You arrive at your destination

Every muscle in your body screams at you to stop.

You ignore it, and keep pushing yourself. A quick glanced upwards confirms that you are so tantalizingly close to your goal - only a foot more!

"Come on - fuck!" You hiss through gritted teeth. Your hand leaves a faint mark of sweat as you reach for the next foothold you can see. Tears well in your eyes as you your dead-tired legs to push you up just a little bit more.

Finally, after excruciating effort, you're able to pull yourself up and over the final ledge of your climb. You want to rest, but you're also deathly afraid of falling from a height like this, so you drag yourself at least two feet away from the ledge, before finally letting your arms go limp and collapsing onto the cliff.

No wonder nobody comes here - the entrance to the cave is so hard to get to in comparison to the rest of the hiking trail! The only way to get to it would be to either climb down from the surrounding cliff faces, both of which have gentle slopes leading to their summits, or by climbing the near-vertical ascent that leads directly to the entrance.

Also, the dragon may be a decent reason for avoidance, too.

You wait to catch your breath for a while, before finally struggling to your feet. You gulp down a decent amount of water, and rub your sore knees for a moment, before staring at the gaping maw of the cave with trepidation.

It goes quite a ways in, and the light of the setting sun only penetrates about a foot in before it is swallowed by the darkness. You swallow your fear and anxiety, reminding yourself why you came as you your way into the cave, cautiously putting one foot before the other in an attempt to avoid any kind of dangerous creatures that may be calling the cave home.

Of course, you know that the only kind of dangerous creature that's actually here wouldn't actually be something you could avoid just by walking slowly. As the old saying goes, "only fools and the dead dare venture into a dragon's lair." What does that say about you?

You avoid lighting the torch with you for as long as you can, relying on your eyes to adapt to the darkness as well as they can. You get only about ten feet in when you have to light it, however - it seems as though this cave is where light comes to die.

The second you light the torch, you begin to feel a little bit more at ease. You continue on, counting your steps so you can hopefully retrace your path for an easy exit, if it comes to that.

After about fifty feet, you stop dead in your tracks, as a reflection of your torch becomes visible, the embers dancing in the cold whites of an eye that is easily the size of your entire body. You stand completely still, paralyzed by the scale of such a creature.

Neither of you move. The dragon doesn't even blink. It simply stares at you - cold and calculating, likely ready to strike at any moment. You continue to stare into its eye, and as you do, you notice that its iris seems to glitter like gold in the torchlight. If you were more inclined to take in the sights, you might very well be mesmerized.

As the silence continues to linger, you feel an anxiety welling up from within.