Lost in The End: Parts 1-3

Lost in the End

By GG

Part 3: Exploration in a Devastated Land

Amber and red light from the morning sun beamed down on the courageous T.rex, Tyran, awakening his eyes to the world around him once more. A warm wind, welcoming with adventure, passed over Tyran—as he yawned, before standing and stretching his body. The tyrannosaur swung his tail around, as the muscles in his body flexed with each stretch; Tyran was defined for a young tyrannosaur, perhaps he would be a star specimen—like his Uncle? The T.rex looked around him, as hunger pangs echoed throughout his stomach. He made his decision in the night, he would follow the rex tracks and whatever that pale-white entity was, perhaps it could lead him towards his parents.

Tyran forcefully yanked his feet out of the sticky forest mud, and pressed forward, walking down a hill and through some brush, before coming upon the bottom of the cliff he peered from earlier. The theropod tracks were still very visible, along with the strange, massive four-toed ones that followed them. The cumulus clouds above covered the sun, providing shade in this plains like terrain, as Tyran lowered his neck and sniffed the tracks. He caught the scent, and could detect it going up to fifty-miles away and more. The rex tracks smelt, so familiar, but not—at the same time. Tyran shook his head, before beginning a swift stride, following the tracks with pure determination.

Just a few days ago, Tyran feared walking twenty feet without his parents, now he was off on his own—through a swamp, during a cataclysm; the young rex is growing in courage, he may survive this extinction. He ran at ten miles an hour through the swamp, crushing logs and various flora in his way. He passed through the swamp after five hours of non-stop hiking, with only brief stops for water. At the edge of the swamp, a vast marshlands lie, of which the sun beat down hard upon. Tyran analyzed the biome ahead of him, seeing that the treks cut directly through them. He placed his three-toed feet in the marsh, disturbed slightly by the feeling underneath his foot-pads, but he didn’t let it stop him—and pressed onward. The sun neared its peak in the sky, as Tyran prowled through the marshlands, his reddish-green feathers blowing slightly in the wind.

As he trekked through the marshlands, though, another scent filled his snout; Tyran lowered into a predatory bent knee stance, as his primal instincts took over—the smell of Anatotitan emanated throughout his olfactory bulbs. The young rex predatorily began to slow down his stride, and lessen the pressure he placed on the ground with each step, as the hadrosaur came into view. It was small, and away from its herd—separated after the extinction. It had not detected Tyran yet, who circled around to its back, and waited. He hadn’t been taught how to hunt yet, and killing this creature seemed daunting to him. Pterosaurs flew above and soared down in the distance, as Tyran contemplated his next move.

The chirps and squawks of the Quetzalcoatlus and Pteranodons were loud, and blotted out nearly all else. Tyran believed this to be his chance, and without hesitation, bolted out—ambushing the hadrosaur! He did not know fear tactics, and charged without bellowing to instill fear in his prey—which allowed it to recognize him as a young tyrannosaur instantly. Tyran clamped onto the tail of the Anatotitan and bit down, achieving an extraordinary bite-force of eight-thousand pounds, for a juvenile tyrannosaur. He could’ve torn off the tail of the hadrosaur, but his inexperience caught put to him, and he was taken aback as the beast kicked his chest with its hind-legs. Tyran stumbled back with a roar of pain, as the duck-billed dinosaur bolted off through the marshlands. Tyran took off after it, achieving twenty-eight miles per hour. He caught up to the beast, the loud booming from each step of the two echoing across a five mile radius.

The hadrosaur rammed itself into Tyran, knocking the twelve-foot tall predator down on his right-side. The Anatotitan out ran and outmaneuvered the tyrannosaur, who was left on his side, bruised and struggling to stand up. Clouds covered the sun again, as Tyran hurled himself up, using his arms to push himself to his feet. He shook his whole body like a wet-dog, enraged that he failed to kill an easy prey like the hadrosaur. Demoralized but still determined, Tyran focused back to the tracks—and set off. The sun began to set slightly, and hours passed, before Tyran finally made it out of the marshlands. He was now on the outskirts of a flat, treeless chaparral.

Tyran twitched and stretched, before stepping onto the ground of the chaparral, the massive tumbleweeds and thorny bushes cutting his feet slightly. He hiked through, his foot-pads slowly but surely building an immunity to the thorns. The slightly setting sun began to change the color of the sky from blue, to blueish-purple, and finally a reddish-purple hue. Alphadon burrowed down deep in the ground, and Tyran caught the scent of the small mammals, along with even smaller reptiles in the distance of the chaparral.

