Scene of the Crime

Dacia kept a brisk pace, her pursuers were close by and she couldn't afford to slow down. The heavy footfalls of other Styracasaurus followed her through the winding tunnels, looking for her. The sunlight hit her face suddenly, briefly blinding her before she fluttered her eyes, letting her adjust to the light. When she could see, she saw a pit before her, only descending slightly more, with most of its volume far above her head. If she looked up, a difficult task with her horns and frill, and saw the hole opening up to the sky, a ragged circle of blue against the deep brown clay. It seemed to be a sinkhole, which made her skin prickle with anxiety, fearing she could trigger the ground beneath her to collapse. With that thought, a chain of images began to flash in her mind, red skies, black smoke and a blinding light that turned her entire vision white. The sound of screaming filled her mind again, agonised cries of pain and the scratching of blistering fingers at stone and metal. Scorched bipedal figures hunched over the ground or staggered blindly around, eyeless monsters aimlessly walking. With a loud gasp, Dacia pulled herself out of her vision, focusing on the feel of dirt beneath her feet, the faint breeze in the air. She was becoming more grounded, but she had little time to fully return to herself. When her hearing came back, she could hear the other Styras again and she hurried to find cover before they reached her. 

She crossed the length of the sinkhole and saw a small green dome, a collapsed stone building overgrown with moss. The glass windows had been blown out and the door hung awkwardly from the hinges, ravaged by years of abandonment and pillaging. She ran to the door and squeezed inside, pulling the door behind her with her tail as she ran. The soft cream walls of the building were immediately soothing, glowing faintly in the orange light of the sun setting outside. Dacia kept walking until she found herself in the very centre of the building, around a circular hallway that spiralled inward to end in this room. Every wall was lined with bookshelves, thick wooden blocks that curved with the twists and turns of the hallways before straightening out into more typical rectangular shapes in the main room. Dacia entered cautiously, completely forgetting about the other Styras in her surprise. This was the most books she had ever seen in one area, ever. She had seen libraries before, some of the large ones in the middle of the Dead City, but none had been crammed floor to ceiling with tomes like this one was. Even the floor was covered in books, scattered from broken shelves that buckled under a collapsed roof. She could just about see the faint rays of light through the crack in the stone, motes of dust drifting lazily through the beam. Dacia redirected her attention to the floor, seeing a familiar gear shaped logo embossed on the front of a leather journal. She knew very little about Morpheus, just that they had created the Alpha Labs, had somehow been involved in the growth of the dinosaur populations on the twin islands and that they built a large number of structures across them. She was eager to try and open the journal, the subject of Morpheus had been so shrouded in mystery amongst the various communities, if this could shed light on it at all it would be worth trying to decipher the runes inside. Human runes were incredibly difficult to read, or at least Dacia thought so, she knew some raptors that had an easier time with it and were willing to sit and read them out loud to her. She used her horn to awkwardly pop the latch on the front of the book and flipped it open to the first page. From her limited knowledge of the language, it was probably someone's name, signed in looping writing and exaggerated swoops. When she turned the page, she saw an incredibly detailed drawing with various words written around it, too small for her to read. Squinting at the strange shapes, she could see it was a two legged dinosaur with a noticeable crest and a beak-like mouth. It felt like a light had switched on in her head when she identified it as an Oviraptor, the strange new dinosaurs that had appeared so suddenly on the islands recently. WIth the possibility of answers to the new arrivals, Dacia eagerly flipped the page to read the next. The following pages contained more drawings, close ups and cross sections of the Oviraptor's body, showing the differences between the variants, quilled and crested and the like. The Styra had to stop and read over each note, fascinated by the attention to detail in the drawings. By the time she finished she would probably know more about an Oviraptor's inner working than her own. 

Once the images of raptors ended, she found drawings of plants. Tall plants with heavy drooping leaves and wide open mouth-like flowers. Flat plants open like a bear trap with bubbling centres, vines with lines around them, indicating movement. Dacia didn't recognise any of these, each page contained a brand new strange plant. They had to have some connection to the way the Oviraptors were planting unknown seeds everywhere they went across the islands. The Styra kept flipping through the journal, seemingly endless new plants staring back at her from the musty pages. She nearly skipped the page where it stopped and had to go back, away from another scientific drawing of a plant and to a two page drawing of a large dome. Inside the dome, the various plants she had already seen were densely planted like a forest. With closer inspection, she could just about make out the shape of rivers or streams running through it. She had seen the greenhouses that Morpheus had built, but this was something totally different. When she couldn't glean anything further from the drawing she turned the page again, finding more plants. A couple of pages more and she encountered a full journal entry, written in the same looping script the journal had been signed with on the front page. She turned her head sideways, her eye parallel to the floor as she tried to read the human runes more clearly. She wasn't fluent, not even close, but she managed to pick out a few words she recognised. Morpheus, plants, artificial, experiments, dinosaurs, specimens, ecosystem... she let the words ruminate in her mind before connecting the dots. Morpheus had built this dome to keep dinosaurs in it, maybe as a test run before releasing them all onto the island. She went to the next pager eagerly but her expression fell as she found a page of words scratched out by large inky swipes. She tried the next page, and the next, but each page after that had been sabotaged in some way.

"Prophet!" a voice boomed around the circular library, making Dacia fall over from her precarious reading position. She looked up to see the back of Theresa standing in the door and shouting back down the hallway. "I found her, she's in here."

"Ah, hello Theresa," Dacia tried to sound wistful and innocent. "You've found me studying ancient texts." She tried to give off an air of worldly wisdom that seemed to temper Theresa's annoyance.

"Prpher, you can't just run form us like that, what if something terrible had happened?" she tsked. If something terrible had happened then there would be nothing they could do to stop it, Dacia thought bitterly, but she bit her tongue and kept her expression placid.

"My apologies, but come here, Theresa, come see what I have discovered," she invited the dark Styra over, leaning back to allow her to read it. Like she was appealing to the whims of a child, Theresa obligingly read the journal but her brow furrowed as she turned the pages with her horn.

"Prophet, these are the Oviraptors, and these plants... could they be..?" she trailed off.

"That is my assertion too," Dacia agreed. "Please, if you would, take the journal with us. We might be able to use it to ask those raptors what they're up to." Theresa nodded and grabbed the journal in her mouth carefully. The leather should provide some protection from her teeth but Dacia still wanted to hurry out and put it somewhere safer. As she walked out she nearly collided with Noir, who had been rushing down the hallway to the main room.

"Prophet," he greeted, inclining his head and accidentally knocking his horn against hers. She winced back away from him and greeted him in turn. "Apologies Prophet, we were worried about you."

"Theresa told me, I'm very sorry to have troubled you," she apologised sweetly. "But in my wanderings I found something quite wondrous about our new friends, come along, we can read it outside in the sunlight." Noir didn't have time to ask anything further before Dacia power walked out of the collapsed library, not looking back. She was annoyed to have lost her moment of peace but she could at least use her followers to get closer to the raptors and ask them some questions.