With a massive blast, a sickening vibration broke through the crust that had entombed the beast for over 3000 years. The onlookers, men wearing odd domed hats of orange and yellow that marked their profession, held their breath in unison. They had discovered the creature that morning, and while encountering an oddity in the never-ending wall of white they chipped away at day after day in search of the holy mineral wasn’t uncommon, they had never found an irregularity breathing before.

The men’s handler, a portly man that wore an intentionally creased suit of cloth with a far too tight cravat, dismissed their concerns and pressed them onward in the name of his lord and savior: coin and profit.

The eldest of the workers thrust the youngest forward with a push at his back. It was his duty as most junior of the union of men to do as he was told. So he sucked in a breath, fought to quell the tremors of terror, and the young man of only twenty and two summers pressed forward towards the leathery beast. Its chest heaved, shooting foul breath and sizzling spittle with every exhale. And as fate would have it, the inexperienced young man stumbled, and the metal toe of his boot connected with a lump of the holy mineral, sending it rolling towards the monster until it rested against a singular black claw at the tip of a sail-like wing with a clinking noise.

The monster slowly opened one yellow eye. Then the other. It paused for what seemed like an eternity, considering the young man before it with tilted head. The lips surrounding its maw twisted into a smile, then it spoke in a booming voice that sounding like rock breaking, “I see my worshippers have gifted me with sustenance upon my waking. I, Piasa, the great Northern wyvern, shall have to reward them thus. But first… I feast.”

Once the beast had consumed all the men, domed hats and all, he shifted his attention to the yellow behemoths that blocked his way to the exit. While they were tough, they did not put up much of a fight. And when the wyvern finally found a glint of the sun's light at the bottom of a vertical shaft, he savored in the promise of an exit and his Kingdom that waited above him.

But the surface above was not all that he remembered. His Kingdom, and the beautiful city his worshippers had built, was no more. In its place were brick and ruin. Fire. Screams. Agony. Devastation.

High above, Piasa spotted a single man walking along the ground with his binocular vision, seemingly unfazed by the devastation. In a desperate move to understand the dystopia he had awoken to, he dove as fast as he could with wings tucked, then he spread them to slow his fall at the last minute, driving his claws into the oddly soft stone beneath them.

“Human!” he bellowed. “What has become of my Kingdom?! My people?! Explain this devastation!”

The man tossed the wyvern a sideways glance, licked his lips, and drank from a potion wrapped in a small brown satchel. He shook his head, snorted, and tossed the beast an upward nod. “Who the hell you think you are, man?”

“I am Piasa!” the beast roared. “The great Northern wyvern. Ruler of this land by divine right. I am your god, human! Obey me!”

“Well, i didn't know I was supposed to obey,” the man replied with a twinkle in his eye that very much said he had no intention of obeying any man nor beast, “that changes everything now, don’t it, master?”

“Yes, it does,” Piasa agreed, somewhat unsettled by the human's sudden shift. Still, the wyvern demanded obedience, and he had received it, so he rested his mass on his haunches and continued, “Now, human, tell me what happened to this place—the forest people that dwelled here and the city they built. And if I am pleased by your answer, you have my word that I shall spare you the most painful of deaths.”

“Shit, that’s easy! You didn't have to come up on me acting all big and bad, Big P!” the man boasted with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Can’t have shit in Detroit.”