Jena of Atlantis, The Fire Eye

There it was, lying there like a pig in a blanket.

The scroll. The silver tipped, water stained velum scroll that Jena had brought back from the far east island empire of Valante. This was supposed to be a written history of that peculiar place, but the more she studied it, the stranger it got. It was in the universal language of the times, which could be just as twisted and bent up as any language today. What was worse, they had included a lot of words of their own, and the history read more like a recipe than a chronicle of events.

It wasn’t any worse than Atlantis itself for wear.

Earthquakes were the big topic. They were more common then than now, and Jena found that they were worse than just knocking things around. They could unearth underground animals, and displace all kinds of angry beasts. Even mice and ants were pushed out of their homes. And all of this would somehow get involved in the humans world, and there you have it.

Confusion.

Nothing serious at the moment, just some aftershocks. Some rambling reptiles of anger, spiteful armadillos, and so on. Many of them blamed the humans, because that was the only race that could really change things on the land, and so they must somehow be responsible for all of this earth rumble.

They weren’t, at least this far back in time.

But they were just as confused as the animals, and plants as well. The continent of Atlantis had come to an exciting moment of deciding to have an emperor rule over all of the lands, but after these earthquakes and some other intrigue, they decided to struggle along on their own as ten separate provinces. Jena had been sent on some curious adventures in this process, and with no emperor after all, she was unemployed.

She had been the youngest army captain since… the youngest ever?. It was an honorary thing, and it worked out when there weren’t a lot of other captains around, or even sergeants. She was one of those snappy crackers that had narrow hard eyes and flashing fingers. Brown as cookies and just as smart.

Her gift wasn’t knowledge. It was speed and flexibility. She had registered in as a warrior once, in the guild. Maybe almost a whole year ago in this timeless tale of ancient. This had grown into the ranger class, that had been interesting. Plants and animals, places. She was able and ready, but even the colorful army of the times preferred team players to scrappy loners.

So there she was, with her glasses pushed on, looking out over the hilltops, hoping for some kind of celestial help in understanding this cryptic mystery.

She was in an old school building that was pre history even to them. Wearing the rare pair of glasses that existed in those early times of no radio waves. Reading a scroll made from sheepskin that had been worked into a fine parchment, several feet long. The ink was made from blueberries and wood ash. And the pen had been a pair of brass things that looked like two sharpened Popsicle sticks held together by an adjustable screw and a pin.

She had one now, to make notes. No glasses for these, she was nearsighted. But there were no notes, not today. Not in the empty old schoolhouse on road 552 outside of the city gates of Mara, that gem of the continent.

The city of trade. The city of commerce and world travel. The city of survivors. These people were like golf balls, they just kept bouncing back from calamity after crises. They had meteors for breakfast, earthquakes for lunch and reptile attacks for later on. Things were kind of quiet at the moment, but things were pretty action oriented back then.

“Thanks,” said Mon, Jena’s young girl friend.

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