It was a dark and stormy night.

He couldn't hear any patter or pitter from any water formations falling from the heavens, but he could very clearly feel the infinite assault of the rain on his scales. Given how long he'd been here, it was easy for him to run through various ways of describing the rain or what it made the night look like outside. He could recall several days that began with a dark and stormy night and went on forever or so just to describe the storm itself.

It was raining fairly hard to compensate for the heat of the summer, so hard that it was difficult to see more than a few feet out past the dark shadows and describe anything in perfect detail. He could just imagine seeing tiny rivers and rivulets slithering down the crystal exterior of the mansion to drip from the upper panes of the window. When the constant waterfall fell to the lower panes it created the softest sound above the white noise of the raindrops that fell away from the castle. A never-ending wet splatter against a crystalline base, that sounded like someone pouring water onto a floor made of metal.

The raindrops alone were like static to his restless ears by now, though they would twitch occasionally if thunder boomed just close enough to the mansion. The floor vibrated from the noise and as a result of the air clapping back together. The lightning brightened the room, but it never added color with it's presence. Such was a side effect the rain's soothing down fall-it turned the horribly colorful world around him into a realm of grey and white. It was almost painful to look at, let alone experience.

Pain was not a foreign thing to him. Pain was his entire life-every second of it. The moment he hatched had been a blinding mess of pain and foreign voices ranting about 'success' and 'the future'. That was nothing compared to the hunger pains when those strange scaleless bipeds neglected to feed him for weeks on end, just to study his behavior towards a live goat. The crackles of their poking sticks hurt the most and often sent him into a fit of foamy snarling with a few well placed stabs here and there. He could fully describe the pain of just living in an empty cage, bones cramped and misshapen from having to position himself in such tiny quarters. Many mornings would consist of him trying to crack stress out of his neck without accidentally killing himself.

Being impaled on a skeleton was an entirely different rating for pain, however.

It was downright baffling. He couldn't even begin to wonder how he'd survived a fall onto such a dangerous skull. It already stung too much to breathe past the bone stabbing in one side of his neck and poking out the other. Just the sight of it was confusing to his still young mind; being impaled in two different parts of the body meant certain death. When that maintenance worker tried to change his lightbulb, impalement definitely spelled death for him. Why was this any different?

The pain returned every time he moved, shooting up and down his body. He wished he'd never just passed out when he landed, or at least missed the horns by a couple of feet. It was better than being stuck in a very painful position. The Indoraptor gurgled on a mouthful of blood, which joined the rain in dripping onto the floor. He still didn't die.

In pain, yet curious, the creature carefully placed a foot on the nose horn of the skull, then a little further up. A weak push made him slide up ever so slightly, but it was not enough to free him.

Frustration made him snarl unhappily. He pressed a bit more firmly against the skull and even used one of his hands to help. Slowly but surely, his body lifted itself further up the horns and finally managed to unsheath itself from the sharp tips. A strangled screech came from the Indoraptor when he made a clumsy tumble to the flat ground. Of all the pains he could list, that was probably the worst of them.

He lay motionless for an hour or so, afterwards, content to die of the massive holes in his body. Blood was certainly oozing out of his wounds at an alarming rate, and yet he didn't feel the icy cold grip of shock try to steal his life. He just felt the pain and the blood and the rain. Nothing more.

The Indoraptor whined softly. He got himself up on floors weakly, muscles shaking with strain as he righted himself. That accursed raptor-practically flinging him down upon the horns herself. A low snarl built in the base of his throat, but the hole in his neck made it turn into a sputtering cough. He settled for standing up on his hind legs and gently giving the room a sweep of his eyes and nose. Nothing was different from when he'd last been in this room except for a few new human odors. Otherwise, it was as if he'd been alone here for some time.

He limped his way into the hall with a measured pace, pouring a helping of blood here and there as a result. After a few meters of wandering around the more familiar sections of the mansion like a lost dog, The Indoraptor decided that carrying on after suffering such fatal wounds would be a bad idea for its health. It was night, and he would need to rest to clear its volatile head. He crept his way down, down, down into the lower crevices beneath the mansion and roamed past melty hallways of glass and concrete. There, he found his lonely den waiting for him with a door outstretched to welcome him. He entered the familiar, homely cage and stepped past the human skull inside.

He curled up and slept hard.

Rayla blinked herself awake from her thoughts, and saved herself from walking into a tree.

