CHAPTER 4: Discoveries
The door had been easy to open. The gate, however, the intricate obstacle made of swirling metal bars, could not be moved even when Sweet added in his muscle, or, at least, that was what Audrey said.
“You see that?” She pointed to a panel to the right of the door.
“Yeah. I wonder what it is…”
“Don’t ask me. It’s the two of you who can read it.”
Milo and Kida walked over to it, reading.
“‘SEH-kah-nokh TEE-mihk doot.’ ‘Type two security.” Hmmm… “Place hand into slot, wait for analysis…’” Milo looked to Kida, who shrugged.
She followed the directions, and as she did so, a glow came from the slot. Curious, she peered inside, or tried to, rather, before yelping and pulling her hand out.
“What’s wrong?! What happened?!”
The queen watched the glow disappear from her fingertip. “Something stabbed me…!”
A hum came from the panel, and the gate slid open.
“Oooookay…” came Milo. “That’s one strange gate lock.”
They entered, finding another gauge panel, but Milo didn’t even try to mark it. He was too taken aback by everything elsewhere.
The room was large and filled with tables, each strewn with strange objects and papers. Bizarre devices, many of which seemed badly damaged, filled the area. Crystal circuitry lined the walls.
A few stone sea snakes guarded the ceiling. An eerie, continuous humming became unsettling to all. It seemed to greet them as they entered.
“…And you ah thought that hall was creepy…” Vinny’s match almost fell out of his mouth, his dark eyebrows raised. “Anyone got earplugs? I left mine on the sub…”
Silence from the team answered.
Milo’s voice finally penetrated the tone.
“Well, Kida, you said you wanted to know just how advanced your people were. I think this is a pretty big hint.”
There was no reply. Instead, she went to a table, flipping through some pages, She looked confused.
“’Ey, whatcha find? You look as confused as I was when I tried to make my first pipe bomb when I was age, eh, 18. That was a boom.”
“…I do not understand these terms.”
Milo picked up a book, opening it. “Like what?”
“‘TOO-leh-bekh-nohl.’”
The linguist’s face watched Kida’s. “It sounds like it’s derived from two different words meaning--”
“‘Twist’ and ‘component?’ The queen handed him the papers, pointing.
“Yeah…”
“Would it have anything to do with the machinery around here?”
“No, Audrey, it doesn’t seem to… This… Doesn’t make much sense. It’s written in the phraseology of the time with religious overtones. You can’t take it too literally. ‘SHAH--’”
“¿Inglés o español solo, por favor?” Audrey reminded. “Preferably English.”
“Sorry about that. ‘…The Spirit, thus summoned by the act, moves from the two into the one, and the feeling fades, the celebration of its arrival ceasing. It busies itself, taking what it needs for its vessel. The ‘twisted components,’ for lack of a better term, will be tools for the Spirit to carry out its needs…’ They seem to be excerpts from this book, judging by the style of these sketches.” A light went on, but Milo shook his head. It made no sense as far as he believed, and that it was impossible. No culture could have figured this out that long ago. The modern world had just discovered it.
“What eez the book’s title?”
“Volume 32.”
“Well, that doesn’t help us none.” Sweet peered into some small glass containers. “Any clue what these things are?”
The crew walked over.
“They are like… little animals in oil,” Kida commented, picking up a container. “Look, this is an octopus… I believe…” She peered into the mass of tentacles.
“A very old octopus. Judgeeing by zee color of zee leequeed and zee good condeetion of zee speceemeens for their ages… these could be notheeng other than formaldehyde.”
“Or a similar concoction,” Milo said, picking up a squid with unusually long fins. “I, for one, don’t plan on sticking my nose in it to find--”
He stopped as Mole popped a jar open and actually did sniff before replacing the lid. “I was right. Formaldehyde. Delicately aged to a possible perfection over 8856 years.”
The linguist looked to Dr. Sweet, who remarked, “That can’t be too healthy.”
Milo nodded at the physician’s quiet comment. He turned around and heard a crunch. Looking down, he was crushing glass under his thick brown boots. Before him was an old glass tank, huge. It was big enough to place a few killer whales into. The glass had long been broken. “…Wonder what they kept in here…?”
“Do we wanna know?” Sweet crunched behind him, followed by Kida. The others wandered.
“Probably,” she answered simply. “I would do anything to help open up the container of the past’s secrets a little wider.”
“Maybe some of these papers will give us a clue.” Milo picked them up, only to have them crumble in his hands. He paused, deciding to put down the book and other papers he had been carrying, just in case. “Well, um,” the king cleared his throat, looking almost guilty. “Ooookay… Some of these aren’t surviving as well as others…” He paused briefly to read a notice that said something about some plans being stolen. The criminal had used a piece of their technology to escape. He dared to blow dust off of a report that described twelve ships, each containing a specialist, were “about to be sent” around the world. Milo was afraid to move the paper yet.
