ii. The Empire of the Echidnas
"It has no name, that we know of," explained Rafe Curl. "The city was built by the echidnas, a dokan race that reigned over an empire when the city was at it's height, then mysteriously vanished - supposedly overnight. The city is several thousand years old, and some of it appears to be missing...but you'll see, I think. The best overview is from the old temple." The massive pyramid he indicated seemed to have withstood the rigors of time better than the surrounding buildings, which were often little more than a worked block of stone or two poking out of heaps of vines and foliage. As directed, Gerald made his way towards it. As he approached he was startled by a movement - a massive ball of stone that flanked the stairs on the closest face of the temple uncurled!
After a moment in which nothing further happened, he moved forward again, more cautiously. The stone form now was clearly that of an echidna, its mate on the opposite side of the stairs long since broken. Rafe had jumped at the statue's motion as well, but was now trotting up the stone stairs with little regard for their crumbling condition. As Gerald reached the top of the pyramid and rejoined his guide, he could see the entire valley. As he surveyed the view, he noticed something odd. Though it was difficult to tell where all the city had been, due to the jungle that had overgrown it, it seemed to be very oddly off center. Three sides of the valley were ringed by tall, vertical cliffs, in fact to get into the valley they had come through a tunnel that ended on a ledge a long climb above the valley floor, and there appeared to be no other entrance; on the fourth side the cliffs dropped away below the valley floor forming an enormous...well, if there had been any sign of lava rock, he would have said caldera. The mountains on the far side of the caldera were level with those that framed the other sides of the valley. It truly looked as if something had simply scooped an enormous piece of earth out of the ground. The odd thing was that although the city didn't appear to have stretched all the way to the encircling cliffs, it ran right up to, and practically off of, the precipice. Again, if there had been any sign of vulcanism, Gerald would have thought it a place like Thera1, where a volcanic eruption simply vaporized thirty cubic miles of earth and the buildings that stood atop it. But there was no volcanic damage to the buildings; earthquake perhaps, by the way they had fallen, but no scorching, no sign of the thick ash layer that should have coated everything that survived being that close to an eruption so massive. As Rafe had said, part of the city seemed to be missing - along with the ground it had been built upon. Frowning in puzzlement he signaled the hedgehog to accompany him inside the pyramid.
The entrance was clear enough, but interior of the pyramid was partially blocked in places by fallen stones. In the process of making his way over, under or around, Gerald developed new respect for the strength and durability inherent in the dokan. The sable-quilled hedgehog squirmed through the small spaces and heaved rocks larger than himself out of the way so that Gerald could follow, never seeming to get tired, or even winded. Several of the defensive areas were still active - somehow the ancient echidnas had harnessed geothermal energy to heave heated stone blocks into some of the passages to block them. Other areas seemed to indicate a certain reverence for water, including an indoor waterfall that fell deeper than the exterior temple was tall. Everywhere there were statues and representations of snakes. Perhaps most amazing was a room of sliding panels that, when aligned, somehow created their own gravity and permitted the explorers to walk straight up the walls, but even this area was trapped with spiked stones that dropped erratically. Gerald vowed to himself to come back some other time and find out how the panels functioned. Although he had come looking for ancient technology, he felt a strange certainty that this was not what he was looking for, wondrous as it was.
At last they came to a massive mosaic, near the heart of the temple. An enormous, draconic or snake-like creature rising from the waves, it echoed the numerous snake reliefs and mosaics Gerald had passed on his way in. This was it. Without knowing how he knew, he knew that this was the key he was looking for. With the help of his guide, he quickly took pictures and rubbings of the artwork and its surrounding "frame" of hieroglyphs, then headed back out. Along the way they took copies of the few other bits of writing they located. Then they climbed the terribly long ladder to the tunnel that led back out of the valley.
