Waters of Change: A Search for the Fountain of Youth (Chapter 13 - Complete)

[LostBBoyBear]

As per my other stories, I just wanted to ensure that all knew what awaited them in this story. Due to the nature of this particular story, there are honestly not a lot of off-putting topics to most. It's definitely more tame, but I know it doesn't hurt to add this section before readers continue. Please note the following will be in this story:

• Depiction of Native Americans
• Usage of religion and references to God
• Physical age regression
• Non-consenting adult being regressed and then babied 
• Some mild language
• Violence and gore directed toward others

As I stated previously, this will like be one of my more tame stories and I know most won't care about these, but I just want readers to be aware. For those of you reading on, please enjoy, Waters of Change!

[Guilend]

Looks interesting 

[Kahlez]

Sounds promising but I have to say how many tags do you want? Yes! 

[LostBBoyBear]

I could have written this into a few chapters, but I honestly just wanted to get this story and it's main plot started. There's a little bit more of exposition here than I would like these days, but after this, the story will progress much more naturally.

Hope everyone enjoys this first chapter!

Chapter 1: A Discovery

Fine grains of sand passed through my hands. Each was a relic unto itself, and I wondered what kind of life it had seen. To an archaeologist like me, such sand was sacred but at the foot of the Great Pyramid in Giza, also abundant. “A little inch to the left or right, maybe this sand could have once been part of something as great as Khufu’s pyramid.” I stared at the large stone slabs that made up the incline all the way to the top. All the photos I had seen in books or in my studies in college, made the structure look vast but with flat sloped sides inching their way towards the heavens. It was anything but flat now, owing to the centuries of piracy and sandstorms around it.

“Shame…” I had no interest in such trivial monuments to the dead. Most had long ago been looted and now stood as a testament to the vanity of pharaohs in their pursuit of immortality. Impressive to the dung beetle perhaps, but I wanted something more… tangible. Something more fitting of the name, Bradley Whittington. “You hear me out there?” I shouted to the heavens with a smile and a sense of annoyance that it hadn’t happened yet.

I wanted a museum piece to make my name written in every book about the ancient wonders that would ever be written from then on. As it just so happened, I was just waiting for just such a phone call that would set me on that path.

For years now, I had been in search of a book. Spain, Portugal, and even the lower slopes of France had been my home for the past two years. I hadn’t had a permanent home since I graduated from college four years ago, and after searching hundreds, if not thousands, of books, I knew I needed more help. So, after leaving my team back in Barcelona to search for the coveted item, I came to Egypt in search of backers.

The rich loved their little finds in the desert. It was something they could slap their name to and be a part of making history. The gold and priceless artifacts inside weren’t bad either, of course, but like me, they wanted something more. Fortunately for a man like me, they could always make more money, but a legacy was harder to grasp at. That’s where I came into the picture.

In an hour, I would have my book and my backers. Just in the distance even now, a scrawny boy I had tasked to wait by the phone was running toward me at a blistering speed. The sun was high, so I arched my hand over my eyes to see him better. “Farouk?” I saw his awkward yet speedy run toward me, his white clothing flapped in the wind and the currents passing through the small holes that the cloth had accumulated over the years. “Definitely Farouk…”

Being so close to my goal, the little figure running toward me on the hot sand seemed to take forever. When Farouk finally arrived, I was so relieved, and I waited with bated breath. Though exhausted and very much out of breath, he spoke one of the words that I had taught him in the past week; small but important. “Phone…” It was simple, but I knew it would change my life forever.

*             *            *

After a decidedly quick drive in my own car fraught with all the bumps one could imagine on the unpaved compacted sand roads, Farouk in the passenger seat and gripping on for dear life, we made it into the city and to the phone I had reserved at a high cost just to hear the good news. If this was the phone call I was expecting, the backers would likely just be throwing their money at my team and I, so I didn’t mind digging into my trust fund a bit more.

“Anything yet, Sat?”

“Yes, sir. I think we’ve found it,” a timid slightly accented voice responded back.

“Good. I should be on a plane back tonight. Make sure to take all the photos. I’ll do my little song and dance, which should be enough, but those greedy backers are going to want something more at some point.”

“Yes, sir.” I then hung up the phone and smiled at my little bit of good luck. I just hoped it would hold out for the next little bit at my next few steps.

“Good?” Farouk asked.

“Good, Farouk. Very good.”

*             *            *

That day, so important and triumphant, was etched into my mind forever. I had begged not twenty minutes later and had received the funding I had so coveted, mainly from a rotund figure named J.P. Hapsborough. On the plane that night back to Barcelona, I felt all would be good and all the time and money I had spent on this endeavor would be worth it.

That feeling lasted until an hour after I landed. The book was as beautiful and thick as I had ever seen. It smelled like a proper elder diary buried in the stacks and forgotten about. Upon opening it however, I could only make out the letters, and if I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought the writer was having a stroke.

As such, that beautiful and momentous day had occurred six months ago, being unable to discern what was actually being written. I was now sequestered in a college lab surrounded by books, and accompanied only by my intern, Saturno, or ‘Sat’ as he liked to be called, and Betty, my secretary.

“Anything yet, Sat?” I asked nervously. The backers were getting impatient with the lack of immediate progress, but we were still nowhere. Caesar shift, alpha numeric, using words from the bible, and the queens own name as a key all proved to be a failure. Today, Sat was trying another combination while I prepped.

“Maybe… I’m looking at this one translation. If I use the word scrawled on the last page, ‘augua,’ and then use a Caesar shift by the number of faithful disciples, I think I can translate from the original Spanish… maybe.”

I rolled my eyes at another ‘maybe.’ I had secured the funding further with the acquisition of the book I had been looking for, but a string of ‘maybes’ were all I could ever show for our progress since then. One more ‘maybe’ may prove to be the breaking point. Already, one backer had pulled his money and my original team dissipated.

Sat stayed on and Betty was still in my employ from working with my father before he passed, but the other team members had left in frustration, Victor having left just last week. ‘Cowards and quitters all of them…’

“Try it out,” I took off my reading glasses and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Let me know. I’m still going to try and work backwards with these old maps. See if we can get a general idea of where to start looking…”

“Will do, boss.” I then heard the pages being rapidly passed back and forth from behind the stack of books that now surrounded Sat.

Upon receiving the book, it was the happiest day of my life after the day I had graduated from college, or at least it was…

Thinking back, after the publishing of a transcribed logbook of the royal family I had seen in my graduate studies, one entry stood out to me: ‘F.O.Y. discovered. Sending ship and crew to New World.’ It had caused some stir in the academic and treasure hunter world alike, but all leads ended up nowhere.

I, on the other hand, had decided to work backward and discovered that one of the ladies of court had been married to a sea captain who had vanished around the time of the original diary entry after setting sail one day. What’s more, the captain’s friend, also part of the vanished crew, had written their own diary that they then left with their wife. The connection to the court and the disappearance of that crew couldn’t be a coincidence. So, I searched for the diary.

After many leads, I found the book had been there in the hands of an old Spanish family, connected to the original man that had set out in 1532. After several bottles of wine with them one night, I discovered the voyage was apparently undertaken with information taken from a dying Juan Ponce de León on his death bed a little over ten years prior in Cuba. It was a mission to find the Fountain of Youth, F.O.Y. Everything just fit perfectly, but they also revealed that they had given the book away to a library many years prior.

“Boss?” Sat called out hesitantly.

“Yes, what is it, Sat. Another failure?”

“N… no, sir. I think I have it.”

“What?” Betty and I rose to our feet and could see just the tops of Sat’s black hair above the books.

“Yes. Come and look.” Betty and I rushed over and looked at the work that Sat had done decoding and translating the first passage. I couldn’t help but flash back to my father and his bedtime stories, often bordering on old tales of long-lost histories.

I had heard the story of the fountain from my him several times and it felt just as real as any other artifact now lost to history. Most told me to forget it and move on later in life, but two things had changed my mind. First, many archeologists were now finding all kinds of discoveries all over the world of places most thought to exist only in legend. Second, and more importantly, giving up on the book temporarily, I had found an obscure passage over a shipping manifest sent to the New World in 1532. Few explorers had ventured into the Floridian area at that point, but these apparent voyagers were tasked to locate an object or place and establish a firm Spanish presence in the area. Further, one of the crew, named Hector, was a mapmaker and close friend of the captain, known for his meticulous journals before the voyage. In astonishment, I had found the man who had written the book I had been looking for.

What intrigued me the most on that discovery, however, was that the crew, captained by a man named Bernardo, received a special blessing from Queen Joanna and then suddenly vanished. Even de León’s own mission had ended in his death, but there were still some survivors, but no one? It was hard to believe. Unfortunately, such secrecy was no doubt the reason that a simple journal would be written in code. The apparent gibberish and a dusty library had made the book easier to procure, but it came at another cost. Hence, Sat and his decoding, which now may have just paid off.

I saw the blue ink in the leatherbound journal next to the large book that had been the bane of my existence for years now. I cleared my throat and read what Sat had just written. “1532, October 17. Today was a momentous occasion. The break we have been looking to the heavens about and that history will remember us for. Queen Joanna called Bernardo in today…” I paused and looked up. “My God, we’ve done it. This is it…”

“Yes, boss,” Sat sighed audibly. He then stretched and looked immediately relieved. I couldn’t blame him. “It was a bit difficult, but I think this could be it.”

I realized how close we were now. “Yes, yes!” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Quickly, Sat. Go as fast as you can. I need to call our backers and tell them the good news. Betty, call them up quick for me! Jesus… good news at last.”

“Yes boss.” She quickly waltzed away, and I couldn’t help but stare at the small journal Sat had been keeping of all the failures and now the recent single success.

“If the next section turns out right, I want you to start a new journal. Keep the old just in case, but I want it all to be shiny and new. I don’t want to remind the backers of all the failures. Just the good stuff, got it?”

“Yes boss.” I nodded and walked back to my seat. I viewed the maps carefully of sea charts from a few years afterward. Even then, leaving Spain destined for La Pascua Florida, as the area was called back then, meant they would be passing through dangerous waters. It had only been forty years since Columbus and most still dared not make the journey. Some had ventured further into the peninsula, but it was still largely undiscovered. I leaned back in my chair and thought of the possibilities that lay ahead of us.

Over the next few days, Sat and I alternated in decoding and translating the book. Interestingly enough, the voyage from Narvaéz in 1528 looked to be more of an accurate tell than any of de León’s own journey. It was curious but after establishing a heading where Narvaéz had landed, the voyager’s path had led us to unfolding and diving deeper into the histories of the local natives at the time. Information was sparse, but the voyager’s destruction marked a clear path toward the inner parts of Florida. It was devastating to the villages, but it meant that they had all marked the occasions dutifully.

Finally, three months after initially decoding the diary, I discovered a passage from a Timucua chieftain at the time. Roughly translated, I discovered that several bearded and dirty foreigners had invaded and had set up camp to the south of them. They made sure to stay away from their ‘hungry forms’ and stuck to guarding their own land. That and mention of them being near a large stone column of sorts that had been abandoned years ago, was enough to start searching the area.

*             *            *

Two months later, the remains of an old Spanish settlement were found. Roughly hewn and almost completely subsumed by the local swamps, the dig was precarious and exacting, but one Saturday morning, we found something.

“Boss! Boss!”

“What? What is it, Sat? What could possibly be so important to wake me from a good dream. A really good dream…” I smiled at the praise I had been receiving in the dream from the backers, the money, the fame…

“Right. Yes, sir, but we, uh… we found something…” I looked at Sat with wide eyes and was no longer thinking about my pleasant dream. “We… we found a chest…”

I shot out of bed like a cannon and snapped my suspenders on my shoulders once more, brushed my hair back, and followed Sat as fast as we both could walk through the camp that had been our home since starting the excavations. I could barely contain my excitement and I jittered about and nearly fell face first into one of the first holes we had dug once we had found what was left of the ruined ancient stone pillar.

Getting to the latest dig site, several shovels lay strewn about the ground and many of the locally hired workers were in a deep pit, neatly shored up to prevent any more flooding. ‘That was not a learning experience we needed to repeat again…’ Nearby, a tarp was laid out and I saw the several items we had been finding lately. Helmets dating back to the 1500’s were barely formed anymore but cut a neat and obvious form of showing that we were in the right place.

At first, upon seeing the chest, it looked wrong. It was large, made of stone, and intricately carved with numerous glyphs. It matched nothing locally that we could find, but it’s depth and the markings on the side were obviously native in origin. I pressed on, despite the oddities. It was something tangible and that had been hidden away on purpose based on the depth. “Up, up. Get it up!”

The workers in the pit struggled to heave the chest together out from its muddy tomb and in front of my feet. “Crowbar,” I said, holding my hand out.

Sat rushed away quickly and then returned with one in his hands, looking embarrassed that he hadn’t been prepared for my request. “Here you go, boss.”

“Good. Time’s wasting here…” I took a breath and reflected on all the time we had spent getting to this moment. The backers had kept threatening to leave the expedition and take their remaining money with them. I had managed to stave them off with each discovery that we had made and discovering the column had bought us another two months of digging. Even that time, however, was running out now.

Already, we had established another Spanish exploration to Florida, a blessing from the Queen herself, and now full evidence of a Spanish presence near the heart of Florida. To me, the expedition had already been a moderate success, but I guess they wanted more. Honestly though, I did as well and steadied the crowbar. “Alright, here we go.”

I slammed the crowbar into a single vein that looked like a seal that was wrapped around the large stone chest. Honestly, the thing looked like an elaborate coffin, but the discoverer inside me just wanted to see what was inside, regardless of if it was a body or treasure. Finally, the crowbar crunched its way inside. “Sat! Give me a hand with this. Come on!”

He nodded and joined behind me on the long sturdy crowbar. “On three.” He nodded again. “One, two… three!” We both shoved with all our might and the lid cracked neatly around the line, opening with a loud hiss.

“We got it!” I wanted to hug Sat right there, but I kept my emotions in check. I was the project leader and discovery had to come before any jubilation. “You men. Out of the hole. We’re going to lift the lid and set it gently down. It may contain evidence that we might need if this isn’t what we’re looking for.”

The men nodded and hopped out of the hole. Signaling them from the side, I let them remove the lid with their own brawn and set it on the ground nearby. Sat and I could have done it, but I didn’t want there to be a single chance that our medium amount of manpower could slip and crack the lid in two. I readied myself and stepped forward to look at what we had found.

Inside was… unexpected, from a certain point of view, I guess. Neatly preserved in its solid tomb, several trinkets inherent to an early 1500’s crew lay within. Looking further though, my bad luck smacked me in the face again. Of course, neatly stacked to one side, lay several books, each bearing the same looks and markings as the one that had originally led us here.

“Shit.” I was so dumbfounded at that moment that I walked off with a huff and shut myself off in my tent.

To say the expedition was disappointing would have been an understatement. While the lab we had started out in over five months ago now was wonderfully crammed with all the artifacts we had discovered and had marked the site to be sure to not lose it, we were no closer to discovering where the actual fountain was.

“Boss?” Sat piped up.

“Did you translate it yet? This whole thing now depends on those blasted journals… again.”

“Well, errr… no. Well, not exactly.”

“Well, which is it Sat? Yes, or no?”

“I… I think you should look for yourself.”

I grumbled and wondered where Betty was with our lunch. I could have used a good meal right about then, but I walked over to Sat. “Yes? What is it? Spit it out.”

“Well… ugh... just look here.” I indulged him and looked to where he was pointing. There was a Roman numeral, ‘IV’ that meant[ZS1]  ‘4.’

“Okay, and?”

“Right… well, I thought the same, but then I noticed that each of these had the same on their first pages as well.”

“Speak more quickly, Sat.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose, trying to ease the hangover away from last night’s ‘drowning my sorrows’ session. “I’ve got the backers breathing down my neck and Betty is late with our food.”

“Right… sorry, boss.” He nervously flipped open a few more journals. “I think the numerals stand for the order of the journals. Hector Rivera was a detailed and ardent journalist, right?” I nodded. “Well, he needed some way to mark them all, and this was a new expedition. Like a new series. So, I thought that he could order these like a set. Like, ‘the Florida 1532 Expedition, Journals 1 through 4.’ You know?”

I realized where he was going with this. “Okay… if that’s true, then that’s great, Sat. So did you skip to the end?”

“Yes, but I hit a snag.” My face dropped. ‘Of course, there was a snag.’ “I got to the last page, and I used the same word to decode the pages and then do the Caesar shift and all that. Makes sense, right?” I nodded. “But… well, look.”

I looked at the page of his handwritten translations and it was just a bunch of random letters strung together. “This is nothing, Sat. It’s just a jumble of letters.”

“Right. I didn’t even get to translating it from the original Spanish.” He looked saddened but then a spark of hope came to his eye. “That being said,” Sat pulled over another of the journals, “I saw this at the end of each. Over and over and in the same place on the last page and marked with a star.” He pointed to a single indecipherable word. “I started thinking, like the last one, maybe it’s another code word.”

“Come again?”

“Like the one I… we” he corrected, “used to decipher the original journal in the first place. ‘Agua,’ right? These others could be the same.” I stared at him for the punchline to all this. Sat normally wasn’t the one to just spew out his thoughts before they would actually mean something.

He took my silence to continue. “I went to the first one,” Sat pulled over another journal and pointed to the roman numeral, ‘I,’ on the first page. “I used the same code word and then translated it and… well, look.”

“1532, November 21. Months out at sea…” ‘It made perfect sense!’ “You did it Sat! You found us the key.”

“Thanks boss. I’m glad to hear you say that, but…”

“But?” I looked at him sourly.

“If my theory holds any water, each one will require a new password to translate and then decipher. The last word with the star and all. If so, it’s going to take some time... and we can’t just skip to the end.”

“Perfect,” I said sarcastically. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from all… this.” I gestured to the room that had consumed my very existence for almost five total years since first hearing of the book back in college and three since starting to search for it in Spain. Nothing else… just libraries, begging, and digs in mosquito-infested swampland, and only rusty artifacts and garbled books to show for it.

Betty then entered like a savior with two bags containing our lunches from a local deli around the block and gave me the single satisfaction I hoped to just get from Sat then. “Just get to deciphering the books. Give each to me when you’re done. I’ve got to go talk to the backers and tell them the news.”

“Good news?”

“No, just news… you gave me some good and bad news today. In the end, it all cancels out and is just news to them. Good job mind you, but they want… something. Something to touch…” I walked away and grabbed my lunch from Betty. “Ring up the backers, Betty... I need to talk to them today.”

“Right away, Mr. Whittington.”

I nodded and shuffled out of the way. I still had a mountain of artifacts to sift through for the records, but I also knew that many voyagers would often hide hidden clues amongst their possessions in case of capture by an enemy. The forty or so pieces that lay before me on various tables in the lab, could hold the key to unlocking everything.

I sat and stared at my sandwich, a little mustard escaping from the side. ‘At least the food is decent around here…’ I took a bite and leaned back in my chair while I chewed. This was going to be a long journey.

[LostBBoyBear]

This story is coming along pretty quickly, so I should be able to post like some of my other stories and complete and post them every other day, if not every day.

Hope everyone enjoys this next chapter!

Chapter 2: A Tempest of Crew and Waves

A week later, and I was just finishing my morning coffee when Sat came barreling over to me. “Boss! Boss! The first book is done. All translated and just waiting for you here.” He handed me his leather-bound journal, fresh and now mostly filled with his scribblings of the exacting translations. It was a wonder that he still had any energy to bound so gleefully over to me, hands still gloved from his handling of the original first volume.

“Perfect. Thank you, Sat.” I took the book from him. “Give yourself a needed break, but when you get back, start on the next volume.” I looked over to the stack of books near his desk, three thicker ones still waiting. “I have a feeling this is going to take some time.”

I looked over the leather-bound journal and saw the first page and then thumbed through the many passages, now noticing a few had been bookmarked. “Sat… before you go, what are these bookmarks here?”

“Oh, right. Forgot about those.” He came over and flipped to one of the pages flagged. “Feel free to read everything you want, but I think some of these other passages could be more enlightening toward our end goal, or at least are something more than bad food or a whale sighting.”

“Hmmm, that’s a good idea. I’ll get around to reading it all the way through, but the backers might come calling at some point soon. Probably be wise if I could tell them the highlights.” Sat smiled, nodded, and then walked away.

I gazed at the cursive handwriting I had come to know and yearn to read. Every time I had read Sat’s translations of Hector’s writings, I felt like I was actually there. It was a beautiful thing, really. I turned on the overhead lamp and pressed into the pages. “9 November 1532. Our crew continued sailing for the destiny we all knew would await us…”

*             *             *

The skies above were clear, but the waves had become choppy and distant clouds toward our destination somewhere in the New World crackled and glowed on the horizon. Being a mapmaker out at sea was a daunting task. Few landmarks to go by and distances judged by technology, though the latest of their kind, often left a lot to be desired. I just wanted to see land now after our three weeks at sea.

“Hector! Hector!”

I looked away from the horizon and saw Phillipe running toward me as fast as he could on our ship. “Yes, Phillipe? Something to say?”

“Captain Sanchez wishes to see you right away.”

I groaned and hopped off my perch near the bow of the ship. I loved the breeze, and it made me feel better on each of the voyages I had undertaken back home. Admittedly though, from earlier reports of other explorers, this would be the longest any of us had endured before. “Thank you, Phillipe. I’ll see him now.”

Entering his cabin at the rear of the ship, I smiled at my old friend and now captain of this ship and entire voyage. “Bernardo! Old friend! What do you need to see me for today?” I asked lightheartedly.

Bernardo barely lifted from hunching over his small desk. “Close the door, Hector.”

Bernardo was disciplined but was usually merry and always delighted to see me. Either he had found out about the extra rations I had stowed away, or something was going on with the crew. “What is it, my friend?”

“Have a seat, Hector.” I did on the stool by his bed. “You are my oldest and closest friend, so I find it in myself to be able to trust you.”

“Of course, Bernardo. You know that.”

