Chapter 1
“Geoffrey, Geoffrey! Hey, Get up!”
Groggily sitting up, I rubbed my hand across my face, trying to wipe the dreams away.
“What is it?” I yelled out of the tent. What could they possibly need to wake me up for? I thought as I made my way to the tent flap and pulled it back. I looked out over the camp, the night sky of the desert, a mass of shining stars. The moon was full and there were enough lamps around the camp that it wasn’t hard to see Sullivan running up to me. Grabbing a long-sleeve shirt and a jacket to stave off the desert chill, I looked around at the sands, normally an orange-like hue in the day, they were as gray as granite now, some areas were darker than others. Probably best to not think about why that is, considering how many people are in the camp. Sullivan reached me as I neared the bottom of the rocky outcropping that the camp had been set up on, I noticed he was panting and wide-eyed, the same look he had in his eyes back when we made our first discovery together.
“Geoffrey. We found... Something...” He huffed, “you... you gotta come see,” Sullivan’s quick breaths were raspy in the cool air as he tried to speak and catch his breath at the same time.
“Well, what was it?” I asked as I waved him onward. He lead me back down the rest of the trail this expedition had worn into the rocky ground here. We’d been digging here for a year now, and it was becoming more and more worrisome that we hadn’t found what the research was suggesting: The beginnings of the human race. This could be very exciting.
“It looks like some kind of altar chamber, we aren’t entirely sure though. It looks like it was used for rituals or something, there are bones littering the area, but not human. They’re alien of some kind, I think.” Sullivan whispered that last part so none of the workers that were still moving about this late could overhear them.
“What do you mean, they’re aliens?" I asked just as quietly as we left the camp. We climbed into one of the four-wheelers we’d brought for driving through the sand, big ATV types that had space for setting crates on the back if there was only one rider. They were useful for supply runs. “We’ve been together for over two years now, and I’ve never heard you mention anything about aliens before, so what’s got you so spooked?” I teased him.
“This,” Sullivan pulled something out from one of the bags on the vehicle and handed it to me. It was wrapped in cloth, and as I removed it I found myself holding a skull. A skull that was distinctly not human. It was at least twice as large as any skull that had been recorded, and the jawline extended further out like the creature had a severe underbite. It felt heavier than a human skull, not just from the sheer size difference as I expected, but the density of it seemed higher. Then I noticed the short tusks sticking out from the lower jaw, right where a human's canines would be. They seemed to have grown from the gum line and curved outward and then stopped where the upper row of teeth and lower row met.
“Alright, what is this?” I asked, completely enthralled, yet waiting for a prank. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Distracted by the skull I hadn’t noticed that we were pulling up to our destination. The mountains that we camped near were now right in front of us. The stretch of mountains seemed to be a good two-hour walk from the camp, it was further than we had discussed extending our search, but as the University that was funding us was breathing down our necks for some kind of report of findings, I didn’t see the point in mentioning the cost of gas. And it was worth it if there were more bones like the skull that was already found. Just the skull alone would give us credence for funding once it was tested and proven not to be some kind of attempt at fraud. “What are we doing over here?”
“We’re going in there,” he replied, pointing about twenty feet high, where there was a small ledge in front of it. Climbing the mountain wasn’t a problem this low, as they weren’t steep. Once we stood in front of the ledge I realized there was a cave nestled into the rock. The cave entrance was at most just enough for two people to walk inside shoulder to shoulder. Sullivan lead the way inside grabbing two flashlights from the ATV and handing one to me. As we walked, I looked around the walls seemed to be natural stone, nothing carved, no paintings on the walls, there didn’t seem to be anything indicating an altar area. The tunnel began to slope downward, and then we came to the end, the opening widening into a chamber. The ceiling sat a decent three stories above, hard to see without the light from the flashlight. As I looked around the chamber I noticed the bones that were littering the floor. I moved around and started examining them, picking up various bones that resembled different leg or arm bones, others that were so small and broken that it was hard to tell what they went to specifically.
Picking up a different skull from the one Sullivan had given me earlier, there were plenty of those too, I examined it. This skull was closer to human size, but it was more angular, the cheekbones higher up and more defined. It seemed slimmer than a human's skull, as well. Walking around the room, I look around for any skeletons that might be completely still, but it seems that most of them have been gnawed on and strewn about for too long, everything was coated in a layer of dust and dirt too.
“We’re going to need to bring a team in here and start collecting as many of these as we can transport back to the University labs. These need to be dated and tested.” I told Sullivan, who was still by the chamber entrance watching as I moved around. The room was littered with scraps of leather and cloth, which seemed to have been chewed on as well, probably by random animals that had found the bodies and picked them clean as well. Eerily, I noticed that the parts that weren’t chewed on much weren’t rotting like they should have been. “We’ll need to gather the bits of scrap cloth and leather too, if they’ve been here as long as the bodies they should have rotted away by now.”
