"So this is it, huh?" Nate said skeptically. "This is the chapel of the moon?"
Chloe squinted and held up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. "I would've expected it to be a bit less... public?"
The four treasure hunters were standing on Ludgate Hill in London, coffees- and, in Cutter's case, pastries- in hand. Before them rose the beautiful St. Paul's cathedral: two wings stretched to either side with spires at the extreme ends, embellished with sculpted sculpted saints and religious figures, their watchful eyes staring down at passers-by, and surging up in the middle into a lovely arrangement of cornices, a colonnade, and a balcony fringed with stone balustrades before finally rising to the grand main dome, with its spire scraping the clouds at an impressive 365 feet up. Nate had seen it before, but it never failed to amaze.
"Well," Cutter said, licking his thumb as he polished off the rest of his pastry, "it's not as if it's just sitting out in the open, probably. Here's the thing," he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his leather jacket. "There's a theory that, before the cathedral, there was a temple to Diana here: the Roman goddess of hunting and of the moon, analogous to Artemis for the Greeks." He grinned in a way that suggested he was hoping for a compliment on his detective skills.
"Well, Sherlock," Chloe said, throwing him a very sarcastic bone. "So you think Newton was secretly some kind of Diana-cult adherent now, too?"
Cutter scoffed and looked offended by the idea. "What? No, I think he probably re-purposed an existing secret chamber for his top-secret alchemy gig."
Nate, gaze still uplifted toward the dome, pitched his head to one side and put his hands on his hips. "It's a plausible theory," he said in an upbeat tone.
"Especially compared to mine," Sully said around his cigar, sporting his typical green Havana shirt with several buttons undone. He plucked the cigar from his mouth and tapped it several times. "I was really scraping bottom: down to either contacting NASA or robbing the Moonlight Diner back home."
Nate chuckled to himself and rolled his eyes. He was dressed in a gray thermal Henley and dark blue jeans with Converse shoes, but noticed that, despite the presence of many of his regular wardrobe staples, he felt kind of naked without his shoulder holsters. Oh well, it wouldn't do to go charging in to some important public monument looking all conspicuous. He pulled out his journal and flipped through the pages until he found a copy of the note Newton had made about the chapel of the moon. It was right across from a drawing he had made of the puzzle in Xu Fu's lab: a caricatured sketch of the five of them staring in cartoonish awe at some gibberish writing and symbols that was being cast by a short and plump Chinese man with a goatee and dressed in a goofy-looking version of period-correct robes who was making shadow figures on the wall by holding his hands in front of a flashlight. He read the lines of writing copied from Newton's journal, then closed the book and stuck it back in his pocket.
"Well?" he said. "Let's get going."
Fortunately for them, there did not seem to be very many people visiting St. Paul's that day. The few that were were obviously tourists and not prone to being suspicious of a small group of four being a little extra nosy. As they wandered through, Nate ran his eyes over the gilded, Baroque-style details of the interior all the way up to the arched ceiling, and followed it down toward the nave. He felt in good spirits that day- in some ways it had been easier since Elena left. Not because she was gone, per se, but because it distanced him from the problem and allowed him to lose himself in the job at hand. He scowled, suddenly realizing how unhealthy that sounded.
"All right, mate?" Chloe asked cheerily.
"Uhm," Nate gave her a sideways glance. "Yeah, I'm fine," he mumbled, and pushed the thought to the back of his brain.
"So if you were going to hide a secret room in this place," Cutter postulated, "it would probably not be on the ground floor."
"...it would be in the crypt," Sully finished thoughtfully.
"Right."
Chloe's eyes were alight as she said, "Well then, let's get down there."
They quickly found the stairs and made their way down to the lower level of the cathedral: the crypt, where, despite the relative brightness of everything, a slightly more Gothic feel in the flare around the top of the many columns seemed to serve as a tribute to the creepy images that the word "crypt" generated in Nate's mind. As they passed a sarcophagus that was enshrined on a pedestal, Sully commented wryly, "Ahh, Lord Nelson, I presume?"
