ONE #2
Amelia had dedicated her career to arcane physics, having studied the origins of magic for almost ten years.
She was one of the leading scholars in magical physics and the properties of the Monolith structures.
Amelia had a firm belief that magic was an energy to be controlled, studied, and harnessed as a natural force produced by the twin Monoliths—not some mystical energy.
Their warring views and differing approaches had always created a chasm of misunderstanding between them. Amelia was constantly in danger of dislodging her eyeballs from her head from the sheer number of times she rolled them in his presence.
Silas wandered over to where she sat, and when his dusty boots entered her line of sight, Amelia squinted up to him, finding it difficult to see him with the bright sun directly above.
Silas stood over her, the sun blazing off his blonde hair and giving him a damned halo.
Of course he’d look like that.
Tall, lithe, and unnaturally graceful, Silas moved as if the world had been built for him and not the other way around.
With his alabaster skin and bright hair paired with icy blue eyes, Silas was unusually pleasing to look at, from a completely aesthetic standpoint.
It was a shame that his personality slid him firmly off the attractive scale.
And don’t even get her started on his aristocratic smirk, borne from his family’s obscene fortune.
He was stunningly, infuriatingly perfect.
And he knew it.
“This might be a variation of the old glyphs mages use to power devices,” Silas mused, glancing between his notes and the wall. “From a quick look, it’s talking about an energy source, likely the Monoliths.”
“The Gemino Tribe predates the Monoliths,” Amelia corrected him, shading her eyes with one hand, “so I’d wager it’s referencing something older, something that came before.”
Silas made a quick noise of irritation and shifted to take a seat next to her.
He pointed to a rough version of a glyph he had drawn on his paper.
“This one means ‘twin’, or ‘dual connection’…” He shut his journal and raised his brows at her.
“Go ahead and tell me how that doesn’t scream North and South Monoliths? ”
Amelia shifted her jaw with rising irritation. Sometimes, she swore that Silas argued with her for pure enjoyment. There were times that his heart didn’t seem in it but continued to negate her out of sheer idiotic determination.
“Your confidence is loud, though your competence is not. Do you know what Gemino means?” Amelia said.
“I’m sure you’re dying to tell me.”
“‘Twin’, ‘pairing’ or ‘double’,” Amelia told him smugly before she leaned closer to him, nudging him with her shoulder.
She flipped open the cover of his leather-bound journal, tapping on the glyph they were arguing over with the end of her pencil.
“Context is everything, Finley. The Monoliths didn’t exist when this city thrived.
” He batted her pencil away like it had personally offended him.
“I guess we’ll find out as we explore the ruins further.”
“That we will,” she agreed, leaning back away from him.
Somara returned with a pinched expression and Amelia stood.
“Nothing to report, Dr. Winslow,” Somara said, her eyes flicking to the device in her hands, “though the numbers were jumping all over the place, it was hard to get an accurate read.”
Silas stood as well, coming over to Somara and craning his head to have a look at the device.
The poor young scholar craned her neck to look up at Silas as he leaned close to her with his focus on the screen, eyes wide with an enamoured look about her.
“Magic is highly disrupted here,” he explained while Somara blinked dazedly.
“It’s unlikely we can rely on these to keep us safe.
” Silas raised his eyes to look at Amelia.
“When we venture to the temple, we’ll need to be overly cautious, and keep the party small.
Perhaps just the two of us to scout first.”
Amelia kept his unusually serious gaze for a moment, a refusal on the tip of her tongue before she forced a nod and turned from them. It was not worth an argument, and she couldn’t deny that safety was paramount in a place like this.
She gritted her teeth, moving away from her fellow scholars.
Amelia didn’t know what unsettled her more, how often Silas challenged her, or the part of her that almost liked it, that wanted to be known.
She walked away towards the solitude of her own tent, ignoring the feeling.
Her eyes tracked over the little gathering of tents, spread out in a circle around a common area where a small campfire was being built in preparation for the coming sunset.
Their party had set up a perimeter around the site of hanging arcane lamps to keep the Rift Crawlers away, but with the unstable magic, the fires’ warm, crackling light was the safety net they all needed.
