The Prophesy: Book 2 - The Right Hand of Destiny

 

The process of raising the three young dragons began in earnest. At first, the essential issue was feeding them, and the royals rotated the feeding duty, and the not so fun job of getting rid of leftovers and dejections. But things gradually stabilized as each took turn in eight-hour shifts, under the watchful eyes of the female Gold dragon. The male Gold accompanied the others in their patrols within the kingdom. Meanwhile, the recovery of more plants and animals resumed. Harp and Thorsten finished the preparation of the next berth for an Atlantean crystal. Paschal and Enron made their way to the Temple of the Sun in Machupicchu and extracted the crystal from its hiding place, along with the Inca Royal Treasure, the same that had the Spanish exited to a killing frenzy and massacring everything on two legs for over three hundred years.

By the second week, it became apparent that the dragonlings were again getting irritable, and Thorsten suggested they needed to learn how to mould their skin on their own, which had grown dull. How do you teach something you never had to do? Again, Thorsten came to the rescue, explaining that snakes rubbed themselves against rough rocks to extract themselves from the soon to be discarded skin. Then the Wolf conscience reminded the boys that the wolves do a similar process each spring, to get rid of the itchy and now useless winter coat. The boys began looking at the nest for the proper sized rocks, but all surfaces were glassy and polished. Paschal decided to install a bed of sharp, pointy rocks on the sand bed, and hope the little dragonlings would naturally take to rubbing themselves on it. After teleporting some fifty tons of rocks and positioning them in a three-foot thick layer, the boys invited the younglings to play on the shards. At first, the dragonlings did not know what to do. Sitar rubbed pumice on the gold dragonling, who immediately began roaring in content, and then it began rubbing himself on the bed of rocks. A repeat of the process on the red and green dragons turned into a rub-the-rock party, and soon enough, the skin began to part at the throat level, gradually splitting along the longitudinal axis from head to tail. The dragonlings extracted themselves from the now discarded skins, and showed their second growth ring as they filled up the still soft envelope. As soon as the skins were abandoned, the old ones were taken to a volcanic lava lake by the boys and dropped in it. The new skin solidified over a period of hours, bright and looking fresh.

"I never knew dragons had skin made of rock scales!" commented Paschal as he and Thorsten carried a part of the old gold skin to the dumpsite.

"Me neither. No wonder they can dive into lava. It feels different from the first mould. Remember, at the time, it felt like some thick elastic cover. I think the dragonling's egg skin differs markedly from subsequent ones."

"Probably because they cannot mould in the egg, whose rocky shell acts as the skin."

"They added a foot in length in a week, and their wingspan has multiplied by ten. If it continues, the nest will be a wing-to-wing carpet! And their overall length is already at four feet from snout to tail tip."

"Remember, they have to be able to fly out of here within two weeks. That's going to make for some fancy aerobatics. That chimney is narrow."

"Yes. I hope Harp manages to teach Ian how to fly before the gold dragon is ready to try his wings. Adjusting the magic field to compensate the gravity well is not as easy as it sounds!"

"Ian's good with the field already. He has been using it to get on Silver Moon's back. And that isn't easy because it takes some fancy adjustments. He has the instinct."

"I wonder how Nestor would see this, probably as another impossibility. Poor grandpa! He lives with so many preconceived limits!"

"I also wonder how they manage to change their colours so fast. Have you seen the little red? At one point, he looked like a piece of rust lying on the ground, then bingo, he turned to striated red and black, and then to yellow-red ochre. He must have had one heck of a dream too: his legs moved all by themselves, like he was running all over the place."

"Aye I did What surprised me was the gold spitting fire in his dream, once. I think it came unexpectedly for him, and he wasn't aware of it. Luckily, Ian was out doing some work at the Ark."

"We are in for some interesting times!"

"We need to inform the others of this. It might not be fun to end up roasted. I doubt that dragon parents are at risk, but we do not have rock skins!"

***

The third mould again added another foot to each dragon. Their wingspan reached twice their body length, at an astounding eight feet. The itch to fly was there, as each one tried to take off the ground by beating their wings furiously. Each wing beat lifted them off the ground ever more, and it became apparent to the boys that the first flight would be soon, probably after the next mould. Each trial was immediately followed by another 'feed me, mummy!' dance, to which the boys gladly replied with more and more meat. The volume was such that they resorted to magic to create enough food. At five hundred pounds of meat per feeding, it became a necessity. The diet now included bones, which seemed to be a delicacy to the dragonlings, which spent hours crunching on them, and extracting the marrow.

Another behaviour appeared during that time that had not been documented before. The dragonlings began chewing on he mould bed, as Paschal had named the rock bed used to ease the moulding. It became apparent it was a natural way to handle dental hygiene. Then the next, and last mould to occur within the nest started. The dragon juveniles that emerged from it were magnificent. At six feet in length, and wingspans of sixteen feet, they would be ready to fly out of the nest as soon as their wings dried and extended fully. The thunderous sound made by the three dragons as they beat their wings to help in their extension and drying was deafening as it echoed in the cavernous nest.

Another change also appeared within the juveniles. They began to lose their baby teeth and they munched on every damn piece of rock they could find to speed the process, salivating furiously. The moulding bed got reduced to black sand in less than three days. On the fourth day after the mould, the red female was rampaging in the nest, and when Harp rose slowly off the ground to exit the nest, it followed him out. The bounding had worked marvellously well. Later that day, it was Sitar's turn to take off slowly, followed by the green dragon juvenile, and, three hours later, just as dusk was setting on the nest, Ian took off under the watchful eyes of his bounded, who followed suit. The nest was ready for the next batch of dragonlings. The royals left behind quickly cleaned it up of any residue, readying it for the upcoming egglings.