She had a bad habit of thinking a little too much when she was supposed to be working on a singular thing. Even when walking, there was a good chance a few stray thoughts would cause her to walk right off a cliff. But she couldn't stop internally admiring the way the forest looked as she traversed it's many strange corners. It wasn't like the gardens of Xadia, where a plethora of friendly creatures came out to greet you with open paws. Years of fear instilled by the likes of humans made these animals more skittish around anything that remotely resembled a human. Four fingers or not, one could not deny the physical similarities between the two species. Unless you ask Ranaan, who would heartily explain how elves are completely superior.

The Elven girl finally made it to her actual destination, a rock near the center of camp, large enough to sit on for a moment. They had taken two full days to sneak into the forest, and that took 48 hours of walking alone. Going that long without sleep was normal, but not something she liked if it was as random as this. Her body ached everywhere from being in constant motion, and she was forced to hide it so Ranaan didn't accuse her of being too soft for the team. However, she could tell even he was wincing a little, along with maybe two other elves in their little troop. She knew none of them would admit it.

A growl silenced her quiet thought process, and she leapt to her aching feet with daggers unveiled. It didn't take her long to find what caused the growl and she had to suppress a surprised grin. "Er...Ranaan?"

"Hmm." The stoic elf sighed and gave a glum shrug. "I will admit, none of us have had much to eat during our journey."

"Finally, you admit it." An elf grumbled sourly.

"Too bad we didn't bring rations," Another elf pointed out.

Ranaan gave the elf a disapproving look. "A true Moonshadow Elf can live off the juice from a single Rasberry, for weeks at a time. Besides...I warned you all to eat well before the trip."

Rayla perked up almost immediately. She had a great idea for exploring more of the forest, if Ranaan gave her permission. "Oh! I could get us a deer to eat! We have our fire spells to discreetly cook it. No human would catch onto that, no matter how close they are!"

He looked skeptical of her offer, but the elves that spoke before agreed verbally. She waited patiently for his reaction, watching his falling expression. He rolled his eyes, but smirked all the same. "If you truly wish to move around so much, be my guest Rayla."

She sprinted off before he could change his mind, grinning from pointy ear to pointy ear.

It was sunlight that awoke him, like the lights from those pestering scientists that always studied him in his cage and wrote things down on their little wooden tablet things. It was from a notable hole in the wall above him, peculiarly high all things considered, which allowed steady rays of sunlight to pierce through all three eyelids and hurt his retina. Snarling in discomfort, The Indoraptor slowly got on all fours and reflexively leaned back on his heels to stretch is long spine. After yawning wide enough to crack the joints in his jaws, he turned to examine the hole shaped wound near his flank.

Only, there was no wound.

He gave a short bark of surprise and sniffed the strangely healed scar a few times, nostrils filled with a greatly aged scent of blood. The beast was greatly puzzled by the smell of time that had passed from his wounds-he'd never slept five days in a row. In fact, he wasn't quite sure if anything he'd ever heard of ever slept that long. His young yet intelligent mind was swimming with questions he couldn't answer, and a truth that spawned them all. Not only had he survived very fatal injuries, but he also healed from those injuries in the span of a week.

A week. He'd been sleeping for a week, and it only felt like he'd dozed a few minutes. How many sunrises had he slept through, before this one awakened him? How many days had it been since he last ate that elevator full of humans, crunching their bones to a pulp and slurping down their brain matter from their skulls? Why had he not died?

Sighing, he resolved to make up answers as soon as he'd found something to fill his snarling belly-he must have some luck finding a decent meal out beyond the mansion. Perhaps once he caught something, he would come back and eat in his newly deserted home. The beast nodded to himself, having caught the tactic from watching humans, and started to step out of his cage...only to stop. His fiery eyes slowly glanced back at the dusty skull looking alone in a corner of the cage. For some reason, he didn't like the idea of leaving it here-it was the only thing he had a positive relationship with after all. He was heading out into a bizarre world that he knew about; maybe his toy could help steel his nerves, should they erupt?

Now carrying the clinking skull in the tips of his black claws, the Indoraptor waltzed out of the cage and down a hall that he knew would lead to a way up and out. Energetic steps propelled him forward; a great contrast to the tired gait he displayed earlier thanks to his grave wounds. Confidentially, he looked around his glass surroundings and paused when he noticed himself in a mirror. Indeed, he looked much better than before. The Indoraptor's lips stretched with a pleased smile, before he started off walking again. Nanoseconds later, the Indoraptor shot back in front of the mirror glass and gaped.

Flesh was covering his teeth.

He pressed his snout against the glass to see better; he actually had... lips . Thin flaps of flesh had grown from just above his sharp teeth and were blocking his pearly whites from view. With a surprised look in his eyes, the dinosaur flexed his newly grown flesh and examined the dark gums surrounding his teeth. Now thi s was definitely deserving of an answer. Now he looked all too similar to that raptor that nearly killed him.