“Yes, which is why I think I can trust you when I tell you that I believe we may have mutineers aboard.”

“Mutineers?” My palms grew sweaty over the word.

“Yes. After three weeks at sea, I was instructed to open this letter,” he gestured to the parchment on his desk, now with a cracked seal. “I was advised to be careful of the selection of the crew by her majesty, but this letter from the royal council has informed me that once we make landfall, many of the crew are expected to betray us and take the fountain for themselves.”

I got up and readied the knife on my belt. “We need to stop them. Come on!”

Bernardo stood up and patted my shoulder to calm my vigor. “Easy, Hector. Easy. We must be cautious about this. If this letter is correct, they would surely prevail with a mutiny out here on the open ocean. We’ll likely fare better in the jungles. It’s a more even playing field out there and we can even begin our preparations now. It might just give us the upper hand we need.”

“I understand,” I said, now calmer. Bernardo was right that a mutiny at sea now would likely just doom us all. The jungle could provide a means of escape if nothing else if events were to turn unfavorable for us.

“Good. Now go out and keep a weather eye on those clouds in the distance.”

“Ah, you noticed those I see.”

“Yes. Hold fast, Bernardo. There’s rough waters ahead.”

I saluted and exited his cabin to watch as he instructed.

*             *             *

The ship sped with the prevailing winds toward our destination, but being seasoned sailors, Bernardo and I had been correct. The clouds gathered menacingly and boiled into a fume all around us. The ship began to pitch all around. When Bernardo commanded the crew to bind up the sails and brace for trouble, I knew we were in for it. Every man on the ship clutched the rosary at their chest. Out here, only God, some luck, and an experienced captain with some discipline could save us from utter wreckage.

The other two ships, the Santa Rosa and Flor Roja, bucked and swayed in the strong winds. Their captains were less experienced, and I looked fearfully as each was pounded again and again by the raging storm.

Our own ship, the newly christened, the Agua Bendita, was taking water over the sides. My clothes were repeatedly soaked, and though my job was as a mapmaker, it mattered little in these situations. I was a strong hand, and we were fighting against the absolute fury of God.

Some of the sailors prayed fervently and many were nearly washed out to sea in the pitching seas when they focused more on their prayer beads than the next behemoth wave to hit us.

“Captain! Captain! Surely, we must turn around!” one sailor, Nuńez, cried out to Bernardo.

Bernardo held tightly onto the wheel of the ship, always having the need for total control during these situations himself and glared at the man. “There is no going back, or around for that matter.” Bernardo looked through the ship and the storm to the unknown horizon. “We go straight through. She can hold a bit longer!” He stared back at Nuńez. “Now, back to your post!”

Nuńez looked like he wanted to protest but another wave splashed on the side of the ship and pushed him to the deck. I went over and picked up the sodden figure. “On your feet. Captain says we go through, so we go through! Now, lash yourself to the mast with this.” I handed him a spot of rope. “Tie it around your waist and then to the mast over there.”

He stared at the rope questioningly. “Do it now!” I commanded. I had little authority in the strictest of senses, but my friendship with the captain and my previous experience aboard these vessels had given me some respect from the crew. Nuńez nodded and went over to the mast to do as I instructed. For my own peace of mind, I checked my own rope attached at my waist. ‘Good. Still secure.’

“A little hard on him, don’t you think?” Phillipe asked, checking his own rope.

“Kid needs to learn. He’s too afraid of the sea.”

“Can’t say I blame him. You know this storm isn’t typical.”

“Nonsense,” I lied, hoping to boost morale with my own perceived bravery. “Just a bit wilder without seeing any land for longer. We’ve seen tougher.”

“Speak for yourself,” Phillipe hmphed. “I know you have more experience than me and all, but this is something more. Is God giving us a sign, Hector?”

“No.” ‘Do I really believe that? Just don’t show your fear, Hector.’ “It’s a test if nothing else, Phillipe. Just hold fast and it will all be over before you know it.” A great gust of wind took the ship, and I looked up toward the main mast where I could hear a tremendous flapping.

Despite the battering winds, one sail was still unfurled. The two lateen sails had been bundled up, but the main mainsail was still out in force. Bernardo was taking a risk that it could tear from the abuse it was taking, but he knew that without it, our ship would only be tossed about and at the mercy of the storm. For such a controlling man like him, that was a scenario he wasn’t willing to entertain.

Many of the ropes were under tremendous strain and the rest of the crew and I desperately tried to keep them in place. Some of the knots had been done in haste and were slowly slipping from the winds that pounded our ship. Tying one of the knots more securely, I looked up and saw a giant wave engulf the Flor Roja. The small, oared ship couldn’t bear the mighty water and tipped over. It did not tip back after.

“Oh, God!” Nuńez cried out. “All those men…”

“42 at last count…” I said mournfully. Bernardo had just spoken with their captain the other day and discovered that two members had died of fever during the previous night. Now, in this violent tempest, 42 more souls were likely to be lost during this voyage. ‘We haven’t even made it to land yet…’ “Best not to think about it,” I patted him on his shoulder, “we’re alive and that’s what we have to focus on.”

Nuńez could only look out solemnly at the figures desperately clawing at the wreckage from the ship, trying to signal us to stop and help. “We can’t stop, can we?”

I patted his shoulder again. “No… storm’s too heavy. They’re in God’s hands now.”

“I suppose… I can’t imagine what…”

“Mister Rivera!” I looked up and saw the first mate, Alejandro, shout at me from the top deck. “Stand to the starboard rigging! The lines are becoming loose! We can’t lose the halyard lines!”

“Yes, sir!” I didn’t like Alejandro as first mate, but an order had to be followed. He knew I as reliable and that I was familiar with these ships under brutal conditions. As Bernardo and I knew about the secrecy of the mission and the possible mutiny, Alejandro likely also knew as well by now. It was a guarantee that he probably liked that I would follow the order and not cause further issues or use it later as an excuse over why to mutiny against the captain.

I dashed over to the rigging. It was all alarmingly loose and many of the ropes seemed tenuously close to becoming undone. If all went, the mainsail would be lost, and even the main mast could buckle under the weight of itself and the storm combined. I speedily went to work retying all the knots I could.

Fortunately, I knew how to use the ship and wench the slack rope around some of the fastening cleats to make it easier to tighten and tie together. One by one, six of the ropes were refastened. I begged for help, but the storm drowned out my cries and no one was willing to be a hero today. Unfortunately, the seventh however, began to slip as soon as I got within reach of it. I was too late.

The rope slipped completely, and I only managed to just catch onto the flinging bits before it was lost and too far out of reach. That being said, the rope was attached to the one sail still flowing about and the wind was determined to whip me about frantically.

“You two! Help Mister Rivera with that rope,” Alejandro shouted, the wind that drowned my voice out back was pushing his words forward enough so that I could hear them. ‘Blasted storm!’ The two figures stood in place and just looked at my flailing form. “That’s an order. Now!” Alejandro barked madly, trying to be heard above the storm and the most recent thunder and lightning strike.

I saw the two grumble but ultimately concede and grab the bit of the end of the rope that still trailed after my grip once they joined me. It wasn’t much, but the tall, broad-shouldered, and slightly rotund individual grabbed what he could and yanked down. The force of the pull nearly brought me to my knees, but much of the weight of the rope had now been transferred to him. The second figure, thinner and lankier, crept about behind him. When he grabbed more of the rope, I barely felt the difference in the weight at all.

“Thank you!” the two just nodded. “Now, I need to tie this off. You! Ummm…?”

“Diego,” the large one responded, a slight gargle coming up with each syllable he spoke.

“Right, Diego. You and…?”

“Roberto…” the skinny one rasped.

“Yes. You two grip in front of my hands and pull down! I’ll take the slack and tie it off. Got it?”

The two nodded and Diego pulled first on the rope where I had instructed. Within minutes, the rope had gained another foot of slack behind my hands. “Good. Now I’m going to loop it around the cleat here and then we can all pull and make it extra tight.

Diego gestured to me to take the lead. I nodded and took the slack rope and passed it around the knob I had pointed to earlier. “Perfect! Now, pull!”

We all pulled as hard as we could. The rain and the waves lapped about us, and the crew scurried to their other duties on the top deck or down below. When pulling on the rope, I could hear shouts of “fasten the cannons” and “secure the main mast” echo from behind me. Alejandro was busy at work trying to maintain order in the chaos that was unfolding before him.

Gratefully, after a few minutes of tugging relentlessly and battling privately against the forces of mother nature, the rope had gained enough tautness that I was able to securely fasten it down. The three of us then took shelter until the next task need to be completed. “So, Diego. This your first voyage?” I asked, trying to block out the storm and pass the time.

“No. Did plenty of passages out of Venice. Came here looking for… something new. You?”

“I suppose the same. How about you, Roberto?”

“Opportunity… bound to be some in the new land… if shared properly,” he grinned mischievously.

“I suppose… Ber… Captain Sanchez,” I corrected myself in front of the crew, “is pretty good about that type of stuff usually.”

“I’m sure, I’m sure… say, you seem like a good man to have in a pinch. If things were to progress… poorly, would you be with us?” Roberto asked slyly.

“Ummm… sure? God willing, nothing will go wrong, but I like to keep my options open.” I really didn’t and valued loyalty above most other traits, but these two seemed like the perfect fit to become mutineers. It was almost too perfect, but I knew I had to be delicate with these things. Earning their trust was the wisest move to make at this point.

“Sailors! Crewmen! Get back to your posts. The lines are getting tangled. Go! Go! Go!”

“Alejandro,” I heard Bernardo speak from above. “Keep your calm. You are a good first mate, but you need to keep your head. The storm isn’t going anywhere, and those lines are fine. Give the men a rest.”

“I… yes, captain. Wait… you there!”

I looked to the deck of the ship. One man stood alone fixing the ropes as ordered.

“I said, you there! With the ropes! Belay that order!” Alejandro cried out again.

But the wind and the rain were too strong to hear his words now, unlike earlier when I was out there. The man didn’t move a single inch, but I noticed the rope tied about his waist was loose. ‘Shit.’

I barreled out of the small covering where the rest of us had been hidden and rushed toward the man. My footsteps thudded loudly, and the man must have felt the vibrations in the planks of the ship, because he soon turned toward me. It was Nuńez.

“Nuńez! Nuńez!” I waved my arms frantically and then tried pointing to my waist. Being on the other end of the ship, despite not being far away, took me time to get to him due to the heavy winds and waves crashing aboard. He finally got what I was referencing, but it was too late.

A large wave rolled up and crashed into the ship. The ship moaned and pitched in the violent sea and water sprayed and poured onto the deck. Part of the deck merely drained away but the section where Nuńez had been, had taken the full brunt of the water. “Nuńez!”

*             *             *

Nuńez was lost that night to the sea he had feared so much. It was a tragedy, and we held a small service for him. Almost 50 of the crew had perished by then, but we had to move on. The next few weeks were plagued by more storms and by today, the first calm we had truly seen in some time, our numbers lost had reached almost to 60.

We mourned the loss, and all the green sailors quickly learned the ropes and what to do and make sure of in a storm. No one could be considered ‘inexperienced’ anymore. For his part, Bernardo kept his heading and ventured further west. If he held any emotion to his losses of men, he certainly didn’t share them.

Today, the breeze blew but few clouds remained in the sky. The heat was stifling, but on deck was at least more pleasant. It all felt like a sign from God that we had made it through the worst of it.

I was at the bow of the ship again, when a tall and muscled man came up from behind me and stared at the still vast ocean before us. “Good evening, Commander Juan.”

“Hello, Hector” he said, adjusting his belt containing his weapons. “Peaceful day, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Have to be grateful that the storms have passed.”

“Yes” he looked downward in reverence. “Lost one of my men to the last storm… good fellow, good soldier.”

“I heard… I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s a soldier’s life I suppose, but it’s never easy to lose a man. And this far away from home… still though, this voyage is too important to turn around when such things occur,” he corrected and almost seemed to puff out his chest.

“True. I just hope the worst is behind us now.”

“I admire your optimism, Hector, but I think the worst is yet to come.”

“Oh?”

“The captain told me that you are aware of the… situation,” he whispered.

“Oh, you mean the m…”

“Yes! But be quiet about it. I just want you to keep your eye out for it.” The commander then turned around when he heard a creaking of the boards. “Oh, Iago. It’s just you.” A little skinny lad ambled about and looked like he was waiting for something.

“Yes, sir. All wicks for the guns have been checked.”

“And the cannons?”

“I… no, sir.”

“Then get to it man. We may need them in these waters.”

“Yes, sir!” Iago bounded off and went below deck.

“Good lad. Young, but can take an order. However, and maybe I’m just seeing things, but he seems to be up to no good whenever I have my back turned. I’ve got to keep him busy. And he’s not the only one…”

“I’m not sure, but I know you’re not alone. A few of the crew seem… off.”

“I’m relieved to hear of my own sanity, but that is a most distressing confirmation. I need to know I can rely on you. I can, can’t I, Hector?” he asked, staring intently at me.

“Yes, sir. You, the captain, Alejandro. I’ll be there.”

“Good, good. The jungles of this new land are hazardous enough. We need all the men we can muster to our side. You never know…”

“Land!”

Commander Juan and I stopped our conversation and within seconds could spot a small patch of land in the distance. A seagull flew toward us and cried out. After so many weeks at sea, we had made it to the New World.  

[Kahlez]

The second chapter surprised me but in a good way nice work so far.

[Guilend]

I'm definitely interested to see where this goes. 

[LostBBoyBear]

I just want to thank everyone for their likes and comments. I know this story is less traditional for this community, but I knew I just needed to finish this one before moving on, so any support positivity toward it is a welcome scene.

Hope everyone enjoys this next chapter!

Chapter 3: Land At Last

I questioned the content in the first translated pages I had read. There was more in the book, but so far, most had been interesting but not substantial in getting us any closer to fountain. I could already see the seeds of chaos that could lead to the eventual failure of the mission, but I really only cared about their successes. Failure for them only meant delays in finding what my team had been looking for.

Every day, I opened the paper and read about the new deaths and conflicts in the world and even our own country. It had been less than ten years since the Great War and subsequent Spanish Flu that had followed it. The memorial to the fallen still stood erect in the nearby park and I could see grieving families still visiting it on the lunch breaks I didn’t end up working through.

I had no illusions that what we would find would change everything overnight, but I hoped it could tip the balance of the scales. St. Sebastian’s, a local church, had to expand their graveyard into another plot two weeks ago, having interred more than their share during the Great War, the Spanish Flu, and a few local deadly outbreaks. Hopefully, we could change all that… even if just a little.

Eager to press on now, I scanned Sat’s leather-bound journal and found the next entry a few days later after they had spotted land. “We had found land, but the storms had thrown us off course. It took a few more days to reach the familiar embrace of our already established colonies in the islands…”

*             *             *

Arriving in Puerto de Carenas, the ship docked in the meager port to resupply for our long journey ahead. Stepping on the first dry land in weeks was a feeling I would never forget. It felt odd and I almost wanted to collapse from the sudden shock of not feeling the rock of the ship, but I also wanted nothing more than to kiss the ground. Fortunately for my own sake, my duties with the voyage took priority.

Bernardo, Alejandro, and Juan all gathered in a nearby garrison to seek more information about the area. Not being needed now, I strolled around the area. Being less than 20 years old, the place was a hobbled mess if nothing else. Pigs and drunkards rolled around on the filthy streets that honestly bore a closer resemblance to a dried riverbed being flaked with so much mud and filth.

I quickly found a local drinking spot where some of the colonists had begun to make their own alcohol. I decided not to drink, knowing our resupply mission wouldn’t last long, but local intel could be important. The laughter was deafening, and a few seedy or weary characters were plopped all around the main area of the primitive looking building. Having just sailed from Spain, I guessed my expectations of the New World may have been a bit much. I sat and turned to a group nearby. “Hector.” I reached out my hand to shake. The scruffy and dour man to my left kept drinking from his wooden mug and didn’t acknowledge my presence. I ordered a local watered-down drink and realized what I would have to do. I took another swig and turned to the rest of the people in the building. “So, any of you sail to the mainland?”

The laughter and talking instantly died. Not a single soul of the twenty or so men in front of me seemed like they were even blinking in their fixed stares at me. “Is that a no?”

“We don’t talk about that area…” the man who had served me my drink said roughly behind me.

“Oh?”

“It’s cursed,” a balding man said, drowning his words in his drink.

“I don’t think I believe in curses. Maybe blessings, but not curses. Back home…”

“But you’re not back home, are you?” A tall and broad-shouldered man huffed as he stood up from one of the rickety tables.

“I guess not…” I could feel the tension in the room. I had seen it before after food supplies ran low and many in that tavern back home had just lost loved ones to a recent plague. I knew I needed to make my exit before things turned ugly. I turned to the man behind me who served the drink and placed a coin on the table. “I assume this will cover the drink.”

He nodded quickly but didn’t speak a word. I could tell that he could sense the tension as well. Words could have been dangerous in a situation like that.

I turned back to the crowd and bowed slightly. “Sorry for disturbing you all. I’ll just be on my way.” They all grumbled and went back to their conversations, though I could see each was still eyeing me on my way out the front door.

As I neared the exit to head back to the rest of the crew, a scraggly looking man stood up. I could practically see his bones under his stretched tan skin, but his eyes bore a look of fierceness I couldn’t quite place. He seemed like he was looking for trouble, but as I walked out, he merely bumped into me and quickly apologized. To my surprise though, the bump thrust one of his hands into mine and slipped me a small bit of parchment.

I knew a handoff when I saw one and quickly made sure no one would see what he had done. “Pardon me, sir.” I bowed at the man and he just gruffed and walked over to the man serving drinks. Nothing more was said or done, and I left the establishment.

Once outside and a fair distance away from the bar, I looked at the note from the man in my hands. “Out back. Now.” It seemed odd and some of the letters were deeply smudged, not having a chance to fully dry, but I took the note seriously. It could have been a trap, but my curiosity got the better of me.

After a few navigational errors in getting behind the building without sinking into some of the scattered mud pits, I saw the man waiting. “I got your note…”

“Yes,” he said frailly. “I didn’t want the others to know. They don’t like the mainland. Most who go there end up dying. Most attempts to settle have ended the same. Why do you want to know about that wretched place?”

I briefly considered telling him the truth. After all, he was taking the risk against his fellow colonists, but I couldn’t risk it. A potential mutiny and special orders from the crown on my end unfortunately dissuaded any sense of equal fairness toward each other. “Just another settlement. Some seek gold or a new life. The usual.”

“I see…” his eyes darted across at me and I could tell he wasn’t entirely convinced but spoke anyway. “The hostiles inland are vicious. Mysterious, but deadly to any outsiders.”

“Which is why we came prepared,” a voice rang out from behind me, one that I could recognize anywhere. The figure then stepped beside me.

“Bernardo! What brings you here?”

“I could ask you the same, Hector, but I was looking for you actually. We got what we came for.”

“Who is this?” the scrawny man asked, his eyes squinted in distrust toward Bernardo.

“This is my captain,” I replied, “Bernardo.”

“Oh. Then you should both know of the danger.”

“As I said, we came prepared,” Bernardo reinforced.

“I see…” the man reached into his clothing and produced a heavily stained and worn piece of parchment. “How about this then?”

“What is that?” I asked, staring at the folded-up bundle.

“Thought you might be interested.” He smiled, revealing his crooked and yellow teeth, and then opened the parchment and revealed a detailed map. From my studies, I recognized it instantly from reviewing Narváez’s journey.

“Is that…?” Bernardo asked, edging closer to us, now seemingly interested in the rakish figure.

“Yes. One of a kind… a more detailed map than you’ll ever get. My friend was on that journey and willed this to me when he died of fever when he got back here. I have no use for it, but I figured you all might.”

“Nothing is for free,” Bernardo said skeptically.

“This is… I have no want for it. It’s a cursed place and most die or are never heard from again. Take the thing and be gone. I wish you luck, but you’ll need God, the devil, and all the powers of the universe to save yourselves if you go in there.”

“Look, old timer…”

The scrawny old man held up his withered hand and Bernardo stopped talking out of respect of the gesture. “Please. Just go and God and all the saints be with you. I wish to discuss this no further.” The man then handed me the map, waved goodbye, and retreated back into the building.

“Funny little man. I swear, Hector, where do you find such creatures?” Bernardo joked, slapping me on the back in amusement.

“Yeah… right…” I couldn’t help but study the map, so I wasn’t really paying attention to anything else.

“Well, I see you’ve found another love, but come. The ship awaits us for our journey!” Bernardo pressed me forward and I stumbled around, looking intensely at the detailed depictions of the landmass we were now about to head to.

“Too bad it only goes part of the way in. De León likely went further, if only…”

“Fear not, Hector. We have no need of that particular section.”

“But…” I wanted to ask more questions, but Bernardo had already rushed off toward the ship. I guess he still had a few secrets, but there was nothing I could do about it currently, so I just followed him closely back to the ship.

*             *             *

The crew had been less than enthusiastic about stopping so briefly in Puerto de Carenas, but the final leg of our seafaring journey kept land within sight for nearly the entire rest of the way. Seagulls would perch atop the masts, and we could spot fires coming from inland. Each was a curiosity, but also a sign of impending danger. Bernardo and I may not have believed in curses, but the scrawny old man had been right about the hostile natives. León himself didn’t survive his final journey inland. I only hoped our fate would be different.  

Finally, we pulled into shore near where Narváez had previously. Boats were lowered into the water and a small contingent of the crew remained behind.

“We’re going inland, men. If we’re not back with any word within two months, set sail back for Puerto de Carenas. We will try to send a party back to communicate our safety and progress, but if the worst should happen… don’t come looking for us.”

“But captain…”

“That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.” The men tipped their heads in confirmation of obeying Bernardo’s possible final order to them. We were adventurers for sure, but we had no illusions about the safety, or lack thereof, of the untamed jungle and swampy environment we were about to enter. Still, my fingers clacked and rubbed together in nervousness as our boat was lowered into the water.

