Legends of Amacia: Mysteries of Tiamat
Monsters and Mysteries in the Dark

“I hope I’mnot disturbing you with these sordid details,” Hannibal said in an apologetictone while gazing at Harry and his family. “Remember Dennis, this is one of thethings you may encounter walking in my shoes. Anyway, Dan got word to me aboutthe replace and I immediately mounted an expedition to the area after dealing withNamil. It took almost a year to get the proper paperwork through both ourgovernment and the Indonesian government. But when it did go through, it tookanother four months to get the supplies together and to reach the site.Strangely enough, the remote tribe Namil spoke of had vanished by time wearrived there. We found their village... or what was left of their village, onthe way to the site. It had been totally destroyed by some unknown agent. Therewere no bodies. The village looked like it had been crushed underfoot andburned to ashes. Some of the huts were burned with something that has neverbeen seen before. It was unprecedented: something far hotter than anythingconventional that we have anywhere on the planet. It completely consumed whatit touched, leaving nothing but ash. You might be tempted to think nuclear,which is what I thought at first, but after some preliminary testing, I decidedagainst the nuclear hypothesis. Here are some pictures of the site.”

Hanniballooked through his pack and pulled out a pile of folders. He then proceeded torummage through them. As he did that, Mary arose and asked if anyone wantedanything to drink. Everyone answered yes. While she retrieved the drinks,Hannibal exclaimed, “Ah, here they are!” He pulled out a stack of pictures andhanding them to Harry.

Harry’sface grimaced with astonishment. “Yikes! Man, you weren’t kidding,” heexclaimed. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It almost looks volcanic.”

“I thoughtthe same thing when I first saw it too,” Hannibal stated. “But if you lookclosely at it, you’ll see the highly selective and localized nature of theburned areas. Volcanic activity wouldn’t be that selective and the heat from itwould have scorched areas around it. That’s when I thought nuclear, but whenthe Geiger counters only registered nominal readings, that theory too wasscrapped.”

“There wasno radiation?” Harry asked.

“Nonewhatsoever; but just look at how some huts were burned to ashes and yet thetrees over and near to the huts had no sign of any heat, not even the grass,”Hannibal explained, becoming a guide to the pictures. “That’s why both thevolcanic and nuclear options were not feasible. We still don’t have any causefor this phenomenon.”

Harrysifted through the pile of pictures and then stopped at one. His jaw fell openas he tried to replace the words. He turned the picture to Hannibal with aquestioning look that betrayed his amazement.

“Yes,Harry, believe it or not, that is a footprint; made by, if we are to believeNamil, the draken colossus. One thing I can tell you about that footprint,there’s nothing like it that has been found anywhere else on the face of theEarth and it was made recently,” Hannibal expounded, interpreting Harry’ssurprise.

“The print;tell me you made a model of it,” Harry finally said as he stared at thepicture.

Hannibalraised an eyebrow, smiling. “What do you think? Of course I did,” he replied.“We made a computer model because of its prodigious size. Do you get thesignificance of the scale? That’s me standing in the middle of the print. We’retalking Godzilla-size with whatever made these tracks. These tracks are largerthan the largest dinosaurs that walked the Earth made by something weighingmany hundreds of tons. It’s a conundrum that defies my intellect.”

At thispoint, Dennis hovered over Harry’s shoulder, drinking in the images. “Wow dad:a real draken footprint from a real draken,” Dennis crowed, his eyes sparklingwith wonder. Mary re-entered the living room with the drinks, which shepromptly served.

“Thanks,”Hannibal said appreciatively, taking a large swallow from his glass.

“Honey,look at these pictures. They’re incredible,” Harry said to Mary, handing herthe pictures he had already looked through.

“I’m surethey are. I’ve been listening,” Mary said, accepting the pictures and lookingthrough them. Her mouth fell open in shock upon seeing the images.

“Thefour-toed draken print in that picture is some eighteen feet wide bythirty-five feet long and nearly four feet deep. And that was just one print.The whole village had prints like that all over it,” Hannibal reported. Atthat, Hannibal retrieved the pictures from Harry, rummaged through them, andgave one back to him. “This is apparently where the beast came from,” Hannibaldeclared. Harry stared at a picture showing a colossal swath of jungle someseventy-five feet wide, looking as if something truly enormous had comecrashing through the rain forest. The cavity in the jungle growth reached almostto the top of the tree canopy. Harry gawked at the unfathomable path throughthe trees. “The path in that picture runs for three miles,” Hannibal explained.“There are trees four and five feet in diameter along that path that are brokenoff like toothpicks. Whatever erased that village tromped through the junglefor three miles and then vanished without a trace. Three miles from where wetook this picture, the swath of destruction abruptly stops with no clue ofwhere it went. It vanished into thin air. One thing I can say about the thingthat did that is it went on four legs and must have stood at least seventy-fiveto one hundred feet high. Who knows how long it was. But we were able tomeasure its stride though. It was a good one hundred fifty feet between theprints. That was but a side bar. Our main goal was the Temple, which curiouslyseemed to provide an answer for the prints.”

