Work Text:
The Nether Expedition
Log One of ***
Author Unknown
There used to be something here.
What it was, I’ve no idea. Whatever it was, whatever used to be, is long gone now. Part of me is grateful. This hellish scape is a place where no life should be, a place where no life deserves to thrive. But the other part of me? The other part of me is irradiated beyond belief. How dare whatever was here didn’t hold up, how dare I not be able to see it with my own eyes!
But what outweighs that irritation is confusion.
It is only natural for me to want answers. “Curiosity killed the cat”, is that not the saying? It is simply human nature to remain on top of what is happening. It is simply human nature to know the inner workings of every little thing around us, to understand it. To control it.
But that’s where the irritation comes back into play. The fact that I so desperately want to know, the fact that I would move mountains and sacrifice anything just to have a glimpse of truth to know what is happening here.
But there’s next to nothing to study.
Almost.
Without evidence, there wouldn’t be a trace of something that used to be here. But there is more than evidence; there is concrete proof that there was once something here. Structures that now belong to the creatures that reside here, inhabited by beasts beyond my ability to describe. There are pillars too coincidental to not be man made. There are winds that echo through the valleys of death that sound just a little too much like tortured souls. There are fossils strewn about the sands of decay.
Dear god, the fossils.
Massive, massive fossils. Huge creatures that are unlike anything I’ve seen before. Unlike anything I’ve seen that resides down here.
I’m yet to encounter anything that shares even a smidge of resemblance to the fossils I’ve found. Nothing that would match the bones that are half buried in sand, the bones that, for all I know, plunge into the very heart of this hellscape. Nothing that would imply they have ancestors that used to be twice my height but evolved to be smaller.
Part of me is wishing, hoping, that whatever creatures these bones belong to are now extinct. Please, let them be extinct.
But yet another issue arises with that predicament.
How? How did these creatures go extinct? Creatures that by all means must have surely been on the top of the food chain.
Perhaps they perished from malnourishment. After all, something that large must have needed lots of food to survive. We already have animals we know of that eat up to thrice their body weight in food each day. Who’s to say these creatures were any different?
And yet as much as I would like to tell myself that is true, deep down, I know it isn’t.
I’ve traversed the red forests. I’ve seen the hogs, the ones with the huge tusks that could easily rip me apart. How simple it would be for them to catch me unawares and charge, piercing straight through my ribs. Those hogs travel in herds, similar to predatory animals. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these hogs traversing the red forests. Not only are they many in numbers, they are large in size as well. I dare not get close enough to them for an accurate measurement, as I’m sure anyone could imagine why. From what I have observed from them, the fully grown ones are roughly 6 feet tall. Packed full of muscle and fat, similar to boars. Giant, angry boars.
There are enough of these hogs to feed a whole city. Setting a decent diet for a beast of the fossils’ size would be no issue.
And that is what terrifies me.
If they didn’t perish from lack of food, what else could it be? I doubt it was overpopulation; the fossils are common, but not an absurd amount. It leads me to my other hypothesis. One that I am hoping through and through is wrong.
That there is something bigger out there. That these beasts weren’t on the top of the food chain as suspected, but instead were prey animals to something that was far more sinister. Hunted for sport, left to rot in the valleys for the bones to collect sand and for skin and living matter to decay. There is one issue with this hypothesis.
I have yet to find evidence of something bigger.
And that scares me the most.
There are no bones, no signs of something massive traversing these wastes, no cave painting-esque drawings on these ruins I’ve studied. Almost as if those who did get to see it didn’t live to tell the tale. But the fact remains, there aren't any bones.
Whatever this bigger beast is, if it does exist, could still be out there.
I hear sounds echo off these walls. Sounds that are similar to roars, sounds that are similar to beasts fighting somewhere far off.
Maybe it’s paranoia. But maybe, just maybe, this apex predator is out there.
Waiting.