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Finding the Lost and Forgotten

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Achkaerin:
Another Mystery

Melanie Bell stepped out of her bedroom pulling on a pale blue t-shirt, it was getting on for late morning and the noise of Elsion's comings and goings was in the usual groove of being the daily backing track. Melanie despite being the Countess of Elsion didn't live on the family estate, she didn't feel up to knocking around in the mansion all on her own, it was too full of memories for that - and they were happy ones of happier times. Instead Melanie lived in a flat in the city centre, it was pretty spacious, a good location, had an underground car park and was only a ten minute walk from Elsion University and about a twenty minute walk from the office, so it was pretty much everything she needed it to be. She walked into the open planned living area, made herself a cup of tea and sat down on the sofa. It felt good to not have anything that pressing to deal with, it meant for once she could read up on stuff - as a Cultist the developments in Phukbridge had intrigued her, especially as she'd written her dissertation on Paul the Explorer's second wife Anezaki Ayanami.

Her little bit of a daydream was interrupted by the doorbell, otherwise known as the buzzer indicating someone wanted to see her, which Melanie took as weird given that she wasn't expecting anybody. She went to her flat's door and picked up the phone that was tied to the doorbell, she watched as the small screen that showed who was waiting came to life displaying a man she didn't recognize.
"Hello?" Melanie asked
"My name is Sebek-em-of, Professor Men-nu Sebek-em-of from Ashmaremu University." the man said "I knew your father."
"What can I do for you Professor?" Melanie asked
"I need your help with something Ms Bell." Men-nu said
"Ok come up." Melanie said, she pushed the button that opened the main door and a few moments later she was letting Men-nu into the actual flat.

"Thank you for seeing me." Men-nu said
"Can I get you a drrink?" Melanie asked
"No thank you." Men-nu said he saw the necklace that Melanie wore, a simple Cultist one, a silver chain with a sword pendant "Interesting that you are a Cult of Helus follower while your father was a Christian."
"My mother was a Cultist." Melanie said "My Dad's side of the family call my joining the Cult my teenage rebellion. So what can I help you with?"
"This." Men-nu said he'd been carrying a long roll of paper which he now placed on Melanie's dining table and unrolled it, placing paperweights at each corner "Do you recognize it?"

"Just about." Melanie said looking at what was essentially a blown up map "This is the tomb of Amentuankh. Pharaoh of Abydos in the sixth century BC. My father was one of the leaders of the team that excavated the tomb about fifteen years ago."
"He was the leader." Men-nu said "I assisted him as did Brian Raines among others. Do you know why Amentuankh was of interest to us back then?"
"I know my father's theory." Melanie said "Around 550 BC Abydos and the Rus Empire were embroiled in a pretty bloody war, Amentuankh then a Prince supposedly either saw or got hold of some Christian relics in the midst of the conflict. Which is why you spent a good few years tracking this tomb down and then what you thought was there wasn't, cue the beginning of my father's fall from grace."
"Correct. But last week this wall here." Men-nu said tapping the piece of paper "Fell down revealing a hidden chamber." he now placed a piece of see through plastic on top of the map which showed the location and shape of the new chamber.
"And what was in there?" Melanie asked
"That's the strange thing there's nothing in the way of what we'd expect to see, no treasures, no gold, no jewels, no weapons or anything like that." Men-nu said "It's like one big cartouche."
"So no physical treasures but treasures of the mind." Melanie said "Interesting. Ok I'll bite what does the cartouche say?"
"We don't know." Men-nu said "Your father had the expertise in this area. It's a particulary obscure language."

"Do you have a source text?" Melanie asked "A copy of the glyphs?"
"On here." Men-nu said putting an external hard drive on the table "Can you figure out what it says?"
"If I do this I'll want to see the chamber, glyphs are tricky at the best of times." Melanie said "Leave it with me and I'll call you later tonight."
"Ok." Men-nu said placing a business card on the table "I'm at the Premier Inn over on Market Street, I'll be waiting for your call."