“What doyou mean?” Harry asked.

Hannibalrummaged through the pictures again and pulled one out, handing it to Harry.“I’ll explain in a moment,” Hannibal stated. “Some eight miles from the end ofthat path, we found the Temple and the draken colossus. This is one of the fewpictures we were able to get of it.”

Harry drankin the picture with his eyes. As he looked, Hannibal handed him several otherpictures of the same thing, declaring, “This thing was so big that we had aproblem photographing it. Also, the pictures you have there are the old-fashionfilm cameras. We tried to use our digital cameras and camcorders but theyturned out to be useless. All we ever got from them was either static or apicture that was so distorted that you couldn’t tell what it was.”

“The energyvortexes,” Dennis piped up. “You said they’d do that.”

“Yes, Idid. That’s very perceptive of you, Dennis. You may yet make a goodarchaeologist,” Hannibal congratulated. “This location must have somehow beenaffected by one of those vortexes.”

Harrycontinued to stare at the pictures. It showed an enormous draken colossus withthirteen heads carved out of a sheer rock face, each draken face beingdifferent as if representing a different breed of draken. Harry estimated thesize of the colossus at about seven hundred feet. He also noticed the intricatedetail in which the draken was carved, right down to the individual drakenscales. “Exactly how big is this thing anyway?” he asked.

“Fifteenhundred feet; it’s carved out of a two thousand foot cliff,” Hannibal reported.

“Fifteenhundred feet…my god; it looks like it’s only maybe seven hundred, if that,”Harry replied in astonishment.

“Thosepictures don’t do it justice,” Hannibal said.

“Mygoodness, it’s beautiful and so lifelike,” Mary beamed after receiving thepicture from Harry.

“That itis. There isn’t anything like it anywhere else on the planet,” Hannibal agreed.“And to add to the mystery of this place, we measured the feet of the colossusout of a whim and found they were an exact match for the prints we found at thevillage. Now tell me if that isn’t weird.”

“You’rekidding,” Harry balked.

“I wish Iwere,” Hannibal answered. “The specs for the feet of the colossus perfectlymatch the prints at the village. I’m still at a loss at how that could happen.It makes Namil’s story about the colossus coming to life and chasing him a morebelievable.”

“And yet,”Harry began as he stared at the photos. “Despite its beauty and the coincidenceabout the feet matching the prints, I get a really bad feeling about thisthing. I can’t explain it. It’s like something that should never ever be messedwith.”

“I’m glad to know you feel that way becausethat was the way I felt when I first saw it. An unspeakable evil seemed to hangover that whole valley. Nevertheless, we went in after setting up base camp. Ilost several of my best men in that place to traps and things that are not tobe believed in our initial foray into the place,” Hannibal murmured as heremembered the deadly perils of the Temple. He once again rummaged through thepictures and pulled another out. This picture had an image of what appeared tobe a gigantic smooth-bodied black and red spider on it. He looked at it brieflyand shuddered before handing it to Harry. “That’s one of the denizens of theTemple,” he said as he handed Harry another picture, “and this was its home.”

Harrystared in disbelief at the two pictures. The one with the spider, whichappeared to be the size of a large bison with a twenty-foot leg span, made hisblood run cold. “How did you ever survive that thing?” he asked.

“Sheer luckand the Lord watching over us, but our encounter with that monster didn’t comewithout casualties,” Hannibal admitted as he described the incident in detail.

Hanniballed a heavily armed team of four men down a tunnel fifteen feet high and twentyfeet across deep inside the newly discovered Temple of Tiamat. Each team memberhad a miner’s helmet with lamp along with shoulder-mounted lights armed with alarge machete. Hannibal carried a .45 automatic pistol on his hip and a bandoleer of grenades while the other members packed nine-millimeter pistols.The walls were curiously bare, unlike other portions of the Temple wherehieroglyphic and cuneiform-style writing and cartouches of a long-dead languagedecorated everything. The air in the tunnel smelled of rancid decaying death.

