Mojo – Tyrant King Press

[Fiction] The Beasts of Kulig County, Chapter 10

Dawn crept across the Samara as the remaining tawala lifted his head and yawned, his breath steaming in the cold morning air. He stood then, stretching muscles stiff from sleep, and took in the morning’s scents. There was a herd of grazers not too far away, but they were prickly and aggressive, not worth the risk. There were other animals even closer in the other direction, but with their thick armor and clubbed tails they definitely weren’t worth messing with. There was something promising intermingled with their scent though, and the giant groundbird strode off to investigate.

[Fiction] The Beasts of Kulig County, Chapter 9

Maggie brought the helicopter up, hoping to lessen the chances of spooking the tawala by being farther overhead. “I’d hate to be whatever that thing’s after,” she said. She glanced over at Gregory; he was watching the giant groundbird intently with wide eyes. Mixed with his look of awe was one of fear, and she couldn’t blame him. Even though she knew they were safe up here from that giant, it was still hard not to be a little frightened. She supposed it was an instinctual reaction, left over from when their distant ancestors were still getting the hang of tool use. She wondered what the animal was after, anyway. Whatever it was it was evidently obscured by the trees, because she couldn’t see it from their vantage point.

[Fiction] The Beasts of Kulig County, Chapter 8

As usual, Gina awoke moments before her alarm clock and shut it off before it could sound. With a low groan she rolled over, burrowing deeper beneath the covers. A cold breeze drifted in through the open window, finding its way under the blanket and raising goosebumps on her skin. She didn’t want to get up. It was warm and comfortable in her bed, as it so often was when she had to leave it. Gina shut her eyes and pulled the blanket up around her chin, taking comfort in the familiar smell of her bedding. Given her druthers, she would probably prefer to spend this morning in bed, quietly dozing until the sun was higher and it was comfortably hot outside.

[Fiction] The Beasts of Kulig County, Chapter 7

Gina gunned the engine and twisted the handlebars, barely evading the long, ridged nasal horn of the bull hudu. The Styracosaurus continued to pursue her for a ways, but soon turned back to his herd with one last threatening bellow. Gina laughed to herself as she left the animals behind, heading for the dubious shade of a thicket of slash pines and saw palmettos. A small flock of hypsilophodonts fled the sound of her motorbike, pronking as they ran. She sat on her bike and watched them for a moment before unclipping her canteen from her belt and taking a drink.

[Fiction] The Beasts of Kulig County, Chapter 5

The sun wasn’t up yet, but the birds were already beginning to sing in the trees when Justin Case’s SUV pulled up in front of Gina’s house. The houses and trees of the neighborhood were silhouetted against the indigo sky, as it slowly faded to a lighter blue in the west. Gina shivered in the pre-dawn chill as she stepped off the front walk and crossed the front lawn.

[Fiction] The Beasts of Kulig County, Chapter 4

Gina didn’t remember much of what had happened after her jeep had gone into the ditch, but according to the doctor currently shining a light in her eyes she had been found by a couple motorists wandering along the road, dazed and covered in blood. The last thing she remembered was the hopper crashing through her windshield and the world spinning crazily, and then she was taking a reflexive swing at the young nurse trying to stitch up a cut above her right eye and having to be physically restrained until she realized where she was. Thankfully, between the nurse’s good reflexes and her own disorientation, her swing had missed. Between those two events though, things got fuzzy.

[Fiction] The Beasts of Kulig County, Chapter 3

“Keeping an eye out up there, Maggie?”

In the cockpit of her Damselfly, Maggie Ovo looked out over the prairie and shook her head. “Everything looks clear up here,” she said into her headset’s microphone as she passed her little helicopter above the herd. “Just mgonzi and you shitkickers.”

[Fiction] The Beasts of Kulig County, Chapter 2

Samaraland was being invaded. Giant hoppers, Macropodotherium, were a large species of hypsilophodont indigenous to Vona, an offshore territory of Garacania. When the island had been cut off from the mainland by rising sea levels, its hypsilophodont population had quickly adapted and diversified, occupying every niche available to them. In order to navigate through the tall grasses that had taken over the island’s open areas, most adopted an energy-efficient hopping gait, earning the nickname hoppers, or as some cheeky zoologists called them, “hopsilophodonts.”

[Fiction] The Beasts of Kulig County, Prologue & Chapter 1

PROLOGUE

A storm was rolling in, and distant thunder rumbled across the darkened prairie as lightning etched flickering patterns across the horizon. One by one the three Nasutoceratops lifted their frilled heads and sniffed, smelling the scent of rain on the air. These ceratopsians were not native to the prairie, their ancestors having been domesticated and brought north from the wet, swampy forests to the south thousands of years ago. Despite not being endemic to this mostly open mix of fern prairie and grassy veld the grazers had proven quite adaptable, and now they roamed the land in relatively small, yet commercially valuable, herds.