"Whiteclaw?"

My soft roar echoed for miles around, lasting many minutes before subducting into nothingness. I lifted my eyes up towards the impending sky, then glanced all around.

It was all just darkness. Just eternal darkness, all around, swallowing me whole, without a light or anything beautiful.

It reminded me of breathable tar, silent and deadly, and hot with free-flowing streams all around. Beneath my clawed feet was fresh water, which I drank when I first arrived, quenching my painful thirst that's been lasting for days. My feet shook the earth as I walked, and splatters of water splashed on my ankles and turned my dusted claws black with a beauty shine. The air was moist and cold, and only the sound of rushing water between my toes echoed for what seemed like miles around.

"Don't be afraid," I said to myself, "Don't be afraid." I heard a noise and spun around, with wide eyes and alert muscles, twitched on each step. The ground beneath me shook at some points, which did tell me that the outside world was falling into some earthquakes.

My snout went up as my eyes closed, and sinking my mind into the atmosphere above, I inhaled as much scents as I can, trying to depict the ones that mattered, with the ones that were pointless. One came up in my mind, a scent I thought I've forgotten, and my eyes popped open in relief and horror.

"Whiteclaw!" I almost squeaked. I gaped my mouth open to taste the albino Deinonychus's scent, and tracking it down with a heart full of pride and reunion, swiftly stomped my way through the eternal darkness.

I perhaps walked through many minutes, before the first sign of something flooded into my retina and shrunk my pupils. I mistook them for fireflies at first, but when I glanced closer, they were actually floating pieces of fiery ash and rubble.

And they all floated towards me like a small cloud, rubbing upon my scales and finding its way to lay waste on my boned spine. They all came through a bright door, which flicked on and off with light, and metal rained down from above. The doorway was low, so I "had to crouch low in a hunter's stance, taking cautious steps towards the place.

"Whiteclaw..." I silently hissed, moving my body through the hole in the darkness, then opening up my body into actual light. And when my eyes finally adjusted into the discoloration of the dark world behind me, they swallowed in the sight of a broken room. Rocks laid everywhere, along with this prickly-material, clear like water, but see -through and sharp on the ground. Fire raged everywhere, melting metal and other fabris, some in which were just burning just because. I followed the scent around for a few minutes, then found myself bumping my nozzle onto some pile of rocks. That's where the scent led. I opened my jaws, grabbing a chuck load of distasteful rocks, then spat them out as I closed in to the rubble.

And found something truly terrifying.

"Whiteclaw's blood," I whispered, pressing my snout into the red liquid. It had his sour-sweet scent, his texture, and a few pieces of his scales littered there. I raised my head, suddenly spotting a new trail of his blood leading into a darker, but not really seeable, hallway on the wall of the room. My jaws gaped as I saw the dark exit, and I had to gulp before proceeding towards the unknown before me. I twisted my head around, glancing at the destroyed room, then quietly followed the pathway towards these moving doors, that bounced creepily on the torn-down walls. I slipped my head underneath the ceiling of it, then allowed my tail to slid upon its top to the opening outside.

Strangely enough, I still felt the blood stick upon my feet, and with a sigh I trudged on, sniffing the trail and following it only using my sniffer and sense of touch. My claws dragged themselves across the flat floor as I walked, turning red with the trail, until eventually, the scent snagged onto my nostrils, stronger than ever.

I was close.

In fact, I was there.

On another twisting turn after almost losing the path, I lifted my head up at a dim light in the distance. Like moonlight from above. As I glanced around, trees on fire sprung up out of nowhere, blazing hot and glaring down upon my soul like demons from hell. Though strangely enough, no smoke cloudy the sky. It was clear as daylight. I moved forwards through the burning forest, feeling the heat scorch my scales and tear up my eyes.

It was only one turn later when a body laying in the clearing opened up in my eyes. The dinosaur was red all over, some with white scaled portion showing out.........wait.

That white part was its skin.

That was Whiteclaw!

