Death Mountain | A 1D Fanfic [Finished]

The Legend's Legacy

Silver scales rasped against the sides of the large cave. Claws bore into the solid rock underfoot. Spines and horns brushed the ceiling, causing the fall of more rubble to the ground. A long tail flowed behind, flexible as a whip. The long neck stretched ahead, the head held as high above the floor as the ceiling would allow. Cat-slittled silver eyes caught every nuance of change as the body moved through the cave quietly.

Behind it, the smaller version of the creature, the baby, struggled to keep up, its body wiggling back and forth as it worked to stay at its mother's side.

The mother reached the cave's entrance and stopped. She could smell food, and she wanted it. But she had to be wary of the twins. They were the only real danger to her and her baby.

She sniffed the air, then cautiously left the safety of her den, her baby crawling on her back.

Standing in the beauty of the night air, beneath the light of the full moon, the beast let out a roar that shook the mountain, base to tip.

*** ***

Harry's head came up as the tunnel shook around him, rubble falling from the ceiling for a minute before the shaking ceased. The roar sounded like thunder, only a hundred times more powerful.

He stood there, frozen in place, until he was sure the ground was finished moving. He then continued through the tunnel, wondering what he was supposed to do now. As he took a step forward, his mind conjuring ideas of what could have made such a sound, his heel caught solid ground while his toes found no purchase.

Reflexively, he pulled back from the step. "Whoa!"

Frowning, Harry looked down and saw he'd nearly stepped off a ledge...

into a crater-sized, spherical space filled with hundreds of creatures.

His eyes widened as he took a step back. Tannish, leathery-looking skin covered muscled bodies that looked like they were part ape, part alien. Like he'd seen gorillas do, these things walked on short back legs, leading with thickly muscled forearms about twice the length of their back legs. Along their backs, he saw either tentacle-like structures that wiggled and twined together, something portruding from the tip of each limb, or he saw a mouth opening and closing, stretching from between their shoulders to their lower back.

Looking down at them, Harry shuddered and quickly moved backward into the tunnel and darkness. Turning around, he nearly screamed.

Five of them stood behind him.

More accurate to put it that there's five of them following behind me. They're not all on the floor. One was on the ceiling, crawling along upside-down, the tentacles on it's back reaching for the one on the floor beneath it, who had a mouth on it's back. Behind the one on the floor was another, the tentacles on it's back.

The two on the walls had tentacles on their stomachs, a mouth on their backs.

Harry took a double take when he saw that. Tentacles and mouths?

He looked at the one on the floor again. It had tentacles on its back.

Above him, the one on the ceiling crawled forward at an incredible speed. When it drew near Harry, he saw that the thing had one big eye on its otherwise indistictive head. The eye moved as the thing did, blinking slowly, watching, tracking Harry's movements as the thing crawled to the now empty space behind him.

Harry followed the thing's movements, turning around to face the big room again.

The thing dropped to the floor in front of him. But it didn't hit the floor on its back. The short back legs flipped around so the thing's back was now its front, the front its back. The arms seemed to shift in their sockets, and the shoulder blades now portruded from the things front, which was now it's back.