Natasha liked the plan. It could work. If she could get the stable door open, that is.

“Open up!” she called.

“Go away!” came the stable boy’s voice from the other side of the door. “You’ll draw it here!”

“It’s coming this way anyway,” Natasha tried to reason, though her patience was growing short. “The Worldgate is drawing them. It won’t go around this building. It’s already smashed its way through several buildings just like this one. The Worldgate is right next door. If you stay in there, you’ll just be crushed.”

“Go away!”

“I don’t have time for this.” This last part, Natasha didn’t try to yell through the door to the dimwitted stable boy. That last part was just talking to herself, a habit she had noticed that she’d picked up somewhere along the way recently.

She pulled out her sword, a relic from her homeworld, with properties forged into it by magical processes that the mastersmiths who made it had been known to kill to keep secret.

“Stand back!” she yelled as a courtesy to whoever might be on the other side.

She plunged the sword’s blade into the door’s wood as a knife into warm butter, at the level she estimated to be just underneath the door’s bar on the other side. Then, she jerked the blade upward and was satisfied to hear the wooden beam barring the door thud onto the ground on the other side.

Next, she grabbed the now unbarred door and yanked it open. Inside was the smell of horses and fear.

“You’ll get us all killed!” cried the stable boy, crouching in the dark with a few other folk who had hidden themselves in the stable.

“Not likely,” Natasha retorted. “I’m not an idiot.”

*******

Gayle was a bit sore. Dwarves were no strangers to ladders. There were entire dwarven cities that had more ladders than they did stairs. However, the measurements dwarves used between rungs weren’t the same ones used by humans, elves, orcs, or other taller races with differently proportioned limbs. Those were too big. Similarly, those used by halflings, gnomes, goblins and other smaller folk weren’t right either. Too small. Dwarves were the only properly sized people among the many worlds apparently.

Gayle rubbed out some soreness as she watched from her perch at the top of one of Newtown’s taller buildings, a four story edifice not far from the Worldgate, and right beside the path of the oncoming T-rex. A few more blocks, and its head would come within spitting distance of her.

She heard the frightened neighing of horses below and down the street. Good. That meant that not only had Natasha saved the horses (they could be rounded up later), but that the monster’s full attention would be on the potential food, leaving it unawares and in position for a couple of surprises from D.R. & Associates.

The apex carnivore tilted its head and strode down the street faster once the horses started making their commotion. There was a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning from a sidestreet. That would be Deldric casting his lightning bolt spell. Gayle couldn’t see him from her vantage point but she could see the T-rex well enough. The lightning took it squarely in the side, leaving a large blackened gash along its side that bled. The beast staggered and almost fell. The horses continued to neigh in fear, though Gayle could tell they had found an escape route, as their plaintive cries were fading into the distance. The beast, knowing nothing of fear itself, seemed undecided whether to continue after the horses or to confront the new aggressor down the sidestreet who had wounded it. It teetered in pain and confusion. It was now Gayle’s turn.

The dwarf ran along the rooftop, picking up speed, whirling her battle axe over her head. The beast was a little bit off from where they had planned for it to be, but Gayle thought she could make the jump anyway. With a cry to the Dwarven Lords Above, tossing her mighty axe forward to add to her momentum, Gayle Garnetstar of Clan Garnetstar leaped forward, crossing the distance between her and the mighty T-rex, to land at the base of its skull.

Quickly shifting her axe to a one-handed grip, she used her free hand to latch onto the beast’s scaly hide, finding to her surprise that there was some kind of harness on the thing’s head. The harness seemed to be made of vines the same shade of green as the beast’s scales, such that it hadn’t been very visible from a distance. That’s handy, she thought, but had no time to consider the strange harness further. With her other hand, she began hacking at the reptile’s neck. Though she had no doubt that her axe was capable of slicing into the dinosaur’s skull, she assumed the skull’s thickness would make that not as effective an attack. The neck seemed much more vulnerable, as was confirmed by gouts of spurting blood.

