The Wyvern in the Wilderlands: Planeswalking Monster Hunters for Hire (Sci-fi Multiverse Adventure Survival / Weird Fantasy) (Monster Hunting for Fun and ... Hunters and Mythical Monsters) Book 1)

by Eddie Patin

  Jason fired a second shot that clapped his ears and made a handful of small creatures in the woods near him scurry for cover.

  The T-Rex spun, eyeing him immediately from the distance, and Jason felt his guts turn to ice water...

  "Okay," he muttered with a weak voice. "Let’s keep going..."

  As if the monster heard him and concurred, the massive predator broke into a heavy, loping run once again...

  "Shit!" Jason cried, then turned to run on. He peeled away from the shoreline, heading south into the valley on shaky knees and feet that he couldn't feel as blood pounded in his head.

  He ran like a bastard, sprinting through green grasses mixes with sporadic bushes and ferns, focused intently on the distant vision of the valley's southern horizon. It wouldn’t be too far before Jason could see the wyvern’s cave—hopefully. Up ahead, the man could see where the random landscape he was running through eventually spread out into the actual grassy valley. Up ahead were the long stretches of green broken up by marshes and patches of cattails that he was expecting. Somewhere up there on the left would be the forest where the cannibals lived, and further still, the sacrificial slab sitting at the valley’s western edge at the base of the slope to the wyvern’s—

  A low frequency groan vibrated Jason’s body, loosening up his dimming fear and making his chest quiver...

  Jason realized that—over the rustling sounds of him scrambling through the grass and bushes and his own boots slamming into the ground—he could once again hear the thumping of the Dreadwraith following him...

  He looked back.

  The Tyrannosaurus Rex was behind him, turning into the valley and watching Jason from a distance with the same impassive curiosity that the man had seen in the faces of the mini-rexes before. Only this time, the T-Rex was much bigger and its red and black colors made it all the more terrifying...

  It was following him.

  "Oh God—it’s working!" Jason exclaimed in terror, turning and sprinting south as fast as he could.

  His mind responded: Oh God—it’s working, in giddy elation.

  The T-Rex was in the valley; in the wyvern's territory. It was chasing him directly into the valley...

  This could work!

  Jason ran, struggling to keep his spear from dragging or getting him caught up on the ground.

  He ran and ran, desperate to keep ahead of the Dreadwraith that chased him like certain, looming death. As Jason plunged headlong through the valley with clumsy, frantic steps, herbivores large and small bolted and scattered before him. The little ones zipped away into the underbrush and nearby woods. The large dinosaurs thundered away further to the south or headlong into the surrounding trees.

  Looking back, Jason could see that the T-Rex was chasing steadily behind him.

  It seemed a little closer. Its massive black legs were like muscular pistons. Its softball-sized eyes stayed locked on him...

  Is it gaining?! he wondered in terror. Jason couldn’t be sure, but the monster looked bigger—he could more clearly see the brown ridges on its head and the black quill-like feathers on its head and neck bobbed in the wind of its heavy charge.

  Jason looked forward again, gritted his teeth ahead of his ragged breathing, and pushed himself to run even faster. His lungs were starting to burn, as were the muscles of his legs. His right knee twinged a little—he expected it to hurt more, but wouldn't complain if it didn't. Jason just growled against the pain and ran on.

  He knew from experience that soon, his bad knee would feel like an icepick was spiraling around in there. He was frankly surprised that it wasn't unbearable already.

  The man knew that he wouldn’t make it much further. The lactic acid was building up in his muscles and he would have to stop. A little while longer, and Jason's body would hit a wall where he wouldn’t be able to run another step without collapsing and resting. The Tyrannosaurus Rex would catch up to him, and the last thing that he was see would be that massive, dark head blotting out the sky above him. Jason figured that he would scream as the monster bit into his body, but it wouldn’t last much longer than that...

  "Stop it!" he cried out against his thought. "Run!"

  The low sound vibrated through his body again like a car pulling up alongside him on the street blaring rap music with the bass turned up too loud...

  "Oh, God!" Jason screamed, pushing himself to run on and on. His boots stamped the ground. He veered around an upcoming patch of marsh, continuing south—always south until the wyvern...