The Indoraptor grumbled incessant things at the back of his throat, made baritone by his own hoarse vocal chords. That cur of a demon almost killed him and attacked him with those annoyingly sharp claws and teeth. If she was still out there, alive and well, he would kill her. He would kill her and eat her and carry her skull around too.

The Indoraptor made his way up to the lowest floor of the mansion, where brown oak floors and walls greeted him. But as he pawed down the hallways like a great black wolf, his sensitive ears detected something. He paused in midstep while his sickle claws tapped the floor nervously; he had heard voices. Yes, human voices just beyond the corner of the hallway.

"You hear that, Kurt?"

A rough, yet feminine sounding voice made the Indoraptor's jaw twitch spastically. The tapping claws became frequent. "Is someone knocking? What's that noise?"

"Someone must still be here." A confused male voice affirmed quietly. He could hear the human pull something out, then a metallic click-obviously the sound of a gun cocking. "Police! Come out and-Holy shi-!"

The Indoraptor often wondered why humans reacted that way to his appearance; their eyes wide and their mouths open in a locked scream of fear. Did they think that shrieking would save them? It was a reasonless reaction in his opinion and rather than allow the male the luxury of screaming, he quickly bit down on his head. A satisfying pop sent a fresh iron taste on his tongue and the blue-clad male went limp. The dinosaur ignored the headless body and whirled to face a barrage of gunfire.

The woman, with red hair that reminded him of that female on the roof, fired with frightening precision against his bulletproof hide. He roared in mock pain the more she fired off and pretended to fall over in death throes, twitching until he was certain that she had run entirely out of bullets. Then he kept himself perfectly still as though he were dead and his eyes only had slits to see through. He could see the shaken woman approaching with quivering limbs, her wide eyes taking in his gangly form with disgust and fear. She lowered the gun-perhaps to reload it.

He slapped the air beneath her chin and snorted as her throat burst open in a spray of red.

The gurgling human succumbed to death in seconds, and the Indoraptor was treated to the first decent snack in about a week's time. His jaws tore into the bodies with some mild difficulty (they were wearing strange armor of sorts), tearing out great chunks of intestines and reveling in the blood he was able to drink from their corpses. Something about the taste of humans was addictive, especially compared to the unalive meat sections he was fed repeatedly-which were cold and tasteless when they slithered down his gullet. The Indoraptor ripped his head up after snatching up the lungs of the female in his jaws. Hmm, rubbery.

With a cackling snarl, the beast rose from the dismantled bodies and stomped off to find the entryway to the giant mansion. He cocked his head as he approached the giant doors, feeling some strange emotion in his chest as he began to pull the handle to open the door.

" Chrak ." He chirped in a low tone.

Was this uncertainty, the emotions of those fiendish humans? What an odd feeling. It was actually making him pause-making him stop to consider his options. Options that he didn't have much of, to be perfectly honest with himself; staying here would eventually lead him to run out of good food sources. He chirped again and forced himself out into the glaring light of the sun. He blinked and snarled at the giant yellow sphere. Such a bright thing. He didn't like the sun.

The dinosaur wisely turned his sights away from the sun, instead moving down the porcelain stairs and sniffing at the steel car with blue and red lights. It smelled of his recent meals; their sweat and odor mixing with the cold metal. They must have come here in this strange metal contraption, seeking...something. He did not care what.

He looked up, using his great neck to look beyond the gravel courtyard to the forest in the distance. It faded in gradually, first as tall grass and then as a few sparse bushes here and there and finally as towering masses of oak. Trees-they were everywhere, as far as his eagle eyesight could see from his position. The forest loomed high with a shadowy background and dark branches, crooked as they tried reached out to him. Distant noises echoed from beyond the foreboding scene, sounds not dissimilar to the noises he'd heard the night of his escape. The whole mansion smelled of other beasts, including that raptor; he could only assume that they'd all entered the forest some time ago. This also gave him pause.

What compelled them to seek freedom from this place? It was the only environment The Indoraptor had ever known, save for that place with all the bright lights and humans crowded around him. The cold feeling of a cell had become him so much that it stung ever so slightly to be standing in warm soil, with a hot light boring down on him. Perhaps these other animals, like that accursed Raptor, were born in some forest like this and had grown used to living in an environment with so many...variables. The Indoraptor chittered to himself, claws tapping the skull in his grip.

