The Brood

The cavern you've just entered is not as dark as one would expect. A faint reddish light comes from the back, where a crack in the stone leads deeper into the mountain. You proceed on your guard, ready to turn away at the first signs of a fire or magma. Even though the air warms up a little, the light is not quite bright enough to be coming from a flame. Instead, you pass through the crack and emerge in an even larger cave, walls covered to the top by thousands of small eggs, the size of a fist, pulsating a soothing red light.

You cannot tell what will hatch from these eggs. They are protected by scales reminiscent of a lizard's, but the shell is too opaque to let out the creature developping within. No sign of the parent in sight, which is a relief. Whatever creature is large enough to lay that many eggs is probably bad news. As you get closer to a wall to examinate the brood in details, the pulse of the nearest eggs accelerate until reaching the frequency of a beating heart, or that of an alarm. You back down immediately, which is a moment too late. The new tempo propagates to the nearest neighbors, and soon enough the whole cavern is bleeping frantically, with you, the intruder, in the middle of it.

A growl echoes from the depth of the cavern, accompanied by the sound of rocks falling. If there wasn't one before, this is your cue to leave. As much as you want to stay and look at the creature you awoken, your guts tell you that it will probably be the last thing you'll see.