Prepping The Battlefield

Blackmist hurried the raptor children away from the stage as fast as he could. Mantell raised a brow at him but he waved him off with something along the lines of ‘already assigned’ and continued to push the hatchlings along. He had expected some form of resistance from the brindle raptor but Tiramisu had been keeping pace with the girls, only occasionally throwing a glance over his shoulder at the Iguanodon. Once he had them out of the line of sight from the other members of the court he gave a sigh of relief and turned to address the three sets of eyes staring at him.

"Sorry for the rush, I'm keeping you three as far from the fighting as I can, so we're going to do some construction work," he said in a hurry.

"What are we going to build?" Thistle asked curiously.

"You see, we have to move out of Atlantis because- well, we just have to, and we understand that the islanders aren't going to all be happy about sharing their land. Conflict will come, and we are ready to fight anywhere. Now, we're building reinforcements in Atlantis itself, just in case the fighting comes down here,” he explained softly.

“Do you think it will?” Foxglove asked, her eyes enormous and innocent.

“I hope not, but I can't guarantee that it won't,” Blackmist said regrettably, “All we can do is prepare.” Thistle was thinking, he didn't realise when he had become able to read the raptor's expression but he recognised her pondering face.

“Where do we start?” she finally asked, not making eye contact with him. Blackmist sighed and reached into the tool shed for a shovel. He knew he would be handling the majority of the work but it was the best way he could think of to keep the children safe and have them contribute to the war effort at the same time.

Thistle stayed quiet and kept her eyes on Blackmist as they walked along the worn path to the exit. Her head was filled with thoughts, whether to run the second the exit was in sight or to play along with Blackmist's plan for a while longer. She hated not being able to bounce ideas off of her packmates, Misu was by far her favourite method of brainstorming and he kept sending her worried looks like he had something on his mind. She wished she could just reach into his little striped head and pull the thoughts right out of him. Foxglove's mind seemed to be blissfully empty, focused instead on the here and now of avoiding the plants around them. Thistle wished she had her easygoing nature, but she supposed someone in the pack had to share the worry with Misu, lest he collapse under the weight of doing it alone.

The exit of the dome was lined with bags, burlap sacks filled with seeds waiting to be delivered to the surface by the waiting couriers, assembled members of the court along with islanders. Some looked more enthusiastic than others, and the more reticent ones were in close proximity to Euoplos and Iggys. The clearing was bigger than it had been when they arrived, trees felled and bushes ripped out by the root to make room for long lines in the dirt. These must be the trenches Blackmist had told them they would be digging. At the moment they were just lines, like someone had dragged some form of farm equipment through the grass and left it at that.

“Here we are, let's get digging,” Blackmist announced, his voice sounding strained under the false cheer. He dropped the shovels to the ground and kept one for himself, fastening it to his wrist bracer and beginning to dig out the trenches. He dug a hole to start each of them off before beginning to dig out a trench himself. If the children began to fall behind he could double back and make it look like they were being useful.

Tiramisu glared enviously at the easy set up Blackmist had for his shovel but took up his own nonetheless. He waited until the Iggy was deep in his work before taking a chance at speaking to the girls.

“What's the plan?” he hissed at Thistle.

“The exit is too busy, we'd never be able to outrun the Ovis and we'd be caught if we ran,” Thistle whispered back, “I have an idea, but we need to stick with this for today, first.”

“Are you going to share this idea?” Misu asked impatiently, sticking his shovel in the damp soil Blackmist had turned over for them. Thistle took his cue and started digging along with him.

“We need to figure out the path. We don't get nighttime down here but they do sleep, there has to be an opening for us to run out,” she said quietly.

“We won't be able to find our way in the jungle,” Foxglove reminded her, happily turning up soil with her shovel. She was making a surprising amount of progress with her shovel and her wide but shallow trench was beginning to pull ahead of theirs. 

"I know," Thistle said, hurrying to join the pink raptor and work on the same trench with her to keep within whispering range, "We go back after all this, find Lego, and then we can escape that way."

"But what if we can't find her? What then?" Tiramisu asked, ever the practical one.

"That's what the backup plan is for," Thistle said simply, sinking the blade of her shovel into the dirt again. "On our way back, we have to make landmarks along the path so we can find our way here again." It was a simple plan, but it was the only one she could think of that didn't involve fighting an entire army of Iguanodons. Misu grunted, going back to his digging in silence. That was as close as she was going to get to his approval, she knew he wasn't happy with this idea but from the defeated slump of his shoulders he clearly had nothing else to offer. Foxglove's faith in her remained unwavering, just smiling and going back to digging the trench. Thistle turned away from both of them to hide her teary eyes and shaking claws. She wasn't confident in her plan, but without it she felt like the others would lose hope entirely, resigned to their fate of being servants to the court of Atlantis and just hoping that someone else could do something to free them. She wiped her face with her wing feathers and steeled herself again. The hatchlings had never needed adults to stand up for them before and they wouldn't need them now. She'd get her and her friends out of this, she just needed more time to think. With this in mind, she focused on digging the best damn trench these uppity Iggys had ever seen.