Shadows and Hope: An Indoraptor Story ✓

Strong Is Love

I woke up late at night and felt strange. Something told me something was happening, and I wouldn't like it. I started to stand up, but the door suddenly opened, and an armed InGen soldier appeared. 

He smirked at me and shot before I realized what was happening: we were under attack. 

At the second shot, I yelled and attacked him despite the pain exploding in my body and my wounds oozing red blood again.

He was down within seconds, but now that I stood over him, I could see what was happening outside. Screams echoed across the small valley, and I felt myself growing cold.

The family that had taken me in was being hunted and killed.

I ran out and screamed into the night, attracting everyone's attention. "There he is!" shouted a soldier, and everyone started shooting at me.

Pathetic pistols, I snarled, dodging another wave of bullets. Pathetic mortals, may you all die in hell!

I tore into another soldier, drowning him in a gushing river of blood. 

Next, I wrestled a weapon away from another man and slit his throat. Then, suddenly, with horrified eyes, I stopped seeing as my sister Kamila was captured as a hostage by a man with a shaved beard and wild eyes. 

"If you don't let us take the Indoraptor, she'll die," he sneered, pressing a black pistol against her head. I growled low in my throat, but when I met Kamila's eyes, she shook her head and mouthed, "Go." But I wouldn't listen. It was either my life or hers. 

So I dropped to the ground, and a man approached, swiftly binding me. But just as the man holding Kamila released her, and she rushed away to flee the scene, I clenched my jaws around the man's arm and tore it off like a river of infinite stars and flowing water. 

I wouldn't let them go down with this. 

But they also had a plan. "Burn the house down; the little one must be inside as well as the evidence," the man ordered as I aimed at him. Yet he tricked me into crashing into another one of his men. 

I killed mercilessly, without remorse.

They would never get away with this, and I would make them suffer for what they did to Isabel. To my family. 

Finally, the house exploded, and I stood there, struck with fear as the fire greedily licked the timber, reaching towards the sky like a phoenix was rising from it. 

But no salvation came from the flames that day, nor would it ever come. 

I stared, tears streaming from my eyes. 

The ones I cared about were gone. 

And I would never see them again.

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You've never cried this much before, old friend, my thoughts whispered, and I shrugged.

I've never had a reason to cry before, I replied, my thoughts humming. True, but you've had plenty of reasons to call out of anger, even though those tears were suppressed for so long.

I snorted - what good are tears when you get nothing from them? My thoughts were silent, and I trudged on, dragging my tail behind me.

The blood I had shed had congealed into an uncomfortable mass over my scales. I couldn't wash it off because it would leave a taste of blood in my mouth for the rest of the day. And I would rather be uncomfortable than vomit.

The warm, scorching desert sun beat down on me as I walked, even though the shadows had started to grow longer. It meant that I was approaching a human settlement.

I spat out the saliva pooling in my mouth and clenched my jaws together to swallow it. Wu was indeed not here either. For all I knew, he would always know my whereabouts, moving from city to city to avoid me and prolong my suffering.

I cursed Wu, wishing he had burned along with the others, growling to myself as I curled my horns down into the sand during a pause.

What good would it have done? My thoughts asked. I froze. So, you haven't abandoned me, old friend? I asked.

My mind laughed, and I chuckled. I can't leave you, you nimrod. We are the same.

I sighed but said nothing more. I stopped and sniffed the air, but no scent of food or water reached me. I swished my tail in frustration. Pathetic, I thought, not even a single sliver of something I can survive on.

But then, I heard something and snapped my head around in the shadows of a leaf large enough to cast a flame of darkness. Something gray and blue stood, golden eyes flickering with anger and teeth gleaming in the faint remaining light. I knew immediately who she was, and I felt the icy claws of hatred grip my heart.

"You," I snarled.