"Ha-ha, that's funny!" Nate shot back.
Eventually the group split up into pairs, more so organically than by a spoken agreement, and soon Nate and Sully were standing by themselves in front of the tomb of Christopher Wren, examining the words written on the wall above. "'Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice'," Sully stumbled through the Latin.
"'Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you' ," Nate interpreted. They exchanged a glance.
"D'ya think it's a clue?" Sully asked.
"No idea." Nate turned with his hands on his hips and swept his gaze over his surroundings, half expecting something to stand out from their current vantage point. He was interrupted by Chloe, who came up in a hurry.
"Nate, you might want to see this," she said, her voice low but urgent. She led them to an obscure corner of the crypt where there was a small alcove that was obviously not well-frequented. Immediately, Nate picked up on the subtle difference from the surrounding areas, but Chloe explained it anyway. "This wall," she said, motioning to the back of the alcove, "it's plaster, unlike the rest of the walls which are stone. And it looks like the application was rushed, or maybe an afterthought. Like someone was trying to cover something."
Nate frowned as he examined it. "You're right. It does look suspicious." He glanced around to make sure no one else was nearby to see them. "Maybe we should try pulling some off- see what's back there."
He and Chloe dug their fingers into cracks in the plaster and began pulling off chunks, and almost immediately froze at the sight of what they uncovered. Small blue-green tiles, maybe six inches by six inches, each with the Argead star painted in gold peeked out at them from the exposed areas, teasing them with the excitement of what lay beyond. "Holy shit!" Nate breathed.
"Come on, let's keep going!" Chloe urged.
They continued to claw at the plaster until it all lay in a heap on the floor, and a wall covered top to bottom in the little tiles stood before them, gleaming in the ambient light from the crypt. Nate's eyes roamed up and down it, his mind turning over ideas to answer the question Sully asked aloud- "What now?"
Chloe hummed. Nate answered tentatively, "I think... it's something about finding the right tiles." He pointed to a couple of them. "See how they're all different? Some have eight points, some twelve, some sixteen. Some only have six." He pulled Newton's journal out of his back pocket and flipped to the page with the star illustration, and carefully counted the rays. "The one in the journal has sixteen."
"Maybe there's a lever," Chloe suggested. Cautiously, she reached forward and pushed on one of the sixteen-point stars. At first it didn't give, but she leaned into it and the tile sank into the wall about a half inch.
"Good call, Chloe," Nate praised, and reached to push another tile in.
They continued pressing tiles until they were down to the last sixteen-point star, and Nate paused with his hand hovering just above it and looked at Charlie. "What do you think happens when we push this last one?"
Cutter rolled his shoulders and considered. "Well, either a door will open up in the wall and let us through-"
"Or?" Nate prodded.
Cutter shrugged. "Or a door will open up in the floor and let you through."
Chloe took a nervous step back from the wall, and Nate looked betrayed. "Well," he muttered, "here goes nothing." As he reached to push the tile with one hand he grabbed the end of Sully's mustache like a lifeline with the other, only to have it gruffly swatted away by a rather unimpressed Sully. The tile slid into the wall like the others, there was a thud, and then the entire end wall suddenly rotated, rolling aside on a giant wheel, and left an open doorway in its stead. "Ha," Nate said triumphantly. "Open ses-"
"Ah-ah," Charlie cut him off by shaking a finger in his face. "Still not the right place for that line."
Nate smirked but shut his mouth. Together, the foursome looked through the new doorway and into a dank stairwell that was as narrow as it was dark, and draped with cobwebs like it was some sort of set piece for an old horror film. Charlie flicked on his flashlight and shone it down the passage, the light spilling over stone steps that were eroded and worn smooth by hundreds of years of condensation and leeched ground water, before finally being swallowed by the deep and ominous gloom.
"Right," Cutter said with forced cheer. "Good job, Nate. As a reward, you can go first."
"Hey, it wasn't even me that-" Nate began defensively as he pulled out his own flashlight and started walking.