Now ashore, the bulk of the crew looked at the canopy of trees before us. No true path and little to go on. It was terrifying but exhilarating at the same time. If successful, our names would forever be sealed on the lips of every great explorer to have come before us. We just had to survive the thicket of swampy mess that lay before us.

*             *             *

That night, we set up camp. Using the map procured form the scrawny old man, we had deduced several potential paths to travel by. Picking the one least objectionable had maddening little effect and the wet and muck we had to travel through was pure wasted effort and frustration to our entire party. Gratefully, we had found a small path that seemed to take us out of most of the more problematic areas. The heat and dampness could kill us all still, but we had to count our blessings where we could.

Finding Bernardo’s tent, I knocked and then entered. “Ah, Hector. What can I help you with tonight?”

“The map, Bernardo. I’ve been thinking. It only leads us so far in. Within days at best, we will be lost in this thicket. That being said, you didn’t seem at all concerned when talking to that man. In fact, it felt like you had another plan…”

Bernardo leaned forward and squinted at me closely. “Is there something you want to ask me, Hector?”

I took a deep breath in and just said what I was thinking. “I’m the mapmaker of this expedition, but I’m also your friend. Why do I feel that you’re keeping things from me?”

Bernardo sighed. “Because I am.” He obviously saw my shock and gestured to a nearby barrel. “Please, sit.”

I did so and glared back at him. “Please understand, Hector. Queen Joanna gave me specific instructions. I can’t show you yet, but I can confirm that there is another map. It was written by de León himself on his deathbed. Pulled from his notes and cobbled together all he knew about this land.”

“And I can’t see this map? As mapmaker?”

“Yes,” he looked at the ground mournfully, “not yet, but not never.” He looked back up at me. “There are four copies in total on the journey. Each is identical to the others. One is on the ship and the other three are with me, Alejandro, and Juan.”

“And not the mapmaker…”

“Yes, Hector. I know it’s not a good situation to be kept in the dark like this, but this journey is too important. This water could change everything for our people. Even the world!”

I stood up. “I understand, Hector. I just thought things were different between us, but I understand.” I walked to the edge of the tent and pulled open the flap. “When you do feel you can show me, I want to look over at least one of them.”

“Yeah… I will,” he said sorrowfully.

I nodded and closed the flap. I knew Bernardo felt hurt by my leaving, but I didn’t want to deal with all the secrecy tonight. This environment had drained me, and by the looks of everyone else, the crew out here was drained as well. Diego and Roberto looked particularly exhausted, but also menacing as they sharpened their axes and swords by the fire we had started nearby. I nodded toward them, which they acknowledged, and I walked off.

The trees moaned and ached in the breeze and animal calls of all kinds littered the blackness before me. It was a patchwork of everything new and exciting but also menacing and deadly.

“Tough day, huh?”

“Yes, Phillipe,” I said, noticing the dark figure who had walked up beside me.

“Maybe tomorrow will be better.”

“Maybe…”

“Better than the ship though, right? Who needs puking and thrashing storms all day? Not me.”

I smiled at my friend and patted him on the shoulder. “Yeah, Phillipe. It’s better than the ship.” I looked in the blackness before me and thought of all the unknowns before us. “Just wish this place was a little nicer.”

“True, but you would know better than us. Captain’s got a plan, right?”

I grimaced, as not having seen the map, I could only worry and hope that all this would be worth it in the end and that my friend was leading us to glory and not just leading us all to our doom. Either way, we would find out in a few days when Narváez’s original map and journey would end abruptly, still several days or weeks away from our destination, somewhere out there. “Yes, I’m sure he does…” I sighed. “I’m sure…”

[Guilend]

The mystery continues 

[LostBBoyBear]

Chapter 4: We're Waiting, Mr. Whittington

The first book ended well, and though I was frustrated that they weren’t even at the camp we had excavated in the first place where we had found the chest full of the diaries, I was glad they had finally made land fall. ‘Maybe something more would be in the second or third book?’

“Mr. Whittington? Mr. Whittington? Bradley? Are you there?” Betty called out from the other end of the room where I had been reading.

“Yes, Betty. Over here.” I waved my arm about from behind my stack of books so she could see from most areas of the dusty room.

I heard the clacking of her heels get closer and she soon appeared in front of me, her hair neatly curled in the latest of fashions these days, though while still maintaining her innocent looks. If she hadn’t been married, I probably would have taken her out by now, but alas. “What is it, Betty?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Whittington, with your discoveries and reading and all, but…”

“But what, Betty?” I asked impatiently.

She looked uncomfortable and squirmed on the spot as if I was forcing her to say a dirty word in a nunnery. “The backers. They’re… they’re here.”

“The backers? As in…?”

“As in most of them. In the nearby smoking room. I placed them in there while I told them I would try and find you. I was going to make up an excuse over why you couldn’t see them, but I…”

I stood up and stroked Betty’s quivering shoulder. “It’s okay, Betty. These things are bound to happen sooner or later. Can’t put them off forever.”

Betty nodded and walked me out and through a few hallways to the university’s smoking room for staff. It was a small pretentious room that had been donated to the school years ago. Now though, mostly only important future donors or heads of projects would meet in there. ‘I guess it gave them a sense of superiority or importance or something like that.’

“Good luck, sir.”

“Thank you, Betty.” I sighed and then pushed open the heavy wooden doors to the room. Inside, were seven men who I had grown accustomed to since I had first received their backing in Egypt. There were originally ten, but three had left at this point for other more fruitful and projects of ‘more substantial results and more frequent impacts,’ at least according to their own words.

Mr. Hapsborough was the first to speak. He coughed from the stub of a cigar he held in his hands and then adjusted his tightly bound vest over his protruding gut. “Mr. Whittington… so good of you to join us. We were just discussing the results of your little project here. Or I guess I should lack of results.”

“Yes, uh, well progress is slower than we anticipated, and the further journals we found are tedious, to say the least, to translate.” Their beady eyes just stared at me for a moment as if looking for a reason not to pull out right then. “But… we have found in the journals that they have now made it to land. The first of the four journals have been translated in its entirety. We expect to have the next translated soon.”

“Hmmm,” Mr. Hilberforth, one of the few non-rotund figures in the room, spoke up. “Soon… a despicable word if ever.”

“Yes,” Mr. Keeling, a red haired and balding figure, agreed. “Soon is relative, Mr. Whittington. We are all wealthy men here, but we did not achieve our greatness simply by relative terms. We have schedules to keep.”

Mr. Hapsborough butted in after coughing and hacking for a moment. “And…” Cough! “Sending money to you is like tossing it in a hole and waiting for us to grab our money back when it gets to the top. As of right now, it’s still just a black hole.”

“I can understand your all’s frustration, but progress has been made. As promised, we found the original book and the dig site of the expeditions camp. Now, it’s just a matter of time.”

“A matter of time?” Mr. Keeling asked. “A matter of time… another relative term.” He shook his head and many of the other more silent backers grumbled in their frustrated agreement with him. “Let me ask a hypothetical… say you get to the end of the books, what makes you think they’ll lead you to the source?”

His question froze my blood. I had nightmares about it since we had uncovered the journals at the dig site. The journals had been buried in a native stone chest, along with the other implements of the quest. Knowing the conquistadors never made it back to Spain, it was hard to guess what had actually happened. Disease? Devoured by the local wildlife? Native attacks? There were too many possibilities and not enough evidence for any outcome. “I’ve thought about that, Mr. Keeling.”

The other backers leaned in. Apparently, it had been a question on many of their minds. “I have to have hope.” Many of the backers grumbled. “I know that isn’t something you can necessarily put your money behind, but we know two things. First, the journals weren’t burned and in fact were preserved in a chest, along with other items of the expedition. If other endings had occurred to their party, such as disease, these items would have been scattered and likely lost to time.”

I scanned the room, and the backers were still looking at me intently in judgement, but I knew I at least hadn’t lost their attention, so I pushed on. “Secondly, the chest was buried. We can confirm that fact from our findings in the area, which means that it was either buried to be discovered again by the conquistadors themselves or buried as a means of hiding the truth by someone else. In either scenario, there is something more along this path we are all on. Cover up or success, and either is good for discovery. I just ask for your patience.”

The backers murmured and bickered amongst themselves for a few good minutes. I stood as still as I could, not wanting to draw more attention to myself when the fate of the project seemed to be balancing on the edge of a knife.

Finally, Mr. Hapsborough spoke up after taking a sip of water on the table, likely to prevent further coughing. “We admire your spit, Mr. Whittington… and your hope.” I smiled inwardly at the possibility of all this continuing still. “That being said, we backers are men of time. As such, you have three weeks to translate the other materials and find our water. After that, we will meet again but so you are aware, we will likely not renew our money agreements with you and leave this project.”

I nodded at the gravity of the situation. Several years of work all boiled down to the next three weeks. In that time, I would either achieve my dreams or be cast into ruin. The other backers spoke briefly amongst themselves again and then started leaving the room. Soon, only a coughing Mr. Hapsborough remained.

I approached the elderly obese figure and placed my hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Hapsborough, are you okay… Hey!”

A man I only knew as Sam quickly lurched my hand away from Mr. Hapsborough’s shoulder, easily doing so with his tall stature over me and thick muscles. “Do not touch, Mr. Whittington. Never again,” he squeezed my hand tighter. “Understand?”

I winced in pain. “Yes…” Sam then nodded and let my hand go. “I was just asking if he was okay…” I shook my hand out to relieve some of the pain.

“I appreciate your concern, Mr. Whittington, but there’s nothing you can do for me right now. You see…”

“Sir, please, no.” Sam begged.

“He needs to know, particularly if things should go ill…” Mr. Hapsborough turned back to me. “You see, Mr. Whittington, I’m dying.”

“You’re…”

“Dying, yes. And something tells me that if that happens, Sam here will likely blame you. I don’t think you want that to happen…”

I clutched my bruised hand and shook my head. “No, sir.”

“Good. So, do us both a favor and find that damn water. If you don’t, if nothing else unseemly, I will be dead and my money will go elsewhere, and you will be ruined in your search. A testament, if you will, of failure in your field.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll… double our efforts.”

Mr. Hapsborough smiled crookedly, knowing his words had gotten under my skin. He gave me the extra motivation I thought I needed to make a discovery. “Good, I’ll be seeing you, Mr. Whittington.” He nodded his head and Sam guided him out of the room.

I meandered back to lab, where Betty and Sat were waiting for me. Betty, however, was listening in on the phone and didn’t see me walk back in. “Yes? Yes? Oh my, thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Yes, goodbye!” She hung up the phone and squealed with excitement.

“Good news, Betty?” I asked wearily.

“Oh yes! I found out that I’m pregnant.”

“Oh, my word!” Sat cried out, hugging her tenderly. “Congratulations, Betty! I’m sure Donald will be so happy.”

“Donald, oh yes, I believe he will. We’ve been trying for so long now, ever since we got married in fact.” The two then looked at me.

I was still in my daze over the increased timeline. Betty being pregnant was cause for celebration, but now, we had to work. “Congratulations, Betty…”

Her face fell. She could always read me like a book. “What’s wrong, Mr. Whittington?”

I realized I was casting a pallor over the room, but I answered truthfully. “The backers… they… aww, I’ll just tell you straight. We have three weeks to find the water.”

“Three…?” Sat looked terrified and then glanced over at the remaining books. They were thicker and likely contained the most important parts of the whole voyage. “That’s…”

“Difficult, yes. I’m going to pause my research and we’ll trade off on our translating of the books. It will need to be around the clock at this point. In less than three weeks, we need to finish translating three more books and mount an expedition back out there.”

Sat gulped. “Yes, sir.” He looked back over to the books. “Guess we best get started right away… I’m on it,” he said determinedly, walking back over to his desk, the journal, and his leather-bound translation of it.

I smiled and then looked over at Betty. She looked nervous but was absent mindedly rubbing her stomach. “Betty?”

“Huh?” She broke out of her daze and looked back at me. “Oh, sorry, Mr. Whittington. What do you need?”

I sighed. “I’m very happy for you Betty, but we can celebrate your pregnancy later. Right now, we need to focus for only a few more weeks here. Otherwise, all this will be for nothing.”

She looked sad an rubbed her stomach once more. “I understand.” She then shook her head, obviously trying to shuffle away her current thoughts. “Do you need anything now, Mr. Whittington?”

“Yes, thank you Betty. Sat and I will start taking our lunches in here from now on. Can you be a dear and go get them?”

“Yes, right away, Mr. Whittington.” She smiled but solemnly walked out of the room.

I sighed again. I was being truthful when I said we would celebrate her pregnancy later, but now was the time for focus. Presently, all that mattered were these journals and the leather-bound translated versions that Sat and I would now both be working on. I just hoped that it would all be done on time.

[Guilend]

Something is going on with Betty. I noticed it in the last chapter, but I'm sure now that there's more to her being pregnant. 

[LostBBoyBear]

As a warning, viewing the rest of the story, this will likely be the most violent chapter. There are other sections that will have conflict, but some could find this chapter more unsettling than those.

Chapter 5: This Is Not the Path of God

Easing into my large leather chair a week later, I eagerly scanned the next sections of Sat’s translations. They had been coming along nicely and each word felt like another pervasive step on the road to true discovery. The backers had scared Sat, Betty, and I with their ultimatum, but I was confident enough in us to know we would achieve the task before us.  

Picking up in the next section, I began reading. “Three days later, and we arrived at another native village, this one actually swarming with more people than these pestilential bugs…”

*             *             *

I swatted another bug from my neck. Beads of sweat trickled down my tunic and soaked it to the core, like I imagined that was happening to everyone else as well. Three days and the small path had twisted slowly back and forth. Our party encountered some native villages, but most just pointed us along the path we were already going on.

For their part the crew just abided with Bernardo, but their nightly grumblings as they soothed their weary feet and insect-bitten backs, were only growing more bitter. I had faith in Bernardo, but given the possibility of a mutiny, I had less faith in the crew. I felt this devotion was even more tested when we came to another village.

It appeared to be populated with many natives, as opposed to the smatterings of people in the villages we had seen before, and many bustled around in their daily lives until viewing our sweating and hairy lumbering forms enter from the south. Their chatter and smiles vanished in a second and both our groups remained still. I could see many from both sides clutching their given weapons with hardening grips and pensive stares.

“You think they can understand us?” Phillipe asked.

“Nonsense. These savages still live in huts and use spears. We’ll just need to… negotiate with them to get what we want,” a sniveling Roberto said from behind, playing idly with his concealed dagger.

“Quiet, men. We are here for questions. This is obviously not what we are ultimately looking for, but they could be of help,” Bernardo added, trying to quell the crew’s mutterings.

“Bernardo,” I whispered slowly creeping up to him in the front, “you’re the captain. Talk to them. There’s more of them, and they look less frightened than the others… honestly, it’s more like they’ve seen us before. I mean Spaniards. Maybe Narvaéz passed by here, or at least rumors of him. Maybe even de Léon.”

Bernardo nodded and stepped forward and spoke with command while trying to gesture out his words. “We are from a distant land. We come seeking something…”

“We know who you are…” an elder spoke up. Bernardo stood there stunned at the native person speaking Spanish to him. “We know your kind. Turn around and go back to your land. This is ours. You will find nothing here.”

Bernardo remained motionless, but I could see some of the more unruly of the crew ready their weapons and faces turn into frowns over the apparent rejection.

“Please,” Bernardo said, coming out of his shock, “we only mean to find one thing. We do not wish for trouble. Just this one thing.”

“But it isn’t just one thing,” the old man continued, squinting in judgement at us. ‘Definitely encountered our kind before.’

For their part, the other natives looked on knowingly, as if they spoke our language as well. Having met many others from less more distant places who did not speak Spanish, it felt odd that these people across the ocean would know our language so well. “You all come for riches, for… territory, for things you destroyed back in your own land. You just want more. Turn around. We cannot help you.”

The crew muttered amongst themselves. Another rejection seemed too much for them to bear, and I spotted Diego readying his large axe attached to his belt. Someone then gruffed too audibly. “Enough with this talk… we need answers in this God-forsaken jungle. Crossbow!”

A man from the rear took the command as an absolute order and fired his crossbow into the crowd. Time seemed to slow as the bolt hurdled past our crew and into the native population. With deadly aim as if pointed by Lucifer himself, the bolt struck a young native man behind the village elder. After a gasp he fell to the jungle floor.

All remained quiet and looked at the twitching form. In a second though, the accuracy of the bolt was revealed, and the young man stopped his rasping breaths. His movement ceased and he was as dead as one could be.

The natives looked on helplessly but didn’t take long to look up and look at the crew with the same anger that our own crew held only moments ago. A look of anger was universal and needed no words to be understood. ‘Not good.’ Suddenly, the natives yelled something in their own language. It was unknown to me, but their intent was clear. Revenge.

They howled and shrieked and began to charge us. Bernardo and the village elder retreated back to their own sides to avoid the onslaught. The crew panicked and used the charge as an excuse to fire at them. Bolts flew from behind my ears and whistled along. Their accuracy was less impressive but fell a few men charging right for us.

I drew my sword and prayed to God for a swift end to this with as few lost as possible. They hit like a wave upon rocks and only the clanging of weapons and pained screams could be heard. The ensuing conflict lasted what felt like seconds and soon, bodies began to drop from both sides. The native’s fury unbridled our own, but our hardened steel and more advanced technology gave us the day. Soon, the warriors were either dead or unconscious and their blood trickled onto the bright green jungle floor.

My own blade itself was smeared with the blood of one native who had tried to rush at me with a large club. He cried out in anger and revenge, and I readied my form. Though I knew this cry aided in his attacks, I used my previous experience and remained calm. His club was ferocious, but my guided sword struck true and skewered him through the chest. It was quick and clean, and I felt only remorse for the man merely trying to protect his home.

Others were less kind and mutilated and beat many of those they faced. Their deaths were anything but ‘clean’ and I said a silent prayer for each. Our mission from God was turning into something that was anything but a mission from God. He may have smote others before, but how could he condone the actions we have taken today? It was barbarism and I wondered who the truly more civilized people were by the end.

Soon, Bernardo was faced with the village elder once more. This time though, the village elder’s head lay bent over a wooden stump and a ruthless Diego held his large bloody axe menacingly above his head. Small droplets of blood cascaded down and dropped into the elder’s hair, no doubt coming from his fallen neighbors and friends. I shuddered to even look at the sight before me.

For his part, Bernardo looked on with weary and regretful eyes. With a sigh, he continued his questions. “Look, I don’t want more pointless killing. We are just trying to find what we know as the fountain of youth. Do you know of it?”

The village elder blinked and looked around sorrowfully. “Yes. A man like yourself. Leanne? Lenor? Came looking for it some years back. I heard he was unsuccessful.”

“Yes. The man was one of us, but I think you know more than that. Now, where is it this thing that we seek?”

The elder’s eyes darted around the scene before him and to his people again. The violence had ended, and all others now lay dead or dying on the ground or huddled nearby and guarded by the crew still alive. Many of the crew looked inches away from beginning the bloodshed all over again and readied their bloodied weapons to use in a moment’s notice.

“Please, what you’re looking for doesn’t exist. It’s a tale we tell our youngest. A myth. Nothing more.”

Bernardo shook his head. “I’m sorry to hear you say that, but I think you’re lying.” The elder looked at him wide-eyed, and though he didn’t dare look at the axe, I could tell he knew it was there. “You see, I know it exists. I have evidence in my possession that it does. The only thing I don’t know about is where it is specifically. So, I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is it?”

“I… I… it’s a myth. That’s what I know.”

Bernardo got up from his seated position and walked over to the elder. “I expected more out of you. I was hoping you were going to answer my question and things wouldn’t have to get nastier, but I guess you need more… motivation.” He then looked toward the crew. “Roberto!”

Roberto then slunk from out of the mass of our surviving crew and took one of the young women and held his previously concealed long dagger to her throat. He sneered from behind her with his yellow teeth as the blade dripped with the crimson hue of its previous victims, thirsty for one more.

I was so disgusted that I took a step forward to end this madness. Alejandro stepped forward as well and placed his hand tightly on my shoulder to stop me. I looked back at him, and he just shook his head. “Don’t, Hector. For your own sake. Be smart…” To my shame, I nodded and did nothing more.

“Please! Please! Don’t hurt her,” the elder moaned, still kneeling with his head perched on the stump.

Bernardo then got close to the elder and shouted, his eyes bulging in frustration and anger. “Then tell me what I want to know. Now!”

The elder hung his head low in shame and nodded slightly. “Okay, okay… please, just let her go. I’ll tell you what I know… all of it, I swear to my gods.”

“Tell me first,” Bernardo said, haunching his shoulders to reinforce his superior position over the old man. “Tell me and I’ll let her go.”

The man shifted his head further down. “Okay…” his eyes blinked back the tears I knew were there. “Follow the path near here. Likely, it’s the same one you used to find us. Take it further into the jungle until you come to a large column with carvings on it. It is where most of us know the legend from. We know nothing more.”

“Is it a signpost? A story marker? What?”

“We don’t know. We just know it is old and it is there. Seek it out and leave us be. Please.”

Bernardo got up and sighed. “Thank you, old man. You held up your end, and we’ll hold up ours. Roberto!”

Roberto grumbled but shoved the woman away back with the rest of her people.

Bernardo walked away and signaled to Diego to let up his bloody axe away from the village elder. He then faced the surviving population of the village. “Listen… all of you. You have had but a taste of our power today. If you follow us, we will return and unleash our fury upon you and anyone in your village, even if they were not a part of the attack. Do not follow us.” Bernardo then turned to the crew. “Collect those who can be saved. Leave those who can’t. We go north!”

The crew grumbled and hauled the few injured that weren’t close to death, totaling only five. Twelve of our own were left on the ground and were only disturbed for the rest of the crew to remove their weapons, armor, and any coinage or jewelry on their person. ‘Not even a proper burial… let alone a Christian one.’

Soon, we were back on the road. Cries of the wounded and mourning natives we left behind echoed in the jungle but became softer and softer as we journey further along the path. Some focused on the man in front of them only… some of the crew smirked.

