To Lyger 0: Magic? He is a wizard/sorcerer, after all! Remember, Night Bat is over 1000 years old himself, kept alive by his abuse of his miraculous. Dhuan has lived at least as long as Nerarchos because of his physiology.
The water around them swirled, flashes of steam rising past their faces and expanding into bubbles that created a veil, obscuring the surrounding water from view. Eddies flowed around from seven bodies moving in all directions, buffeting Poseidon as he tried to regain his balance. With a dismissive wave of his trident, Poseidon pushed away the bubbles, revealing the distant ridge and its swirls of seaweed, seeming to blow in the current. The dark hole that Peregrino del Mar had spotted remained in the same place – was that were Nerarchos lived, or did something else lurk within? Still the water swirled around him; Poseidon found himself rotating in a small current put off by Aqua Bug and Aqua Noir as they swam in a tight circle around the group while Hato Gozen rotated frenetically above them. Gripping his trident in both hands, Poseidon focused on the power lurking below the surface and held the trident steady, vertical in front of him. Almost at once, a ripple expanded out from the trident, stilling the water around them.
"Thanks," Aqua Noir told him sheepishly. "I'm… not exactly used to moving around underwater like this. Cats and water, right?"
Poseidon's mouth set in a thin line. "It's fine. But it won't help matters if we panic – especially down here." Without looking at Aqua Noir, he slowly rotated in place, scanning the ruins around them for any sign of Nerarchos. Below them, a half-dozen smaller pillars lay strewn on the seafloor around the large mosaic. Radiating out from the mosaic he could see five or six square foundation stones, arrayed in an expanding spiral pattern. Near two of the foundations lay the remains of stone roofs, squared off blocks whose angular corners had been rounded by the water. Open space separated this group of ruins from the next-closest district.
Nowhere for Nerarchos to hide. Once again, the seafloor around them was quiet and lonely.
"So, what are we going to do?" wondered Neptune, glancing at Poseidon and raising an eyebrow dubiously.
"I thought I saw movement from that cave over there," Peregrino del Mar answered. "Should we check it out?"
Aqua Noir pursed his lips, his eyebrows furrowed intently. "I don't know," he admitted. "There could be something worse in that cave. And that would be drawing us away from the ruins themselves. This is what we came for, after all."
"Well, yeah," Peregrino del Mar interjected, giving Aqua Noir a concerned look. "But when we came here, we weren't exactly expecting to find a resident."
"Are you suggesting that we should leave?" demanded Hato Gozen, folding her arms.
"It might not be a bad idea," Poseidon pointed out. "Unless we can figure out exactly where Nerarchos went."
Hato Gozen shook her head curtly. "We've come too far to give up now," she retorted, her eyes narrowed. "We can't let him turn us away."
"Agreed," Aqua Bug answered, nodding. "Who knows when we'll be able to come back.?"
Aqua Noir gave his staff a testing twirl. "We still need to keep an eye out, just in case he comes back. And try to stay together"
Olivet fluttered her legs and sent a jet of air out behind her, propelling herself forward in the direction of the Sorcerers' Academy ruins. "We should keep moving," she called. "Just in case he returns."
Sharing a look, Aqua Noir and Aqua Bug raced after Olivet, skimming through the water with powerful kicks. Neptune swam after them, though he veered off after a few dozen meters, angling down to glide just above the seabed, swirling his net below him as he went and pushing away more of the sediment that had collected. Hato Gozen, still scanning the area around them, took a position well above the rest of the group, trailing slowly to keep the others in view. After a long minute, Poseidon finally followed the crowd, with Peregrino del Mar close behind him. As he swam, Poseidon paused every few meters, swinging around in a tight loop to search the water around them. More of the city came into view with each meter they swam towards what could only be the old center of the city. Examining the seascape as he went, Poseidon nodded slowly to himself, starting to recognize patterns in the layout. A spot that had to be an outdoor forum, delineated by the circular row of medium-height columns, was surrounded by another open-air section of the city – a bazaar? Several of the outlying districts seemed to consist almost exclusively of small foundation stones – precisely the correct size for a house. Poseidon tried to commit the entire city plan to memory to diagram out later, once they were back on dry ground. How would the map of Atlantis compare to other ancient cities? How many of them had been influenced by Atlantis? From what the others said, the better question might be how many were not influenced by Atlantis! In its day, Atlantis had been the preeminent city of the world, until it had been destroyed. Even now, so much of its influence remained to be felt in the world.
If he ever got the chance, how many questions he would have to ask Nerarchos.
If the sorcerer didn't try to attack them first.
Poseidon scanned the water in all directions as he followed the others across the ruins, glancing back over his shoulder every couple minutes to make sure they weren't being followed. Hato Gozen and Peregrino del Mar stared back at him, raising their eyebrows dubiously, though at least once he caught Peregrino del Mar searching the ocean behind him. The water remained still and quiet around them, with no sign of Nerarchos visible nearby. A school of fish swam past them at an angle, moving toward the dark cave on the edge of the depression in which Atlantis' ruins had settled. A larger fish darted out of the seaweed surrounding one of the mosaics and caught one of the smaller fish in its mouth before sinking back out of sight with its prize.
