Nel had enjoyed much warmth and love from
the Dogon tribe and was already feeling much better by the time Neter arrived
back in Kergal. Like Zara, she had trembled in fear of Aquilla, she too thought
she would perish in the tunnel, and just like Zara, nothing had prepared her
for the shock of meeting the Dogons, of discovering Lemuria and the beauty
around her.
Neter
sat down by the fire to devour a bowl of food, exhausted from the journey,
watching her interact with the tribe. She seemed a lot less beat up than Zara,
perhaps she would be able to reveal some more clues. He noticed she was rubbing
her eyes in the morning sunlight, struggling to cope with the light.
She
seemed to feel his gaze and turned his way.
"Panther?"
He asked, in between mouthful's of food.
Nel
nodded, curious now of his persona, the twisted role he seemed to play in her
mythology text books, she didn’t feel afraid of him like she thought she
would.
"Me
too" he offered up, hinting of his past life in the Atlan Empire. It
explained perhaps why she had fared better than Zara. Panther life had been
okay, perhaps Panther slaves had the best lives in Atlan. Bakkon wasn't a
ruthless psychopath like Atalon, Panthers were sheltered somewhat from his cold
hard world.
Underworld trains? Vikkar was deeply troubled by the unbelievable and horrific briefing, not simply because the news was so troubling, but he had to entertain the possibility that Neter himself was suffering some sort of delusion.
"Are
you sure it was Fina?" He knew
of the tunnels were vast, there were many islands still to discover still but
the things Neter was describing seemed impossible, surely everyone would know
about such infrastructure. On one hand, Neter’s story explained much of the
unknown. It explained the damaged slaves that wandered into Kergal every now
and then, like Zara. It explained the dogons, once and for all. But he never
remembered Atalon being genocidal!
Most
troubling was that he knew his Nefilim crews were loyal, they were the ultimate
underground connection to Atlan, they would never have kept those sorts of
secrets from him. Would they?
"It
was Fina" Neter insisted. "I told you, don't believe me. Go and see
for yourself, you don't even have to take the tunnel, you can go by boat!"
He chugged back some wine. "Tell me about Torus."
"I
don't know where he came from, to be quite honest" Vikkar had wondered
about Torus too but nothing had arisen to make him press for the truth. "He
could be an immigrant for all I know. I just figured he was a younger, modern
Gen type Origian" he confessed. "It's not the sort of thing that's
discussed..." Vikkar couldn’t help but wonder about that now, if the
things Neter was saying were true, would Torus really keep him out of the loop
like that too? Torus wasn't in on the book heist loop... He obviously wasn't a key player. Yet Torus was god of the Underworld? Would the Firmary
gods really keep such secrets from
one another?
It
seemed impossible, yet something was obviously wrong, anyone could see there
had been strange things going on, in fact, some of these strange things had
been exploited...
He
shook his head as he realized there were in fact layers of convenient
coincidences. Business had been booming since Orius left, all kinds of
questionable un-sealed business of which no questions were being asked had been
carried out. The pyramid construction was having staged bedrock issues... The
unexplainable uranium orders being charged to gold accounts... Gold orders
being re-directed to Ebar at the last minute...
Book
heists… He had never really stopped to wonder if these things were all related,
until now.
"What
are you going to do?" It was almost a rhetorical question. Vikkar knew,
there was likely nothing Neter or anyone could do.
"I
don't know yet" Neter replied, staring out across the water towards the
smoking city in the distance. "But we have to do something, we can't just
let that insanity go on."
He
finished his wine, stood up and walked over to the lookout, he could see the
red and white tent tops from here... Movement in the harbor below caught his
eye. Through the lower canopy of trees he could barely make out the Nefilim,
loading gravel onto Vikkar's ship. They were obviously a good team, how could
they not know? Would they really keep
such secrets as the Underworld reality from Vikkar?
Vikkar
was starting to believe Neter was right about something nefarious going on,
above and beyond his knowledge.
"You
know, I do think there is something strange going on over there right now and
I've been kept out of the loop. That celebration drama, it's out of character,
I was invited to the party but I didn't go because Atalon wouldn't let me bring
Vida. It's very unlike him to let them have fun like that, especially now,
given the war plans. The whole city basically shut down for his stupid
barbeque!"
"I
wonder what they are barbecuing..." Neter had only heard scattered rumors
about the Coming War. "Is he really
waging an all out war on Aquilla again?"
Vikkar
filled him in on the latest plans to level the mountain, about the atomic
bombs, that the Nefilim miners had been ordered to stay out of the mountain
until it was over.
It
was horrific news, but hardly plausible. "Do they have a date?"
"The
eclipse."
"Of
course…" Neter studied the dark profile of Mount Ekar, gravely troubled by
the new details, it was just as Mina predicted, worse. Perhaps they wouldn't
level the mountain, but there was already a disaster happening over there. They
wouldn't have much time to do something about it. 
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