Chapter One

Near the Dry Plains of Antarctica, with no snow in sight, Dr Roberts and his team were exploring.

With winds reaching nearly a hundred miles an hour around them, the scientists found it very hard to navigate the plain. Their equipment: a Geiger counter, a Geiger Muller, an Alpha Radiation Survey Meter, a metal detector (although Dr Roberts had no idea why he had decided to bring one) and a few other things that would be needed to build a small, temporary station, were being very annoying, Dr Roberts thought, and as hard as it was trying to get through the driest place on earth with winds that were constantly trying to smother you doing it with a bunch of equipment for a much-needed experiment was much, much harder.

After a few more hours trudging through the dry landscape, Dr Roberts reached his desired place: the Blood Falls, next to Lake Bonney. He motioned his team to set up a station on the black sand that was dominant in Antarctica's… er, beaches, for want of a better word.

The Blood Falls, of course, were not made of blood, thought Dr Roberts, thinking back to the extensive research he and his team had undergone before journeying here. It was a- what was it? His near-photographic memory flitted back to last December, and there he remembered: saltwater, tainted with iron-oxide, the five-story "waterfall" (Dr Roberts chuckled) poured out of the Taylor Glacier. His colleagues back at Scott Base in New Zealand had laughed at him when he had said that he wanted to lead the experiment of detecting radiation in Antarctica, for who in their right mind would let Dr Roberts lead an experiment when he couldn't so much as lead a trip to the mall to get supplies?

His boss, Professor Oswald, that's who.

His team trudged around, preparing. The counters were out and activated. Radiation levels were higher than normal, Dr Roberts saw with satisfaction. Triumphantly, he envisioned his colleague's shocked faces when he came back, hopefully in one piece and not mutated (although the chances of him being an abomination, at least more so than usual, were pretty slim).

A voice shook him out of his thoughts.

"Walter? Walter, are you there?" called the assistant doctor, Professor Alfred Nott, looking as though he had just fallen. His woollen jacket was dirty. "Good grief, Doctor, I've been calling your name forever, I thought you were daydreaming or something… your eyes glazed over, and stuff."

Dr Roberts shook his head. "No, nothing like that," he responded, "I was just, er… thinking."

Nott nodded and gestured Dr Roberts to follow him. Nott started talking, and Dr Roberts forced himself to listen to him.

"The counter's acting weird in this particular site," he said, and they both started to climb a ledge as Nott lead them, "and I don't know what's going on, the needle's been going up and down ever since I set it down. And, believe it or not, the metal detector came in useful! There's something below us, I don't have a shovel or anything, though…" said Nott as they reached the cliff.

"If you want, you can get out a shovel," replied the Doctor. Nott just nodded. That was what differentiated Dr Walter Roberts from his colleagues: he was willing to help out his team, and while the others sometimes would, not all of them would allow their assistant to dig a potentially dangerous site in search of minerals and a source of radiation, Dr Roberts thought, and he often thought of himself as harmless and very smart.

"Look," said Nott, gesturing towards a yellow counter. It indeed was acting rather ridiculous, mused Dr Roberts.

No, he thought. Rather was an understatement.

The needles were twitching, but never straying below the red area. The whole thing was shaking violently. This was not normal Geiger counter behaviour.

Dr Roberts stepped towards it, trying to get a closer look, and, without so much as a warning, the Geiger counter exploded.

Dr Roberts stepped back as yellow pieces of plastic flew towards him.

"Wow," said Nott, a few moments after that. "I didn't expect that. And Geiger counters don't just explode. What gives?"

Dr Roberts agreed. What had caused it to explode? Geiger counters could resist radiation, they were made to.

Unless…

Dr Roberts scanned his surroundings, looking for the source, or at least a place that would lead him to it, underneath him, with Nott babbling away next to him. He scanned the area below him, until… A-ha. Dr Roberts turned around, about to tell Nott when suddenly he froze. Slowly, Dr Roberts turned around again and looked at the thing that had caught his eye, cautiously.