*             *             *

That night, the crew divvied out some of the food they had stolen from the village. I, on the other hand, could not stand what we had done and marched over and into Bernardo’s tent without knocking. It was a breach in protocols, but my need to speak with him superseded that. “Bernardo! We need to talk. Now.”

Bernardo quickly shoved something away under some blankets near to him, looking like he was just caught doing something that he shouldn’t have. “Bernardo! Never do that again. We are friends, but do not take our friendship for granted and forget your place on this voyage,” he said coldly.

“Yeah…” ‘Hard to forget you’re the shit in charge today of everything that happened.’ I wanted to yell at my old friend, but I knew I had to take the high road here. Otherwise, he would never listen to me and today would just be the first. “Very well, old friend, but today… That crossed a line.”

Bernardo then looked at the ground with immediate regret and I could see through his gruff captain’s demeanor. “I know. I… it shouldn’t have gotten that far out of hand, but I couldn’t just roll over. Not with this crew.”

“Damn the crew and their bloodlust, Bernardo!” I yelled a bit too loudly. I calmed myself a bit and then continued more softly. “We are here on a mission from God and queen. Did you forget that?”

“No! That’s why I have to push sometimes.” He rubbed his forehead in frustration. “I despise what happened today, but we are in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by people who would rather us dead. Or, if nothing else, would lie to us to the point of only breaking when further lives were threatened.” He stood up and walked over to me. “Think of it this way if it helps. They gave us a heading and a new way to go. The column is definitely something and we wouldn’t have known that if we didn’t press.”

“True, but we have to live with the death of many of our own and at least a quarter of the population of that village. That’s not nothing. It’s a steep price. Almost too steep to me.”

“Yes, perhaps… but I can’t focus on that.” Victor walked over and sat back down on his blankets and thumbed whatever he had shoved under them. “We have our priorities. Morales can be viewed after we’ve taken what we need. This quest will not end in failure… it can’t.” He thumbed the item again and then looked back at me, but I could tell he put on his captain person again. Cold, calculating, calm, brave, and forceful. “Good night, Hector. I need to be alone now. Take your conscience outside and deal with it how you see fit. Just know that I won’t speak of this again with you, friendship or not…”

I wanted to protest but I just nodded and then left his tent in frustration, knowing I wouldn’t get any more out of him tonight. Bernardo had always been bull-headed, but this felt like something more than some of the past actions I had seen on other voyages. I then remembered that he said he had proof of the fountain, but I had never seen any such item. ‘What did he have? Was it a key? Something more to this unknown map I had yet to see, even as the voyage’s mapmaker?’ My mind swirled with the possibilities, and I stumbled out of our makeshift camp for the night and back to the path we had been following.

What had begun as a blessing and direction had turned into a road of blood and violence. As far as I knew, we were no closer to finding the fountain and now, many lay dead for something that could only end up being a myth from where I stood. Setting out for God and Queen and kingdom had been a noble beginning, but the jungle cared little for these things I realized. Here, success meant abandoning some ideology for the greater good. I just hoped that days like today would be few in number and we would find that column soon. Otherwise, we would not only lose more men, but our souls in this festering jungle and swamp as well.

[Guilend]

Just wow. That was deep. Good writing. 

[LostBBoyBear]

Chapter 6: Discovery of Marshland and Mosquitoes

Later, after about a week of hacking and traversing through the dense jungle, even when following the narrow dirt path, we finally made it to a large stone block. I shuddered to think of our trek without that path.

Now though, having seen the ruins of ancient Roman buildings for most of my life, this one mass wasn’t entirely impressive. That being said, we had found the landmark we all had been looking for. Additionally, the intricate carvings on its face seemed mystical and the few rays of sunlight piercing down to our level managed to cast their light on it in the most peculiar of ways.

“Something else, huh?” Phillipe asked, staring, like me, at the carvings before us.

“Yes… one can tell why others used it as a marker of note and know about it in the first place,” I said, gazing up at the stone structure.

“Alright, alright!” Alejandro called out. “Enough dawdling! We need to set up camp before sundown!”

Obeying his orders for his sake and our own preservation, we all set up camp rather quickly and found this one spot to have a slightly larger dry area than the past few nights. It was nice, but I could see Juan and Bernardo scheming nearby. Our bit of good luck this way was likely to be short lived now that we had found the rumored marker. Now, the real journey was about to begin.

I was correct in my assumptions about our problems and by the time my tent was set up, the two called out to us and set us on a new quest. As such, currently, I was traipsing through the jungle to the south of the stone column with much of the crew, leaving behind only a dozen or so men to protect our now established base camp. Unfortunately for our party, now being off a trade route and cutting through the jungle proved to be extraordinarily difficult.

Every few minutes another of our party would find a muddy pit or water hole to slip into and with our armor and supplies, getting out proved to be a challenge. With some concerted effort though, we managed to pry each of those we found out from the muck.

Another mosquito landed on my neck, and I quickly swatted it, the tenth in the past few minutes. “Bloody insects.”

“This is a cursed place, Hector…” Phillipe moaned, his boots half sinking as he stood still while we waited for Bernardo to figure out where to go next.

“Quiet you all,” Alejandro commanded, “we might not be alone.”

The crew’s eyes darted about the bush but couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary, but our time here had worn our nerves down and we didn’t trust what we couldn’t see anymore. Today we only just saw the typical animal and wilds we had come to know on this quest, but we all knew that could change in a moment.

Six hours of searching, stopping, and hacking later, we still hadn’t run into a single native and had found nothing else on our journey.

“A full day wasted…” Diego growled, heaving under the weight he was carrying after a long day.

“So pointless sending us all out at once” Roberto sniveled, sitting on a nearby rock to rest his obviously aching feet. “A few at a time would be better.”

“Easier to be separated or get lost,” I countered, wiping a thick bead of sweat off my forehead once I removed my helmet.

“Maybe… but this area is too untamed for all of us to go at once. We’ll be here for years at this rate,” Roberto continued.

Snap!

We all looked toward the sound and saw Bernardo standing there in front of us. “He’s not wrong,” he noted, walking closer to us now, looking as weary as ever. “We’ll start that process soon. Handpicked groups while the rest protect the camp or go a different direction.”

“Very wise, sir,” Roberto said, nearly bowing at Bernardo’s presence, trying to remain under his good graces and obviously flustered at his words being caught by the captain moments ago.

“Can we go out and question some more natives again?” Diego asked, stroking the axe on his belt, and looking half-dazed in contentment. I made a mental note to keep a stronger watch over Diego. Even if not part of the potential mutiny, he would likely still be trouble in any capacity before long.

“Thank you for your… enthusiasm, Diego, but not for now.” Diego scowled at the rejected offer. “We don’t even know where the locals are, and I very much doubt the past three villages know any more than we already know now. It would be a waste of effort.”

Diego and Roberto said nothing but glared menacingly in Bernardo’s direction once he had left the area to direct the crew back to the camp. They had likely taken Bernardo’s words as an outright refusal. I, however, noted that Bernardo never actually said the word ‘no.’ If our past encounters with the natives were any indication, avoiding them would likely be the best policy, but Bernardo obviously thought otherwise from what I could tell.

All I knew is that we had learned little, and the price seemed far too great to even consider questioning the natives more as a viable option. Having only seen a few villages, we could see they were primitive, but a combined four villages alone had more people than our entire crew put together. Given enough push from us, I didn’t want to risk them banding together and attacking us outright. We had no reinforcements, and our weapons were only marginally better than the native’s own with our few numbers and the dense jungle. It was all a sobering thought as we headed back to our camp and I cursed the fact that our gunpowder had gotten wet last week.

*             *             *

Later that night, a soft rain had begun to fall, and the muck seemed to pour in further around us, creating deeper pools in our makeshift camp, despite its elevation. Bernardo was no fool and had ordered us to start construction of an impromptu fort while we searched for our prize. It would take time, but it would provide us with a more stable base of operations, and if the natives ever attacked, we would be able to defend more readily. Plus, it would tire the crew out and give them little time to plan a potential mutiny out here.

For now, I needed to speak to Bernardo about things moving forward. The discourse amongst the men was growing but I also felt that despite being a friend to all the leaders and an important part of the crew, I was still looking at things from the outside. I knew my place wasn’t as vital to the mission regarding my leadership role, but I knew I had to press Bernardo a bit to truly be satisfied.

Sloshing through the sodden ground, I finally made my way to Bernardo’s own tent. Now, two guards from Commander Juan’s own detachment were standing outside, both armed with large halberds. “Please let me pass.” Both looked at each other questioningly, but eventually let me through.

Inside, I saw Bernardo reviewing more charts on his makeshift table. “I guess security has gotten a bit tighter now.”

Bernardo stopped and looked at me squarely. “Yes, Hector. We are now at the camp, so the munity could occur any day now according to the letter I received warning me of it originally. Besides, you saw the men today. Even I could see their dissatisfaction with the ways things have gone. I almost relented over that Diego fellow’s request.”

“I know. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh?” Bernardo stopped looking at the documents on his desk and gave me his full attention.

“Yes,” I said, fully entering the tent now. “I don’t think it would be a good move to upset the natives more than we already have. We are in the middle of the jungle and outnumbered by God knows how many times over.”

“I’m aware, Hector, which is why I said no for today. Until we have more information, the negatives just outweigh the benefits. I may reconsider, but I’ll remember your warning.” I nodded but just stood in place, trying to figure out how to ask to be included more. “Is there something else?”

“Yes, well, I’m not sure how to say it though…”

“We’re friends, Hector. Ever since you snatched that extra food in the market when we were younger, you know you can trust me.”

“Yes, I just… oh why bother…? Bernardo, I want in.”

“In?” He hunched forward to listen in better.

“Yes. You already revealed that you were keeping things from me, but we’re at our permanent camp now and you need people you can trust more now than ever. You practically said so yourself. I want to be included with whatever you’re hiding from the rest of the crew.”

Bernardo hesitated and seemed to be contemplating if he should let me ‘in’ or not. There was an uncomfortable period of silence, but finally, he spoke up. “You’re right, Hector. As usual… I just wasn’t sure how many to include in on this.” He then reached behind him and pulled out a long tube hidden away in one of the barrels that made up his impromptu desk. “This is one of the maps, Hector.” He then pulled the parchment from the tube and laid it out.

I approached his desk cautiously but then immediately began pouring over the map’s fine details and colorful images. Part of it seemed intricately created and designed by a professional who labored hours on it, but the other part seemed scrawled by a mad man in a rush. Little words darted about the parchment, each more confusing or erratic than the last. “This is the map you talked about?”

“Yes, Hector. After our last conversation… well, I thought it was time I brought you in to let you know the seriousness of all this and why I need to push sometimes. After all, as you stated, we are out in the middle of the jungle and now that we’re at the camp, I’m worried. I need another man I can trust.”

“You’re worried about the mutiny?” I asked, still looking over the map.

“Yes. I need you, but you can’t take the map from this tent here. You understand, right?”

“Yes, but Bernardo, where did it come from?” I asked, now looking up and at him.

“Well,” Bernardo started, easing back, “de Léon may have actually found the fountain before he died and it was only on this discovery that he was attacked and later died from the poison of a dart from that day.”

It made sense and I honestly had been assuming that to be the case so far. “So, we are to find, what? Magic water?” I asked a little sarcastically.

Bernardo grinned. “In a way, I suppose you could say that, but it’s something more.” Bernardo then adjusted himself more. “You see, the queen has tasked us with the retrieval of the water to increase our power in this land. England, the Dutch, and France have all begun to look at colonization of land that is rightfully ours, by divine hand or conquest. This water could provide our navy with the edge it needs to succeed on that front. Imagine it…”

It was an intriguing notion, and I could see why the queen wanted the water, but I had so many questions now. “I see… but Bernardo, that’s a lot of water. Is that why we’re establishing a presence in this pestilential jungle?”

“Maybe… but as I’m sure you’ll find when you review the map yourself, there is a notation of something more.”

“More?” I asked, now leaning nearer myself.

“Yes. The source of the power of the fountain.” He lowered his voice. “A jewel.”

“A jewel. Like a ruby or sapphire?” I said quietly, matching his volume.

“Perhaps… de Léon only mentions that it was unlike anything he had ever seen before.” Bernardo relaxed back and sighed. “Unfortunately, the poison was affecting him greatly by then, so it may have only been a hope or an answer to a question, but Queen Joanna believes this note to be genuine.”

“So, we are to find the… jewel, and bring it back.”

“If we can,” Bernardo shrugged. “If it is real, its power and the reverence the natives hold for it cannot be ignored. Coming here, the deception or silence we had seen from the other natives not even nearby to its source made me more suspicious, however, the stone column today solidified my faith.”

“Why’s that?”

“The symbols, Hector. Look at the upper corner of the map.”

I did and sure enough, the spirals and blockish patterns of water, men, and a central sphere of some kind were now very evident. What’s more is that they exactly matched the carvings from the stone column that we were supposed to find. “My God.”

“Yes, Hector.” Bernardo then grabbed the map suddenly from under me. “Enough for tonight. Feel free to ask me to look tomorrow.” Bernardo rolled the map up tightly and put it back in its case and the barrel he plucked it from originally. “You are now part of the inner circle of this quest. Don’t let me down, but I’m sure you now understand why I kept things from you.”

“Yes… it’s just so…”

“Hard to believe, yes, but here we are.” Bernardo then put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Go. Get some rest, Hector. We can talk more in the morning, but just know, the real quest begins after sunrise and the smaller parties will start searching what we seek.”

I nodded and made my exit from the tent. Pathways and embankments were already starting to form in the camp, and I made my way over to the rest of the crew. Diego and Roberto were eyeing me suspiciously, but I just put them out of my head for the moment. They were another problem for a different day. For now, I just couldn’t stop thinking about the map.

I had no doubt that other secrets were locked within the unique parchment, but what of the jewel? ‘Was it act or fiction?’ I couldn’t tell for sure, but something was out there beyond the muck, bugs, and humidity. A trickle of sweat finally broke free of my thick black hair and rolled down my neck, as I stared mournfully at the crew.

Tomorrow, they would go out to explore further. The treks would either end in success, in which case a mutiny could likely happen to seize the jewel or the water there, or failure, in which case the crew would certainly mutiny to focus their efforts elsewhere. Either weighed heavily on my mind and I just prayed luck would be on our side as the clock began speedily ticking toward an unknown outcome.

[Guilend]

Okay, you have me on edge. You'd make a great adventure author that's for sure lol

[LostBBoyBear]

47 minutes ago, Guilend said:

Okay, you have me on edge. You'd make a great adventure author that's for sure lol

Thank you! I've actually written several other adventure stories in the past. They're kind of fun to do, but I honestly knew I just needed to get this story out of my system. Probably the least kink-based story that I will ever post on here, but after, I can focus on all the other fun ones. 

[Guilend]

50 minutes ago, LostBBoyBear said:

Thank you! I've actually written several other adventure stories in the past. They're kind of fun to do, but I honestly knew I just needed to get this story out of my system. Probably the least kink-based story that I will ever post on here, but after, I can focus on all the other fun ones. 

Lol I'm definitely enjoying it regardless. I'm in too deep now to turn back. Kind of like they are lol

[LostBBoyBear]

Thank you all for reading this story so far. I know it's not the most kink-based piece ever written, but something is definitely afoot on the quest to seek the fountain.

Hope you all enjoy this next chapter!

Chapter 7: Where Did You Go?

Another six days later and I pried open the journal that Sat and I had tirelessly been working on. The third book had been translated, and despite my exhaustion, I knew I had to press on and read further. The backers were becoming more cautious and grew frustrated with the agreed upon three-week deadline. Something told me that they would take it back and change it to two weeks if they could.

Mr. Hapsborough, against all odds however, actually seemed to be the one keeping them at bay. His power over them never ceased to both amaze and frighten me, but I just had to count my blessings where I could. Betty retrieved another coffee for me as I scanned the pages for the next highlighted section that Sat had marked off for the third journal.

Some days were just more interesting than others and time was of the essence, so highlighted sections were critical at this point. Soon, I leaned back, took a sip of coffee, and began reading in earnest. “Commander Juan set off this morning with a dispatch of part of the crew and several of the soldiers under his command…”

*             *             *

I studied the map with Bernardo waiting patiently in the corner of his tent. The scratching’s often seemed the work of a tormented or diseased mind, and I could only surmise that it was the poison speaking. I couldn’t blame whoever took the notes in his final moments; one just never knows what the difference between incoherent strings of words and the truth could be coming from a dying man.

“Anything yet?” Bernardo asked, beginning to pace about.

“Nothing since you last asked me, but I do wonder if something could be hidden here at all.” I pried over the map and my skepticism seemed to only grow with each day I looked over the parchment.

“Meaning?”

I leaned back and looked at the frayed Bernardo seriously. “Meaning that de Léon was dying. If he had found the water, wouldn’t he be… I don’t know… not dead, or at least not dying if this water had the power we all seem to think it does?”

“That’s a point I’ve considered before.” Bernardo admitted. “Maybe he got close and never actually saw the waters or maybe the natives have something to prevent the water’s effects.”

“In either case, I would suggest we keep an eye out,” I warned. “Speaking of which, where is Juan? Shouldn’t he be back by now?”

Bernardo grimaced and noticed the dying of the light now barely pouring into the tent. “Yes. Put the map away. We need to go look outside.”

I nodded and placed the map back in its holder and place in the barrel. Going outside, the jungle’s darkness grew steadily, and our fire already lit up the progress that had been made on our fort and settlement. Scrap logs made for easy pathways in the muck and several mounds of dirt, loose brush, and twigs had been compiled together to form a wall of sorts on six sides. Lookouts were posted at several of the points where the walls met, and many of the trees had been felled to give them a better line of sight with their armed crossbows.

“You, Iago! Report,” Bernardo commanded the small soldier looking to the North, where Juan and his men had departed for this morning at sunrise. It was the fifth search party, but all others had come back before nightfall.

“Nothing, sir. Commander Juan hasn’t reported back and there has been no reportable movement.”

Bernardo sighed and rubbed his temples. “Very well. Stay on watch until relieved. When you are, come find me.”

“Yes, sir,” Iago saluted and then turned back toward the norther section of jungle.

“Nothing yet, huh?”

“No. They should have been back by now.” Bernardo hung his head low in regret. “I should have gone with them. I’m the captain and…”

“And your duty is to the crew. Juan is a capable commander and besides, you’ve gone out three of the past searches. This was his turn.”

“Yes, but,” he lowered his voice, “I’m only staying here because I don’t trust these men.”

“Neither do I or anyone else with a brain around here. There’s just too many unscrupulous characters roaming about,” I whispered back. “We just need to hold fast. With luck, the party will be here before too long.”

“You’re right,” Bernardo said back to his normal volume.

“Any report, sir?” Alejandro asked, jogging over to us from the south side of the camp.

“No, Alejandro. Nothing. We’ll have to send a search party out there for them tomorrow.”

“Yes, but for now,” I noted, “let’s all get some food. It’ll be good after a day like today. Keep us from worrying…”

*             *             *

The next morning, though, the party still hadn’t returned. Now, Bernardo, some of the crew, and I set off on the same path Juan and his men took. Their hacking through the jungle cut a nice direction for us to follow in and they never seemed to waver from their original direction out the fort.

It was midday however, before we started to notice the path had started to become more erratic and began to bank sharply in one direction and then the next. Still heading northward, but no longer in a clear unilateral direction. “What do you think, captain?” I asked, being in front of the crew.

“I’m not sure.” Bernardo bent down and examined some of the still undisturbed tracks in front of us. “These seem heavier and further apart. Like they picked up speed.”

“Maybe they were being followed?” one the crew suggested, listening in carefully.

“Maybe… maybe…”

Achha. Woop! Woop! Hicka hicka ooom!

“What is that?” I asked, readying my sheathed sword.

“I don’t know,” Bernardo answered honestly, now clutching his sword. “Be on your guard men. Crossbows at the ready.” He signaled to the men behind us and four of the crew with crossbows cocked them back and held them up, their fingers near, but not touching, the triggers.

“Move up,” Bernardo signaled and waved forward.

Our steps were slow and deliberate. Each one was painstakingly taken to minimize the noise we would make. None of us seemed to know what was up ahead, but the still emanating strange noises combined with a missing contingent of the crew did not bode well.

Passing through the cut path more closely, Bernardo moved an errant palm frond out of the way. The noise got louder. We each took more steps forward and saw a clearing ahead. Bernardo waved us on, and I could hear the clicking and shuffling of the crossbows behind me aiming more closely. Another member of the crew stepped forward in front of Bernardo and then froze. Bernardo took the same step and froze as well. Insatiably curious, I stepped forward as well and froze myself. Standing in the middle of the clearing and flapping and yelling about like a little bird was Commander Juan.

“Bwue birds singin’. Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! Oh my yay! Hocka hocka! Woop woop!”

The crossbowmen behind me joined in and stepped into the clearing but also inadvertently stepped on a dry branch.

Snap!

Commander Juan stopped his small dancing and singing and looked over at us in terror. A second later, his serious face turned into a large goofy smile, and he bounded over to us, his clothes threatening to fall off along the way. Getting close to us, it was immediately apparent that many of the fasteners had been loosened, misplaced, or entirely undone. I would expect this from a child perhaps, but not the esteemed commander.

“Fwiends! Fwiends! You all are my fwiends!” Quite unexpectedly and to the captain’s grimace, Commander Juan then hugged him tightly, even going so far as to pull him upward and off the ground, his strength, if not his mind, still very much intact.

“Juan! Juan! Put me down!” Bernardo shouted, trying to wiggle out of his grip.

Wide eyed and almost seemingly to be a little scared, Juan put Bernardo down and backed up sheepishly after breaking the hug quickly. Between his singing, dancing, hugging, and everything else, even his eyes and overall demeanor, reminded me of a young child. My older brother’s youngest son had looked the same way when he had been scolded for breaking a small pot back home before we left for this journey. 

