Month: January 2024

By me, with art by Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

When Warbell said it, through the panic and chaos of the situation, I realized that he was telling the truth. The felt presence of the portal in the chamber was very strong, but there was another pressure in my mind that I hadn’t felt before. As I focused more on it, it was like a browser window opened in my mind’s eye, like I was logging on to a computer system. When I glanced over at Colander, I could see she had made the same connection to the system.

Ed had stopped her advance and was looking at us in confusion. She glanced from us to Warbell several times, her pixilated expression slowly replaced by rage.

“What are you jabbering on about?” she asked in dinosaur speech. Then, in English, Ed spoke brokenly, “What he say you? What he tell you do?”

After making a sort of mental assent to the pressure in our minds, an image appeared like a computer screen before us. What Colander and I saw was something like a long legal document, with a number of areas where we could either assent or decline. It was full of questions like, “Are you certain you wish to cut off all contact between your world and the Kingdom of all Eternity and Perfection of our People and the Future?” “Do you realize that you cannot easily reopen the portal once closed, and the disconnect may possibly be permanent forever?” “Are you a representative of the human race with the authority to make decisions for your people in relation to the Kingdom of all Eternity and Perfection of our People and the Future?”

And many more.

And I just started saying yes. Agreeing to the conditions. Indicating again and again that, yes, I did want to close the portal. Forever. Regardless of the consequences. Regardless of the irreparable damage the decision might cause to relations between the Kingdom of all Eternity and Perfection of our People and the Future and my people. Regardless of anything and everything that might happen. Faster and faster I just agreed.

And I must have been speaking out loud as I agreed, because Ed was yelling at me.

“What you saying yes?” she bellowed. “Why? What you doing?”

Warbell roared, all the fury of a king present in his voice. All the authority was back in the old lizard, all the royalty and charisma and power.

“The frozen kingdom has done enough damage to this world,” Warbell said. “And now it is over.”

The sudden majesty in Warbell’s demeanor was enough even to silence Ed, if perhaps only for a moment. That moment was long enough. Another question was before me in my mind now.

“This is the last question, and your last chance to change your mind. Are you certain you wish to close the portal?”

I said yes, and something moved into action like a wind the width of the sky gushing in all around, as if the world was taking one last, big, deep breath before taking the plunge.

And Ed, still rising in a paroxysm of rage, used the tendrils under her control to snap Warbell’s neck.

By me, with art by Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

Colander was the first to get a shot off in Ed’s direction. I expected Ed to spit fire-extinguishing foam like Warbell had earlier, but instead several of the rope-like tendrils that made up the walls and the floor swooped in and blocked the shot.

Ed was controlling the parts of the very tower itself! She was plugged in, and the tendrils and beams that would normally dance and shake and dodge the birds flying through the sky were now under her control. The next moment after I realized this, tendrils were around my body as well, squeezing me, crushing my arms to my sides, wrapping around my forehead and blocking my fire cannon. Another tendril slapped Colander off her feet, then pinned her to the floor.

Warbell disappeared from sight, initiating his invisibility cloak, but he wasn’t fast enough. Several more tendrils strtuck out at the seemingly empty space where he had been standing and wrapped around his body, squeezing and squeezing until he gave up and became visible again. The old lizard tried to shoot his shoulder cannons, but his shots went wide or were also blocked. Then as I watched, several smaller tendrils shot forward, wrapped around Warbell’s shoulder cannons, and ripped them off of his body.

Warbell screamed. I didn’t realize a dinosaur could scream, but Warbell did, high pitched and full of terror and pain. The translation devices did not make any translation—Warbell’s scream contained no words, but only clean, terrible emotion. The tendrils threw aside the torn-out cannons, which bounced on the membranous floor, spattering blood.