***

Flying lessons started in earnest. The dragonlings followed their bounded in the air as much as they could. The boys used these times to teach them about all the tricks of flying. At first, the basics were taught; such as nose-down take offs, then running takeoffs, and eventually the use of the wings as air brakes. It took some doing, and a few accidents for the dragonlings to master the basics, but by the next moulding, which again added another foot lengthwise and added another four feet to their wingspan, they were ready for the next part, hunting.

At first, the boys simply dropped dead birds to teach them how to catch something in midair. But their ravenous appetite would have gnawed through an entire flock, so it became necessary to teach them how to hunt bigger game. Yet that was going to be a problem. Being surrogate mother doesn't make you into a dragon! After consulting each other, they decided the best would be to teach the gold and red dragonlings the art of hunting mountain sheep, while the young green one would be brought to southern, ice-free lakes to learn dive fishing.

The red female showed her budding speed and manoeuvrability advantage over the gold male as she quickly managed to learn how to push the mountain sheep into panicked flight, and, after picking a target, make it fall off the cliff. The gold male, on the other hand, systematically picked bigger, slower prey. As for the green male, he learned to sense the surface wavelets that a school of fish makes in its displacement down below and to dive from great heights right in the middle of the panicked fishes and swallow as many as he could. He learned the hard way to keep the sun in front of him, after hitting a pool to find almost all fishes had taken cover.

The next lesson was the use of lava to wash off any parasite that might happen to install itself between the scales' plates. Oh yes, parasites did manage to install themselves on their skins: lichens, fungus, and mushrooms, even some zebra moulds for the green dragonling. The boys used the magic field to isolate themselves from the intense heat and keep the lava from sticking. The dragonlings took to the lava like ducks to water and began playing rockball, which consists of creating a ball of molten rock and throwing it up in the air at each other, either dunking out the way or returning it to the sender with a slap of the tail. Sometimes, the ball would shatter from the throwback, or bounce off the lava lake or rock bed or the cliffs that delimited the caldera.

The boys began moving ever further away from the nest, accompanied by their bounded. It took some work to make the dragonlings understand the difference between hunting and collecting for the Ark or Eden project, but after some minor mishaps, except for the poor victims of the dragonlings, everything got settled.

Eventually, Harp and Thorsten managed to get the red dragonling to fly far enough it could accompany them in their scouring of the Andes for other rare animals. They 'explained' to the red female she should stay up and signal to them any animal she saw. They then would pop near it, teleport it to the zoo for preparation to the Ark. They would also sample the vegetation and move these to the Eden project.

Meanwhile, Harold, Samson, Dunbar and Williams began to slowly empty the eastern end of the Tunnel and moving things in an orderly fashion in the tessaracts that Harp had built. They took their time. Winter was back in full force, and thick layers of snow covered everything, making displacement within the kingdom next to impossible, so magic users, mostly the royals, were in need, if only to deliver supplies to cities and towns isolated by snow. By spring, the Eastern Vault, as it had been named, was empty and sealed definitively.

Other bindings between dragonlings had occurred during this period, and each of the royals found themselves shadowed by their own little dragon. Ian now spoke fluent Franca lingua, troll, Elvin, dwarf, and even managed to hold a conversation in the song-like speech of the Fairies. Dragon language held no mystery for him either, and he could be seen dancing on Silver Moon's back, holding funny exchanges with the dragon queen. He had mastered the dialects of the equines, the canines, and gained a fair understanding of the Unicorns, whose language seemed to have evolved independently of the equines'.

Magic capacities had been spreading, first in the royals' closest help, to gradually extend further out. Dukes, marquis, generals and marshals were the first to gain access, being more in contact with the royals, but it gradually spread out, first in the wolves, then the equines, then the legionnaires and the elves. The final ones to gain access were the fairies, which were pretty frustrated, given that Timor, a Troll, gained his magic before them! It turned out it would be necessary for each to have magic in order to bind effectively with a dragonling, and that things sort of went forward as needed. Timor was so pleased when the last gold, a male, bounded to him.

***

The fourth known crystal was still stuck in the underlying rocks of the Cheops pyramid, and the nuclear war had been merciless for Cairo, this made access to it risky. The pyramid itself had survived, turned glossy from the heat, but entering it via what the ancients called the Descending corridor to reach the Chamber of the Queen, would be hazardous, as an important amount of radioactive sand had accumulated in the passage and chamber over time.

Then there was the Sphinx. It too had its importance. According to the last report from the migrating Atlanteans, just prior to the fall of the Child Moon, the elements necessary to build and complete the last chamber of Thebes were stored under it. The ancient Egyptians, not knowing what stasis chambers were, only saw in these elements ways to preserve the dead for afterlife and began imitating the Atlanteans with sarcophagi, and a complex embalmment process. Even the Book of the Dead was but an elaborate hoax to copy the stasis procedure.

Harold, after consultation with Harp and Paschal, took a decision.

"We'll move the elements under the Sphinx first, and assemble the missing stasis room. It's going to take us some time, and we will use this period to analyze the issue with the crystal. Hopefully, its chamber was not breached."

"If it was, dad, it wasn't by the ancients. The discovery of the crystal would have left traces! Imagine something that looks like a sixty-foot high diamond! Knowing the greed of the Ancients, it would have triggered a war!"

"You are right, Sitar. I am sure it is still there, unknown to all but us. What I worry is seepage of radioactive water into the cavity."

