A/N: I'm surprisingly getting through these. I was expecting to upload maybe every 2 weeks but eh, I'm getting through them at a reasonable pace. I'll estimate how long the whole story is gonna be (potentially 25-30 chapters) and I hope by then I've got quite the amount of views. Nevertheless, enjoy the chapter!
Sage looked over the cliff-face, sighing. He threw stones over the edge and thought to himself about life. It'd only been a couple of weeks and things were starting to shape into place. Sage would always pretend it hadn't been that long since he arrived, but now, he couldn't deny it.
Apollo picked up his shovel and headed through the forest path towards the cascades. He had one goal in mind, find some fossils. He'd only arrived in in Cascade Cove 3 days ago and he wanted to make a large amount of bells to invest in a house and basic supplies to get by. Fossils was his first option. He was always a great fossil finder, seeing small gaps in holes and shoveling them up to discover almost anything. Once, he'd found a T-Rex skull. What's more, the museum already had one. So he kept it upon the mantlepiece above his fireplace. he had no desire to sell it as it was his prize possession. People would admire it as their first comment when they entered Apollo's house. When he moved, he made sure it came with him.
Climbing up the stoney staircase past the cascades wasn't a challenging task. Apollo had always had good core strength and staircases weren't difficult in the slightest. When he reached the top, he looked over the summit. All of the cascades morphed together on different sides of of the island in the middle to create a hexagonal shape in the center. It looked that of Niagara Falls layout. Apollo adored it. It was one of the many reasons he moved. At the summit, he pulled out his shovel from his pocket and began to search.
Over by the corner of this cascade, there lay a star shaped hole. Apollo noticed it immediately and trotted over towards it to dig it up. He knew it was a fossil as most things out in the open like this resembled fossils. When he dug into the ground, he had to shovel quite profoundly.
"Quite a big one, eh?" he smirked and dug the whole thing up. He didn't recognize it though. An ankylosaur bone? That would explain its rough edges. As Apollo placed it in his pockets, he inspected the cascades. A large wave bent over the edge, strangely.
How odd Apollo thought. He leant over the very edge and knelt there for a moment before he observed the happening again. An eroded rock? Apollo guessed before picking himself up and wandering over to where the strange occurrence was happening. It wasn't a far walk, he required his vaulting pole to get over the cuts between each cascade. When he was above the occurrence, he pulled out his ladder and ambled down to where the wave was sprouting. A small water cut was bursting through a little hole between two rocks.
Hmm, could this be it? Apollo thought. Fortunately, he had a strong shovel which he used to scrape against the stones and pull them out of there current state. But as Apollo dug deeper, he started to notice that there was a large empty area between the rocks. How? There was more than rocks under those cascades.
Apollo had dug until he reached a kink in the water flow. He let it slide and the water flowed out, fixing the wave problem. But Apollo's curiosity didn't stop there. The kink also included a trigger in the rock wall. Apollo pulled a huge amount of rocks out and made a large enough hole to fit his eagle body. Cautiously, he stepped inside.
At first, Apollo's view was completely blinded as the cave was so dark. But light between fossil holes shone through and gave Apollo a path. Stalactites hung from every inch of the cave and were illuminated by fossil holes. Apollo powered on. He wanted to see what this cave was all about. Why it was hidden so deep in the ground? Why did it show itself at this very moment? Maybe it was magic? While realizing he might have gone a little too far in, Apollo hear a deafening, traumatizing sound.
The roar of a dinosaur.
He knew it was a dinosaur roar. It sound like those seen in movies. Although no one had heard what dinosaurs sounded like but Apollo could only assume that it was a dinosaur. A shadow hovered over ground-based stalactites and was illuminated in a blueish light. Apollo was petrified. He started to dash back to where he wandered from. The shadow came back from the hall-like cave. It turned to Apollo. Apollo, still looking back, felt his heart pound and the adrenaline pump through his blood.
Stomp
Stomp
Stomp
Apollo ran, sweat tumbling down his forehead. Tools were spilling out of his pockets at an alarming rate but he couldn't care less. His number one priority was to stay alive. Gripping his pilot outfit tightly, he pushed through. Looking back, the shadow only hovered there, looming over the cave in a horrifying state. Seeing the entrance, Apollo's hope rose. He ran faster then ever and slid through unharmed. He piled rocks swiftly into stacks and slammed them against the rock wall. He patched up kinks and patted wet sand on to the ends with his shovel that he hadn't lost.
He panted heavily, thankful he had not perished in that event. But in that moment, in that very nanosecond, Apollo realized something. Something Sage didn't know. Something Tom Nook wouldn't tell newcomers about. Something Isabelle wouldn't announce early in the morning.
There was so much more beneath the surface.