The only thing creepier than finding the ruins of a colossal ancient citadel at the bottom of a sinkhole was finding out it that it was still inhabited. Of course by the time we knew, eight people had gone missing and we'd already accidentally caused part of the sinkhole to collapse, opening the formerly isolated lake into the main river basin and releasing the inhabitant.
We never meant to set it free but there was absolutely nothing we could do to stop an eighty foot sea-serpent from swimming away, jagged fins slicing through the air as gracefully as its heavily plated body cut through the current as it headed or deeper water.
The citadel didn't hold much in the way of answers. All we knew was that it was built to be a holding pen and someone, likely a local family or clan, had continued to maintain the herd of cows that roamed the otherwise deserted town.
In other words - they'd been feeding it. And we were assuming there was just the one, though females in most aquatic species are usually far larger than the males. We all knew that but we were hardly expecting a swarm of writhing darkness to pour out into the river a few hours later.
We couldn't have predicted the slaughter that followed. All along the river, from source to sea, body parts washed up covered in the same countless jagged teeth-marks. The males had made the river their home and that was more than enough for us to worry about.
Then someone uploaded a video from a whale watching trip that showed a humpback whale being bitten clean in two and we found the female again. Now barely a month later and our shores are as dotted with whale bones as the river is with corpses and no matter how many we kill in the river, the beast in the sea remains free.
We never meant to set it free but there was absolutely nothing we could do to stop an eighty foot sea-serpent from swimming away, jagged fins slicing through the air as gracefully as its heavily plated body cut through the current as it headed or deeper water.
The citadel didn't hold much in the way of answers. All we knew was that it was built to be a holding pen and someone, likely a local family or clan, had continued to maintain the herd of cows that roamed the otherwise deserted town.
In other words - they'd been feeding it. And we were assuming there was just the one, though females in most aquatic species are usually far larger than the males. We all knew that but we were hardly expecting a swarm of writhing darkness to pour out into the river a few hours later.
We couldn't have predicted the slaughter that followed. All along the river, from source to sea, body parts washed up covered in the same countless jagged teeth-marks. The males had made the river their home and that was more than enough for us to worry about.
Then someone uploaded a video from a whale watching trip that showed a humpback whale being bitten clean in two and we found the female again. Now barely a month later and our shores are as dotted with whale bones as the river is with corpses and no matter how many we kill in the river, the beast in the sea remains free.
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