The Last Battle of Atlantis

Chapter I The Finding ({Present Day}) “Two months of digging, and still nothing,” Duncan murmurs. “That’s because there is nothing here,” Kyle responds. “We only have two more weeks, and then we will go to the next adventure.” Duncan looks at the sky. He feels he has failed his fellow archeologists. It is dreary, and the clouds are thick and gray. Touches of blue can be seen peeking through the heavens. The mountains of Spain, with their magical sprinkles of snow, make Duncan feel as though everything is a dream. There is hardly a breeze at the dig site. Duncan, who is forty-two years old, with brown hair, blue eyes, and in shape for his age, scans the mountainside and sees scattered groups of his teams working through their assigned areas. The only people around are his teams of archeologists. The closest town is eighty miles away through rough terrain. He and his team have been commissioned to dig all over the world, but only in rare cases has Duncan’s team failed to find anything. Because the expedition has gone on for over three weeks with little success, the archeologists start to feel they are wasting their time. “Go check the sites. Make sure everyone is alright. We still have two more weeks,” Duncan says wearily to Kyle. Kyle nods, and walks down the trail. He makes his rounds of the sites to see if there is anything that his coworkers have missed. It is getting very frustrating to Duncan’s teams. Duncan promised his investors the mountain region should be a refuge for a society. It was the investor’s idea to come to Spain. Duncan’s gut instinct tells him that the region was once rich with a past society. There are traces of fertile soil, rivers, creeks, and stone. Because of the remoteness of the region, the area has not been excavated in detail from anyone else before. In Duncan’s past, he has had success with places like this. The site is driving him crazy. About four o’clock in the afternoon, Kyle, who is twenty-seven, with sandy brown hair, and brown eyes, steps under the canopy of a dig site and asks Raymond, a student on internship, if they have found anything of interest. “Nothing,” Raymond replies. “I have gone through everything in great detail, and I can’t find anything.” Kyle bends down and filters through the stones. One catches his attention. He lifts it up and breaks off a section of hardened clay. He sees it is a stone carving of a horse with reins. All the archeologists look at the stone carving with confusion. The archeologists will have no way of telling where or when it was made until it goes to a lab for testing. Kyle grabs his global phone and calls Duncan immediately and tells him of the find. “Find out exactly where you found the stone and get our crews to that location. Don’t stop digging until you find something else,” Duncan orders. Kyle says, “Because the crew has had little sleep, everyone is exhausted. This artifact could have been dropped in passing. The crews have pushed themselves to the limit. Because it’s getting close to the end of the expedition and our supplies are limited, we need to wait until daybreak.” “I don’t care,” Duncan interrupts with anger. He tries to regroup his thoughts and says in a direct voice, “Get the supplies and crew there now. I don’t want excuses!” By nine thirty at night, the crew has completed its setup with equipment and digging tools. It is really starting to get cold. There is a full moon, which will help the excavators. They start excavating close to the rocky mountainside where they found the artifact. The archeologists start to move stones and rocks; they work until two thirty in the morning. By this time, most of the crews are working like zombies. Some cannot feel their hands because of the weather. Duncan sees their exhaustion and rethinks his decision to work through the night. He wants everyone to push themselves, but he knows he cannot destroy his crews physically. About a hundred yards from where they found the artifact the tides are turning for the archeologists. Rachel, who has worked at Duncan’s side on many projects, shouts towards where her boss is excavating, “I found something!”