I stared almost uncomprehendingly at Warbell as life essence seeped and poured down the sides of his body. Warb continued to struggle, snapping at the tendrils holding him back. Several of the ropy snarls now controlled by Ed balled up together into something resembling a fist, reared back, and struck the old lizard in the face. A couple of Warbell’s teeth snapped and flew out of his mouth, skipping across the floor. Colander closed her eye and looked away. I stared, speechless with rage and fear.

Ed growled at Warbell, her voice shifting and rumbling, growing in menace.

“You thought to beat feet again,” Ed said, translated. “After what you did to Pearlwine. After what you did to my mother!”

The tendril fist clobbered Warbell in the face again, this time on the opposite side of his head. I heard something break again, and Warbell looked down, reddened saliva oozing out of his mouth.

Ed snarled with hate.

“You destroyed my cage worm,” she said. “I was going to bring you back alive once I got my mitts on ya. For justice. But I realized I could connect to the portal tower in the same way I could the cage worms, and my plan, everything, fell together. I was not keen on this outcome, but you left me no choice.”

The cage worm must’ve been the robotic centipede, or dinosaur “handcuffs,” that Warbell had stomped into the ground. Apparently to use the cage worm, Ed had to have some kind of connection, and via a similar principle, she could also hack into the robotic tower. It was horrible to think about.

Ed bit out the next few words, and the translation came out stuttered as well.

“You’ll get what’s coming to you here,” she said.

“Earthdancer,” Warbell said in return. “I love you. I always loved you, just as I did your mother, Pearlwine. Forgive me if I didn’t show you that love more effectively.”

Then Warbell turned to me and Colander and said in English,

“Close the portal. Use your mind and connect. You can do it at any time.”

Read the next chapter.

By me, with art by Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

“Charlie could have done it,” I said. “Well, that makes me feel real special.”

“It isn’t about being special,” Warbell said.

Several dinosaurs (including a grumpy-looking styracosaurus and a peppy struthiomimus) appeared at the far end of the hallway, shoulder cannons at the ready. Without warning they started firing, but Warbell was faster. Before they started shooting fireballs at us, something in Warbell’s body reacted, and he belched out a mist of bubbles into the air, filling the corridor. The fireballs, entering the mist, fizzled and popped and disappeared before they could hit us, by which point we had started sprinting down a side route. Unfortunately, given that the walls were porous, the assembled dinosaurs could still shoot at us—which they did. Fireballs came whooshing through the air, ropy walls contorting to let them pass. However, the fireballs were affected by the winds up high in the sky, which made it hard to shoot accurately over long distances. Nevertheless, one of the fireballs passed mere inches from my face before we had a chance to escape up to the next level.

“As I was saying,” the old lizard continued, “It’s not about being special. Explicitly it’s not about some unique characteristic. The council back then, they deliberately created this security system so that your people could reject the connection with the frozen kingdom, if you all wanted to cut off relations with us. The council argued that your people should have that right because our side has such superior technology and so many other advantages. Size. Teeth. Horns. Bigger brains. Many felt it would be unfair if our side, the dinosaur side, could just prey on you all unchallenged. So adding a way for your living world to cut yourselves off from us was meant as a kind of counterbalance or a means to make sure we dinosaurs used the portal fairly.”

“That didn’t work out very well,” I said. “How are we supposed to reject the invasion of the dinosaurs if we can’t see you, and we can’t see the portal, and we have no idea how to close the portal in the first place?”

“Oh, well, I agree with you, of course,” the old lizard said. “I was just explaining the idea behind the design, but that honorable intention was lost when my side got greedy and wanted to exploit your world. I think that sort of thing has happened occasionally in your human history as well.”

“Let me tell you all about it,” Colander said. “I am a librarian. I have the power of books. Let me tell you about the conquistadors, the colonization of India, WWII…”

“I saw a lot of those things happen,” said Warbell. “We watched a lot from our world. I’ve seen many of your famous people in person, or at least through the portal.”

“Which ones did you watch?” Colander asked.

