36. Chapter 36

NIARA

I didn’t like not seeing Myles for a few days, but the idea of diving in the middle of the night into a nest of sirens didn’t appeal to me either. I suppose I could have insisted at least to come along with him and waited on the boat, instead I pounced on the idea of doing some more research in the ruins of the city by the volcano island. At least it would keep me occupied enough to not constantly think about Myles, also I was sure my days exploring the ruins were coming to an end once we moved Aecor. Instead of a day trip it would take two days.

So with a heavy heart I bid Myles good-bye and Kyle took me straight to Death Mountain. To make things a bit easier, we had marked the spot with a buoy.

Ours wasn’t the only boat, several others had accompanied us to resume their underwater training that had been interrupted by the battle with the Chrymphten.

Three dragoons accompanied me during my dive, while the rest either took off to where they liked to train or remained aboard the ship to keep an eye out .

As always as soon as the first statues and obelisks came into view, the world around me faded my sole focus was on the ruins. Even after all my dives here for the past few weeks, it never ceased to amaze me to swim through these breaking apart buildings, to think that the ground below me wasn’t just sand, but paved roads, roads that had been traveled by people many thousands of years ago.

I swam toward the fountain and sat at the edge, looking into the basin filled with shells and some seaweed growing on the edges. A snail made its way up the center column, cleaning it off whatever algae might be growing.

Who were you people ? I wondered, trying not to float up. Sitting underwater was harder than on land for sure.

Something blue caught my attention where the snail made its way up painfully slow. I used my hand and first fanned it against the column, then wiped. More colors became visible under a layer of seafoam, that broke under my fingers like sand. The seafoam was the same color as the rest of the fountain, making it appear as if the center was just a column, but it wasn’t just a column. It had been painstakingly decorated with colorful pebbles into a mosaic.

Intrigued I pulled out a piece of cloth I had brought to clean artifacts and began wiping at the column in earnest. Soon I floated in the center of the basin, swimming up the column that was twice as thick as me, wiping foam as I went. I didn’t stop to regard the mosaics, set on taking in the whole picture once I had it freed of the seafoam, still the artful displays didn’t escape my attention.

Painstakingly the artist had assembled pebbles, some the size of a needle head, in all colors of the rainbow, arranging them so that darker shadows were visible underneath a person’s muscles. I marveled at one’s image perfectly depicting his hollow cheeks, looking so real, it could have been an image taken with a palmtop.

I floated back after I was sure I had cleaned the entire column, to take in the full sight and was amazed how much it reminded me of Egyptian stories back from Earth. It hadn’t been easy to come by books of Earth’s history, thousands of years ago, but I had owned a couple and the resemblance was astonishing.

The lifelike figures were aqua like the Leanders, with the same kind of burning black eyes, but their facial structures were a bit different, kind of like Neanderthals differed from Homo Sapiens, only these people didn’t look as primitive. It made sense though, if they had lived that long ago on this planet.

Whatever story the artist had tried to retell on the column, spiraled up from the base and I found myself swimming engrossed in circles around it, following the depictions.

It was a representation of how these people had lived off the land, a very fertile land from the looks of it, they appeared very advanced in the arts of biological science, which this column was dedicated to. It showed how they bred, what I assumed to have been some kind of livestock, larger, how they invented serums to harvest more vegetables or made certain animals lay more eggs.

It was intriguing to decipher their accomplishments, which were in some cases mindboggling, when I came across a cross breed between a bird and some kind of rodent. Whoever these people had been, they had been extremely advanced in biochemistry. Still, judging by what I had discovered in their houses, they had lived relatively primitive. Then again, I mused, the Leandars flew in spaceships and many preferred torches, so maybe it wasn’t such a stretch to see these people advancing in one area but not in others, maybe it was us humans who were wired weirdly because we had developed so many different technologies in so many different fields. Then again, didn’t one advancement bring upon another?

Not necessarily, I allowed, it depended on need. Many of humanity’s achievements were built on war and survival, the urge to usurp others. A more peaceful species, might develop differently. I made a note to think some more on this later, when I wasn’t hundreds of paces underwater and continued deciphering the fountain.

There wasn’t much more though, the entire fountain had been dedicated to achievements made in regards to livestock and crops.

A quick look at my oxygen gage told me that I had spent three hours on the fountain. I only had a couple more, before it was time to return to the surface.

With one last look at the fountain, I propelled myself forward, past the houses I had already searched and passing more, set on today being the day I would explore the large temple. All the houses had pretty much looked the same, and things like clothes, paper—if it had existed—wood and such had long deteriorated or floated away, I didn’t think I would find anything spectacular in the houses I swam by.

In one house, I came across a necklace, that I had brought up. Once it was cleaned and polished, I had marveled at the craftsmanship and a quick trip to one of the Leandar jewelers had confirmed that this piece was worth millions of credits.

I wasn’t out to find riches though. I would have a few weeks ago, then I would have given my left arm for this kind of treasure to restore Horn. Now that we had new trade agreements, I knew Nathan would get Horn back into its old splendor.

I couldn’t bring myself to wear the necklace either though. Not because of its value, but because I kept asking myself who it had belonged to, what had happened to that person. As pretty as it was, it only gave me more questions than answers.

This wasn’t my first time entering the temple. I had done a quick browse through before, out of curiosity, now though, I looked at it through fresh eyes and realized that the columns and walls here too, were covered in the same kind of seafoam. Some parts too had been somewhat cleaned by snails, allowing a glimpse of color. Where before I had thought that the paint had peeled after all these years, I now knew that this wasn’t the case.

With a heavy sigh though, I realized the amount of work I would need to do. The walls were tall and long, the columns so thick I wouldn’t be able to span my arms around them, I didn’t think even Myles would have been able to.

This would take weeks, maybe months. I would have to talk Myles into having some of his dragoons help me. Like a moth drawn by a flame, I swam through the vestibule looking up at the large, domed ceiling, drawing comparisons to Myles’s domes.

Statues guarded benches arranged in a circle around the, if this had been a place of worship, where these their gods? I scrutinized a couple, even though they were all drenched in the seafoam they didn’t look much different from the ones in the depictions. If they were gods, they had looked the same as the people who had lived here.

Except… I scrubbed away some foam to expose the same aqua coloring of the Leanders. Maybe they weren’t gods after all, they could be statues honoring dead loved ones and the benches were here for the people who used to come here to talk to them. It was a comforting thought.

One of the walls I discovered held hundreds if not thousands of niches, filled with small urns, strengthening my theory that this place had been something like a cemetery, or a combination of temple and cemetery.

I swam up and down the walls, intrigued and tempted to take one of the urns to examine its contents, but shied away from it. I wasn’t an archeologist, even though I had always wanted to be one. If these urns contained the ashes of dead ones, I didn’t want to disturb the peace they must have found here. Not even the water had disturbed that.

At the end of a long corridor I discovered a large block, lying next to a hammer and chisel. Curious, I kicked my legs and swam closer. The block of rock lay on its front and was far too heavy for me to lift, even in the water.

I needed help for that.

Determined to find Kyle, I was about to leave the temple, when a dragoon entered. He waved at me, pointing at his oxygen meter, then up. It was time to leave. But I wouldn’t leave without the stone block, for some inexplicable reason it was calling to me.

I waved the dragoon forward and indicated for him to grab the block, which he did without hesitating, before he pointed up again. I nodded. I understood. Time to leave .