Bones lay everywhere.
Some had vanished almost completely beneath the vegetation. Others protruded from moss and soil in pale clusters, roots winding through empty ribcages and around scattered limbs.
Sid crouched beside one.
His fingers twitched.
Kaya grabbed his shoulder.
“No.”
Sid looked up.
“No?”
“We have things to do.”
He looked back at the skeleton.
Its left femur lay several inches from the rest of its body.
“…But—”
“Clay.”
Sid stared at the femur for another moment.
Then reluctantly stood.
“Fine.”
They followed the water deeper into the golden cavern.
Shapes moved occasionally between the distant vegetation, but none approached. Whatever lived here seemed content to leave them alone.
For now.
Sid crouched at the shoreline and pushed both hands into the sediment.
Fine grains slipped between his fingers.
Silt.
Mud.
Fragments of decaying vegetation.
He dug deeper.
The material changed.
Denser.
Stickier.
Instead of washing immediately from his fingers, it clung to the bone.
Sid began following the bank.
“I thought we were looking for clay?” Kaya asked.
He ignored her.
A few paces farther on, a smooth grey band emerged beneath the shallow water.
Sid stopped.
He dug two fingers into it and pulled free a lump.
The material sagged in his palm but held together.
A rattling laugh escaped him.
“There you are.”
Twenty minutes later, a mound of grey clay sat beside the shoreline.
Kaya had stripped dry moss and dead vegetation from the surrounding rocks and spread it across a bare patch of stone.
Elias crouched beside the clay.
“This should be enough to test the concept.”
“Very good.” Sid nodded eagerly. “I trust you can design the kiln?”
Elias ran a finger through the mound.
“Design one?”
A shrug.
“Simple enough.”
Sid brightened.
“Build one?”
Elias paused.
“That depends on what we’re working with.”
“Excellent.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“It was close enough.”
Elias stared at the clay.
Then stared some more.
Alan watched him.
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“That doesn’t look like thinking.”
“It is.”
Elias scooped up a lump and pressed it against the stone.
“If we simply put fuel beneath whatever we want to heat, most of that energy escapes into the cavern.”
Sid crouched beside him.
“So we trap it.”
“Correct.”
Elias began building.
Nothing elaborate. A thick, crude enclosure with a narrow opening near the base and another above it.
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Sid watched the uneven walls take shape.
“That’s ugly as sin.”
“The goal is heat retention.”
Elias opened the lower gap slightly.
“Fuel and airflow.”
Then indicated the opening above.
“Exhaust.”
Alan tilted his head.
“And that’ll work?”
“No idea.”
Silence.
Alan stared.
“What?”
“I’ve never built a kiln before.”
Elias pressed another lump into place.
“But the laws of thermodynamics have remained surprisingly consistent since my death.”
Sid nodded.
“Good enough for me.”
Kaya looked over from the pile of drying moss.
“What about the animal fat?”
Sid stopped.
“I…”
Everyone looked at him.
A longer pause.
“I didn’t really think that one through.”
Alan stared.
“You’ve been talking about fire for days.”
“Correct.”
“And you forgot the fat.”
“I remembered the fat.”
“The container for the fat.”
Sid rubbed his jaw.
“That part escaped me.”
He looked back toward the tunnels.
“I’ll go get the dinosaur’s skull.”
Alan blinked.
“The skull?”
“It should hold liquid.”
Sid nodded to himself.
“Probably.”
“You want to cook fat inside a dinosaur skull?”
“Render.”
“Sorry. You want to render fat inside a dinosaur skull.”
“Yes.”
Elias considered it.
“Primitive.”
“Very.”
“It might work.”
Sid brightened.
“Excellent.”
Kaya’s eye lights narrowed.
“You’re going back there alone?”
“I’ll probably be fine.”
“That’s exactly the kind of sentence Parker would’ve said if he’d had time.”
Sid stopped.
Silence.
He looked at Alan.
“Alan.”
Amber eyes blinked.
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“I have developed pattern recognition.”
“Buddy system.”
Alan pointed at himself.
“Why me?”
Sid started walking.
“Because Kaya is gathering tinder, Elias is building the kiln, and you’re standing there criticizing everyone.”
Alan looked at Kaya.
Then Elias.
Neither defended him.
He sighed.
“All right.”
His deep voice rolled through the cavern as he hurried after Sid.
The golden light faded behind them.
Blue crystal once again washed the cavern in its cold glow.
Alan’s feet slipped across the damp stone.
Sid marched twenty paces ahead, apparently immune to the concept of difficult terrain.
“What?” Sid called back. “They didn’t teach you how to walk in film school?”
“I’m still adjusting to the fact that I no longer have feet.”
“You have feet.”
“I have foot bones.”
“Semantics.”
Alan caught up.
A broad stretch of darkness opened to their right beyond the water.
He pointed.
“What about over there?”
Sid glanced across.
“How about you wander off and tell me what you find?”
“You really are charming, aren’t you?”
Alan kicked a loose pebble toward him.
It bounced once, rolled down a gentle slope and disappeared into the water.
Plunk.
“Come on,” Sid said. “We’re getting clo—”
THUD.
Both stopped.
Another impact travelled through the stone.
THUD.
Alan looked down.
He could feel it through his legs.
