"The Great King of the Forest?" Roland wasn't the type to take an interest in mythology, but he knew that legends were often the result of actual sightings. And the creature embroidered in front of him was too detailed to be fictional, even though the canvas was still incomplete.
This, combined with the footprints they had found next to the mamenchisaur's body and the fact that Sisna had said they had recently encountered the creature, raised doubts in Roland that they were facing an entirely new species.
“It certainly has a high-sounding name. 'Great king'… I guess it's pretty pumped up" Ian said, making Sarah disapprove of him wholeheartedly.
"Nick, ask her to describe it to you" the woman told the photographer. He promptly executed.
Neytiri shrugged: “I didn't see it, but the guards described it to me eagerly. It is large, much larger than any other creature, and has giant claws and teeth. It moves with majesty, it can swim and walk,
Sobek watched closely as the humans dragged some crates ashore and established a base camp. He had no reason to be afraid: thanks to [Ambush] not even a thermal sensor could detect him.He noticed that humans weren't alone. Among them were some individuals with red hair who were undoubtedly Neanderthals. 'I guess they recruited them to guide them… after all these lands are almost unexplored from their point of view' he thought.His eyes fell on Ian Malcolm and his companions. He still couldn't bring himself to have met people so familiar to him. God had really played a good trick on him.However, what he wanted to know was their offensive potential. He counted one hundred men and at least double the number of weapons. Fortunately, there were no missile launchers or bazookas: they were all weapons designed to not raze a piece of forest to the ground. The maximum available was a few machine guns.After all, it would have been foolish for humans to de
The huge creature was lying on its stomach, its head slightly raised thanks to a rock. The sail soared towards the canopies of the trees and the legs were slightly tucked under the body. Sarah couldn't believe what she was looking at. She took off her sunglasses with shaking hands, making sure she wasn't hallucinating. That dinosaur was too big! A tyrannosaurus measured up to 13 meters. A megalodon could reach 16 meters, or even 18. The basilosaurus even reached 20. But this animal surpassed them all by far! At first glance, it was about the size of a blue whale! "This is beyond any known conception" Eddie whispered beside her. The man had recovered faster. Behind them, Nick were starting to take pictures. Ian, for his part, didn't seem calm at all. "We have to get out of here" he whispered. "If it wakes up we're screwed!" But no one was listening to him. Even the Neanderthals had remained motionless and seemed unable to move. Neytiri was trying to recover, but it was impossible
The huge beast stood up on its hind legs rising to its full height. It was nearly ten meters tall and its skull alone was three times the size of Sarah. If it wanted, it could have crushed her like a bread stick. "Shoot it now!" Ian yelled at Roland. The hunter didn't hesitate and quickly pulled the trigger followed by his men. The darts crossed the clearing in a split second and hit the dinosaur's skin. Normally they would have had to stick deeply and would have had to narcotize the beast instantly. Instead they bounced off its skin as if they had hit a granite wall and fell to the ground useless. The dinosaur didn't even seem to have noticed them. It lowered its head to Sarah and let out a snort. Sarah didn't move a single muscle. Despite her fear, she still managed to think clearly. She knew that if she ran away the predator moved by its instinct would chase her; in that case she would have had no chance of escape. She had to wait until it lost interest in her on its own. The di
A group of alamosaurs were grazing quietly in the middle of the forest. The herd was quite large: making an approximate hypothesis, one could safely admit that there were at least a hundred of them.Such a pack ate disproportionate amounts of food, clearing large acres of forest at very high speed. Wherever they went, the green foliage of the trees gave way to bare branches. The alamosaurs had to eat around one ton of food each day to support their mass of over seventy tons of weight.While a hundred alamosaurs might seem like a lot, they weren't even remotely close to a real herd. Some groups of sauropods could have numbered thousands of individuals. Such herds of giant herbivores could clear entire acres of forest in a matter of hours.Such large herds were also possible on Mesozoic Earth, although they were much rarer. But on Eden, which possessed an infinitely larger amount of land and thus much larger food sources, herds of thousands of sauropods, including
Jocelyne didn't know what else think, except that the hall she had just entered was extremely beautiful.It was a huge room, made of gold and white marble, with beautiful chandeliers encrusted with diamonds and sapphires. All the people inside were dressed in sumptuous and magnificent clothes. She felt like she had just entered a fairy tale palace.The only strange thing was that all the people inside the hall were masked. None of them had their faces uncovered. They were beautiful masks, of course, but it almost seemed that people wanted to hide their true identities. The women all wore the mask of a doll, some resembling porcelain dolls, some rags, some plastic, but all beautiful beyond measure. Men, on the contrary, had a mask that vaguely resembled an animal, while some even had one that even resembled a demon. Those with the demon mask, in particular, were the most beautiful of all and dressed in the most beautiful clothes.The only exceptions were her and
When Sarah and Ian came out of their cabin they noticed that Roland's men were already in action: they were dragging numerous crates under the controls of their leader. Nick seemed to be in a nervous breakdown as he yelled at the hunter and Eddie tried in vain to mediate between the two."What happens?" Sarah asked the photographer.Nick gritted his teeth. “Isn't it obvious? The bastard wants to go catch that dinosaur""What? Did you go crazy by chance?" Ian exclaimed stepping forward. "You have seen with your own eyes that bullets do nothing to it!""Exactly. For this we will resort to a trick. It may be invulnerable from the outside, but inside it is made of flesh like all of us" replied Roland showing the contents of a crate. Looking inside, the four saw kilos and kilos of frozen meat.Nick was the first to understand. "Do you want to put the narcotic in the food""Exactly. After it has eaten it will go down like a stockfish. There
"Damn..." Eddie murmured. "That son of a bitch really caught it"Ian swallowed. Seen up close, the dinosaur's gigantic body looked even more huge. "It can't go out, right?" he asked in a whisper to one of the guards.The man laughed. "Unless it can cut reinforced steel, I highly doubt it" he said. “Anyway, now it's sedated. You can approach safely"Sarah obviously didn't think twice. In a few moments she was next to the dinosaur's body and was already touching the huge abdomen. "No feathers" she whispered to himself. "Except for a small group of quills on the neck and head. More evidence of probable evolution from an aquatic dinosaur..."Ian couldn't understand how his girlfriend could be so casual. He was literally shitting himself. The giant dinosaur scared him quite a bit. Maybe it was because of his past trauma at Mega Beast Park… but the professor Malcolm felt it wasn't the case. It was as if his one was an instinct. He had the impressio
That night wasn't very pleasant: around two o'clock of morning a deafening noise had woken the entire ship. The dinosaur had awakened and started fidgeting like a madman in its cage. Many attempts to calm it down had been unsuccessful and eventually Roland had drugged it again. That event clearly didn't help morale on board. Not only did Nick, Sarah, Ian and Eddie become even more hostile to the idea of taking the animal away, but Roland himself became worried: if he couldn't find a way to calm the dinosaur he couldn't feed it, which meant risking its death. For this he had accelerated operations to the maximum. The next day the camp was completely dismantled and the ship began its return voyage. The situation didn't improve in the following days: every time the dinosaur woke up it would shake like a madman and desperately try to break the cage. Roland had been forced to sedate it continuously. Fortunately, after three days, probably due to the constant narcotics and the absence o