The ground was tougher than that of a forest, although the dirt did give slightly underneath the weight of Tyran, who hadn’t mastered predatory walking and prowling. Tyran trekked through the chaparral, eventually coming upon a massive hill. From the top he snorted, overlooking the land from a high point; he saw more forest in the distance, swamp beyond that, and desert even further out. As Tyran began to carefully stomp down the hill, something felt off; he focused his vision to the bottom of the hill—an Anatotitan carcass lie mauled. Tyran stopped his gait, his tail swaying back and forth and feathers blowing in the wind—before he took in the smell of the carcass, deducing it was the same hadrosaur he had failed to kill.

Tyran walked over to the carcass with energy in each step, pleased that there was finally a meal for him after what felt like weeks. He leaned his neck down and embedded all of his teeth into the carcass, before putting his leg back and pulling hard—ripping out eighty-pounds of flesh. Pterosaurs chirped in the distance as Tyran reared his neck back vertically and threw the meat into his mouth and down his throat without chewing once. Happiness for once filled Tyran, and he leaned in for another bite—before his wish was stopped, by a sound off in the distance.

The land grew dimmer from the setting sun, its all encompassing light fading away, as Tyran looked around his entire perimeter, searching for the source of what sounded like a footstep. Tyran calmed down and snorted again, certain there was nothing, and leaned back in for the same bite—but this wouldn’t be happening. The Tyrannosaur looked to his right and bellowed aloud in fear as from the brush an Acrocanthosaurus bolted out—one of the last of its kind. Tyran ran directly forward without hesitation, barely missing a direct rush from the titanic predator.

Tyran twirled his tail to his left and swung his body to his right, spreading out his legs to reach a prepared predatory stance—as the Acrocanthosaurus stood his ground and analyzed him. The carcharodontosaurid was fifteen feet tall, three feet bigger than Tyran, and he was forty-five feet long; compared to Tyran, who is twelve feet tall and forty feet long, the Acro dwarfs the young rex. The two stood off against each-other, encircling one-another, snarling and bellowing every other second. Tyran was chilled to the bone, as he has never fought another animal before, let alone a fully grown Acrocanthosaurus. As they prowled around each-other, Tyran began to shake his head, blinking madly. Flashbacks were coming back to the tyrannosaur—he has faced this Acrocanthosaurus before.

One year ago, when he was nothing but two years old, his parents engaged this theropod in combat, defeating him each time—until the fateful day that he engaged them whilst their second child was asleep, leaving the baby rex unprotected against Acheroraptors—who devoured it. Tyran barely survived the encounter with the raptors, but he remembered the trauma vividly, and he remembered the lone Acrocanthosaurus—Acrone. Rage began to swell in Tyran, who bellowed a deep roar, before charging the theropod. The young rex was brash and young, and left himself open to Acrone, who side-stepped and slammed his hooked jaw down hard onto Tyran’s back—knocking him to the ground. Tyran grunted in pain, struggling to lift himself up with his feet, but being stopped by Acrone—who clamped onto his back feathers and hurled him to the side by them.

Tyran rolled to his side, blood dripping from his back and side from the bite and the thorns of the Chapparal bushes. The rex forced himself to his feet, seeing Acrone charging him; Tyran ducked his body hard to the right and slammed his tail into Acrone with all his power, knocking Acrone aside and breaking two of his ribs. Tyran immediately seized the opportunity and clamped onto Acrone’s neck, holding on with all his might. Acrone roared aloud in pain, before slicing Tyran’s jaw with his significantly longer arms, forcing the tyrannosaur off. Tyran was only stopped for a second, before smashing Acrone’s skull with his thicker skull—blood launching out of the Acrocanthosaurus’s mouth.

Tyran charged in for a finishing blow, but his lust for blood was met with a powerful blow to the skull from Acrone, knocking Tyran airborne for a second. The rex fell directly on his side, blood dripping from his mouth and his back. Acrone looked over the defeated Tyran with a condescending smirk on his maw, before stomping over to the hadrosaur carcass, lifting it up with his mouth and walking off into the distant Chaparral. Tyran fell unconscious as night cased the land and stars became visible in the sky. Can Tyran survive this? It doesn’t look good.

Part 3 end.

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Part 2: An Unstoppable Force

The smell of death was overwhelming. Tyran walked timidly through these death-grounds, the smell of rot suppressing his will to eat. His tail swayed back and forth as his sapphire eyes bounced between corpses, analyzing each one and their slash marks. Tyran stopped for a moment, and leaned his neck in to sniff the marks of one of the wounds. He caught the scent of Triceratops flesh from the rotting wounds, and only one predator can successfully take down a trike—his own, Tyrannosaurus. Yet, there was still something more to this, as tyrannosaurs don’t kill with their arms—and there are clear slash marks, eight inch deep.

