A king of the Savage Lands. To Brontë it sounded intense— given all that he'd heard and learned of the island.
But he'd spat in the face of intense and fought the definition of it repeatedly since he was sixteen. In all it's forms.
Prehistoric mutant monsters that doubled as his ancestors.
Super-powered crime lords. Vampiric embodiments of evil.
Sasquatch and two wendigo in the same day. One he ate.
Even so, he didn't face the mysterious and timeless jungle world with any ego beyond what he knew.
Which was very little.
"Damn…. I shouldn't have been sleeping that whole flight here…" Bronte thought as they made their way through the green to approach the lizard-men of Vala-Kuri.
As always, he smelled them before he saw them. They exuded a thick miasma of herbs and flowers. All of which Bronte had never smelled. Which said a lot considering he'd been all over the world and in space.
It was in his scenting and sensing as they approached that he started to go lightheaded. The progression was quick. It felt like a second after he noticed, he was falling to the floors with Magik yelling out to him as she unsheathed her blade.
Blackness and further herbal scents followed.
Bronte was awakened by the pulsing of a hollow rumble. The sound was unique in the way that it felt like the absence of sound. It made his skull numb and his ears feel like they were popping.
His eyes opened with a start and his claws popped from between his knuckles.
"Bronte! It's fine. It was a misunderstanding." Magik held him.
Brontë came to his senses as he looked around. He was on the ground— in thick grass with snaking beat in paths that led to intricate treehouses and farm looking buildings made of some sort of glass-like gem that was refracting and concentrating sunlight.
It was pretty. It reminded him of Krakoa.
"What happened? Where's Junior."
"I'm here." Junior said from beside him, "Mend processes fumes and chemicals before they reach me."
"Chemicals…." Bronte stood up.
Shuffling and hushed whispers echoed from the trees and shadows of the farm buildings.
No more than a few feet ahead of Bronte, one of the Lizardmen stood alone. He was tall and wore animal leathers and plant fibers. His height climbed over seven feet tall with scales and a rounded snout. He didn't have the savage jagged dino-look Bronte visualized. He looked….
Herbivorous.
"My apologies for the perceived attack." The Lizardman said, "We have plant defenses set up at our village borders to stop predators from entering. Raptors used to be quite the problem for us. Until we learned to germinate and grow plants that become narcotics when combined with common enzymes and proteins found in predators blood cells."
"Nice info-dump." Gabbie commented.
"Thank, you." The Lizardman replied.
Brontë looked around, meeting eyes with his people, "Y'all good? Everybody straight?"
They nodded.
"Shana and I brought you all here because we knew we'd be good. Especially compared to the other tribes and places here." Ilyana said.
Logan growled at the shadows where others watched— and now ran for safety.
"Aye, man." Bronte said to him, "Stand down. Diplomacy goes out the window if you start barking at these people."
Logan groaned and shook the grogginess from his head.
When Bronte turned back to the leading lizard, he was smiling.
Brontë braced himself purely off of past experiences. A simple flexion of the muscle and adjustment of foot placement. The winds awaited his command.
"You called us people…."
"Huh…?"
"The last man to address us as equals was Kazaar. And her." The Lizardman pointed to Shanna.
She bowed in respect. The Lizardman returned the gesture.
When he stood back up, he spoke to Bronte, "He was once king of The Savage Lands. He died protecting us."
"I'm sorry for your loss." Bronte said.
"We are all regretful." The Lizardman replied. "But don't let me have us skip past introductions. My name is Kuyin Serrato of the Valakuri lizard-people." He held out a hand. Four fingered, scaled. Nails thick like hooves.
Brontë took it, "Bronte Connors of the X-Kind people."
"Not human people?" Kuyin asked.
"Nah. We a little different."
Kuyin looked down at Bronte's knuckles, "True. So, what brings you here?"
"Oppression."
Kuyin turned his green-scaled head in confusion.
"I'm leading a charge to liberate my people and establish a nation and states…..cities…. wild-lands of our own. In liberation we have to expand. And in establishing our own kind, we have to recognize the others like us. Here in the Savage Lands, we're trying to make alliances and access points for others like us that want to find another home."
"Others like you?"
"People with mutations that make them different." Ilyana said.
"I see."
"Now, I don't want you to think we're coming in here like some colonists. That Columbus shit is dead. If you don't want us here, we'll never come back. Right now we're only exploring." Bronte said.
Kuyin shook his head, "Oh no, we are a peaceful people. And if you and your kind are at all like Kazaar, we would love to meet and work with your people."
Brontë hesitated for a moment and looked back to Laura, "That was too easy, right?"
"Embrace it. This will probably be the only time it is, hermano." Laura said. "Shanna gets herbs from these people all the time. They're farmers."
"Why don't you seem so happy?" Bronte asked.