"Oh my..." I trailed off with a widened mouth hanging open as fear settled into my gut and onto my friend. The red coloring was actual his blood, and the blackened parts were his partially healing wounds. He looked as if he got ripped apart literally, or as if some firestorm disintegrated most of him.

I couldn't even tell if that was him on the first initial glance.

His body laid on the side, jaws open as if about to roar, and eyelids half-open. His tail curled around, broken and dead, while his belly was exposed, showing tons of flesh and bone.

The sight itself made me almost puke, and I backed up into a tree in terror to grab some air before I could even hyperventilate.

He was really dead.

He was really dead...

"Oh Whiteclaw," I wept, "What have we've done?"

"Actually," A voice hissed on the outside of my ears, "You've all done a lot. For all of us."

A Deinonychus-shaped shadow or evil of some sort broke away from the darkness in the forest, grinning evilly, eyes bright red and locked upon me. I breathed hard once, snorting in anger as I stared at him.

Whiteclaw's blood was on his claws.

"What are you..."

He looked so much like Whiteclaw...

"You don't remember me?" The shadow sounded surprised, "I thought you'd be smarter than Whiteclaw, not so clueless as-"

"I don't know you, nor do I care."

The shadow narrowed his eyes.

"Aren't you afraid of me youngling?" It asked next. I shook my head.

"Why not? Surely you're not as dumb as-"

"In fact, I'm going to rip you apart for what you did to Whiteclaw," I snarled, bending my knees into a stance. I let out a little roar at the Deinonychus, lifting my tail high like how Whiteclaw once did, and moved slowly to him.

"Now Shadow-"

"I'm going to freaking KILL YOU!" I half-wept, half-growled, and I could tell as each of my footsteps shook the earth, he grew more and more nervous and angered. I let out another powerful roar, edging closer for the kill.

Then I lunged, widening my mouth for a bite force more powerful than I could ever imagine. But when my jaws crashed shut upon each other, which quaked my mouth, the shadow was gone. Moreso, I never actually got it, which felt like it was way beyond impossible to get away with.

"You know when you're afraid of something," the shadow's voice sounded behind me as I turned around, "Sometimes it could feel....almost too real....to oneself."

"What do you know about fear?" I growled, "What do you even know about me?"

"More than you think."

"You're just a clock," I shook my head, "You're just a wall in a cave."

"No..." The shadow smiled, "I am fear. And I know exactly what you're most afraid of."

Before my eyes, his body began to warp around like a weak tornado, forming and changing into something bigger than my own self. His height rose higher than an adult's size, and slowly, the blackened smoke around him interchanged and swirled into an arm, into a tail, into a snout, into teeth. My eyes widened as the sharp of a T-Rex filled my eyes, then flashed colors of tan and light brown. And when the body was complete, my heart ultimately froze.

"The truth hurts, doesn't it Shadow?" A bloody Lily whispered.

My eyes widened with pure horror, while at the same time, my jaws dropped open and my stomach did a flip inside. She stood tall, but her broken body and bloody exterior looked as if I was staring at a carcass, a T-Rex carcass.

"No....NO!" I felt tears spring into my face as I saw my dead mother glance back at me, as if staring at a devilish demon.

"Come to me Shadow," She whispered, motioning her head over to me with a calm voice of butterflies, "You don't have to be afraid anymore..." I stared at her body, trembling violently, then spoke quietly out of the goodness of my heart.

"I would have anything in the world to see you again mom," I whispered, "Anything to be with you.....but..." I took a step back with a choking voice of heartbroken terror, "You're not her."

"Shadow please....I'm your mother..." She took a step forwards to me with a slight grin.

"You're lying...!" I sobbed, backing up, "You're not Lily...."

"Ah....you are scared...."

Lily put her tiny arms down, and her eyes suddenly went black with a red dot in the middle. Her voice went from calming to painful, and a hum of anger streamed from her nostrils as the shadow spoke towards me.

