The gravel crunches beneath Jenna’s feet as she wades through the thick fog pooling around her thighs like water in a shallow pool. She can barely see the top of her boots, let alone the soles of her feet. It’s only a matter of time before her legs disappear entirely.

Something skitters across the top of Jenna's left boot—she jumps back.

“Ah—!” 

“Jenna?” Allen asks in a concerned tone.

“I’m fine,” Jenna replies—her voice cracks. She resists the urge to shudder. She’s no scientist, but something about the way the forest seems to be waking up as the fog rises… Luke would tell her correlation doesn’t equal causation. The rising caws, trills, shrieks and coos in the distance would beg to differ.

She shakes her head and turns to the old blue-haired guy in charge. He’s fiddling with some kind of old-fashioned scanner—a small handheld device with four buttons, an antenna and a tiny yellowed screen displaying a bunch of red and white blips on a radar grid.

He turns his head towards her. Jenna gets a distinct feeling that he’s raising his brow. He then turns his head back towards the scanner and goes back to fiddling with it.

“We’re the white dots, right?” She asks after a long beat.

The man hums.

“Yes, and no,” he replies before tilting the device towards her and pointing at the two red dots following alongside the five white dots centred in the middle of the yellowed grid, “We are the white dots. You and Mr Lasker are the red dots.”

“How come?”

“You’re not wearing a mask,” he says, fiddling with a dial on the side of the device to zoom out the map, “So as far this is concerned, you’re no different from the canavari.”

Jenna furrows her brow, “Like those purple dinosaur things? With the frill necks?”

She waves her hands around the sides of her neck to illustrate her point. The blue-haired man tilts his head towards her again.

“Trust me, Miss Jenna,” the man says in a serious tone, “When the fog is this high, the firfirli are the least of our concerns.”

Something roars in the distance. 

Jenna swallows and glances at the others trailing behind them. She makes eye contact with Allen over the broad shoulders of that peach-haired twink’s dad. His eyes are as wide as hers.

She turns back to the dinosaur monitor in the leader’s hands and watches as the screen updates their position every half-second. As few red dots appear along the edges of the grid before disappearing a half-second later.

Right. Good to know there are worse things than those stupid little lizards out here. Fantastic.

───※ ·❆· ※───

The fog has risen to Jenna’s hips. They’ve been walking for a while now, though not long enough for it to be more than 15-20 minutes. 

The blue-haired man’s dinosaur monitor dings—Jenna’s head snaps towards the sound.

“What—?”

“Shh!” The man interrupts, his hand snapping into the air to halt the party in its tracks. 

Jenna gives Allen’s arm a gentle squeeze before jogging to the front of the group to check the monitor herself. The blue-haired man doesn’t stop her from looking at the screen as he signals for the rest of the team to be dead quiet.

Five white and two red dots sit in the centre of the screen, as she’d expected, but at the bottom right of the screen… a white dot is circling a larger red dot. Something makes a deep cawing noise in the nearby distance—Jenna’s head snaps towards the sound.

The blue-haired man signals for the group to gather closely.

“Is it—?” The buff peach-haired man asks in a hushed voice.

“Yirtici,” the blue-haired man confirms with a sharp nod—he turns towards Allen and Jenna, “Quieten your breaths and soften your steps. We cannot afford to attract its attention.”

“What about the white dot?” Jenna asks in an equally hushed voice, “Doesn’t that mean there’s a person out there—?”

“Patrol teams subjugate the canavari all of the time,” the man replies before stepping back, “And they’re far more equipped to fight them than us. Now be quiet.”

Another deep caw sounds from beyond the trees, followed by a series of screeching and the sound of rustling leaves. 

Jenna falls into line behind Allen and the buff peach-haired man as the leader motions for the group to enter single file. She glances behind her at the gold-horned woman of the group, who cheerfully gives her a double thumbs up. The woman’s nails are also painted black. Jenna returns the gesture with a smile of her own beyond glancing over the woman’s shoulder into the thick fog beyond—

Claws dig into Jenna’s lower leg. She freezes. The claws move, climbing higher up her calf like an iguana slowly climbing a tree. Jenna’s breathing shallows as she slowly turns her gaze towards her fog-obscured upper thighs because something is climbing up her freaking leg—she feels the claw dig into the flesh of her upper knee, then her lower thigh. 

“Jen—?” The woman starts.

“Stick—I need a stick,” Jenna shoots back as the faint impression of a lizard’s claw appears along the edge of her mid thigh, “There’s something on me—”

Allen’s head whips around, his eyes wide, “What—?”

“Shh!” The leader hisses from the front of the group—he doubles back and approaches as Jenna feels something tail-like smack the top of her right boot, “What’s going on?”

Jenna watches the red-haired woman snap a nearby branch off of a tree with a flinch of her shoulders. A deep screech echoes in the distance—it’s close. Too close.

The lizard’s claws dig into Jenna’s thigh as it climbs a step higher. The faint outline of its spiked head is now visible through the slowly rising fog. The leader freezes.

“What is it?” Allen asks, his eyes wide, “What’s wrong?”

