remaining strength, Diego tried attacking, only to be swatted again, crashing through a rotting tree trunk and tumbling down the hill until he found himself lying on flat terrain.
Shaking his head, he struggled to get up and heard crashing. Looking up, he saw the bear sliding down the hill, pushing a tree out of his way.
Diego tried to run but found himself slipping. Looking down, his paw had wiped away the snow to reveal ice with air bubbles trapped beneath it. He gasped and his pupils shrank before hearing the bear roaring and seeing him standing at the edge of the river on his hind legs.
"End of the line, pipsqueak!" he smiled maliciously as he lumbered towards Diego, claws raised. The tiger looked over his shoulder to see that his back was to a rocky cliff, while on the other bank, atop the hill, Manny and Sid appeared.
"There he is!" Sid cried and pointed down.
"Stop it, you lummox!" Diego tried to warn the bear as he clumsily dodged another swipe, barely keeping his footing on the ice. "We're on a frozen river!"
Rearing up again, the bear let out a booming laugh.
"Like ah'll fall for that ol'trick!" he growled as he took another step towards Diego, only for his foot to break through the ice.
"Oh?" the bear realized his screw-up before screaming as he fell through the ice, which caused the rest of it to fracture all around Diego.
Fearfully, he made a beeline towards the shore, jumping from one ice drift to another as they quickly broke off into smaller pieces.
"Diego, over here!" Manny shouted as he and Sid reached the shore but before Diego could get to them, a crack appeared between them, making the tiger yelp and stumbled back as he drifted further away from them.
His back hair and tail puffed up as he found himself on a small chunk of ice, digging his claws deeply into it.
Too scared to move, he saw Manny and Sid some twenty yards away as he was being carried away by the river, the former holding out his trunk.
"Grab my trunk!" Manny shouted. "Swim for it if you have to!"
"But...I can't swim!" the tiger blurted out, to his friends' surprise, and his massive embarrassment.
"Can't swim?!"
Sid slapped his forehead and lamented, "Now he's telling us?"
"Just hold on, Diego!" a frustrated Manny shouted as he followed the tiger along the bank, with Sid following after him.
Manny soon found a boulder protruding from the bank and he tried to grab the incoming Diego from there.
"Just give me your paw!" he extended his trunk. Seeing Manny within reasonable proximity, Diego did as he was told.
Paw and trunk almost touched when a large hairy arm erupted from the water between them, making Manny jump back as it grabbed his tusk.
The bear used the mammoth to haul himself out of the freezing water and shook himself dry while Diego passed by them.
"No!" he cried while feeling the currents getting stronger and struggling to hold onto his rocking ice drift.
"Diego!" Manny and Sid cried as the tiger was carried out of sight. The bear saw it too and mockingly waved at him.
"See ya, pussycat!" he laughed gleefully.
"Hey, we were trying to save Diego, not you!" Sid yelled at him but cried and hid under Manny when the bear growled and reared up to his full height, standing two feet higher than Manny. But the furious mammoth didn't flinch and stood his ground.
"Finally! Ah can have this big fat meal all ta mahself!"
"Hey, he's not fat. He's poofy!" Sid pointed out but screamed and ducked behind Manny again when the bear lunged at the mammoth.
Manny bellowed and charged as well, revealing a terrified Sid curled up in a ball.
The mammoth headbutted the bear in his chest and pushed him back while the latter sunk his teeth into Manny's head, but the mammoth smacked him in the temple with his trunk.
Shaking it off, the bear slashed Manny across the base of his trunk and grabbed him in a death lock again, chomping down on his neck. Rumbling, Manny struggled with the bear, who was forcing him down on his knees while trying to bite through the mammoth's neck.
His face hardening, Manny bellowed with unbridled fury and used his full strength to push himself up. The bear felt his grip loosening while Manny wrapped his trunk around his foe's leg and tripped him.
As the bear fell on his back, Manny maintained his grip on the former's leg and swung him around, before letting him slam headfirst into a tree trunk.
"Yeah! Go, Manny!" Sid cheered him on.
Shaking his head, the bear wasn't done yet and rose to his feet. He swiped at the charging mammoth but Manny ducked and slammed his left tusk into the bear's gut, knocking the wind out of him.
He followed that up by ramming the bear with his head and uppercutting him with his other tusk, knocking out a tooth or two in the process.
Feeling dizzy, the bear lost his balance and landed on Manny's tusks, who promptly threw him against a tree, knocking it down in the process.