  The T-Rex’s heavy steps shook the earth under his boots, and Jason could hear the thumps definitely getting closer. Now, he also heard a crash with each step of sticks and grass and bushes being crushed under the monster's feet...

  Suddenly on his left, Jason heard the sounds of cannibals, hooting and screaming, making their animalistic, excited noises. Risking a glance over there, he saw them sprinting along with him through the trees, their rapid footfalls crunching and rasping through the underbrush. He saw some of them staring with wide eyes at the T-Rex pursing him. The cannibals waved their arms and stone tools around as they screamed like they were weird, reptilian monkeys.

  Jason fearfully became aware that—as close as he was—there was no sign of the wyvern.

  The T-Rex continued loping along behind him, thumping through the valley like a black and red freight-train, sometimes letting loose one of those odd and terrifying low frequency sounds that rumbled through the air and buzzed in Jason’s bones...

  Jason peered up in the sky as his heart hammered in his chest and ears—just for an instant. He was immediately terrified of tripping and falling. His lungs were burning as he heaved thick, humid breaths, and he could feel the world around him pulsating at the edges of his vision along with the fierce beating of his heart. He didn’t see anything resembling the wyvern in that brief second looking up into the sky. There were pterosaurs circling on thermals—was the wyvern one of them?

  "Come on!" Jason shouted as he watched for the cave. He'd be there any second now. Where was the fucking wyvern?! "Come on!" he repeated. "Come on! Come one!"

  Jason forced his body to keep flying through the grass—his legs burning and joints screaming in pain—and he sprinted on, feeling the ground shake under him as the Dreadwraith closed in...

  At last—finally—Jason saw the opening of the wyvern’s cave approaching on his right. As the bushes opened up ahead of him, he saw the sacrificial slab, bright with red blood in the sunlight. He was dimly aware of two cannibals standing next to it, their gangly forms frozen in shock—they were watching the monster bearing down behind him...

  As Jason approached on desperate legs, his body red-lining and feeling like he was at the end of his rope with fire coursing through his lungs and muscles, the cannibals near the wyvern’s cave scattered.

  The T-Rex grunted with a deep sound of vibrating bass that renewed Jason’s stark fear—he was so goddamned afraid that he couldn’t even make sense of the adrenaline ripping through him anymore. He just ran!

  Jason made it to the rock formation surrounded by smoldering sticks and chunks of dinosaur remains. He tore off to the right up the slope to the wyvern’s cave, targeting the same bushes he’d hidden in twice now...

  "Where are you?!" he screamed, feeling the T-Rex’s heavy steps crashing and shaking the earth behind him.

  Jason dropped his spear and dove into the bushed at the top of the slope, just off to the side of the cavern’s entrance, not looking back...

  The monster could easily follow him. It could effortlessly just push its massive, five-foot-long head through the fronds and pluck him up; toss him through the air and swallow him whole.

  When Jason crashed through the bushes and hit the dirt, it took him a second to force his body to obey and turn around, scrambling to a crouched position to watch. He prayed that the T-Rex hadn’t simply followed him up the slope—he dreaded looking out from the leaves and thick foliage to see the gigantic creature staring right back at him from
a few feet away...

  When Jason could see through the bushes again—his heart beating madly and his lungs gulping down oxygen—he beheld the Tyrannosaurus Rex standing below towering over the sacrificial slab. The monster had been distracted by the cannibals that were in the area. A nearly-incomprehensible sense of relief crashed down onto Jason like a truck-full of sandbags, and the man watched with wide eyes and a spreading grin as the Dreadwraith ran back and forth, chasing after the several cannibals scrambling for safety. Its heavy feet thumped at the ground and its tail swung back and forth as it turned, black feathers ruffling with aggression.

  In the next instant, the T-Rex caught one of the primitives with its enormous mouth, snatching the poor bastard across the body and one shoulder and pulling it up into the air. The cannibal screamed loudly with a piercing, animal sound, flailing around in the beast’s mouth. The T-Rex threw it up into the air, releasing the wailing savage for just a moment, then it big down again with a better grip. The cannibal screamed bloody murder then was quieted almost immediately when the Dreadwraith shook it like a giant dog shaking a toy in its mouth. Other cannibals hollered and screamed at the monster, sprinting around but staying far from the T-Rex’s reach.

