“Ah, and here is where we begin.” Monica and Aimee followed Matt around the chamber’s perimeter as he told the story of a civilisation now long dead for many millennia.

Meanwhile, Alex scanned the room, looking at the entrances, the debris size, and shape, and the ceilings above. He strained all his superhuman senses for any sound or sense of movement or life other than their own. For now they had time to look at the life and death of perhaps the first great civilisation the world had ever known. Maybe it could tell them how to fight the creature or, better yet, escape it.

“Bear with me as this’ll be a subjective translation. I’ll be filling in the gaps myself with what I think fits or looks right.” Matt turned and shrugged, then went back to the glyphs. “The Aztlans believed they were raised by the gods from the very soil itself. The gods lifted, or maybe that’s crafted them, from earth and stone and gave them the world as a gift. This symbol means they went forth over the waves and knew of many other lands. These lands were mainly populated by the ‘hairy men’ or ‘hairy people.’ This is incredible. This history could be around fifteen thousand years old—at that time some continents had creatures like saber-toothed tigers and mammoths roaming their plains. Most of the indigenous natives would have been little more than hunter-gatherers. To them, this advanced race must have been awe inspiring.” Matt continued reading from the wall, pointing at one symbol, giving its meaning and then moving on to the next.

“Aztlan was a land of sunshine and abundance. The people were healthy, crops were plentiful and the gods cherished them. They believed of all the world’s people they were the favourites of the gods. This looks interesting; this symbol could mean an earthquake. One day the earth started to shake and many of their buildings fell down. They were all thrown to the ground. They believed they had angered the mightiest god in Xibalba, the underworld, and he was coming to punish them himself. I bet this was when their digging broke through to the subterranean sea. Before then, it had probably been undisturbed for hundreds of millions of years.”

Matt pointed to an image of small figures kneeling before a giant, tentacled creature. “Introducing Qwotoan himself,” Matt read on. “The following pictures show more and more Aztlans kneeling before Qwotoan. Looks like they were upping the sacrifice ante each month, but all it was doing was feeding an ever-growing appetite.”

“Feeding dependency, they created safari park lions. The creatures made humans their natural food source,” Aimee said.

Matt nodded and continued, “Qwotoan was also coming up into the city and taking the people without waiting for the sacrifice ceremony.”

“How? How was the creature getting into the city?” Alex stepped forward eagerly.