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As I continued looking around, my foot kicked something, causing me to look down. I found that I had kicked some kind of leather pouch. Bending over I picked it up and noticed that it had been hiding a carving that was on the floor. Shining the flashlight around the floor I noticed there were more of them spread out around the edge of the floor. Some of them resembled seemed similar to old Celtic writings, others resembled elder Futhark, an older Nordic type of rune script that I had studied back in school. They were similar but none of them quite matched what I had seen before. I picked up the pouch as I stood back up from the rune and looked it over. Just like with the scraps the leather was untouched by time, and the string tying it closed was just as strong as when it was first made it seemed. I untied the bag and looked inside finding that it was pick black. Not that there was light from the flashlight on the bag, the opening of the bag seemed to absorb the light. Curious as the bag weighed it I held the flashlight against my arm and side-tipped the pouch over. Three gemstones came out of the bag each vastly different from the others.
One was spherical and seemed to be what was causing the contents of the bag to be blocked. It was a shade of black that drew my eyes in, making me feel like I was falling into a sea of darkness that was never-ending and would consume me. I pulled my gaze quickly from that one and looked at the other two, putting that one back in the pouch. The next one was a deep purple, reminding him of amethyst, it was uncut and reflected the light onto the ceiling of the chamber, the refracted light causing shadows to be outlined in purple. The final gem had jagged edges all over and was blood red. Even with the jagged edges, it was clearly in the shape of a teardrop, and looking through its translucent shape turned everything a shade of red.“You called the University letting them know we found something, right?” I called out. Putting the two gems back in the pouch I continued looking at the different bones and the runes. Pulling out a sketch pad from my bag I crouched and began sketching out the different runes. “They’ll be willing to give us funding for a full-scale expedition after seeing this. These skeletons alone prove that we weren’t the only creatures on this planet at some point in history.”
“No. We won’t be calling them,” Sullivan said softly. I almost missed him. I stopped drawing and looked over my shoulder at him. “There’s been a bit of a change in plans.”
“What do you mean,” I said as I stood up. I placed the pouch in the inside pocket of the jacket.
“Well, you see, there’s another player in our little expedition. One that pays quite handsomely for little things,” he sneered at me. Who sneers at people like that? “They’ve been with us since the first expedition we ever went on together. And they’ve asked that we never speak of these findings. And as they’ve already paid us, I figured this is probably for the best.” Sullivan pulled a revolver from behind his back, “After all, you were more into this whole archeology thing than I was, and since this is your life’s work, it just seems fitting that your life ends with its discovery, doesn’t it?” The sharp crack of the revolver fired as he punctuated his question. The bullet crashed into my chest, and I felt the air rush out of me. I took a step back looking in confusion first at Sullivan and then down at the hole that was in my jacket. I realized then that he had hit me dead in the heart, feeling the shirt become saturated with warm blood, my blood, I felt my knees give out and I crashed into the ground. I reached out to Sullivan, I couldn’t believe he’d just shot me over money. He looked down at me, the smile on his face didn’t reach his eyes as waved and turned around without saying another word. As my legs fully gave out and I fell face-first to the ground I belatedly noticed there was dust of some kind floating around me. As my consciousness began to fade, things began to brighten, like there was a light at the end of a dark tunnel. Huh, that sounds fitting actually, the light guiding the dead to the next step. In the distance, it sounded like there was an explosion and then everything went white before my consciousness fled.
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The Pantheon Courts had been sealed for a millennium and the gods and goddesses had retreated to their domains. They were isolated and conserving their strength having been disconnected from the flow of ætherial energy that was their source of being. Neketal felt it first, the weakening of the seals. The magic sang to her sweetly, tasting a flavor of mana she hadn’t been able to enjoy in far too long. The whispers of mana flowed around her, and as she followed it back to the source she found that within her domain there was a small spiderweb of cracks. It was as if someone had thrown a walk at the glass that was just thick enough to crack but not break.
When they had first trapped themselves by causing the collapse of magic, they had tried to break the seals that held them from influencing Rocar. Nothing they had tried then had worked. Beings that were capable of changing the very world itself were powerless to break the seals that trapped them within. Focusing on the cracks, Neketal placed her hand against them, pushing the mana within her through her spirit channels and out of her palm. She felt some resistance from the barrier, and then it gave way as the mana flowed through the cracks and out into the void.
She directed her mana toward Rocar, her mind racing at the implications this could have. She knew she needed to hurry before someone else discovered the reason behind the cracks in the barrier. Sending out a small wave of mana over Rocar, it rebounded on a Gate. She knew the Gate and knew that there was no way it should have been able to activate, the Realm it was connected to had lost its mana shortly after The Sundering. Forcing the mana to move closer to the source of the change she found what had caused the seal to crack. Someone new had entered Rocar, the Gate had opened if briefly, and had deposited a being of some sort. She pushed on the tendrils of mana, stretching them out around the person, and began inspecting him. She slowly wrapped him completely within her mana as a plan began to form. She pushed her spirit into the thread and let the mana dissipate.