A few hours later Melanie was in one of the lecture theatres of Elsion University more specifically it was the lecture theatre that was where Brian Raines taught students history and archaeology, while Melanie perched on the desks at the front row of seats Brian stood next to where she was perched while Brian's wife Alexandra paced around, all three of them looking at the projector screen where some of the glyph text was displayed.

"To think that Amentuankh's tomb had a hidden chamber like this." Brian said "It's remarkable."
"If this proves that your Dad was right." Alexandra said "You might manage to get his reputation back."
"It's a pretty big if though." Brian said "Without knowing what this cartouche says."
"Well there's only one way to be certain what it says." Melanie said "I've got my Dad's language notes I can translate some of this but I don't know if it's accurate because some of the glyphs are very similar in appearance but have vastly different meanings."
"So you're planning a trip to Abydos by the sounds of it." Brian said
"Yes." Melanie said
"Well you'll be fine with Men-nu." Brian said "He may be a little bit ecentric at times but he's a good guy."
"I'll bear that in mind." Melanie said
"Just be careful." Alexandra said
"Always am." Melanie said "But I can't turn this down."

"So like your father." Brian said "Same adventurer's spirit."
"Perhaps." Melanie said she was taking her phone out and dialling a number "Men-nu it's Melanie Bell I'm in."

Achkaerin:
The Tomb

Melanie had spent the flight down to Abydos staring into space, she couldn't quite believe that after all these years, something new had been discovered in Amentuankh's tomb. It didn't mean that her father's theory was right, there was still no proof of that but proof or no proof she was in a hopeful mood. The drive in the jeep from the airport out to the dig site had equally as hopeful though Natasha's driving was at risk of turning that hope into something else.

"Natasha we're not going to be able to do anything if we don't get there in one piece." Melanie said as the jeep bounced a little off the sand
"Hey you know I'm better on sea than on the land." Natasha said "What's the urgency anyway?"
"Your Dad never told you?" Melanie asked
"No." Natasha said
"Amentuankh was a Pharoah of Abydos centuries ago back when the country was a significant player in the north." Melanie said "He led a notable campaign against the Rus Empire including some skirmishes in what is modern day Vanora. My father believed he might have come into contact with some missing Christian artifacts, as a Pharoah if he had such things he'd have been buried with them but when the tomb was found they weren't there which was when he started to lose his reputation."
"And now Men-nu has found something?" Natasha asked
"A new chamber that Dad didn't find." Melanie said "Apparently it may hold some answers."
"It sounds like a longshot." Natasha said
"They're the best kind." Melanie said

Half an hour later the gang, because they'd all insisted on Melanie dragging them along, had met Men-nu and were exploring the tomb, it was dusty but that was to be expected, Melanie, Lori and Rosalie stepped into the new chamber and each of them gasped.
"I've seen something's in my time following you around on wild rides Melanie but this takes the cake." Lori said shining her flashlight around the room "The hieroglyphics are magnificent, a little dusty and worn in places but magnificent nontheless."
"Can you work your magic?" Melanie asked
"Yes but it's going to take a while to do it." Lori said "We're talking analysing each symbol."
"Sooner you start the sooner you finish." Melanie
"Leon!" Lori called into the main chamber, her brother Leon appeared quickly
"Yeah sis?" Leon asked
"We're going to be doing a little bit of ID work get the bots." Lori said
"Bots?" Men-nu asked
"Swarmbots." Lori said "They have their uses for stuff like this. We use them when we need to catalogue a find such as this chamber, we'll outfit each one with a camera and let them record each symbol and map the room."
"I presume the camera's have filters that allow you to go beneath the surface?" Men-nu asked
"That's the idea." Rosalie said "We apply the filters and we can figure out precisely what we're looking at, even something worn away on the surface with leave indentations beneath the surface."
"We've got the battery power to run through the night so there's that. Hopefully be able to have something by tomorrow afternoon." Lori said
"Do it." Melanie said

Melanie left the tomb, she needed some air, she walked a few metres away from the site and took in the sunset, sipping some water as she did.
"What's up?" Rosalie asked coming to stand next to Melanie.
"It's just weird being here." Melanie said "Of all the things I could have got caught up in I have to go chasing the same thing my Dad did."
"There were a lot of Christian relics that supposedly went missing around this Pharoah's time, it has to be while Vanora somewhat flip flopped between Abydos and the Rus Empire." Rosalie said
"I hope so." Melanie said "Because if it's not then we're going to be running into walls we don't want to." 