Seeing his changed mental state, I decided to approach him gingerly. “Juan? You okay… buddy?” The words caught in my throat a bit over how awkward they were to say to a man who had once boasted only two nights ago around our fire back at camp of taking out five men with a single slash of his blade. Fortunately, my language and tone seemed to work.

“Hecto’! You a great fwiend.” Juan then sat on the ground with a thud and began playing with some of the grass nearby. I noticed Bernardo walk off and disconnect himself from the scene. For now, I couldn’t worry about what he was thinking. I needed to focus on Juan.

“Well, uh… thank you, Juan.” I crouched down to be more eye level with the commander. “Juan?”

It took a second between his pulling of the surrounding grass, but he finally answered. “Yeah, Hecto’?”

“What happened? Where are the others?”

“Others?” Juan looked up at me in confusion.

“Yes. The people that you went out with yesterday. Where are they?”

“I… I… I don’ know…” His face saddened and he actually looked like he was about to cry.

“Uh, that’s okay, Juan. How about you stand for us, and we can look for them together? Does that sound good? Like a game maybe?”

Juan looked immediately relieved and excited, and then bounced back up on his feet, his pants threatening to fall off in a moment. ‘Yeah, yeah! Wet’s go!”

“Hold up there. Got to fix these first.” I managed to stop Juan for a moment and refastened his pants for him. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to do it himself and I wanted to spare him the indignity of that at least. For all I knew, Juan could snap out of whatever this was, and I certainly didn’t want to be on the negative end of that revelation. Better to save his dignity for now and use it to defend myself against his possible wrath later down the road.

For now, Juan only sheepishly smiled at the gesture. “Tanks Hecto’.” His wide eyes and difficult pronunciation, however, made my previous thoughts of recovery seem less likely, but I still felt good for helping the diminished commander out.

Putting his future out of mind for now, I only smiled and nodded and guided him forward toward the cut path once more. My mind swirled with the possibilities of what had occurred. ‘Had the great commander, hero and winner of several battles and duels, actually cracked out here?’ It was a disturbing thought that someone so steadfast and hardened could be reduced to a state of being that seemed more interested in some colorful bugs to our left in some rays of sunlight, rather than the actual mission before us.

Not long after our encounter with the changed Juan, we came to another clearing. This one was more disturbing and yet also still as illusive.

Discarded armor and clothing littered the ground. Some had blood while the rest were just wet and reeked of something strange. Nearby tracks into the water seemed to suggest that a few had escaped, but animals looking nearly like crocodiles splashed about. ‘Would men accidentally, or even willingly, choose that fate? To be eaten rather than whatever happened here?’

I looked at Juan, who was now looking at his reflection in one of the discarded helmets. “Juan? Do you know what happened here?”

Juan’s face clouded and he fell on the jungle floor in despair. “Bwue featers… scweamin’… suwounded everywhere. I… I…” Juan began to rock back and forth. Whatever his memory was, it obviously wasn’t pleasant.

I got one of the crew to calm him down and I went off to find Bernardo, now standing at the edge of the water where the tracks had led. “So, what do you think? Natives? Jungle?”

Bernardo just continued to stare out at the water. “I… I don’t know, Hector. I knew this journey would be hazardous, but these men were loyal and skilled warriors, but there’s just… nothing here.”

“Except for some discarded armor and what’s left of Juan.”

“Yes. Blue feathers, screaming, and being surrounded everywhere seems to paint a clear picture, but I knew those men, Hector. Each had been selected by me for the party that day. All highly prized soldiers and navigators… each a veteran of deadly battles! They wouldn’t have just given up. There would be blood… or at least more than… this.” He gestured toward the animals in the water and their splashing about.

I patted Bernardo on the shoulder, knowing he was feeling the guilt over having selected those men in the first place. “You can’t blame yourself, old friend. They did their duty, but now we need to figure things out and move on from here.” I looked back at Juan, who had now stopped rocking and was playing with a few oddly shaped sticks he had found. The crew member, Hugo, I had assigned to watch over him, was doing his best to keep Juan entertained in all this mess. “What about Juan?”

“What about him? We take him back, obviously. He’s one of ours.”

I sighed. “Good. I was thinking the same… I just wasn’t sure how you would think… with the crew and all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bernardo stared at me accusingly and questioningly.

“Come on, Bernardo. You’re all about this mission, which is good, but Juan… he’s a liability if nothing else at this point. He may have snapped and could come back, but no matter what, the rest of the crew is going to see him and wonder what happened. He could be used as a reason for who knows what.”

“I see your point, but we take him back. I’m not losing another member from this search party.” I nodded and didn’t press the issue further. Satisfied, Bernardo then straightened up back into his typical captain’s demeanor. “Men, search the area for any clues. Gather what you can and then we’ll head back to camp.

“Hugo,” Bernardo directed at him, now playing around with Juan, “I want you to continue to watch over Commander Juan here. Think you can do that?”

“Yes, sir. I had some training as a cleric and my sisters all have… young ones themselves. Juan is easy compared to most of them.”

Bernardo winced at the correlation between Juan and Hugo’s nieces and nephew, but only nodded and then went back to searching the area with the rest of the crew himself. I watched Juan for a moment myself play with the odd way the light cascaded through the jungle canopy, but I then joined the crew as well and began to search the area for any further signs.

The work was slow maneuvering around the trees and swampy areas, but our crew found little else to suggest what had happened here. Using the donkey we had brought with us, we loaded it up with the armor and weapons we couldn’t carry and then headed back to the camp.

Looking back at the empty clearing, I shuddered and wondered what could have happened to them. Bernardo was right in that each was strong and brave and would have defended to the last man. Juan was the same but now had been reduced to a humming and playful figure. It was all too disturbing, but I just hoped the crew back at camp wouldn’t react too harshly over his presence. This jungle was proving hazardous enough as was evidenced with the missing party, a further 26 gone now from the crew. A few more like that and there wouldn’t be any of us left.

What’s more, one of the three copies of the map had proven to have been lost as well. Bernardo shuffled it off, but I could see the fear in his eyes. All in all, it wasn’t a good day and gave us all a foreboding sense of what was to come.

[Guilend]

I'm not going to lie. I saw something like this coming, but when and to what extent it started was a mystery to me lol. Good work 

[LostBBoyBear]

Chapter 8: Lost Is All Relative Here

A few days later, I walked around our finished settlement. Large embankments flanked our tent village from all sides and sentries guarded at all hours of the day on a rotating basis. I sighed heavily as I saw that Bernardo was once again venturing out with another search party.

Our arrival back at camp, after only finding the changed Juan, was met with confusion and anger as expected. Juan was quietly sequestered away, but many of the crew had begun treating him like a child. At first, they jeered him, but each, particularly those with children they had eft back home, began to dote on the former commander. Objects amounting to toys were fastened and many took turns from Hugo in caring for him in some capacity. It was sweet and yet disturbing over the fall of such a seasoned commander.

Bernardo had only acted more erratic, and my viewings of the map had grown more infrequent. The loss of someone as loyal as Juan who just happened to be in possession of another copy of the map did nothing to ease Bernardo’s already paranoid mind. Each night we had met, I had seen my friend dive further into frustration, paranoia, and guilt.

Last night, was no exception, but upon looking at the map, I noticed a few odd markings that I told Bernardo to look at. Within an hour, he seemed to have an epiphany of a kind and notified the crew that he would be leaving in the morning. All he kept muttering afterward was, ‘dying of the sun.’ I was truly worried for my friend.

This morning however, true to his word, another party was assembling, armed and ready for apparently almost anything. I walked slowly up to a determined Bernardo. “Bernardo, please. Reconsider leaving. We need you here. The crew…” I lowered my voice, “I’m not sure what they would do if you were lost.”

“I’m well aware of the risks, but risks need to be taken in this case, old friend. Besides, I’ve put Alejandro in charge while I’m away. He can lead you all on if anything should happen…”

“Then let me come with you! Please, Bernardo. I can help,” I pleaded.

He patted me on the shoulder and looked at me with sympathy. “I’m sure you can, but I need you to stay here.” I looked dejectedly at the muddy ground. “I know you want to come, Hector, and I’ve never known a more loyal friend, but I need you to stay here. You are closer with the crew than the rest of us in command, but you will also be second in charge to Alejandro now. I need you to balance his… tighter grip on things. Balance him out. Maintain the order, Hector. Please. For me.”

I looked up and nodded. “Very well, Bernardo. Just come back again this time.”

Bernardo nodded. “I will, Hector. So long, old friend.”

“So long.” We waved goodbye to each other, and Bernardo called his party together and set out toward the jungle.

*             *             *

As day turned into night, Bernardo hadn’t returned. Considering the flapping and giggling Juan near the fire was a best-case scenario with the last missing party, I didn’t like the odds with my now missing friend. ‘Where are you, Bernardo?’

The next day, with Bernardo’s party still missing, I took more men, including Phillipe, into the jungle and followed Bernardo’s path like we had done with Juan’s. Again, by the end we only found discarded armor and weapons littering the jungle floor at a clearing. This time now however, there wasn’t even a member of the crew left behind like Juan was. Just deathly and eerie silence everywhere.

Seeing the dimming of the light, we decided to camp for the night. I had bargained with Alejandro and taken the third and last map with us. I reasoned with him that if the captain was missing again, combined with what Juan had told us, finding the local natives could be of help. As such, we weren’t expected back until tomorrow, so camping for the night seemed wise with the potential pitfalls of nightly jungle life.

We got a fire going and cooked our dwindling rations. Rain had unfortunately soaked some of them after the first week and our supplies hadn’t grown much since then based on our foraging. A steady rain began to fall, and we all huddled under an impromptu shelter we had set up on the high ground of the area just in case of such an event.

During the night, between the odd noises and patter of rain, I finally managed to rest for a little bit. What I felt like wasn’t long later though, Phillipe started shaking me. “Hector! Hector!”

“What? What is it?” I answered, annoyed over the interruption to my sleep.

“I hear screaming and crying from the jungle.”

“It’s just your imagination… go back to sleep…” I turned over, lying on the ground still to find a better position and closed my eyes.

“I hear it too, sir,” one of the crew added.

“And me,” many of the crew added in as well, many apparently not sleeping either.

“I hear strange noises… whispers and crying of some kind…” another crew member noted.

I sat up and listened but heard nothing except for the pattering of the rain and the moaning of the trees. “It’s nothing. Keep the rotating watch but get some sleep. We’re going to look more tomorrow. You’ll need your strength.”

The crew nodded and I huddled back on top of the brush and fronds we had scrounged together. It wasn’t much, but my exhaustion caught up with me again and despite hearing some odd sounds from the jungle myself, I quickly passed out.

*             *             *

We set off at the break of day the following morning. Many of the crew seemed exhausted from a sleepless night, but each pushed forward in their own way. Excusing myself for a moment while Phillipe made some early portions of breakfast, I looked over the map that I had concealed within my pack.

The colorful illustrations fascinated me still, but I started to hold the object with disdain. It had been responsible for the loss of over half the remaining crew by now that had departed the ships. Even if we were successful in finding the natives, I had serious doubts of mounting any kind of steady attack or even defense against them for long. Still, I had to look at the illustrations and mangled writings before me.

Upon the colorful and erratic parchment, I saw approximately where we were. To the north, where Juan had gone, appeared to only be marshland. If a people did live there, they likely didn’t hold the secret we were looking for owing to the harsh environment not suitable for living. Where we were now looked like firmer ground and a more suitable location for an established settlement. To our northwest, I spotted a cluster of something and a more recent note than the others I hadn’t noticed before, ‘Ruins?’

It was a provocative word on a map searching for something tangible and it almost looked like Bernardo’s handwriting, so I felt it was our best move. Bernardo and his party could have certainly passed there following this path, and it was also close enough to the north, that Juan and his men may have stumbled on a scouting party within a distance of them as well. Rejoining the crew, I told them of our direction while we ate breakfast.

*             *             *

By the time the sun was about directly over our heads, we reached a patch of jungle that seemed to breathe with more light than we had seen since first arriving on the beach. Some of the men even muttered, ‘gold,’ but I knew it was likely just sunlight. Still, it was intriguing, so I pressed forward.

Moving past the branches was not gold, but it was something that enticed me even more at least, a hole city of ruins. A mass of white and gray stone stretched before us. What looked like an entire city to us was just lying in the sun and waiting to be explored. No signs of a recent civilization based on how the jungle was overtaking it in places, but sites like this were unheard of before in this area.

While lacking colonnades and the more recent churches, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the ruins of ancient Rome when I visited there last year. It was all half buried but nonetheless impressive to a boy who had grown up in a second-floor apartment.

“Sir, what is this place?” I shaking crewmember asked, clutching his rosary tightly.

“I don’t know…”

Phillipe then walked up near to me. “Was this on the map?” he asked in a whispered tone.

“Wha… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied, remembering the trust the captain had placed in me with the referenced map.

“I understand that you have to lie about such an object, but I just don’t want to walk into a trap, Hector. Anything about something like that?”

“I…” I didn’t want to lie outright to Phillipe. He may have been timid, but he could spot a liar from forty paces away. I relented. “No… nothing like that.” I raised my voice again. “Keep an eye out, men. We don’t know what could be lurking behind these ruins.”

The crew nodded and then weaved in and out of the old structures. Despite my apprehension, after turning around one corner, to my delight, I saw several carvings bearing a significant resemblance to those on the stone column back at our camp. During my examination of them, however, I heard what could only be described as distant shouting.

Th crew could hear it as well and I saw their fear over the unknown guttural noises. I needed to take command and give them some confidence back. ‘Scared men were dead men.’ I breathed in and began to call out. “Ready yourselves men! This jungle has taken the commander, our captain, and much of our crew. It will not take us! What say you?”

The crew rallied with their own deep affirmation and took up a defensive position. A few men armed with crossbows, wrenched them up and then took positions behind a fallen large stone pillar, aiming where the increased shouting was coming from.

My pulse rose steadily, and I unsheathed my sword. I wiped a bit of sweat from my brow and could hear what almost amounted to a thundering herd approaching quickly. Soon, I could hear the snapping of twigs and the panting of someone. Closer and closer with each passing second. I steadied myself for the worst and tried to be ready for anything… or so I thought.

After coming from behind a large, cracked stone wall, darting right for me, was a small child. No older than three, if that, and nearly naked, the young boy ran as fast as his small legs could carry him. In seconds, he dove under my sword and hugged my leg tightly. I just stood there in shock, but it didn’t last long. Soon, a few dozen or so natives, dressed fully in their own regalia and battle dress, soon showed up right behind the boy.

After a brief silence and exchanged glares, they made the first move. “Hand us the child,” the one in the middle commanded in perfect Spanish to me. Feathers and animal skins adorned his muscled body and he reached out the hand he wasn’t using to hold a mighty and deadly-looking club.

I looked down at the boy, and though he didn’t say a word, I could see the fear in his eyes. What’s more, I swore the child looked familiar, but also strangely unlike many of the men pursuing him. In truth, he looked more like my young nephew from back home than those demanding him back.

“He looks scared,” I managed to croak out, understanding the delicate nature of the situation.

“He’s ours,” the man said again, using a perfect dialog of Spanish again, “Hand him over now.”

I stared at the child again, and though his eyes pleaded with me to let him stay, I also saw the men before us and my crew behind me. Despite our advanced technology, the natives outnumbered us at least 2 to 1. I didn’t like those odds and I couldn’t justify taking in a child I didn’t even know.

I sadly pried him off my leg and he started to fight me as I did so. The man who had spoken to me, came forward and assisted with removing the child. Once he managed to snag the boy himself, he handed him off to another warrior, who then held tightly onto the child.

The man obviously in charge then spoke again. “Thank you, stranger. You have honored us and complied with our request. We see you as a noble person and we hope you honor our next request.”

I stared at the man and eyed his club. I didn’t think I had much of a choice in the matter, but I gave him my full attention, nonetheless.

He gestured all around him. “These ruins may serve as a boundary. Come no further this way again. We know of you and what you did to make it this far, but I believe that was the doing of another in your party. Honor this boundary and we will let you stay where you are. Do what you will there but stay away from here.”

I grimaced at the thought of giving up on our search for the crew, but they currently had us at a significant disadvantage. The ruins obviously showed something greater at work here, , perhaps born out of the possession of the jewel we were seeking, but I knew any retaliation today would only end in our eventual defeat. “Very well…”

“Good. Be at peace and safe travels.” The man raised his hand solemnly and nodded his head toward me before turning and leading his people away.

The child struggled but all in vain. For a moment, I even swore the child looked a little like Bernardo when I had met him years ago, but it was a ridiculous notion. ‘Don’t be an idiot, Hector. How could that possibly be Bernardo?’ Even thinking that though, I also swore that the child looked younger as he began to repeatedly squall ‘no,’ thrashing against the warrior who was now holding him against his chest. ‘Ugh. Guess I’m more exhausted than I originally thought… What a preposterous notion for that to have been a younger Bernardo.’

On the way back to our camp, I explained my rationalization to the crew, and I gladly could see that they knew I was right. Hated as though the decision may have been, we all knew the odds weren’t in our favor and would have led to only our blood on those ruins back there. I also noted that with any luck, we could take our remaining forces and attack later. I knew it was two-faced but clues to our missing crew and the possible fountain itself all could lie within reach of those natives.

*             *             *

The next day came swiftly, and we all set out for our camp again, sadly empty-handed. Unfortunately, a few hours away from our camp, I saw a skinny and determined man running toward us. It was immediately apparent that a spout of blood was trickling from his sweaty brow, and upon getting closer, I recognized that it was Iago.

“Iago! What happened?” I asked when he nearly collapsed before us.

Iago was out of breath and wounded in several spots but managed to pant out a string of words I wished to never hear. “The crew, sir… Alejandro… pushed too far… mutiny!”

I gulped in fear over Iago’s dreaded news. Now, we were without a commander or captain and several loyal men were likely dead. I had handpicked the men around me now, but I wasn’t too fond of our odds walking back to camp. What Bernardo had feared the most had come to pass, and now I had to end it without him. I had to do it for Bernardo, for our lives, and for the waters and jewel that awaited us. Any alternative could only mean failure and death. “Ready yourselves, men. We’ve got a fight ahead.”

[LostBBoyBear]

Chapter 9: Goodbye, Goodbye, and Hello There You Little Thing

Discoveries of missing crew and now the foretold mutiny had occurred, and each word seemed to unfold the mysteries of what had happened 400 years ago. Sat and I now worked around the clock and often ended up sleeping in the lab to ensure someone would always be translating the old journals with the rapidly approaching deadline from the backers.

Each journal had been written delicately and with much effort, but the fourth book seemed more panicked and shakier. It seemed only natural with the events unfolding like they were, but I didn’t like where all this was headed. More scribbled writing combined with all the unfortunate events and the crew never being heard from again, all pointed to the fact that their quest had been an ultimate failure. Still, I had to have hope.

I steeled myself as best I could away from the more negative thoughts however, and just focused on the hope of more translations. I was in such a rush that I didn’t even take the time to fully read out what I had translated myself and later, Sat and I both agreed that reading the entirety of the last book would be critical as our desperation and rushed state grew more apparent.

Now, with the fourth book fully translated according to Sat, who had just finished the last bit, I sat down in my typical leather chair and opened the final of the translated journals. I could smell the fresh ink and crisp pages and could feel our goal within reach. I readied myself and with fumbling and nervously anticipating fingers, I pried open the book and began reading. “We were alerted of a mutiny back at camp…”

*             *             *

Mutiny. The word curled the lips of any loyal man and out here in the jungle, it was a near death blow to us all. The natives we had just seen had outnumbered us then and our only hope was to confront them as a united front. Based on Iago’s report, all the hope we had carried for the possibility of openly assaulting them now had vanished in the humid climate along with the rest of the crew.

One of the members of our party had quickly patched Iago up and he was now leading us back to the camp, still a few hours away in this thicket. By the time we got within earshot, we were sweaty and tired already. I knew our numbers would count for something, but we were not at the strength that I think anyone was originally hoping for.

“You men stay here. Guard well along the brush here while I go scout ahead. Stay hidden but be prepared just in case. I’ll be back shortly.” The men nodded and I tottered off stealthily as to not announce my presence. Men under these jungle conditions were nervous enough, but with the addition of a mutiny, and I would rather be cautious and alive than bold and dead under the possibility of accidental gunfire.

Within sight of the camp, smoke billowed from one end, while shouting and cursing could be heard from the other. I took a breath and approached the side where I could hear an irate Alejandro barking out orders. “Alejandro! Hey!” I announced when I was within spitting distance of the walls.

“Halt! Identify yourself!” a nervous and twitchy member of the crew pointed a smoking arquebus at me, wavering it around due to its weight being in mostly untrained hands.

I knew with its range and his shakiness, I was relatively safe, but I put my arms in the air just to ease the tension a little bit. “It’s me. Hector!”

“Hector?” I saw Alejandro poke his head out of one of the reinforced walls. “Oh Hector. Thank God! Come in! Come in!”

I lowered my hands and walked in after two men removed a barrel at one of the entrances into the fort, which I then noticed had overall been divided into two sections. The larger section was commanded by the loyalists to Alejandro, but the smaller section was covered well by the superior numbers of the mutineers. “Looks bad, Alejandro. Iago informed me a little, but what happened?”

“Our rations have been dropping I’m sure you know. But it was too much, Hector, and probably far more than anyone could have guessed until I checked last night. So… I cut them…”

“You…?” ‘No wonder the others had chosen this time to mutiny!’ Low rations are bad but cutting them down at all is a last desperate measure for men out in the middle of the jungle and without the possibility of backup. ‘Damn you, Alejandro for forcing this situation.’ I wanted to throttle Alejandro’s neck right then, but I knew my calm demeanor had to prevail if we were to prevail. Further infighting would only give the mutineers a chance of victory. “Very well,” I grimaced, “what’s the situation?”

“They hit us this morning. Fortunately, they woke Juan, and I don’t know if the seasoned commander came back for a moment or his new self was just scared, but he just started yelling as they tried to take over.”