"Oh Shadow.....haven't you learned about love?.....Perhaps, you should listen to YOUR MOTHER!!" She inhaled hard for a second, then let out a powerful roar, louder and stronger than anything else. The fire on the trees around me suddenly sprang away from its roots, and before I knew it, a newborn firestorm rushed at me from the sides of the shadow.

There was no avoiding it.

I felt a splash of the fire slam into my noggin, throwing my head down close to a whiplash, then pain burn through my body, like slitting a piece of melted metal through my organs. The sickly sweet aroma of chard flesh flew into the air, when I realized that I was literally getting burned. As the pain increased, I let out a horrible scream, feeling the side of my face melt away. I tried to hold my ground, but the force only pushed me further back, making my clawed feet slide in the dirt.

A huge fireball of heat struck me a few seconds after, and my feet left the floor in a matter of seconds. My body got thrown backwards into a bunch of other trees, then crashed all over the place, before rolling to a stop on the forest floor. I shook as my screams continued, and my vision blurred everything around me. The fire stopped flowing a few seconds later, and all I could see was smoke and steam uplift from my body. Half of it was blacker than dried lava, pieces of my scales and flesh ripped away to reveal my bone. Every movement I created was like being electrocuted and melted at the same time. I cried for so long, so much that I even believed that I ran out of tears. I tried to stand again, wincing as melted iron flooded through my veins, and only rolled over a bit to my side. I felt the ground shake when I finally made it to my wobbly feet, but even so, I had no chance to see what had come. The shadow's T-Rex body struck me by the belly, off my feet, and watched as I collided into the ground with another earth shaking smash.

I couldn't get up anymore.

The ground shook again with each footstep of the shadow, following up by a crushing stomp on my hip by his foot. I screeched on the ground, breathing harder and harder as my vision went even blurrier. He went for a first attack at my neck with a black and bloody jaw, but with a jerk of my head, I actually managed to strike his head. The shadow gasped as he fell backwards a bit, then growled me.

"So you want to fight back...." He sneered, then stomped over to my still smoking body, snatching me by the vertebrae. I couldn't do anything to fight back now, since my body left the floor seconds earlier after his pick-up. The ground swayed as he walked forwards, crushing my spine with fury as he dragged my tail around. I was in so much pain, so much that I couldn't move or breathe.

"This is what pain feels like Tyrannosaur...!" His voice rasped as he took two strong front steps. Then suddenly, I felt the world swing around me, and my body slipped out of his jaws. At first, I didn't know what he actually did, until suddenly, the left side of my body slapped into a huge wall of rock with enough force to knock out all of your teeth. My body literally quaked in mid-air, and pain sliced my body in half, tearing my muscles apart as I fell, tail following slowly behind. I landed on my back, completely silent and motionless.

I couldn't move at all...

Stars clouded my vision as I tried to see, but all I kept seeing was the shadow of my mother's side snatching me up from the earth to slam me into the wall again.

The second strike was like being stabbed by a Three-Horn.

The third was like liquid metal rushing in my veins.

And the fourth I thought shattered my skull.

On his last one, the pain was beyond extreme, and at that moment, I couldn't feel or see anymore, nor could I fight back. My body thumped onto the ground like a piece of dead meat, and my tail was the last to wobble to a stop, limb and motionless.

Then all went silent.

Through my weakly opened eyes, I could see him plant his foot into my hip, then draw a line of blood from the flesh. But I felt nothing.

No....I can't be....

"That's two down," He hissed in the distance, "And that was way too easy."

I died!....I began to cry in my thoughts, No....

My body began to get dragged on the earth by his teeth (by my tail), and as the area began to vanish with all the smoke and fire, I found myself in the darkness again with the cold slightly-deep water beneath me. It turned red when my vision lowered through my eyes, flowing down to watch, which I could guess was my or Whiteclaw's blood, to whom he carried over as well. He let go of his tail, then slowly walked off.

And then I realized that the darkness was swallowing me whole.

NO! I roared in my mind, Don't leave me in here!

With a small snort of darkness, the presence of the creature moved away into the blackness of the horizon, gone from my view.

And then it was quiet.

Deathly quiet.