"We'll know when we get to it, dad. Given its importance, I am sure those responsible for its storage vitrified the sandstone bricks they had to use to line the inner wall, thus sealing it in a complete glass bubble of several feet. Sandstone is well known for its faults and porosity. I may not have been there during the construction, put I did make the plans for the pyramid, the Sphinx, and the chamber. The Atlanteans in charge of the last convoy were our last scientists and they knew how vital that equipment was."

"Paschal, you were not there, but I was. My memory of events as they unfolded is coming back slowly," replied Sitar. "We were fighting our way through another attack from the Egyptians, that were helped by these damn soul snatchers. The lead scientist came to the conclusion we would never reach Kantar on time and decided to implement your plan B. While we held the enemy at bay, they built the chamber, put the crystal in it, and sealed it. They then put a thick layer of vitrified sandstone bricks above the trap, what would become the Chamber of the Queen. Then they built the storage room under the rock that anchors the Sphinx and moved everything into it, again sealing it with vitrified sandstone. The Egyptians performed the last stage of the construction. We were forced to use local labour to build these huge markers because our own forces were beginning to weaken due to the incessant attacks. After ten years, we were finished. We then dispersed ourselves into the population and hid. The scientists became the founder of the Egyptian theological class, and we became the core of their army. Gradually, everything was forgotten, and it was what we wanted. There were very few survivors of the convoy, especially after the Child Moon fell. It did help us establish ourselves as the upper caste, because we were as good liars as the soul snatchers. We claimed it was God avanging our dead and used it to its utmost potential. It worked for quite a while. I remember the first Egyptian Pharaoh was the chief scientist of the convoy. He did not last long because he was already old, but he did last enough to give the impression of immortality to the humans. That too served us, because from then on, Pharaohs claimed godhood. A very useful tool when you are dealing with ignorant, religious-obsessed masses. And, Harold, don't look at me like that! It worked, and that is all that mattered!"

"Hey, you usurped a royal title!"

"So? Where you there to claim it? And I didn't, it was the scientist that led the convoy that did! We did try to maintain Atlanteans separate from the Egyptians, but, as Francesca can testify, inbreeding has its bad sides. The subsequent Egyptian Pharaohs took it to mean they could mate with their immediate family, and this led to a lot of brother-sister marriages with the expected consequences. We tried to keep the distance at a maximum between lines within the Atlanteans, but there is only so much you can do with a restricted population pool. And, eventually, we did breed with the Egyptians and vanished in their mass."

"Don't blame Sitar, dad," intervened Harp. "I did the same thing when I tried to kick-start the Atlanteans' return with Camelot while I was still known as Merlin. It failed miserably, if only because whatever qualities possessed king Arthur, he had enough genetic defects that inbreeding would have led to a disaster. He was a jealous prick, always wanting to lay down with a young girl, but unwilling to take responsibility for a lineage. Once he had lay a girl, he was not interested in her anymore, but beware if someone tried to take her as sloppy seconds. He was one hell of a possessive brat. He would go into a mad jealousy bind and, more often than not, have the poor second violin castrated, and the girl beheaded. His legitimate wife lived hell, and the dumb ass always kept blaming her for not producing heirs! How could she? He did the deed once with her, and that was it! Somehow, I think Arthur was more into boys than ladies. He did it for the gallery, but not out of commitment or true interest. I never caught him with his pants down on a page, but I did notice quite a few walked funny after spending time with him. And he kept a harem of them at the castle. Not a harem of girls, but boys! And his sister was a first-class bitch. She tried to bed him many times, even if I told her to not do it. Am I glad he could not get it up on her! My biggest mistake was giving him Excalibur! I thought he would understand what was expected of him. Big mistake! He went mad with power lust, and I had to kill him myself. After that I never tried to speed the events up! Born a dickhead, died without his big one. After that I left Camelot and began trying to locate the crystals. I have found most, and we have made substantial headway in reassembling them. What I regret is never finding the biggest of all. It was the last one to leave Atlantis."

"OK, boys. I understand the issues. I admit my old self, stuck in Kantar, was unaware of the situation, and we never did talk about the last days of Atlantis, if only because our memory was spotty at best."

"We all did, if you want to know the truth. I am responsible for the emergence of civilisation in Mesoamerica, and it too turned into a bloodbath," Paschal replied.

"And I brought about the Inca civilization," added Enron, as memories flooded to him. "We sure made a mess. Hell is paved with good intentions."

"That is true. We left seeds of civilizations everywhere as we first fought the Elohim, and then when we moved out of Atlantis to get away from the impending disaster. Thousands of us gave impetus to civilizations across the globe, but, as usual, it degenerated. You can find leftovers of our passage in just about every old civilization. The Chinese, with their festival of the Dragon, remember the fall of the Child Moon the most vividly, but it goes much further. We gave them techniques for the production of ceramics, just to name one."

"Let's forget the history lesson, Paschal. What we need to focus on is what needs to be done. If only we knew what is driving us so hard. It must be big!" Samson commented.

"About the crystals, were do we stand?" asked Annabelle.

"We had the first one in place in Thebes when we moved it. We have moved the second one found under the Cromlech. We also have recovered the third one found under the Temple of the Sun in Machupicchu. Then there is the fourth one found under the Pyramid of the Moon, we were readying ourselves for its move when the dragonlings were ready to hatch, and it was put off. We will be moving it shortly. We know there is one under Cheops. Then there is the missing sixth, sorry, fifth one."

"That doesn't add up. We know were five are and we keep trying to forget about the one missing in Atlanticus. What's with this?" asked Timor, eyeing them as he counted on his fingers.

"What do you mean, there are five!" exclaimed Paschal.

"No, six: 1- Thebes; 2- Stonehenge Cromlech; 3- Temple of the Sun; 4- Pyramid of the Moon; 5- Pyramid of Cheops and finally 6- The missing one in Atlanticus. And it would make sense. Everything here is by six!"

