Volcanoes

The sun shone high as Trent’s boat struck the shore. He looked out at the ship waiting a good distance from land and shook his head. They had been too scared to come any closer. He jumped ashore.

The rowers of the ship started to backpedal out onto the water.

“Wait. Wait!” he called after them, “what do you think your doing?”

“We no go island mizter. Zairs a monster of ze island. You on own!”

The two rowers looked at him for a few moments more then started off in the direction of the ship.

Trent shook his head again. The natives of the nearby islands were a very superstitious bunch. Believing every little fairy tale that they were told. He pulled the book out of his backpack and opened it. The large tome creaked and rustled as the pages fell open.

This was the right island. According to the tome a creature once came to this island, the last of its kind, to die. It was supposed to be extremely large, as big as an elephant at least. Such a find would strike him into the records of great archaeological finds of the century.

It didn’t take him long to get to the centre of the island, where a mountain stood tall, climbing into a cloudless sky. The sides of the mountain spoke of age, and reminded him of the volcanoes that dotted the islands are the Pacific Ocean.

A shiver went down his spine as his eyes wandered over the mountain. There was something strange about it. But he continued on his quest by entering a small cave at the base of it.

The cave stretched long, and as he walked he ran one hand over the rough surface of the cave wall and held his torch forward in the other. The walls seemed a bit darker than usual for a cave, but this didn’t hold his interest for long.

Soon enough he entered a vast chamber, roughly the size of a house. He looked around at where he shone his torch. Runes covered the walls. Ones that had never been deciphered. He had seen them before though. In the tome he had brought with him. He opened it to a page that they were on and started searching to see if he could find the exact passage.

“I’ve hit the mother lode here! No one has recorded anything like this since Tutan…” he stopped talking to himself as he noticed a strange noise coming from behind him. Like stone grating against stone.

He turned slowly, afraid of what he might find. He screamed when he saw the entrance he had walked through closing, the gap already too small for him to get through. He ran to it, and started banging his fists on the stone, screaming at the top of his lungs.
The grating noise started again, and he looked around at where it was coming from. Maybe it was another passage opening. But his hopes were dashed when he saw what it was.

A section of the cave had started to rise, revealing what appeared to be a red liquid behind glass. He rose, awestruck by what he was now beholding. He stood slowly, hands behind him pushing himself up along the wall. He staggered over to it, his entrapment forgotten about.

He reached a hand out and touched it. It was cold, and felt like stone. Maybe it was a giant ruby. He noticed how high the curtain of rock had climbed, at least three times his own height. It stopped with a crunch and rock dust rained down on him. He flinched and began brushing his arms off.

More motion caught his eyes and he looked at the red section again. It seemed to be swirling, to be moving, to be turning around. A long black slit suddenly appeared at the edge of rock, stretching from floor to ceiling. Slowly it rotated around the redness until it was before him, making him lift his head to see its top.

It narrowed then widened. Trent fell backwards, and then used his hands to pull himself to the other side of the cave. The slit widened a little more. The redness had stopped it swirling when the slit had stopped. He shone the torch upwards to get a better look at the curtain of rock that had raised itself.

Words appeared in flames across the redness. They burned into his mind, and then the images flowed.

It soared about the world. Its mighty wings blocked out the sun on whole islands. The creatures ran in fear. They were the Dragons!

The ground started to erupt in flame. Great gouts of hot liquid leapt from the ground and destroyed plants and animals.

It did not eat much, only one animal every time the world went around the sun. The animals may fear it, but only for its size, not for its temper.

A mass of the Dragons flew to where the ground was erupting. Slowly they dropped their tails into the ground, and then lay atop the break, wings folded around them.

The ground stopped shaking, and the creatures lived. But they knew that if they moved the world would again start destroying itself.

The world changed. Oceans rose and fell. Dirt covered the Dragons. Their skin turned to stone. Slowly one by one they died, because no food would come their way.

These Dragons had formed the mountains and volcanoes of the day.

He saw men entering the cave he had. Countless numbers of men. Over and over again as the years had rolled on. Feeding the beast that lay within…

Realisation struck him, but it was too late. The great dragons tongue had already moved behind him during his gaze. He was just another adventurer brought to feed the dragon, to keep the earth from destroying itself.