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!”