"Damn it! Put that clearly in our face, Timor's right. Something is really bugging me now. Even knowing the list, I still have problems wrapping my mind around the number. And that pisses me off!" exclaimed Paschal. "It's like I miss part of the plans for Thebes. It infuriates me!"

"More like someone's playing with our minds," Harp replied. "Now that I know about it, he better number his guts!"

"Anyway, while we are in the process of looking at what to do, any suggestion concerning the Right Hand of Destiny? We should be complete now. All I need to figure out is what to do. Ian is able to travel on his own, even if he is only three. I've been watching him with his blades, and even I think I would be hard put to survive the little bugger."

"Sitar's right. He has become almost impossible to get off Silver Moon's back, and the Gold dragonling barely leaves his side. I pity anything attacking him. We need to deal with that riddle," Paschal replied.

"Thorsten and I will move the crystal stored under the Pyramid of the Moon tomorrow. It will take us five days to reach Thebes, and another day to install it. Then it's the check-up of connections, say another week of work," replied Harp. "Our dragonlings will assure air cover. They work together rather well."

"What about the Centaurs?"

"They wait, Yamato. They have survived well so far, and there is no reason to believe they are at risk on the short term," decided Harold.

The move of the next crystal from the Pyramid of the Moon went well, but also revealed a sad story. Apparently, the aborigines attacked the constructors as they were finishing their work and massacred everyone. The crystal and its secret were safe, but not a single Atlantean survived the assault. The Atlanteans, outnumbered, had lost the battle. Hundreds of skeletons were found in the antechamber, clearly quartered and their long bones splintered, their skull pierced to extract the brain. Clearly, a savage cannibalistic ritual had occurred below. Strangely, no children skeleton were found, and it appeared that they had been taken away as slaves or to be used in other more inhumane rituals.

"We have nothing to envy the orcs concerning savagery, it seems," Harp commented.

"I don't get it?" replied Thorsten.

"I assume fully my human side; I may be Atlantean, but I have a long history of humans in my genes. Who knows how many of our ancestors have done exactly what we see here? Who are we to act like offended virgins? My human memory may be defective and the Human Conscience still in its infancy, I must assume my lineage."

"Aren't you dramatizing, Harp? You were the oldest single surviving Atlantean as Merlin. You were reborn as Harp after a single cycle! If there is someone that is Atlantean, it is you! I would understand if you had to pass through a series of short-lived hosts, but that isn't the case. I, on the other hand, have yet to figure out my lineage. And there, I might be sorely disappointed. I just wonder how many of my ancestors would be beheaded today?"

"Probably a lot, Thorsten! Given dynasties are maintained by blood and guts, I doubt you would find many saints in the lot. When you finally access your ancestral memory, you might consider getting a glass of cold water to wash off the sour taste. I am gaining Merlin's memory, and I wasn't a saint either, believe me. I've had my shares of gutting enemies, double-crossing people to get my way, or downright treason. Arthur was but one of many kings that lost his life for my survival. The more I learn about who I was, the more I feel we aren't really that different from humans. More technologically advanced, maybe, but on other aspects, as savage if not more so than those we wanted to civilize. Some days, I have the impression 'civilization' is measured not by its moral progress but by its advances in the fine art of war."

"Maybe savagery is part of the skills needed to survive? Cooperative behaviours can only work if all parties do their part. If you have a group that exploits that behaviour for its advantages but does not contribute to the common effort, you end up with competition, because the cooperative people will end up dead from exhaustion."

"You have been reading the Ancients' books on sociology again, Thorsten. Let's get back to work."

***

The recovery of the components to construct the last stasis chamber below Thebes was undertaken. The nuclear bombs had vitrified the sands and they were still glowing intensely, thousands of years after the cataclysm. The situation was so hot it was decided to protect everyone, including the dragonlings, with a magic field. It glowed blindingly as it reflected the radiation.

"I wonder how we will get to the under chamber with this mess," moaned Harp.

"Couldn't we just teleport in it?" suggested Thorsten.

"And risk materializing in rock? No way!"

"How about fracturing the glass layer and displace it first?" proposed Sitar.

"I want to know how deep it goes," replied Paschal. "And we need to find a way to verify if the toxic material has seeped deeper. Strange as it may seem, the thicker the glass layer, the more protected will be the sand below it. Vitrification from intense heat will have captured most of the hard radiation."

"How thick is the sand cover?" Enron asked.

"Today? Somewhere around sixty-five feet to the base, but the lower anteroom is some one hundred feet deeper, in the sandstone," replied Sitar. "It covers the Sphinx right to the top. If they followed your plans, that is, Paschal."

"That's the situation now, but we know the Ancients kept the Sphinx free of sand for some time. They even tried to repair it. As with anything dating from Atlantis, the Ancient's work has done more damage than anything. The ignorant know-it-alls destroyed more than nature would have succeeded in doing in a million years. The Sphinx had been designed to stay shrouded in sand. Too bad they did not have enough energy to vitrify the Sphinx when it was just finished."

"The issue is was the Sphinx uncovered during the last days of the Ancients?" Thorsten wondered.

"It was. Which means the current sand layer is composed essentially of radioactive material. The only hope we have is that the glassy covering at the foot of the Sphinx was thick enough to protect the underlying sandstone, or at least capture most of the hard radiation," replied Paschal.

"Well, what do we do, Harp, Paschal?" asked Enron.

"We do not need to clear the entire Sphinx, but we will need to move most of it. Let's get to work. We used wind once, and we can use it again. This time, let's get it to spin on itself like a tornado, nature's vacuum cleaner," suggested Harp.