“I don’tlike this,” Hannibal’s second in command murmured. “I’m getting a very bad vibedown here. This isn’t like the other areas we’ve seen.”

“I hearyou, Dan,” Hannibal replied. “Something about this place crawls. It’s as ifwe’re being watched but I don’t know by who or what, so we’d better be on ourtoes here. As far as I know, this place has not seen the foot or eye of man forover five millennia, maybe longer.”

“If noone’s been here for over five thousand years, then why are we being socareful?” an Indonesian man named Keshi asked.

“Justbecause people haven’t been down here for five thousand years doesn’t mean someanimal hasn’t taken this place as its den,” the third man, Jerry answered.“There could be some unknown variety of snake, spider, or other creature downhere that no one has seen before that could be very dangerous. I rememberstories of explorers going into very deep caves and replaceing insects and animalsnever seen before that were very aggressive and predatory.”

“Jerry hasa good point,” Hannibal stated as he edged forward cautiously. “There areanimals that adapt to environments such as caves and never see the light of dayor human eyes. The deep-sea creatures are the same way. The bottom of the oceanis just as alien a place as this is. Jerry’s just pointing out that this is anunknown complex of caves, much of which seem to be artificial. That’s what’sbothering me here...the artificial nature of this tunnel. It seems to have beencut by a force unknown to modern science. It’s completely smooth and not anatural formation, like a lava tube. The closest thing I can compare it to isthe tunnel a nuclear driller leaves behind.”

“I noticedthat too,” Dan stated, becoming more ill at lease. “I’ve also noticed that thefarther we come, the worse the smell is.”

“Me too,”Jerry agreed.

Keshi feltthe wall of the tunnel and noticed not just the smoothness of it, but a silkysubstance on it. “Hannibal, I think you may want to look at this,” he calledout in an insistent tone.

Hannibalstopped and walked over to Keshi, seeing his hand coated in a silky substance.The group gathered around and looked at Keshi’s hand. “What is that?” Jerryasked.

“It lookslike spider silk,” Hannibal replied as he tested the material. “It’s not stickyso it’s not part of a trap web. It’s almost like the web some spiders use intheir burrows.” He picked at the wall with his finger, peeling off a smallportion of the silk and holding it to the light coming from Dan’s headlamp.“It’s also translucent. I can see right through it. But when I look at the wallcasually, I don’t see a thing. This is very strange.”

“Is itpossible that we have a new species of spider down here?” Dan asked.

“Could be,”Hannibal stated, dropping the silk. “Or this could just be some residue of regularspiders who managed to get down here. In any case, stay together and don’ttouch anything. Also, keep your eyes open and your voices down. If there issome unknown variety of spider in here, we don’t want to announce our presenceto them as a food source. I’d rather not end up on the menu if I can help it.”

Keshitrembled at the thought and quickly wiped the silk off his hand. “Then why arewe going on?” he asked.

“Because weneed to secure this area,” Hannibal stated. “And to replace out if there’s anythingdangerous in here. If we don’t go on and there’s something hazardous down herewe don’t know about, it could come calling when we least suspect. I’m not aboutto let that happen. Come on…now let’s go.”

Hannibaltook up the lead again, this time with much more caution. He searched thetunnel ahead of him religiously as his innate ability to sense danger ramped upanother notch. Dan, Jerry, and Keshi likewise searched, often turning around tosee that they weren’t being followed from behind. The smell became very rancidand nauseating as they moved down the tunnel. Slowly, the tunnel began todescend.

“Thistunnel is getting taller,” Jerry murmured softly, “and it’s getting wider tooas we go down.”

“I noticedthat,” Hannibal agreed as he stopped for a moment, flashing his headlamp up atthe ceiling. The ceiling seemed to be arching up and away from them, rising tothirty feet just ahead of them. “Come on,” he said, pulling his .45 automatic.“I suggest you pull your guns out, guys. Something is very wrong here. I canfeel it.”

They did asHannibal ordered and followed closely as Hannibal searched the expandingdarkness ahead of them. A hundred feet down the passage, the descent leveledout as the tunnel abruptly opened into a colossal shaft so wide the far sidecouldn’t be seen. Heat and a low rumble rose from the pit before them as theystood on a fifty-foot wide ledge at the mouth of the tunnel. The smell ofsulfur perfumed the air along with the smell of rotten eggs.