“Lincoln, Genghis Khan, Jesus Christ—really impressive chap, that,” said Warbell. “Oh, we’re almost there. Just up here.”

We zoomed up the stairs that Warbell indicated, and then emerged into a large chamber. The room was round, with ropy tendrils weaving into a large translucent dome above our heads. Vine-like tendrils dangled and twisted all around us, and the sunlight twinkled on the wisps of clouds that whispered in the sky through the gnarls. We could feel rather than see the portal in the middle of the dome, where more of the tendrils seemed to outline the portal’s position.

We heard a self-satisfied grumble-wheeze, and when we looked over I heard Warbell suck in his breath.

There was Ed, stalking toward us, head down in predator mode, tendrils from the tower connecting to her back and leading away from her body. The huge orange rex was wearing some sort of winged cybernetic attachment that folded back along the sides of her body. Her little jet-pack must have allowed her to get here faster than us after she recovered from the paralysis caused by the green fire. Steam was rising from the wings in waves of heat. She must have just arrived, perhaps a few minutes before we did—long enough to hook up the tendrils from the tower to her back.

The interpreter devices translated what she had to say:

“I was waiting for you, you charmless nincompoop,” she said. “I won’t let you take a powder back through that portal. Get ready, because I am going to bust your chops but good!”

Read the next chapter.

By me, with art by Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

“What do you mean, one of us is going to have to do it?” I roared.

My voice had gotten louder since first meeting Warbell because of all the ridiculous things I now had to shout about, so while I was not a dinosaur per se, nevertheless I think my vocal volume was getting close to dinosaurian.

“Yes, why did you think I was giving you both a huge patch of my skin to create super suits with?” asked Warbell. “To start a fashion line? Creating the pillow hurt, I will have you know. Both the process of figuring out how to do it, and then actually putting it into practice.”

Warbell was outright running down a huge hallway at this time.  A massive fluffy cloud was passing through the tower and the corridor, and his body caused the cloud to puff apart slightly as he disappeared inside. He was going way too fast for Colander and I to keep up, so Colander mumbled, “Oh, just hang it all,” and leapt into the air, activating her flight powers as she did so. She was already gone through the cloud before I got up off the floor to follow her lead.

When I caught up Warbell was standing at the foot of another staircase, eyes ablaze with impatience.

“They are coming!” he said again, and as if on cue the ceiling broke open at that moment and four smallish two-legged herbivores that looked a lot like psittacosauruses (each with a complimentary striped brown and white body) fell upon us, shouting and making all sorts of ruckus.

“Stop, criminals!” said one.

“There is no escape, dirty ruffians” said another.

Both utterances were of course translated by our charming ear devices.

Warbell promptly took one of the dinosaurs in his mouth (sharp teeth out, not his friendly teeth) and shook his head back and forth. The other psittacosauruses—even though they had their shoulder blasters out—absolutely freaked. Not one actually shot their cannons. One of them froze in fear, mouth dropped open in utter shock. The other two ran away, screaming. When Warbell spat out the one he had chomped, it plopped on the ground, unmoving. That was enough to motivate the last remaining psittacosaurus to faint dead away.

Up we went through more clouds, and up another ramp, the swaying of the tower becoming more pronounced. I tried to fly, but I kept running into things, and so I decided to stick to running for a while—but I learned I had cybernetic enhancements in my legs, too, so I was quite fleet of foot.

“Can you tell us why you can’t close the portal yourself?” Colander asked as we desperately ran up another staircase, this one colored pink and green like a mango.

“One reason,” Warbell said. “The dinosaur council decided a long time ago that not just anyone can close the portal. It has to be someone particular.”

“You mean we are the chosen ones?” I asked, my eyes about popping out of my head. “Like Harry Potter or something like that?”

“Sure, I chose you,” Warbell said. “But what I mean is, only people from this side can close the portal. Any human being. But not any dinosaurs. So, essentially, your neighbor Charlie could’ve done it in your stead if I had brought him with me rather than you two.”

