THE 25th CENTURY RAPTORESS
"I think the sinner hath just returned to the lands of the living - yes?" a voice dangerously close hissed lowly. But ... that was a Utahraptor's voice! Utah's weren't as stupid as to join the Stycophysises, were they? If yes, since when?
She opened her mouth to say something, but gagged as the movement revealed more taste of blood. She coughed. There was a painful silence as her cough died down. Finally she found words.
"Who the heck are you and why am I here?" she demanded. Her voice croaked. Slowly she could see again. The sight nearly shocked her. Three 'Deinodons' were gathered around her shape. "I am Kytaem." the one said. - The name made her blood curl, now all was explained. Fire Praiser. Not another religious freak. The raptor seemed to know it explained all, then nodded to the others - no doubt of the same twisted clan - and introduced them. "That's Sytaka and Kronoquaer." the Utahraptor said, nodding his head. He placed a paw onto the side of her head. She almost screamed as the firey touch sizzled her cut scales - he wiped away a streak of blood, almost gently.
"And you're Magera?" he asked, smirking and removing his paw. As she weakly nodded, scowling, he cackled. "The nameless one!" he laughed.
It took her a frightfully long moment to realize he meant that her name lacked a meaning. But why was that of importance? Why was he laughing? Who gave a damn. Slowly anger rose within her. "Would you flippin' weirdoes lemme go now?!" she winced as one of the ropes dug into her skin, as if giving her an answer already - No.
Kytaem chuckled softly. Then, abruptly stopping the laugh, he said: "You're the weirdo here." He seemed serious. "You've lost faith in the ultimate power of Kanushry!"
"Oh, whatcha gonna do about it, nerd?!" she hissed and immediately received a slash to her snout - three burning lines sent a firey pain up her nerves, making her gritt her teeth and wince again. 'Sharp claws... congrats' she nearly said, but kept the comment to herself.
"Hey, KyT - stop damaging the sacrafice!" Sytaka grumbled. 'Yelp!' Magera thought. 'I'm too young to die!' SyT gazed at her eyes. "You're a disgrace ... but good sacrafices are rare these days." she hissed. Magera squirmed. "NO!" she complained. "I donn wanna be your stupid sacrafice!" That got her another, more powerful slap on the otherwise of her face - prank, this had to be a nasty prank.
"If you're lucky, your soul'll manage to let go of the body and enter the Izurian world." Kronoquaer shrugged, untouched.
She kept silent, fear slowly enveloping her. These idiots weren't joking at all, actually... were they, now...? She uttered a soft, frustrated 'ugh' - how could anyone actually BELIEVE this stupid Cetarosian religion anyways?!
She forced her eyes closed and pressed her still bleeding cheek onto the stone. And yerked back. The rough surface was hotter than the pain streaking across her senses. For the first time she saw the surroundings. And it struck her that it had to be the same clearing she usually hung around at. Life was cruel.
Once more she closed her eyes and attempted to block out all senses. Wake up, Magera! This was either a nasty orank or a dram, had to be, the latter being more probable. Dream? Nightmare!
"... e taen Naq ..." She ignored it. It was a dream. She'd wake up as soon as anything happened, unscatched, laughing about her own sillyness and the patheticness of the figures in her dream.
" ... vek e, nam e ... "
'Ugh, could you shut up?' she thought, miserable. It was annoying.
" ... u adreth." the never changing voice of Kronoquaer stopped, last word half hissed. She screamed as a searing pain penetrated her chest, spilling blood, tinting her scales from teal to crimson, washing her with pain, pain, pain ... and then all went black.
She woke up. For an instant she broke into a near-hysterical laughter. As that died down - though the grin of triumph remained painted on her Megaraptorian face - she opened her eyes fully. Where was she, actually? The grin turned to a thoughtful frown.
Around her were a few too many colors. She couldn't identify them, nor put them into a specific category. "Es-na Magera?" a voice asked in fluid deinodonic, tearing her out of her thoughts and back to the 'real world'. She turned from the crimson-orange trees with the metallic sheen and the unidentifiable-colored bark and saw a small, strange looking Compsognathid. Strange in the sense it was a pure blue. The grass it stood on was metallic green - almost normal. She herself sat on a larger plane of golden-bladed grass. The contrast was amazing.
"Es-na Magera?" the blue creature asked. It paused at she didn't reply. "Na-es Magera, omeij?" it smiled, now.
"Yes, I'm Mager. What's this place?" she asked, getting up and walking towards the creature, not really that interested why this creature knew her name. It was another one. But after three, one more or less didn't really surprise her. She reached the fringe of the golden grass... and smacked into a barrier that seemed to vibrate a shockwave through her entire body... including her soul... as a matter of fact, it seemed strangely dominant.
"OMEIJ! SA ARRIRASAYE ET RYPTICIANATEH! *DON'T GO AWAY!*" it shrieked the last part.
