Can we write a story combining dinosaurs like from The Land Before time with the worlbduilding of Game of Thrones?
Let’s find out!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we do a prompt crossing dinosaurs with Game of Thrones
Watch the highlights here or scroll down to see what we wrote.
Here’s what we wrote:
Rexabeth the former tyrannosaurus princess sat at the head of her own miserable wedding. After running away in exile from her own former kingdom, she’d been married off to some savage raptor colony on the other side of the world by her uncle Avunculus. Now, she was sitting at the head of her own ceremony, watching over a feast of messy, uncivilized raptors rip away at the flesh of prey hunted in her and her betrothed’s honor.
Not that her groom was nowhere in sight.
She sat at the giant stump of a long-felled empyrean tree, her uncle on one side and her two raptor servants on the other. They were called micro raptors, or as she referred to them, her “little delectables.” She could easily swallow both of them whole in one bite, a thought that gave her some amount of reassurance as royalty. Even if her father had been slain and her titles stripped from her bloodline, the only way she would ever lose her teeth was when they were pried from her corpse after a bloody battle.
Her wedding meal sat before her, untouched. It was a fresh dimetrodonin head, the warm entrails spilling out of its neck onto the beasts’s own giant dorsal fin that it was served on. She had no appetite.
“You should eat up, princess,” her uncle whispered into her ear with hot breath. “You want to have plenty of energy for tonight.”
Rexabeth grunted in annoyance, but inside she was all cracking eggs. She had only met her husband-to-be once before today, when her uncle had introduced the two of them. He was big for a raptor, at least he came up to her snout, which she was thankful for. Hopefully it would make the consummation process easier, not that she knew much about the details anyway.
Trying to take her mind off it, Rexabeth whispered back to her uncle. “Can’t I just eat half these savages and we set back for home tonight?”
Avunculus snorted and chewed dripping dimetrodonin intestines between his teeth.
“Not yet,” he said. “Before we can take back the throne from the betrayer, we need an army. And these raptors, they’re not the brightest, but they’re hungry. We’ll give them all the prey they want.”
Rexabeth gazed over the wedding feast. Two raptors were clacking fangs at each other over the smallest scrap of hide. Another was burrowing his face deep into the bloody, open belly of a black-and-white Unaysaurus. Were these really going to be the allies that would help her take back her rightful throne?
“All I want,” she said, seething bubbling spit between her clenched teeth, “is to see that anklyosaurus betrayer bleeding and pleading before me for his life. I shall sharpen my teeth so pointed that they will pierce right through his rock-hide armor and straight into his flesh, and I shall throw him off the throne he stole.”
“You will, my princess,” her uncle said. “But we need time. And now, it is time for you to make a very important ally.”
The sound of raptor screeches came from all over as everyone in attendance stopped feasting and thrust their bloody mouths to the sky, howling again and again. It was the same call Rexabeth had heard once before, when she met her betrothed for the first time. It was the entrance call he demanded of all his subjects.
The whole field shook as the cavalry came into view. A dozen brontosaurus, with the biggest and strongest one ridden by her husband-to-be: Laktor.
As he and his comrades rode closer, Rexabeth’s heart raced faster. The moment she’d been pretending to be strong for was coming ever closer, becoming more of a reality. She was strong in battle when the goal was to kill, but had no idea when the goal was to copulate.The cavalry came to a halt outside the ceremony, and the raptor riders leaped off. Laktor had something else with him that two of his riders carried behind, likely a fresh kill for his wife-to-be. But as they got closer, Rexabeth could see it moving. Perhaps it was still alive?
Laktor and his riders stepped past the guests as they bowed before him and clawed onto the top of the holy stump. He clacked up to her on his talons, now towering over her head thanks to the extra height from the stump, and gazed down at her with scaly, slit eyes. He didn’t say a word.
“I present General Laktor!” announced one of the raptor riders. “And his gift that he has brought for his betrothed.”
Laktor stepped aside and let the riders bring the present forward. Rexabeth saw what it was, and she let out a gasp of shock.
It was a human. A live human.
The soft, small creature was letting out high-pitched screams in some unknowable tongue. It struggled against the claws of the raptors holding it, but could not escape. Rexabeth panted in anticipation of such a delicious, rare treat. This human in particular had a plump belly that she was eager to bite into.