By me, with art by Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

While I was very, very uncomfortable with the skin stabbing me in the back of my brain without my permission, I couldn’t exactly object since without the skin I would be skydiving. Still, I filed away the memory as something to complain about loudly once I was back on solid ground.

Plus, I had neat new powers I wanted to play around with. I didn’t have time for kvetching.

I stretched out my hand and thought, “Fire!”

A fireball launched from my body—but not from my hand. I hadn’t even noticed, but a third strand of the dinosaur skin on my head (in addition to the two which wrapped around and became my dinosaur goggle glasses) was protruding from my forehead, and it shot exactly where I was looking—the ropy wall. However, the fire bursting from my face was a big surprise for me. I fell backwards onto the membranous floor, then saw the wall I had fired at effortlessly wriggle out of the way of the fireball as it passed.

“Be careful with that,” Warbell said. “If you hit me or Colander, our cybernetics will shut down, and then we will go plummeting down below and quite possibly become what you so colorfully call street pizza.”

“You would make for a jumbo-sized XXXL pizza, Warb,” said Colander. “Also, I want to try this thing out!”

With that, Colander then jumped into the air with a shout, “I can fly!”

Instantly the air around her hummed to life and she went vertical, flailing her arms and legs before slamming head first into the ceiling.

“Ooph!” she said, as she descended again, rubbing her head. “That was really incredible!”

I tried flying a little bit by picturing myself hovering just a foot off the floor, and immediately my feet lifted off the ground, the vibrating air causing the membranous floor to shiver subtly. Warbell grinned at me. Colander whooshed back up to the ceiling, this time stopping just before beaning her head again.

“You’re doing great, but we don’t have much time,” said Warbell. “Probably they have already sent—”

Before Warbell could finish his thought, we saw a stegosaurus of some kind (it had spikes instead of plates, so maybe a polacanthus, but I can’t be sure) stumble down some stairs several hundred feet away—and it saw us.

The stegosaurus made a burbling sound, which our skins automatically translated as, “shucks!” Cannons started emerging from the stegosaurus’ side. Colander fired off a blast from the ceiling that would have hit right in front of the stego, but the floor instead opened up to let the fireball through—and the dinosaur fell halfway into the hole and got stuck. His spikey tail whipped back and forth as he shouted a series of profanities which were then translated as things like, “Gosh darn,” “Golly gee,” and “You big meanies!”

“Who wrote these translations?” I asked. “I am kind of scared out of my mind, but on the verge of a giggle fit at the same time.”

“The translator studied English from the 1940s and 50s I think,” said Warbell. “We need to get going, though. Others are coming.”

Warbell was right. We could hear footsteps, voices.

“What is going on?”

“I see a stegosaurus butt sticking out of the floor.”

“Quite embarrassing, what?”

We dashed up a nearby staircase, startling a flock of birds passing through, then booked it down a side corridor and up an automatic lift. While I couldn’t see the portal yet, I thought I could feel its power through the walls.

“We’ve got your back, Warbee!” Colander said, giving an exaggerated action pose as we landed on the next level. “We’ll cover you as you go so that you can take out the portal with your magical shoulder cannons or whatever.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll give it our best, so you just do your thing.”

“Well, that’s kind of the rub,” Warbell said uncomfortably. “I can’t turn off the portal. One of you is going to have to do it.”

By me, with art by Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

The living leather suit slipped up and around my body, wrapping around me, sliding over my clothes and shirt and arms. It was an intensely strange feeling, warm and creepy, and I had to fight the urge to struggle. Colander was definitely squirming beside me as she went through the same treatment. Despite the warmth of the skin, I shivered several times. As the leather proceeded up my body towards my head, a flap rose and two strands swung around the sides of my skull, covering my eyes with a transparent barrier. I slapped at the goggle-like apparatus that now covered my eyes, and then furtively pulled my hands away.

