Brontë didn't dream. Reality was too rooted in the realm of fantasy as it was. Too many stakes and new concepts to grasp with hands outside the physical.
Sleep was a black swim in oceanless waters. Joined by the sounds of a wild land untouched by human modernities.
Things roared back at the clouded sky. At their slain enemies. Tribes traveled and went to war, blowing foul horns and beating flesh stretched drums.
It was a world lost in time.
It was the home of his lineage and future. It was that last portion that had him waking with a start.
Or it was the mannish roar that shook the air in the cave and had everyone up with a start.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
They were up like they'd been that way.
"The hell was that?" Bronte asked as he sat up with the top half of his Storm-wolf suit removed.
"Dads hunting." Laura said with a yawn, "Or fighting. He kind of mixes the activities."
"Fighting what?" Bronte asked.
"It could be anyth—"
Before Laura could finish speaking, a colossal roar caused a minor earthquake in the cave. As rubble and artwork began to fall from the stone walls, Shana and Rien took off in a panic with Shana leading the sprint riding her smilodon.
If something could break the arcane calm of a wild-woman known as the She-Devil, it was a problem. Earth-splitting roars aside.
Brontë suited up and left with the rest of them. He didn't flinch or hesitate when one of Ilyana's portals opened in front of them all as they ran and had them stepping out into the wild beside Shana and Rien.
"Any ideas?" Bronte asked Laura as they ran through the jungles.
"Oh, I'm starting my job as guide now?"
"Yea."
"Well, not the best start. No. No idea. Usually he's just fighting off lurcher-lizards and dinocrocuta packs. You know, scavengers. Or even Savagepool. This is something bigger." Laura said.
And she wasn't wrong at all. It's footsteps radiated through the trees, causing it to rain foul smelling berries and fruits that sent massive bugs flying down with them.
It was chaos.
And the chaos reached a foul crescendo when Bronte's nostrils flared.
He smelled them before he saw them.
Just like before.
They breached the jungle density and found themselves in a clearing made by violence. Blood and entrails collected on jagged tree stumps.
The Hairyass Squadron hauled boulders and spears in massive numbers.
Savagepool stood on a taller tree stump with a feather in hand that he used to direct the wild-mens barrage.
"Hairyasses! Fire on my command!…..ladies, gentlemen, readers, watch closely. You'll quickly find similarities to this battle and one of clawdaddy's most well known. The wolverine is once again fighting an overgrown green monster. Only this time, it's not a virgin with radiation power— SHIT!" Savagepool's psychotic rant was interrupted as the monster swung its barbed tail and sent splinters of wood flying at them all.
Savagepool took cover behind the tree stump and waved his feather, "FIRE YOU MUSTY CROMAGNONS! FIRE!"
Silence.
Brontë looked to his left— where Savagepool and the Hairyass Squadron were waiting. Now it was only Savagepool. His wild-men allies were all skewered by giant slivers of wood or outright exploded from the force.
Savagepool groaned, "you…..BASTARD!"
He charged the beast. Running to join Logan as he faced off with a giant. A dinosaur with thick double scaling, massive footed back legs and forelimbs that held the mold of monkey arms. Ropes of muscles twitched and jumped causing the armored skin to ripple in slow motion. It almost looked like a t-Rex. But it had wings and a rhino-horn.
"I'LL KILL YOU, DRACO-REX!" Savagepool unsheathed a bone sword from his back and moved to run past Logan.
Logan popped his claws and sliced off Savagepools head without breaking contact with the Draco-Rex.
Junior gasped.
The two wild predators moved on their own timing— faster than any of them could have percieved with an entirely untamed intensity.
The Draco-Rex opened its jaws and roared a torrent of blue fire.
Logan jumped straight into its mouth, disappearing behind its triple row of teeth as the Dino snapped its jaws shut.
Before any of them could assume the worst, they had a massive wave of scalding blue fire to worry about.
Ilyana teleported everyone back a few hundred feet. Brontë remained, turning the flame into spinning steam clouds as he met the blast with iced force winds.
He charged through the smoke screen with an arm spinning with ice shards and killer winds.
The Draco-Rex had the same attack plan in mind.
The earth rumbled as it charged him through the steam waves. Its jaws snapped and it's jagged fists reached for him.
The familiarity of battle called to him. He focused on it as he dodged its fists and slashes on ridden winds. He focused so he wouldn't consider that his sisters just lost their father the day after they met him.
As he slipped past the feral blows of the dinosaur, he blasted into the air. At the same time, he explosive sheets of ice spread across the grounds in his wake.
He rose up from the smokey clearing. At the same time, the Draco-Rex flapped its massive dragon wings and cleared the steam.
The two faced eachother for a moment before Bronte dove past its face.
He lunged with his only arm, shrouded in an ice shard tornado and stabbed the barbed tail of the beast.
Back when he was with Laura and the others, he was always tasked with dismantling weapons. Evening the playing field. Or destroying it.
The second his claws bit past the scales of the Draco-Rex and stabbed its tail, it flash froze from the inside and became encased in ice.
The Draco-Rex flapped its wings to try and swat him away but Bronte was already flying into the air.
Once he was high enough, he took a deep breath.
A powerful breath that ruptured and vortexed the winds for miles, causing birds to fly backward and weaker uprooted trees to rip out of the ground.
The accents of his suit turned white as it harnessed and controlled the winds.
He exhaled and spit a pressured bullet of wind.
It blasted through the air and hit the Draco-Rex's tail, blowing the whole thing to frozen pieces.
The Draco-Rex snarled and stumbled forward.
Then its tail regrew.
"I hate lizards." Bronte said before flying back to the ground to rejoin his family.
"What happened?"
Brontë kept out a certain bit, "That thing is strong as hell. I damn near threw out my shoulder stabbing it."
"The nutrient density, air quality and abundance of iron here makes everything basically super-human. Sorry I'm new to being a guide. Anyway, where's Log—"
The Draco-Rex roared and leveled the jungles.
Brontë protected them with a wind bubble.
Junior transformed into Mend as his symbiote suit took him over. "Time to get active, unc?!" His sigils glowed with elemental wind-rider magic.
The Draco-Rex stumbled forward and shook.
They braced themselves.
Brontë squinted, "Hold on…."
Three claws ripped through its forehead, forming a jagged open slash, followed by another three and an opposite slashing motion.
Suddenly a gruesome x was carved from the inside of its head.
The Draco-Rex's eyes went blank as a fur-covered beast-foot kicked through its skull.
It fell to the ground with a massive thud and out stepped the primal wolverine. A lupine beast with claws, fangs, fur and ferocity in limitless quantities.
Bits of brain and skull dripped off of him in red slime giblets.
He stomped his foot on its snout— staking the monster as beneath him, and let out a deafening roar.
"No need." Bronte replied.