I found another folder… this one is labeled “The Guardian”

The first picture inside is of… I am not even sure what it is that I am looking at to be completely honest. The picture feels heavy in my hands as if it is the wrong weight.

It is a photograph of a massive and boulder-sized man. He must be standing at least twelve feet tall. He is broad-chested and in incredible shape. There is no expression on his face whatsoever. He’s literally a blank slate. People don’t come that size… what am I looking at here?

There are multiple pictures in the folder, none of them taken at very good angles. The lighting is all wrong, almost as if they are action shots. Perhaps they are pulled from video footage, although I can’t be sure.

Some of them appear to be more recent than others, although I can’t tell for certain. This thing carries its appearance timelessly. It could be decades old, centuries perhaps, or maybe built last week. There’s simply no way to know.

In the very back of the folder there is a map, it has various locations marked with X’s. France, Belgium, The United States, Argentina, and at least a dozen other countries. Is this supposed to be sightings? I can’t imagine this menace rampaging throughout towns and going unnoticed.

I found some notes amongst the pile of photographs, they seemed to be centuries old, and I worried about them crumbling in my hand as I held them. I could just barely make out the writing.

“The abomination that you see before you has no name, also as you can very well see, it has somehow managed to travel further than most men can ever dream of, although we are not sure how. Boats, planes, and other mechanical means of transport are out of the question based on his weight alone.”

Traveling? I am not so sure that is the correct term. How would this thing go about unnoticed? It is massive and impossible to miss, also how much could it possibly weigh?

“The Guardian cannot be traced back to a specific time or point in history. All we know is he does not wish to be witnessed.”

I can see that. It looks to me like he doesn’t like much of anything. What could possibly be going on behind those dead eyes? I grabbed the folder and shook it twice to see if I had missed anything, surprisingly a small crumpled piece of paper fell out onto the desk. I promptly straightened it out and began to read.

“To whoever finds this note, this will be the last bit of knowledge that I leave to this world, for I am being tracked. It knows that I have become aware of its masters. The Guardian was previously thought to be sentient, operating independently. That is not the case, at least not anymore. As you can see I have tracked him across the globe. He never stays in one place too long, somehow he is hardly ever seen. It’s actually nothing short of a miracle we got pictures.”

So someone was tracking this monstrosity, they were tracking this “Guardian” I honestly couldn’t even imagine. This thing looked to me distinctly like the kind of thing that found you, not vice versa. I did not envy whoever was in that position. I kept reading, my curiosity sufficiently piqued.

“If you see it, or if you hear it… Both of these are unlikely, the thing somehow moves with a grace that does not reflect its size in the least. You don’t stop to think, you do not pray. You do the only thing that might save your life… You run.”

No arguments here, I couldn’t imagine the presence of this thing in a room. Even just having these files and photographs open on a desk has unnerved me. Its eternal eyes glancing through centuries, out of its eternal portraits, and directly into my soul.

I spread out more of the disheveled paperwork, against my better judgment. I was looking for any other clues or suggestions as to what this thing was. There were some pages that seemed significantly more aged, perhaps the older insight would be more valuable.

“The Guardian protects, silently observing as he shifts throughout time. We are lucky that he has remained indifferent at most times throughout history. His true power remains unknown as he simply observes.”

Hmm, it seems whatever this thing is, it became a little more active from its original role. That does not seem to be a good thing.

This section was ancient, I can tell from the penmanship that it was definitely written in quill and ink. I was straining my eyes to read the faded ink. Let’s see if we can find something a little more recent.

Here we go.

There is an image I missed, it was taken with a powerful camera, and a recent one at that. I can see the details on its body and the musculature is insane. But there is something of… It looks like… Well stone?

I hadn’t noticed at first, but it was obvious now. I do not know how I missed it. It was obviously made of stone. Not a man at all… But a statue. Incredible, they were tracking a statue? That explained the size… But now there was a distinctively more perplexing issue. How had a statue come to life and started exhibiting hunting tendencies?

Now that I had seen it, it was impossible not to in the other photographs. It was like a puzzle that suddenly fit perfectly together. I felt like an idiot for not seeing it at first.

The stone man that circumnavigates the entire globe. It would almost be beautiful in a sense, if there wasn’t such sinister overtones from this folder. These people, whoever they are, they were hunting this thing. A mountain sized statue of a man that at one point began to seemingly hunt them back.

There is a final picture that again, I don’t know how I missed. It is a picture of a man, a normal man if ever there was one. He has kind eyes and is standing in front of a lake. There is no distinct markings or clues as to what the purpose of this photograph is. In fact the only lead on it is a small inscription on the back:

“For Amelia.”