“Mother of a rodent,” the leader growls under his breath in a faintly dutch accent before his head tilts towards Jenna, “Stay very still, Miss Jenna, that thing is very dangerous.”

The lizard climbs a little higher before settling its head against the dip of her pelvis. Jenna takes a moment to close her eyes and just breathe. Of course. Of course there’s a murder lizard on her leg. Why wouldn’t there be?

“What’s—holy diarrhoea!” The peach-haired twink shrieks, leaping back, “What’s that thing doing here?!”

“Riain!” The leader snaps.

A deep, reverberating screech echoes from up the path. 

“No!” A distant woman screams.

The lizard digs its claws into Jenna’s thigh—heavy footsteps rapidly approach from the rear. Jenna snaps her head towards Allen, who stares back at her in growing horror over the buff man’s shoulder.

“Get off the path,” the blue-haired man breathes out—his head snaps towards the approaching woman’s scream, “Get off the path!”

“I can’t!” Jenna snaps back in a shrill voice.

“The lizard—is it venomous or poisonous?” Allen shouts, his head snapping towards the leader, “What kind of dangerous is it?”

“Venomous!” He shouts back—the approaching creature caws at a terrifying pitch, “The two front teeth are venom injectors, but it’s fast—!”

“How fast—?” Allen starts.

“Got it!” Jenna shouts, her heart slamming against her ribcage as she stares down at the creature clinging to her hip just below the heavy fog line.

The woman’s scream is getting closer and closer—she only has one shot to do this. She flexes her hands against her sides as the blue-haired man ushers his team off of the gravel path like they were caught meandering along the train tracks.

Screeching. 

Screaming. 

Cawing. 

Heavy footsteps.

“Jenna!”

She takes a deep breath and grabs the lizard’s head like a snake catcher slamming a serpent’s jaw shut. She rips the furious creature off of her leg—its claws cut deep—and flings it into the fog seconds before a massive orange and blue blur shoots down the path with a screaming woman clinging for dear life on its back.

Jenna dives out of the way, barely missing the beast and the thick ropes whipping through the air behind it before one of the ropes snags her foot and slams her face first against the gravel. She barely has time to register the pain before she’s being dragged through the stones by the heel at a breakneck pace.

“Ahhhh!” She screams, bracing her arms across her face to keep the stones from shredding her cheeks like a cheese grater.

“Oh my Gods!” The woman clinging to the creature’s back shrieks in horror, “Who are you?!”

“Is that really—ow!—important right now?!” Jenna snaps back as the stones tear the feeble mesh covering her midriff to shreds—she grits her teeth and flips herself onto her back when the horse-sized lizard takes a sharp turn to the west, “Stop the damned dinosaur!”

“I don’t know how!” The woman shrieks back, “I’ve never done this before!”

Jenna shouts in pain as a particularly sharp stone scratches its way up her back as she’s dragged across it at full speed.

“Are you insane?!” Jenna shouts, trying to crunch forward just enough to get her hands around the rope— “Agh!” She’s slammed back into the gravel as the stupid dinosaur somehow picks up the pace, “Pull the damned rope!”

“Why in Gehenna would I do that?!” 

“To slow the fucking animal down, woman!” Jenna screams back, her abs burning as she tries to crunch forward again, her arm outstretched to reach for the rope and get it off of her fucking ankle, “Yank the damned rope!”

“But—!”

“Now!” Jenna roars—her fingers touch, scratch, grasp at the fraying threads tying the rope together until—she grabs the coarse rope and pulls at the tangle knot holding the stupid thing in place—

The orange beast screeches and rears back, flapping its taloned flightless wings as the woman riding it yanks at the rope around its neck as hard as she can.

The second the rope comes loose, Jenna’s body is sent flying past the creature’s feathers, reptilian legs and right off the path—she shouts as her back slams into the trunk of a large tree. 

Shouts and panicked caws reign down around her as Jenna’s ears scream from the impact. Her arms shake as she pushes herself onto her hands and knees—the pain is blinding. 

“Pull harder!”

“I’m trying!”

Jenna turns her head to face the commotion—to see what’s going on. 

She freezes. 

Small little frill-necked lizard-chickens she can handle. 

Her breathing starts to quicken. 

Venomous iguanas climbing her damned leg like a fucking tree she can handle.

Her fingers begin to tremble in the dirt.

Cave collapses, fucked up sky portals, near death experiences she can fucking handle, but this? This?

Her eyes trail up the deep blue and black scales of its leg to the sleek orange, blue and white features lining its body in stripes and spot-like patterns depending on where she looks. From the fan-like feathered tail to the feathered, striped plume standing tall on the massive creature’s head.

Her blood runs cold as she stares into the beast’s beady yellow eyes inset into its orange, white and blue reptilian face. She’d recognised that bone structure anywhere. The sharp teeth, the long snout, and that distinct, deep, bone-chilling caw that she’s only ever heard in movies.

That’s a raptor. That’s an actual, literal raptor thrashing against a trio of tight lassos pulled taught against its long neck. Cold sweat drips past the side of Jenna’s jaw. 

It’s only a matter of time before that thing breaks free of the trio trying to hold it down, and when it does… when it does…

Jenna’s breathing turns shallow.

They’re all going to die.