The Crystal Part 2 (694 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 0.66 on 4 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by guiness (View user info) at 2006-06-11 01:09:39 EDT
Men fought for it. Blood was shed over it. Yet those who held it never truly possessed it. It possessed them.
***
Friday April 4, 2003 :
"Wanna grab some coffee after work?" asked Mark. He had been after Jen for the past couple of weeks and she was beginning to find his advances a little irritating. She wondered if he was just plainly incapable of taking a hint. At least she had a valid excuse today.
"As much as I'd like to, I've gotta work late tonight. The professor's having me work on a new project, something about a few documents found at a Roman gravesite outside of Alise-Sainte-Reine", she told him.
"Why's this find so important?", Mark asked her.
"It's the nature of the documents", she explained. "They're dated 1st century BC and were found in the grave of a Roman captain. But they're not in Latin. It's some kind of Gallic dialect that nobody in the department seems to be able to decypher. So I'm stuck cross-referencing the words until I find a match and can jump start the translation."
"So why would these documents be in a Roman grave?"
"I don't know. It's all strange, and I can't seem to get any more information about the dig from the team captains or for that matter, the professor himself."
"Why would he keep this from you? You two have always been close."
"I don't know why. But I do know the situation's making me uneasy. I'm going to keep asking questions until somebody spills the beans", she said smiling.
"Well, good luck to you", Mark returned the grin. "And maybe we can get that coffee some other time?"
"Maybe", she replied flatly, trying to send a negative signal in the hopes that he would finally get the picture.
"Great! I'll see you in the morning!", he said cheerily.
"It's hopeless", she muttered to herself.
***
Two hours had passed since Mark left and she still had made only minimal progress. The documents used the Etruscan alphabet, but none of the words could be found in the small amount of reference material she had. "Dammit!", she said in frustration. "What the hell kinda language is this anyway?!"
"A very strange one indeed", came a voice from the doorway behind her.
Jen gasped, startled, then realized that it was the professor. "You frightened me!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I thought you might still be here working on the manuscripts. Your dedication is going to be the death of you", he said with the spare, yet gracious smile she knew so well.
"If it does, then at least I'll die doing something I enjoy", she remarked. "Well, most of the time at least. I just can't figure this out for anything!" She felt slightly ashamed that something so simple could irritate her this much. But she was a perfectionist and over-achiever after all. In this line of work, one had to be ambitious if they were going to enjoy any success whatsoever. Especially if that person was a female who shared her humble background.
She had grown up in rural Pennsylvania with a father who died in a mining accident when she was 8 years of age. Her mother had spent the rest of Jen's childhood working two or more jobs simultaneously, trying her best to provide for a family that desperately needed a husband and father. Jen had worked hard through school and eventually earned a scholarship with the University of Pennsylvania where she graduated with a master's degree in history, with majors in Middle Ages history and etymology. After a brief post-degree apprentiship with the college, the professor decided to give Jen a full-time position with the research division of the history department. He and his wife had always been kind to Jen, trying to provide some symblance of friendship and family for a girl to whom these ideas still seemed a little foreign. And the professor had taken a special interest in helping Jen to discover her abilities as a scholar, training her in various fields outside her studies and giving her tips or suggestions about her work when things went awry.
"Here, take a look at this", the professor said. "Chang had an idea but we haven't had the opportunity to examine it as of yet."
He handed her a piece of paper that's writing resembled a child's secret decoder ring.
"You've been using the Etruscan alphabet and looking for Etruscan words. Try substituting letter for letter with the Oscan alphabet and see what you come up with", he directed.
"A Celtic alphabet?", she asked.
"Just try it."
As she did this, she realized that the language wasn't Etruscan at all but was a cryptic rendering of another more obscure language, Celtiberian. "But I don't understand", she said. "The Celtiberians predated this area by several hundred years. What would these documents be doing at a Roman burial site?"
"Finish the documents and then I'll tell you", he said.
***
In a little over half an hour she was finished, and what she read chilled her bones. "Professor, I'm finished", she said solemnly.
"What do the documents say?" he asked. She seemed to notice a hint of anxiety in his voice, something that she had never heard before.
She hesitated, then said, "They're mostly gory descriptions of what seems to be the battle of Alesia. It appears that this was more of a planned genocide than a seige. But the end disturbs me the most. It's a curse spoken to anyone who disturbs the site."
"How does it read?"
She read, "'Cursed be the cursers of our power. The holy earth will slay its defilers with the pain of a horrid wilting. Never shall this grave be opened, lest the offenders suffer eternally and the power exact its revenge on its enemies.'" An unknown shudder gripped her momentarily. She had read various threats and curses before but this one seemed to have an undenyable truth behind it, a certainty that they were all in serious peril.
"Then it's true", he stated.
"What do you mean?"
"The documents aren't the only thing strange about this site. The corpses we found are still..whole", the professor remarked.
"I don't understand professor", she said, the unease in her chest growing stronger by the minute.
"The bodies haven't decomposed. They're as fresh now as if they had died today, but they are ice cold. Several degrees below 0 celcius, yet they are not frozen, and there is no rigormortis. And they have the most unnatural of injuries." He was visibly shaken by this confession. "Pack your things up. I'd like you to accompany me to the site when I leave tomorrow for further investigation", he said.
"But what about the other projects?"
"Leave them. This is our one and only priority now. This will either be the discovery of the millenium or a horror beyond our wildest nightmares."
As they were leaving the office, she couldn't help but think that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
***
To be continued...
User Reviews
Submitted by guiness (user info) at 2006-06-11 16:17:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by maiorano84 (user info) at 2006-06-11 02:37:26 (#)
Ranking: 2
See, this is a good story, but the way you write it is so irritatingly cliche...... let the suspense build on its own, don't try and force it.
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In retrospect, I agree. That's one goal for the next part.
Submitted by wardy (user info) at 2006-06-11 02:50:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
meh. +2 because you got zanatos thinks he's an authority on creative writing...
Submitted by Zanatos (user info) at 2006-06-11 02:47:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Sorry dude, but the first few lines sound like a direct ripoff from "Lord of the Rings." Minus 2 for "triteness." The story lead should grab and pull readers into your story -- not get them scratching their heads and thinking, "Where did I hear this before?".
Submitted by maiorano84 (user info) at 2006-06-11 02:37:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
See, this is a good story, but the way you write it is so irritatingly cliche...... let the suspense build on its own, don't try and force it.