Hall of Infinite Doors
The temperature changes dramatically when you enter, and the darkness does not take long to overwhelm you. You stay close to the wall, feeling along the stone as a guide, though it soon grows clammy with underground moisture, and warm with the press of your body. You feel as if you're travelling in a huge, moist, foul womb filled with potential atrocities, and every breath you take seems resounding in loudness and bound to give you away. You can hear nothing except a faint hissing in the distance, like air moving through some great subterranean aperture.
The further you travel, though, the more you can see that the darkness is not exactly complete. At times, high above you, the great tunnel will show a chink or crack which lets in some of the orange daylight. Spots of brightness appear on the ground, letting you see the thick brown soil-like stuff which covers the cave floor (and is grown over in some places with moss and small weeds). At times great chunks of the roof are missing, letting you see the immensity of the great cavern if just for a moment. Somehow that makes it all the more horrible to plunge again into utter blackness, guided only by the wet wall and the ever-growing stench.
Your feet occasionally stumble, catching in cracks in the floor and tripping you, though you are very careful not to cry or scream. Now you can hear the hissing louder, and occasional shuffles and bumps as something large and nameless crashes against the walls of the cave; remembering their vastness from the moments of illumination and juxtaposing that against the potential immensity of the creature hidden, you almost freeze in sheer terror. You don't even remember why you came here, but you did, and you must see this out to its inevitable conclusion.
Eventually the spots of light grow in number and immensity. You can see with the faint yellow illumination they provide, and guide yourself not just with sight and feeling but with sound and smell, as the growing scent of whatever hideous beast must lurk hear and the growing smell of putrefaction grows. As you move further in, the tunnel grows twisty, often pocked with depressions or alcoves litered with stones and rubble, gouged out of the wall in some mindless expression of fury.
And then you round a wide bend and have to stop, as fear will not permit you to continue.
The roof of the cavern is almost nonexistant. Pitted with breaks, it allows in a vast amount of light, enough to illuminate the thing residing there in full. The great green-scaled bulk of the thing is amazing in its immensity, dwarfing whales and resembling the great dinosaurs in size. Its thick body is augmented with four powerful legs, each tipped with three wide claws that scratch and gouge the accumulated dirt and dung with every small movement, and a whiplike tail emerges from the thing's body and retreats into darkness. But what holds you fascinated is the thing's heads.
Because, you see, there are nine of them. Nine long-necked snake-headed things, siblings to one another, emerging from the same body. Nine heads coiled around one another, snoring, breathing, sleeping, tasting the air. Nine heads rough-scaled with horny patches of armor and small closed eyes. Nine heads with jaws larger than three of you.
And one of them awake, its tongue flicking in and out of its mouth furiously. Tasting the air, with its strange scent of you. And then nine heads moving and rousing. Nine heads spearing their sight and smell towards locating you.
The further you travel, though, the more you can see that the darkness is not exactly complete. At times, high above you, the great tunnel will show a chink or crack which lets in some of the orange daylight. Spots of brightness appear on the ground, letting you see the thick brown soil-like stuff which covers the cave floor (and is grown over in some places with moss and small weeds). At times great chunks of the roof are missing, letting you see the immensity of the great cavern if just for a moment. Somehow that makes it all the more horrible to plunge again into utter blackness, guided only by the wet wall and the ever-growing stench.
Your feet occasionally stumble, catching in cracks in the floor and tripping you, though you are very careful not to cry or scream. Now you can hear the hissing louder, and occasional shuffles and bumps as something large and nameless crashes against the walls of the cave; remembering their vastness from the moments of illumination and juxtaposing that against the potential immensity of the creature hidden, you almost freeze in sheer terror. You don't even remember why you came here, but you did, and you must see this out to its inevitable conclusion.
Eventually the spots of light grow in number and immensity. You can see with the faint yellow illumination they provide, and guide yourself not just with sight and feeling but with sound and smell, as the growing scent of whatever hideous beast must lurk hear and the growing smell of putrefaction grows. As you move further in, the tunnel grows twisty, often pocked with depressions or alcoves litered with stones and rubble, gouged out of the wall in some mindless expression of fury.
And then you round a wide bend and have to stop, as fear will not permit you to continue.
The roof of the cavern is almost nonexistant. Pitted with breaks, it allows in a vast amount of light, enough to illuminate the thing residing there in full. The great green-scaled bulk of the thing is amazing in its immensity, dwarfing whales and resembling the great dinosaurs in size. Its thick body is augmented with four powerful legs, each tipped with three wide claws that scratch and gouge the accumulated dirt and dung with every small movement, and a whiplike tail emerges from the thing's body and retreats into darkness. But what holds you fascinated is the thing's heads.
Because, you see, there are nine of them. Nine long-necked snake-headed things, siblings to one another, emerging from the same body. Nine heads coiled around one another, snoring, breathing, sleeping, tasting the air. Nine heads rough-scaled with horny patches of armor and small closed eyes. Nine heads with jaws larger than three of you.
And one of them awake, its tongue flicking in and out of its mouth furiously. Tasting the air, with its strange scent of you. And then nine heads moving and rousing. Nine heads spearing their sight and smell towards locating you.