I looked over at the quivering form of Juan, now crying on top of a wounded Hugo. The two had become inseparable and seeing Hugo with a crossbow bolt in the arm must have been devastating to the reduced former commander.

“We fortified ourselves behind some brush, barrels, and carts, but… Hector, they killed the horses and donkeys.”

“Al of them?”

“Yes…”

‘Shit.’ Th horses were nearly useless in their intended capacity to fully ride on against an enemy, but they had helped us move large quantities of supplies through the jungle along with the donkeys. Now, the return trip back home seemed desperate and fading as a truly successful possibility. “We’ll deal with that later…” I looked over at the arquebuses that many of the loyal crew possessed. “I’m assuming the gunpowder remained with you all?”

“Yes. That was one small mercy. Captain Bernardo’s idea to lock it up after it dried the other day was a good idea. Only I had the key at this point, so once we were secured over here, we just started firing with the arquebuses and the crossbows. Only a few of us have been hit, but I sent Iago to find you all knowing you were supposed to come back.” He looked over my shoulder. “No captain? The others?”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Later, Alejandro. I have a few tired but loyal and eager men, all armed, just within earshot of here.”

Alejandro squinted at me and could tell I already had a plan. “What do you have in mind?”

I peered over the barricade separating the two halves of the fort and confirmed what I thought I saw coming in here. Their barricade was flimsy and there were several approaches unguarded. Likely, the squabbling I had heard earlier was leading to disorganization and infighting. “Once my party and I are in position, I’ll send Iago back here and let you know to start firing. After a round, switch to crossbows, but keep an eye out for us and stop firing when you see us assault from the north, or the left side from here.”

“Isn’t that… risky?” Alejandro asked timidly.

“Yes, but we’ll give them a way out the other side. With any luck, there will be so few of them after the initial blows and their escape that they won’t be able to mount a counterattack any time soon. Regardless though, after we’ll have the fort back without any worry about another mutiny.”

Alejandro stroked his goatee for a moment. “Very well… go and take command of your men. We’ll be ready here.”

I nodded and then sprinted off as fast as I could back to the party that I had taken with me yesterday. They were still weary and hidden behind the brush, but each looked eager to join in the fight. “Alright… here’s the plan.”

I informed the crew of the plan and then we all got within spitting distance of the fort while still remaining hidden. It was a flaw in the fort to get so close without being seen, but I planned on taking full advantage of it. In position now, I sent Iago limbering back to the loyalist side of the fort and Alejandro. Within minutes, the fort erupted in a large explosion of fire and smoke.

I rose and pointed my unsheathed sword toward the fort. “Upward and forward men! Charge!”

The rest of the crew got up and we all charged headlong out of the bushes and at the fort. A few stayed behind and fired their crossbows at the few men that had been guarding who weren’t also wounded after the initial attack from Alejandro’s side. The previous gunfire had worked as planned, and many were still reeling from the sudden shock.

Diego then charged out with his axe raised above his head and venom in his eyes. I readied my sword, but three bolts were sent sailing directly into his large hide from Alejandro’s defenses. Diego stopped and some blood trickled out of his mouth. In a second, he fell to the ground, dying if not dead.

Seeing their strongest warrior fall, many of the mutineers retreated or even surrendered instantly. I assumed the jungle had taken its toll on the men’s spirits and their mutiny was barely a force to be truly reckoned with anymore. Our fury, a round of gunfire, and a few more shots of crossbow bolts had obviously pushed them over the edge.

Entering the fort however, some men still stayed behind and readied their knives, swords, and axes, but I knew it was too late for them to mount any kind of real defense. Roberto, now bloodied and screaming, tried to get his men to return and shouted for them to ‘kill them all,’ but it was to no avail.

The few crossbow bolts sent flying our way from them only wounded one man by grazing him in the leg. The others flew high and wide, and the crew took advantage of their poor aim and either forced them to surrender by wounding them severely or even just purely cowering them into submission.

I slashed at a man I recognized as one of the gunners of the Santa Rosa. His muscular form tried slashing at me with his small axe, but my long sword easily sliced through his knuckles, and he howled as he dropped his weapon. He tried to charge at me with a dagger in his other hand that had been hidden in his boot, but I was ready and thrusted my blade cleanly through his chest. He gargled incoherently for a minute, before falling, stone dead.

The few mutineers remaining dragged Roberto away, still cursing and screaming at them to fight, but he was too feral and upset over the turn of his fortunes that he didn’t realize how few men of his were left to put up any kind of fight.

Satisfied the fighting had now tipped in our favor, Alejandro and his depleted men came over to finish the fight from his side. Few were left in any shape to fight, and his men mostly helped with containing the few surviving prisoners once they reached us. At this point, the mutineers mostly lay dead or dying strewn about the fort.

Walking amongst the wreckage after, I thought of our situation going forward an shook my head in despair. After a quick tally, another 36 of the crew had died in the mutinous plot. Now, sobering enough, with the amount who died at sea, those who had been lost in the two search parties, and those just killed in the mutiny, our party numbered only 32. Now, 52 of the 218 who had departed Spain were left, and that number even included the still crying Juan and the ten or so wounded who wouldn’t be dead by morning and the 20 men we had left back at shore on the two remaining ships.

After collecting the dead and the leftover possessions of each, Alejandro and I surveyed the damage to everything. Due to the ravenous and undisciplined form of the mutineers, many of the supplies were now ruined. Even with our fewer numbers, I highly doubted the food remaining would last long if not supplemented with raids from local villages, foraging, or the discovery of the life-giving waters itself. With our low numbers though, all options seemed hopeless.

*             *             *

“No,” Alejandro refused as I laid out my plans. “I need you, Hector. Look at what happened while you were away. I’m in command, but you are the leader they will actually follow.”

“Perhaps, but you are in charge. Besides,” I continued, looking around the patches of blood still surrounding us in the damaged fort, “I think those disloyal were killed or driven off into the jungle.”

“Maybe… but too many have been lost already. What if you meet with the same fate as the other parties before you?”

“This will just be a scouting party, Alejandro. Phillipe and I will go to the ruins and search for signs of our missing crew. With luck, we will either find them or at least find more supplies that we can use here. As a last resort, we can all take our findings, leave, and then go back to Puerto de Carenas.”

I remembered back to the bar with the desperate souls I had met there. They may have believed in curses, but I always found that the guarantee of treasure, revenge, or immortality was always a good motivator for men like that. “There were plenty of eager souls there. Knowing what we do now, we can set off again with more men and avoid some of the pitfalls we did last time.”

Alejandro looked weary and lacking the strength I would have hoped for in the new captain I was leaving behind again, but I was out of options now. It was Alejandro or I would start needing to rely on wounded crew members like Iago or Hugo. Regardless, I doubted they would be much better.

Alejandro sighed. “I can’t argue with that logic, Hector.” We both stood up and shook hands. “Good luck to you and to you as well Phillipe,” he said, looking over my shoulder at an even more timid than usual Phillipe.

I nodded and after a quick resupply of our provisions, Phillipe and I set off back northwesterly toward the ruins.

*             *             *

Having ventured already that morning, participating in the quelling of the mutineers and the cleanup afterward, our trek back allowed us only to travel halfway back to the ruins. Phillipe and I set up camp in a clearing and used some more palm fronds to provide a temporary shelter for us in case it rained.

Using the firelight, I poured over the map. Phillipe knew about it already and with so few numbers in the crew, I needed someone else I could definitively trust with its secrets. “I’ve poured over this a thousand times at least by now, Phillipe. I just can’t make sense any more of these scribbles. For all I know, they came from a deluded and dying man hoping for the riches he never found.”

“Maybe…” Phillipe stared at the map intently and I noticed he was focusing on only the northern half of the map. “What was that bit you found for the captain the other day? The one that set him off on his journey that he kept muttering about after?”

I thought back to that day. “Something about the dying of the sun.”

“Dying… dying… what about west?”

“West?” I asked questioningly.

“Yes. The sun dies or disappears in the west. Could it be that?”

“Hmmm… maybe west of the ruins?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to try, right?” Phillipe asked hopefully.

“Right. Well, get some sleep for tomorrow. We’re going to need it.”

Phillipe nodded and settled down into the palm fronds we had laid out earlier on the jungle floor. I viewed the map one last time and prayed to God in thanks for surviving the dreaded mutiny today. Our numbers were low, most of our crew was missing and presumed dead, and our supplies were dangerously low. What had started off as a mission to save Spain was now turning into a death sentence. As I laid down myself for the night after putting the map away, I only hoped we would be successful tomorrow and that I would find my friend alive somehow out there.

[LostBBoyBear]

So, I just finished making some minor changes to the ending of the plot and I now know the story should be a total of 13 chapters. As such, unless something else happens (like did yesterday), the final chapter should be posted this Thursday.

I also just want to say a quick thank you for those who have actually read this story. I will admit it's more of a slow burn and not the type of story most are looking for, but I'm a glad a few people are reading it at this point. Once done, I have several other projects I'm working on that everyone should enjoy much more. 

Hope you enjoy this next chapter!

Chapter 10: I'm Just Not Sure

Awaking the next morning before the sun had even risen, Phillipe and I made a small quick breakfast and set off further to the northwest of our base fort by the stone column. We treaded over the same path we had come back on yesterday and before midday, we were back at the ancient ruins we were told to never visit again.

The cold stone stood withered but proud against the jungle, which threatened to encroach upon it on all sides. Hundreds, if not thousands must have lived here, and I truly wondered how such a place could be built. Places like Rome and Egypt had nearby quarries, but this place seemed to come from nowhere or was constructed with one of the most elaborate transportation systems I had ever seen or even read about.

Exploring the temples and buildings, I climbed up one of the more intact structures, keeping its stairs to the top and being covered with the least number of vines or aged crumbling from what I could see. At the top, I could see for miles around, which allowed me to spot several wisps of smoke in the distance. Looking toward the south, I swore I could even see one coming from where I presumed our camp likely was.

“See anything?” Phillipe called up from the ground.

“Yeah… you can see for miles up here! You should see it for yourself!”

Phillipe looked nervous and even clutched a nearby stone façade to anchor himself to the ground. “Uh… no thanks… I’m good right here on the ground” He steadied himself again on the ground and then looked back up at me. “Anything useful?”

“I’m not sure… maybe? There’s a bunch of fires all around to the west.” I pointed toward where I had indicated.

“Well, let’s pick one then!”

I looked where the sun had started to fall in the sky right after its peak overhead, and low and behold, I spotted a few clusters of smoke rising out from the west. “Yes! Over there! There’s more fires there than with the others. Probably a larger civilization or something.” I pointed toward more forcefully where I could see the signs of what I could only guess was more people gathering. If nothing else, Phillipe and I could always come back here and try again if my guess proved to be incorrect. We were just scouting after all and likely wouldn’t be seen.

“Perfect!”

I climbed off the building, and Phillipe and I meandered through the ruins toward the west. Sure enough, it didn’t take us long to find another path coming from the direction. What’s more… we found fresh tracks, likely coming from the group we had encountered before that had chased that unusual child when we first came here two days ago.

Phillipe and I set off on the path and to our delight, we came to a slight ridge and just over its crest, we spotted another village. This one, however, was different than the others. It seemed like an amalgamation of those we had seen on our way to the stone column after departing the ship, but also of the ruins we had just left.

Like the other villages, several people shuffled and ran about the open ground, and fires and more primitive signs of technology were scattered throughout the area we were observing from our lookout. That being said, unlike the cobbled together wooden buildings we had seen with the other natives, these buildings were made definitively made of stone. Sturdy pathways also connected each of the buildings and I couldn’t help but see the similarities between the ruins and what I was looking at now.

“This has got to be what we’re looking for, right Hector?” Phillipe asked in a whispered voice.

“Maybe… I’m just not sure though. It certainly seems like the best chance we have to finding what we want, but…” I squinted my eyes and looked at the sight before me again.

“But what?”

“I just don’t know… there’s something off about all this. I mean, these natives… they look different than the others we’ve seen. More youthful… I don’t think I see a single elder. And the village… how is all this possible out here? It’s all swamp and forest. No mountains or anything.”

“Yeah, it’s weird but who cares, Hector. We found a civilization that seems out of place. Seems to me that it being out of place is just what we’re looking for in the first place, right?”

I nodded in agreement and then shook my head. “No, no, you’re right… just odd is all.”

“Ca himechiqe, Saturno!”

Phillipe and I looked toward the village and crouched lower behind the log that was our cover, hearing the unfamiliar words and worrying that we had been spotted. Instead, we saw the man I had spoken to yesterday was just running after a young boy. After the man caught up with him, they embraced tightly in an obvious sign of affection. ‘Probably his son or something like that…’

“You know,” Phillipe began, “now that you mention all the weird… I just noticed… why are there so many babies crawling or children running around?”

I hadn’t even noticed their large numbers, but when I studied the camp further, I saw what Phillipe had noted. From what I could see, children under five seemed to outnumber those above the age of ten by at least three to one. “Maybe more of the adults are just inside the buildings? You know… running the household or something…”

“I guess… but come on, Hector,” Phillipe said while pulling on my shoulder. “We’ve seen what we needed. We can go back to camp and report our findings and then go from there.”

I sighed. “You’re right, Phillipe. It’s time we made it back to camp. Can’t imagine Alejandro would want to be alone for long.” I stared at the cluster of buildings and the people running about them one more time and sighed. “I just wish we could have learned more today. It’s nice we found this place, and I’ll mark it on the map, but I feel like there’s so much more here…”

“Maybe, but we need to get back before we’re spotted. Mark your map, but then let’s go. I know how you get with these things, Hector. Priority is the crew now… remember?”

I nodded and pulled out the map to update our findings. My mind still raced about the oddity of what we had just seen, but with only two copies left, the security and the accuracy of the maps were now paramount. Further, we could use them to convince others back at Puerto de Carenas to join our next expedition. I made a mental note to update the map held on the ship as well when we got back and then stored the revised map away.

*             *             *

That night at our improvised shelter for the night, I looked over the updated map once more. I wished I could actually read more of the scribbles and decipher what was truth and what were likely just mere delusions from a dying man.

“Will you stop looking at that thing?” Phillipe asked, obviously annoyed over my persistent habit of pulling it out and reading it again. “You’ve probably memorized the stupid thing by now, and I doubt that another night is going to get you any closer to fixing this mess of a situation. We need to focus on getting out of here and back to our ships and port in one piece.”

I rolled up the map with a sigh. “You’re right, Phillipe. Sorry. Just hard not to feel we’re missing something. Like it’s staring us right in the face…”

“Maybe… but we can worry about that later.” Phillipe looked at me in trepidation. “Alejandro is our captain now, but the crew respect you far more. You led us against the mutiny, and you have the experience and temperament to be a good leader for us. I shudder to think how any of this could have gone without you. You need to step up and be more than a mapmaker if any of us are to leave this place alive.”

I smiled at the compliment. “Thank you, Phillipe. I appreciate that, but we need to follow Alejandro. I’m his second in command remember though. I can help him out where needed as a leader. I’ll put the map away, but we still need to respect his authority.”

“I guess,” Phillipe said, looking at the ground, “I just know that without you, none of us would survive the trip back to the ship, let alone be able to mount another expedition back out here.”

“Perhaps, but it’s best not to dwell on all that. We just need to focus on getting back there first. Get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be another long day.” Phillipe nodded and we both settled down on the palm fronds we had laid beneath us.

Thinking back, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on at the stone village we had seen once more. Writing in my journal always helped ease my thoughts, but tonight, I couldn’t make it past the strange noises all around us and what we had seen. ‘Stone buildings that seemed to just sprout of the ground, and what was with all the young ones? Did all the elders die?’ My mind was plagued with such questions, but I desperately tried to put it all out of my mind and fall asleep, despite the rustling of the jungle going on all around us.

*             *             *

“What the…?” I flipped the last page of the translated journal back and forth, as if wind or their rapid turning would somehow reveal more of what had happened.

“You okay, boss?” Sat asked, coming up behind me with concern.

“No, Sat. Where’s the rest of the translations? Were they ruined or something?”

Sat looked nervous. “Uh, no boss. There were a lot of blank pages after. You can see for yourself…”

I nodded and hurriedly walked over to the original journal that Hector had kept and that we had found in the stone chest. I flipped through the brittle old yellow pages, and it immediately became obvious of all the blank ones about a third of the way through it. “Shit. Did something happen to them? To the crew?”

“I don’t know, but we do know that the journals were buried in a box underground. Seems to suggest something. Maybe…?”

“Yes, but…”

“Mr. Whittington! Mr. Whittington!” Betty cried, bursting into the room holding a piece of paper. “This just came for you.”

I saw her eyes were red, but in my frustration, I angrily snatched the paper away and began reading, ignoring her for a second. “Mr. Whittington. Stop. We are out west currently and this is the only way we could reach you. Stop. You have one week now before we pull out. Stop. We need physical proof of progress and more than just the journals you uncovered. Stop. Please inform me and the rest of the backers of current progress immediately. Stop. Regards. Stop. JP Hapsborough. End of message.”

“Oh,” Sat said worriedly, now looking over the lack of an end to the journal, “that’s not good.”

“Damn it!” I cursed out loud, causing Betty to jump back a little. “Shit. Sorry, Betty. Bad new all around today.”

“Yes… I…” Betty then burst into tears and then ran away.

“Wow, I didn’t realize how much she cared about this project,” I said, watching her run out. “That’s dedication…”

“She… never mind.”

“What?” I asked abruptly.

“She…” Sat sighed deeply, and his face quickly darkened, “she lost the baby, sir.”

“Oh…” I was racked with guilt that maybe I pushed her too hard in the past weeks, but I knew there would be time to grieve for her and the baby later. Now, we had to focus on our rapidly approaching deadline. “We can mourn later, Sat, but now… I just have no idea what to do with the backers…”

“Yes, sir. I understand,” Sat responded dejectedly.

*             *             *

Sat and I sat in mournful silence for the next few hours. We both had moments where we seemed to have a good idea, but then would remember some issue with it and slump back in our respective chairs and remain silent. Finally, Sat hunched forward and spoke up. “What if we brought them with us?”

“Brought them with us… where?” I asked after I sighed and began to rub my temple to soothe the headache that had been building.

“To the site… where we found the journals at the fort.” I looked at him questioningly. “We’ve both read the journals by now… They went northwest from the site and found the ruins. Chances are, we could find something out there now. Plus, they then went west. Who knows what’s out there now?”

“It’s a longshot, Sat…” I groaned.

“Yes, but it could give us the time or sympathy we need,” he countered. “Besides, you never know what we might find out there if we just look. Lots of undiscovered and wild areas still in that area.”

I sighed again and looked at the nearby journals once more with disdain. They had been another clue to this entire mystery that now ended with only more questions like the ones before them. “I suppose.” I stood up from my seat… “Guess I better go get a hold of the backers. Invite them on our little journey.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll start getting the other bits ready. Probably take… I don’t know… three days.”

I wearily thought about the various logistics myself. “Yes… three days should be enough. It’s tight, but doable.” I then nodded toward Sat and walked off to go talk with the backers.

I dreaded the message I was going to leave for them, but with any luck they would agree, and we would get more time or maybe even sympathy once they got a real taste of what we did, as Sat had suggested. It was a desperate move, but it was the only one I could see to have an actual shot at working. As I readied myself to send the message, I kept having to remind myself of the same thing to bolster my confidence. If this whole journey had taught me anything on a personal level, it was that anything could happen when you least expected it. Maybe just this once, it would work in our favor.

[LostBBoyBear]

Chapter 11: Water and Rocks

Sat was gloriously right, and three days later, our slightly-weary-from-travel backers had just offloaded at our original dig site by what remained of the stone column I had so eagerly read about. Now the edifice was worn down and encrusted by vines, but it was certainly the same.

Being back here after reading the journal, I marveled at the rest of the site before me as well. Now, I could picture where the path had been that led them here, the place where the tents and walls had been erected, and even the side of the fort where the mutineers had fortified themselves and were ultimately defeated. It was all so real and tangible now. I felt we were so close to the end, yet still so far from our ending objective.

“You okay, Mr. Whittington?” Betty asked, hopping down from one of the vehicles herself. Despite objections from Sat and I, she had begged to come on the trip and sweetened the deal once she noted of her willingness to keep camp with its tidiness and cooking. No one argued with her after that. If nothing else, it could provide her with a good distraction against her recent loss.

“Yes… thank you, Betty. It’s just all so real out here now. Before, it was just another dig site like dozens of others I’ve seen. Now, it’s real… like I was physically here when the conquistadors were.”

“Looks just like a giant mud pit to me,” Mr. Hapsborough growled, swatting a mosquito away from his sweat-covered neck. “Where’s my water, Mr. Whittington?” His impatience hung around him like a dense vapor. Sam cracked his knuckles menacingly behind him.

“Well, it’s not here, sir,” I explained. “We are still within the week you promised, but based on the journals, we believe we can find what we’re looking for from here. Sat! The maps!”

“Yes, sir.” Sat jogged over to one of the trucks and retrieved a large tube from inside. Coming back, he unrolled the papers contained inside and revealed a large map of the surrounding area.

The backers leaned in, each with their own personal servants waiting behind them, Sam ominously towering over the rest. “This,” I pointed on the map, “is where we are. From the journals, we know they went northwest.” I popped out my compass and orientated the map in the correct direction. “Giving a little leeway,” I said while drawing out an angled search area from where we were, “this is our search area.”

“That’s massive!” Mr. Hilberforth shouted.

“We’ll never find the waters,” Mr. Keeling despaired, many of the backers nodding their heads alongside in agreement.

“Hold it, hold it, gentlemen. Look,” I pointed to the map again, “we know from our research over the past few days that none of the ruins described were ever found in any previous dig or construction. So, we know these areas can automatically be eliminated.” I erased my pencil lines on the map for certain areas that would have encountered something in their construction. This included a power station, a school, a small community, and even a daycare. “Plus, we know that it took them about a day to reach. Accounting for their pace and potential obstacles, we can start looking here.” I pointed to a small spot on the map and the backers leaned in curiously.