Far in the distance ahead of him, Neptune paused in front of the largest building complex they had yet seen, three enormous rectangular impressions in the ground that jutted out from a central point, one of the buildings with two of its walls still mostly standing, and another with pieces of what had to be its roof collapsed on its side in the center of the structure. Aqua Bug floated near the center where the three structures met, leaning over to examine something near the base of the statue marking the central point. Poseidon's eyes widened in awe at the sight of what could only be the Sorcerers' Academy. Calling on the power within him, he sent a spiraling vortex through the water, power-washing away millennia of grime and silt from around the buildings. Images of animals appeared, carved into the stone. Starbursts and streaks interspersed between the carved animals. Poseidon drifted over to float directly above the central court, adjusting his water vortex downward to rinse away the grime. A mosaic emerged, an image of a seven-pointed star enclosed in a circle, the star's points tipped by different-colored gems, the carvings within the points eroded away by time and water.
"This is incredible," Poseidon breathed, floating around among the buildings and descending to the bottom. Sinking his hands into the silt, he carefully began clearing sediment away from the foundation, searching curiously. A handful of coins. An obsidian dagger which had somehow retained its edge. A few silver buttons. Though he couldn't date any of them right now, it would be child's play to date them once he was back in Athens. As he worked, the others swam around, pausing to examine the parts of the academy grounds, though without stopping for long in any one place. Slowly, Poseidon moved away from the central court and started into one of the buildings itself, where a large mound of seaweed filled most of the space. Poseidon cocked his head as he disturbed the seaweed wrapped around a column near the center of the building. A flash of color appeared near the end; cautiously, he pushed the seaweed away to reveal a mosaic set into the column, showing a black cat and a red beetle.
"I wonder what they used this building for," called Aqua Noir, drifting around the outside of the second building in the complex. "It all looks pretty open inside…"
Poseidon shoved the artifacts he had found into his pockets and swam in that direction. "It wasn't necessarily open on the inside," he pointed out to Aqua Noir as they dropped over the half-wall and swam slowly around the inside perimeter. "If the walls were wood, they would have rotted away long ago. Especially underwater like we are."
"Or petrified." Aqua Noir nodded toward one of the columns resting alongside the foundation.
Poseidon hummed, hovering directly above an exposed column and examining it carefully. Like all the other columns he had examined in the ruins, this one also had ridges carved into the stonework; unlike those other columns, the ridges were not perfectly uniform and straight, with slight imperfections: lines that did not run parallel, ridges that were not a uniform width. In a couple spots, a layer of stone appeared to be affixed above the ridges, flaring at the edges and thinner in some spots. He ran a finger along the stone, which was slightly textured – far from the smooth surfaces of the other stonework. "That's odd: they look like they have a wood grain… But why they would have chiseled in this particular design…" He cocked his head, glancing back at Aqua Noir. "Did you say petrified?"
"That's what a lot of the columns in New Atlantis are," Aqua Noir told him, gesturing toward the column in question. "They flash-petrified wood into stone since they didn't have enough stone on their island."
Poseidon blinked, staring at the column and moving around it more slowly. Now that he knew what to look for, the evidence was unmistakable. "How is that even possible?"
Aqua Noir quirked an eyebrow at him. "Would you say that it's… miraculous?"
"The temple should be just up ahead!" called Olivet from a spot a half-kilometer further away from the temple, waving them forward. Behind her was an imposing sight: a building that somehow had not collapsed, with a large open doorway to grant admittance. Aqua Bug and Hato Gozen paused for a long moment, staring at the massive structure in shock.
Looking down at the small hole he had excavated, Poseidon sighed. "I really need to come back with the rest of the team someday," he observed, brushing some of the last of the mud away from the column, exposing more of the wood grain, including several patches of what he could only assume had once been bark. Sighing, he turned away from the academy complex and swam after the others, pausing as he passed to observe a spot near the edge of the academy's far building where it appeared that the mud had been disturbed. Rising a little higher into the water, Poseidon leaned to one side to look over the edge of the roof, studying the disturbed mud more closely. Two panels of the flooring had been pried out and were nowhere to be seen. "Now where could those have gone?" Poseidon mused to himself, drifting in that direction.
"Spread out and look around," instructed Aqua Bug, looking around at the others as they gathered around her, outside of the enormous building. "There could be anything here – information, the Miracle Box, maybe even another miraculous!"
"Yes…" a deep, ominous voice seemed to whisper from all around them. A figure in a long dark suit and cloak floated out from inside the Temple, a slender sword held in one hand. He sneered, turning his predatory gaze from Aqua Bug to Hato Gozen before it finally settled on Olivet. "That would be nice, wouldn't it?"