“This ah look familiar to anyone?” Vinny held up a metal rod at the other end of the room. By sheer angle alone it was obvious the rod was hollow. The demolitionist casually walked up to Milo, Kida, and Sweet, turning it over...
A familiar set of runes adorned the tube.
“YAHD-lu-goh-nikh!”
“It’s GAH-nokh-nihr! The Spear of Destiny!”
“Or it’s ah prototype. I saw other pieces, but none of them were crystal.”
“Wait a second…” He looked back over at the notice. “Apparently some plans for the Spear had been stolen before the cataclysm!”
“Which means…”
“Right, Kida. There actually might be another Spear out there, made by a different people, maybe.”
“Over here!” Milo felt a little swept away as Audrey called him over. “What do you make of these?” She handed him a headband and a vial of what he thought was at first pebbles and grains of Atlantean Crystal. Upon closer inspection, crystal had been intricately worked into the “pebbles,” which were actually much more intricate than he could have ever thought feasible. Tiny spiral shapes, corkscrews, projected from the sides. “Any ideas?”
“Well, no… Were there any documents?”
Audrey’s attention went to Mole as he opened a door in the floor and scurried down the revealed steps. “Were, yes. Are? Looks like the water got to ‘em.” She rested the blueprint scroll on her shoulder and followed the geologist. The mechanics also held another scroll in her other hand, a piece of crystal hanging from it the source of its preservation through time.
“Found something else?” Milo asked, looking at them.
“Yeah, actually. A design drawing that matches the blueprints, but shows more than just the gauge and valve system. I think I have a rough idea as to what the symbols are supposed to be, just by context. So you don’t need to record anything else now, Mr. Map.” She elbowed him hard in teasing.
“Ha, ha, very funny. For once I’m not the one with her nose stuck in old scrolls.” He received a punch to the shoulder, though he had expected that. If it were not for the light of Mole’s lantern and the crystals, he would have fallen down the stairs.
“You catch that sign up there? Whatever it said?”
“Yeah. ‘Isolated Test Chamber 5.’”
A few seconds time yielded a widening in the corridor as it opened up into a large chamber. The smell in the area was damp. Inside was…
…Nothing it seemed.
In fact, in the center of the area was a place where it looked like the floor had been scooped out. There was a half-sphere of nothingness. The contour of it was rippled, much like the submerged sand of the beach. Along the edges of this beautiful “crater” the floor had been ripped up, as if the event had been powerful. The smoothness of the “scoop,’ the beautiful carving away at the stone was strange when compared to the violence of the shattered edges.
“What on earth were they doing in here?”
“Thees textureeng eez strange. No sort of erosion could have caused thees.”
Audrey walked along the edge, looking in. “Why did they carve-- AH!” She tripped on a protruding piece of rubble, but did not fall in.
“You okay?” Milo helped her up.
“Yeah, this stupid rock got in my way.” She kicked it, but it didn’t budge.
“Hey… Wait a second. That’s the corner of something. It… looks like it’s been carved away, too, like whatever it was attached to was removed. Look. There’s a number ‘3’ here.” He pointed to three dots, one above the other, which barely escaped the carving.
“Well, whatever they had here, they took it out. Let’s go.”
“Guess there isn’t much more to see…” Milo shrugged to Audrey, and the three climbed the stairs.
“As they reached the top, they were greeted by Sweet. “Find anything?”
“A hole. A great big dip in the ground.”
“Well, it looks like it was carved out by some force, to amend Audrey, though how, I’m stumped. This whole place… It’s… I think they designed the shelters around this lab.”
“Why?’
“Well, Sweet, it might be that if there was a disaster, they believed their technology, or its development, would save them. I mean, it makes sense to protect their technology too.”
“Lot of good it did them.” Audrey shook her head.
“Ey, if you don’t ah try, you don’t get ah any ‘good.’” Vinny shrugged as he walked up.
The doctor gestured with a huge, dark-skinned hand toward a gate, the steel bars intricately entwined. “Well, it isn’t the whole lab. Milo, there’s another door.” Streaks had been left in the dust, showing where a cart had been moved aside to reveal the once-blocked gate.
“According to the map,” Audrey began, “there should also be another set of pressure gauges in there.
The crew all took a closer look.
Based off the Disney Picture "Atlantis: the Lost Empire." The Name "Shards of Chaos" is property of Disney. The term "gorlock" is property of Disney Interactive. The characters, "MUH-suh MIH-kee" and Khohbdesheh are my property, and I acknowledge I do not own the names. Fan fiction storyline also my property. Milo Thatch, Kidagakash, Bendoh, Rourke and other characters, names, concepts, and all Atlantean in this story are property of the Walt Disney Company.
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