Struggling to hold on as the beast bucked and to keep hold of the blood-slickended axe handle, Gayle felt the beast buckle as well as buck. Dazzling lights almost blinded her as she heard Deldric’s gnomish voice invoking magical blasts (that thankfully weren’t lightning that might shock her as well). Each of these struck the beast with enough force to kill a human man, though the T-rex could obviously withstand many such impacts.

After several tense moments and three times almost losing her grip and being flung from the thrashing dino, Gayle heard the beast’s breathing become raspy. It seemed to go weak all at once and tumbled to the ground, twitching. Gayle was able to roll with it and be clear of it when it finally hit the ground so that she was not crushed.

She lay on the ground for a moment, panting, her own breathing difficult. Across the street, which ran through a marketplace, she could see Rave the Healer having deputized Bob the Brownie as his nurse assistant, helping a man who was trapped beneath a collapsed fruit seller’s wagon.

“Are you OK, Gayle”?

Don Espino was suddenly there helping her up.

“The Newtown militia took out the third beastie,” said Hiln, striding up next.

“I wonder if they’ll let us keep pieces of it,” Don Espino wondered aloud.

Espino liked trophies from rare beasts. He also knew that many magical and rare creature parts could be used for magical purposes.

As Gayle accepted Hiln’s hand and got to her feet, she could hear Espino gasp.

“Eeeeeew, what it that?”

“Well,” came Deldric’s voice, sounding eager to show off some magical knowledge that he had that Espino did not, but he was cut short.

“It’s getting away!” came the elf child’s voice. “Wow, it’s fast!”

Gayle looked over to see the vinelike harness she had held onto before had detached itself from the dead T-rex, and crawling along using what she had thought were vines as tentacles. Reminding her of a landed octopus, it reached forward and then pulled itself along the ground in an attempt to go….somewhere. Then, to everyone’s amazement, eyes opened all along every tentacle, dozens of eyes. The thing seemed to have no central body, just to be a mass of multi-eyed tentacles.

As Deldric and Espino pursued the weird parasite thing down the street, Natasha came up and joined the group.

“What are you looking at, Hiln?” The human warrior asked the group’s combat leader. “I thought Espino was the one who liked to examine monsters and take trophies.”

Hiln was stooped down to study several strange puncture wounds on the dead dinosaur’s head. He stuck a guantleted finger into one.

“They run deep,” he said. “Maybe to the thing’s brain.”

The three warriors, two dwarven and one human, all three considered this weird news in silence for a moment.

Gayle was suddenly concerned for the group’s two youngest (for their species) members.

“Let’s see if the boys caught up to that thing. What do you suppose it is?”

“I dunno, lass,” Hiln answered, “but I like it less than I like T-rexes.”

Don Espino de la Rosa, who had graduated first in his class at the Academy of the Great Magocracy, knew the rules of magic. The rules of magic, once grasped, made sense. Even the ones that at first seemed counterintuitive and contradictory would finally harmonize in the mind of the learner once all the subtle nuances of a given situation or problem were revealed. Thus had taught Espino’s teachers. That was part of the understanding of magic at the Academy. There were other understandings, of course, than the one taught at the Academy. Mystics and other esoteric sages said that magic, by its very nature, could never truly be understood by mortals, because it was, after all, magic. If it was ever truly understood, these mystics said, it would cease to be magic and become a science. Espino preferred the Academy’s way of thinking. He liked things to make sense, especially rules. Rules should make sense.

The rules of humanoid societies, though, thought Espino as he watched Hiln try to reason with one of Newtown’s militia guards outside the Townhall building, were stupid.

“I’m very sorry, sir. Townhall meetings can only be attended by Newtown citizens and by specially invited speakers.” The guard’s hand was on the hilt of his sword, but his facial expression and body language suggested he’d rather not use it. He looked at his fellow guard opposite him on the other side of the entrance to the Townhall.

The other guard held out his hands placatingly. “It’s pretty easy to become a citizen, actually. You only need ninety days residency.”

“Bother!” Hiln seemed at the end of his patience. He wagged his finger at the first guard. “We just saved this town’s butt!”