Achkaerin:
The Text

The following morning the gang gathered around a table that was full of printouts and had an annotated map of the chamber on it. Hugo was doing his thing, he was a mathematician by qualification and for stuff like this he was certainly the best guy for the job.
"Ok so the new chamber, the cartouche as we call it can be broken down quite comfortably into different sections." Hugo said "There are about twenty five or so sections based off the content and context of the records."
"Sounds like a needle in a haystack." Nicolas said
"It would be if we didn't know that we were looking at the time before Amentuankh was crowned Pharoah." Melanie said smiling a little, this was reasonable progress after all, she looked at Hugo "So break it down Hugo."
"Ok the fourteenth section talks of his coronation so we can eliminate that section and the ones after it." Hugo said "The first section is a longwinded introduction of who Amentuankh was, it's like that chapter in the Christian Bible that recounts Jesus's ancestry with all the names. There's a couple of sections on his upbringing, one on his marriage and all that. I think based off an initial glance that what we're looking for lies in the eighth, ninth and tenth sections. Those appear to depict his time at war with the Rus Empire."
"So we need to take a detailed look at those?" Melanie said, Hugo nodded.

So the gang sat around the tent reading through the translations of the text in detail. It took them a while but gradually they started narrowing it down bit by bit until finally Rosalie let out a triumphant 'aha'
"What have you got?" Melanie asked
"Something interesting to say the least." Rosalie said she put the text she'd been reading on the table "It says 'Although I was able to sack the holy city of those non-believers I knew I would not be able to hold it. That was never my intent anyway. I came in search of their relics to take from them that which was held sacred by them, but these were not to be found within the city, according to one elder my men questioned what we had come for had been taken out of the city prior to our arrival, a subsequent search of the city by my men confirmed that he was telling the truth while questioning of others eventually yielded the direction of travel, south.'"

"South." Melanie repeated "So assuming this is accurate that means Tamora, Royal Seleucid and Slava Lavosk area."
"Within modern context yes." Rosalie said "But they could be much further afield than that."
"Let's hope not." Melanie said "Still not where I'd I've wanted this to lead."
"Well Jewel of the Desert is coming up." Rosalie said "We could probably find someone or something that gives us some information about what happened next."
"What we need is the Midaranye history of that time period in detail if we're going to piece this together." Melanie said "But the festival is the right place to start in any event."

Achkaerin:
Saint Peter's Way

After the Jewel of the Desert Festival it had been back to Elsion and days of reading through the various documents that they'd managed to buy, what didn't help was that most of it was in languages that in modern Mundus were considered dead or spoken by very few people. Fortunately the gang had called in a favour from their friends at the Achkaerin University of Arts and Culture and were joined at this stage of their investigation by Michelle Walker and her lecturer, not to mention Achkaerin's CETO representative, Doctor Donna Steele, it also meant that Melanie's flat was far more crowded than usual as they all sat around the place trying to decipher what the various texts they'd got said, desperately searching for even the slightest link to what happened after Amentuankh sacked Jerusalem.

"The cartouche has nothing." Rosalie McLean said, she was sat at what passed for Melanie's desk.
"That's interesting." Donna said
"How so?" Leon Downing asked
"The cartouche you found is essentially the record of Amentuankh's life it's sort of like a greatest hits album." Donna said "You can prove that Christian relics were removed from Jerusalem presumably by the Vanoran's in the days before Amentuankh sacked the city. Now if Amentuankh had actually captured those relics afterwards and it's probable that he tried wouldn't you expect that to be mentioned?"
"Yes." Brian Raines said "Failing to do so would be a significant failure and embarrassment on his part so he'd likely erase it from the history."
"He doesn't have them so they got away." Donna said "But where did they go?"

