Nightshade Tentacle

Nora headed down the tunnel marked with the tentacle, expecting an extensive and complex series of caverns and tunnels, but instead, barely twenty feet into her foray she was stopped by rubble. This old tunnel had long ago caved in. She cursed under her breath.

"Goddammit. Now what?"

She poked at the large rocks, seeing if there was possibly a way through somehow, but there wasn't. But her efforts weren't completely wasted. Under one of the rocks she noticed a skeletal hand, old and barely keeping together with dirt and dust. She started digging, and after a decent amount of time managed to unearth most of the skeleton. The bones were crushed and misshapen from years of pressure, but the clothes it was wearing were well preserved due to the dry conditions. What surprised Nora so much was that the clothes were relatively modern, or at least looked like they were made in the past couple decades. She turned the dark brown jacket over and audibly gasped. It was an old Soviet army jacket! What was something like this even doing here? Who was this? Why did they die like this? For a moment Nora thought that the answers would be lost to time but then she noticed the journal in the pocket. She delicately opened it up, careful not to damage the fragile faded pages. It was written in Russian. Thankfully she knew how to read a little Russian, although the handwriting weren't doing her any favours. She sat down and began to read through it, starting of course with the first page.

'Deep Cave Network Expedition Journal, property of the U.S.S.R. Special Ops Division N233-C, Agent Nicolaj Petrikov

Tuesday, 10th August, 1978,

We have begun the most glorious expedition today. I, Nicolaj Petrikov, along with Dr. Vlad Smirnoff, Angelika Smirnoff, Professor Simon Ortega, Professor ------, and three workers we hired, have entered the great Kamchatka cave network. It wasn't long ago that the extent of these caves were realised. What's strange to me is why we have a person like Professor ------ with us. What do they expect us to find down there? Dr. Smirnoff tells me not to worry about it, and be joyous that we're allowed to go down these caves at all. I guess he's right, but I am still uneasy.

We started our descent into the depths. Angelika keeps the spirit high with her jokes. We're lucky to have a woman like her on board.

Wednesday, 11th August 1978,

We came upon a marvellous discovery today. Around 5 kilometres down from our starting point we came upon a strange chamber which I am sure will go down in History as the most important archeological discovery of the 20th century, if not ever, that is unless we find something more further down the cave; it seems quite likely we will. The chamber is quite hard to describe in words, but I will try my best. There are four braziers on each corner of a large tiled square on the ground. This square sits in the middle of the cave like a sore thumb, not connected to the natural stone walls and ceiling in any way, as though all interest and attention was put on the centre. In the middle of this square sits a pedestal with the most fascinating relic I have ever seen. It's some sort of statuette made from granite of an ape, or creature, with large, circular opal eyes. I wanted to inspect it, but Professor ------ stopped me, telling me it would be bad luck. I scoffed and told him that this expedition has no place for superstitious nonsense. Dr. Smirnoff shook his head though, as if he and Professor ------ talked about it before hand. It was Professor Ortega who picked up the statuette in the end. He took it back to the surface despite the protests of Professor ------. We camped for the day, and we spent our time inspecting the strange shrine.'

Nora rubbed her eyes and looked at how many pages there were left. There were quite a few. She decided she'd read the rest of the journal back at camp. She searched the rest of the pockets. There wasn't anything useful really, but she did find a strange rectangular baton with a purple stripe on one end. This must be one of the keys for the door. How this man got it must be explained in the journal, but for now Nora took it.

[Nicolaj's journal is now available back at Nora's camp.]