Angels With Teeth

Deerlegs and Embargo said goodbye to Berlioz at the tunnel entrance. She had been a welcome guide, both in escorting them to the koi pond and through the rest of the jungle. They didn’t quite understand why she’d choose to stay in the dome - mapping routes, apparently, but to what end? - but they appreciated the help that she had given them. Undoubtedly, their journey would have been much more difficult, perhaps even impossible, if their paths hadn’t crossed with hers.

Sleep, however brief, had reinvigorated the pair, if only by a fraction. It was enough for them to continue on their journey through the dark, towards the sanctuary of the surface. Where before they had waited anxiously and uncertainly at the mouth of the tunnel to enter the dome, they were now more than ready to step into the tunnel and leave Atlantis behind. They walked over the threshold without a second thought.

Embargo carried in his jaws the corners of a bundle of armour pieces and components, wrapped in fabric they’d stolen from the Atlantean treasury. Deerlegs continued to limp just ahead of him, eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness that was only dimly lit by Embargo’s faintly glowing star-like spots and the few scattered, functional lights that lined the walkway. Embargo would have liked to walk ahead, to help her from bumping into or tripping over anything, but he was more concerned with what now lay behind them than anything that might be on the path ahead.

Aside from the occasional clank of armour rattling in the bundle and bumping something that Embargo hadn’t seen, aside from the quiet scratching of their claws against the walkway, the pair was silent as they walked. It wasn’t just the fatigue, it was everything that had happened. Deerlegs had been faced with the reality of her mortality, of their defenselessness against other dinosaurs that were several times their size and even against the euoplos, who were much closer to them in terms of height. Embargo understood. He'd had to come to terms with that early in his life, but Deerlegs...

Highcliff had always been reserved, always knew their limits and tried to react accordingly, but this was difficult to swallow. It felt like the islands were changing again and again in these massive ways, first with the cataclysmic changes that had threatened to level Highcliff and drop the herd off the face of Isla Kela, then the arrival of carnivores that were large enough to swallow a pachy whole and then with these Atlanteans who brought their carnivorous plants and the threat of war to the islands. They couldn’t… keep living as they had been. They had to change too, if they were going to survive.

Deerlegs sucked in a breath, drawn from her thoughts when a slight overextension of her hip sent fire up and down her leg and tail. She paused, eyes squeezed shut and breathing heavily as she fought to keep from shouting out in the tunnel. Embargo had stopped as soon as she’d made a sound, waiting and listening. They were on their way to safety, they weren’t there yet. There was still every chance that they could be followed by Atlanteans who were coming up to the surface in search of those who had escaped the bloody banquet, and voices echoed in this confined space - or by carnivores taking advantage of the bottleneck and picking off anyone who came up to the surface.

She glanced over her shoulder after a moment, listening as well. She couldn’t hear anything but the faint sound of Embargo’s breath, and the same was true for him. He nodded faintly, barely jostling the armour components, and they continued.

Embargo’s own thoughts were similarly busy as they walked on. This place… Atlantis. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting when the oviraptors started to appear across the islands. Another Zone B perhaps, even if it turned out to be an entire jungle beneath the ocean. It had turned out that the Atlanteans weren’t suffering, not in the way that the Alpha labs inhabitants had been, yet they were somehow so much more cruel. Their home was in danger, he understood that. Though his home had been threatened by teeth and claws rather than the oppressive weight of the ocean, he and the dacen were threatened all the same.

Perhaps that was the difference between them. The Alpha labs inhabitants had welcomed the world when they were finally exposed to it. The Atlanteans and their Queen only saw new lands to invade and conquer and spread across, like their invasive plants.

He was disappointed in them.

They had to stop a few times to catch their breath on the ascent - the angle wasn’t steep, but it was uphill all the same - but finally, finally, Deerlegs could smell fresh air as a faint breeze whispered down the tunnel from up ahead. It was surprising; she would’ve thought that they’d be approaching daylight, yet ahead of them lay only more darkness. Maybe they had been traveling longer than she had realised, between their long stay at the koi pond and the few stops they’d made as they climbed through the tunnel.

Night… was not her favourite time to travel. Carnivores liked to roam at night.

The wind didn’t carry any suspicious scents, nor did she hear anything echoing against the hard metal walls of the tunnel other than the sounds of their own footsteps. They might have finally gotten a lucky break.

Or perhaps the wind simply hadn’t been blowing from the right direction.

===

Rime’s eyes glinted in the darkness, turned silver by the moonlight that coated the land in a soft silver shine and made even the long-abandoned, decrepit buildings gleam. Her pale scales almost seemed to glow, particularly the white patches that lay scattered along her neck, spine, and flanks. Gloam strided across the landscape with her, her markings making her appear as though she were a rippling shadow moving over the land.

They had finally gotten their answers, and were met with a mixture of disappointment and relief. There were no other acros waiting for them trapped beneath the earth, as they had been. They had no kin suffering due to slow starvation as they fought with one another and consumed their dead, no others being poisoned by the slow release of an invisible toxin that would permanently alter their features and cause them to form movement-hindering growths or leaching the colour from their hides and feathers.

Instead they had discovered that what lay beneath the surface of the ocean was a veritable bounty, if only they could claim it. The tunnel that lead to “Atlantis” - as they’d heard it be called - was scarcely larger than the train tunnel they had tried to venture through, and far longer. It would be almost impossible for them to traverse.

