Dark Fangs: Forbidden Fugitives

Chapter Thirty-Four

It all felt like time was slowing down now. Light streaked into the subterranean coulee, still, but the day was painfully long; the morning wouldn't come to a close, and allow the afternoon to have its time. The glow of the crackling fire at Jae's side would usually reflect with shining glimmer against her long, rippled dark brown hair, but now the dark tresses were just tangled, heavy locks, weighed down with filth, dull and coarse. Her parakeet-green eyes were a much colorless shadow now, and her body fragile and weak with exhaustion and ache.

     From above, as always, Fright lay with his eyes fixed eternally on Jae, his scarily long claws hooked over the fissure's edge, as if he thought the harder he curled his talons around the rock, the more likely it was to crack off and allow him a way into the massive cavern below. 

     Jae hoped his persistence was all in vain, and maybe he'd die from hunger in the process. 

     Then again, she really didn't.

     From her left, almost directly behind her, Midnight Moon shifted against the rock ground below and tried to hoist her large cranium from the tattered saddle blanket Jae had shoved under her head. The Thoroughbred mare nickered quietly, but gutturally, and Jae's throat throbbed for the equine as she felt her pain. 

     "Please try not to move..." Jae twisted to face her horse, but a pain in her side erupted like fire and ice barreling into each other beneath her skin. The area Midnight Moon had struck her. 

     Jae clamped her jaws down hard and blinked three times, hard, forcing the pain to seep into her teeth and eyes; a distraction. When the hurt resumed its place in her skull, Jae turned again to view Midnight Moon, who was now not lying on her side, but more so like a deer bedding down in snow. Her eyes darting to scan the mare's body for any worsening wounds, Jae breathed raggedly, through almost clenched jaws. 

     "Look..." she muttered hoarsely, closing her eyes for a long moment. "I know you can't understand me, but if anything could even get you to understand..." God, please, don't let her hurt herself anymore...let her understand this, please... "I need you to stay still. I have fire now, so I'll go look for water in this cave." I'm thirsty anyway, too. "So, please, if I leave you here, can you stay down just so I can stop worrying you'll try to get up and impale yourself on a stalagmite or something?" 

     Midnight Moon didn't respond. She only blinked softly in agony up at Jae, her neck swaying as if she didn't even have the balance and strength to hold her own head up.

     Jae stood with a sinking dread in her gut. She turned to look skyward at Fright, then back at the heavily wounded blue roan mare. One of these days I'm gonna come back from a water or scavenging trip, and she won't be alive. I'll come back, and she'll have bled out or just stopped breathing because of the stress her body is under. 

     And I need to be okay with that. 

Torch in hand, heart hammering in her chest, Jae limped stiffly into the depths of the cave range, the flickering orange light creating shadows that seemed like phantom creatures stalking her through the darkness. 

     It was beginning to freak her out.

     Maybe it was just the shrieking roar Fright had given her as she began to retreat from his field of vision, or the fact that he'd never clawed and thrashed harder against the stone ravine mouth that he couldn't fit through. It was as if she was going to disappear forever.

     Talk about clingy, Jae thought with an inward growl. Her eyes widened when her mind punctuated the thought with an animalistic snarl. What is happening to me? 

     The range of the stone floor was mostly flat, which Jae appreciated, though her torn up shoes and limb wounds didn't help to any degree. The torch light wasn't bright enough in her opinion either, after that glorious ray of sunlight that had beamed through the cavern that morning. The constant dripping of moisture on the cave ceiling was a lot more frequent here as well, and oddly enough, the resonance of waves crashing violently against rock began to gain raucous. 

     Jae stopped suddenly, wincing a little at the pain that caused, but her excitement was too great, masking the pain as soon as it struck. A grin of confidence played along her lips as she realized what that blaring sound meant. 

    Waves. The ocean. Jae thought excitedly. She began to pick up her pace, limping into an uneven run, the flames of the torch dancing across her blood-streaked, mud-streaked face. I'm free. We're free.

     Clear skies, Sanctuary Island jungle, Mother and Father, Grandfather and Grandmother, Angel, Drake, and Happy....Jae turned a sharp corner, and all of the massive, dark hollow spilled out into the most titanic, ear-splitting cavern of chaos Jae had ever witnessed. She'd though the area of the cavern she'd fallen into was big...but this...

     This is a different animal. Jae thought with a shiver running down her spine and skin. 

     Massive, jagged rocks and uneven ground with holes and small ravines shaped the cavern, from ceiling, to walls, to ground, and at the farthest end, it opened into a dark, horrific mouth that appeared as the raggedly-fanged jaws off a creature from hell. What that maw featured was the open ocean, and waves like sky-scrapers battered and rammed the craggy, saw-edged cave shore with a sound louder than any roar Jae had ever heard. She dropped the torch and covered her ears as the sound of pummeling waves pounded against her skull, and a salty wind blew with force enough to throw her to the ground in a heartbeat, if she was not prepared to hold herself against the gale. 

     There has to be a way to get out without swimming through....that. Jae thought, glaring at the rampant torrent through half-closed eyes. A way...like a small tunnel maybe? Something near the very edge of that--

     She didn't finish her cognitive sentence, because, something broke her train of thought almost immediately.

     Fright can't be down here...right? She thought, trying to turn to see behind her. But with the torchlight extinguished, the only light was a dull silvery mist from the ocean. And those stomping steps weren't human. She wouldn't be able to hear them if they were.

     Then what's behind me--

      Teeth flashed. Claws gleamed suddenly.

     A scream as blaring as a horse's bray rang from Jae's throat as her eyes registered the monster looming over her. Pain clawed at her nerves in every wound, and fear overtook her mind.

     There was another massive dinosaur in this ravine-cave, and it was was definitely not friendly.