And when I did, the world changed. Finally I could see the tower, which had been swaying gently beneath Warbell’s feet all this time. It was the strangest building I had ever seen. I was expecting something made from steel and concrete, but instead I was greeted by an almost net-like structure of ropy, pastel-colored tubes. I don’t know what else to call them. It seemed like the whole shebang was gently weaving and moving, all the walls composed of those same tubes, letting the air pass through the gaps as if nothing was in the way. The floors were solid, but visibly gave a little under Warbell’s weight. The sections of floor seemed to be connected by some kind of blue-green membrane stretched between the ropy tubes. Stairs also ran up into the distance, made from the same ropes, and above I could see another dark blue-green membrane acting as a ceiling. As I watched, the ropes and columns composing the walls contorted out of the way for passing birds, and even some of the membranes snapped open to let through a passing cloud.

“You can’t really hide up here, since everyone can see you walking in the sky,” said Warbell, “Unless you use your invisibility. Which you can. Both of you can get down off of me now, too.”

Warbell crouched, and Colander and I slipped off and landed on the translucent membrane. Part of me was afraid the membrane would snap open beneath my feet, but nothing happened—I just felt it give a little under my weight.

“So what happens now?” I asked.

“You need to learn how to use your new dinosaur suits,” said Warbell. “I was fond of that patch of skin and flesh, so please take care of it for me. If I ever get a chance to see Thinkwilder again, I will definitely have a few complaints to lay at his feet—because trust me, this IS skin off my back, so to speak. The leather-suit plot was Thinkwilder’s idea and his design. Believe me, it’s as weird for me as it is for you.”

 “How do we use our monster suits?” asked Colander. “I feel like some kind of weird R-rated superhero. Oh!”

Colander reacted and slapped at the back of her neck. I felt something, too—some kind of sting at the base of my skull—and I yelped.

“You should have a physical connection to your suits now,” said Warbell. “The suits are now hardwired to your brains. I am sorry I didn’t warn you about this earlier. I realize setting you up with living suits that surgically attach to your brainstems probably counts as a crime of some sort in your world, and you also most likely feel very much personally invaded, but in this case we don’t have time to train you in the use of any kind of analog method to control their functions. This way, just think it and the suits will do as you ask, within certain parameters.”

“Do what?” I asked. “What are our superpowers?”

“You can fly, turn invisible, shoot green fireballs—though not many and not very fast,” Warbell said. “You can change colors if you want to. Turn on and off your skin so that the tower will drop you. Translate dinosaur speech. Monitor your vitals. Just think about it, and the skins will react.”

Warbell winked at us and winced, flexing a pulled muscle.

“You are now superhuman,” he said.

Read the next chapter.

By me, with art by Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

I yelled like a ninny, visions of plummeting down, down, hundreds of feet, splattering on my doorstep, the funeral, the fact that I would miss next summer’s Dinosaur Yacht Slaughter 10: Red Sea flashing through my mind.

“We’re not falling anymore,” Colander said. She tapped me on the shoulder and pointed.

“We only fell maybe a foot,” she said.

Warbell was standing on nothing. He was standing, though. Confidently. Nonchalantly.

“Don’t get off yet or you will start falling,” Warbell said. “We are standing in the tower, and the matter of the tower will open up around your bodies. You would fall right through the floor.”

“Tower?” Colander asked.

“Warbell wrote that there is a tower built to reach the portal, which is up in the sky somewhere above Final Pumpkin,” I said, still breathing heavily and feeling panicky. “It’s made out of some ghost material so human airplanes and birds and such can’t see it and just fly right through it or something.”

“What it actually does is… it dodges you,” said Warbell.

“How’s that?” Colander said.

