[ WP ] You have discovered an abandoned city and are the first human in thousands of years to enter . You are half a mile in when you notice that every statute and carving has turned and is smiling at you .

Underground. These things were always, always underground for some reason. And not just a few houses buried in the sand either, an entire city, a complex massive enough to put Macchu Picchu, Angkor Wat, or even the Giza Plateau to shame. And granite. Almost everything is a dark grey, speckled. Obsidian flakes reflect the torchlight. Flickering, flaming torchlight. I lit the coals in the braziers as I passed—some still had enough to actually burn and glow. 
 
 It's enough to drive back the oppressive gloom, but not enough to remove the musty, stale smell from the air. Or the skeletons of the dead from my path. I treat them with respect—after all, some other archaeologist of the future may well find my bones in a deeply mysterious location. This place though, I still wonder how it's managed to stay off the map so long. 
 
 Then again, deep underground, the entrance to this complex overgrown with thick forest creepers. I have no idea where the other exits are, but I've been walking at least half a mile, quite probably more. I must be the first man alive here in a thousand years. The art is simple, mostly statuary and pottery. Pre-Inca. Pre-Indus. Pre-Dynastic. Prehistoric perhaps. 
 
 I get the feeling I'm being watched, the hairs on the back of my neck starting to rise. The air in here is so still and stale that even the slightest breeze becomes suspicious. Yet somehow all sounds are deadened, muffled by some strange effect of the halls. Even my footsteps, in heavy boots, do not ring and echo. 
 
 The air is thick, and heavy with dread. I feel as if something terrible has happened to this place—a once great realm torn down and cast aside. I am still being watched. I turn to face a rank of statues set in the wall, all grinning faces and bared teeth. As I step back their eyes follow me without moving. The carving to their left sports a stylized face; it, too, has begun to stare at me. 
 
 The city gazes at me with a million eyes that can never see. They follow. They smile. But they do not see. I know what happened to the others, because it is starting to happen to me. 
 
 They went mad. Mad with the revelation. And the city *liked* it. I can feel my sanity being torn away in shreds, and nothing now stands between me and embracing the statues of oblivion. The city eats a person's sanity. Devours. Ravishes. It feasted once upon nameless thousands. But now its mystery lures in lone explorers, and it hungers once more. 
 
 I find myself perfectly willing to sate its hunger… 
 
 *edit: typo. *