Tyran pulled his neck back with a confused look on his maw, before twirling around, kicking reddish-brown dust up into the air, and making his way onward. As he moved through the fern-forest, the sound of footsteps in the distance filled him; the air ran cold, and distant thunder could be heard, as closely followed an ear-piercing screech, demonic in its might and ferocity. The young twelve foot tall T.rex had no hesitation, and immediately bolted through the forest near his top speed—going twenty mph. He ran until the bellowing was no more, and by now he was inside an arid arroyo. A stream of water fell down a red-clay hill, the highlight of the rather flat and nondescript desert; mesas, some one-hundred feet tall were in the distance, and a thunderstorm was approaching, as the moon rose high above the land—casting an eerie and beautiful glow across this devastated world.

Tyran’s neck flexed as he let out a low growl, seeing the thunderstorm approaching. He snorted, before beginning a faster-paced walk through the mesa, walking on the edge of his feet to acquire a bounce per-step. He bounce-walked for twenty miles, each step propelling him a great distance, as he wanted—no—needed, to find a place to rest before the storm. As Tyran walked, determination in his sapphire eyes, his powerful ears began to detect the audible vibrations of another theropods steps. He stopped his gait, and looked around, sniffing in all directions. His twelve foot tall frame cast a shadow in the moonlight, as he faintly saw a tail move from behind a small mesa.

The tyrannosaur walked after the tail to see an Abelisaurus, nine-feet tall, attempting to shelter. The abelisaur spread out its stance and bellowed at Tyran, for it was terrified of tyrannosaurs. Tyran however, although in his youth he was already taller than it, had no intention of killing the theropod. He snorted at the abelisaur, before making his way back on the path. The Abelisaurus, was very different as-well, and merely looked at him as he walked, sort of shocked that there was no territorial conflict. He continued to search for a shelter, as Tyran hiked off into the distance.

The thunderstorm was beginning to reveal itself as no ordinary storm, but acid rain. The corrosive liquid melted mesas and hills, and it was closing on Tyran, whom increased his striding speed, going nearly ten miles an hour. The moonlight was eerie, and unwelcoming, as the colossal dust cloud in the sky from the extinction covered nearly one third of it. Narrow shards of light pierced through the dust covered sides, shining on various parts of the land. The air was permeated with the smell of forest, which was pleasant to Tyran, and most other animals. Quetzalcoatlus flew high above the land, covering some of the moonlight even with their colossal bodies.

Chirping could be heard, along with the squawking of small birds, and the cooing of Acheroraptors. Tyran heard these sounds up to twenty-five miles away. He took in the sounds of the world, which was most active at night, using each one to determine what type of animals were active in which direction. To his left, smaller chirps, meaning there were birds rested on trees, and trees meant shelter from the storm. To his right, small dromaeosaurs; they could mean a number of locations, plains, forest, mountainous, even more desert. Knowing small birds meant trees, the young T.rex swung his tail to the right and bolted off to the left—going fifteen miles per hour.

He ran through the hard red clay desert, underneath a massive fallen redwood-trunk, and around a river inside a plains, before finally reaching another forest. The acid rainstorm was isolated to the arroyo, Tyran had outran it and made his way to a shielded forest. He decided he would rest here for the night, and hiked his way through—looking for a suitable nesting spot, each step from his massive feet leaving a footprint in the dry mud. As he prowled through the forest, he passed by a cliff of which fell down fifty-feet to a vast plains—however something was down there. Tyran stopped in his tracks; that same scent he had caught from the animal carcasses he had smelled awhile back was filling his olfactory bulbs.

It wasn’t entirely tyrannosaur, no, it was off. Tyran furrowed his brow and snorted, before slowly and carefully looking to his left at the plains beneath the gorge. An, entity, pale-white, walking upright, with long arms, legs, and a tail on the ground, was eating the carcass of a juvenile T.rex. Tyran’s face was filled with a strange mix of focus and confusion, as he watched this, being, inhale the entirety of the carcass—hurling its neck back to swallow massive chunks of flesh without chewing. It consumed the entire carcass, before focusing on its main objective. There were the unforgettable massive three-footed tracks of a Tyrannosaurus rex leading into a swamp.

The entity walked over to the tracks, kneeled down, and sniffed them with its pale-white snout. Tyran saw, as the creature’s face changed from neutral to pure rage; the being began thrashing around, smashing its fist into the ground and yelling aloud, filling Tyran with the same ear-piercing screech from before. The young rex lowered himself atop the hill, making sure he couldn’t be seen, as the pale-white being morphed itself into a classic theropod horizontal stance, before bolting off at incredible speeds, following the rex tracks. Tyran had a strange feeling that the rex tracks could lead back to his parents, but he feared a confrontation with that, entity.