Magera blinked as it ran. Okay... another weirdo. Rapticia? Ah, maybe no weirdo, some parents were 'blasphemic'enough to call their kids that - not that she believed, so she didn't care.
Magera looked back to the bright crimson forest. There was no way of entering the part with the green grass - 'It seems to almost be radiating a calm coolness' she thought - and she was positive the little one didn't think walking to the fringe of the forest, the edge of the plane, would be AWAY... why should it? It was still clearly visible. Besides - she wanted shade.
The golden grass was very soft. It reminded her of something, but she wasn't sure what. The next moment, she lost her footing and slipped. Both forearms attempted at grabbing something as the entrie golden grass plane rippled, almost organically and strings of - still grasscovered, which was unrealistic - ground errupted around her. They twirled, and dove towards her shape. That was it. She could no longer retain it.
She screamed.
There never was an impact, instead, the light around her seemed to dim. She opened her eyes. She was locked into a fortress of slightly shimmering and swaying golden blades of grass. Urgh, beaten by foliage. What was going on? The ground, ahd, all the time, felt strangely warm. She still didn't know why.
"Damn you, MaG, next time - LISTEN!" she scolded herself.
"WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THERE WILL BE A NEXT TIME, MAGERA?!" a voice boomed in her head. Frightened and startled, she tried to find its source. Even though her gaze sweeped the whole spherical prison, she didn't find it. Which didn't improve her mood.
There was a suidden cold yank at her wrist and her snout snapped into the same direction, only to see the writhing, faint outlines of a colorless, almost gaseous seeming - but certainly solid feeling - chain.
"WHAT THE...?!!" she demanded and tried to wrench loose.
"STOP TRYING IT." the voice continued in her head.
'Go away, go away...' she miserably thought.
A small shape appeared in the corner of her eye. She turned immediatelly to face it, and was once more hindered at oveing all too freely by the chain. A small, metallic purple gecko was there. Metallic, metallic, everything here seemed metallic...
"And who are you?" she spat, uncomfortable with this treatment.
"Kanus." the gecko said, smirking.
"Oh, haha, yeah right." she snorted. "Listen, whoever you are, I don't tend to believe that."
The small creature raised a brow. "Eh? Ah, wait, you're an atheist - how cute." Then he chuckled. She was just about to snobbishly ask 'what?!', when he interrupted the beginning of her attempt and said, almost with a thoughful look: "Ah, if your so-called religion would just focuss on the facts and wouldn't exactly call us gods - I'd be happier with that too." he nodded.
She was dumbstruck. Great, this made no sense. Unless it was another dream. Oh! That explained a lot, but not the many new colors. Once more, just as if to draw attention, Magera yanked at the chain.
"Don't try." he reminded, getting up onto two feet, his whole shape shimmering and twisting till he was a Ceratosaurus. Almost reluctantly, he waved a paw. "That's coldfire, not the strongest, but you're inexpienced." he said. Slowly she was developing a hate. 'Inexpirienced?' she growled inwardly. 'BRING 'EM ON.'
As if having read her thoughts, he smirked. She felt something creep up her spine. What may have just been her fear made her turn. She blinked, seeing nothing, obviously. There was a yank to her other wrist and it knocked he off her feet, herself yelping in surprise.
Like a snake, the chain let go off her paw, reared up - '... and hissed.' she almost thought - and dove into the ground beside her, all in such a short time span she had no way of avoiding it. The individual links seemed to crawl on her skin as it slithered across her chest and held her fast. She shrieked a note, half of anger, half of fear. Even if this was a dream, heck no, this was not nice.
"Madgie, you are not dreaming." he said. Something about the tone of his voice made it an unmistakable fact. She whimpered. It hurt a lot to realize that now. She may have been an atheist, but she'd read most legends. Nice for a story, those certainly weren't things she felt like really living through, or like something that would have a place in the real world. Real World? Weren't the Izurian grounds in the eleventh dimension? That might explain the colors, or the non-colors, whatever term was correcter.
As she faught back from under memories of mostly wicked stories, she saw he'd knelt beside her. He placed a paw under her chin and held firmly, near-forcing her to look into his eyes. "Listen, I give you three choices, I'm not too unfair." he smirked.
"Them being?" she weakly asked.
"You could die now, forever - no more soul. Or, you could become my little experiment." he smirked.
"What's the third?" she asked, as nastily as she could, fearstruck as she was.
"Hm, good question." Kanus smirked. His shape flickered back to the geckoan one, except larger this time. The smirk of a gecko was so broad it really scared her out of her mind. "I'd say the third might be..." he paused again, blinking. "That what happens to all souls that 'accendentally' land in Utkananala."
