New Atlantis

Chapter 3

Circa 4501

As I heard the door open, I looked up to see ember soaked through with salt water. I wondered right away if she was the same ember that I had just read about in the scroll. I wondered if there would be any reaction to the name saerinia or Samantha, so I took a chance as she was getting a towel to wipe her wings off.
“Ember” I started casually, “have you ever heard of the names Saerinia or perhaps Samantha?”
She immediately froze at the name.
“Where do you know those names from?” she asked.
“I found something that I have a feeling you might want to see.” I told her. She came closer to me and I showed her the ancient scroll that Eona had written many years ago talking about the city and the species. I could see her eyes tear up as she read about her old life and the ones that saved her many centuries ago before the city fell. Indeed, my thoughts of her being the same ember as the ancient wrote about were true.
“Ember, I was wondering if you could perhaps tell me more about what the scrolls are speaking about” I said to her gently, being considerate of the emotions that the scrolls brought up for her, “could you tell me what you remember?”
“Yes of course” Ember said, “If you wait until the others are sleeping, I will gladly tell you what I remember. Can I make a request of you?”
“What is your request?”
“Could you please take me to the place and building where you found the scroll that you are reading?”
I agreed to take her there even though it was underwater by now. However, if there was a way that I could learn even more then I already had been, I would take any chance to do so. We agreed to go to the area before the next dawn lightened the shields around us. She would also bring the other scrolls that she had.
That night after the rounds had been made, there was a small knock on my door. I had not gone back to the scroll as I knew there wouldn’t be a lot of time from when me and ember had talked about going to the building I had originally found the scroll. After dinner we agreed it should only be the two of us as we had to maneuver the water away from the buildings that my group had been camped out at for a long time the previous days. The only other one to come was the little fyramercha that I had found in the same building as the scroll I had been reading that mentioned embers name. We three would be the only ones to go out after the last of the people working had gone to bed. That time had come as the little one perked up when ember knocked. We had been getting ready the last few hours and I had to make sure that no water, even the slightest would hit the little fireball that had attached itself to me after I found it.
The second it saw ember it grew hotter to the touch and pounced her in joy as it remembered her. It seemed that it was one of the original ones that had survived, and it had lived to see ember grow long before the city was in ruins. I hoped that perhaps some of the other species that I had read about somehow survived just as ember and the little ones had done. I don’t understand how they survived in the millennia since the city had fallen but I was glad that I was able to meet them in my lifetime. Together the three of us travelled outside the limits that housed the research lab and I took lead as I back tracked the steps my group had walked since the shielding that we had placed failed, and we had to move to a dryer place. I showed ember the area that I had taken the group and the children above the water that flooded the lower parts of the city that we travelled. She started to tell me about how the buildings were when she was a child and that the camp we had to flee had been an original part or Eona’s and Saerinia’s home. When we settled there I had no idea that the two that I had been reading about for the last few days were the two founding members of the fyramercha trade guild when Atlantis was thriving. We had camped in the original area where they raised the little fireball species that was so attached to me. I started to wish that I had seen the hundreds of fyramercha that once slept in the pit area where I found the little one.
As we walked around the different machina, most had Samantha’s insignia on them. Ember went around turning on different machines that would allow the house to come into view. I don’t think she ever thought that she would return to this place again after whatever event hit the city and destroyed it. I gave her time to mourn her family as the water lowered and revealed the ones that weren’t lucky enough to get away. Her parents being among the fallen in the yard. The way they were laying, one could tell they were protecting the little ones both fyramercha and jorogumo as there was multiple bodies of both species. We didn’t say a word as we dug fresh graves for the ones she lost. I noticed she laid her parents to rest beside a small grave that I could only assume was Samantha’s. Given her mutation, I would not have thought she would have survived long into her life, having no gills. Ember mentioned that shortly after she became a full member of the family they had lost her sister. That was all I was told as we buried them in the family cemetery, and I refused to press more from her as I knew she would be in mourning quite a while.
It has been three days since we laid her family to rest and only a few times when other Hexie came to talk to her and report things, did ember talk, and she fed them small lies so that they would think we were here to research the machina that would be a better way to preserve the building and lab. We would indeed be bringing quite a lot of the dormant machina back to place in the museum wing. I decided to wander around and explore the property for any scrolls or anything I could find that might shed more light and give Ember a better sense of peace after finding her parents. I came across a somewhat medium webbed over section of the stone behind the house while waiting for Ember to call. Inside was a group of little jorogumo that somehow used their webbing to trap air in the crevasse to survive. There were two adults that no longer had that spark of life in them. I assume they were how the little ones ate. While looked down on, in many species in order to survive members would give their lives and bodies for the children and young ones.
There were two small scrolls beside the adults that I collected, hopefully at least one of them had the names of the little ones in them as naming species now days is a lot more difficult than it once was. I placed them in the same pocket as the one I had been reading before. I asked the little ones if they would help me bury what I assumed was their parents. We laid them to rest in the same cemetery as Eona and Saerinia. They were as much their family as ember was in the last days. I felt it was fitting for them to be with their family instead of in a hole where they were found rotting for all eternity. As ember was still silent, I decided to sit in a place where the little spiderlings could rest or sleep if they wished, and I thought about reading more of Eona’s scroll until ember was finally ready to go inside and look around and collect whichever memories were waiting for her after two millennia. I ended up grabbing one of the small scrolls instead and carefully opened it to whatever knowledge it held even if it was a goodbye letter to their children. It was a very fine handwriting; I took my time to carefully secure the paper as it was already falling apart and cuddled up with the little ones. A few of them were still awake but most of the group fell asleep as they cuddled up to me and my little fireball to keep warm.
The submersible had set off and we were on our way judging by the sudden lurch and creaks that I began to hear as the water surrounded it and we began our descent into the darkened abyss where I had asked the navigator to go according to the coordinates I had gathered. I still wasn’t sure they were holding the true location of what I was seeking.
Looking through the notes, I was flabbergasted. The company that I hired the team and submersible from, had been investigating the lost city of Atlantis for generations. I was sitting in one of the many archives that they kept hidden throughout the vast properties that they owned. There were files stored in submarines like this one. Ferries, city halls, laboratories, and factories throughout the world hid gems just like the room I was sitting in right now.
Their main archive, according to quite a lot of the notes I had been reading, was inside a cryogenic lab that was concealed in a location so secret that the name and exact location of it was not in a single document or record. At least none that was in the submersible I had hired.