"We need energy," noted Paschal.

"We have lots of it within the sand itself. Do you think we might be able to focus the heat dissipated by the radiation to useful form?" suggested Enron.

"We might, but most of it is unstable, and I do not wish to trigger a chain reaction by condensing the isotopes. There is no need to get as sloppy as the ancients," answered Harp.

"And you think a tornado is not sloppy, maybe?" laughed Thorsten.

"It is, Thorsten, but it's controllable. Who knows how big of a mess a chain reaction would cause in this area. Just look at your shield sparkle. It gives us an idea of the mess we are flying over."

"Well, how do you create a tornado anyway?"

"Move air upward. It is a natural consequence of the motion that it starts to rotate. What we need is to create localized depressions. In fact let's start with small daredevils to practice."

The boys began creating little gusts of wind and then making them vertical. Nature took over and the daredevils formed, sucking off dust.

"That's it. Now let's amplify this big one there, together. A F5 would move most of the sand out in one go, and we would let it go free over the Nile, we see down there."

"Funny a river in Elvin Kingdom is also named the Nile," commented Enron.

"Homesickness or something else, who can tell?" replied Harp.

The reddish, cloudless sky gradually turned dark from the increasing updraft. Thunder rumbled within the blackening cloud, and lightning sheets travelled horizontally. Friction between the grains of sand created an enormous static charge, and loaded the cloud with an enormous negative charge to build at the bottom of the anvil. As updrafts driving the dark cloud gained momentum and the circulation increased within the cloud, wind at the ground level picked up, adding to the electrical positive charge at the surface of the sand. Suddenly, huge lightning flashes began travelling from the earth to the cloud, passing through the magic field and getting amplified by the presence of the protective spheres. An observer on the ground, had he been able to live long enough to tell his story, would have sworn that Zeus had descended on earth to battle with Aeolus. The wind picked up speed, and a tornado gradually descended from the anvil's underside. It measured well over ten miles wide and its centre rotated at around seven hundred miles per hour, barely below the speed of sound.

«I've never had so much fun since we got rid of the last orc raid!» exclaimed Harp.

«Me neither. But we need to get that monster to do the work. It's still twenty miles from target. Sitar, Enron! Increase the wind on your side to create a depression! The twister will move into it. Thorsten, slow down the front. If it passes too fast over the Sphinx, it will not have enough time to suck all of the crap! Harp, you and I will fine-tune the aim. For now, I'll help Thorsten by creating a depression behind the trajectory. Harp, do the same opposite to Sitar and Enron, but not too much. We have three minutes to adjust!»

The twister gradually twisted left and slowed its progression to less than twenty miles per hour. The black funnel discharged huge electrical bolts in all directions, giving the impression to a casual observer God's finger was scratching the earth. It finally reached the Sphinx and the boys slowed it even more. The rocky formation got hit thousands of times per second by powerful flashes of lightning, while the sand that was encasing it got lifted by the tornado. The boys kept the tornado centred on the head of the Sphinx, waiting for the floor of the valley to appear. Finally, after ten minutes, the ground's nature changed and the glassy, vitrified bottom of the quarry pit appeared.

"It's time to move that to the Nile. Is the horizontal wind blowing in the right direction? It would be dumb to have done all that to get the sand falling back on us!"

"Yes, Paschal. Look at the anvil's top, it points directly towards the Nile. Let's get this moving again."

"OK. Careful now, we have to get it down from the plateau without losing control. That's going to be tricky."

The boys gradually moved the still raging tornado down a slope and brought it to the Nile, where it began sucking water like a thirsty camel siphons a pound at an oasis. This had unexpected effects: It began raining fish! The dragonlings had a field day catching fish in free fall and gorged themselves on the unexpected boon.

"I thought we were protected?" asked Thorsten.

"From the sand, the radiation, and the wind, but I had not anticipated fish rain. Anyway, it will not last," replied Harp. "Let them enjoy themselves!"

As the tornado moved downriver, gradually losing momentum, as the boys were no longer focussing its power, the dragonlings kept following it, catching in midflight more food. The big Gold even managed to gobble a Nile crocodile, which had been sucked off the rock it has been basking on.

"Don't worry, Harp, your Red will be back shortly. Let's get to work."

***

The boys dropped down between the front paws of the Sphinx and studied it. After a few minutes, Paschal backed away and began counting steps from the left paw along the breast of the construction. At twelve steps, he marked the glassy surface with a piece of chalk. He repeated the same process from right paw. That left a gap about two men wide. Then he made another mark twenty-five steps from the torso, and drew a line parallel to the torso. Another twenty steps further off from the torso and he repeated the line. Then a quick twelve steps from the tip of the paws right and left gave the last two markers. He completed the rectangle by linking the two chalk lines.

"OK, if this was done according to my plans, below us is the door to the antechamber, plus or minus a yard. Now, how do we get to it?"

"Glass is sensitive to ultrasound, right?" suggested Thorsten. "I remember breaking mom's crystal set when I tried to sing once! Dad told me to never do it in the mines again!"

"What happened?" asked Paschal, interested in the prospect.

"Well, I was trying to see how high my voice could go, competing with Ruby's constant bother. I wanted to make her run away so I started that song, but way, way above the normal range. The first thing we noticed as I was getting close to the middle point of the song, was the entire crystal collection crack and break into pieces. Then I continued rising, and the plate glass of the dining room table broke into pieces, and as I was still going up, and no one could hear me anymore but me, the wall of the dining room, made up of obsidian, a volcanic glass, began fracturing, and some pieces of the ceiling to fall down. That's when dad and mom came rushing in and dad told me to stop or we would all end up with the mountain on us."

