Hybrids: An Indoraptor Story ✓

Blood Rush

The pain began the moment we started running.

Side by side, Blink and I limped together, plotting our every step through the endless pinewood dynasty. Thistles and silkweed whipped into our snouts, scarring the thin flesh and making the stench of our trail even more promising to our adversary. And the earth never settled -- it sloped high and low, and dipped all around, adding more anguish to our tiring limbs.

The second we claimed dominion to the furthest mountain peaking the valley's crevice we slumped to the ground, heaving and panting for a breath of fresh air. Our wounds began to shine like rubies, glistening a deep amber red under a tangerine hue of sunlight. The smell of blood was as enchanting as it was terrifying. But nothing compared to the primal howls heeding our direction.

Blink lifted his head, listening to the cry of the hunter. His sharp eyes peeled over the landscape below, nostrils enrapturing the perfumes of the desert while two dagger-like talons twitched and curled every so often in thought. He turned to look at me, sealing his nares before he hissed aloud: "We won't make it on two legs."

I couldn't agree more. Growling softly, I flexed my silver scales from tip to tail, trying to levy how bad my injuries had become. Even at a standstill it hadn't started to cease; while my underside had scabbed, every other part of me had surfaced torn flesh to the heathens of the day.

A part of me felt that I deserved this. That my inability to fend off evil was making me less of a hybrid, and more of a liability. Cursing under my breath, I let my eyes lead the way, following the path we took in an attempt to look beyond it. Alas, injuries didn't matter if death was around the bend. We needed a way out, and now, at the peak of the valley, the world opened its wings to our wondrous eyes.

Everything seemed to fall away from so high up -- where tall tree-like-torches towered now looked like small shrubs slinking in the sifted sands. Even the rolling hills themselves took the look of mounds stacked one atop the other, while a hazy ripple hovered over the desertland on the horizon. My breath hitched.

"There's not a lot of places to hide."

"Hide? We'll be dead no matter where we go," growled Blink, now licking at his injured paw. "Unless you have a ground-breaking idea to hold him off."

"No." I began looking over the rolling rapids and the V-shaped horizon of land beneath us. "That won't work. We need to go somewhere he can't follow..."

I trailed off. The sudden appearance of something ahead sealed any further thoughts from escaping my maw. So much so that it caught Blink's attention, who's quills rattled in knowing an idea had come to show.

"What is it?"

"You had a list of rules you taught me in the woods," I croaked, turning to Blink. "Right?"

Blink nodded. "Yes. How to kill without blood... how to hunt indiscreetly-"

"What about human towns?"

"We avoid them at all costs..." His eyes widened, and a threatened growl left his jaws. "No."

"He won't follow if we-"

"And throw ourselves into death's claws again?!" The Scorpios Rex snarled, standing upright and hissing against the pain on his underside. "We won't last a day out there..."

"Which is why Ripper won't follow," I hissed, curling my tail into myself. "We just need to cross that highway."

Blink followed my gaze, noticing a thin strip of gray cut straight through the earth. Just a few tail-lengths away from its borders sat a lonely town glowing of a million stars in the bright of day. Each streak light refracted through the desert, heralding a family of humans and the benevolent puppets they deemed pets. They roamed the streets untamed and unafraid and filled their caverns with life unspoken of. Blink's tail curled out of uncertainty.