Their footsteps resounded in the claustrophobic, all-stone confines of the stairwell as they descended into the blackness in a gradually twisting spiral that eventually let them out at a stone arch, painted with images of the goddess Diana in various scenes from Roman mythology. Through the arch they entered a large, square room with a circular pit in the middle, recessed about three feet with shallow stairs all the way around its circumference. An altar or pedestal of some type stood in the center of the pit, and directly above it was a matching cupola. Nate's flashlight picked out several torch sconces on the walls, and he turned to Sully.
"Hey, can you-"
"Yeahhh, I got it," Sully muttered, pulling out his Zippo and making a circuit around the room to light them.
Nate and Charlie put their flashlights away and strode toward the central pedestal, taking note of a statue of Diana that had been toppled to the ground to make room for a spread of books and maps that now occupied the stone platform, resulting in the goddess' head and left arm having broken off. "Old boy Newton wasn't very respectful of ancient religions, looks like," Cutter commented.
"Well," Nate said, putting his hands on his hips, "he was a devout Christian, so probably that didn't lend itself to holding the Greek or Roman gods in very high esteem."
Chloe nodded. "I'll take you're word for it."
With a quizzical glance, Nate asked her, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well, you're the one who grew up in a Catholic boy's home."
"At least I never joined the choir-"
"Hey, hey, the papers, anybody?" Sully suggested, stepping up to the altar.
Nate paused in mid-comeback, looking sheepish. "Oh, right. The papers." He turned back to the pedestal and picked up the nearest sheet before setting it down again and picking up another. "This is definitely Newton's stuff," he remarked.
Chloe, meanwhile, was tracing a finger across the map on the table, and spoke up, "Yeah, and I think I've got the answer to which of Alexander's cities we're looking for." Her finger came to rest on a point in Egypt and she lifted her eyes. "Alexandria."
Nate let out a huff under his breath and rolled his eyes. "Of course," he muttered to himself.
"What's that, mate?" Charlie inquired.
Ignoring him, Nate finished scanning the parchment he was holding and announced, "This one's from Aristotle himself. Listen to this: I am afraid our quest has been poisoned by greed...Would that men chose virtue over power! But it is not to be with all, as proven by my friend and comrade and student Antipater, who, after helping me to subdue Alexander to keep him from fulfilling his lust for power, saw the terrible terrible outcome of the cursed stone's influence and still could not restrain himself from partaking of its bitter water. Oh, that he had only listened! For now I have been forced to abandon him along with those of the League who accompanied him, and we will seal the entrance to this accursed city and scatter the remnants of the trail abroad, in hopes of deterring any more dishonorable people from its discovery. If my strength permits, I and the remaining loyal from the Corinthians must make it to Alexandria to destroy the map left by Alexander, though I fear my time is drawing short. May the gods deal justice to all who seek the stone that is in Atlantis!" Nate trailed off.
"Sounds like he's talking about the League of Corinth," Chloe said.
"Yeah, that checks out," Cutter added. "That star was, I think, one of their symbols, and like we said before, eternal life is about the greatest military boon you could ever hope for, so it makes sense the League would want to be in on this."
"That's why that Argead star has seemed so familiar all this time!" Nate exclaimed, his eyes flashing. "I should have known."
"And seems like Aristotle and Antipater were involved with the dirty work of making sure Alexander got discontinued, after all," Cutter noted.
"'Discontinued?'" Chloe raised an eyebrow.
"What about the whole thing with the stone?" Sully wondered aloud.
Nate, having put down the parchment and picked up another sheet of yellowed paper, traced the first few line of print with his eyes and then began reading without introduction, "I am very near now, I think, to finding the stone, that most base of all elements, which will grant abundantly greater insight into the mysteries of my alchymical quandaries, and, yes, even life itself. For if I shall only live long enough to find the "temple of Shu" told of by Aristotle and Alexander, then my journey is all but complete. Only, this is what others would find fault for: Even now, there are those who say my search is "misguided", "occult", and "apostate", wishing to keep me from such dyscovery- indeed, even threatening violence and personal harm to me! God spare my life, and I shall find that elixir of life and, at the least, prove that mine were not the rantings of a madman, and at the best that we may still live forever. Sir Isaac Newton."