“It’s programmed to dodge and avoid humans, animals, and machines here on your earth,” Warbell said. “So if a bird flies through, the various beams bend out of the way, holes open in the walls, that sort of thing. It’s made out of a special reactive material that constantly readjusts as needed, but in a way that keeps the whole building stable.”

“You have a flying castle that constantly morphs and warps to avoid all animal life and human transport?” Colander asked.

“Not flying,” Warbell said. “More like dancing. It has legs, too. It’s tricky when it has to move too many legs at once.”

“Wouldn’t that leave huge pits everywhere the dancing tower steps?” asked Colander. “This tower has to be pretty heavy.”

“The legs bond with the earth wherever it connects so that the elements of the earth become a part of the structure of the tower holding it up,” said Warbell. “Then they unbond whenever the feet move, and it doesn’t cause much damage to the ground or street or whatever.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Neither do I,” said Warbell. “But it works.”

“Well, what now?” Colander asked. “How do we close the portal?”

Warbell looked up and around, peering through the clouds.

“You aren’t going to like this, but we don’t have much choice,” said Warbell. “Thinkwilder and I planned for this. The only way for you to interact safely with the tower is to wear, uh, part of me, because only dinosaurs can interact with the tower. I hope you don’t mind.”

With that, Warbell burped up the pillow that he had had with him when I first met him, that he had supposedly had in the cavern beneath the rocky outcroppings out back behind my house. He apparently had swallowed it at some point. Now he shook it vigorously, once, twice.

Suddenly it split in two, the cloth outside dissolving and the entire pillow morphing into writhing leathery material.

 “This isn’t very comfortable for me, either,” he said. “But to walk on the tower, you need some of my flesh, so to speak. You have to wear parts of me, and this pillow is composed of my own flesh and blood. It is a part of me which Thinkwilder and I built into living suits you can wear. I promise you can take off my, err, leather clothing at any time, but please wait until you are on solid ground before you do so.”

By me, with art by Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

“But I don’t understand,” I said. “In that last encounter, in the field. How did she fly and light up the field with all those zappy-blasts, and then zip out in her wiggly-air if she was stunned by your tranquilizer fire stuff?”

We were high over the city now, and Warbell turned and began levitating with determination towards what seemed to be empty sky.

“Ed was prepared,” Warbell said with a pause, and seemed to dodge something midflight before continuing. “After getting knocked out in the city, she must have rerouted her cannon and flying mechanisms so that they wouldn’t get disabled with the rest of her body if she got hit by the green fire again, and then programmed in a series of reactions that would be set off in the event that she was knocked out.”

“So when she was hit with the green fire ball,” I said, thinking it through, “it activated her flying switch so she could fly into the sky and shoot everything in the area without moving a muscle.”

“That’s about the long and the short of it,” Warbell said.

“It is beyond my ken that your daughter wants to kill you,” said Colander. “How awful.”

“She didn’t try to kill me back there,” Warbell said. “She wanted to talk about it first… and I guess beat me up as well. But she has tried to kill me before. More than once.”

Colander and I each exclaimed our dismay in the tones of our peculiar personalities, though Colander’s sieve of emotions produced a particularly long wail.

“I didn’t write that part in the journal,” Warbell said. “Just a minute.”

And the old lizard maneuvered around in the air again, flying over sideways and about something I couldn’t fathom. I did catch a glimpse of Six Degrees of Bacon down far below, though, and suddenly felt pretty hungry.

“You don’t have to tell us anything that makes you feel sad,” Colander said. “You need to concentrate all your saurian brain molecules on healing up good and strong.”

“The nanobots are taking care of most of the healing,” Warbell said with a grimace. “Whatever sadness I am feeling, even still, to express that sadness is also a means of healing. Permit me the indulgence if only until we arrive. When I consider everything that happened, well, I guess there are a lot of reasons dads often think they are bad parents, but I can’t think of much that would make a fellow feel that regret more keenly than when their kid attempts patricide. The first time was right after I discovered Razzberry was dead. Ed was off in another area. Hunting. She never fully gave up on hunting. I think that’s why Furbud never felt as comfortable around Ed as he did with me—Ed always had a lot more killer instinct. But when Ed found out about her mom, she immediately turned on me.”