Accedentally. In your dreams, gecko boy. Weren't sacrafices a very direct way of sending someone to a specific spot? Who cared ... right now, it scared her to know Kanus really existed, making not all but most stories true, and she now saw why the Kazyeekavkem'a had feared his powers. She was positive the little coldfire trick wasn't even a fraction of his true power.
"Well?" he grinned and placed a strangely warm paw onto her neck. "Do you choose now or do I choose for you later?" he asked, taunting her. Oh, she almost itched to ask 'why 'later'', then realized she wouldn't want to know.
Weakly she nodded her head to indicate she was going to make up her mind now. Death was a total no-way. Not the total death he was suggesting, anyway. She didn't want to be tortured for eternity, so the last wasn't an option either. But neither was being an experiment, actually... shoot, it was the best damn choice she had. And the fire god probably wanted her to say that, too, he wasn't all too dumb, according to the stories. "U epua'es..." she grumbled.
"The second?" he smirked, pretending to be surprised. "What a nice choice indeed..." he chuckled. Actually, she noted to herself, he was more hesitant than she would have expected, with a lot of things.
"So, you choose to be a little experiment of mine, do you?" he smirked.
It seemed it had been the totally wrong answer, as if it'd been the only thing that would have meant triumph for the purple-metallic gecko. Which was obviously only an illusion, but, she had to admitt to herself, a good and almost convincing one. She shut up, very afraid that anything leaving her mouth would turn the tables of the situation to worse - if that was even possible.
He rubbed his paw under her chin and smirked his evil smirk. Why was this a bad thing? "Do you got no one else to torture?" she asked, half sarcastic, voice nearly cracking in effort not to weep in the terror that manifested itself within her.
"Nope." he shook his head. "Ah, I won't torture you ... much." he assured. Somewhat, she told herself that this situation was very, very ironic. As long as she kept that in mind, it kept her fear in boundries. "Madgie - you're not ... AFRAID, are you?" he grinned evilly, narrowing his eyes. She uttered a soft whimper. She knew hiding it was not going to help her, so why waste energy? "Hm? What's that?" he grinned.
"I'm scared, alright! Half to death!" she finally managed to yelp.
"Good." he merely said. He lowered his snout and allowed his forked, black tongue to run along the grooves of her neck. The movement was too sudden for her to manage to supress her reflexes. The non-tied paw - restricted only by the chain that ran from over her chest to over her upper arm - shot up and smacked Kanus across the reptilian face. The move was weak, but showed effect. She growled.
Instead of growling or slapping back, Kanus slowly lifted his head and smiled at her. "Oh, I see..." he narrowed his eyes evilly. "Resistance, is it?" he snickered.
Magera whimpered, lowered her paw, set it upon the soft, warm gold and slid her claws into the fabric, symbolically seeking a place to hold onto. The grass rippled in protest to the puncture andits bladed surface tickled her back, herself having to supress another whimper or even a shriek.
Kanus smirked. "I could manipulate you all I want - thoughts, emotions, and so on... but I like seeing fear." he grinned. "Or at least sensing its presence."
The last comment was a foreboding, she just knew it. Softly she whined as she felt a tickle at the back of her mind, such a shallow tickle one could almost miss it. Slowly an outward sense of calmness overtook her senses, even as she inwardly struggled to remain in controll. She had no idea why she lost controll of her conscious mind, and the rebellious subconscience was untouched. Then it struck her - '... sensing it's presence.' No, that was cruel. That was indescirbably, impossibly cruel!
~Stop it!!~ she yelped mentally. She could sense how it was weakened by the prison that was now her own mind.
"Nah." Kanus bluntly said, untouched, still smirking. he rested his purple head on the teal scales of Magera's chest, it moving up and down rhythmically with eavery breath. Fake breath. She was dead. This was merely an illusionary world made to resemble the third dimension. A mindscape. She squirmed, ever so softly and a rebellious shiver seized her shape as both minds clashed. It died down. SHe felt him slide his head up a bit and once more the thin reptilian tongue tickled her neck, teasing her.
"Stop, please..." she begged. For some reason, the request broke through the barriers, a faint whispered sentance. She didn't care about revealing the deep fear that plagued her anymore.
"Shht." he lowly hissed, which only spurned her fear more. ~Leave me be, please!~ she attempted. In vain, obviously in vain. He just ignored it.
With horror she ralized he slowly shifted above her, something she certainly failed to agree with. If she had any controll over her body's movements, she would have snapped up a foot and attempted to slash at him. As if he knew - '... and maybe he does!' she shuddered - he hugged her left leg with both of his, permitting no movement whatsoever.
{ Maybe I'll finish this sometime soon too... -.- Oh, yeah, by the way ... I had this notice on the old page and it's still true : >> 19.09.2000 : Please check out "From Earth to Fire", which is FireClaw's past. Oh, by the way, no, nothing nasty's gonna happen, lol, but you know how psychology works. }