Countdown ✓

Whiteclaw (17 days after)

I had to stop eating bugs and rotten carcasses. It was starting to become distasteful in my mouth. I was even losing myself, eating already dead, cold, and fleshless organisms and bugs. I needed to hunt. I needed to kill. But I couldn't allow my own savagery to open its way up to the the world, especially now since there are 'friendly' herbivores that are resting in the yellow valley. But I could tell that they were just as hungry as I was to taste something fresh for once. We needed balance in the world, and working together wasn't buying it for me. We all needed the circle of life to come back, so we carnivores could hunt, those herbivores could feed and lay eggs.

But I don't know if it's possible anymore.

Since my memories flooded back into my brain cells, my thoughts have been locked upon going back into the Countdown Clock. It surely had everything in that other world, with fresh air, the sun, free meals to take into consideration. I still wondered if those skinless mammals were aweing over the dead hairy beast, or bison I presume, that I took down days before.

When I wasn't struggling to hunt, without herbivores staring at me constantly, I napped in this warm spot within Three-Toed Cavern, which is what we called our raptor cavern now. More so carnivorous cavern, since Shadow now slept with us nearby. We began naming areas around us since this land was pretty much our new settlement.

Shadow named a river and pond after himself during our exploration of the area, and perhaps it was a good idea since not only was the water resourceful, but also refreshing and crystal clear.

Thunder Falls laid beyond our reach, far down north to its rushing waters that splayed out before tumbling down with a roar to its bubbly death.

We named the resting area of the remaining herbivores the Open Zone. Pick didn't like the name, but eventually, it stuck for a while. Or maybe me and Shadow forced him to like it since he attacked us both anyhow.

Shadow mysteriously and already knew what the countdown caves were when Amberclaw showed it to him. He saw it in a dream, Amberclaw inquired thereafter, strange. Amberclaw's been studying the clock as if it was a cheat sheet, carefully aligning his eyes forwards and back to capture each image of the clock's construction.

The Barren Lands were the areas beyond the Open Zone, the deserts, the corpses, everything. Nobody really went there, since there was no place left to go but here. This region didn't have much, but it was resourceful in its ways, and protective. No wonder we were still alive.

Besides eating traumatizing meals, there were some that came in our favor. Sometimes, if we're lucky, a lone herbivore, or perhaps a group would appear on the horizon of the Barren Lands, trekking endlessly on the hot boiling sand, dragging their dying tails on the dry and flakey soil. Since they were weak and sagging, it was simple for me, Drexel, and Amberclaw to take them down without a single scratch. Sometimes on my hunts, adrenaline would pump through my veins like an electric current of power, and before I even know it, the feeling of sinking my jaws into the bloody throats of those who passed by ended quickly. Eating warm meat soothed my own stomach a lot, and for you vegetarians out there, you have no idea. And just like that, there laid lunch.

Often, us Deinonychus (and Utahraptor) would hunt every other day, while Shadow, the Tyrannosaurus, laid there like a lazy bum in the shade of the heat. If he did hunt, we'd watch him as entertainment. Shadow originally didn't know how to catch his own food in the beginning when I first met him after encountering Pick and Stella, and his one, and only experience of it was getting tossed around by a Spinosaurus. Drexel frowned at him the day that he began teaching him how to hunt. I joined in too on some days.

"I wouldn't consider that as 'hunting' Shadow," Drexel clicked, tilting his head, "More like fighting. But a failed attempt."

"Oh. Then how do you hunt?" Shadow questioned. Drexel gazed up in awe at the size of the T-Rex, then thought hard.