The Truest of Dinosaurs
by Javier Pérez Rizo
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
Good heavens! Good luck to me! Well, let's go, then. With a great deal of effort, Robi climbed down from the wall and fell onto the compacted earth, which had the smell of rotten eggs on it. He should've had an excuse when Aydan's mother showed up at their hut. The elegant lady was desperate. She begged on her knees for me to intervene. According to her, Aydan had disappeared through the fog doors, along with a considerable portion of the Falcóndez fortune. They had recently discovered a clue to his whereabouts, but that was all. No one dared to touch the doors of the dreaded Castigo. Except me, who, being a fool, was persuaded.
“I beg you,” pleaded the grieving mother, “you have always been the best of friends. He will listen to you. Tell him we Just want to talk; we won't ask him for a single thing.”
Robi said goodbye to Alicia and the girls. He took a cart up the mountain and luckily found a ranger willing to take him to the spot where the foreigners had been seen.
The causeway was truly a majestic staircase, already dilapidated, broken here and there, revealing the material of the mountain beneath the carved slabs. After half an hour of climbing, he finally reached the first resting place. Someone had arranged a few modest benches, for which Robi was grateful.
As he sat down, he noticed a cracked obelisk of dark mineral on one side of the steps, but there were white masses embedded in the stone that he soon identified. These are bones.Those are real bones, yes, very good. Break time is over. Robi, let's just end this business.
The macabre details multiplied as he climbed. The railings now seemed to be sprayed with a mysterious congealed substance sticky to the touch. Banners frayed by the passage of time waved in the pestilential breeze that blew from cracks in the earth.
Robi smiled as he looked at the bloody scenes on the tapestries. Where the hell have I ended up? His paws clattered on the stairs. Yes, I want you to know that I am here. I do not like surprises. The smell became nauseating. How can they live like this? The answer was a shadow fleetingly hiding behind one of the cliffs, whose walls rose above the stairs. If they start throwing rocks at my head, I will kick them until I am tired. I'm a father with a family to think of. I don't have time for this.
“Greetings, friends. I'm coming to see Aydan! Hello...” he repeated.
No one answered, but he could hear the boots stumping between the shadowy canyons of boulders. Unintelligible voices mingled around him.
“I just want to know if he's here! I don't want any trouble. Do you understand me? Aydan Look, I'm not armed.” Robi tried to stand on his hind legs so they could see he wasn't carrying a weapon, but he almost fell off the stairs. He gave up.
Finally, no one tried to stop him, so he arrived at the threshold of a gigantic cave with double doors mounted on ingenious triangular frames carved into the mountain rock. The guards made themselves known. They had spindly forms and walked on two legs. Yep, those are humans, no doubt about it. Curse them! Their faces were covered by strange helmets with tinted glass visors, and on their belts they wore all sorts of artifacts perfectly fitted to their fine-fingered hands, trembling like worms. If they attack me, I'll take half.
“Hello, how are you? Sorry to bother you. I came all the way here to meet an old friend, Aydan. I'm sure you know him, right?”
The creatures were talking to each other. Their voices were broken and full of clicks that repeated all at once. What kind of magic is this? They all speak the same language, like a chorus of birds in flight.
“Robimán,” one of them snapped, pointing at him with two fingers. “Robimán?” he repeated, sounding like a question, and Robi breathed a sigh of relief for the first time that day.
“Yes, that's right! He called me Robimán when I was young. It was my warrior name. I am Robimán.” Bite your tongue, man, and calm down a bit, do me that favor.
The subject started another series of broken choruses, and the rest of the troop returned to their posts. All humans were lost in the trenches dug on either side of the stairs, except for the one who spoke. The leader pointed to the titanic doors decorated with details of coiled snakes that looked like two pieces of a mirror and were about to attack.
Robi followed this supposed butler, and the two entered a vaulted hall. The daylight faded behind this entrance. The walls rose high and were covered with ancient saurian armor and canvases he had never seen before, with humans also clad in metal and mounted on other four-legged creatures. I do not like this. Without pausing, they passed glass shelves with hideous skeletons exposed to the light of glowing braziers. This seemed to be a museum of mummified remains and pictures of the most horrible freaks the imagination could conceive. They can't be real.
He certainly had no love for humans. Everyone avoided them. It was one thing to maintain cordial relations for the good of both societies and quite another to adopt their barbaric customs. There is no telling what they are capable of. A Saurian would never deceive a fellow human for his own benefit. It had been said that humans were capable of witnessing acts of terrible evil and remaining indifferent. A Saurian would never admit to such an aberration in his life. The purpose of existence is to strive for happiness. The happiness of this place seems different, corrupt. Aydan, what's going on?
“This way,” the stranger pointed, still not showing his face.
Robi was surprised to hear him speak his language so well. The voice was not unpleasant at all. At the end of the hall, they had erected some kind of altar with another of those dark obelisks he had seen before, but this one had carved bat wings and gaping reptile jaws on top. Jagged swords, broken spears and pieces of armor lay at the foot of this column, forming a kind of funeral pyre.