With cautious steps, he plodded forward and disappeared amongst the trees. He would come to sniff at each tower of bark that he passed, big or small, until his nose had become bored of the scent of plants. When he wasn't attempting to sniff at trees, he was fighting off the assault of flies that had grown attracted to the human blood on his muzzle. His lips twitched back in an annoyed snarl while he shook his head-why were these tiny things so persistant on buzzing around his jaws, mindlessly lapping the red liquid staining his lips?The predator bounded forward in a loping run,outpacing the insects and giving himself a much needed rest from his pursuers.

About ten minutes of deep wandering into the forest, he came across a very pungent smell in the air. The Indoraptor cocked his head as the smell hit his nostrils with each puff of his lungs. It was bizarre; a strange urine odor, mixed with dirt. He chittered and stomped off in the direction of the smell, soon coming into a light clearing. In the middle sat a fairly large rodent-like creature with a stout body, stubby legs and a small head. It's body was covered in almost entirely black fur, save for the two white stripes running down its back and its very fluffy tail, which was mostly white. The creature was digging its paws into the earth for something until the dinosaur plodded into view, which caused it's fur to raise in alarm. The scaly beast watched in awe as the small creature raised its tail high in the air, and then backed up towards him with it. The Indoraptor wouldn't have guessed what this meant in time.

A yellow musk suddenly sprayed out from glands beneath the thing's tail, hitting his snout and nostrils in a great cloud. The black beast barked in outrage and alarm at the horrible smell that now clogged his nostrils, lips peeling back in disgust. He slapped the skunk aside with a clawed hand, barely caring as it crunched into a nearby tree or how the human skull fell from his grip. He had to get this horrible smell out of his nose! It was like the musk had stained his face with the horrible scent. He had to get it off, to smell something else.

Ignoring the dead rodent, he picked up the skull and galloped off into a random direction to let the wind waft away most of the residue on his face, then stopped to rub his snout into the ground. The smell was still there, but he would be able to tolerate it and look for other scents as well.

He looked up from his position and noticed he was at the very edge of a large clearing. His eyes swiftly roamed over a field of very tall grass but stayed locked on a large thing in the distance-a large thing that made him snort in surprise and confusion. It looked so strange to him-a four legged thing with its appendages so long that it was nearly as tall as The Indoraptor, despite its head being bent low to the ground. Brownish black fur covered all of its body, some with great patches missing and some parts looking dirtier than others. Flies buzzed incessantly around its hindquarters, but their droning could not drown out the noise of wet chewing. When it's head raised up behind the cover of tall grass, The Indoraptor marveled at the sight of a fat snout and a fairly stout head that connected to it. Aside from unintelligent little eyes and startled ears, he saw that the beast had strange horns protruding from its head at odd angles. They didn't look as sharp as the Triceratops skull that nearly killed him, but they were intimidatingly big.

They stared at each other for a moment; him blinking and it drooling through a mouth full of grass.

Just when he was beginning to think they'd be like that for a while, the hair on the back of the thing's neck stood on end and it started to circle him. The dinosaur frowned as it drew near in it's movements and then, defying logic, it flung a hoof at his snout. A sideways hit made him snarl, both pained and confused by the actions of the beast. The furry creature tried to slap at him with both forelegs, striking blows to his ribs with its blunt hooves. In retaliation, the Indoraptor caught the forelegs in his jaws and crunched down. The furry beas beast snorted and pulled itself free soon after, but at the cost of it's own shins. With his skull toy rolling on the ground, The Indoraptor was free to hiss and dart forward at the unprotected neck of his foe. A satisfying pop had it go limp almost instantly, and the Indoraptor let the body of the moose fall to the ground.

The furry beast was still alive as he began to chew his way through its throat, at least until the eyes glazed over when his teeth scissored through the vertebrae. He picked up the neatly severed head in his hands and examined the teeth. Different than his, like those humans. But these had no canines. Just flat yellow pieces connected to gums and a uselessly rough tongue. The Indoraptor began to nibble at meat left at the neck when he thought he felt something beneath his feet. But it was nothing he could be certain of, so he kept snipping off meaty pieces.

The ground vibrated again. Then again. Then again.

He looked up sharply when he heard the crackle of tree branches, and his eyes widened in sudden terror. He had never seen any creature bigger than he was and therefore never thought that there might be something bigger out beyond the walls. The beast he saw lumbering out from the dark of the forest was an intimidating monster of immense size; a behemoth at least twenty feet tall and much longer in length. It's arms were tiny but it's massive jaws were not, made even bigger by the amount of teeth lining its gums. It halted on two legs in a stalking position and finally ended its thunderous assault on the earth. Black pupils dilated in the direction of the Indoraptor and an unhappy growl vibrated the air itself.