“What is—”
“REEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
The cry tore through the cavern.
Its echoes crashed back from every direction.
REEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
REEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Sid dropped flat.
Alan stared at him.
“Sid, what are you doing?”
“Down.”
Alan stared for a moment before obeying.
Far ahead, something moved.
Slow.
Heavy.
Deliberate.
A silhouette passed between distant crystal formations.
Alan lowered himself further.
Even from this distance, the creature was enormous.
A massive head swung above a thick neck. Powerful hind legs carried a body layered in mud-coloured scales.
Its forelimbs looked almost absurdly small by comparison.
Alan stared.
“…Is that a T. rex?”
“Shh.”
The creature moved on.
Each footfall weakened until the cavern swallowed it completely.
Only then did Sid rise.
He pointed ahead.
“Let’s go.”
Alan remained crouched.
“You saw that, right?”
“Yes.”
“And we’re continuing?”
“Yes.”
Alan stood.
“I’m beginning to understand Kaya.”
The carcass eventually emerged from the darkness.
Alan stopped.
Something was wrong with it.
The crystals embedded in the decomposing flesh no longer glowed red.
They were green.
A dark, sickly light pulsed beneath the rotting tissue.
Sid approached immediately.
“Oh.”
Alan pointed.
“Why are they green?”
Sid tilted his head.
“The crystals changed color again…”
He crouched beside the carcass.
“Interesting.”
“That word is starting to concern me.”
Sid cut into the neck.
His blue crystal slipped between vertebrae with practiced precision. Dried muscle parted beneath the edge, followed by tendon and the thick ligaments anchoring the skull.
Gas escaped from the opening.
Alan instinctively recoiled.
Then stopped.
“…I just realised I can’t smell anything.”
“Useful, isn’t it?”
“I’m watching you decapitate a rotting dinosaur. At this exact moment, yes.”
Sid kept cutting.
Fifteen minutes later, the skull broke free.
It hit the stone with a heavy clack.
Sid immediately began threading strips of ligament through openings in the bone. Hide went across the eye sockets, then around the lower jaw, pulled tight enough to form a crude lining.
Alan watched.
“What exactly are you making?”
Sid stepped back.
“A backpack.”
Alan looked at the enormous skull.
Then at Sid.
“A backpack?”
“A cauldron.”
“A backpack cauldron.”
Sid nodded.
“It can be both.”
He crouched and wrapped his arms around it.
The skull rose several inches.
Then dropped.
CLACK.
Sid remained bent over it.
“…It’s too heavy.”
“That realisation came remarkably late.”
“And that’s before we add the fat.”
Sid stared at the skull.
Then at the dinosaur.
Then at Alan.
“No.”
Sid pointed at the carcass.
“I’ll make a half-dinosaur, half-human.”
“A what?”
“A labourer.”
He pointed at the skull.
“That backpack isn’t carrying itself.”
“You cannot keep solving logistical problems by creating people.”
Sid was already cutting.
“Watch me.”
A heavy bone came free from the carcass.
Then another.
Sid dragged them across the stone and began shaving them down.
Human remains lay scattered nearby.
A skull.
Spine.
Pelvis.
Limbs.
Sid assembled them, then stopped.
“No…”
Alan watched.
“The proportions are wrong.”
Sid replaced several vertebrae with thicker pieces carved from the creature. He widened the ribcage and reshaped the shoulders.
Thicker.
Broader.
He stepped back.
Alan looked from the hybrid skeleton to Sid.
“So this is how you brought me here?”
“No.”
Sid tapped the crystal.
“It was this.”
He returned to his work.
Rough edges disappeared beneath the blade. Joints were adjusted by fractions. Oversized bones were rotated, inspected, then moved again.
“No…”
A tiny adjustment.
“Better.”
Alan folded his arms.
“Nobody has ever told you to stop, have they?”
Sid ignored him.
The finished skeleton was nearly nine feet long and several times thicker than any of them. Dinosaur bone reinforced its spine, shoulders and limbs until the frame looked almost grotesquely overbuilt.
Sid circled it.
His eye lights narrowed.
“A little asymmetrical…”
Scrape.
A sliver of bone fell away.
“There.”
Alan stared at the thing.
“What exactly do you think is going to happen?”
Sid raised the crystal.
Then began carving.
Runes spread across the hybrid’s bones.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Alan leaned closer.
“Are those runes?”
“Or something.”
“You don’t know?”
Sid turned his head.
“Be quiet.”
Scratch.
The final line connected.
The crystal went dark.
Completely.
Sid stared at it.
“…Ah.”
Alan looked between the dead crystal and the enormous skeleton.
“What?”
Sid pointed.
“Either the larger body required more energy…”
A pause.
“…or I’ve exhausted the crystal.”
Alan stared.
“Those are very different conclusions.”
“Yes.”
Sid looked at the hybrid.
“We require more data.”
Silence.
Then—
Green light flickered inside two enormous sockets.
Sid froze.
The hybrid raised its head.
Slowly.
Bone ground against bone as its massive hands curled against the cavern floor.
Sid’s jaw opened.
“Hehehe…”
The laugh escaped before he could contain it.
“IT’S ALIVE!”
The cavern thundered back.
IT’S ALIVE!
IT’S ALIVE!
IT’S ALIVE!