Page 57 of Caveman Alien's Terror

“You think I need thehelpof a small female like you?!” he sputters.

“I know you don’t need it,” I say as soothingly as I can as I lightly put my hand on his spiky forearm. “But it would be the easiest way. And it might be possible for us to stay together. What if youhad the help of the tribes to look for gold? What if hundreds or thousands of cavemen were helping you?”

Praxigor pulls his arm away from me. “You keep calling them ‘cavemen’ and ‘tribes’. I told you, they aredragon slayers. That is why they exist. They live only to kill dragons like me. I am now in the most helpless state, an easy target. An alien woman half their size is not going to stop them from doing what every fiber of their being is screaming at them to do! Listen! Can you hear them coming? Can you hear them making as much noise as they can, driving me ahead of them? Does that sound like someone who’d just give up when they finally find their prey?”

He has a point. I can’t be sure I’d be able to stop these guys from killing him. If it was the Borok tribe, I probably could. Or the Tretter tribe. Or maybe even the Krast tribe. But I don’t know who these guys are.

“Can you,” I suggest, “move faster than they can sense, run past them and see what color their stripes are? And then come back here?”

“That sounds like something a lesser creature would do,” he sneers. “Checking if the enemy is too strong to fight? And if so, tiptoe away into the pale, safe shadows of cowardice? You can just say it as it is, female. Those are your friends, and you’re worried I’ll destroy them!”

I shake my head. “That’s not it at?—”

I’m interrupted by a loud yell of triumph from the edge of the jungle. A white-striped caveman has stopped and is pointing his sword at Praxigor. “Thereeeee! Dragooooon!”

The drums speed up and become thunderous.

Many other cavemen come into view, warriors running with shiny swords in their hands. There’s hundreds of them, from several tribes. I even spot some with yellow stripes. “Those are the Borok tribe! Come on, Praxigor! Give me a chance!”

“You want them to kill me!” he snarls, a crazy sheen in his eyes. I swear they’re going fully green. “You wanted this! You’ve been slowing me down so the slayers would have time to gather and hunt me! ‘Let’s be friends,’ you said. But those are yourrealfriends. You will leave me to join them, and then have them try to kill me!”

“No!” I yell, turning to face him full on. “That’s not it!”

He turns on his heels and unsteadily walks onto the rope bridge. “But Praxigor isn’t the one who is left. Praxigor is the one wholeaves!”

The bridge shakes and creaks from his movements.

I grab onto the two handhold ropes as I step onto the bridge, too. “I’ll come with you.”

He stiffens, ignoring me as he spots something.

“Praxigor the Devious!”comes a call from the other side of the canyon. “Chief! We found the Ceremat tribe!”

It’s the three outcasts Praxigor called his lackeys. They’ve come out of the jungle on the other side and are standing by the rope bridge, eagerly waving him across.

“Is there a woman?!” the dragon yells over to them.

Outcast Tarat’ex puts his hands in front of his mouth like a trumpet so he’ll be heard over the noise of the approaching cavemen. “There is, Chief! Come and we shall take you there!”

Praxigor turns to me, making the rope bridge sway and creak. “Did you hear it? There’s a woman! Soon I shall have both her and her gold!” He has an ugly grin on his face.

I hang onto the rough ropes for dear life. “That must be Cora! I have to see her!”

His eyes are like emeralds, hard and bright green, the color of envy. “Perhaps she won’t betray me. Stay here with your real friends!”

Risking my life, I take one hand off the rope and try to grab his. “I must come with you!”

“I am leaving you,” Praxigor says as he takes hold of me and lifts me up, ripping the rope out of my clenched hand.

I scream as he lifts me higher, ready to throw me into the chasm. I still can’t see the bottom of it.

“I’m leavingyou,” he says again as he tosses me back to the edge of the canyon. “So you can’t leaveme!”

“Oof!”I nearly get the wind knocked out of me as I land on the rock. Scrambling to my feet, I want to run after him. But he’s already on the other side of the bridge, climbing the last few feet, where the outcasts grab him and pull him up. He roughly shakes them off him and rips the anchoring ropes and sticks out of the ground, tossing his whole side of the bridge into the chasm.

The limp chaos of ropes is now only anchored on my side of the canyon. It falls until it slaps heavily against this side of the canyon, broken and useless.

The dragon turns and walks into the jungle.

---