“Oh my gosh,” I said.

“I know what it feels like to be bit by a tyrannosaurus rex,” the old lizard said. “In the neck. I wasn’t ready. Wasn’t even thinking about protecting myself. I was still in shock over… everything. Didn’t even enter my mind that Ed would… Luckily, there were medics at the scene at the time of the attack. Still, when it happened, Ed didn’t have the full cybernetic enhanced system, so we couldn’t just knock her out so easily. There was quite the fight. I’d rather not go into details.”

“You don’t need to,” said Colander.

“What about that weird robo-worm?” I asked. “The one you stomped on.”

“That is a standard-issue pair of dinosaur handcuffs, or its equivalent I suppose,” Warb said. “Dinosaurs have all sorts of shapes and sizes, which makes standardizing equipment tricky. But the “robo-worm” as you call it—that attaches to dinosaur spines and takes over the body. You can still think and feel after it gets you. You just can’t move your body at all, and no amount of foam or green fire or time will get you free.”

I shuddered.

“I’m completely okay with snakes and lizards and the like,” Colander said, voice wavering. “But not if they are going to stick their claws in my back and take over my brain. That’s just not right.”

“We’re here,” Warbell said.

I looked around for a moment, confused. We were just floating about in mid air. There was nothing interesting to see—I mean nothing more interesting than a flying t-rex.

Then Warbell turned off his flight mechanism.

And we fell.

By me, with art by Sam Messerly.

Click here to read from the beginning.

Colander was sitting behind me when I asked the question, and I heard her gasp. Warbell just kept on walking without slowing his pace.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Colander said. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“We can fly now,” said Warbell. “I think it’s best if we do so. It gets us off the streets, which reduces the possibility of getting hit by cars since they can’t see us coming. Get ready.”

“Come on, Warbell,” I said. “We just risked our lives for you. Multiple times. We saved your keister. We deserve a straight answer.”

“This is obviously a very sensitive topic,” said Colander. “But I agree with Walter this time. You actually do owe us an explanation. We don’t know what we are getting into.”

“And you owe me a new truck,” I said. “My insurance probably doesn’t cover… whatever it was that destroyed my truck.”

The wind started shaking around us, making our view somewhat hazy. Goosebumps broke out all across my arms and legs. The wind felt like it was snaking through my hair and sorting each strand, and my clothes were being shook loose as well. Then the old lizard took step into the air and we were flying.

I instinctively held on harder to Warbell’s back, and his muscles shifted again, protrusions of flesh clamping onto my legs to keep me steady. Colander nevertheless grabbed on to me for extra reassurance, and I didn’t object.

“I wrote in my journal that there was still much to say and explain,” said the old lizard in a tired voice as we rose into the air. “Earthdancer, or just Ed… she is one of those things.”

Now that we were several dozen feet up in the air, or rather further up in the air than before (riding on the back of a rex already means riding high), I had lost the desire to say anything. Colander filled the silence, however.

“Your daughter’s name is Earthdancer?” she said.

“She was borne while Razzberry and I lived on the earth together,” Warbell said. “We were overjoyed. We felt like the earth was dancing with us. A child—it’s a peculiar kind of joy. I was so glad I had the opportunity to feel that kind of joy.”

“Was your wife’s name really Razzberry?” Colander asked.

“That was her nickname,” Warbell said. “Her real name sounds really pretentious if I translate it into English, but she was not a pretentious sort of person.”

“Oh, thank you, sorry if the question was impertinent,” Colander said.