Their entire party had ten people. Amelia and Silas were the lead scholars for the excavation, with Halpert as a senior scholar.
They each had two junior scholars as assistants to the dig and had been assigned a navigator specialist seeing as all their navigation devices would short out while in the Rift.
The last two of the party were the…well, they were the muscle.
Hired mercenaries for lack of a better description, to protect them in the event that something terrible happened.
Amelia hoped the mercenaries would be very bored over the course of their time there.
She ducked into her tent. Slinging her backpack from her shoulder, she wandered over to the small table pushed up against the wall of her tent and browsed over the set of books she had brought.
With a sigh, she concluded what she already knew.
Her runic translations were mostly modern, whereas the glyphs she needed to interpret were much older.
“Knock knock,” came a voice from behind her.
Amelia didn’t need to turn. Silas. Of course . She gritted her teeth and turned to find him holding the flaps open and peering inside as though he owned the place.
“We’re finishing up for the night,” he said, “securing camp before the sun disappears.”
“Mm-hm,” Amelia replied, stacking her books in deliberately neat piles.
“Right, then,” he said, already turning to leave.
She sighed. “Wait.”
Silas paused, glancing back at her over his shoulder. She took in a deep breath, already regretting what she was about to do.
“Can I borrow the translation texts you have with you?”
He raised a brow at her and smirked with a small shake of his head, as if she’d said something hilarious.
“What?” she demanded, crossing her arms.
“Oh, I’m sorry…were you asking for my help?
” His grin widened, delighting in the moment.
“I was just basking in the glory of being needed by someone who thinks she has all the answers.” Amelia glared at him.
Silas laughed, clearly pleased with himself.
“Fine, I’ll bring one to you. I’m sure I can learn to share. ”
She narrowed her eyes on him. “I’ll be sure to send a thank you note when I publish about my discoveries here,” Amelia muttered.
Another low laugh, rumbling around her small tent. Silas gave her one last look before he turned and left, the flap falling shut behind him.
She exhaled sharply.
One day. It hadn’t even been one full day and she already felt smothered by his presence. This excavation had once been her dream. Now, it was being shared with the one person who made her want to dig a hole and bury him in it.
Emerging from her tent, Amelia made a beeline straight across the campsite towards Silas’ own private quarters, boots crunching softly in the cooling sand. Silas was crouched across the site, rifling through the food stores, his back to her.
She hesitated, wondering if she should wait for him to bring her the text as he had said, but within a second Amelia had made the decision, his parting smirk lingering in her mind.
Amelia would find it herself. She may need the knowledge of a book he had brought, but she didn’t need him .
The bright flames of the campfire crackled away in the centre of the camp. The sun was starting its descent, casting an orange glow across the plains of sand that stretched as far as the eye could see.
She might call it beautiful if she didn’t know better.
She pushed aside the flaps to Silas’ tent and strode inside.
Amelia paused at the threshold, glancing around the space.
Given Silas’ general air of perfection, she expected his tent to be unnaturally neat and put together.
But she found the dimly lit space littered with items strewn about the floor.
His sleeping bag and crumpled pillow lay in a messy heap beside his bedroll.
Books were stacked in precarious piles in a corner, ranging from brand new to looking like they would fall apart should they be touched.
Wrappers and an empty drink container lay near her feet.
She raised a sceptical brow. Had there not been the pile of books and the open scroll on the small table to her left denoting ‘ Artefacts of the Rift’ , Amelia might have thought she’d stumbled into the wrong tent.
Her lip curled. “Charming.”
She stepped carefully through the mess and crouched next to the stacks of books.
There were tomes on ancient civilisations, magical relics, and celestial alignments…
and then there were a few bound in cracked, red leather that had no title on the spines.
They drew her attention immediately, and Amelia peered curiously over her shoulder to the flaps of his tent, which swayed lazily in the gentle breeze.
Heart racing at the thought of being caught snooping, Amelia looked back before pulling out one of the leather-bound tomes and opening it to a random page.