Day 2,232

Whoever built the temple didn't want anyone to find it, that much we guessed from the fact that they'd built it some 200 feet beneath the riverbed. It was far down enough and surrounded by enough densely packed clay that everything inside was bone dry and we'd been lucky enough to have hit it from inland, avoiding the worst of the potential water damage.

Nothing could explain what we found in there or how anything had lived in a sealed subterranean structure with no logical ecosystem. What we did know was that they worshipped something colossal and shark-like, though originally we thought it was a representation of masculine energy and the strength of a hunter but the preserved creature we found disproved that pretty quickly.

It was like Lovecraft's wet dreams and worst nightmares rolled into one twelve foot tall corpse dressed in several shades of leather. A few sneaky samples later and we knew that only some of them were from cows - the same breed that happily wandered about the temple, leaving no faecal matter and eating nothing, just existing.

Most of the leather was human skin, expertly tanned and sewn into elaborate robes that did nothing to hide the dense musculature and deep scarration all along the creature's body from the fin-like protrusions on top of its head to its torn webbed feet.

Worst of all were its eyes - pitch black orbs, still wet, still glistening and seemingly following us wherever we went. Of course we already knew it was dead - its internal organs hung from a racks on the ceiling in great ropes and bundles and a small core sample showed that it had been stuffed with a mixture of smoked wood and human hair.

Whatever it meant to the people who made the temple has been lost to time. There were no reading materials, no messages in the carvings aside from multiple depictions of the creature just standing and nothing to warn us against allowing it to come into contact with water.

How were we to know better?