Page 12 of Caveman Alien’s Terror (Caveman Aliens #25)

12

- Astrid -

His manner has changed again, from almost chummy to that old meanness. After the outcasts left, he started to seem almost normal. That didn’t last long.

“Sorry.” My voice sounds thin. “You just sounded like you were in pain.”

He ignores me.

Maybe he is in pain. Maybe the outcasts hurt him more than he said, or maybe he’s sick.

Or maybe he’s just a jerk, a jerk with powers like a superhero.

“Superjerk,” I mouth quietly. “Just need a lemon-colored cape with a big Balenciaga logo on it.”

My hand finds the hard outline of the dragon dagger in its hiding place. If he turns on me completely, I have ways to deal with that.

This level consists of many square cubicles made from wood, not unlike chicken cages but bigger. It confirms my suspicion that cavemen didn’t build this place. Someone much smaller in stature did, someone who enjoyed living in villages and in tiny cubicles stacked three deep.

I examine a piece of the wood that was splintered by the falling door slab. It’s old and discolored, but not rotting or dissolving. It’s not planks, but old saplings or branches where the bark has been scraped off.

“This place may not be as old as it looks,” I ponder as I drop the wood.

“We shall continue,” Praxigor says and goes over to the stairs leading down. “Until we find something worth hoarding.”

He’s illuminated from below, as if the stairs lead outside, to daylight.

He starts going down the stairs. “I actually am in some pain, since you ask.”

“Oh.” I quickly follow him. “Where?”

He descends to the next level before he replies. “All over, Astrid. I ache to leave this lamentable form and be myself again. Every part of me longs for it with an intensity that you can’t possibly comprehend. Every moment is agony, and sometimes I can’t keep it bottled up.”

Wow . I think that’s as close a thing to an apology I can expect from him.

I carefully put my hand on his bulging upper arm. “What can I do to help?”

“You are already helping me find gold,” he says. “That’s the only cure. Ah. This is a much larger space.”

It’s not outside, the way I thought. We’re still underground, but this is more of a hall that stretches to the bare rock on every side. It’s many times bigger than the levels we just came from.

I can see that because it’s almost as bright as day down here. The light comes from above, from dozens of three-foot-wide circles in the ceiling, blindingly bright.

The air smells of dirt and plants, but it’s not the suffocating half-rotting scent in the jungle. This is cleaner, somehow. I recognize the spicy scents of some of the plants that we use a lot in the tribe.

I walk over to one of the light spots and look up, shielding my eyes. “It’s sunlight,” I report. “There are holes in the ceiling that must lead all the way up to the surface. And then all the way to the treetops.”

“How?” Praxigor asks, reasonably enough.

“Through pipes,” I take a guess, realizing that it doesn’t explain anything. “So, some time ago I lived underground, too, with some other girls. And we talked about how we could make our tunnel brighter. Just a hole going up to the surface wouldn’t be enough. Because you know how dark the jungle is. The canopy of treetops doesn’t let any direct sunlight reach the ground. But if you had a really long pipe or tube, you could stick it up along a tree to the very top and have it gather sunlight up there. It wouldn’t work unless the tube was shiny on the inside, which seems like it would be difficult. We certainly never even tried. But I think that’s how this must be done. Because this goes high up. The hole at the top looks tiny from here.”

“Ah. At least we can guess why they did it,” Praxigor rumbles.

That part is pretty obvious. We’re surrounded by plants everywhere, growing all the way to the ceiling, clustered thickly around the light spots.

I check some of the plants. “Yes, because these plants need light to grow. They're all food plants. Look, there’s berries and nuts and fruits and roots. Nothing else. No weeds or straw or grass.”

Praxigor looks down on a bush, its limbs heavy with pale white bulbs. “Are you about to tell me that you want to eat this vegetation?”

“Those are actually not my favorite,” I tell him as I pick a laurel-like leaf from a bush. “But some of the other ones are good. Want to try?”

“I do not. ”

I carefully push the lower end of the now unneeded torch into the soft dirt so it stands by itself while I examine the plants. “This is not random. Someone put thick dirt here. There’s water trickling down from above. This was someone’s kitchen garden. They grew food here.”

“And there’s no way to get further down,” he growls. “No stairs that I can see.”

“Then this must be the lowest floor. I’m sorry, Praxigor. It doesn’t look like there’s gold down here.” I take a cautious couple of steps back, waiting for his explosion of rage.

He kicks up a cascade of wet dirt. “It was always unlikely.”

No rage, then. Maybe he just needed to vent before. He's just a little bit complex, this dragon dude.

“There’s still Cora,” I remind him. “If we find her.”

“Now we have to,” he says calmly. “If there’s something you like here, eat it. Those lackeys won’t be back for a long time. You can rest if you want.”

“That would be nice,” I reply and pick some ripe berries. “I need to eat more often than you think.”

“All the time,” Praxigor growls. “So many needs!”

“I have many small needs,” I tell him as I chew the tart berries. “I need food, and air, and water and many other things. You have one big need instead.”

“One overpowering need,” he agrees. “So strong it causes pain when not satisfied.”

I munch on the berries. “So you don't need to breathe?”

“Not the way you do. If I did, I wouldn't be here.”

