An expedition team in Antarctica was hard at work, using a high tech laser drill to carefully melt the ice without damaging anything inside it. A team of scientists and archeologists from around the world who were all eager to see what was under the ice. Some had high hopes of finding proof that a civilization once lived on the continent before it was covered in ice, others simply wanted to find some ancient life-form perfectly preserved deep in the ice. The team had finally reached the dirt that was buried beneath the thick ice. They lit the tunnel they had drilled with ice and started running scans with a number of tools that could tell if anything was in the ice or under the earth around them.
The scanners showed something in the ice, not far from where they made landfall. Whatever they found was large, far too large to be an animal. It could have been anything from a building to a natural rock formation. So, in order to find out, the team slowly and carefully drilled their way to it with the special laser drill. They didn't stop or rest until the tunnel met with the solid object that was detected. It was almost as if God himself had blessed the team, as the path they took with the drill led them straight to what looked like an entryway into what was likely a massive structure that had been perfectly preserved under the thick ice of Antarctica.
Even with the tunnel being drilled to be large enough to drive a vehicle down it and still have room on the sides, the wall that the entryway was a part of stretched far into the uncleared ice. The team started looking at the parts of the structure that was exposed, trying to figure out the material, methods, and tools that would have been required to create the structure as a way to try and gauge the technological capabilities of the lost civilization that built it. The archway of the entrance, a sort of rectangular door frame, was inscribed with symbols. Ones that didn't match any known language. The door itself was made out of a single block of stone that looked like it had been carved to fit the entrance and slid in with a tool, sealing off the building. The door itself also had an etching that was different from the language on the frame.
An archaeologist studied the symbols on the doorframe. “It looks like a language, these could be numbers or letters. The symbols are made out of extremely basic geometric shapes. Squares, rectangles, and rectangular triangles with the shapes sometimes carved to overlap. Like this symbol here is a thin rectangle that has a rectangular triangle at the bottom as a sort of boot with two small squares lined up above the right side of the triangle to the right of the rectangular line. Though it's more geometric, the simplicity of it reminds me of cuneiform languages. These were carved with a precision that suggests this culture was more advanced.”
The man then turned his attention to the door that was more capstone than door. “The stone the door is made of is a different material then the walls, suggesting it was cut much later and perhaps from a different quarry. Placed in long after the building was finished, it’s almost like a cork sealing off the building, preventing entry or exit. The carving in the door itself looks like it was chiseled in with more basic tools, as if whoever did it was in a hurry and simply scratched it in. However, the carving itself is a full image, a pictograph or mural.” He ran his hand over it before aiming light on it. It looks almost like someone scratched an image of thorns into the capstone. Since it was added long after the building was finished I'm guessing whatever the person was trying to convey was different than whatever the door frame itself says.”
One of the other people looked over the capstone carving. “Something about this feels foreboding… and familiar somehow. As if I've seen something like this before.” The archeologist took a second look at the capstone carving and his eyes widened. “It's… the field of thorns.” The other man put his hand on his chin. “Ah, you're right Daniels, it does look like a field of thorns.” The archeologist, Daniels stood up from his slouched position to look the other man in the eyes. “No, you don't understand Hammer. It's not A field of thorns, it's the field of thorns. Though the idea that this ancient culture came up with the idea on its own, however long ago this was built, is something. There's no doubt in my mind about what this is.”
The other man, Hammer, looked confused. “You lost me Daniels. Is there some special significance to those desperate scratches?” Daniels' motions got animated as he tried to explain. “Some time ago there was this sort of art project. The idea was to create a sort of universal danger symbol. One that could be understood by any culture of any language no matter how much time had passed. Something that could convey a simple but clear message of danger to warn of things like nuclear fallout to a culture without any context as to what that even is. The message would convey the simple idea: Nothing of value lies beyond this point, no tales of valor are recorded here. All that lies beyond this point is death.”
Hammer looked over the scratches on the capstone. “So you think it's a warning? What about the stuff in the door frame?” Daniels sighed. “Those are older, and although I can't even begin to translate it, I'm guessing it's a welcome mat of sorts. Saying hello and telling whoever entered what it was for. The lack of a secondary visual sign at the side suggests that either the majority of the culture was literate or that this building itself was used only by a literate upper class.” Hammer nodded as a wrinkled woman with grey hair poking out of her winter gear walked over. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let's move this big rock and see what's inside. Your sponsor isn't paying for you to just stand around.”