It was a cave.

Things like this didn't normally surprise Dr Roberts, but this was an exception. He and his team had scouted the area thoroughly, had taken several tests on its surroundings with pictures for reference. The last four months had been spent camping near the area, and some nights Dr Roberts and his team just looked out to study the landscape. And this was what shocked Dr Roberts.

Because the area wasn't supposed to have a cave.

What was it doing there? Dr Roberts' hands dived into his pocket and took out the pictures that had been taken to study the Blood Falls, captured by a drone. He stared intensely at it and checked the landscape. He repeated the action a few more times before stuffing the photos back and closed his eyes.

"Alfred," he said, and Nott fell quiet at once. He only addressed Nott as 'Alfred' when it was serious, it was only ever Nott or Professor, or assistant. "Alfred, what is that?"

Dr Roberts raised his arm and gestured towards a place around a quarter of a mile away from the Blood Falls, right in line with the two men.

Nott followed his arm and then his gaze. "I'm not sure, Doc. Looks like a-" and then Nott stopped, confused. What was a cave doing there?

"Exactly," said Dr Roberts. "We've studied the place since February, and stopped a few weeks ago. It's the twenty-first of June now, don't you think we'd have noticed if a cave was there? And how did it just, er... appear, for want of a better word, right under our noses?"

It seemed as though Nott had no answer to those questions.

"I say we explore it," said Dr Roberts, and then he saw Nott's terrified expression, and chuckled. "Oh, what harm can it do? We've gone inside caves before, like last year, for example."

"We're going to a cave we know nothing about, have just known about, with no preparation beforehand? Doc, are you mad?"

"You know as much as I do that these things don't normally happen, Alfred," said Dr Roberts, dead serious, "We came here to study the radiation, what if that cave is the source of it? Or, at least, the path that will lead us to the source?"

Nott shook his head as they walked towards the ledge again. "I'm not supposed to argue with you, Doc, but this time I have to," he said, "one, we don't know anything about that cave. Two, we don't even know where it leads! It's more than likely going to lead to a dead-end!"

For the first time since they had journeyed, Nott's eyes betrayed him. Dr Roberts could, for just a moment, see the fear in them.

Dr Roberts' eyes softened. "If you don't want to go, if you'd rather stay here, it's fine by me. I'm going. I want to see whether or not it…" Dr Roberts sighed. "Well, if it's nothing, I'll just come back."

Nott sighed, "No, no, I'm going with you. I'm just agitated, is all."

Dr Roberts smiled gratefully and started climbing down.

The cave, it turned out, was the entrance to a long, rocky path that curved sideways a few hundred meters in. The team grew tired quickly. A few steps from the curve, the temperature dropped suddenly. Dr Roberts gasped, shivering from the unexpected cold.

Stupid, he chided himself. He hadn't even thought about wearing his usual jacket.

"What happened?" asked Nott from beside him, his teeth chattering from the cold. Dr Roberts shook his head, his arms wrapped around his body.

"Let's just go back, Doc," said Richards, who was in charge of monitoring the counters. "I don't know why, but this place feels off to me…"

The team muttered among themselves. Dr Roberts shook his head again.

"We can't give up like this," he chattered. He continued to walk down the path.

Fifteen minutes later, Nott had grabbed his shoulder for support, nearly collapsing from the cold. Dr Roberts bucked his knees, but he stayed in place.

"We have to go back," moaned Nott, his face white and his whole body shaking. Dr Roberts was nearly jumping himself.

He sighed and checked his watch. It had been nearly an hour, but it had felt like days.

"Yes, you're probably right," he muttered, but just as he made to turn a loud beep pierced the silence: the sound of a metal detector.

"Right," he growled, "who brought Ozzie?"

Slowly, Richards raised his hand, looking embarrassed. Dr Roberts rounded on him, about to scold him, when suddenly it beeped again.

Dr Roberts glanced at it, confused. He opened his mouth, about to ask a question, but Nott beat him to it.

