Legends of Amacia Rise of the Caverias

Two hours later, Hanna left the Teacher on a mission. She moved through the tower machinery like a ghost, knowing exactly where she was going. Upon entering a small elevator, the door sealed her in and the elevator started to descend. For twenty minutes the elevator sank. Suddenly, one side of the elevator’s wall vanished as it emerged into a great shaft that appeared to be bottomless. The shaft was a thousand yards wide. The walls were lined with the same machinery/crystal combination that lined the core of the Temple of Tiamat. Energy surges ran up and down the shaft as the elevator dropped. This looks familiar, Hanna thought as she looked into the abyss, touching a transparent wall that separated her from the shaft. Thirty minutes later, she began to see a light from the bottom. Hanna looked down from the elevator, seeing below her a lake of molten rock with a gigantic spire sitting in the middle of the lake rising nearly four thousand feet from the lake’s surface. It reminded her of the Temple of Tiamat’s core. As she approached the spire in the elevator, more detail came into view. “Hmmm. Interesting,” she mumbled as the elevator approached the spire. It consisted of seventy percent crystal and thirty percent metal...a metal she couldn’t identify. The spire glowed softly as small charges jumped between it and the walls. About half way down the spire, the elevator became enclosed again and within ten minutes, the elevator bottomed out in the core of the Tower nearly three miles beneath the island.

The elevator door slid open and Hanna followed her nose down the passage, watching for traps. She did not encounter any though as she walked three hundred yards to a stone door, which opened of its own accord as she approached. Entering a replica of the control center of the core in Tiamat, Hanna noticed this one was bigger and the console was labeled bilingually in the Stone Language and Atlantean. She walked around the console and saw the view port in the side of the room so she went to it, looking out into the core. The view port showed that she stood a thousand feet above a lava lake with the central spire being three hundred yards across rising out of sight from the lake of boiling rock. Hanna watched the molten rock bubble and pop, swirling around the base of the spire. Energy surges ran up and down the spire like lightning. “Yes. I know this place. It’s just like Tiamat,” she said aloud to no one.

Walking back to the console, Hanna examined it and found the access point, keying the sequence in. The console promptly lit up and a hologram of the core appeared above the console. She looked at the console and murmured, “Where are you? Where are you?” Hanna manipulated the console, and within minutes, had run a diagnostic on the core and the machinery of the Red Tower. The core was running flawlessly, generating enough power per second to run the entire western hemisphere for twelve hours. Within a few more minutes, she isolated the portal generator...where it was and where its damaged circuits were located. “Ahh, there you are,” she said with satisfaction as she used the console to show her exactly where the damage was to the portal generator. The main power leads had been damaged by a cave-in. “Hmmm. Maybe if I reroute the power around the damaged section, we can get the portal running again,” she muttered while keying in a sequence into the panel. “That should do it. Now, let’s set this thing to fix the damage.” Hanna keyed in another sequence and the core trembled as a small power surge rushed out of the spire and arced up the shaft. “That should do it,” she said with satisfaction, “Now to find out whether it works or not.” She left the control room, heading back to the elevator that took her back up to the main part of the Tower. An hour and twenty minutes later, Hanna entered the portal chamber and looked around. “Boy, I’m glad I looked at the schematics to this place or I would be utterly lost in here. The machinery in here is worse than it is at Tiamat,” she muttered while looking at the portal chamber.

The chamber and portal generator were an exact copy of the one at Tiamat, only smaller. The circular chamber spanned about two hundred feet across with a ninety-foot domed ceiling. The crystal machinery of the portal generator rose to the ceiling. An eighty-foot wide platform sat underneath the machinery rising six feet above the main floor. The control platform sat in the exact configuration that it did in Tiamat. Hanna walked up to it and immediately noticed that the controls were labeled in both the Stone Language and Atlantean. She quickly looked over the console, saw the telltale remote earpiece, and picked it up. Gently placing it in her ear, she touched the console and it lit up. A grapefruit-size crystal on the top of the platform glowed softly, and then a hologram flashed out of it showing the whole world, which intrigued her.

“Hmm, I wonder,” Hanna mused as she zoomed in on Tiamat. The hologram zoomed in until Tiamat was in view. However, the hologram shook and buzzed with static. She manipulated the console controls and within ten minutes, she had cleared up the interference. She was seeing outside of the Temple shield. With a couple more moves, she tried to penetrate into the portal chamber but it wouldn’t do it. “Oh, well, let me try someplace else. Maybe my old house,” she muttered. The hologram changed and Hannibal’s old house spot appeared clear as a bell. The ruins of his house were still black with the chimneys lay fallen over. “Now to see if this puppy works,” she murmured. Power suddenly entered the machine. The crystals hummed and resonated as the air became charged with raw power. Her hair stood on end as energy bolts sprang from the crystals and met in the middle, forming a twelve-foot glowing sphere. The whole Tower trembled as the portal machinery sprang to life. In seconds, the portal was open. She walked over to it as Enoch, Nemesis, Nathanael, Andrew, and Hunter ran into the chamber. Hanna heard them enter and turned to them, standing in front of the portal ring as energy flashed and glowed in the ring. It cast Hanna’s shadow on the platform in front of her.

