Britannia Unleashed

Temporalis-7

PREHISTORY BITESHe sweltered, but Belvedere refused to remove anything other than his jacket; it wasn’t the done thing. His one concession, rolling up his shirt sleeves after first checking nobody was around to witness it — old habits and all that.

He scampered through the trees, more squirrel than man, making great haste. Not that Belvedere needed to move fast, he was, after all, moving within the confines of a dream, albeit a hot and sweaty one, more that it was just his way. He had always been a man of progression, a leap before you look kind of fellow. He knew nothing else.

So it was, our hero followed the broken path of whatever beast had forged it. The destruction headed in the general direction of the gleaming spire he had spied and that was good enough for him. Plus, although he would not care to admit it, the odd flashes of daylight the damage afforded held a certain reassurance in a world otherwise black as pitch. However, Belvedere was no fool and made certain to remain within the confines of the absolute shade. One look to the mighty-sized footprints made quite sure of that.

He made good time in his arboreal pursuit, or so he thought, for it was hard to judge time when the light remained constant — a salient detail he’d noted but not addressed. Neither did the absolute silence help his judgement in such things. This continued absence of further life was suspicious. Belvedere had thoroughly expected a world of monstrous noises, bellows, guttural growls, and the like, but there was nothing. It was a most unusual sensation for a man who’d been brought up with birdsong, then later gunfire, to hear nothing. Even the mosquitos, or whatever they’d been, were absent from the place. The jungle was barren of life, or life chose to remain hidden?

The thought of hidden beasts of any size let alone gigantic ones caused Belvedere to pause, his fingers busy at the blue phial again. He had always been a bit of a twitcher, the product of a restless mind, and decided it best he tucked both the phial and the chain it hung from back within the confines of his shirt.

“Hmm,” he mused. “I think you’d best stay under lock and key my little, blue trinket. You’re my ticket out of this strange world if anything, well, er, unusual should happen.” The irony of his pause was not lost on him, neither was the sound that came next.

“Arrooaargggh!”

“Gadzooks! That sounded a little too close for comfort.” Belvedere pressed back against a tree trunk’s solid girth. There he stood stock-still, listening. “Oh, for God’s sake man, you won’t get anywhere lurking like this.” He chastised himself thoroughly, the sound of his own voice a slight placebo in the situation. A quick scan of the surroundings, for what good it did, and he pushed back off in the same direction as the savage sound.