Now lying on top of the fallen trunk, the bear groaned and rolled onto his back. He was seeing stars but they were quickly replaced with the image of another spruce tree falling towards him. He screamed before getting squashed between the two trunks and knocked out cold.
Standing by the uprooted tree, Manny admired his work.
"You messed with the wrong herd." he said grimly when Sid rushed up to him.
"You sure showed him, Manny!" the sloth congratulated him. "He bearly stood a chance!"
But Sid realized something and snapped his head back towards the river. "Wait?! What about Diego?"
Manny realized the same thing but could do nothing but look on worriedly.
The further he went downstream, the wider the river seemed to get. Diego was hyperventilating as he struggled to cling to his ice drift, which was shaking violently from the pounding rapids.
He picked up momentum as the river curved down and barely avoided colliding with a boulder, but he wasn't as lucky with the second time. Despite the blow, he clung to the ice, sucking up the pain. He had to hold on until this wild ride was over.
But the third boulder standing in his path was hidden beneath the surface, and it sliced Diego's icy raft into two, plunging him into the freezing water.
He panicked and trashed around with his legs, trying to hold his breath while the current slammed him against several boulders. Managing to break the surface and gulp for air, the dazed and battered tiger grabbed onto a drifting log but his troubles were far from over as he heard the roaring of a waterfall.
He could do nothing but brace himself for impact as he was hurled over it, clinging onto the log but as he fell down, his back hit the water first and the log slammed into him, knocking the air out of his lungs and pushing him under.
Things turned silent. The water was calmer here but still freezing and the stunned Diego found himself sinking deeper and deeper while slowly losing consciousness. Looking up, he saw the log drifting along the surface, there was no way for him to reach it now.
He was struggling to remain awake as the last few air bubbles escaped from his lips and his body was rapidly shutting down from hypothermia. It couldn't end like this, he had to fight it.
That's when a massive, torpedo-like shape swam past him, followed by more like it, all sporting rows of small bony plates on their backs, and whisker-like barbels on their jaws. Migrating sturgeons.
Feeling a rush of adrenaline, Diego managed to spin himself around and sunk his claws into the back of the first fish to swim near him. It naturally panicked and trashed around, but the tiger clung on to it, literally for dear life.
Once he saw the pebbly bottom getting closer to the surface, he let go of the thrashing sturgeon and pushed himself along the bottom with his last remaining strength, struggling to stay conscious, until he reached shallower water and finally managed to catch a gulp of air.
"Just a little more." he pushed himself onward, wading his way out of the frigid water, only for the biting winds to make contact with his soaked fur, making him shiver uncontrollably, but he pushed himself further until he crawled onto the snowy bank and collapsed.
Shivering even more than before, he felt all energy ebbing away from his body and barely managed to look over his shoulder, his blurring vision making out the outline of a cliff, a waterfall, and the small lake below it against the blizzard.
"Can't...stay here." the delirious Diego mumbled and tried to walk. "Must find...shelter...Manny, Sid...they will find me..."
He knew if he stayed here, he would either freeze to death or be torn apart by some passing scavengers. Staggering through the snow, all he saw were pine trees and he could faintly hear the calls of various wildlife, but no sign of a cave or even a fallen log or large boulder he could lay against.
He didn't get far, his body was quickly shutting down, and he only managed to drag himself under a spruce tree.
It barely provided any cover from the storm, but Diego had no other option as his vision was turning blurry and his head spinning, while his body slowly got caked in snow. He collapsed under the tree, breathing heavily, and within seconds, things went black.
I put Diego through quite the wringer in this chapter, and it ends with him being on the verge of death? Will he make it? Of course he will, this is just the start of the story XD Though right now, he will be separate from Manny and Sid for the foreseeable future.
Here's some trivia in regards to this chapter:
1. The pit with the animal bones is a reference to the Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming, an 85-foot-deep pit where numerous ice age animals fell to their deaths, including some mammoths (no sloths or Smilodon though).
2. While there will be plenty of anachronism in the fic (carrying over from the series and maybe expanded upon, as long as it's Cenozoic); Arctodus simus, the giant short-faced bear, did live during the last ice age, and would have coexisted with main trio's respective species. Its portrayal here is pretty on point, as this was one of the largest carnivorous mammals ever to walk the Earth and one animal that could have utterly destroyed a Smilodon fatalis, by virtue of being three times bigger and a bear, which are natural powerhouse.
3. Sturegeons are another "living fossil", a group of fish that has been around since the age of dinosaurs and has changed relatively little over tens of millions of years, so it felt appropriate that they show up in this prehistoric setting.