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Shadow (The Clock Part 1)

"Whiteclaw?"

My soft roar echoed for miles around, lasting many minutes before subducting into nothingness. I lifted my eyes up towards the impending sky, then glanced all around.

It was all just darkness. Just eternal darkness, all around, swallowing me whole, without a light or anything beautiful.

It reminded me of breathable tar, silent and deadly, and hot with free-flowing streams all around. Beneath my clawed feet was fresh water, which I drank when I first arrived, quenching my painful thirst that's been lasting for days. My feet shook the earth as I walked, and splatters of water splashed on my ankles and turned my dusted claws black with a beauty shine. The air was moist and cold, and only the sound of rushing water between my toes echoed for what seemed like miles around.

"Don't be afraid," I said to myself, "Don't be afraid." I heard a noise and spun around, with wide eyes and alert muscles, twitched on each step. The ground beneath me shook at some points, which did tell me that the outside world was falling into some earthquakes.

My snout went up as my eyes closed, and sinking my mind into the atmosphere above, I inhaled as much scents as I can, trying to depict the ones that mattered, with the ones that were pointless. One came up in my mind, a scent I thought I've forgotten, and my eyes popped open in relief and horror.

"Whiteclaw!" I almost squeaked. I gaped my mouth open to taste the albino Deinonychus's scent, and tracking it down with a heart full of pride and reunion, swiftly stomped my way through the eternal darkness.

I perhaps walked through many minutes, before the first sign of something flooded into my retina and shrunk my pupils. I mistook them for fireflies at first, but when I glanced closer, they were actually floating pieces of fiery ash and rubble.

And they all floated towards me like a small cloud, rubbing upon my scales and finding its way to lay waste on my boned spine. They all came through a bright door, which flicked on and off with light, and metal rained down from above. The doorway was low, so I "had to crouch low in a hunter's stance, taking cautious steps towards the place.

"Whiteclaw..." I silently hissed, moving my body through the hole in the darkness, then opening up my body into actual light. And when my eyes finally adjusted into the discoloration of the dark world behind me, they swallowed in the sight of a broken room. Rocks laid everywhere, along with this prickly-material, clear like water, but see -through and sharp on the ground. Fire raged everywhere, melting metal and other fabris, some in which were just burning just because. I followed the scent around for a few minutes, then found myself bumping my nozzle onto some pile of rocks. That's where the scent led. I opened my jaws, grabbing a chuck load of distasteful rocks, then spat them out as I closed in to the rubble.

And found something truly terrifying.

"Whiteclaw's blood," I whispered, pressing my snout into the red liquid. It had his sour-sweet scent, his texture, and a few pieces of his scales littered there. I raised my head, suddenly spotting a new trail of his blood leading into a darker, but not really seeable, hallway on the wall of the room. My jaws gaped as I saw the dark exit, and I had to gulp before proceeding towards the unknown before me. I twisted my head around, glancing at the destroyed room, then quietly followed the pathway towards these moving doors, that bounced creepily on the torn-down walls. I slipped my head underneath the ceiling of it, then allowed my tail to slid upon its top to the opening outside.

Strangely enough, I still felt the blood stick upon my feet, and with a sigh I trudged on, sniffing the trail and following it only using my sniffer and sense of touch. My claws dragged themselves across the flat floor as I walked, turning red with the trail, until eventually, the scent snagged onto my nostrils, stronger than ever.