“To understand the full scope of the problem we are facing, I have to explain something that is difficult for me to say,” Warbell said slowly. “There is a problem with all dinosaurs bearing their children on your earth. They don’t come out with the same intelligence we now have from living in the timeless space of the frozen kingdom. They come out as regular dinosaurs. Ed was originally that way, too—a predatory animal with no ability to speak, though that changed as we used many techniques to boost her intelligence. Now as you can see she is not stupid, but neither is she, shall we say, fully civilized. Her mind works in ways I don’t understand. She could never accept the explanations given her about Razzberry’s death. She was convinced I killed her. Ed is here on a personal mission, without the backing of my people, to bring me to what she sees as justice—any way that she can. And she is not scared of violence.”

Warbell’s voice went dark.

“I’m afraid she thrives on it.”

Read the next chapter.

By me, with art by Sam Messerly.

Read from the beginning.

Warbell turned and limped toward me, some vestiges of the flames still smoldering on his shoulders and neck. He shook his head, and the remnants of the fire were tossed up, tracing neon lines in the air.

“Let’s go,” he said.

We found Colander hiding next to the remnants of the truck. She was shaking, incoherent at first, but when she got a good look at me, she gave me a big hug and held on for a long time.

“I was almost splattered across the landscape,” she said. “My gosh. I am really glad you’re still alive.”

I beamed at her through the dirt and scum on my face, and Colander raised grinned hard enough to displace some of the muck on her cheeks.

 “Okay, we can’t stay here,” Warbell said. “Hurry. This isn’t going to last. Punkstomper, Wigglejump, and Yellowrdash are going to be out cold for a while with the fires everywhere like this. But there will be more dinosaurs coming. We need to go.”

“Can you even walk?” I asked. “You look terrible.”

“Good,” he said. “I’m a terrible lizard, am I not? I am wounded, but once I can get my cyborg enhancements functioning again, they will streamline the healing process. Come on, I’m going to let you ride. Once in a lifetime experience. Just don’t stick your foot in my wounds. I can still walk faster than you two can run.”

Warbell helped us onto his back, and we were careful not to scramble on the old lizard’s torn skin. I felt incredibly awkward, and with no blanket on his back, I basically had Warbell’s spine digging into my groin. Riding a dinosaur sounds cool, but in this case it really wasn’t—especially given how guilty I felt that I hadn’t had the chance to change my pants. We rode in silence for some time as Warbell took a wide-strolling gait towards Final Pumpkin. He was going quickly, but with care not to accidentally throw us onto the ground and break our necks. 

Several minutes passed as I continued holding on to Warbell’s back, my arms threatening to cramp. Suddenly I felt the muscles and flesh under my body subtly shift beneath me. It was like his bones and muscle had reformed to make it easier for us to sit safely on his wide and bumpy dino-back. I also felt a slight buzz in the air, and looked at Colander. She gave me a quizzically curved eyebrow.

“What is that buzzing noise?” Colander asked. “Is that a massage chair inside your butt warming up?”

Warbell smiled.

“Invisibility cloak active,” he said. “We are out of the flames. I am starting to turn on some of the cybernetics again. Some of my interior systems are also active, so I can reshape my body a bit to make the ride slightly safer for you—unless you want for me to let you slide off.”

“Nope, not feeling like sliding right now,” I said, building up a bit of courage to squeak out an attempt at humor. “If you do have any fancy massage settings in your hinder, though, just give me the gentlest setting. I can’t take any more jostling around.”

Frankly, at that point, I felt like I had been jostled around a lot more than just the physical sense, and it was really getting to me. The dirt in my every crevice didn’t help matters any, and given that I wasn’t actively putting myself in imminent danger of becoming saurian foot-sludge anymore, I couldn’t abide the annoyance any longer.

“Something tells me you are still hiding a few things that you didn’t mention in the journal you gave me,” I said.

Warbell grunted, but didn’t proffer anything coherent, so I just went with the wild thought spinning wild through my pain-addled skull.

“Alright,” I said. “So am I right in guessing that big rex is your daughter?”

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