The door into the mountainside was vast, made from solid steel. It had been buried for thousands of years before it was uncovered by the lone adventurer.
Built like a tomb, he knew this place was important but had no idea why. The temple was hidden well, and the terrain was forbidding. It seemed designed to repel investigators, which was incentive enough for him.
There was an inscription next to the door, one in the dead language his ancestors left behind during the Dark Times. Learning heiroglyphics or ancient Chinese was easy compared to this language, its phonetic basis made it impossible to understand without understanding the spoken language. He was one of the leading experts of his time, but his knowledge of the language was sparse at best. He wrote down its strange script and moved on.
The thick metallic door took a lot of effort to shift: The cutting gear he was using would not even scratch it. Cutting through the stone wall was the solution. It was hard work, his tools blunted quickly. It was times like these that he regretted working alone. He tunneled his way through the massive stone walls, eighteen feet of stone and concrete. He wriggled through the hole, and, switching on his torch, entered the chamber.
The brutalist architecture shocked him. Bare walls. Had tomb robbers been here first? He was not sure that this was a tomb. He recognised some of the words on the plaque on the front of the tomb: One of those words was honor. Most of the words felt out of place, but “honor” was a word often inscribed on tombs, but it did not feel like a tomb or a mausoleum: Stark. No decorations. Mausoleums normally had decorations. This place too... functional. Internal doors led further inside, these not being much less massive, but they were on rollers, and were easy to open. Whoever had sealed the outer doors must have believed that was enough to deter even the most ardent thief. There was a round symbol of these doors, possibly a religious symbol. More inscriptions, many faded, all indicipherable. This door was surprisingly easy to open, and he stepped through. On down the corridor, carrying his torch and cutting equipment,he came to another solid door, and studied the opening mechanism. It would open only after he closed the door at the other end. He closed that door, and opened this one. To the right was a storage area. There were the remains of clothing, possibly ceremonial in nature. What was left of this clothing was yellow, and surprisingly heavy. It seemed to cover the whole body, even having a darkened visor over the headpiece ensuring nobody could see into it. This clothing was certainly not built for comfort, it had to have some ceremonial purpose, but still... what ceremony would require such cumbersome clothing? He walked on, towards what he assumed to be the inner sanctum.
When he opened the inner door, he heard a click at the other end of the room. He ran back: It had locked automatically. He now had no choice. These doors were impenetrable using his cutting gear, and the walls in this area were made of the same stuff. With nothing to lose by now, he went into the Inner Sanctum.
No altar. A long crypt of locked doors, All sealed. No handles, welded shut. Going further down, there was one door which had rusted over the millenia. Stepping through a puddle, he felt a warm sensation in his foot. A warmth that also penetrated through the degraded metal. This was his best option for finding out what lay within, so he started cutting.
The door finally fell away, and he could feel a burning heat. The Sacred Relics held such supernatural power, that he instantly felt weak. His skin started to burn. He staggered out of there.
His skin was bleeding. He staggered out of the long crypt and slumped across the floor. Whatever that was he felt, he knew it had lethal power. Unable to get out, he made himself as comfortable as he could, and waited for the inevitable. He looked at the copy of the inscription that he took down outside the mountain, and spent his last few hours attempting a translation.
Hundreds of years later, other archaeologists came. They had, over the years, been able to discipher the old message left by the doors of the Yucca Mountain Complex:
This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location… it increases toward a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
The body of the Archaeologist still lay there, made hairless and sterile by the radiation, mummified by the dry air.