The Indoraptor warbled nervously and stepped back.

The Tyrannosaurus barked and raced towards him, its footsteps causing the earth to shake like rolling thunder. With a hiss of surprise, he sprang up and darted backwards to escape the menace that was all too close behind and starting to gain distance with each massive stride. He galloped forward on all fours and constantly tested the strength of his apeish arms by launching himself over the grassy floor. The giant beast lumbered along like a jogging bear chasing after a deer with a limp-drool falling from the generous lengths of her teeth. The monster ignored the carcass left behind in favor of chasing the threat with the familiar scent of a past foe. He could see in those orange, flaming eyes-he knew the beast would not stop chasing him until he was good and dead.

The Indoraptor sprinted with the aid of those powerful kind legs, whipping past winds at speeds he would probably never know or have ways of knowing. It wasn't long before his lungs began to cry and shrivel, begging for a slower gait so that they could gulp down some air. But to slow down meant the rex would persist longer and kill him. He had to keep running.

He lost his footing on a short hill and promptly the price by rolling head first down between a pair of thick trees. He rolled onto all fours and prepared to dash off again, eyes flickering to the mammoth creature on his tail. He bolted off and-

Where was the creature, anyhow?

"Zuh."

The Indoraptor padded to a halt and suddenly took notice of the fact that his certain death was gone, with no trace of footsteps or even a scent of follow. He sniffed at the air again, and then once more just make sure that was right. When he did this, he was quick to realize that the missing Tyrannosaur was not the only strange thing to happen just now. The sky was different- the sun was starting to set now, as opposed to the morning light it had been when he first woke up. The forest was different too. The trees seemed...more flexible than they last appeared, more brightly colored green than dark moss. Scents of animals had changed greatly too-he now scented things that he was certain wouldn't have existed in the forest without him knowing. Perhaps that hill fall was higher than he expected.

" Hrek . Chah ."

The Indoraptor clapped its jaws together noisily and decided to investigate it's buzzard surroundings-starting with the smells that registered the highest with it. He prowled to his left and was mildly pleased to find that-despite the hot sun blazing down on him with fierce intensity-the grass was soft like cushions beneath his padded feet. There was an abundant lack of insects as well, no flies to buzz around his jaws in a pestering manner. There was the occasional call of an animal in the trees, but it was nothing he found bothersome.

His tongue slithered out when he parted his jaws, flickering once before resting in his mouth again. A nice, warm heat signature about four yards to his right made his stomach growl with new life. Since he hadn't had the opportunity to devour that moose, he would instead settle for catching something new. He set the human skull down in the grass and began to creep towards the source of heat. Soon he found himself gazing from a large patch of bushes, red eyes squinting at a scene in the distance.

A deer-or a doe to be precise- looked ready to bolt away from something in front of it, judging from the cautious angle that it's legs were locked in. It's head was curiously leaning towards something bipedal and he found himself sneering-humans. How had this one come to travel so far into the forest? He gazed at the four fingered hand it stretched out to touch the doe with, knowing in his heart that he would swat aside the deer and bite that feminine hand off. Then he would swallow her whole, kicking and screaming. His hind legs bunched up, preparing to spring forth in a flurry of muscle movement…

Rayla carefully knelt down in front of the skittish doe, leaning forward to give it an affectionate scratch beneath her chin. She grinned the more it relaxed, the more it nuzzled her hand. The Elven girl cooed gently as she appreciated the warmth of its furry texture, running her fingers along the all too delicate jaw line. "Aw. Ma team is hungreh. But I don't think you'd be big enough for the job, wee one." The doe curiously tilted its head at her as spoke, gazing up with liquid orbs of dark brown innocence. There was so much of it in this creature-in all the creatures of this forest. How such innocence could thrive in the presence of great evil was beyond even the greatest minds.

She pouted. Did humans ever appreciate nature, the way Elves did? Did humans ever stop to think of the things they consumed in pursuit of their dark magics? No, she was certain they did not. The way they acted was clear sign of recklessness in order to achieve more dangerous power. She would love the chance to see a human try to get up close to a doe like this-an innocent creature like this would smell their vileness from a mile away. They'd clear an entire section of a forest just to keep away from-

The doe was gone. It took her ten seconds to realize that it had vanished in a blur of black and red. It took Rayla five seconds to realize something warm had been sprayed on her face. She ran a few fingers over her face and stared intently at the dark red substance on her fingertips. What was this? It looked...like blood? Crunching and slurping noises drew her attention upward.

A pair of dilated pupils in the center of bloodshot eyes stared down at her and crushed what remained of the doe in a single bite.