12. Chapter 12

It had only been a few hours, we still had a third of a tank left, but I figured this might have been enough for my dragoons for the first day. I remembered how tired my legs were after the first dive, not that mine would be any better as this was only my second, but at least I knew what to expect now.

I signaled for everybody to move back up to the surface and noticed some of them picking up a few of the fragile relics we had found on the ocean floor. When I watched Niara take a small cup, I gave in to my own curiosity and took one of the better in shape looking daggers hoping it wouldn't disintegrate in my hand like the skull had.

It was surprisingly heavy and I kept a tight grip on it during my ascend.

Excited voices rang out the minute we were back aboard and my dragoons took their mouthpieces off. They reminded me of a group of seffies looking over new fabric, but I couldn't fault them. My own chest churned with our discoveries and the thrill of moving underwater like a siren .

"Vissigroth," Samurg, one of my dragoons held out a round piece of gold to me, that he had rubbed clean on his pants.

When I held it up, I could make out edgings, glyphs and an unknown person's likeliness. Puzzled I moved it through my fingers, until Niara plucked it from my hand.

"A coin," she exclaimed.

"Coin?" Samurg and I echoed simultaneously.

"On Earth it's a common currency, like you use gems." She explained. "It wasn’t unusual to have the image of whoever was the ruler of the time engraved on their coins."

"How do you know all this?" I asked, staring at the piece of gold in her hand.

"On Earth this would be a rare treasure. People were paid handsomely to find artifacts of old, long forgotten worlds. Of tribes who lived before us." Her cheeks flushed slightly, "My father thought it a waste of time, but I always liked to read about history, geology, science who the world works, who lived there before. Were we still on Earth, I would have loved nothing more than to be an archeologist."

"Archeologist?" It seemed the only thing I was capable of was repeating words back at her.

"A person who studies those old worlds and keeps records of them," she explained.

"A history keeper?" I began to understand.

"Yes, but different from your people who keep count of Leandars' past and present. Here it would be a person who would for example, try to decipher all the history and secrets of the people who created Attourna and this city we just discovered, which might have belonged to the same tribe."

Her face lit up while she spoke, radiance glowed off her. She was more animated than I had ever seen her. In that moment I would have given anything to keep her smile up. An urge to make her happy, see her this lively caught me by surprise but right then I knew I would do anything to make her happy like this.

At the same time I couldn't deny a certain amount of curiosity about the race that had lived on Oceanus before us as well, long before the planet became what it was now. It was hard to imagine continents and islands on Oceanus like they existed on other planets, but I had just seen uncontestable proof that it had been like this before.

"When this is over, I will finance a campaign to dig into the secrets of Oceanus's past and if you like you can lead it." I offered intrigued.

Stars lit up in her grey eyes and a beatific smile curved her lips. "Seriously?"

"I swear," I answered under my breath, because damn, she was stealing the very air from me. No seffy had ever touched a part of my soul the way she was right then.

"That would be…" she handed the gold piece back to Samurg, raised her arms into the air, before they embraced me. She even rose on her tiptoes and gave me a very chaste kiss on my cheek, which still managed to spring my cock into an arousal so hard, so fast, it left me dizzy. This seffy's aptitude to arouse, flabbergast and puzzle me was as uncanny as the emotions she rose in me .

My body was very aware of her scantly clothed body, her warm tits pressing into my abdomen, but my heart was even more enchanted by her sudden, unexpected gesture than the arousal she caused.

It took all my willpower, to let her retract her arms and step back from me instead of pulling her against my chest and ramming her into the railing to have my way with her. She was straining my self-control to the outmost limits.

I cleared my throat and took my eyes off her, only to find every dragoon's gaze directed at her with the same kind of desire flooding me. A deep growl escaped me. I barely forced the words MINE back.

"You better get dressed," I instructed her instead hoarsely and harsher than I intended, the light on her face dimmed as she remembered where she was, who I was and who she was. I wanted to slap myself for bringing reality back to her, but the hungry look on my dragoons' faces was more than I could bear.

"Of course," she demurred and stepped to where she had left her clothes earlier.

"You too!" I barked at my dragoons, who had at onces turned their heads from the seffy and busied themselves with relieving themselves of their diving equipment and returned to their animated chatter from before. Holding out the pieces they had sampled for others to inspect.

I caught myself wanting to turn to Niara, called myself an idiot and pulled out the dagger I had retrieved from the ocean floor .

The blade was dull and lightly crusted, still, it was excellently made, with gemstones decorating the handle. They weren’t just for decoration though, they also offered a more stable hold if the hand encircling it was sweaty or already drenched with blood.

With my nails I scraped at the crust of dead shells and snails as well as sand clinging to it and after a short while, I made out glyphs edged into the blade. Glyphs the kind I had never seen before, arousing my curiosity as to what they could possibly mean, bringing Niara's words about archeologists back.

I wondered whose hands had held this dagger before, who had been the last person to wear it? What had they looked like? Questions, I had never considered before started to burn inside my head.