“Holyshit,” Jerry cried in disbelief as everyone looked across. “It looks like wemade a wrong turn here. No way can we cross that. I can’t even see the otherside. What is this?”

“It may bea volcanic vent,” Hannibal answered. “The rumble, heat, and stench of sulfurdioxide in here tell me that’s what it is.”

Danhappened to look up as Hannibal scanned for a way across. What Dan saw causedhis blood to run cold. “Uhh…Hannibal,” he murmured. “I don’t like to be analarmist, but I think we stumbled into a world of shit here. Look up, but nottoo quickly. We’re definitely being watched now.”

Everyonelooked up with the lights, seeing a spider web unlike anything ever seen on theplanet before. The web consisted of strands the size of large ropes with thefine silk they found on the walls hanging from them like ghostly curtains. Thestrands attached to the sides of the shaft and went up out of site above them.Within the web were many dozens of cocoons with skeletal remains of animals andwhat appeared to be people hanging out of them. “Oh my god,” Hannibal breathed.“I don’t believe what I’m seeing here. What kind of spider spins a web likethis?”

“I’d rathernot meet it,” Jerry answered, backing towards the tunnel. “This place is rightout of a nightmare.”

“Hannibal,is that an egg sack?” Keshi asked fearfully, pointing high in the web out overthe pit with his machete.

Hannibalblinked in astonishment. Hanging one hundred yards up and out two hundred yardsinto the pit just at the limit of their lights sat a cocoon the size of atour-bus. It pulsed slightly as the light struck it. “I think you may be rightabout us landing in a world of shit here, Dan,” Hannibal whispered. “Back awayslowly and don’t make any sudden moves. That’s an active arachnid egg sack. Ican see it pulsing. We need to get out of here and seal this tunnel. Do nottouch anything. Whatever made that sack could still be here watching us.”

“I don’tever want to meet that bitch,” Keshi answered in a fear-fueled panic, backingaway and then turning to sprint away.

“Keshi,”Hannibal called out urgently. “Don’t run! Any sudden movements could call themother down on us!”

Hannibalhad no sooner issued the warning than a noise on the wall above them attractedHannibal’s, Dan’s, and Jerry’s attention. “Oh dear god!” Jerry cried in horror.“What in heaven’s name is that?”

An enormousblack and red spider the size of a bison with a leg span of twenty feet raceddown the wall, jumping at Keshi. Hannibal didn’t hesitate in opening fire withhis pistol. Dan and Jerry did the same, firing at the giant abomination asattacked Keshi from above. The bullets did nothing to the monstrosity. Itstruck Keshi in the back with two of its front legs that had strange foot-longstinger-like appendages in the ends of the legs. Keshi shrieked as the stingersimpaled him in both shoulders from the back until they protruded from hischest. Blazing, paralyzing fire filled Keshi’s body and mind as the toxincompletely incapacitated him in seconds. The spider lifted its hapless victimhigh in the air and then body-slammed him to the floor, pulling out thestingers in the process. Hannibal saw the beast’s head drop, revealing footlong fangs that ripped into Keshi’s back. A primal scream rattled out of Keshi.The spider then pulled back and lunged for Keshi’s head, biting it offcompletely in a spray of blood, which it drank. Only ten seconds elapsed fromthe time the spider jumped at Keshi until it delivered the decapitatingdeathblow. Hannibal, Dan, and Jerry stared in horror at the brutality and speedof the giant spider that killed Keshi before they could blink twice.

It thenturned to Hannibal, Dan, and Jerry; blood still dripping from its hideous maw.Hannibal, Dan, and Jerry had emptied their pistols trying to stop themonstrosity from killing Keshi. The monster spider hissed at them, clicking itsfangs. Dan snapped a picture of it as it eyed the trio. The flash brieflyblinded the monstrosity, causing it to back off a few steps. A hissing roarrolled out of the spider as it reared up like a tarantula on the attack,suddenly spitting a caustic substance at them as it came down, forcing the trioto dive for cover. Hannibal threw his machete as he dove aside. The machetestruck home in the spider’s head puncturing two of its eyes, causing it toshriek and thrash about trying to dislodge the machete. It used its front legsto scrape at its head to pull out the blade lodged in its eyes.

“Grenadethe mother fucker, Hannibal,” Dan called out urgently from near a brokenstalagmite six feet across. “Do it or we’re all dead!”