"Do you think you could do that again?"

"I don't know. I was three years younger, and my voice has begun to change."

"I wonder if it's necessary for that type of frequency. I still have my boy voice, and so do most of us. We could combine them and amplify their intensity by magic."

"Harp's right. Let's get up in the air. Ah, here come our friendly dragons. Maybe we need to warn them about the upcoming choir?" replied Enron.

Some explanations later, the boys began singing going ever up into the higher frequencies. At some point, the dragonlings began signing as well, adding a very high-pitched part to the sound. Magic was used to amplify and focus the mounting concert to the middle of the rectangle drawn by Paschal, and after three minutes of intense bombardment, fissures began to appear in it, spreading gradually to encompass every square inch of the ground enclosed by the paws. At a signal from Paschal the boys and then the dragonlings stopped singing.

"Nice work. Now, to get an idea of the depth of that glass covering."

"It must be considerable, given the amount of energy we pumped into it," Enron answered.

Paschal focussed on a small piece of glass and began extracting it. That was more difficult than extracting a wisdom tooth, since all pieces interlocked, but, finally, after a lot of twisting and swearing, the long shard of glass came out, all eight feet of it.

"Wow! Look at that! It's all coloured, striated, and shows several melting and cooling!" exclaimed Thorsten. "It's beautiful!"

"As beautiful as a poisonous snake, Thorsten. These different strata also indicate varying concentration of radioactive elements. Just look at it with you hard radiation sensors," Harp replied.

"Let's get down to business. Harp, we need to dispose of these shards. But where?"

"In the Nile, it's not that more radiation will change its current state. I doubt dumping a few tons of radioactive glass will significantly change its contamination level. And the water will keep the glass cool and intercept most of the hard radiation."

"Agreed. How do we proceed?"

"You play the dentist with the help of Enron, Paschal. Thorsten, Sitar and I will move what you extract to the Nile. The dragonlings will assure land and air cover."

It took the rest of the day to get the glassy cover out of the way and fully disengage the narrow door.

"It's vespers. We have been up for eighteen hours. Let's find a safe place on this continent and rest for the night. Harp! Please put a force field around the door, and another around the Sphinx. I do not want to walk into a trap tomorrow morning. Who knows what may live in this place."

"OK, Sitar."

"We go south. I think the interior is a lot less damaged than the coast, if only because it supports life and the Centaurs. Nonetheless, when we find a campsite, we form patrols. On land and in the air! Paschal, Enron to the forward flanks while we travel, with your dragons above. Try to find a suitable campsite. We need water, air and ground cover. Thorsten, Harp, to the rear, again with your dragons. I will hold the apex of the pyramid with my own dragon. Let's get moving. Hold formation and keep your eyes open! Keep the shields of your dragons active at all times as well as yours. We have no idea of the situation in the jungles and savannahs we will be flying over. Set the altitude at three thousand feet minimum. I want you to have the time to evade anything coming your way. Arrows will be hard to spot and even if they are only scratching your skin, can carry deadly poison."

Everyone understood that Sitar was the best suited to lead the military part of the expedition and obeyed instantly.

***

The last rays of the sun were escaping over the horizon when the boys found a small, rather rapid river covered by trees that crossed a savannah.

"Let's feed our dragons, and ourselves. Paschal, remember the Centaur are insensitive to magic, which means we cannot count on fields to protect us from direct physical attack. Can you design a system that would alert us to their presence without depending on it?"

"I saw some lianas. By setting them to trigger a sudden release of a bent tree, we can get enough warning to be out of here before anything reaches us."

"That goes for anything coming on land, Paschal, what about tree travellers?"

"Like?"

"Big cats."

"Are they insensitive to magic?"

"Not that I know of?"

"Well, Harp and Enron can deal with installing a magic dome outside of the traps I'll set up. That way, we will know that whatever triggers the traps is a Centaur, since anything else will be kept away."

After some thinking, Sitar agreed with Paschal's defence plans, and the boys implemented them. While Enron, Paschal and Harp dealt with securing the perimeter, Sitar and Thorsten fed the dragons with a good assortment of meat and fish. Two hours after vespers, the first watch was given to Thorsten and his dragon. The dragon took the upper level, a mile high, since his eyes were more bird-like than Thorsten's. From the ground, the dragon's mass could be mistaken for a big bird of prey checking for food. Even then, the dragonling instinctively understood the need to go unnoticed and its colour had darkened considerably, with tiny white dots that could be mistaken for stars as they moved along the skin of the dragon to appear fixed from the ground. The young dwarf began to travel silently just above the tallest trees, keeping in the dark so as not to stand out against the star-sprinkled sky.

Two hours later, Harp and his dragon replaced Thorsten.

"Sleep between the wings of your dragon, Thorsten. The forest is too silent. Something is up. I already warned the others. That way, the dragons will be able to protect you with their body from any Centaur and take off carrying you. I have explained the issue to the dragonlings and they agreed to carry us to a safe altitude."

Matins saw Enron take over from Harp, and the night, even more silent than before, continued on. Even crickets had grown quiet, which did nothing to calm Enron's apprehension as he kept his vigil. The moon was setting down on the western edge of the savannah, and the night promised to take a much darker shade as it vanished out of sight.

An hour before lauds, Sitar took over from Enron.

"Anything unusual?" he asked.

"It is deathly quiet. The wind has dropped entirely, and there isn't even the buzz of an occasional insect or the flop of a drop of water in pools stored between trees. The lack of wind is what bothers me. Our enhanced smell would have warned us if anything came from upwind. But we do not have that benefit, so I had to patrol everywhere. It's become impossible to count on long-range detection except sound, and even that might be misleading, given the trees buffer sounds quite well."

