Snickerdoodle and Seafoam looked up at Mt Ahnakim with nothing short of trepidation. They held day packs of supplies on their backs as the cold mountain wind whipped around them, chilling the thin air.

Seafoam knew that they had both agreed to try and see what secrets the mountain kept, but now that they were here, looking up at it…

The mountain seemed to have a presence. Though other peaks towered around it, scraping the bottom of the sky, the mountain of Ahnakim to loom over everything around it. The sides of the mountain almost seemed carved in the likenesses of the beasts of Olde on a gargantuan scale, and Seafoam shuddered and looked away, the stories whispering in their mind.

"We can still turn back," Snickerdoodle offered, looking just as disturbed as Seafoam was.

Seafoam shook their head determinedly. "No. We should - we should do this."

Snickerdoodle tilted her head then nodded, feathers rustling in the breeze. Seafoam envied her her power of flight, how it made scrambling over this difficult terrain look dirty and inglorious. But she didn't fly when it was time to travel together, trekking at Seafoam's side as she did now, along the narrow but visible trail.

It was part game trail, part seasonal stream, and part path worn by many others making this trek to the strange mountain to learn its secrets. The natives and other colonists had warned the two against this endeavor but their curiosity had gotten the better of them.

Even if they had regrets now.

Eventually, multiple of these strange almost-paths converged, and Snickerdoodle and Seafoam followed them, feet crunching in the sandy soil as they cleared the treelike and emerged into the land of massive slabs of rock and much else. Still the mountain loomed, but the path seemed to have a different route in mind, and Seafoam hesitated.

"Should we keep following it?"

"I can fly up and check."

Though the prospect of being in the wilderness - that Seafoam had grown up in from a whelp - was suddenly alarming, they nodded. Snickerdoodle spread her wings and soared into the air with a powerful beat, circling before landing.

"It seems to lead to a cave in the mountainside," she reported. "It was dark inside so I couldn't see much but… ir felt strange."

The aerobic's brow was wrinkled in thought.

"What about this place isn't weird?" Seafoam sighed, then shook their head. "Dangerous, you think?"

"…no, I don't think so."

The two looked at each other a moment, then moved off down the trail together, towards the tunnel into the mountain.

The tunnel was, indeed, dark, and as Seafoam clicked on a flashlight, they heard Snickerdoodle gasp. Seafoam started and looked up, then also gasped. Ancient stone carvings covered the walls… beasts and creatures foreign and familiar, depicted in stone that had lain untouched for millennia.

It was… disconcerting, and the two inched together warily. Suddenly the rest of the tunnel, yawning in the dark, looked nothing more than a mouth waiting to swallow them. The two exchanged looks and moved on.

They followed the tunnel cautiously, ears ringing with the tales of ones who had tried this very same endeavor and failed miserably. Snickerdoodle tried to start a conversation, but the atmosphere quickly crushed it. It seemed… disrespectful to talk, here.

Seafoam's flashlight occasionally played over the carvings, and they wondered of some of the beasts of Olde still existed today. But that thought was quickly shaken out of their head as the two's flashlights played across an obstruction in their path.

A massive door, many times Snickerdoodle's wingspan, blocked their path. It had once been finely carved and inlaid, but now the metal had rusted and the carvings had been partially worn away by time and age. But still, in the light of their flashlights, in the depths of this tomb of a mountain, it was a stunning sight.

"…well," Seafoam started, then stopped, not sure how to continue the thought.

"Well," agreed Snickerdoodle, then leaned forwards. "Look - there's a small door, inset."

Seafoam joined them in getting closer, and the two examined the smaller, their-sized door. It had obviously been used over the years, dust not laying as thick, and meta slightly more shiny than the rest of the door.

Seafoam reached for the handle, then hesitated.

"Should we -?"

Snickerdoodle looked up at the door, then nodded. "We've come this far."

And then the two opened the door, stepping forwards into the black beyond.