Hannibalstood up with two grenades in hand. He popped the pins on them and threw themat the beast before diving behind a small boulder as Dan and Jerry found coverbehind the broken stalagmite. The spider knocked one grenade out into the pitwith its leg, but the other landed beneath its belly. The explosion ripped themonster apart, sending pieces of it flying everywhere, while the second grenadewent off harmlessly in the pit. The spider’s head landed in front of Hannibal’sboulder with a sickening plop while one of the two stinger appendages on thefront legs fell in front of the stalagmite Dan and Jerry used for cover. Whenthe smoke cleared, Hannibal stood up and looked, seeing the back third of theabdomen lying on the floor with pieces of the rest of the spider scatteredeverywhere.

“Dan,Jerry; are you okay over there?” Hannibal called out.

“Yeah,we’re okay if you can be call being nearly eaten by a giant monster spiderokay,” Dan answered in a shaky voice as he and Jerry got up.

“What aboutKeshi?” Jerry asked as they approached the decimated spider carcass.

Hannibalshook his head sadly. Tears dripped from his eyes. “I tried to warn him,” hesaid. “You just don’t bolt when faced with a predator like that. It makes themthink you’re prey.”

“Is thereanything left of Keshi?” Dan asked with grief evident in his tone.

“No,”Hannibal murmured. “What the spider didn’t get, the grenade scattered. Thereisn’t enough left to even bury.”

“What kindof spider was that?” Jerry asked. “Or is it even a spider? It can’t be of thisworld. Spiders here just don’t get that big.”

“I don’tknow,” Hannibal admitted. “It’s unlike any arachnid I’ve ever seen. Did you seehow it used its front legs? It apparently has some kind of stinger inside thoselegs like a bee has in its tail.”

“What aboutthis?” Dan asked, walking over to the head. “Look at the head and those fangs;the venom coming out of those fangs is so caustic that it’s liquefying therock.”

Hannibalsquatted down and examined the head, seeing the venom dripping from thefoot-long fangs and eating into the floor. “Holy shit; that’s some nastyvenom…it’s eating the floor away,” Hannibal stated. “What is this thing?”

Jerryhappened to look up at the egg sack and saw it pulsing. “Hannibal, I think weneed to beat a hasty retreat here and come back with some major firepower. Thategg sack is moving. We need to destroy it before those monsters swarm out ofthere. We’re not going to be safe until we do so.”

“Goodcall,” Hannibal replied, rising. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” Hannibal,Dan, and Jerry slowly backed into the tunnel and then fled the area once theywere out of sight of the web.

Hannibalpaused in his account as a tear rose for Keshi. “We were exceptionally carefulin our explorations after that incident,” Hannibal stated with a quiver in hisvoice.

“Was Keshiyour friend?” Harry asked softly.

“Yeah,”Hannibal replied. “He was a fairly new recruit from the local area. He had suchpotential too. Who would have thought his fate was to be killed and eaten by agiant spider that I suspect is not even of this world. If I hadn’t theforesight to bring those grenades, chances are we wouldn’t be having thisconversation. That monster was the most alien thing I’ve ever encountered andit was highly intelligent. I could feel its hostility and evil nature. All itwanted to do is feed on us.”

Harryrubbed his chin for a moment, pondering the horrifying tale of the giant spideras Dennis clung to his mother’s arm. “Hannibal, is it possible that this spidermay be the reason the area around Tiamat was considered cursed by the nativepopulation? After all, something like that would have surely been able to getout of there and hunt on the surface. Any native who saw it and survived wouldhave definitely considered it a demon of some kind associated with Tiamat. Anddidn’t you say you saw both animals and people cocooned in the web?”

“I did,”Hannibal admitted. “It’s a legitimate possibility the spider could be at leastpart of the reason for Tiamat being cursed. I will say that I’ve neverencountered anything that fast or vicious. And when we studied the remains ofit, we found the venom from the head a thousand times more deadly than that ofthe sea snakes. That makes the venom from the spider potentially the mostpotent poison on the planet. And it was so caustic that only the highestquality ceramic glass could contain it without being melted. The poison waslike super-concentrated acid made out of some kind of organic enzyme I’ve neverencountered before.”

“What aboutthe stinger things you said the spider had?” Mary asked. “I didn’t believespiders could have stingers.”