Silence hung, thick with the implications of the note and the repercussions of it. Charlie was the first to brave the resulting lull, saying in a voice that was low and grim, "I guess he never was able to prove his point, poor bloke. To many, he died the ranting madman, as far as his alchemy was concerned."
"A little boy by the seashore finding the shinier pebble," Chloe added. The others nodded, understanding the reference.
Sully frowned. "You don't think he, uh, ya' know, got..." He drug a finger across his throat in a slashing motion.
Chloe raised her eyebrows. "Oh, that'd be rich. And insidious."
Nate suddenly scrubbed a hand across his face while he spun in a half-circle, and began agonizing as he paced back and forth. "Crap! The philosophers' stone! The League of Corinth! Shu! It's all so obvious, why didn't I see-"
"Whoa, whoa, wait!" Sully stopped him, holding up both hands. "Before you land too many kicks to your own nuts for whatever reason, why don't you explain that whole thing about Shu?"
"That whole thing about the path of the immortals being found from the void? Shu was the Egyptian god of the sky, wind, and the void. He was comparable to Atlas, in that he was often pictured as holding up the sky, and there's the ruins of a temple dedicated to him outside of Alexandria, and it, it's just so obvious, I should've-"
"Nate!" This time it was Chloe who cut him off mid-sentence. "Stop. Sully's right: stop beating yourself up. It's okay to not know everything. You're not the only one in the world, Nate." Nate seemed a little offended, but Chloe forged ahead. "You don't have to bear the load alone. Newton got where he did by standing on the shoulders of giants, and it's okay that it's the same for you. We haven't expected you to be able to tell us exactly what happened and where Atlantis will be. We'll figure this out together. Look, you haven't been at the top of your game, but it's fine. It's obvious why, and it's because you really need to go and talk to Elena. She's a saint, Nate, but she's afraid- terrified- to lose you. You just need to go and work things out-"
"Oh yeah, and just send a note to Floki and Garnier: 'hey guys, raincheck! I just need to go work stuff out with the wife, so if you could just save your plans to take over the world until I get back, that'd be great.'?" Nate's voice was cuttingly sarcastic.
"Nate." Chloe held up a pacifying hand. There was a time when she knew this conversation would have been conducted on the level of stray dogs: Nate barks, so she barks back. But Shambala had changed that. She felt like she understood just a little more where Nate was coming from, and what he really needed when he got like this. So instead, she calmly replied, "Nate, when it comes to history, you're the best I know. Really. But this-" she gestured to the map, "I think we can handle this while you take a quick break. Go home, do what you need to do, I'll even buy you a ticket- round trip, so you can come back when you're done." She pulled out her phone as if to prove a point that she would buy them on the spot. As she held the device to close to her face, Nate happened to catch a glance of the screen and instantly paled.
"Shit!" he cursed. The expletive came in a hiss and was quickly followed by many more uttered under his breath, then he suddenly announced, "We've got to get out of here!" Folding the papers he had read, despite the fact that one of them was a timeless parchment that was definitely not suited for folding, he stuffed them into his journal and turned to the door.
Chloe looked confused. "W-what? Nate, what's going on?"
"I said we've got to go," he repeated, sounding on the verge of panicked. He rushed for the stairs but pulled up short at the sounds that suddenly began echoing down them: that of footsteps and an unmistakable voice that carried down to them despite the fact it was clear it was intended to be a whisper.
"They must be down here! Get your guns ready. Men, stay alert!"
"Oh, god," Nate whispered.
"It's Floki," Sully breathed. "And we don't have any guns!"
Nate quickly glanced around and arrived at what seemed like the only viable option, which he quickly voiced to the others. "Hide. Somewhere good." His mouth formed a grim line. "We're gonna hope they don't find us."