"How long has the moon been down?"

"Ten minutes at most. I am using wolf sight to detect motion. Magic will be useless to track the damn Centaurs."

"OK. Go rest on your dragon, but gently wake up the others first. Tell them to stay still, as if asleep but to be vigilant. I do not want anyone drowsy and taken by surprise."

"OK. Sitar. It won't be easy, the dragonlings are more comfortable than beds!"

"Don't I know it. Ask Harp to make us some odourless stimulant, say iced tea, using magic."

Sitar began his patrol. As his turn was coming to an end, he noticed his dragonling circling somewhat west as if it was interested in something. He moved in that direction and at first saw nothing of interest. But, suddenly, he saw a walking bush! Something was using camouflage to get near them, and that wasn't a lion or panther! As he studied the savannah he noticed an arc closing in on their position. He quickly did a round and found they were encircled, and that the other side of the river was even more compromised. They were almost to his traps.

«Alert! Take off silently, stay below the tree cover and follow the river down current! My dragonling and I will assure rear guard. Harp, to the front! Silent movement!»

Sitar returned to the tallest tree of the forest cover and climbed vertically to his dragonling, which had responded to a silent call. Sitar then lay on the back of his dragonling and directed him to go upriver about five miles, outside the closing circle, do a turn around and dive in an opening in the tree cover. A few minutes later he was catching up with the others. The dragonling glided silently above the river, its noise camouflaging the occasional flap of the wings.

Sitar had barely left behind the encircling centaurs that a resounding crack was heard in the forest, waking up every sleeping animal and triggering a cacophony of alarmed cries from monkeys to lions.

«Ah, they triggered the traps. It won't harm them, but they will have the fright of their life!»

«What did you do Paschal? That seemed pretty noisy!»

«I installed a tree branch held taut by a long liana about six feet above ground. That, in turn, was tied to a rotten tree branch that kept a leaning tree trunk like a toothpick holds a rattrap. When the branch got violently released, it pulled on the liana that kept the tree trunk from falling, and that is what you heard. No one was hurt, because the tree trunk was well within the security perimeter.»

«You are as bad as dad!» commented Harp.

«I like emulating Harold. He has a sense of the practical I envy sometimes.»

«I wonder how they feel now?» asked Paschal.

«How about frustrated?» piped Thorsten.

"We got another three hours of darkness. Let's find another resting place. I think that rocky plateau we see off to the east should do. It seems to be relatively free of vegetation, but difficult of access. And we can inspect it from the air before landing. If we see any big predator, we can always go elsewhere."

Sitar's recommendations were followed and the rest of the night was quiet. A few roars of lions could be heard below in the plains, but none ventured near their camp. As the sun rose over the eastern edge of the plains, tearing apart the shroud of darkness and covering the sky with a pink veil, the boys took a quick breakfast, refilled their water pouches from a nearby spring, and returned, flying high, to the Sphinx.

All seemed quiet as they neared the Sphinx, and, after testing the magic field, Harp approved further descent. Not a single animal print covered the fine dusting of sand the night had blown over the surface of the glass. Harp and Paschal quickly created a small vortex to remove the sand, and everything was ready for the resumption of work.

***

The boys descended into the pit, making sure the dragonlings kept an eye out from above. The first thing they noticed was that seepage had occurred and that there were still spindles of glassy material underfoot. Harp and Paschal cut out hardened steel door and, with the help of the others, lifted it out of the narrow passageway. It showed traces of molten sandstone, but appeared otherwise intact. Its outer surface was highly radioactive, but still a lot less than at the surface. The glass had done its job at protecting the under-layer.

Once the two-foot thick steel door was lifted, it showed no sign of radiation on its inner surface and the hallway seemed intact if a bit dusty.

"Let's prevent contamination of the area, Paschal. We need to install a filtering magic field similar to our portable one. After that we will be relatively safe below."

"OK, I'll immobilise the air while you do the trick. That way we should have very little dust falling in."

The procedure was quickly done while Enron, Sitar and Thorsten consolidated the sandstone on which used to rest the door by vitrifying it. The level of dust falling from the opening gradually stopped, and, shortly, Harp signalled to the others they could cross the field before he sealed it.

"OK, we can deactivate our bubbles. Even at maximum photo-multiplication, I have problems detecting traces of the radiation. Give me ten seconds before doing so."

A sudden updraft threw out the last residue of dust, and then Harp gave the thumbs up.

"What about breathing air?"

"It's filtered. Only a portion of the air is radioactive. The rest flows in and out freely."

"Ah, the advantage of magic!" commented, on a nostalgic tone, Sitar.

"Maybe, but we still need to be careful. Let's go down the incline to the next door, the inner lock."

As the boys went down, they could see marks of stress on the vitrified walls of the passage. There had been numerous earthquakes over the eons, and they had put the construction under terrible pressure. That it still stood could only be testimony to the quality of workmanship of the Atlanteans.

"There we are!" exclaimed Harp as Bata showed a glossy door in front of them. Now, Mister Architect, how do we open that door?"

"Let's see, it's a series of numbers. See these numbers there? Some are missing, but can be calculated from the series present. You enter the number by rolling these little clicking spindles so the missing number is composed on the lock. Notice there are five missing numbers. Now, to complicate things, I used base eleven to create the numbers! So, let me do the series."

The series visible to the boys was this one:

The remaining five slots held three tiny rotating dials side by side each, which displayed in order the following symbols:

Paschal materialised a table, a parchment, some ink and a pen. He quickly began solving the problem in front of Harp, and then turned to the each slot, and dialled the combination²⁴²⁴ ("1 1 2 3 5 8 13 20 33 53 96 149 base 10; 1 1 2 3 5 8 12 19 30 49 88 126 base 11 encoded."). The final solution was as follows:

"Simple, yet effective," commented Harp.

