Shadow of the Crimson Shield
The midnight air over the semi-arid plains was heavy with mist, but Braska stood unmoving, a 6.5-ton fortress of living bone and muscle.At twenty-eight years old, the veteran female Ankylosaurus knew every sound of the forest edge. She kept her low, massive 1.6-meter-tall body positioned firmly on the perimeter of the clearing. Behind her, hidden safely in the shadow of a shallow dirt scrape they had dug earlier, the rest of her small herd was resting. She could hear the faint, slow breathing of her lighter-colored sister, Kora, and the old, weathered matriarch, Vur. Even Tesk, the impulsive juvenile, was uncharacteristically quiet, tucked safely into the center of their defensive circle.Braska raised her wedge-shaped head, the pale moonlight catching the deep charcoal-grey of her dorsal osteoderms. The intense crimson pigment around her eyes and blunt keratin beak flushed bright with circulating blood as her senses heightened. She smelled the damp ferns and cycads they had eaten at dusk, but beneath that familiar scent, the air carried something else. A predator was moving through the thick jungle brush.She didn't retreat. Her duty was to shield the pack.Digging her sand-colored limbs deep into the soft riverbank soil, Braska lowered her front shoulders. Her long tail, tipped with a massive, bone-crushing club, lifted slightly off the ground. She began a slow, calculated side-to-side sway, ready to unleash a devastating lateral sweep that would easily fracture the legs of any carnivore foolish enough to step into the light.A low, territorial rumble vibrated through her leathery underbelly—a warning from the Crimson Shield that her perimeter would not be breached.