Forsaken Fields: Pavia - Searching among the stones

Prompt #3 - Chlorosaurs

Content Warning: There is animal death in the last paragraph. Feel free to skip it.

Keys was getting really tired of the sun. And he didn’t even have relief to look forward to when they went back through the portal because all of his joints would make him regret the day he was ever born, even if he couldn’t remember where and who he was born to. 

Thomas was, as ever, a bit louder when it came to things they disliked. As they came out of the shadow of another spire Thomas huffed, annoyed. “Why has it got to be so hot? This is insane!” 

Keys nodded, trying not to think about the sweat building up in his back brace. Good for support, lovely to look at and all, but it was starting to feel like a death trap. 

Lock gave them a scathing look over her furry shoulder and Thomas laughed nervously. “Right, sorry.”

Lock turned her attention back to the path, walking heavily. As a prizzly bear, she was built to collect warmth in her fur. She desperately wished she had stopped somewhere before they came to this place to get a cooling charm of some kind for herself. 

“Why don’t the two of you make yourselves useful and check these spires here for markings,” she said, wandering over to one of the spires in a cluster. 

Keys nodded. In their search for what had happened to himself and Thomas, they had noticed a strange sort of symbol cropping up here and there. Six markings in the shape of slanting eyes, three in two vertical rows. There had been some evidence in their research that there had been a cult out here with that imagery at one point. 

The cult hadn’t been heard from in quite a while, but it was rumored that they had a lot of their meetings out in the stone spires of Pavia. 

“What do you think the cult was up to?” Thomas asked as they split from Lock to check some more of the spires. 

“I don’t know. Sacrificing things and chanting weird stuff?” Keys asked. “What do cults normally do?”

“I think all that stuff’s out of style these days,” Thomas said. “I hear that the rage among cults these days is to get really excited about the leader and do whatever crazy thing the leader tells them to, and then either the leader dies and they do weird things to the body or the leader declares the time has come and they all kill themselves.”

Keys winced a little. “Yeesh. Not my scene.”

“No,” Thomas agreed. “Unless…. Perhaps I was the cult leader. I might be able to get behind that.”

Keys snorted and elbowed Thomas, rolling his eyes. “You’d make a terrible cult leader.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Thomas replied, getting another snicker out of Keys. 

Thomas started to wander, looking at each of the spires and trying to identify if there were any markings in the old weathered stone. 

Keys was about to do the same when he heard a distressed croak above him. He tilted his head back to see one of the chlorosaurs nesting at the top of the spires flapping its membraned wings. He also saw an egg falling right for his face. He managed to step to the side enough to keep from getting brained by the egg, but the egg shattered on the rock next to him, splattering him in egg juice. 

He yelped, shaking his arm to try and get some of it off as the chlorosaur above him shrieked again. 

He looked up just in time to see the creature’s inky blue eyes lock in on him as Thomas yelled and Lock roared from behind. 

The creature bore down on him, wide wings shading the desert surface and then the wind was knocked out of Keys as the creature scooped him up in its claws. 

He struggled for air as he was lifted up into the sky. 

“KEYS!” Thomas yelled, jumping, and while Key’s felt him grab onto his waist cape, the fabric came untied easily and fell away from him and down onto Thomas. 

Keys cursed the fact that he kept it tied like that to prevent getting caught by it as he finally got his first breath of air back into his lungs. He struggled in the Chlorosaur’s grasp, craning his neck and feeling his stomach drop when he saw how far they were from the ground, Lock running back and forth like she was ready to try and catch him if he dropped. 

He wanted to close his eyes against the view, but he was afraid that he would be dropped and he wanted to be able to see what was going on to try and do something to help himself when that happened. 

The Chlorosaur screeched, pecking at him angrily. He got his one arm over his head to try and protect himself, his other arm trapped firmly against his body as his legs dangled over the abyss below. 

He writhed, trying to get the creature to stop pecking at him. “Stop! I didn’t roll your egg, stupid creature!”

The creature clacked at him, slowing its ascent. 

“No, no, wait! Don’t-”

The creature dropped him. 

Keys screamed as he fell through the air, his good eye watering as the wind whipped up around him. 

He saw the ground approached, but more importantly, the top of a spire approaching with two more Chlorosaurs nested on top. 

He got his hands underneath him, elbows locked straight as he blasted fire from both scarred palms.

The chlorosaurs shrieked in surprised, wide white eyes taking him in before they took off with their eggs clutched to their boney chests. 

