Leafclaw: The End of an Era

Chapter 3

Leafclaw skidded to a stop, eyes widening as the gargantuan orb hurtled through the sky and slammed into the Earth below in a massive eruption of rock and fire. A wave of heat suddenly slammed into him, so immensely hot that his eyes seemed to burn in their sockets. The ground rattled below, causing everything to tremor violently. A tremendous sphere of light shot into the horizon, reaching tens of thousands of feet into the air. The sky turned a brilliant golden red, and Leafclaw flinched away from the blinding light.

SLAM!

The Earth bucked so violently that Leafclaw was immediately thrown of his feet. His jaws forcefully clapped shut as his head smacked into the sand.

SLAM!

The little dinosaur forced his eyes open to see chunks of rock and fire raining onto the land around him. Trees were blown to smithereens, boiling water splashed in all directions, and the ground cracked beneath his very feet.

Dinosaurs screamed in terror, scrambling futilely to escape the cascade, only to succeed in trampling one another. Predator and prey alike pushed past one another, previous conflicts forgotten as the one primal instinct imbedded in all organisms screamed a single command: Run.

The ground shook harder now, not just because of the meteor shower, but also due to the stampede galloping Leafclaw's way. Behind him, the tyrannosaurus scurried away, eyes wide in terror. Leafclaw climbed to his feet, shaking his frazzled head. All around him, rocks shattered, creatures exploded, and the ground burst into flames. A wall of fire rushed towards the lake, devouring anything and everything in its path. Leafclaw stared as the entire jungle before him dissolved into a mass of red nothingness. The lake was sucked dry of its refreshing contents, and the herd of dinosaurs charging towards him erupted into the growing barricade of radiation and fire.

Realizing the inferno was coming for him next, Leafclaw suddenly slammed himself to his shaky feet and bolted in the direction the tyrannosaurus had run.

The fire roared behind him like a living thing, ferocious and hungry. It ripped through plants and animals alike, never slowing down to devour its prey.

Leafclaw raced forward, not daring to look back. Ahead of him, the juvenile rex screamed for his parents, but they had either abandoned him, or were crushed by the stampede. Leafclaw stretched his short legs to their limits, willing them to carry him towards the jungle trees as fast as possible. They
ached miserably, threatening to slow him down, and Leafclaw roared in anger. The heat at his back stung his skin and singed his feathers, but Leafclaw, for the life of him, couldn't move any faster.

Only twenty meters ahead, the tyrannosaurus had almost made it to the safety of the larger trees, and Leafclaw panicked and dug his feet further into the sand. He wasn't going to make it. The conflagration was closing in behind him and the rex was in the way.

Said dinosaur roared, just reaching the edge of the jungle, when a meteor slammed into his position, crushing the theropod in an instant and ending his life with a horrible blood ridden shriek. The explosion demolished any nearby trees, disregarding weather or not they were taller than the meteor itself. Fauna instantly caught fire, turning the beautiful and luscious undergrowth into a charred and black hellscape. The ground jerked underfoot, and in that moment, a shocking realization slammed into Leafclaw's chest: Nowhere was safe.

Not the jungle, not the water, not his cave. Meteors were already demolishing those areas, and were now dropping like a blazing rainfall. The world was on fire, and there was nowhere left to run. No organism could possibly escape. The only thing they could do was watch, petrified, as the world broke and they all died.

Despite knowing all this, some instinct kept Leafclaw running.

He charged onwards, veering away from the jungle and heading across the flat sands. His own panicked breaths roared in his ears, and adrenaline pumped through his veins. The pectinodon jumped over rocks, fire, and debris, heart thrumming at an unnatural pace. Meteors rained down from above, and he leapt from side to side in an attempt to dodge the majority. One splashed into the lake beside him, showering the small theropod in a douse of sizzling hot water.

As logs and bushes erupted into flames, more putrid black smoke filled the environment, and Leafclaw choked on the contaminated air.

But the worst was yet to come.

At this point in time, the meteors had been falling at the rate of a light shower, crashing down quite frequently throughout the land. However, now that the main asteroid had thrown a quantity of rocks worth more than sixty times its original mass into the atmosphere, it all came plummeting back to Earth in a catastrophic maelstrom of smoldering hail.

The force of the meteors pelted the ground, rattling the Earth so hard that everything residing on it was knocked off their feet and throw helplessly across the rough ground.

The terrain exploded, soil flying in all directions as a sea of fire took over the world.

Leafclaw was rocketed off his feet, and could do nothing but curl in a ball as the land simply imploded. A sizable rock bashed into his right leg, and he yelped in pain.

And then he saw it.

Only a few yards away, the open mouth of a small cave stood standing despite the chaos raining down around it. If a meteor struck it, Leafclaw would be dead, but it was a much better option than staying here to meet his inevitable demise.

Stumbling to his feet, Leafclaw struggled to walk forward. The ground was so unstable that he could barely take a step without falling, and his injured leg dragged behind him. On cue, the Earth bucked so hard that he was thrown forward and almost broke his arm trying to catch himself. However, that momentum propelled Leafclaw close enough to finally make a mad scramble into the cave.

The pectinodon threw himself inside just as the roaring wall of hellfire finally overcame him, illuminating the inside of the rocky structure and turning it into searing oven in a matter of seconds. There was a massive crack, and a jungle tree crashed down right in front of the cave entrance, blocking the deadly fire from invading Leafclaw's current sanctuary.

The meteors fell harder, if possible, and Leafclaw shrieked, throwing himself to the ground as the world convulsed mercilessly around him. The deafening roar of fire screamed in his sensitive ears, and the heat rushed into his den and roasted his small body from the inside out. He couldn't see, couldn't run, couldn't breathe. The only thing he could do was hide in his miserable little shelter and cling to the melting floor for dear life.

And so, as the world around him crumbled to pieces, that's exactly what he did.