“And I’m sure the council and everyone in town appreciates that,” said the second guard. He looked over the rest of D.R. & Associates perhaps hoping to find some help in calming down Hiln.

Rave stepped forward and used his best healer’s bedside manner voice. He placed his hand on Hiln’s shoulder and addressed the guards.

“Good sirs, thank you for your information and assistance. We only just arrived in Newtown this morning through the Worldgate. We shall indeed be seeking citizenship.”

Turning to Hiln, the healer said, “Come, my friend. There’s nothing further to be gained here right now.”

Natasha spoke up. “Besides, we have to help Little One here catch his pet sheep. It ran away in the confusion of the attack. I’m sure he’s worried about it.”

Espino caught on right away. “That’s right. I miss Shawn, my sheep. I hope he’s ok.”

Hiln took his fearsome glare away from the two veritably cowed guards in front of him. Espino saw the second guard, with Hiln’s face turned away, mouth a silent “Thank you” to Rave, who nodded slightly.

“Yeah, right. Yer sheep kid. Let’s go find ‘im.” Turning back to the guards, he said in parting, “We’ll expect our property returned to us, of course.”

“Property?” the first guard tentatively asked in a squeaky voice.

“Yeah, the alchemical component our mages harvested off that dino, which was our rightful kill, and thus our rightful trophy.”

The second guard said, “We don’t know anything about that, sir.” He hastily added, “But we’ll definitely ask about it for you.”

“You’d better,” snarled Hiln, finally stepping down from the Townhall entranceway.

“They were really rude when they took it,” said Deldric.

Earlier, as Deldric and Espino had chased the weird, brain-tapping, tentacled parasite thing as it had attempted to flee once its T-rex host had died. They had rounded a corner and come face to face with the town militia unit that had taken out the third T-rex. This unit had included an officer who dressed as a traditional battle mage, complete with a bandolier of holstered wands. Espino had thought his tall, high, rounded purple hat/helmet to be particularly ridiculous. Upon seeing the tentacled mass of eyes scooting down the street and heading for the entrance to a crawl space under an inn, the Newtown mage had blasted it with one of his wands. The thing stopped, twitched a few times, and then lay still, it’s eyes closing one by one.

Considering how fast the thing was, and the small, tight spaces it could probably squirm through, Espino thought it was probably for the best to kill the parasite like that since it was getting away. He would have preferred to capture it alive, but it was obviously dangerous and, once under the town’s buildings, could have gotten anywhere.

The battle mage had confiscated the parasite “in the name of town security”. When Espino and Deldric had protested, they had been treated like children (although Deldric was an adult gnome). The battle mage told them not to play with such dangerous things. They had even been asked where their parents were since the town had just been attacked by dinos that had breached the Wall.

Espino was sure that either he or Deldric could have beaten this local yokel militia mage in a duel with their eyes closed. Before their pride could get the better of them, causing one or both of them to smart off at this authority figure, the rest of D.R. & Associates had arrived to smooth things over.

Town criers had come out then declaring the emergency over. Worldgate workers began prepping the gate to operate again. Able-bodied laborers and foremen were summoned to begin repairing the Wall. A special Townhall meeting was called, from which the Associates had now been turned away.

There was one more detail left of the dinosaur attack, though. A detail that might provide them with the opportunity for a closer examination of one of the brain parasites, the remaining live T-rex that the Newtowners didn’t recognize as such, because it was a sheep.

*******

A sheep that had not always been a sheep wandered an alley behind a row of houses on 3rd Street, confused. It vaguely remembered being taller, a lot taller. Visually, its perspective on the world seemed like it was lying down on the ground. It was eye level with bushes and rocks. Normally, when it walked, its head should be eye level with the treetops. So, the sheep that didn't fully understand that it was a sheep tried, in vain, to stand up to its full height, as it seemed to remember its full height should be. Instead, it fell down. Now it was even closer to the ground. Furious, the sheep roared its rage, or tried to. Instead, out if it's mouth came a plaintive bleating sound.