“Spiders ofthis planet don’t that I know of,” Hannibal replied. “That’s why I suspect thisspider is an alien of some sort. Where it came from I don’t know, but it’sdefinitely not from around our neck of the universe. The venom in the stingersturned out to be quite remarkable. It wasn’t nearly as potent as the poisonfrom the fangs, but it was still very dangerous. The stinger venom seems to besome strange form of neural toxin that only interferes with voluntary nerveimpulses. It completely shuts down the voluntary nerve impulse part of thenervous system and slows down in the involuntary part. For example, if…godforbid, I were struck by a stinger from this species of spider, I would go intoinstant shock with complete paralysis from head to toe and my involuntaryfunctions would slow to the point that I would seem to be dead. It’s much likethe tiny amounts of the blowfish venom used by some voodoo practitioners toperform the zombie rituals. The stinger venom from the spider essentially doesthe same thing, but doesn’t kill like the blowfish venom. It immobilizes theprey so it can be consumed while still alive.”

“That’shorrid,” Mary replied with disgust. “You mean that the spider in this picturefirst paralyzes its victim and then eats them alive? That’s a terrible way todie.”

“You’ll getno argument from me on that,” Hannibal stated. “I saw that monster pounce andkill Keshi before I could react. I never believed something that big could movethat fast. It’s my fault Keshi died at the fangs of that fiend. I knew hewasn’t ready to go in but he insisted. I should have….”

“Stop it,Hannibal,” Harry retorted. “You know that’s bullshit. It’s no different fromgoing into battle. You were never responsible for Keshi. He made the decisionto bolt after you warned him. It was a stupid foolish mistake on his part,which cost him his life. You’re not to blame. If the thing hadn’t jumped him,it would have jumped someone else…maybe even you, so stop beating yourself upover it. Some things are meant to be.”

“You’reright, Harry,” Hannibal admitted. “It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt though oreven have to like it. That’s a way to die I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.”

“Of courseit hurts,” Harry stated. “But you weren’t responsible for his actions. You’reonly responsible for your actions and no one else’s. Now what about thismonster’s nest…the egg sack, what did you do about it?”

“I did asJerry suggested after we killed the beast,” Hannibal answered. “We went backwith a large, heavily armed contingent and torched the egg sack along with theentire web. I personally destroy that egg sack with flamethrowers andphosphorus grenades so I could sleep easy. After disposing of that monster’snest and sealing that tunnel, we continued our explorations with much morecaution.

“God, wemust have stumbled around in there for months. The place is vast, much biggerthan anything I’ve ever encountered before. We never did replace the ends of thatplace. It became so dangerous in places that I decided not to proceed anyfarther. The spider was just one of the monsters we found in the darkness ofthat place. But while we were exploring the Temple, I did happen acrosssomething of great value that wasn’t a monster.”

“What wouldthat be?” Dennis asked.

“We found achamber deep in the place that seemed to be some kind of library or archive.The chamber was the size of a football stadium with a ceiling that was aboutone hundred feet high. In this area were row upon row of stone sarcophagi,hundreds of them. Each top had a very ancient and archaic type of hieroglyphicwriting on it that was unlike anything ever seen before. We opened only ten ofthese coffins. Inside were tablets with the same type of writing on it. Thesetablets are made of some strange composite that we were unable to identify. Allof our efforts to identify it failed. The only thing we could determine aboutthe metal was that it was manufactured alloy and not natural elements like goldor iron. Its molecular structure is much denser than anything we have now andstrangely enough, its actual structure is a strange type of lattice that isincredibly strong and light. These plates looked like a combination of gold,platinum, and mercury. They’re beautiful.” At that, he pulled out anotherpicture and handed it to Harry. The picture showed the tablets in their stonesarcophagus, sitting there awaiting someone to read them.

Harrylooked closely at the picture and whistled softly as he handed the picture toMary. “Indeed,” Harry agreed. “It’s a beautiful treasure.” Dennis looked at thepicture with Mary and gasped in delight.

“True, verytrue; it’s a treasure all right. The greatest treasure ever uncovered,”Hannibal returned. “But not in the way most people would see it. You see, whenI entered the Temple, I immediately saw the writings on the central passage andrecognized them as the dialect that the draken cult used. I noted the cursesand warnings that were scrawled all over passages. It was then I forbade anyonebut those who I personally chose to go in with me. All the rest were to standguard outside in relative safety. A couple of guys decided to go in without mein spite of my warnings. They were never seen again. I can only assume they metwith a bitter end at the fangs of one of the monsters or in one of the deadlytraps that infested the Temple. This Library is buried deep in the Temple, muchdeeper than where we encountered the spider. Many traps had to be tripped anddisengaged before we could safely access it. On the door of the chamber wereseveral different types of glyphs, vaguely similar to the dialect of the cult:the same writing that was on the sarcophagi and the tablets.” At this, heturned and rummaged through his pack again and pulled out a piece of paperrolled up. Handing it to Harry, who immediately unrolled it, Hannibalannounced, “This is a picture of a portion of one of the plates. It seems to bea list of some sort.”