“What’re you doing?” Enoch asked as they ran up. Both of the Sons of Thunder were impressed that Hanna had gotten the machine working.

“Just fixing the portal so we can use it; I was just about to make a trial run,” Hanna said as she turned to the portal.

“Where is that?” Andrew asked.

“That, my boy, is where I used to live in the country of the United States of America. As you can see, that’s what the masters of the universe did to my home when they tried to capture me. Fortunately, I was too slick for them. I’d left before they came so they burned the place to the ground out of spite. I just wanted to walk my old home grounds again.”

“I can understand that,” Enoch said. “But wouldn’t it be a safer test if you opened it just outside the tower in case something were to go wrong? That way, if you were not able to use it to return you could still get back here.”

Hanna smiled, saying, “Good call. Let me just change this to outside the tower.” With the remote, she thought of right outside the tower and the portal ring closed up into a sphere, and then reopened outside the tower. “Okay then, who wants to do the honors?” Hanna asked.

Hunter immediately stepped forward, saying, “I’ll do it.” Before anyone could stop him, he stepped through the portal, emerging outside the tower. He stopped and looked around. “Interesting,” he said as he turned and went back into the portal chamber through the portal.

“I’d say that is a successful test,” Hanna said, pleased that the portal worked properly. “How do you feel, Hunter? Are there any sensations that we need to know about?”

Hunter thought for just a second, and then said, “No. I feel the same.”

“No tingling or weird sensations?” Hanna probed.

Hunter shook his head and said, “No. I feel all right. It just felt a little strange moving like that. I’ve never done that before.”

Hanna nodded, saying, “You get used to it after a few times. The reason I asked is that if the portal isn’t running perfectly, it can damage you when you go through it. Enoch, is there any one here who knows how to use this thing?”

Enoch shook his head. “I don’t think so. This machine hasn’t worked since my dad rescued Electra, Kida, George, and Ben with it so there wasn’t any need in knowing how to use it. Why do you ask?” he answered.

Nemesis answered the question, saying, “She needs someone to operate it on this end and to close it when we’re through it. I suspect that she may want to use this device to move the people. I know that she’ll want to use it to go to Amacia. Am I right, Hanna?”

Hanna nodded, saying, “Yes. You’re correct in your assumption. Just think about it. Amacia is a desolate land of fire, ash, and poisonous fumes surrounded by deadly marshes, active volcanoes, and blistering deserts. And let’s not forget about the Emperor’s minions that are everywhere. The only chance we have to get Selina and those people out of there is with this machine. As of now, this is the only one in these lands that I know of that’s still functional. The only other one I knew of was in Arionath and was destroyed in order to keep the Emperor’s mitts off it. Use of this machine could be critical in this operation.”

“How difficult is it to use it?” Enoch asked.

“Not too terribly difficult,” Hanna answered, “All one needs is a clear and sound mind and knowledge of the places that we need to access. In fact, the Teacher could teach you how to use it in a matter of minutes.”

Enoch rubbed his chin and said, “Since we all have to go except for Elias, George and Ben, I think we should get Elias and show him how to use this thing.”

“Excellent suggestion,” Hanna agreed as she shut the machine down from the remote. “By the way, has anyone seen Argus?”

“He went back to Acheron yesterday,” Andrew reported. “He said that he needed to check on them and left a message to tell you where he went. He figured you’d find a way to repair the machines since you solved the riddle of the ancient machines in Arionath.”

Hanna grinned slightly, saying, “Argus is on top of things, as always.”

“Speaking of repairing the machines, how did you fix this contraption?” Enoch asked bluntly.

Hanna smiled wryly. “You’d be surprised what the Teacher can show you,” she replied. “I found the layout of this place and found the core. I learned how the machines worked, took that knowledge to the core, and used the main control panel there to reroute power to the portal before setting the machines to repairing the main power lines to the portal. It appeared that a cave-in caused a disruption in the power supply to the portal. But as you can see, I got it working.”

Enoch was flabbergasted, asking in amazement “What? You went to the core?”

Hanna nodded sheepishly, adding, “As a matter of fact, the power plant of this tower is very similar to the one in Tiamat. The only difference is the control panel is just a bit bigger and it’s labeled in Atlantean as well as what I call the Stone Language. It’s a very impressive machine, just like the one in Tiamat.”

Enoch marveled, saying, “I’ve been to the core only once and it took me three days to find my way out of there. And you say you went there and fixed the portal from the main control panel?”

Hanna nodded. “Yes, sir,” she declared. “I activated the diagnostic circuits and found where the problem was. From that point, it was just a matter of rerouting the power around the damaged circuit. I can tell you that without the Teacher, it would have been impossible. You see, every machine is different. The power plant of this tower is slightly different from that in Tiamat so I had to learn from the Teacher how to deal with the problem.”

“I see now,” Enoch replied as understanding came to him. “One question though.”

Hanna leaned on the console and said, “All right, brother, shoot.” Her reply puzzled Enoch so Hanna chuckled a little and clarified, saying, “Ask your question. My comment was a slang saying on the surface for ‘ask the question’.”

Enoch had to laugh, and then he asked, “What was on the cylinders?”

Hanna’s face sobered as she answered, “Those cylinders are a key and clue to one of the greatest treasures ever amassed. Come, let me show you something.” She led them away to her room.