Chapter 14
I woke up to fingers stroking my face.
I moaned since the fingers felt wonderful, but the sensation was contrasted with the worst headache I’d ever felt. It was like a hangover on steroids, and it felt as if my brain was trying to break out of my skull like a baby dino being birthed from an egg.
“Owwwwwww,” I sighed as I raised my own fingers to my temple. I suspected the person rubbing my face was Galmine, and her gasp of joy confirmed my belief.
“Hurry! Victor is awake!” She shouted, and it felt like someone had just screamed inside a megaphone they had pressed against my eardrum. I groaned with agony, but this also hurt, and my cry turned into a rather unmanly sounding whimper.
It was probably the worst pain I’d ever been in. That wasn’t saying a lot since I’d never suffered from any sort of severe physical trauma, but I also couldn’t imagine a pain more severe than what I was feeling.
But I had work to do, so I needed to get my ass in gear. The fort wasn’t going to get built without my dinos doing the labor, and my dinos weren’t going to work if I wasn’t awake to direct them.
“Did you say he’s awake?” I heard Kacerie say from the direction of my feet, and I pried one of my eyes open. My cornea got a view full of bright fire, and another lance of pain speared through my brain.
“He is,” Galmine whispered. “Can you go get Trel and Sheela?”
“Yep!” Kacerie said, but I couldn’t get my eyes open in time to see her leave.
“What’s happening?” I whispered. My mouth felt like sandpaper, and my throat felt like I hadn’t drunk water in a month.
“We don’t know, but it appears you fainted after the attack,” Galmine said. “Everything is fine though! We are all safe, and your dinosaurs are relaxing outside of our gate.”
“How long have I been out?” I asked.
“Most of the day, you were still breathing, but none of us really knew how your species recovers.”
“Shit,” I said. “We’ve got stuff to do.” I tried to pry my eyes open, but the firelight was still too bright, so I could only get them open for a few seconds before I had to close them again.
“You should just relax,” Galmine said, and her fingers moved to rub my temples. It was the perfect spot, and I let out a loud moan as the pain in my skull began to release.
“He’s awake?” I heard Trel say, and I cracked open my eyes to see the dark-haired woman walk into the hut.
“Hey Trel,” I said, and I felt her clawed hands grasp my left palm.
“I was worried,” she hissed. “You shouldn’t do that to me.”
“I’m alright,” I said. “I dunno what happened. I just felt like shit all of a sudden and then I was laying with my head in Galmine’s lap.”
“You must have overextended your ability,” Sheela said as she stepped into the hut. “It was a difficult battle, yet you got through it without any of your dinosaurs becoming injured.”
“Yeah,” I said. Maybe I should have been happy, and I was, but the pain in my skull was preventing me from feeling anything but the desire to just sleep again. “What is the status of the camp?”
“The logs we pulled inside the camp last night have been burned successfully,” Trel said. “Sheela pulled them out today while you were resting, and we’ve got the next set ready to go when the sun sets.”
“How did you pull the old ones out and bring the new ones in?” I asked.
“Hope let me ride her,” Sheela said. “But she seems very tired now and is resting out with the others. I also believe they need water, but the other dinos don’t seem to be responding to me when I try to ride them.”
“It’s a good thing I’m awake then,” I said as I finally forced my eyes open. “I’ll take them all to get water. They saved our ass this morning.”
“Yeah, but it was because you told them what to do,” Trel said, and she wore a proud smile on her full lips. “I always knew you had great power. I thought so when we first met.”
I laughed a bit as I sat up. The movement made my head hurt more, and I reached for one of our jugs of water. I drank almost the whole jug, and my skull started to feel a little better. The four women all gawked at me when I drank, and I let out a short laugh when I finally lowered the jug from my lips.
“I’ll be okay,” I said. “Just feels like I drank a bottle of vodka and chased it with a kick to the head.”
“What is vod--”
“It’s an alcohol made with potatoes,” I said as I tried to stand. My head spun a bit, but Sheela was instantly by my side, and I leaned up against her shoulder so I could stand.
“Perhaps you should rest more,” she said. “You are obviously not recovered.”
“Do you guys have enough clay to burn the holes in the logs tonight?” I asked, and they all shook their heads.
“So I need to take all the dinos to get water, and we need clay. Do we need to hunt for food also?”
“No,” Sheela said. “I’ve cut some slabs off the large horned dinosaurs that attacked us this morning. We might want to tow the bodies farther away from our camp, but we have food for the next few days.”
“Alright,” I said. “That’s one thing off our plate. Let’s load up the jugs and baskets we need to fill on Bob, and then I’ll make a trip to the lake. Who wants to go with me?”
“I will,” Kacerie, Sheela, and Trel said at once.
“I don’t feel good about leaving Galmine alone,” I said.
“I will be fine, Victor,” she said. “If we close the doors, then nothing can get in to attack us.”
“We just had seven apex predators attack our fort,” I said.
“Yes,” she said with a nod, “but having an extra person, or two, or even ten wouldn’t have helped save our lives. The only thing that saved us was your taming skill.”
“Maybe I should just leave some dinos here to patrol, and then I can make a second trip for water.”
“The sooner you leave the sooner you can return,” Galmine said with her cheerleader smile. “Just hurry back. I’ll tie the gate closed after you leave.”
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s get going. Trel, I’m glad you are coming, because we need to talk about building an aqueduct either from the lake or the river.”
“Hmm, that is an interesting project. It also makes me feel as if I have become a plumber.” The spider woman sighed, and I let out a laugh.
“You aren’t a plumber, Trel. You are a problem solver, and one of our next problems is getting running water to our fort so we don’t have to leave it twice a day.”
“We’ll talk about it more when we get there,” she said, and the five of us walked out of the hut with our baskets and jugs.
The new set of logs were laid out inside of the fort, and I saw that the team had already marked the spots where we needed to burn the holes. I ensured Galmine latched the door closed behind us, and then Trel, Kacerie, Sheela, and I jumped on our dinos. Trel and I rode on Bob, and Sheela and Kacerie rode on Hope. The rest of the dinos followed behind us, and we raced over to the lake valley.
My headache was still pretty brutal, but the fresh air and pace of Bob’s run helped my brain clear a bit. We made it over to the lake without any issue, and we slowed our steeds down by the spot where we normally gathered clay. The only other group of dinosaurs was on the far side of the lake where the parasaurs usually gathered. However, these weren’t parasaurs, they were a pair of giant brontos with necks that stretched up into the sky like roller coaster rides.
We sat on our mounts for a few moments to study the thunder lizards, but the massive creatures didn’t seem to notice us, or they didn’t care, and we soon got to our clay gathering.
“I’d love to tame one of them,” I said as I glanced across the lake. I didn’t feel confident that my Tame skill was strong enough to work on one and messing up would probably mean I’d be flattened into a pancake.