Robi turned to the right without asking the reason for the offerings. The human led him down several corridors that seemed to lead to the back of the fortress. Through half-open doors, Robi counted a large number of humans. In some rooms, they seemed to be busy repairing their equipment. It was full of sparks and colorful veins. From the depths of some narrow staircases came the piercing screams of someone undergoing some sort of martyrdom. Don't react, calm down. The guard looked at him, but Robi looked straight ahead without comment. Finally, they turned into a corridor where a prominent archway with a barred door awaited them. Prisoner; I am not leaving here.
The subject ignored Robi's concern. The iron bars were attached to the ceiling by means of a crank and hidden pulleys. The human pushed open the heavy door, which was wide enough for a dinosaur. Without saying a word, they stepped into the shadows of a cathedral hall. Robi was speechless that something like this could be hidden under the mountain. Only the light of a candle illuminated the silent room. They walked between thick, gray columns that spread their branches to support the roof. The unknown guide's heels clattered until they reached the center of the vast room. It was lit only by a single candle on its tall, gilded stand.
“Who do we have here?” The voice rumbled deep as a horn.
The dim light barely managed to outline the figure that lay among numerous and precarious stacks of books that seemed to be the only thing furnishing the place, aside from a thick, darkly patterned carpet on which the host rested.
“I have brought you an old friend,” whispered the sweet voice of the guard, who had finally removed her helmet. Fine braids of hair broke free in a shower of colored ribbons. A brown face smiled with teeth as white as sugar cubes.
“Ah, the old friend has arrived, and he took his time to get here. I see he has put on some weight. The climb must not have been easy for a dinosaur of his age,” Aydan greeted him from the shadows while closing the large volume he had been reading.
Robi tried to understand what he saw under the dim flame. My eyes must be deceiving me, but without a doubt, it's his voice. “Aydan, I have come because your mother is quite disturbed. You should have seen her. She came to see me in the hut.”
Aydan moved away from the light. “I can't believe that these are your first words after such a long time. Be careful; when I get angry, you won't be able to stop me like before. I have been practicing. Haven't you seen my Pillar of Victories?” Robi remembered the ominous obelisk at the entrance. “Don't make such a face, my friend. I've been busy. It's true that I should have visited the old mansion, but I didn't want to cause any more trouble.”
Trouble? Not at all, his mother would have a heart attack if she saw him. The sinister profile he guessed in the dark sent shivers down his spine. “Let's leave the boring topics. I have great news for you.” He spoke with emotion and paused dramatically. “Drum roll, please.”
The girl made a purring sound and Aydan continued, “My friend, it turns out there is hope for people like us after all, and I found it in the most unexpected of places.” A long, muscular neck emerged from the shadows. The triangular shape of the horned skull swayed back and forth as he spoke, the light brushing only against a sharp beak covered in glittering gold plates.
“Stop all this mystery and spit it out,” the girl scolded and, in the shadows, Aydan shrank back. The girl continued: “We're glad you came, Robi. Aydan told me a lot about you and how you grew up together. When you learn what we have done here, I think you will be very excited.”
I highly doubt it, crazy little girl, Robi thought, trying to keep up appearances and looking for key points in the room in case he had to escape.
“Shut up, Nadia. Don't spoil the surprise.” The woman fixed her rainbow braids and held the dark helm on her hip.
How could he have mistaken her for a man?
“You have nothing to say to me, you miserable bastard,” Aydan urged from the shadows.
“Well, I don't know,” Robi began nervously. “It's just that you vanished, and we never heard from you again. Now I see you here, and I don't know what to think. From what your mother said, I thought something serious was going on. So, I decided to come here myself.”
“Screw you! I mean, if my mother hadn't showered you with tears, you wouldn't have come to see me,” Aydan growled, collapsing two towers of heavy tomes.
“I never received an invitation from you. I didn't even know if you were alive.”
“Shame! Isn't everyone in the entire region talking about me?” Aydan asked, almost yelling and calling echoes back from the ceiling.
“No, at least I haven't heard anything in the village or in my shop.” Why should the whole region be talking about you? What have you done?
“I told you,” Aydan scolded the woman. “I knew we needed better outreach. That's why we get so few applicants.”
“Okay, don't rant. I'll take care of it, but it wouldn't kill you to go out and terrorize one or two villages a week,” Nadia replied to the shadowy monster without a shadow of fear. “The young people would see you, follow you, and you could seize that chance to go see your mother.”
“You know well I have a lot of books to read if we want to keep up with the invasions. The operation hasn't finished paying off yet. We're up to our necks.”
“Yes, enough, you're boring our guest,” Nadia cut him off as ivory saber-like fangs flashed from where Aydan's voice was coming.
Robi was alarmed. What demon is that?
“Right, my apologies. This job can get a little tense. That's why I need you here with me, Robimán,” the threatening figure in the shadows assured him. “I wanted to surprise you. Do you like it?” Shadowy cloaks obscured the view of the columns as Aydan spread his arms and wings around him.
“Wow, they are amazing. I don't know what to say.” I have to get out of here.
“But wait, I haven't made my proposal yet.”
Nadia snorted in amusement at her partner's comment.
Copyright © 2023 by Javier Pérez Rizo