“There's also another need I have,” I tell him. “Or more of a preference. I like to know things. To understand them.”

“Such a terrible affliction,” he says coldly. “I have heard of it. It's called 'being nosy', and it’s dangerous to be nosy around dragons. We always think you’re trying to find out where we keep our hoard.”

“Well, I don’t care about that,” I state. “Do you mind if I try to satisfy my need? It's not an interrogation. I have no interest in your hoard, as I think you know. I ask from pure curiosity.”

“From pure nosiness ,” he says drily.

“All right.” I shrug. “From nosiness. And not because I want to harm you or annoy you. Because I really don't. I just want to ask some things.”

“More questions,” he groans. “Is there really no way around it?”

“I suppose you can try saying 'no'.”

“Would it work?”

I pick a seed out of my mouth and flick it away. “I can’t imagine it would.”

“As I thought,” he sighs. “Go ahead, keeping in mind that I react badly to disrespect, or even the tiniest suspicion of it.”

I guess I better take advantage of him being in a semi-approachable mood. “Thank you. I will try. How did you get to Xren? You flew in your dragon form?”

He turns and stares into the distance. “There's no other way for a dragon.”

“Fine. Why did you come here?”

“Everyone else was going. Well, I’m sure these were important questions. Now?—”

“I have more questions!” I tell him. “Every other dragon was going?”

“Everyone that matters.”

“So there are more dragons on Xren?”

He sighs from pure boredom. “A handful that I know of are still left here. All right, that was as dull as I expected. But hopefully you satisfied your nosiness.”

“Not yet. Bear with me, please, Praxigor. Where are the other dragons?”

He takes a stone out of his pocket and starts picking at it with one claw. “Here and there.”

“Here? So nearby right now?”

“No. Thank you for taking an interest in the doings of your superiors. Now the nosiness has definitely been satisfied, perhaps we can?—”

The light from the closest hole in the ceiling suddenly goes out, as if someone put a lid on it high up there. Then the other holes follow until the whole underground hall is in darkness.

“That wasn’t sunset,” I state, glad I didn’t extinguish the torch. I pull it out of the dirt.

There’s a strange sound, a kind of a buzz getting steadily louder, but lower in tone.

“Someone’s coming,” Praxigor says. “Hopefully they’re less nosy than you.”

I look up. Those noises are coming from the light holes that are now dark. As if someone or something is sliding down the inside of those tubes on the way down here. And this is a place that’s tried to kill us with traps. “I don’t think that’s good news.”

Praxigor takes a step over to me and raises his eyebrow. “Good news on this planet? Of course it’s not!” He grabs my upper arm and leads me to a spot on the floor where we’re furthest away from all the light holes. At the same time we’re partly inside a cluster of slender trees that bear unripe fruit.

Something drops out of the closest light hole, hits the ground, and explodes with a dry crack .

It’s quickly followed by many others from the other holes all over the big hall, which is now really bright again.

It takes me a second to see what they are.

“Let’s go back up!” I gasp as my skin creeps and I try to move away.

“The stairs are over there,” Praxigor says, keeping me in place. “Let’s see what these things want first.”

They’re dinosaurs, fuzzy and gray, only about the size of husky dogs. But where a husky is furry and beautiful, these things have long, thick hairs that stand out from their bodies like a dense wire brush. They have four legs each, which is rare in the jungle. More common are the huge gapes with an absolute mess of small, cone-shaped teeth arranged in layers. Their eyes are crusty and small, four on each side of the head and one in the back. They're predators, working as a pack. I distractedly decide to call them ‘brushfangs’.

“They just hatched,” I realize. “Look, they all came out of eggs that cracked when they hit the ground!”

There are shards of broken eggs on the ground all over the room.

“More bad news,” Praxigor grunts. “Newly hatched creatures usually don’t know what’s best for them.”

“And they often need to eat right away,” I add.

The newcomers take a few seconds to orient themselves. The ones from further away come running towards us at a fast trot, mouths wide open. The ones that are closer start to run in circles around us, fluidly avoiding the slender trees. Soon they’re all doing it, whirling around us, faster and faster until they’re just a gray blur as the circle tightens. They give off thin yip sounds, which is much creepier than loud barks would be.

I point the torch at them, wishing it burned with a bigger flame. “I think they want us .”

The brushfangs start jumping on each other’s backs in a movement that must be instinctive. In the blink of an eye they’re whirling around us from the ground up to eye level, forming a frantically yipping tornado of snapping jaws. With us in the middle.

It’s an effective tactic — it’s impossible to focus on just one of the creatures, and it’s incredibly confusing. If I were a dinosaur, I would have no idea how to defend myself against these things. It’s surprisingly intimidating.

“They do appear interested,” the dragon muses. “But surely they can’t be stupid enough to actually?—”

He doesn’t get further before the mass of predators attacks. Using the speed they’ve built up, they tighten the tornado and snap their terrible jaws with hard clicks as they pass. They remind me of a pack of piranhas.

“Fool’s gold! ” Praxigor exclaims as some of the brushfangs bite onto his hands and fingers and stay attached, dangling with their full weight. “Voracious beasts!” He shakes them off, but I notice some golden specks on his hands that look like his ichor.

These things are actually attacking him. And they’re succeeding.