Hammer looked at the woman. “Ma’am, Daniels seems sure there's some potential danger inside. The capstone carving is intended as a warning that would outlive their culture.” The woman has a crew scan the building and capstone with Geiger counters. They indicate radiation is within the normal range. The woman nodded. “We'll put on hazmat in case of a problem with the air, then we'll remove the capstone. Unless I see an actual reason to stop, we'll continue. Ready your gun just in case Hammer, it's what you were hired for.” Hammer sighed. “Yes ma'am. You heard the lady, gear up and roll out. Anyone that isn't going in will wait out here.”
After the capstone was photographed and carefully removed, a small number of people put on hazmat gear and got ready to enter the building. This group included Hammer and Daniels. Once Hammer was suited up he primed his high tech gun. “I've got a bad feeling about this.” The small group then slowly entered the building while everyone else continued to photograph and examine the exterior. Hammer was up front with Daniels close behind looking for more writing in the hopes of perhaps even finding a way to decipher the language. Flashlights light the wide hallways as the crew moved from hallway to hallway, corridor to corridor. Each room being examined and photographed. Not a single piece of furniture or pottery was left undocumented.
There wasn't any writing on the walls on the inside, that was until they reached a door frame that had a door in it rather than being an empty archway. The door had several lines of text and was photographed before any attempts were made to open it. The door was solid, similar to the capstone, with no obvious way to open it. It felt almost like a last line of defense, one final attempt to get whoever entered the building to stop. The woman ordered for the team to find a way in after the door was scanned and they found no signs of radiation outside normal background readings.
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It took a lot of effort, but with tools and teamwork the door was forced to slide into the wall revealing a staircase downward. As the team defended the spiral staircase they photographed walls with text and murals inscribed on them. Daniels commented on the murals. “These seem to be telling the story of some cataclysm. There was a sort of eclipse? Something like that that coincided with huge waves and flooding that destroyed a city with monsters showing up during it in the mural. Perhaps this was some mythology, or the monsters were a metaphor? They seem to have contributed this event to… the opening of a jewelry box shaped like an apple?”
Daniels ran his hand on the part that depicted an apple being opened to show a gemstone inside with waves of something coming out that was followed by the start of the eclipse. He then looked to the door that led to the next room after the staircase. A long, wide, and tall hallway with similar murals stretching the length of it, showing the history of some city that existed even before the one they were in. “If we take these at face value then they migrated here from somewhere else. This means this civilization that was already well over thirty four million years old could have been much older. Antarctica would have been ice free back then.” Daniels awed at the murals.
Hammer looked confused. “Wait… but humans haven't been around that long let alone building things. The earliest version of humans is only some hundred thousand years old.” Daniels nodded. “Yeah, three hundred thousand years give or take. However, this suggests it happened before. Perhaps humanity evolved separately long ago, were wiped out, then re emerged. This discovery completely upends almost everything we know about humanity. Though these first humans would have been much different than us.”
Hammer looked around at the massive hallway. “This place feels like a tomb. I don't think we should be here. Unfortunately, unless an actual threat shows up.” There was then a sound, shuffling in the distance. Hammer aimed his flashlight down the hallway and in his horror saw something shambling towards them. The area was sealed off, air tight, and frozen under a thick layer of ice. Nothing should be alive down here outside of maybe a variety of microscopic organisms and the simplest of plants or fungus.
The scientists took a few steps back as Hammer aimed his weapon and flashlight at the mass to reveal what it was moving down the hallway. The figure stood upright like a man, but looked to have a black carapace exoskeleton. The bipedal figure stood somewhere between seven and eight feet or over two meters tall. On the head of the figure stood something that resembled the dead of a vulture, buzzard, or some other carrion bird made out of the same material as the skin. Its eyes looked like black void but on shining the light at its face before it moved its hands to block the beam Hammer saw the void where eyes should be wasn't an empty socket and even noticed some sort of tubes going from the sides of the head to somewhere unseen behind on its back.
Hammer lowered the flashlight to aim at the body and kept his gun aimed at the figure. This wasn't some Chimera, some monster that combined the aspects of various creatures. This was a suit, similar to a hazmat or space suit, ment to protect the wearer and keep them alive. Was there a village at the other end of this hallway? Some society that modified the inside of the building to continue to live even after the building had been sealed off from the outside? If so, then why? Was there some illness, a plague so bad that this seemingly advanced society would go as far as to abandon the sick and lock them away.”
