Set to Detonate

“We can get a better look from up here,” Dullahan called over his shoulder.

Callahan fought to get through the dense shrubbery behind him. “I’m going as fast as I can!” It wasn’t her fault that her feathers kept snagging on brambles and twigs. Being small was a blessing when it came to hiding and climbing, but it also made it difficult to get through more dense undergrowth. She exclaimed and thrashed her head from side to side when she ran through a spiderweb. It clung to her muzzle and feathers, a horrible sticky mask that she paused to wipe from her face with a look of absolute disgust.

“Hold still,” Dullahan chirped, amused. She paused, muzzle wrinkled with her teeth bared as he helped her to brush the tangled webbing from her unruly feathers.

“Better?” he teased.

Callahan rolled her eyes and pushed him forwards. “Better. Go! We’re gonna be late, and I wanna see what’s going on before they leave.”

New dinosaurs had been pouring onto Pera for days, now. When Layla came back from her travels, she said that the ground was spitting them out, and they were coming from a different island - one named Kela, which had no burning mountain. It was weird to think about. What kind of place didn’t have a burning mountain? It must get so cold in the winter, with no fire under the earth to melt the snow.

The newcomers were also fascinated by the tapejaras, which made the twins a little smug. They had known about the pesky food-stealing flyers since they were very small. It was a very cool feeling to know so much more than the adults, for once.

Even more new faces joined them, dinosaurs that even the local adults had never seen before. Towering giants with necks that reached towards the sky and tails that trailed behind them forever before they ended in solid, spiked clubs; and four-legged lizard-like dinosaurs near the size of an adult utahraptor with sabers for teeth. Layla had them avoiding both while they traveled, just in case they were aggressive or had a taste for young utahraptors.

But now the newcomers were doing something at the base of the “dam,” something about freeing the water and releasing the water-dwelling atopos that called the big lake home. The “dam” didn’t look like anything more than a towering, smooth-faced cliff to Callahan and Dullahan, but that was what it was called, apparently. Layla had left them to do some scouting to see what was going on, which meant the twins were left to their own devices yet again. And when they were left alone… they tended to get up to something.

Layla didn’t want them too near the newcomers until they learned more about them, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t still watch from a safe distance. That safe distance being from the top of the dam, this time. It was far enough away that they would be safe from prying eyes [and teeth, and claws] but they would have a clear view of what was going on.

“What do you think they’re saying?” Dullahan whispered. He crouched down beside Callahan, who was peering over the edge at the gathered dinosaurs far below.

They had played up here many times since Layla started bringing them on her adventures (or since they’d started following her on her adventures, more like, since they were big enough now that they could keep up with her) but they had never really realised just how far up they were until they were at the top looking down. Even the largest dinosaurs looked like ants at the base of the dam.

Callahan shook her head. She couldn’t make it out. They could still pick out and identify individuals - Libre and Largo were hard to miss, being the largest tapejaras that any dinosaur had ever seen - but they were too high up to hear what was being said. The wind carried fragments of conversation up the smooth stone, but it was impossible to put the pieces together to really understand them.

“I dunno,” she whispered back, not really sure why they were whispering when there was no one around to hear them. Except maybe the water dwellers, but the surface of the big lake behind them was glassy smooth with no swimmers in sight.

“Oh come on,” Dullahan teased. “Make something up!”

Callahan snorted and looked back at the gathering far below. She thought for a moment, watching them, then shot Dullahan a mischievous look. “They’re saying that they can smell my stinky brother from all the way down there.”

“What?!” Dullahan exclaimed with a laugh, “no way! You’re the smelly one!”

“It’s true!” Callahan laughed, her eyes squinting with amusement when Dullahan nipped at her feathers. Almost all her downy feathers had been replaced with smoother adult feathers by this point - no more risk of getting one stuck to his tongue or the tip of his snout.

“Okay, maybe not true,” she laughed, after very careful rough-housing atop the dam. Her muzzle wrinkled, her teeth bared in a teasing expression. “But something does stink.”

A rancid odor, like rotten eggs, was wafting up on the breeze that rushed up the front of the dam. It was getting stronger, the longer all the dinosaurs lingered around the base. A bunch of yellow rocks were being piled up. Just a few at first, and hard to see, but the pile was noticeably growing as more dinosaurs came and went throughout the day. It was exhausting work just watching them all work.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Callahan mumbled, her chin resting on the concrete.

Dullahan gave a snort. This had been way less exciting than he hoped it would be. “Maybe the dam’s got a hole in it?”

Callahan shook her head slightly, scratching her chin on the concrete. “The riverbed’s been dry forever.”

