As a continuation to my previous stories, I now present to you the first half of my next story. Unlike my first few stories, this will be a double length story, with four parts instead of two. You should be warned, this story will present one of SciFi's most terrifying alien creatures, so there will be blood and gore and even death of minor characters. I will try to keep it all to a minimum, hence why the story is only rated T. Our story begins deep within the Amazon Rainforest...

The sun shone bright and hot on a cloudless day as thousands of crickets are heard buzzing in the trees as the view panned from the sun and down into a dense jungle setting complete with tall trees, ferns and vines, and even a colorful toucan sitting on a branch that squawked before it took off and flew through the trees.

Down on the ground, some ferns were shuffled a bit before a man wearing dried leaves tied around his waist to prevent himself from being revealed appeared from behind the ferns. He wore colorful mud on his face, probably for ceremonial purposes. He carried a pouch on his back, a sheathed knife at his waist and a long spear in hand.

He spoke in a foreign dialect that consisted mostly of a series of clicks and shouts. He waved into the dense forestation before he took off. More than a dozen more men dressed the same emerged from the dense jungle with spears of their own. They all looked quite scared and followed the first man who must have been a scout for the others.

They whispered amongst themselves in their dialect as they entered a circular clearing. They formed a small group and stood back to back to make sure no one or anything could sneak up on them.

They were all very nervous; only the scout was able to keep his cool. He spoke something to his fellow tribesmen, an order of some sort. They raised their spears and began sweating profusely. They began to whimper amongst themselves and failed to notice a black spine-like tail slithering out from the bushes along the ground.

"YAAAAH!" one of the nervous tribesmen screamed as he was pulled to the ground, the black spine-like tail wrapped around one of his legs. His fellow tribesmen shouted in their dialect as they chased after the man as he was dragged across the clearing and into the ferns. "YAAAAAH!" the man is heard screaming from the other side of the bushes.

The tribesmen stopped giving chase and began to back away nervously as the sound of something eating the man came from the bushes. They all jumped back when something was thrown at them from the bushes. It landed on the ground and they all cautiously approached whatever was thrown at them. It was the man's left arm, torn from his shoulder, ripped right out of the socket.

As they examined the severed arm, the man's severed head came out of the bushes and slowly rolled downhill towards the tribesmen. One of them shouted in their dialect and pointed towards the head, shocking them all and making them jump backwards in surprise. The head stopped next to the severed arm, his face frozen with fear from the moment it was torn from the rest of his body.

The tribesmen had had enough, they screamed for their lives as they ran through the bushes in the opposite direction. They ran as fast as they could; running around trees, vines, bushes and ferns; but it wasn't enough for most of them. The stragglers were pulled into the bushes by unseen forces, but their screams revealed that something was attacking them and killing them.

By the time they entered a larger clearing they had dwindled down to only five men. The clearing they were in wasn't empty though, sitting in the middle was a very large stone structure; it looked like a step-pyramid with a statue sitting at the very top. The statue resembled a giant egg with carvings in the side, but it was too far away to see any detail.

The five tribesmen shouted in their unknown dialect as they ran for the only entrance in the side of the stone structure. It appeared to be the only entrance in the side of the stone structure that went below ground. The men ran through the open doorway and grabbed pre-lit torches as they made their way through the dark tunnels.

Many secondary tunnels branched off from the main tunnel as the tribesmen ran down the long corridor. "HMPF!" one man grunted as he tripped and fell directly across from a secondary tunnel. A scaly black hand emerged from the darkness and wrapped its long fingers around the man's leg. "Huh?" he said in shock. "YAAAAAH!" he screamed as he was dragged into the darkness, his finger tips scratching along the ground. The sound of him being torn apart and eaten is heard soon after.

Two more men fell in the same manner until there were only two left, the brave calm minded scout and a nervous wreck of a man. They ran into a dead end; they slowly began to backtrack, eventually coming to another dark tunnel. They turned around and prepared to fight when they heard something approaching them from behind.

Another dark hand with long scaly fingers emerged from the darkness. The brave scout shouted a battle cry before he pulled a small knife out of its sheath at his waist and swiped it in front of his face.

The unseen creature is heard screeching in agony as it pulled its arm back, but the blade had cut right though its hand. The scaly hand dropped to the ground but not before spurting out blood, but this wasn't ordinary blood, it was yellow. When it splattered onto the stone floor, it began to fizzle and burned into the stone like acid.

The acidic blood was all over the knife and it quickly dissolved in the man's hand. He dropped the knife but not before losing a few fingers that had been melted off from the blood. "YAAAAH!" the man screamed as he grabbed his hand in agony.

The other man was too nervous and scared to help. He backed away and coward before another black spine-like tail emerged from the darkness at extreme speed. It was sharp on the end and so impaled the scout man's chest and puncturing and penetrated out through his back.

The scared man turned and ran away screaming. He was quickly cut off when a giant boulder fell from a hole in the tunnel's ceiling, blocking the only exit; or in this case, escape; from the underground tunnels. He skidded to a stop and dropped his torch. He whimpered in fear before he heard a growling coming from behind him. He gulped nervously, turned around and screamed as the view quickly zoomed in on his face before it panned back to the man that was stabbed through the chest by the spine-like tail.

He gasped for breath and spat out blood as he grabbed the tail where it entered into his chest and tried to pull it out. He grunted before running out of energy. His arms dropped to his side and he began breathing heavily as he focused his eyes on the darkness.

The creature that the tail belonged to finally moved into the light. The man's eyes bulged with horror when he saw the creature. The full length of the creature's tail was between fifteen and twenty feet long. The creature had a humanoid body covered in shiny black armor, spikes emerging from its back and an elongated head. It didn't appear to have any eyes.

It growled at the man and barred its teeth, clear gray teeth that seemed almost transparent. The man said something in his native tongue as the creature opened its mouth and hissed. The man shouted before something emerged from the creature's mouth. Its tongue was a miniature version of its head; teeth and all. The creature screeched before the miniature head of the tongue shot out of its mouth and snapped at the readers before everything went dark and quiet.