"Because how are you just a farmer in a place like this?" Laura asked.
Brontë shivered at the thought and felt the dull humming in his ears reach a crescendo of sorts. Or anti-crescendo in its muted tones.
Kuyin spoke again, "So, how about we give you something to aid exploration? A token of gratitude."
"For what?" Bronte asked.
"For not letting the wilder man attack us. He seems to listen to you." Kuyin referred to Logan. "And for killing the Draco-Rex. Such a species has almost ended my kind many times through history."
"You heard that, huh?" Bronte asked.
"The better question is who didn't."
Brontë didn't like that thought.
Kuyin croaked like a great lizard— it seemed like a laugh, "Allow me to take you to the treasury quarters. Your allies are welcome to explore and get acquainted with the others of my kind. Is that alright with you?"
Brontë listened to his senses. He turned and met eyes with Laura. She shrugged. He looked back to Shanna. She nodded once in her usual cryptic and distantly magical mode of being.
"Junior." Bronte said.
"Yea."
"You're with me." Bronte said.
Junior stepped beside him. Brontë nodded to Kuyin after eyeballing everyone else, "We're good."
Kuyin took a horn from the belt of his gear and blew it.
Suddenly lizard people stepped out from all over in all manner of colors and shapes. Some were massive and covered in thick stone-like scales while others were small and wispy with spikes like dreads running down their backs. The genetic diversity was overwhelming for such a tight knit grouping of individuals.
As they headed deeper into the village, the lizardpeople ventured out, grouping up and watching Bronte's family.
Gabbie took Rien by hand and approached a group of younger female lizard-people. The last thing he saw was one give Gabbie a flower.
"This is the treasury quarters. Kazaar thought it was a good idea for us to consolidate the things learned by past generations. A way to not lose recipes and techniques."
Brontë turned around and faced a thick hollowed out tree. Inside, spiral stairs of wood and stone led them to the top— up a hundred and fifty feet to a floor of branches and foiliage connected by twine netting to make a trove of treasures and scrolls. It was a mess until Bronte saw the tags and colored leaves dissecting everything.
"Tay! They've got seeds here for plants that spit Fire." Junior said.
"Like Mario..?" Bronte asked.
"What?"
"Nevermind." Bronte said quickly as they followed Kuyin.
He hopped up and traveled the branches on all fours, flipping about the trees before his long muscled tail dug into a pile and pulled out an old leather scroll.
"Aha!" He yelled before tossing Bronte the scroll and climbing back over to them.
"What's this?" Bronte asked.
"A green map." Kuyin explained.
Brontë unfurled the scroll. It was a map— of sorts, but it didn't go by topographical linework and manmade borders. It went by rivers and plantlife and stylized iconography of botany based concepts.
"We've mapped and marked many rare herbs and remedies. We have the location of river flows that mix with weathered rock valleys to form elixirs and natural lotions. Perhaps it will help you better your travels. Maybe even help some of your more emotionally charged individuals." Kuyin explained.
Brontë widened his eyes as he looked back at Kuyin, "Man this….. this is amazing. We couldn't get this anywhere else. How long did it take to make this?"
"Six generations." Kuyin explained.
"Damn.... I almost feel like I can't take this."
"Please. You might have saved us all from meeting a horrible end. It's payback. Pay it forward if you must. There's others out there who may need to meet you. And you may need this to help them." Kuyin explained.
Brontë nodded and shook up with the Lizardman again. "I wish the lizard person back in New York was more like you."
"What is a New York."
"Stay innocent, man." Bronte and Junior laughed.
Junior stopped laughing suddenly and his symbiote suit squirmed. Before he or anyone could react, Mend took over Junior's face. "Something's wrong, Unc."
"Su—"
Before Bronte could reply, a whistling echoed from the sky.
The only reason Bronte caught it is because of his time on battlefields. Whistling from the sky only meant one thing.
A bomb.
Bronte's Storm state activated in the blink of an eye and he was out of the treehouse in even less time. Just in time to see a bubbling red and black mass rocketing towards the earth. Like a lava caked meteor straight from your worst nightmares.
Mend appeared in electrified hyper-speed right beside him. They moved so fast that time slowed.
But only barely. They still had to think quickly.
"Get everyone over to Ilyana. She knows what to do."
Mend took off in a flash of speed.
Brontë did the same. But as he ran— as he grabbed up young lizardpeople and old alike, he realized there were even more— hidden in their houses and under ground. Under fragile soil that had been dug up and torn apart a dozen times over.
He reached for the winds as the meteor neared. Not to ride like his namesake but to reinforce.
It all happened so fast it was impossible to process.
All the wind for miles was ripped. Vacuumed and focused into one place. A shield of pressure and force winds that scalped the savage lands and screeched at the pulse waves of magic.
What came next was a mind numbing pop and endless screams.