  Jason expected to see the monster throw its head back and slurp the broken cannibal down its gullet. Instead, the Tyrannosaurus Rex dropped the dead man, who flopped to the ground.

  Tastes bad, Jason thought, looking up at the sky...

  Jason spotted the wyvern before the T-Rex did, and the man was gripped with fear when he watched the dragon-like creature dive-bomb the massive dinosaur predator out of nowhere. With a mighty screech, the wyvern crashed into the Tyrannosaur’s back, attacking it from all angles! Jason gasped when he saw it, grasping at his hair in terror. The wyvern’s hind claws sank into the T-Rex’s back and haunches; its long tail stabbed into the carnivore’s back like a scorpion’s stinger and its wings folded around the Dreadwraith like a bat landing on someone’s shoulder. The wyvern’s head reared back for half a second then struck like a huge snake, biting the back of the T-Rex’s feathered neck with a savagery that made Jason’s chest feel crushed with cold.

  The Tyrannosaurus Rex spun in response, opening its jaws and lashing out at the wyvern with a loud and deep bellow that vibrated Jason’s bones. Jason grimaced in the grip of fear when he realized that the huge predator couldn’t reach the wyvern. The vicious wyrm clawed and scrambled around on the T-Rex’s back, easily less than half the dinosaur’s size, stabbing it again and again with the barb on its deadly tail! Jason watched as the wyvern raised that spiky tail—it moved so like a scorpion’s—and punctured the T-Rex’s back and sides over and over. All-the-while, the serpentine beast lashed out with its teeth and claws, clutching onto to the Dreadwraith with its hind legs and the claws on the knuckles of its broad, leathery wings...

  Flames erupted here and there as the wyvern bit and tore at the T-Rex’s back and neck. Small fired belched forth from the beast’s throat, scorching the dinosaur’s feathers and catching a patch of those black quills on fire.

  When the T-Rex lashed out with its great maw to catch the wyvern again, it managed to snatch one of its wings! The wyvern was yanked from the dinosaur's back and crashed into the ground next to the fight. The earth rumbled under Jason's boots as they fought.

  "Yes!" Jason cried, feeling a growing sense of terror and dread inside him.

  The T-Rex took too long to recover though, and by the time it rushed in at the fallen wyvern, the wyrm was already upright again and leapt into the air with several powerful beats of its wings. Jason thought that the wyvern was going to charge at the T-Rex’s back once more, but it didn’t. As the Tyrannosaur charged in with thundering steps and mouth wide open to catch the fleeing creature, the wyvern furiously pumped its wings and rose up into the air out of reach...

  Jason couldn’t tell if this was good or bad.

  He could see the wyvern’s wing tattered—wounded—sunlight shining through a torn place of the membrane where the T-Rex had caught it with its teeth. Yet the creature was still in the air. Would it leave the region now and find new hunting grounds, where it would nurse its wing back to health and start over? Or would it dive-attack again?

  The Dreadwraith let out a long, low frequency moan that buzzed through Jason’s body. He looked back down the slope at the massive predator and felt a twinge of fear set in as it took a ponderous, stumbling step...

  Oh God, Jason thought, thinking of the venomous tail.

  Amazingly, the Tyrannosaurus Rex—the king of the dinosaurs—started swaying from side to side, looking around at the several cannibals hovering nearby sprinting through the woods and carrying on like madmen. Jason saw one of the carnivore's huge knees wobble, then the T-Rex looked up into the sky...

  Jason looked up too and saw the wyvern far above everything, circling. He saw the sunlight coming through the hole in its wounded wing...

  "This is bad," Jason said to himself, hardly hearing his words over the frantic beating of his heart.

  Then, just like before, the wyvern folded into a dive, plummeting toward the T-Rex with its tail flying behind it and its hind claws stretched out as if it was a giant attacking eagle...

  Look out! Jason thought. He wasn’t sure if he screamed it out loud in his mind.

  As the T-Rex took a clumsy step to one side, staring across the valley at a group of cannibals running over, the wyvern crashed into it claws first! Jason helplessly watched the piercing tail bury its barb into the dinosaur’s back again and the wyvern wrapped its wings around the T-Rex’s sides. The long talons of the wyvern’s hind claws disappeared into the black feathers of the Dreadwraith’s back the instant the wyvern attacked, and Jason felt like he was watching in slow motion as he saw the wyvern rear back its head and neck to strike...