“Identity yourself!” Hammer ordered, knowing full well it definitely wouldn't understand him. Daniels repeated the command in every language he spoke, all thirty of them. Perhaps one of them had something in common with the language that people used for a word to get through. The figure stopped moving forward, having already slowed its relatively slow walk once the light hit its face. It simply stood there silently for a moment before lifting its arm and speaking. The language might as well have been gibberish, even to Daniels who spent his entire life studying dead cultures and linguistics.
“I've got no idea what he's saying. He might as well be speaking in the Chinese equivalent of pig latin written in windings.” Daniels commented when Hammer gave him a look as if expecting a translation. The figure said a few more sentences before taking a few steps forward. Hammer raised his weapon and aimed at the figure again. It sweeped its hand horizontally and Hammer noticed movement coming from behind the figure. Several masses of twisted and broken flesh dripping of black icor lumbered and shambled from the darkness behind the figure. Moaning and gibbering as they moved.
Hammer didn't hesitate to start to fire rounds into the masses but all it seemed to do was slow them down. Desperate and unsure of what else he could do without damaging the building he pulled the pin on a flash bangs and punched it like a professional baseball pitcher into the crowd. When the flashbangs went off it seemed to burn away at the dripping black ichor of the abominations and physically damage them. The monsters, now angered, charged at the scientist. Upon seeing this Hammer started lobbing more flashbangs right into the monster's heads.
Twisted and broken masses of flesh in the vague form of people started ripping and biting people apart causing them to scream and run in a panic as blood and flesh flew everywhere. As the barrage of flash bangs went off in quick succession burning away the abominations the figure simply stood there covering where its eyes should be. Hammer ran out of flashbangs and started lobbing flairs at the few monster that remained. More than half of the people that came down were quickly rendered into chunky salsa but the abominations were now few in number and were slowing down to move around the flares.
Hammer tried his weapon again, now that there were fewer of them and the ones that remained were weakened, the high tech assault rifle was actually doing damage now. However, the few that remained managed to get around the flares and charged. One ripped a man in half, another but a woman's head off, and the third ripped a person's throat out. They then started coming at Hammer who managed head shots on all three dropping them with the last one clawing into his shoulder lightly before having its head blasted off.
The only ones that remained was himself, the woman his employer sent, Daniels who had been taking pot shots with an ordinary pistol, and the figure in the suit. Hammer didn't hesitate to move forward and start blasting the thing. He emptied the magazine into the figure before he let go of the trigger, even though the figure dropped some time before that. He even reloaded to take an extra shot to the skill of the unmoving figure just to be safe. The woman walked over and tapped the wounded shoulder. “You good?” Hammer grunted. “I'll live.” She gestured down the hallway from where the figure came from. “Let's see what those freaks were protecting.”
Hammer sighed “Yes ma'am.” before taking Daniels and walking down the hallway till they reached another door that was partly open. There was a strange yellow light coming from inside. They forced the door to open a bit farther before going into a large room with a spire-like altar that held some spiky glowing yellow crystal that seemed to have something inside of it. In front of the thin pillar sat a second figure in a suit like the first, only this one's suit had several more small tubes and devices in the side. It sat at the bottom of the killer and could barely move its head to look at the three people who entered.
Upon looking at them the figure started softly laughing before wheezing. It then spoke a sentence or two before coughing and laughing. It then used what little strength it had to look at Hammer and reach in his direction before saying one final word that everyone in the room understood. Pandora. It then slumped, the machines on its body continued to whirl as he wheezed for a bit longer. Then his breathing seemed to stop and he remained still. The final effort of his life made for one final attempt at a warning of some kind.
Hammer walked up the corpse to grab the glowing spiky gem on the pedestal. Inside the glowing translucent crystal seemed to be what looked like a golden apple adorned with small gems and lines of silver with a small seam on it like a jewelry box. Hammer grabbed it and took it to show to the other two. The lady nodded in satisfaction while Daniels started looking it over. So many had died horribly for this artifact, not even knowing it was there. They died in the simple pursuit of knowledge. “Curiosity killed the cat as they say.” Hammer joked dryly as they started heading out. Daniels finished the saying with its lesser known second half. “But satisfaction brought it back.” The group made their way to the outside of the building. Hopefully their sponsor would be happy with the pictures and the artifact.