Harrylooked at the strange writing intensely.

“How manytablets or plates were in the box?” Mary asked as she returned the pictures toHannibal.

Hannibalgot a far look in his eye for a second as he searched his memory. “Thesarcophagus is four feet by ten feet by three feet deep,” he replied after afew seconds. “The plates are two millimeters thick bound into books ofgenerally five hundred pages. In one of the sarcophagi, we found some twohundred such books. The picture I showed you is but a small portion of a singlepage. The pages of these books are two and a half feet by three and a half feetsquare.”

Maryshifted in her chair, trying to grasp the sheer volume of knowledge Hannibalwas talking about. “You know, Hannibal,” Harry declared. “I’ve seen thisstrange writing before. I don’t rightly remember where, but I know I’ve seenit.”

“That youhave, my friend. That you have,” Hannibal answered with a smile as he reachedinto his coat pocket, which hung on the back of his chair. The golden Amuletcame out when he pulled his hand out. “You’ve seen it here,” he said, tossingthe Amulet to Harry, who fumbled but managed to catch it.

“The Amuletyou were deciphering,” Harry said.

“Lookclosely at the markings on it,” Hannibal instructed.

Harrylooked closely at the amulet and then the rubbing several times. His eyes grewround as saucers as he realized what he was seeing.

“Yes,Harry…they’re the same language,” Hannibal crowed, interpreting his reaction tothe picture.

“Is thishow you deciphered it?” Harry asked bluntly.

“Yes,”Hannibal answered after a sigh. “At first, I didn’t realize what I haduncovered. It was only later after the way to the Library chamber was securedthat the real work in there began. I had found the Amulet some ten yearsearlier, so for some eight years, I toiled unsuccessfully trying to decipherthat thing. Then we discovered Library at Tiamat where I found the key to thewriting.”

“Not to getyou off the subject,” Mary intruded. “But how big is the whole Temple?”

“Oh, it’snot off the subject at all,” Hannibal answered. “The complex turned out to beinside a dormant volcano and its total extent isn’t known but we managed toexplore a five mile radius from the entrance, all of it underground and nearlyall of it carved out of solid rock. That which wasn’t man-carved is natural inorigin; great caverns that boggle the imagination with their splendor. Manycaverns were lit by some strange electromagnetic phenomena which lit it up likethe evening twilight.”

“It waslit? Wow!” Dennis exclaimed.

“Yes, itwas. Not only did we explore a five-mile radius, we discovered it had manydifferent levels to it. I estimated that at the lowest level that we explored,we were almost two thousand feet below sea level,” Hannibal explained. “It wasat that level that we stopped pushing out and down. For one thing, the heat atthat level was a stifling one hundred twenty-five degrees. The rock itself washot and air was full of noxious fumes. The place is a legitimate labyrinth. TheLibrary chamber is up much higher than that level even though there lies nearlythree thousand feet of solid rock over it and nearly three miles of passages toreach the entrance.”

“Any ideaon how much more of the complex there is?” Harry asked.

Hannibalshook his head no. “Only God knows how much farther it stretches,” he admitted.“All I know is that the deeper we went, the more hazardous it became. The trapsbecame more and more numerous and fiendish and we encounter several more giantspiders and some things much more horrendous than the spiders. Giant scorpionsnearly as big as the spider in the picture were encountered on more than oneoccasion. Bats the size of the condors of South America were found, though theywere among the more benign of the denizens of that place. We encountered othercreatures there that defy explanation. Snakes capable of swallowing a man wholewere seen and other manner of reptilian things were encountered that I’ll notgo into. We encountered creatures of such ferocity that on several occasion wewere forced to flee. But there is one thing that I learned all too well in theexploration of that place: there are much darker and fouler things than giantspiders and scorpions in the deep places of the Earth. Monsters do exist.” Atthat, he once again rummaged through his folders of pictures and producedanother picture. This one showed a wide view of a vast cavern with enormousstone drakens lining the walls. They rose to the ceiling some three hundredfeet up. He handed it to Harry. “This is what I dubbed the Hall of theDrakens,” Hannibal declared. “There are over one hundred draken statues ofvarious size and shapes lining the walls of this cavern.”