*             *             *

Fortunately, based on our estimates, the area we needed to search was very narrow. Lakes and already existing structures eliminated several points, and the amount they could have traveled had eliminated several others. Arriving at the site an hour later, our crew began to dig. Gleefully, this afternoon after two further days of searching, we struck the first of the heavily covered ruins that Sat and Phillipe had last visited.

For some reason when we first discovered them, I caught Sat looking suspiciously sad and I made a mental note to ask him about it later. For now, I had to focus solely on finding more results to please the annoyed and exhausted backers.

Gratefully, knowing we were in the vicinity of what we were looking for, we sent the diggers away and began to search the area to the west. The backers had argued over their presence in the first place and keeping them on further had only ‘threatened the secrecy of the waters when we find them,’ or at least that’s what they had justified to me the previous night.

Finding a few more ruined stone structures after another day, these less buried, I ordered the crew to span out and start searching for anything out of the ordinary. Fortunately for my rapidly approaching deadline, it wasn’t long before we found an underground cavern entrance nearby.

To some of our humor, it was only found when Mr. Hapsborough went away to relieve himself in the bushes and his consistent hacking echoed into the covered cave. Swarms of bats shot out and Mr. Hapsborough fell backward in sheer terror. Sam quickly rushed to his aid and the whole scene took everything we had not to laugh at with his frightened expression and wet pants. The mighty Mr. Hapsborough had been brought low from a few harmless bats. To preserve our relationship with the biggest of the backers though, all three of us made sure to cover our smiles as he went away to change in the tent that he had set up for himself.

Thirty minutes later, Sat, Betty, and I all lit torches while the backers and their servants clung onto the more modern flashlights. They were fascinating but often unreliable, so I opted for the more time-tested torch. Besides, a torch allowed one to burn away cobwebs and could provide a means of which to start a fire later to push back predators or cook our food.

Following the slippery and muddy cavern, we soon came to a carved arch. Covered in slime and partially chipped as it was, my heart soared over the possibilities. I turned around and the backers each looked pleased, many shaking hands with wide grins plastered across their faces.

Moving forward, the narrow cavern passageway soon opened and revealed a massive cave. The water seemed to glow, and following this, my eyes feasted upon a large temple-like building etched into the side of the rocky walls holding everything up.

“We did it!” I hugged Sat and Betty tightly and everyone began laughing hysterically at our turn of luck. In my younger days I would have probably danced or jumped for joy, but now, I just stared at everything in contentment and wonder.

The backers rushed forward, and all neared the waters edge when Mr. Keeling, not looking where he was going, tripped over something in his way. “Ah! What the hell was that?” Mr. Keeling asked lying on the ground, nursing his sore elbow which had hit the ground first when he fell. He pulled himself up and grabbed his fallen flashlight and shined it upon the mass that had tripped him. In a second, a wet and slimy skeleton clad in rusty chunks of metal was quickly revealed. “Ahhh! Ahhh! Get it away! Get it away!”

“Relax, Mr. Keeling,” Sat said, as he leaned down to examine the body the backer had unintentionally tripped over. “He’s long dead… he can’t hurt you anymore.”

“I’ll say,” I said, crouching down as I looked over the body. “Sat, look.” He turned to face what I was grasping. “Armor…”

“Yeah… conquistador, by the looks of this,” he said, as held up the traditional curved helmet from nearby.

“You think this is what happened to them?” I asked as I checked the body for any signs of foul play, remembering back to Hector’s journal and the abrupt ending that it had.

“Hard to say…” Sat said as he rose back up and looked blissfully on the water.

“Well, here’s to him,” Mr. Hapsborough said, holding up a tin cup, full of the practically glowing blue water, obviously having shaken off his previous fall.

“Here, here” the other backers shouted in joy, Mr. Keeling being the last to join them with his own cup full of the precious water.

“I wouldn’t do that…” Sat said worriedly, now looking over a few of the carven images on the walls of the cave I hadn’t noticed.

They were blocky and hard to make out, but I trusted Sat’s background in native iconography and art. It was one of the main reasons I had selected him for our team and his expertise was certainly paying off now.

“Ha! We are modern men. Those all are just carvings on a wall by a clearly barbaric and primitive people. Couldn’t even be bothered to keep a place like this guarded or anything…” Mr. Hapsborough scoffed, taking an eager drink of the liquid in his cup. The other backers shrugged and downed the liquid as well.

I wanted a taste and Mr. Hapsborough, seeing my desire, handed me his own cup. “Mighty refreshing, good sir. You deserve this,” he said smiling, his round cheeks almost seeming more alive and fuller.

I weighed Sat’s warning, but I had come too far to stop now. I tipped the contents back and the crystal-clear blue water passed over my tongue. It tasted sweet and instantly refreshed my senses. I had been nursing a headache from the heat all morning, and instantly, it was gone. Even the aftertaste of the heavenly water seemed to dance about on my tongue with the subtle vapors still there. “Oh, that’s good stuff.”

“I’ll say,” Mr. Keeling shouted giddily, eagerly downing another cup as Mr. Hapsborough took the cup back from me.

Mr. Hapsborough offered me more, but I saw an odd glow coming from the roof of the carved building. Locating a set of stairs up to the point, I wandered away from the others. Betty and Sat followed me to the base, but remained on the ground of the cavern while I ventured up toward the glowing.

Getting to the top, I saw the most beautiful jewel I had even seen. It glowed and sparkled with a brilliant blue light and almost seemed to pulse in my presence. My fingers wandered toward it, and I could feel a buzz pulsating through all my limbs. My mind clouded, my heart raced, and I felt as if I could fly. Being drunk was the closest thing it all felt like but comparing it to that was like calling champagne fizzy water… it did it no justice.

I neared the jewel and was nearly touching it when someone started shouting. “Boss! Boss!” Sat cried from down below on the ground.

I stopped and looked at him annoyedly from the top of the perch above everything else. “What is it, Sat? Can’t you wait one minute?” I looked back at the precious jewel that seemed to be the source of the water pouring down and into the pool below that the backers were eagerly lapping up. “This is our moment of glory! Surely such carvings can wait for one second.”

“I don’t know about that but please don’t touch it. It’s dangerous! These writings…”

“I don’t care about those writings!” ‘How could he be so dense?’ Years of waiting and hoping this place wasn’t just fantasy and he wanted to talk about some stone carvings. This was more than history and studying the past. This was life itself. “There are no such things as curses! This is mine! All mine!” I turned away and redoubled my efforts to touch the stone. Years of research and near bankruptcy had all led to this single moment.

My fingertips pulsed heavily, and my palms were awash with the water from below and my own nervous perspiration. I swore I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears, and it took everything in my willpower to keep moving forward. Finally, my fingers touched the glowing jewel.

Instantly, a shock of warmth erupted through my hand. Not of fire or pain, but it felt like a calming burst of sunlight had just been cast over my skin. Now, the only difference is that it radiated through my entire body, like a waterfall suddenly pouring down on me. It was blissful and I felt… powerful. Without another thought, I yanked the jewel out of the wall.

It was heavy, but my adrenaline surged through me, and I held it with both hands above my head and presented it from the top of the temple to the rest of my team and the backers. “Behold! The power of the Gods! The jewel of youth and the fountain! It’s all ours! We’ve done it!”

The backers erupted into thunderous cheering and applause. Even Betty, who had been like a ghost since hearing of the news of her lost baby, sported a warm smile. Everything we had all been through was finally worth it. This precious jewel, not much bigger than my hand, was the culmination and physical evidence of our success.

I held it front of me and stared into its depths. It felt mystical in a way I had never experienced before and the inner part of it almost seemed to cry out for me. It was almost as if it was beckoning me to enter into its heart. I nearly accepted.

Crack! Crack! Thud!

I snapped out of my gaze, and I looked all around for the noises being made. “What was that?” Mr. Hapsborough called out, but it didn’t sound like him. Edging closer and gazing into the figures below, I still saw the gleeful backers, but instead of slick ragged men in well-fitted clothing, a bunch of muscled young men now stood in their place, some of their clothes hanging loosely off their more youthful frames. ‘What the…?’

“It’s what I warned you about, sir,” Sat called out. “The warnings… they said not to remove the jewel.”

I wanted to argue with such superstitions, but I heard another groan and creak to my left.

Errr…. Errrr! Rumble! Rumble! Dit! Dit! Craaack! Smash! Thud!

The cave began to shutter violently, and my entire body started shaking along with it. In seconds, large pieces of stone started to fall from the ceiling. “Cave in! Run!” I called out to the others on the ground.

The others stood dumbfounded but bounded away when a large piece of stalactite fell crashing to the pool below it.

Crack! Splash!

The young backers all clutched their chests in shock, and many were soaked from the ensuing splash the fall had caused. They all began to head for the way they came in, though even their servants had begun to panic and were now abandoning them in rapid succession. The discipline and refinement of all of them had instantly evaporated under the first sign of danger. The backers were left helpless and entered a state of shock, so the kindhearted Betty and Sat had to help each of them out on their own and away from the collapsing cave.

Sprinting down the steps, I nearly fell forward and downward, only seconds away from cracking my head open at the bottom. I was relieved to have made it down with the jewel, but as soon as my foot hit the main floor of the rumbling cavern, the vibrations increased tenfold.

I could barely stand, and I saw the others having similar issues under the immense rattling about. Many of the servants, except for the still steadfast and obviously regressing Sam, made it to the way we came in, but no further. “Look out!” one of them called, but it was too late. In a second, a mighty cave-in occurred.

Crash! Snap! Thud! Thud! Thud!

“Ahhh…! Ugh…” Boulders fell and quickly silenced the small and shortened screams that had echoed from the fleeing servants.

Large pieces of stone now blocked the entrance, but from my position it became obvious that any of the servants who stepped foot into the passageway out, were now crushed and buried alive, though I doubted they would remain that way for long. Tons of stone and a fragile human body were never a good combination, and as if to confirm my suspicions, a gripped hand still sticking out from the rubble suddenly tightened and then relaxed. It didn’t move again.

Sat, Betty, and I looked on hopelessly, but another rumble shook the cave.

Errr… Errr… Craaaack!

I looked up and saw several pieces of debris falling right for us. Sat managed to duck away in time, but Betty wasn’t as quick, and was hit on the head. Her kind but panicked expression faded, and she fell to the floor, her eyes closing shut.

“Betty! No!” I lunged forward from my position and managed to dodge several of the falling rocks. I picked her up and brought her out of the path of most of the falling debris. I checked her breathing and for a pulse, and I was immediately relieved to find one.

Unfortunately, I was paying so much attention to her that I didn’t notice what was going on around me or that the cave-in had shifted.

Rumble! Craaack! Crack!

It was too late when I heard the nearby echoing sound, and I only managed to look up in time to see a large cluster of rocks headed down right on top of me.

[LostBBoyBear]

So, this is the second to last chapter of this story. If everything goes well and the way I believe it will, the final chapter will be posted at some point tomorrow. 

Please enjoy this next to last chapter!

Chapter 12: The Memories of a Jewel and a Man

The rocks hurtled toward me, but I couldn’t move in time. In a second, many fell near to where I was kneeling to check on Betty, but a second later, a large, chipped rock fell directly on my left leg, crushing and pinning it underneath. “Ahhh!”

I yelled in pain, collapsing to the floor. My hands fell forward and the jewel that I kept with me went flying. I immediately looked around for it, but it was quickly lost in the piling rubble of shattered stones from everything collapsing. Remarkably, the carven stone temple remained firm and still intact.

It was there that Sat, the backers, and Sam were all huddled underneath one of the ground floor’s overhangs. Many of the backers looked like early teenagers now and when one saw the appearance of the others, they all then began to notice the changes in themselves.

“What’s happening to us? Mr. Keeling cried out, his voice cracking slightly.

“I d… don’t know,” Mr. Hapsborough admitted, a regressing and still loyal Sam still shielding him from some of the rocks falling nearby.

“Ahhh!” Mr. Hilberforth cried out. Everyone’s attention soon turned to the youngest looking backer in the group and in the brief period we were all looking at him, he grew steadily and noticeably younger. His body, already having erased the lines and weariness of time, began to shrink and he screamed out in terror and pain. Within minutes of his change, the backers and Sam began to do the same and plummeted downward in their youth.

“Help us! Please!” Mr. Hapsborough cried out to me, now seeming very scared. It was quite the difference from the once proud and fearsome man I had come to dread each time he had called me asking for updates on this project.

“I’m… ahhh!” I tried moving but the large stone still pinned my leg down to the ground and a grimaced in the extreme pain I was feeling. “I’ll try to help but my leg… it’s stuck!” I saw Sat hunching over and shielding himself from the rocks nearby. “Sat! Go help them! Please!”

Sat nodded and rushed to their sides, and I’m not sure what more I expected at this point, but he seemed to only be able to comfort the sad and scared backers as they rolled down through their younger years. Many seemed to exhibit behaviors associated with those who had yet to undergo puberty, and still more showed signs that attending school at their age would have been considered a stretch.

Clothing once haughty and the latest trends in expedition ware, now hung loosely off many of the backers as they continued to scream in pain and regress further. From their screams, I was surprised to not see bones splintering in their rapid changing. Their change may have made noises though, but only the rumblings still going on around the cavern could be heard, even going as far as to block out some of their dimming wails as the pitch of their voices changed and some became garbled.

I redoubled my efforts to unpin my leg in desperation to help them. I grunted and cried over merely lifting the rock only slightly. The temporary release felt nice, but I couldn’t hold it long and had to let go of the rock after gently setting it back down on my leg. I stopped and took a breath before trying again to budge the massive stone.

Finally, after a solid effort on my part, I grimaced and rolled the stone over my leg instead of continually trying to lift it off. I could feel bits snap further in my leg and could even hear a faint ‘squish’ noise. Soon, the rock rolled away, and my leg felt terrible, but I only smiled in relief that I wouldn’t be pinned in this caver forever, particularly with the falling rocks still showering around me.

I then began crawling over to the overhang where the rest of the crew was. I got there just in time to see many of the backers wailing out as they continued to shrink. By the time I even got within spitting distance of their reduced forms, many had entered a new and even more frightening phase.

Mr. Keeling was the first. Initially, he only reached toddlerhood, but it wasn’t long before his proportions changed more, and his words disappeared along with his coordination as he became what I could only describe as a baby, complete with an increasingly balding head. My worst fear then came true as the regression continued, and Mr. Keeling transformed smaller and smaller until becoming only an ugly pile of what I could describe as goo on the floor. I could only watch helplessly as he let out a final unearthly scream and then disappeared into the pile of primordial ooze.

Each backer, one by one, then transformed in a horrifyingly similar way as well. Screams of anguish and fear were let out as each turned into their own pile of slimy substance upon the cavern floor. Sam, the once intimidating and tall manservant, became a shriveled and helpless infant that pounded furiously but hopelessly against the ground. Within moments however, he was no more except a similar pile of slime and bubbling muck. Now, only Mr. Hapsborough remained, but even he had not remained immune from the ravages of the water.

“Help me, Brad! Please!” he wailed, looking barely old enough to attend any kind of schooling.

I tried my best to drag my form over to him to try and save at least one of the backers, but my shattered and ruined leg only slowed me down and sent electric shocks of immense pain throughout my body. “I… I’m trying. Just hold on!”

“I can’t! I’m scawed, Bwad!” he cried out. Soon, baby fat began to appear over his body and his limbs became pudgy and less coordinated. By the time I could reach out and hold his hand, he wasn’t making any sense anymore. “Gaaah! Pffft! Baaa!” If his words actually meant anything, I couldn’t understand them myself.

In seeing the full scope of all the backer’s and Sam’s regression, I couldn’t be sure if the physical changes coincided with any of the potential mental ones. I didn’t have time to ponder the matter much though, as within a few minutes of spastic twitching and gargled responses, Mr. Hapsborough, the titan of industry and the wealthiest of the backers, ceased to be anything more than a pile of ooze on the floor like his manservant or the other backers before him.

I lay prone on the floor and looked at the horrifying piles of leftovers before me. Once powerful men had been culled to mere nothingness in less than an hour. The fountain of youth had certainly lived up to its name but to a devastating effect. A rumble from my gut and a sudden burst of warmth around my extremities brought me out of my stupor and forced a realization upon me. I drank the water as well.

‘Shit. Shit. Shit. Am I going to be reduced to a pile of ooze as well?’ My thoughts scrambled and I tried to observe my body for any signs of regression. To my horror, a scar on my hand from a cut I had received during the dig site where we found the journals originally had now vanished. Curiously though, my leg was still smashed and throbbing with bolts of pain. ‘Why is the scar gone, but my leg is still mangled? Do these waters only have the power to regress and not heal? What’s going to happen to…?’

My thoughts stopped abruptly when I heard a few rocks slam nearby. The cavern had continued to shake, and pieces of loose stone had continued to fall, but this sound of moving rocks felt more deliberate and focused. Sure enough, I looked around and saw Sat digging through a pile of nearby fallen rocks, curiously in the same place where the jewel had disappeared. “Sat! I’m in trouble. I think I’m going to end up like all of them.” I gestured as best I could toward the piles of goo on the floor, now surrounded by heaps of muddied and ruined clothing. “I don’t want to end up like a pile of ooze!”

Still searching, Sat only sighed. “You won’t end up like a pile of ooze, but I did try to warn you. All of you…”

“Yes, yes, you warned us all,” I said impatiently out of fear. “Wait…” I stopped for a moment and thought about what Sat had just told me. “Why won’t I end up like a pile of ooze like them? I drank the water as well! Remember?”

Sat only continued to search the rubble, but then in a hushed and distracted tone said, “yes…”

“So, why…?”

“Aha!” Sat yelled out in joy. “Here you are!” Sat then reached down and plucked the glowing jewel I had taken from the temple which had caused the shaking of the cavern in the first place. Curiously, the vibrations slowed down around us as soon as he made contact.

Sat turned back and then walked over to me, crouching just out of my reach. “You see, Boss, I know because of this.” He effortlessly held up the glowing jewel in front of my face. I was enraptured with it and tried to touch it, but Sat moved it just out of my reach. “Tempting, isn’t it?”

I nodded. I would have tried to snatch it out of his hands just to touch it one more time, but my shattered leg put me at a significant disadvantage over the crouched Sat before me.

“You see, I know all about this jewel. Far more than you, actually.” He stared longingly at the jewel like one might as if they were looking at an old friend. “Which is why I know I need to return this beauty to its rightful place.” Sat got up and walked toward the stairs to the top of the temple. “Now, don’t go anywhere! I’ll be right back,” he said, as he turned his head toward me and grinned mischievously.

I growled at his poor joke, but my head swirled with what was going on. ‘How did Sat know more about the jewel? Is there a folktale I don’t know about? Did he withhold some of the translations from me before I started translating the journals alongside with him?’ I didn’t have time to think about much else when I heard a thunk from above. Almost instantly, the water, which I hadn’t realized was glowing less, returned to its former pristine state and the cavern fully ceased its trembling. A triumphant Sat then jaunted down the stairs.

Once back to where I was still mostly stuck, Sat grinned again and then sat down, still out of my reach. “Now, where was I? Oh yes! The jewel!” He then leaned back and looked over at the skeleton still on the ground that the now deceased Mr. Keeling had tripped over. “Not much to look at, huh?”

Sat seemed like he was waiting for an answer, so I just shrugged. “You see, Boss, you all are always alike. So steadfast and bullheaded in your determination to find the water or even the jewel, that you don’t question all the little bits going on around you.”

“Wha…?” A surge of heat radiated throughout my body again and I spasmed with pain.

“Easy there, Boss… though I guess we’re more on equal footing now, so I’ll just call you Brad.” He smiled and I felt like I was in no position to argue with him, especially between my leg and his mysterious knowledge of the jewel over me. “Anyway, I guess you deserve the truth at this point. You see, my people are very protective of this site. We don’t have guards here, but we find we don’t need them most of the time, as I’m sure you can guess why now.”

I looked over to the collapsed entrance where the deceased servants were and then to the piles of ooze nearby. I shook my head.

“Well, all you are alike. Explorers, conquistadors, soldiers, plantation owners… all of you come searching in one way or another, but it almost always ends the same.”

Hearing his words of the repulsed people before me, I looked over to the skeletonized conquistador. “What happened to him? Is that Hector?” I asked timidly, but my curiosity outweighed my sudden fear of my assistant.

“No, but I can tell you that they found and tried coming back down here after that journal ended.” Sat stood up and went over to the skeleton and lifted the body up and then pulled something out from underneath the armor. He then came over and sat back down before showing me a long old arrow. “Some stories, you see, don’t have a happy ending… poor Alejandro.”

“Alejandro? You mean… ahhh!” My body twitched for a moment, and I curled a little involuntarily at the pain.

“Easy there, Brad. Just breathe. It will all be over soon.”

I grimaced but the pain then faded, and I glared back at Sat. I could feel a tingle on my face and when I touched it, my eyes grew wide, and I panicked when it no longer felt rough from my morning stubble that I had been growing. I was still growing younger. “How…?”

“I suppose that’s a good of question as any at this point.” He then pointed toward the top of the temple. “The jewel. It’s all about the jewel. You see, as told by my father, and his father before him, the jewel came to earth one day, hurtling down from the heavens. It was thought to be a gift from the gods, and we washed it off in the river and put it in our temple. We soon realized that it gave us… certain abilities.”

I looked at Sat questioningly, so as if to convince me further he easily picked up a large fallen rock nearby without any difficulty. “You see, enhanced strength was one perk. Immortality, youth, and even as we discovered later, a mastery of languages were others. But as it was a gift from the gods, we used it sparingly and respectfully. My grandfather built those ruins you and Hector found, but we opted later for a simpler life in pursuit of this. Subtlety then became our way of life... our survival.”

As I was wracked with another surge of heat, I could feel my clothes becoming baggier as I looked at Sat questioningly.

“Well, you deserve the truth, so just know, it was no coincidence that I became a part of your team.”