"Doc, what is this?"

He looked over to where Nott was pointing at: the floor. Dr Roberts hadn't noticed it, but they had probably been walking on cold, colourful metal for a few hundred meters by now.

Except… no metal in the Dry Plains was reported to be this colourful. Dr Roberts shouted with glee, thinking that they had made a discovery, and he reached out his hand to try and touch it. He wanted to feel the cold, hard surface of the mineral, he could practically see the looks on his colleagues' faces-

His palm suddenly seared with pain as soon as he touched it; he recoiled, tears forming in his eyes as he wrung his hands. He eyed the floor warily.

"Wha-"

His sentence was cut short as a loud, scraping sound was heard throughout the cave. He caught movement from beyond the path, in the shadows.

Black, wriggling somethings shot out and slithered around, taking care not to reveal themselves fully, shrouding themselves in darkness. Then, just as suddenly, they retreated.

His team remained silent, all staring at the places where the tentacles had appeared. They had left dents in the floor, in the metal, as though a large sword had been run across it.

"DOC!"

Dr Roberts whipped his head towards Nott, who was shaking and pointing towards a stalagmite.

"It-it disappeared, but I swear on my life, Doc! There were tentacles around it, I'm serious! They've surrounded us!"

Dr Roberts made no sound. One thing crossed his mind: the source of radiation; the metal? Dark shapes rose out of the ground and glided across the ground towards them.

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?" bellowed Richards, eyeing the tentacles, "RUN!"

As one, they scrambled towards the direction they came from, but more tentacles shot out of nowhere, blocking the path. Dr Roberts felt like vomiting.

The tentacles, although Dr Roberts didn't know why, retreated a few seconds later. The temperature dropped even further but he didn't notice that. He fell to his knees, shaking madly, terrified beyond his mind's comprehension.

The ground split open, and gargantuan tentacles his size many times over burst through the earth. The group yelled at random, but Dr Roberts stayed glued to his spot, staring at the mass of black. He had already given up.

The tentacles wrapped themselves around the ground, pulling it downwards. The ground shook, and Dr Roberts fell to his back as debris and rocks came crashing down towards the ground. Strangled yells were heard everywhere. The cavern walls started moving and started shaking. The floor was falling!

"No!" shouted Richards, and he launched himself towards one of the newly-created ledges. He was about to grasp it when one of the smaller tentacles wrapped around his torso and squeezed. A crackling sound was heard throughout the falling cavern, and then a scream of agony. Dr Roberts had glimpsed a broken body, blood falling, and then closed his eyes. A few moments later, he opened them.

Dr Roberts looked around him. Bodies lay strewn across the ground, some not making even the slightest movement, others struggling to get up. Richards fell from above, his twisted body splattering against the ground. His eyes were dull and empty.

Another crackling sound above made Dr Roberts look up. The cavern ceiling was coming apart, too! A large section peeled off of the ceiling and shot down towards them.

The falling piece of rock seemed to be dropping down slowly, or so he thought, and he barely registered the excruciating pain in his legs when the chunk smashed into him and crippled his knees.

The earth came apart like a cookie being crushed. It broke slowly... until it split in two and Dr Roberts could see the thing below him, pulling him, killing all of them.

A mass of black tentacles… a circular mouth, filled with rows and rows of sharp, dagger-like teeth; a forked tongue, and even from the falling ground Dr Roberts could see the massive scars around the monster's face… and a single eye so full of hatred and evil, it was the most terrifying thing on it. Underneath all the tentacles, a pair of black wings were visible.

Around the beast, white dots decorated the black space, and Dr Roberts could feel another searing pain, this time in his body. He had had enough time to glance at his fingers before the earth gave way again. He couldn't breathe. His skin was cracking like wet paper. He felt colder than he had ever felt in his whole life.

The mouth widened, and Dr Roberts floated, pulled by the gravity of the massive monster, screaming though no sound came out, through the ground that had crumbled mere moments ago, into the great beast.