  The Tyrannosaurus Rex lifted its massive head, jaws cracked open, eyes lolling, preparing to lash out at the wyvern’s wings once again. One of its huge legs wavered, and the enormous beast stumbled to one side as the wyvern rode high on its back near its shoulders...

  With terrifying speed, the wyvern lashed out with its jaws and bit into the T-Rex’s cheek. It ripped, reared back again, then attacked its eyes...

  As the stinger-tipped tail raised up and jabbed at the T-Rex again and again, the huge predator suddenly lurched and stumbled, finally losing its balance and crashing to the ground with a thunderous slam that shook the earth under Jason’s feet. In the next instant as the T-Rex struggled to stand—scraping at the ground with massive, glossy-black claws and dark tail thrashing—the wyvern scrambled across its body like a giant bat, over to its head. The wyrm raised one hind foot into the air...

  Jason watched in shock as the wyvern tore the T-Rex’s throat out with a powerful down-stroke of its claw!

  Chapter 33

  The Tyrannosaurus Rex’s bright red arterial blood splashed all over the ground near the fallen behemoth. More blood followed behind the initial glut, ebbing out one gushing bucketful after another. The huge predator squirmed weakly on the ground under the wyvern.

  The serpentine monster didn’t stop there. It tore at the Tyrannosaurus Rex with its fangs and its claws, stabbing it in the belly with the barb on its venomous tail again and again...

  Jason was flooded with cold horror as if he’d just jumped into a black pit of icy water.

  The Dreadwraith was dead, or dying...

  His plan had failed.

  It was such a great plan. The T-Rex was so much stronger than the wyvern...

  "No!" Jason cried, bursting from the bush, suddenly alive again with pain, muscles burning. Without thinking, he picked up the spear he had discarded on the gravelly ground outside the bushes with his left hand, and he felt the pistol gripped tightly in his right, buzzing as if the polymer weapon was alive. The man ran down the slope, his boots scrabbling and crunching on the dusty rocks, fire and terror and fury coursing through his veins making him insane.

  Running up to the wyvern, Jason su
ddenly felt a jolt of madness, raising his Glock to the monster as it spun to face him. The monster's mouth was splashed with the red blood of the Tyrannosaurus Rex...

  "I need to go home!" Jason screamed, pointing his pistol at the sleek, spiky creature slithering to intercept him. All of its claws were still hooked into the T-Rex’s dark, fallen form. "It's not fair!"

  Jason fired twice, aiming at the monster’s bloody, draconic face as well as he could while crazy with outrage and desperation. When the Glock popped two times, the report didn’t hurt Jason’s ears, but it definitely caught the wyvern’s attention...

  The beast leapt off of the T-Rex’s body, dislodging its claws from the bulky black and red form. It slithered forth low on the knuckles of its wings toward the man. Its poisonous tail whipped back and forth behind it dangerously, and Jason was suddenly aware of how big and wicked the wyvern really was.

  He realized with a shock how stupid he was to have run out to shoot at the monster like that. If he’d even hit the wyvern, it didn’t give any indication that it was wounded.

  Shit, Jason thought. Probably missed! Stupid! Fucking stupid!

  As the wyvern closed the distance from the dead T-Rex to Jason’s position at the bottom of the slope—hissing and writhing like a den of vipers—the man realized that he’d made a terrible mistake...

  Ignoring the monster’s path to slither in and cut him down, Jason burst into motion sprinting to the north! Cold fear exploded inside him, and he ran past the advancing wyvern—spear in one hand, Glock in the other—very aware of the creature’s furious eyes burning into him as it pursued. The malicious beast’s face—sleek and deadly and splashed with bright, red blood—filled Jason with raw horror. He ran for his life to the north, cutting immediately toward the woods to the west...

  Jason ran like hell.

  He ran and ran, dodging through trees, trying to keep from getting his crude spear snagged in ferns or branches and slowing him down. He prayed that the wyvern wouldn’t be able to follow him through the woods. His heart hammered in his chest and neck, his breathing fumed like a machine quite a bit out of maintenance. It wasn’t long before the man's legs were burning again, then his lungs, and he paused to stop and look back, almost swooning from the blood rushing through his brain.