"I may have something on that." Michelle said "One of the scrolls in that box you brought back from the festival is written in a now extinct script that died out in the area around the seventh century." she was pouring over the scroll magnifying glass in one hand while her other hand held a pen that hovered over a notepad "Yeah this could be it.
"What is it?" Donna asked
"It's a letter from a small Christian community that at the time seems to have been in modern day Tamora." Michelle said "It describes how a small group of Vanoran's came through the settlement carrying something."
"Does it say what?" Melanie asked
"A chest reflecting gold, with a lid depicting angels atop it carried by staves." Michelle said, Melanie closed her eyes for a moment and then left the flat in silence Donna looked at Brian
"You never told her did you?" Donna asked "You never told her what her father was really chasing."
"No." Brian said "Jonathon became obsessed by it to the extent that it consumed him, if she'd known she could have gone the same way. Never underestimate the rabbit hole." Jonathon was Melanie's deceased father, like her he'd been an archaeologist who'd become maligned by the community due to his chasing of things such as this.
"Well you'd better go and talk to her." Donna said 

Melanie had managed to get down the stairs, out of the building, across to the park and had even managed to purchase an ice cream by the time Brian caught up to her.

"Melanie..." Brian said
"You should have told me." Melanie said "A chest being carried on staves with a lid depicting angels did you honestly think I wouldn't recognize what it was? That I wouldn't know the general description of the Arc of the Covenant?"
"Of course not you're much too intelligent for that." Brian said "But this quest destroyed your father. I don't want you to go the same way."
"And if he was right?" Melanie asked
"Then prove he was right." Brian said "But make sure that you lay this ghost to rest before it becomes your life's obsession."
"Do you think he was right?" Melanie asked
"I never doubted that Christian relics were moved, that much made sense." Brian said "I found his theory of it being the Arc fanciful though. But that's not the question - the question is what do you believe?"
"I've always believed in my father ever since I was a kid just learning about the wonder of history." Melanie said "I'm not going to stop now."

A few minutes later Melanie returned to the flat with Brian just behind her
"Are you ok?" Natasha, Brian's daughter and probably Melanie's closest friend, asked
"I'm fine what have we got?" Melanie asked
"The settlement the letter comes from no longer exists but it mentions the river Shatt al-Arab." Michelle said
"Which gives us a location in the Kingdom of Altai which essentially is immediately south of Vanora." Donna said
"It's Saint Peter's Way." Melanie said going to the nearest bookcase and pulling a map off the shelves before unravelling it on her dining room table.
"Saint Peter's Way?" Rosalie asked

"The spread of Christianity out of Vanora occurred through people travelling to other nations across Mundus and sharing their belief's, that's how you get a load of settlements in Altai that are of the Arab-Christian variety. We also know from the history of the Ecclesiastical State that the man responsible for founding that nation somehow journeys to that land from Vanora, the man in question is believed to be St Peter so the route he travelled became known as St Peter's Way." Melanie said slowly tracing the route on the map "However the route is older than that, consider that Attica the most southerly part of Tamora historically enjoys Christian roots and is a port."

"Take the cargo from Jerusalem south to Attica and then by sea elsewhere most likely Ecclesiastical State." Brian said "Makes sense but the cargo never arrived so it got lost somewhere along the way."
"It's a little more problematic than that." Donna said "A group of Vanoran's whether small or large and on foot is not going to be able to outrun an Abydonian army of the time given that they were cavalry focused. They'd never make it to Attica they'd be caught and massacred but that's inconsistent with what we're led to believe by the documented account."