“Then… “ Dullahan thought for a moment. “Maybe they’re trying to lure something. Make such an awful stink so that something comes to investigate, and then, they’re gonna pounce on it!” he chirped, giving Callahan a nudge.

Callahan squeaked in surprise, scrambling back from the edge. “I almost fell!” she snipped, shooting him a hard look.

“You were fine,” he laughed, “I didn’t even push that hard, and you were laying down.” When she didn’t let up, he apologised with a quiet murr and preened some of the feathers on her shoulder, which stubbornly refused to lay flat, just as they always had. They were a long way up, he didn’t mean to scare her like that. Callahan sat back down and quietly accepted his apology, and nibbled just above his shoulder as though she were preening him as well.

“I think they’re almost done, whatever they’re doing,” Dullahan offered as he sat beside her. Which meant Layla was probably going to come back for them soon. Maybe she’d have the real answer.

Soon it was just Libre and Largo left at the base of the dam, fussing about and apparently moving some of the pieces into the perfect spot - whatever that looked like to them.

Callahan looked up at the sound of Layla’s voice. She was at one end of the dam, calling for them. They had been watching the dinosaurs at the base of the dam all day and now a strong evening wind buffeted against them, keeping whatever Layla was saying from reaching their ears. Callahan tilted her head. Layla was acting weird. She was staying at the very edge of the dam, tense, moving like she wanted to get to them but she couldn’t actually go. The little bit of Layla’s voice she could hear over the wind sounded frantic.

“C’mon, Layla’s here. I think we’re in trouble,” Callahan sighed as she got to her feet. 

Dullahan was still watching the Twins below. “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute. Libre’s doing something.”

Callahan gave her brother a doubtful look, but it wasn’t her problem if he wanted to get in even more trouble. She grumbled to herself a bit as she trudged along the top of the dam towards the shore, squinting as Libre’s shadow temporarily blocked out the sun when the giant tapejara flew overhead. She didn’t understand what the problem was, they’d been on top of the dam loads of times -

The dam suddenly shook, eliciting a bark of alarm from Callahan that was punctuated by a thunderous sound echoing from below. Layla’s shouts became even more frantic, her voice growing hoarse, but it was too late. Dullahan was watching in terror as a spiderweb of cracks climbed the dam at an alarming rate, reaching towards him as water began to spill out at the base.

He shrieked at Callahan to run. The top was already beginning to fracture and crumble, the middle beginning to collapse in on itself. Callahan’s claws scratched against the concrete as she raced towards the side of the dam that Layla was shouting at them from. She looked over her shoulder, terrified for Dullahan and terrified again to be caught in the collapse. Concrete fractured under her feet, threatening to trip her and grab her and drag her down with it.

Dullahan struggled even more, pieces slipping from underneath his feet. He was running as fast as he could, he was fighting to make it just a little further, he was almost there, he was - 

His foot went through a crack that had formed in the concrete chunks, pinched between pieces of debris. “Callahan!” he cried out as he was dragged down, at the same time that she screamed for him - “NO! DULLAHAN!”

Her horrified face was the last thing that he saw before he was falling through the air. He finally knew what it felt like to fly, like the birds that they saw when they first left the nest; only his flight ended abruptly when he crashed into churning, cascading water.

Callahan screamed for her brother, fought to get away from Layla from the safety of the shoreline. Dullahan couldn’t be gone, he was her twin, her other half! She shrieked and cried out, agonised as she felt a piece of herself die, swept away by the water that glowed in the setting sun like pouring lava.

Dullahan couldn’t see, he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know when he stopped falling. He didn’t know which way was up. The turbulent water threw him around, beat him, crushed him, smashed him against trees and rocks and objects that he would never know what they were. He managed to gasp for breath when he briefly breached the surface of the water, only to be ripped beneath the surface again by the current and a tide of debris. Bubbles burst from his mouth as he screeched underwater when something sharp ripped into his thigh, his cries muffled by the torrent which swept him further and further away from his sister. He didn’t have to suffer the pain for long. The world went dark when something hard crashed into the side of his head.

When the lake finally drained, when the raging river finally subsided into a slow-winding stream, Layla walked beside Callahan and helped her search the banks for any sign of Dullahan, even just his scent.

Callahan called her brother’s name again and again until her voice broke every time she tried to speak, but was never blessed with an answer. She never found a trace of him on the banks, and even searching downstream along the shoreline yielded nothing. He was just gone.

Dullahan was washed away, far from the dam. The sand that he woke up on wasn’t black, but that was okay. He didn’t know why it would have been black in the first place. His mouth was dry. Everything ached. He could barely move his right leg, and his head…

Where was he?