I am a researcher from England who has found myself taken around the world as a consequence of the line of work I follow. As a researcher, I have played an important role in conducting a variety of investigations into ecological shifts in the biological populations which dominate different geographical environments and habitats. I specialise in investigating changes in the ecosystems present in different regions of the world, and this involves studying more closely the way the conditions of environments and habitats themselves fluctuate overtime. There are, in many cases, specific organisms which migrate into new areas and in the process trigger the emigration of various other biological populations out of their former habitats. The organisms which trigger ecological shifts by pushing other organisms out of such environments tend to be ones which dominate food chains and consequently necessitate the migration of other organisms out of the regions which they settle in. This instance was one of those, and the specific variable which we uncovered was beyond what we could ever have initially anticipated.
Our region of interest was a mountainous area of Alaska. This was certainly not the first time I had conducted research in the Americas. Indeed, I had a long line of experience investigating a plentiful quantity of ecological alterations and biological migration patterns across this large and fascinating continent. I also enjoyed the research I conducted back in Europe, but I would also excitedly anticipate any opportunity to travel across the Atlantic and help discover more there. As a consequence, I was in no position to pass up the opportunity to play a leading role in whatever project was being considered in Alaska, and I instantly made my enthusiasm and commitment unambiguously clear. In this mountainous Alaskan region, there had apparently been a noticeable decline in the biological populations which had once inhabited the area not so long ago. There had already been many cases in the past in which I had investigated a general decline in the richness of organisms inhabiting a certain environment, so this issue was certainly nothing particularly new or unusual for me to help address. I would be cooperating with a team of sufficiently experienced researchers such as myself. We would be embarking on an expedition across this region of Alaska and making as many observations of this area as possible. If we could demonstrate the existence of a new organism in the environment which had previously not been known to inhabit it then that would provide a clear means by which we could develop a promising explanation for these reported rapid ecological declines.
We set out to the region with all necessary supplies. We set up camp in a locale seemingly surrounded by a wall of rock with a gap fortunately present which enabled entry. As well as this, there was an entrance to what appeared to be a tunnel in part of the rocky wall. We agreed that this tunnel would be an area of interest in our research, as if it were to lead to an underground network, it may serve as a habitat for a particular organism which was using it to quickly navigate the mountainous labyrinth on the surface. It was not unheard of for there to be naturally-formed geographical barriers such as rocky walls which happened to surround and almost border a particular patch of land. Areas like this were still infrequent and rare, but did form as a coincidental outcome of naturally-developed rock formations overtime every now and then. It was therefore wise for intelligent beings such as ourselves to exploit these little hideouts to more adequately coordinate investigative research being conducted. We would come to learn that this time we would not be the only impressively intelligent being living there afterall.
We had already engaged in a fair amount of travelling in order to reach this new camping spot of ours, and so we made the most rational decision anybody in our situation would have done and made use of the soon-to-come nightfall for the conventional purpose of sleep. Our camp had already been set up, with our tents readily made. None of us needed convincing to rest for the night and investigate the tunnel in the morning. As the sun set and the sky began to turn a crimson red, it took almost no time at all to fall into a peaceful slumber. I awoke in the dark hours of the morning stunned by a spine-chilling hiss which echoed seemingly from the same direction as the tunnel in the wall. The hairs on my neck stood up as I ventured outside my tent with apprehension. I saw that the other researchers were awoken and doing the same, equally alarmed by such a disturbing sound. We all agreed it had most likely come from the tunnel, and that given how greatly diminished our chances of returning to sleep were as a consequence of the unnerving hiss our ears had been exposed to, we ought to investigate right then and there rather than later. We got out our torches and began to cautiously make our way through the tunnel entrance. As soon as we entered, the atmosphere changed almost immediately. I felt instantly constrained by the inner walls of the tunnel. It was almost as though the cavern we had been drawn into was consuming us. Enveloped by the newfound abyss that surrounded us, time itself became incomprehensible, and it felt as though the journey down the tunnel was a descent into insanity. In spite of being surrounded by the rest of the research team, I felt increasingly alone as we ventured further and further down a gullet which seemingly lacked an end. Eventually, however, we encountered something.
The tunnel opened up into a cave-like area which seemed to centrally coordinate a number of other tunnels around it. Their entrances were all around the walls. There was no mistaking. Something had deliberately formed these tunnels and designed them to lead back to a den it had crafted for itself. The den’s walls were decorated with great sticky ropes which crossed over one another, forming scaffolding. It was a web. There were holes in the web where the tunnel entrances were. From the ceiling hung the carcasses of various different mammals. Thankfully, humans appeared to be mammals that were not encased within any of the webbing - yet. Just then, the same hiss we had heard before echoed from one of the tunnel entrances on the other end of the den.
Within the darkness of the tunnel entrance furthest to the other end, a set of scarlet red eyes illuminated. After that, an arachnoid creature emerged. Its limbs were thin for its length, but nonetheless physically strong as they brought the creature forward with thudding steps which sent vibrations throughout the rock both above and below us. Relative to the rest of it, the main body was of comparably moderate size, with a length sufficient to securely harness all eight of its limbs and a width sufficient to balance itself as it towered over us. A set of thin hairs stood from its skin as a dauntingly sadistic pair of fangs at least as large as bananas extended from its mouth. In spite of its spider-like resemblances, it was considerably larger than any spider ever previously encountered. It paused for a moment, before its legs thrust itself at us accompanied by a malevolent screech and we all broke into a frantic run in the direction we had come. Luckily, our journey into that den had only entailed a single tunnel so we did not have to recall any complex set of directions in our retreat. If we had done, I am sure it would have come at a grave cost. Had we ventured further into the network we had just encountered the beginnings of then we would have likely found ourselves trapped in the dark labyrinthine feeding grounds of the creature we had just bared witness to.
After what felt like an eternity of frantic running, a peak of what looked like a currently ongoing sunrise slipped into my field of view. As we drew nearer, a break of orange into yellow and then white gave us the relieving signs of arising daylight on the surface as we suddenly broke back into our world. We all fell onto the ground panting as we looked back to see that the red eyes had disappeared. It had gone. We decided our investigation had concluded as we reported our findings to the research company which had deployed us. My expectations of them not to believe us were surprisingly falsified as they revealed that they had become open to radical possibilities as a consequence of just how rampantly and sporadically the ecological decline in that region had occured. They suspected the region had effectively become the colony of something the likes of which had never been seen before through the human eye. They told us they understood and very much supported the early termination of the investigation, even suggesting that the quality of the information we had reported provided a more than satisfactory level of knowledge on what had happened to the area.
Where the creature came from remains a mystery and the research company we were operating under, alongside other subsequently implicated authorities, have made their best efforts to conceal knowledge of its existence from the general public. What I can say is that the relatively geographically hidden nature of its newfound territory is fortunate in all our interests. Nonetheless, do not attempt to find the concealed mountainous location which harbours this organism.