“What do you mean? I selected you!” I yelled forcefully, but to my embarrassment, my voice cracked. When I tried to correct myself to reassert my authority, my voice no longer cracked, but instead had become much higher.

“Getting closer…” Sat mused, “but anyway, no. Because of my age, I could focus on several things, and I’ve connected myself to several projects over the years to search for these waters. Like my family before me. You think we allowed de Léon to leave alive by accident, did you? No! We lure those close enough to the truth and then let events play out naturally. Being the next chief of my people, I took it upon myself this time to guide you on this journey. A little more hands on this time I will admit, but you just never know what someone like you could find.”

“But the journal… the box,” I whined, sounding like a prepubescent boy much to my chagrin.

“Yes… but you see, I was the one that buried the box. After the conquistadors were dealt with, by their own hand, the jungle, or,” he gestured to the body, “even this place or from our warriors, I obeyed my father and placed the journals in the box alongside a few other interesting items. We knew that they had been sent here on a mission, so we left enough breadcrumbs to be followed if returning parties ever came searching for them, but they never did.” Sat paused and looked sad for a moment. “Or at least they never did until now.”

I leaned in as best I could to hear this tale unravel further. “Once the logbook had been discovered, I knew it was only a matter of time before an individual like yourself would find this place. Plus, all the construction and advancement of society these days… the journals would be discovered eventually. So, I sprang into action and got on your team. Now, the journals have been discovered but this quest will end in failure, and everyone will think you all were eaten by alligators or something untoward like that.”

“Someone will come looking for us!” I shouted in my squeaky voice, my hand raising in a fist to emphasize my point. I don’t think it worked though, as Sat just smiled at me sympathetically as one would do towards a small child. I then realized my emphasis and show of force was likely hurt by my high-pitched voice and my dwindling form, encased in my now billowing old clothes.

“I doubt that. You see, all the artifacts have been crated away for long-term storage, likely to only be a footnote in history. I made the arrangements before we left and everyone on this little quest of yours left no connections behind. The backers were all shut-ins with their wealth. I made sure of that… and you. No family left behind. Not even friends. No, no one will come looking for a lost expedition like this one. Besides, no one even knows to look for you here. At best they will search the dig site the hired workers left from, but then will find nothing afterward. Your all’s secrecy guaranteed that.”

His words struck me in my soul, and I felt crushed. All the work and effort had led to nothing. Undermined by my own assistant no less. As I looked over this now cursed place, however, I saw the still unconscious Betty strewn about on the floor. “Bu’ Beddy!” I countered as best I could, remembering her husband, Donald, was still out there and would definitely try and find her.

“Yes… Betty.” Sat looked over at her. “Poor soul. She’s innocent in all this, but I think I may have a solution for her as well.” He turned back and saw my horrified face. “Nothing insidious I assure you. I swear, and you’ll even likely see that personally.”

I wanted to argue but when I tried yell again, my tongue felt wrong. It was slack and uncoordinated. “Gaaah! Naaa!” At best, my emotions conveyed my hatred of Sat, but it was all likely for nothing as I really only managed to let out a bit of drool on my diminutive and nearly naked form.

“Almost finished now…” Sat mused, “and don’t worry about turning into a pile of ooze. You touched the jewel. It will protect you against all that. My people have seen it before and all I can say is that you’ll still be you. Just in an altered state.” Sat sighed. “Hard to say though… I have an idea but its more or less uncharted territory.” Sat then darkly chuckled. “Not like you can do much about now though anyways in your current state and all.”

My pent-up emotions and my ultimate failure in all this couldn’t hide away anymore. My regressed feelings and sheer vulnerability all came rushing to the surface and I let out a giant wail. I tried to will myself to stop and maintain some dignity throughout all this, but my body just wouldn’t listen. It was a peculiar feeling I knew I wasn’t going to like.

“Awww… it’s okay little Bradley. Don’t you worry none!” Sat then reached into his pocket and pulled out something small and popped it between my lips.

My lips took to it with furious abandon. As hard as I had been crying, my mouth and cheeks had now replaced that anguish by furiously and rhythmically sucking on whatever he had put in my mouth. ‘Was this magic? Was I under a spell?’ No matter what I tried, I couldn’t spit the object out. For all intents and purposes, I was silenced in a matter of seconds.

“There… perfect! I have to say, of all the centuries I’ve lived, I do love the overall advancement of society. I miss waking up to the trees, the stories around a nightly fire, and a good old-fashioned hunt, but it’s hard to argue with something as simple and as effective as… what do the British call it? Oh yes, a dummy.”

Sat looked on at my shrunken and pacified form with glee and accomplishment. “Somehow, I just knew that this thing would come in handy. Boy, for someone who’s over 400 years old, I sure do love the future!” Sat grinned and began to walk toward me with his arms outstretched.

Even if my leg wasn’t somehow still broken, I could only lay there on my stomach helplessly. I stared in horror at my betrayer, and yet, for whatever reason, I also felt a sense that everything was going to be okay as he picked me up and began to gently rock me back and forth.

[LostBBoyBear]

So, this is the final chapter of this story. It was fun to write, but I'll probably just stick to some of the other stories I have in mind for the future. I was originally thinking of doing other archaeological stories about age regression and the like, but I might focus on them only in the distant future or make them much shorter as just a fun side project. 

Next up will be another in the 'Stuffy's Tale' genre set in the Diaper Dimension, this time focusing on an elephant and a Little as they explore their unique relationship and try to evade an unruly criminal element in their city. I'm not sure when I'll start posting bits of that story, but writing it so far has been very fun for me personally, so it is all going very quickly.

For now though, I hope everyone enjoys this final chapter!

Chapter 13: The Most Magical Place in the Land

“Shhh, shhh, easy there, little Bradley,” Sat whispered, cradling and bouncing me gently in his arms. To my dread, the motion actually felt nice, and I clung to his shirt. Not out of love mind you, but utter terror of this renewed sense of my own dread from being carried so high off the ground for my small form.

“Now, I’m going to keep that dummy in your mouth, but we need to fix that leg of yours. Couldn’t really do it while you were still regressing. I might be strong, but why take the chance for you to try to fight back and end up hurting me. Then we’d both be stuck down here.” Sat smiled and then carried me over to the water.

I tried to squirm away from his grip out of fear over that water. It had killed all the backers when they had entered themselves and while Sat had assured me that the jewel would prevent my further regression, I really couldn’t trust Sat anymore.

“Just stay as still as you can and let me help your leg. I can’t imagine that’s very fun, is it?” Sat asked jokingly. Despite my seething hatred of Sat, I only pathetically and submissively shook my head as much as I could in my regressed state.

Sat only smiled and then began to rub the water on my leg. He said some things I couldn’t quite make out, but it almost sounded like a prayer. Regardless, I was too distracted by the feeling in my leg to truly care. It felt like it was on fire for a moment, but after an almost popping sensation, the feeling went away, and I could only feel the cooling waters around the appendage.

“There, that’s much better, isn’t it?” I nodded, just happy that my leg felt normal again. “Good. Now, time we all leave this place together.” Sat looked over at Betty and then placed my tiny form next to her. “Now, just don’t move. I’ve got to make sure the way out for us is still usable.” I could only grunt and spastically twitch in response in any meaningful way with my newly regressed state.

Sat then walked away and from my viewpoint, and I could only hear a few scrapes and shifting of something afterward. In a few minutes though, large rocks then began to be hurled away from a central point where Sat had walked off to.

Struggling fiercely and dying of curiosity as to the commotion, I was only able to just make out Sat at another entrance to the cavern, heaving rocks away as if they were mere fluffy pillows. Drinking the water and holding the jewel, I remembered I had felt powerful after, but Sat was clearly demonstrating the full might of its powers. ‘He did mention an enhanced strength earlier…’ The ruined city and all its splendor made sense now seeing Sat like this. Likely, the inhabitants, or I guess Sat’s tribe, had just moved the stones themselves into place, even if the jewel had only affected the others with a mere fraction of its power.

Regardless of my pondering, soon, Sat returned and cradled my form in some of my leftover clothing and heaved Better over his shoulder. Without so much as a backward look, Sat then departed the cavern and the still buried servants and the piles of ooze that were formerly the prized backers. I couldn’t decide who had a worse fate of the two groups left there.

Going through the excavated entrance and then up an established set of stairs, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of security with Sat. He seemed so strong and kind from my perspective. Even Betty’s fully grown form looked like a mere ragdoll in his arms as we neared the top.

I even felt a burst of warmth radiating out from me as I snuggled inward for more comfort. For his part, Sat only smiled and cooed. “Oh. That’s okay... you just rest now.”

Finally at the top, and after slightly fumbling with the door while still trying to hold both Betty and I, Sat managed to open the door and we all walked forward into a brightly lit room. In a second, another woman entered the scene with an angry look plastered across her face.

“Where have you been? No note even?” a tall woman asked, almost looking like Sat’s sister from my cradled view.

“Good to see you as well, Doli,” Sat said sarcastically as he set Betty down on a nearby chair, while still cradling me in my old clothes.

The woman known as Doli warmly smiled and realized how her brush words had come across. “Sorry, Sat. We were all just concerned that something bad had happened when you didn’t call us or send your usual letter after a few days.”

“I figured, but as you can see… I had my hands full.”

“So, the secret is still safe then? If they are all that’s left?” Doli asked, eyeing Betty and I with suspicion. I pulled myself as much as I could into Sat’s embrace as I could just to escape here judgmental and prying eyes.

“Yes, Doli. The secret is safe.” I saw Sat look around and behind the window in the lobby of whatever building we were in. “How were the others today?”

Doli shifted around and rolled her eyes. “Well, one of the reasons we were trying to contact you is that some of those we let grow back up again, had to be regressed once again. You think after 400 years for some of them, they would learn, right?”

“Well…”

Both Doli and Sat then turned quickly around when they heard a shuffling behind them. “Ugh… where am I?” a dazed Betty said, slowly sitting up from her slouched position in the chair that she had been placed in.

Sat immediately handed me off to Doli and crouched down to speak to Betty. “Hello there. Here, drink this. It will help,” Sat said calmly, handing Betty a small glass of clear liquid from nearby.

“Oh, thank you…” she then took the water in one large gulp, her eyes betraying that whatever was int at cup was more than just water. “Where… where am I?” she finally managed to make out.

Sat smiled gently. “You’re at a nearby nursery. You were in an accident. Total wreck right after you were coming home after your boss let you go. I think there was something in the road…”

“Oh… oh my! Was anyone hurt?” Betty asked worriedly.

“Oh no, no. Just a bump on the head for you, but in fact,” Sat turned and pointed toward me, “you actually found this little fella on the side of the road and brought him here. You passed out in this chair while we were processing him and checking with the local sheriff if anyone was missing a baby.”

Betty smiled gingerly at me and then turned back to Sat. “Any luck finding…? I’m sorry, I actually don’t know your name…”

‘Wait! What?’ I fussed audibly over my confusion about why Betty didn’t realize who she was talking to. They had known each other for years at this point, but Betty was acting like they had only just met today. ‘Was there something in the drink? Had she gotten hit on the head harder than I thought?’

After a moment of drinking from his own glass, Sat spoke back up. “Sat, and to answer what I think you were about to ask, no, no one has claimed the poor lad.”

Betty put her hand to her mouth and gasped. “Oh no, that’s just so terrible.”

Sat only smiled, but I couldn’t tell if it was from that Betty hadn’t questioned his identity or that he was glad she was still showing sympathy for me. “Yes, but we’re sure glad you found him.” I then tried to wiggle away from Doli and Sat and toward Betty. Doli immediately noticed and started apologizing. “Oops. Looks like someone has formed a bit of an attachment to you. Sorry, we’ll get him with the others…”

“No!” Betty yelled, but then blushed at her sudden outburst. “I’m sorry… I mean, please, if the babe wants me… I don’t want to say no to such a cute little thing. After all, he’s been through so much…” She trailed off and looked at me in a distant manner as if she was in a trance of some sort.

Sat only smiled and stood up. With a single gesture, he then winked out of Betty’s sight to Doli, who then proceeded to hand me over to my former secretary. “Here you go, Miss Betty.”

“Mrs., actually.” Betty’s smile then vanished. “Oh my, Donald!” she cried, just as she took my diminished form in her arms.

Doli spoke up first. “It’s okay, ma’am. I’m sure everything will be just fine. I believe we even have a car for you.”

“For me? Oh, please. You don’t…”

Sat held his hand up and took over for Doli. “Nonsense. Please. It’s the least we can do for you after such a terrible accident and then getting this child to us. I shudder to think what would’ve happened to him if you hadn’t shown up.”

“No… best not to think about that…” Betty then looked back toward me. I saw her sad eyes brighten almost instantly. ‘Was she remembering me? Please, Betty! Remember!’ “Oh, he’s just the cutest, but… oh my! Looks like someone’s had a little accident!”

‘What?’ I looked down at myself and to my horror, I realized the warm feeling I had felt when Sat was bringing me up the stairs was me having an accident. I hadn’t even felt the need to go. I kicked around in frustration and humiliation over my little incident in front of the three adults in front of me.

“Oh, you poor thing. Here, let me get you taken care of.” Betty then slowly got up from the chair with my still distressed form. “Where can I go to get this one changed? Something is telling me that he’s in need of some… personal touches…”

Doli understood and nodded. “Right this way, ma’am.” The two shuffled out of the room and into the room that Sat had gestured toward earlier when asking about the ‘others.’ Betty didn’t see, but Sat gave me a delightful grin and a small little wave goodbye. If I could, I would have cursed him out on the spot. Instead, I only gave him an angry scowl as best I could. He only gave a slight chuckle.

Not ten minutes later, I was cradled snugly against a serene Betty. I had been humiliated since being brought into the main part of the nursery, having been stripped, washed, diapered, and clothed in a small white dress I only ever saw on the very young. Betty was now cradling me close and rocking back and forth in a rocking chair. I had hated the entire experience, but I couldn’t deny at this point that Betty would have been a wonderful mother.

Sat then casually walked in from the other room. “Ma’am?” Betty looked up contentedly at him. “I just thought you should know that the sun has begun to set outside. As I’m sure you can attest to now, these roads aren’t the best even in the daytime.”

“Oh… yes. Thank you.” She looked lovingly down at my small form. “I think I just got caught up so much with this one…”

“I understand, but Doli here can take over.” Doli smiled from where she had been standing and walked up to Betty and stretched out her arms peacefully to take me off her hands.

Betty struggled for a moment, but then handed me off like she would a sack of flour and over to Doli. I squirmed discontentedly and Betty only looked back at me with regretful eyes. “I’m sorry… he’s so difficult to simply let go of.” She looked off in the distance and looked down in despair. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this, but I recently lost my own child…”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Sat said sympathetically. I couldn’t tell if his words were genuine anymore, but I remembered how saddened he was when we were all working together only just last week. That last day of reading the journal and Sat informing of Betty’s lost pregnancy now felt like a lifetime ago.

“I found out that I’ll never be able to bear a child myself a few days after… I… I…”

“It’s okay,” Sat said, placing his hand reassuringly on Betty’s shoulder. My own heart broke for my former secretary, and I could only whimper in distress in my newly regressed state. “You know… and this may be too presumptive of me… but if no one claims this child…”

“Are you suggesting I adopt this child?” Betty interjected and asked with an almost happy flutter to her voice by the end of her question.

‘What? No! Betty is wonderful, but I can’t be adopted! They wouldn’t know I was once her boss! They would treat me like an actual infant!’ I squirmed in discomfort over the notion but was only shushed and rocked calmly by an ever-steadfast Doli.

“Well… we would still need to ensure no one else would claim the babe… but I don’t see why not at this point.” Sat stroked his chin as if he was about to make the deal of a lifetime. “How about this… you go and discuss it over with your husband and then ring us up if you decide to go forward? How’s that sound?”

Betty wasted no words and sprang up and hugged Sat tightly. “Oh yes! Please!” She then excused herself and started prattling on for the next few minutes about her plans. I kind of tuned it all out, but then popped in when she finally seemed to take a breath. “… I’m sure Donald will be just so pleased.”

Sat’s smile only grew wider. “You know… there’s even a city nearby. Orlando, to the northeast of here. Nothing much now compared to some other spots, but considering your circumstances, we could even offer a reduced rate here to watch your little one should the need arise. Plenty of jobs and opportunities around here for a set of new parents,” Sat egged on.

Betty couldn’t stop smiling and it took another few minutes, with a slight pushing from Sat, that Betty then waved goodbye to me, gave me a peck on the forehead and then strutted out of the building. I was so caught up in what had just happened over my possible future, that I blurred out all the pleasantries exchanged.

I knew Donald was the fatherly type and that both he and Betty had wanted a child for years by now. Sat, Doli, and I also of course knew that no one would be coming by to collect me. No phone call had been made to anywhere else and until an hour or so ago, I hadn’t been a baby in decades. I knew that the news of her never being able to bear a child, coupled along with Sat’s encouragement and half-truths, had all but sealed my fate. By this time next week, Betty would likely be my new mother.

Though Doli and I didn’t join Sat or Betty outside, I could hear the engine of the car start up and then blast out as she drove away. As Doli neared the window, I only saw the dust gather as Betty sped out of view to tell Donald the good news.

In my distress of being totally abandoned and at the whim of the people responsible for my current state, I started to wail once more, quickly spitting out the dummy that Sat had placed in earlier. Doli then only said “tsk, tsk” to me and simply grabbed a nearby baby bottle and shoved it in mouth as she sat down in the rocking chair. To my frustration, my regressed reflexes took over and I began to greedily slurp down its contents.

Sat then reentered with a wide and satisfied smile on his face. “Whew! That was a close call… remind me to thank the tribe for sending around that car for her and for cleaning up the site.”

“Don’t worry, I will.” Doli then peered out the window at the now vacant spot where the car once was. “Amazing that the sacred water and a few herbs could cause all that…”

“Truly a wonder…” Sta agreed. “Very useful to make any of them forget about what they witnessed. A few suggestions and then I can play on her emotional state… it’s all too easy. The mind is entirely flexible with just a little push, and we can convince her of her new reality.”

“All for the water…” Doli droned.

“For the water,” Sat echoed.

I continued to nurse, half-dazed from the milk and both looked at me with contentment for the next few minutes. “So, everything taken care of back at the university?” Doli finally asked.

“Yes, yes,” Sat said, slumping into a nearby chair after making a phone call in the main lobby of the nursery. “Everything has been altered or destroyed that can truly lead to where the water is. Most will think of it as just an expedition gone wrong… they always do.”

“True,” Doli said now looking out the window to an open field where workers had begun to erect a circus tent. “Still… have to wonder about the future. Progress seems so fast these days. Maybe they’ll find…”

“Nonsense. You worry too much, Doli. Our old villages recede more every year and this building protects the actual location of the fountain. Besides, the one cave entrance leading to the water some of the elders worried about, has now collapsed thanks to the greedy widdle paws of this one,” Sat said, as he gestured toward me.

“Yes… they always seem to be the architects of their own doom…” Doli then looked off in the distance as if she was pondering a great mystery. “What about water seepage?”

“Water seepage?” Sat asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes, you know… water leaking out from under the pool down there. I mean… look at them out there, Sat.” Doli gestured back toward the circus tent. “A little odd, don’t you think?”

Sat looked over and I shifted my eyes as best I could from this angle and distance and saw several adults gawking over the slowly rising tent. What struck me as the oddest though was that the local adults looked eerily similar in their facial expressions as the kids that were with them.

“Maybe…” Sat said, now with a little less confidence in his voice. “Maybe in 50 or so years we should be worried, but I think we’ll be fine for now. Besides, this area has often protected itself from such things and we and everyone who comes here seems to be able to adapt around it. Remember when the first plantation was erected near here?”

“Yes… I thought it was the end of our people forever…” Doli said mournfully.

“But we survived and we’re still here long after that place burned and then rotted away to almost nothing.” Sat almost seemed to puff out his chest as if he was boasting with that statement.

“A blessing from the gods, perhaps,” Doli mused.

“Perhaps… but you know what my father always says… this is the most magical place in the land… hard to argue with that.” Sat peered back out the window and to the trees beyond the tent’s location.

“Yes… these babies are a testament to that…” I wiggled furiously under the bottle, but my efforts were all in vain. I didn’t have time to mourn my loss of power over even my own limbs or fate though.

“Waaah! Waaah!” Two ungodly wails suddenly erupted from the room I had seen earlier while I was getting changed that contained several cribs.

“That must be Hector and Bernardo realizing they’ve been regressed… again,” Doli noted.

‘Wait… Hector… Bernardo… oh God! Was this to be my fate for the next hundreds of years like them!’ I panicked momentarily, only to be quickly shushed by a soothing Doli.

“One would think after 400 years they would learn, but…” Sat shook his head. “Oh, never mind… You take one and I take the other?”

“Deal.” Doli then turned to me. “Looks like you’ll be joining the others now. Maybe you’ll learn better than they have…”

“Maybe… but you know, they remind me of something,” Sat mused as he stood up.

“What?” Doli asked, standing up herself, with me still in her arms as I got close to finishing the bottle I had been working on.

“If the others out there ever come and try to find the waters again… we know just how to deal with them.”

“Yes,” Doli agreed and then turned down to look at me. “Isn’t that right, widdle Bradley?”

It was enough to scare me, and I could feel a little warmth occurring in my diaper directly correlating to my fear. My face scrunched up and I had a feeling that once the bottle was finished, they would know just how much I knew of what I mistake I had made. I doubted I could hold back my tears of regret for long in this current state.

Both smiled at me in their triumph, and I couldn’t help but think back as they laid me down in a playpen. Now, I only wished that I had just stuck with digging in the desert like everyone else had. ‘What was a mummy’s curse compared to this?’ I shuddered at what could have been and only kicked my legs out in frustration as the two continued to look on at my helpless form, before departing for the nursery to attend to the former conquistadors. ‘Stupid cursed water…’ I finished the bottle, spit it out, and joining in on the despair of my new nursery mates, I then began to wail as loud as I could.