“This human is no meal, princess,” the raptor rider said. “This one is with eggs. Three of them, according to our dilophosaurus sage. Acquiring humans at such young age is rare. Perhaps they could be trained to be of some use to you?”
Rexabeth was at a loss for words. Her entire life, from being exiled as a child up to now, had been spent preparing for war. Every day was training for that inevitable battle between her and the betrayer. Everything she had, she’d earned with her own teeth.
To be given a gift, this was a new feeling for her. Something she didn’t have to hunt for, from someone who had so much that they were willing to share. Perhaps these raptors would make good allies after all.
General Laktor turned on his claws and clacked back toward his steed. Rexabeth’s uncle gave her a tap on the back, nudging her to follow along. With the eyes of all the guests on her, including the ones from the now-silent human-beast, she walked to the brontosaurus, and looked up to Laktor, already seated on its back. He made no motion, said no words, but he didn’t need to. Rexabeth straddled the tail of the steed, shimmied her way up its back, and dangled her legs on either side, right behind her soon-to-be husband. The mount let out a cry, but expressed no other discontent at the new weight as Laktor ordered it to turn around and ride away.
The cheers and shrieks from the wedding fading behind her, Rexabeth and Laktor galloped off into the darkness. Their path lit only by the moon, the stars, and the red-eye above. But despite the shadows and towering trees that engulfed them, Rexabeth felt no fear. She could only imagine riding with Laktor toward the castle of her fathers, and the terror that he and his army would impose upon them all. The smile that overtook her took every last tooth she had.
The two of them rode farther than Rexabeth had even known possible. When Laktor finally brought the brontosaurus to a stop, they’d arrived at a lake that shimmered the color of bone and feather. It reflected another sky inside of it, one that rippled with every insect and fish that dared to peek out at the two predators who had arrived.
Laktor leaped down from the back of the steed, and Rexabeth followed suit, slowly stepped down to the soft, grainy soil. Laktor made some kind of cry that his ride understood, and even the mighty brontosaurus disappeared into the darkness of the woods. Rexabeth and Laktor were alone at the watering hole, alone in all the world, it felt.
Rexabeth steeled herself. This was for the good of her family, her country, and herself. She needed to be a strong warrior, not a scared girl.
She prepared for Laktor to attack her, and to fight her instincts to rip him to shreds. She would have to hold back everything she’d taught herself for so many years, and let him win. Hopefully he would be merciful and make it quick.
But he didn’t run at her. Laktor slowly walked into the lake and motioned so subtly with his head for Rexabeth to follow that she wasn’t even sure he’d meant it. She waddled after him, dipping her toes in the lake, then with a few steps more, both of them up to their knees in freshwater.
Something about the coolness of the liquid soothed Rexabeth’s rampaging heart. Laktor continued walking forward, now up to his chest, and Rexabeth followed. When he finally stopped, only his neck and head were visible, and the same went for Rexabeth. They were two heads, floating on the water, the spotlight of the moon right upon them, and the red-eye, ever-growing and ever-watching, twinkling at them.
Under the water, fish swam by Rexabeth’s body, tickling and tingling with their fins. Then she felt a new tingling, one that was slightly sharper and more focused, coming from her front.
It was Laktor, dragging his fingers slowly, sensually across her scales. She couldn’t see it happening, but she could feel it. Something about only experiencing it with one sense made it all the more heightened, all the more pleasurable. It wasn’t just his fingers touching her, it was the entire lake that he controlled, wrapping around her and flowing against every part of her body.
In that moment, Rexabeth wanted to do the same back to him. Using her underwater, invisible fingers, she brushed them against his tough hide for the first time. It was so much harder than she imagined, like scraping against fine stone. The hide of a warrior, being touched by a lover.
Laktor let out a quiet moan, the breeze from his breath rippling across the surface of the silent water. He looked up at Rexabeth and spoke the first words he’d ever said to her.
“Beautiful.”
No longer were their bodies separated by air or by water. They came together as one magnificent beast, two apex predators screaming to the sky as they reaped the pleasures of their greatest hunt yet.
But then the red eye up above grew to its biggest size, and slammed into the Earth, obliterating everyone and everything in a terrible fireball of pain and destruction.
THE END
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Featured image: Pakutaso