All was not lost simply because they couldn’t journey to the sunken city, though. They could still benefit from, and had been benefitting from, the Atlantean’s rapid invasion of the islands. The oviraptors were fat and succulent compared to the leaner herbivores that had been scrounging for scraps after the fires that ravaged the islands leading up to the Alpha lab opening and letting the contained inhabitants run free, and they tasted all the sweeter knowing that it was the Atlanteans that had caused their recent troubles with the plants growing and spreading and making hunts even more difficult. With Atlanteans slowly spreading across the island, the acros had fed enough on rich prey that they could afford the interest of hunting more challenging targets.

Now they followed the scent that challenge. An Atlantean of a different form, something they had only seen from a distance while they studied it. Squat to the ground and heavy, covered in thick spikes with a long tail that looked as dangerous as a dacen’s despite lacking spikes. They often wore warped sheets of metal, wood, or leather that were fit to their bodies that seemed to give them an extra layer of protection - an extra layer of arrogance to think that they could survive here.

They had surveyed long enough, considered and conversed about the strengths and weaknesses of their prey. Now it was time to hunt.

The tunnel entrance was a perfect hunting ground. The euoplo whose scent they were following now was heading towards the entrance, just as others had. The goal was simple: grab it before it got too close to the tunnel. They dared not take any Atlanteans that crawled up from below at the entrance itself - that was too obvious, and would spook future prey, like rats hiding in a hole that refused to come out because they could smell blood.

Rime could hear a voice from ahead. They weren’t far from their quarry now. There was a strange glow on the horizon as they peered around the weathered corner of a building. It wasn't moonlight, nor the inner fire that some dinosaurs burned with after they had been exposed to the invisible toxin too long, but something else. Teal glowed brilliantly from the face and along the front half of a euoplo’s back, shining from beneath the armour the monochrome euoplo sported.

With him were two pachys - small and inconsequential, likely built with stringy, tough meat. They were often more bone than flesh anyway, and Gloam and Rime both had their hearts set on the challenge of hunting a euoplo. This one would pose a special challenge, with the armour covering its head.

Deerlegs and Embargo had made it only a short distance from the tunnel before they had come face to metal face with one of their captors. One of their jailors. Neither pachy was sure if they had the speed or stamina to outpace the metal-clad euoplo, not with their injuries and not with the burden that Embargo was intent on carrying. There was no use dropping it now, anyway. They didn’t stand a chance at fighting back even if he did.

Halberd could smell the blood on them. As much as Embargo had tried to repair Deerlegs’s tail, as much as they had tried to wash the blood from their hides and feathers, he could still smell it.

“You escaped Her plan.” There was no question in his voice. Even in the dark, his visor helped him to see the marks left on them from an oviraptor's claws and an iguanodon’s lethal spike.

“I would be of half a mind to let you free. Fighting as hard as you have, you’ve almost earned it. But you’ve stolen from us,” Halberd accused. His breath hummed as he exhaled through the grates covering his muzzle. He shook his head. “I had my doubts about the two of you, but you really are just criminal scum.”

“Criminal?” Deerlegs spat back, incredulous. Anger bubbled within her again, fury lending strength to her words. “What’s criminal is the way that we were treated! The way that your friends tried to kill us again and again when we had done nothing wrong!”

She snorted and tossed her head. “Your Queen pleaded for our help and when we refused, when others were unsure, she slaughtered them! And you expect to be greeted by the islanders when your dome falls after that?” Absolutely not. She was going to tell everyone that she could what sort of characters the Atlanteans truly were.

Halberd was patient as Deerlegs vented a small modicum of her anger at him. If they suspected his intentions, they weren’t running, and if they weren’t running, it was because they knew they had no chance against him. He was a knight of Atlantis, and he was sworn to carry out what his Queen commanded. If these two had escaped with their lives, if they were stealing from Atlantis, he would make sure that Her will would be done.

His visor let him see a great many things that others could not, but even he couldn’t see the future. He had faith in his Queen, that what future she promised would come to pass.

“You have been judged. You are not part of the future that She promised.”

Horror clawed at Deerlegs’s heart. She scrambled back before Embargo even had a chance to warn her to move. His grunt was muffled through the fabric in his mouth as he, too, tried to jump away when Halberd charged them. His movements were slow and clunky, hers hitched and clumsy. They weren’t going to be able to get away, and they couldn’t fight back. A pachy’s dome was just not a good match against euoplo armour, and Halberd was armoured twice over. Even his hammer sported spikes.

They couldn't run back the way they'd come - they would only be running back down into Atlantis, and that wasn't an option. The cracked pavement split into a few directions - too many options for frenzied minds to choose.

Their path was chosen for them when Rime surged forwards from her hiding spot with Gloam just behind her, jaws agape with teeth flashing in the moonlit dark. The bellow that Rime produced echoed against the buildings that towered around them, adding to the chaotic energy.

Terror made the pachys move. Embargo had told Deerlegs horrific stories of what the acros were capable of, and now there were two of them barreling towards them, one was the largest he’d ever seen.

Rime’s massive jaws clamped around Halberd’s tail, the short section between the hammer and where the spikes along his tail ended, and yanked. The euoplo was pulled away from the pachys, making a horrible agonised sound as he fought to get away. He thrashed in Rime’s grip as Gloam moved in towards his head.

Deerlegs was almost paralysed by fear when Gloam’s spring-green eyes glared down at her as their paths crossed. The wounded pachy would be such easy prey. It was fortunate for her that in this exact moment, that was a drawback rather than a boon.

Embargo flinched when he heard the sound of teeth against metal. He’d heard it so many times before, running from the snapping jaws of acros chasing him and others through Zone B. That sound haunted his nightmares.

Don’t stop. Whatever you do, don’t stop. He couldn’t say the words aloud, not with the armour bundle still held firmly in his jaws. All he could do was silently will Deerlegs to keep moving.