"There's only one way we're going to find the answer to this." Melanie said "Pack your bags we're going to Tamora."
"Is that wise?" Brian asked
"Probably not but that's where the answers are." Melanie said

Achkaerin:
The Secret of Shatt al-Arab

Tamora wasn't a nation that Melanie had ever imagined she'd end up on one of these mysteries, they'd flown to Vanora and travelled the rest of the distance by jeep convoy crossing the border and following their maps to where the river Shatt-al-Arab intersected with Saint Peter's Way. The Sun was high and the air was humid, so much so that Melanie had foregone her almost synonymous leather jacket for a sleeveless white t-shirt, she wiped her brow as she surveyed the area with her eyes for the first time, everyone else involved was setting up equipment. Melanie started walking around the area her eyes narrowed in thought, going over everything they knew so far.

"Ok" it was Doctor Donna Steele who kicked things off "Jerusalem is that way" she pointed at the horizon "So this is the path to Attica."
"It's a plain" Rosalie McLean said "So if the Abydonian's caught up with them here it's a massacre of Vanoran's being run down and slaughtered."
"Any other battles of note happen around here?" Nicolas Mackenzie asked
"None that we know of." Brian Raines said
"Melissa get Apollo to work its magic." Donna said
"Already on it." Melissa Cunningham said, she was another of Donna's post graduate students, though probably the closest to protégé of them. Melissa had a laptop powered up and operational it was showing a map of the area they were standing in.
"What's Apollo?" Rosalie asked
"Apollo is a satellite that allows us to look beneath the surface and see what lies beneath." Melissa said, she pressed a few buttons and the screen now showed what was beneath the surface of where they were standing.

"Oh my word." Donna said looking over Melissa's shoulder "That's not what I expected."
"How so?" Leon Downing asked
"All of these shapes." Melissa said indicating large grey segments on the screen "Are most likely large concentrations of skeletons. I'd almost say battle formations."
"And they're scattered around enough to suggest a battle." Donna said "But that doesn't make sense, the Vanoran's are at a huge disadvantage here, if they had the time to get into formation then they were offering combat here. And against a likely highly mobile and cavalry based army offering battle on a plain is asking for death."

Melanie was crouching on the riverbank looking at the water, staring at her reflection she'd heard the conversation and she agreed with Donna that it didn't make sense for a Vanoran army of that time to offer battle to an Abydonian army of the time because there was no way on this terrain that the Vanoran's would win, so why offer the battle if you couldn't win? Then she smiled.
"Because it's not about winning it's about something else." she muttered, then she got up and turned to the group "What time of year did this go down?"
"Winter." Brian said "If the dating on the cartouche is accurate then this all happened in the winter months."
"I think I know what happened." Melanie said "There's only one reason you'd offer battle on this terrain when you know you're at a disadvantage."
"Which is?" Rosalie asked
"Delay." Melanie said "Put yourself in the Vanoran commander's shoes, if you're smart you've got scouts out front and watching your back so assuming that's true then you'd know that you're being run down. But you get here, a river with a high water level and a fierce current. You've got maybe a day's advantage over your pursuers what do you do? What's your objective?"
"Assuming that we're right about what they were carrying." Leon said "To keep that out of Abydonian hands."

Suddenly there was a chuckle from Donna who was now looking across the river, she'd got there.
"Your father always said you were brilliant Melanie." Donna said "Go on."
"Leon's right." Melanie said "So to keep it out of Abydos hands you send it across the river probably with a small guard. Let's say we're right about their advantage you send it across under the cover of darkness, give them enough time to get out of sight before the sun comes up and then when the Abydonian's come over the hill you fight them to buy time for the Ark to get away. By the time the battle's over the Abydonian's have lost a day and have an obstacle that they can't cross quickly."
"And if you're travelling light which the Vanoran's are and you're small in number you can lie low and make your distance each day until you get to Attica." Brian said "Guess I call the local authority?"
"Yeah." Melanie said, the only way that they were going to be able to prove their working hypothesis was to get their hands dirty and dig, and for that they needed the authorities permission.
 

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