"That from an expert at creating headaches!" replied Thorsten, remembering the nightmare of the runic code.

The mechanism rumbled gently as the last counterweight moved and the door swung inward, revealing the inner chamber. Under Bata's gentle light shone another of Atlantis's treasure. The giant room was filled with watertight crates, all carefully labelled in hieroglyphs and numbers. Also included were scroll after scroll detailing the assembly process, and, right in the middle, a glassy rock with a hole shaped like a dolphin.

"That one's for Samson, I think," pointed out Sitar, to the approval of the others.

"Harp, we have transport issues. One, I doubt we can carry all of that in a single go, and I do not want to leave anything behind once we move things out. Any and every component is vital to the success of the assembly of the last room under Thebes."

"I agree, Paschal. What if we used the dragons as carriers?"

"That would work, but we need the adults as well as the juveniles. Do you think they would cooperate?"

"All we can do is ask. Give me a few minutes. I'll contact Ian, he is with the dragon King, waiting for another batch of egglings. It's going to be Annabelle, Francesca, and Theresa's turn to bind with the three un-hatched dragonlings. They are due in four days, and Ian is doing the introduction to the Queen of dragons."

After a few minutes of silence, Harp gave the boys the feedback.

"The dragon King will lead the dragon adults to a safe pickup place of our choosing. I also have contacted Williams and Dunbar. They will create leather pouches and nets to carry the stuff, which will be strapped onto the dragons with adjusting leather belts, much like we do with horses."

"How many dragons are we talking about?"

"I haven't asked, Thorsten. However, dragons can lift considerable charges. We can even install an airlift, where they could do more than one trip. We do know we have twelve flight-ready juveniles, five of them being here already. In fact, we will use them to carry the components to the pickup point."

"Why don't we use magic to teleport them out of here?"

"Because the magic field is so corrupted it can not be used safely. Remember how much problems we had with that tornado. That the tornado could have gone out of control did not bother me much, but dropping fragile pieces of equipment, or worse, losing it during transport, is too risky."

The boys moved out of the room and quickly spread out deeper in the desert, looking for a less radioactive area. After an hour of fanning out in what was once the Sahara, an oasis imprisoned between two high cliffs was found, and, after some cleansing, the radiation level dropped within acceptable range. Each one-way trip would take an hour and require another hour to load at the Sphinx; magic would be used to discharge the material at the pickup staging point.

As soon as the pickup point was selected²⁵²⁵ ("The point is at 26 00 10 N 33 32 43 E Greenwich meridian."), the boys set it up properly, enclosing it in a defensive ward, and Paschal materialised the proper straps and nets to begin transporting thing. By sext, all was ready for the first transport, which was made up of Harp, sitting comfortably on his dragonling, and five tons of base components. An hour later, Thorsten was ready and left with his dragonling with a slightly bigger load. Then, an hour later, Enron took off with his dragonling, carrying some six tons of material, given his dragonling was a bit bigger. Sitar took off with five tons and by then Thorsten was back with his dragonling for the next load, accompanied by Harp's Red one. Paschal's dragonling was loaded and ready to go, so Paschal took off, leaving Thorsten to load his and Harp's dragonlings. In all, through different combinations of trips, some one hundred tons of material were moved from under the Sphinx, and it was still pretty full.

"How much time before the dragons reach us?"

"They haven't left. Collecting everyone for a massive flight seems to take more time than anticipated. And Annabelle got her dragonling, four days early, another red one," Paschal replied to Enron's question.

"It fits her fiery character perfectly! I saw her do a dressing down of a legionnaire centurion once, and I thought the guy would lose his bladder."

"Yes, some people think because they wear a uniform it gives them the right to sit on their laurels. She makes quite sure that no one does that."

"What is their expected travel time once they leave the gathering place in Lava Flows?"

"Let me see," began Paschal, "it depends on the slowest of them, which happen to be the gold dragonlings. At horizontal flight, the young ones travel at an estimated three hundred miles per hour, which means, since they will be flying over the according to the shortest route, approximately five thousand miles, some seventeen hours non-stop. Some of the red parents are already at the gathering, since they had only to travel from Wyvern's eastern mountain range. Others have to travel from South America, and still others from Australia over the South Pole. They considered flying directly to here, but rather than get lost looking for us, they decided to regroup. Yet others are coming from New Zealand, and others from Iceland. They will be fed raw meat by dad, something around a ton each. Those in Africa have been told to intercept the main flight over Crete. Harp, when they start leaving the North American continent, go meet the African dragons at the Kilimanjaro²⁶²⁶ ("It is the highest volcano of Africa."), to guide them to Crete. They are mostly found around the Kilimanjaro, the African Rift, and the Serengeti super-caldera according to the Gold King. I do not think the consolidated flight from North America will leave for another forty-eight hours, to give everyone time to join, feed, and rest."

"I wonder how they communicate over long distances?"

"Apparently, they have their own means of telepathy. It is the only way they can actually communicate across dragon species. The colour code we saw with the gold pair is unique to their species, Sitar. Maybe the day will come when we use telepathy to communicate with them. The dance we have used is like baby talk to them, before the juveniles develop their control over the colouring for within-species communications, and, at sexual maturity, they get the gift of telepathy."

"Harp, you have been talking to Ian, right?"

"Yes. He is one effective baby-talker, according to the Dragon Queen!"

"Given the little bugger is always nude, he can use his entire body to pass a message!"