Harrylooked intensely at the picture and spoke up. “This wasn’t a good place, wasit?” he asked.

“No, itwasn’t,” Hannibal said as Harry handed the picture to Mary, who seemed torecoil with a bit of revulsion at the picture. She immediately handed it backto Hannibal. “It was a very bad place,” Hannibal said soberly. “This cavern wasthe entrance to the lower level where we ceased to explore in that directionbecause of the conditions and hazards.” Hannibal looked intently at the pictureas he reminisced. “This place was very strange; unearthly. It had eyes,” headmitted. “I swore that the stone drakens were actually following our progressacross the cave. Bones, human bones were scattered everywhere. Some of thosebones were of a giant nature. I saw human-like femurs almost four feet longamongst the normal-sized bones.”

“You sawgiant bones?” Dennis queried. “Awesome!”

“Are yousure those giant bones were of people?” Harry asked.

“Absolutely,”Hannibal replied. “There weren’t many of the giant skeletons, but they weredefinitely present. Some of these giants had to have been nine to ten feettall, maybe bigger if the femurs are any measure of their stature.”

“Wow,”Dennis crowed with delight. “I like hearing about that much better than I didabout the giant spider. Just thinking there are spiders that big scares me.”

“It wouldscare any sane person who has a brain in their head,” Hannibal stated. “Butdon’t worry about the spiders. We killed all of them. They were just toodangerous to let live. I don’t care if they were a new species, but thosebeasts were a threat to everyone. I had to think of the people who were withme.”

“And so youshould have,” Harry agreed. “That’s what a good leader does. He or she takescare of the people they lead. What else did you replace in that cave?”

“Well,getting back to the bones,” Hannibal stated. “There were piles of skulls andbones against the walls and scattered across the floor, so many bones that wecrushed them under foot walking across it. It was as if the Hall of Drakens wasa place of feeding. It made my blood run cold. One thing about the cavern thepicture doesn’t show is that there are as many smaller gargoyle statues asdraken statues. They sat up on the walls and stood among the drakens. A strangeecho permeated the whole place, like that of a distant roar or bellowing of a beast.Also, the entire complex down to this point had a comfortable temperature,about seventy degrees, which I thought was most peculiar. Most caves systemsand undergrounds have an ambient temperature of fifty-five to sixty degrees. Itwas almost as if the whole place was heated. Maybe being inside a dormantvolcano contributed to this phenomenon. Who knows? There were severalantechambers off to the sides of this cavern. One led to this cave.”

Hannibalsmiled as he pulled out yet another picture and handed it to Harry, who nearlyfell out of his chair when he saw it. It was a picture of another cave about athird the size of the Hall of Drakens. This one had a giant draken carved outof a single emerald crystal. The emerald draken was one hundred fifty feet longand fifty feet high, carved with the most exquisite detail. The cave itselfseemed to be a giant diamond geode that scattered the light so that thesmallest light would brighten the cave to the point that shadows were cast.Also, there were huge piles of gold, silver, diamonds, emeralds, rubies: allmanner of treasure. The piles reached some twenty feet high with barely room towalk between the piles. Harry stared, speechless at the picture. “It was therethat I found the scarab that I gave you,” Hannibal announced.

Dennisgawked at the picture, gasping in astonishment. Harry then gave the picture toMary, whose eyes grew to the size of saucers. “It’s a king’s treasure!” Maryexclaimed. “I can’t even fathom how much its worth.”

“There’senough treasure in that cave to completely pay off the debt of the entire worldsome ten thousand times over,” Hannibal declared. “The sum is astronomical. Itcan’t be calculated. It actually reminded me of the tales of the draken’streasure hordes. If that doesn’t qualify as a treasure horde, nothing does. Andthe neat thing about it is there are only five people who have seen it inperson and know how to reach it. Each of us took a modest share of it. I filleda small sack with the treasure, which included the scarab. We hid most of itfrom the authorities. We gave them a token payment, which insured that we wouldbe left alone...a bribe if you will. The Hall of Drakens and the treasure caveare four and a half miles from the entrance at a depth of eighteen hundred feetbelow sea level; some forty-five hundred feet below the entrance altitude on anextremely treacherous path guarded by many traps and denizens.” Hannibalretrieved the pictures and rummaged through the folder again, pulling out yetanother picture. He promptly handed it to Harry.

“This iswhere we stopped because of the perils,” Hannibal announced. “As I saidearlier, the temperature at this level was one hundred twenty-five degrees. Itwas like being in a blast furnace.”