The young tyrannosaur knew it was too late for him to keep moving now; he hiked over to a small outcropping in the forest, twirled his tail around his body, hinged his thighs next to his ribcage, and laid down—falling asleep instantly. Little did he know what tomorrow held for him.

Part 1: The End

A vast, golden, grassy field. The sun is up high, in a cloudless sky, overlooking the gorgeous land like an eagle. There are massive trees, but there are beasts that rival them as-well. A grouping of Triceratops, twenty to be exact, are grazing in the distance. They graze alongside a herd of Anatotitan, the two herbivore species living in harmony, as ten Alamosaurus pluck green leaves from the pinnacles of massive ferns beside them. Unbeknownst to all these creatures, a family, of the most powerful predator to ever exist—is nearby. Lucky for the herbivores, they aren’t in a killing mood, and are already well fed. Three Tyrannosaurus rex, nested deep within a nearby forest.

The mother’s feathers were a deep pink, practically red—and her scales were the same. She was sixteen feet-tall and forty-five feet long. Her bite-force was around eleven-thousand pounds, and she weighed eight tons. The father tyrannosaur was thirteen feet-tall, also forty-five feet long, and his feathers were an emerald green. He was very thin, and weighed a mere six tons—low for his species. His bite-force was nine-thousand pounds, still devastating. These two had been together for two years, and the mother had laid three eggs in her time. Two were devoured by Acheroraptors, only one survived. That one, a T.rex with slightly red hued green feathers, extremely rare sapphire blue eyes, a practically nonexistent dewlap, and beige scales on his snout, lower thighs, ankles and lips—was special.

The young tyrannosaur blinked, and pulled back his lips that cover all of his teeth so that he could yawn. Yet, as peace seemed to be around the young T.rex, something was off. He looked around, and things were static—no movement, it was as if the birds and pterosaurs in the sky were frozen in place. The young T.rex who was three years of age stood up from his rest and looked around confused and worried. His parents were frozen too, as if this was a painting. He began to panic, and bellowed aloud in fear—before this world he was in began to discombobulate and collapse around him.

He twisted and turned around, before something snapped within him—and he opened his eyes. A dream, the golden grassy fields, the animals—his parents, all a dream. The T.rex used his small but powerful arms to lift him up to one leg, as he shook his body like a wet dog, trying to regain his senses. He looked around, mortified. He was in a swamp, but it was set ablaze, and it was unrecognizable. The heat of a nearby sizzling fire was intense, and it was almost as if the embers were burning him alive. The rex struggled to stand, the heat becoming unbearable. His eyes told him he was nowhere he knew, but his intuition told him this was what has become of his home. The T.rex looked behind him at a massive muddy hill. Deep indentations from that of a big animal were on the hill, sliding down it until finishing at the exact place the tyrannosaur had woke up in.

He had fallen down a hill and blacked out—the only solution. He still had pieces of his memory, although he had lost a lot, and waded through his past, remembering his parents, but most importantly his name—Tyran. The green rex flexed and stretched his legs, getting a feel for his body once again, before slowly and carefully walking through the burning swamp. What could’ve done this? What could have caused so much destruction to this world?

Tyran trekked through the swamp, each motion his thigh muscles rippling, as his neck analyzed what lied ahead. Dense thicket on the right, and the left, but a precipice dead ahead; forest seemed like the safest path, but he was injured and confused, so the young rex went straight—heading for the precipice. He stumbled over, his green feathered tail swaying right and left hypnotically. At the edge of the ravine, he looked down; it was massive, but there was no way across, no way except an old, rotting, collapsed tree to his left. Birds flew up high above the gorge, as the sunset in the distance, casting a royal purple and golden hue across the land.

The air was humid, and the mud underneath the tyrannosaur’s feet was wet and sticky, as he lifted his feet up and slammed his footpads into the Earth—making his way towards the collapsed tree. He placed his right foot atop it, before slowly, and carefully, walking across it—each step making the tree creek slightly. Finally, he made it across, his heart racing. The other side of the gorge was a regular fern forest, although it reeked with the smell of corpses. Tyran stepped off of the tree and looked around at a gruesome sight; corpses, Triceratops, Anatotitan, even juvenile Alamosaurus, lie dead. His first thought was that they had been killed by whatever did this to his world, but as he trotted over—each step echoing across the forest—he noticed the calculated, and wild slash marks across the animal's bodies. There were long, deep, bloody gashes across the bodies of some, and others their necks had been torn out.

No natural disaster could do that, only an animal could, but what animal would kill at-least twenty powerful herbivores, and do it with ease? Tyran didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know, he barely had the courage to survive what he was doing right now. He just wanted to find his parents, and get out of here, but as the sunsets and night rises across the ashes of the North American continent—Tyran feels his chances are lowering.

Part 1 End.