Keys managed to slow his fall just enough that he could take a more controlled roll when he hit the top of the spire. 

He scrambled to keep from falling off the shear edge as Thomas and Lock raced over to the spire. 

“Keys, are you okay!?” Thomas called up. 

Keys took a long moment to just breathe, looking up at the chlorosaur that circled above. 

“Yeah. I’m okay. Can you see how I can get down?”

Thomas and Lock stared at the smooth surface of the spire and then shared a look. 

Lock shook her head a little. “I could do something maybe, but I might destabilize the spire entirely. Do you have anything you can do?”

“I can try,” Thomas said doubtfully. “I mean, I can sometimes do this thing with-”

“Help!” Keys yelped. The Chlorosaur was diving for him again, dissatisfied that he wasn’t splattered on the rock. He just barely managed to fend it off with another burst of flames. 

“Hurry!” Lock said to Thomas. 

Thomas gritted his teeth, putting his palms on the stone, trying to get it to form stairs or divots in the spire that Key’s could use to get down, focusing only on that and the weight of Keys’s waist cape he’d thrown over his shoulder. 

There was another screech from the Chlorosaur and Keys yelled down, “Please hurry!”

Thomas growled, his concentration broken and flustered enough that he couldn’t use his tenuous connection with the earth. 

“You’re going to have to do it,” Thomas told Lock. “I can’t.”

Lock sighed. She reached forward and, with one massive paw, scooped out a bit of the spire at the base to create a step as though the ancient stone were soft dirt. However, there was a large portion of the stone around the scoop that had been turned to dirt. 

She looked up at the spire and knew that the scoops wouldn’t make a very good ladder anyways and it would make the spire too unstable. 

“See if you can’t distract that thing and I’ll worry about getting Keys down.”

Thomas nodded and took a couple of steps back before running to the mess of broken egg that still lay puddled on the ground, yelling to get the Chlorosaur’s attention. 

“Yeah! Eyes on me, you flying weed!” Thomas yelled before he stabbed his sword down into the mess of goo and barely formed Chlorosaur baby. 

That definitely got the Chlorosaur’s attention. 

Thomas started running very quickly as Lock leapt up, grabbing onto the spire and climbing up it as quickly as her bear body could take her, her tail swishing in the air behind her. 

Keys, now that he wasn’t being attacked by the chlorosaur, poked his head over the edge to see her, still laying on the ground, afraid to get blown off. 

“I’m coming,” Lock assured him and he nodded, shivering slightly. 

“Do I grab onto your back?” he asked cautiously. He didn’t like the idea of that. What if he slipped over her and fell to the ground? He wasn’t sure he could do the flaming palms trick again. 

“No,” Lock said quickly. “Hold on. Almost there.”

She got to the top and snuffled worriedly at his hair before saying, “Hold very still.”
Keys did so, trusting her implicitly as she opened her mouth, digging her teeth into his back brace so she wouldn’t hurt him as she picked him up. She turned her head so he was hanging over the other side of her arm so she could get back down without scraping him against the rock of the spire. 

Keys wrapped his arms awkwardly around himself, closing his eyes to keep from seeing how far away the ground was. 

She huffed softly at him as she worked her way back down slower than she got up, listening to the screaming creature that Thomas was keeping busy. She could feel Keys trembling and was incredibly grateful he trusted her enough not to thrash or try to grab onto her as she got him down, despite how terrified he was. 

When she reached the ground she hopped down and put Keys gently on the ground, standing over him while he got his bearings in case the Chlorosaur had any more ill intentions. 

Thomas came running back, diving under Lock as well, the Chlorosaur screaming as it followed him. 

Lock bore her teeth and roared, swiping at the winged creature as it dove over them. 

“You alright?” Thomas asked, out of breath and putting a hand on Keys’s shoulder. 

Keys nodded, lifting his head a little. 

“Lock, we should get out of here.”

“I agree,” she snarled. “Hop onto my back and hold on.”

Keys and Thomas rolled out from under her, hopping up and burying their hands in her fur before she took off across the desert sands. 

As soon as they retreated, the Chlorosaur landed on the ground, moving in a rather uncanny fashion as it watched them disappear out of sight around another cluster of spires. 

It sauntered through the stones, finding a spire with a certain set of markings. A dark chuckle echoed through the air as the Chlorosaur slammed its shoulder into the spire. The inky blue color in its eyes and the chuckle disappeared in an instant, leaving a confused Chlorosaur to be crushed under the weight of the toppling pillar.