A long trek back through the jungle and Gerald was set up in a human-specialized hotel near the embassy - since most dokan were only about half as tall as humans, many of the buildings were uncomfortably low-ceilinged. The public buildings tended to have higher ceilings, but Gerald still found himself reflexively ducking every time he went into the university's research library. He did that quite often as he was researching the echidnan empire. He was ably assisted by Professor Misty Breeze, a white fox. (He'd thought he was used to the dokan by the time he was introduced to her. But he found himself gaping like a utter idiot at her the first time he met. Her fur was pure white with just the faintest silver-grey shading on her legs and arms. Her eyes were a pale blue, and she tended to dress in skirts and blouses of blue and grey that set off her coloring. Gerald was very nearly in love at first sight, until she introduced him to her husband Arance.) After much linguistic study, Gerald and Misty managed to decipher most of the story. For a story it was around the mosaic, carved into the rock. The story spiraled around from the interior outwards, and the last few sentences seemed to have been added both later and more hastily than the careful, precise signs that recorded the bulk of the tale.
The echidna tribes had lived in the valley for generations, gradually forming a kingdom that was fairly advanced compared to its neighbors. Their primary deity was a water god, for water gave both life and destruction; a smaller faction, mainly soldiers, worshiped a snake god for the snake's silent strike and ability to devour foes larger than itself. While the kingdom prospered, a strangely glowing gem was found in one of the mines, and brought as an offering to the sacred spring. This spring was the home of mystical creatures called chao, who were considered messengers to the water god.
("Chao?" Gerald asked when Misty gave him the translation for the peculiar, dotted teardrop-shaped glyph. "What does 'chao' mean?" Misty explained that they were still kept as popular pets, although she'd never heard of anyone giving messages to them; she offered to introduce him to her son's chao sometime.)
Petitioners would bring offerings of fruit and prayers and if a chao ate the fruit, it was considered a promise that the god would hear. So the people lived well, the chao lived well, and the kingdom prospered and traded with both its near neighbors and distant lands. Then a merchant far afield found another of the glowing stones, and brought it also to the shrine. Now the echidnas began actively seeking more so-called "power stones". At some point after this a new tribe came to power over the original line of rulers; the Knuckles clan. They obliterated the names of their predecessors completely and ruled with a new philosophy - since the gods had favored them with the "king" power stone (apparently larger than any previously collected, and supposedly found by the Knuckles' chieftain inside an anaconda he'd slain) it was clear that the echidnas were most favored and thus should rule over all the dokan tribes. Now the kingdom became an empire and began to actively extend its reach. The water god fell from precedence although the occasional power stone was still brought back from conquered cities. The aggressive snake god served the empire's goals better, although the commoners still brought offerings to the chao and the avatar.
(The avatar? After a bit of intensive research the white vixen managed to locate a second, more detailed reference. Apparently somewhere along the way one of the chao had grown and morphed - perhaps, Gerald mused, because of the "power stones"? - and was now considered an actual aspect of the god.)
Now the empire was approaching its height, and construction was begun on two massive temples, one the squared pyramid of the Snake God - obviously the one Gerald had explored - the other a circular replacement for the original shrine to the water god. The great green "King" power stone was mounted at its summit under a domed roof and around the base were erected 7 pillars, each crowned with one of the power stones. The original spring was channeled into the several levels of the new shrine, and into a moat around the base, and the avatar was seen no longer, although the chao remained as always.
Then Chief Pachacamac came to rule, and devoted his reign to conquest. Deciding that the power stones would be useful in the fight, he went so far as to attack the Shrine and slaughter the chao in his attempt to take the stones. In response the avatar erupted back out of the spring and, possessed by the water god himself, destroyed the empire; tearing the shrine itself out of the ground along with half the city.
The tiny remainder of the Knuckles tribe gained access to the floating island before it left the region entirely, vowing to prevent the misuse of the power stones ever again. The remaining echidnas carved added the warnings around the story in what remained of the temple, then faded into obscurity and eventual extinction. The floating island itself drifted off over the ocean and was rarely seen.
Gerald would have taken the end of the story as the usual sort of "paradise lost" myth associated with great civilizations - such as Atlantis and Babylon - but Misty insisted that it was true. Or at least, the part about the floating island was true; she easily pulled out a number of news references and factual texts about the enigma. Gerald remained unconvinced but contacted a friend of his who had joined the Space and Satellite Division of GUN - and received not only several satellite photos of the island in several locations but a record of its motions over the last ten years. Also included was a not that although the satellites could see and track the island, they were unable to actually record any details about it; although they could count cars in a parking lot in Central City they could not reveal the exact size and shape of the island, let alone its actual surface. The cause of the interference was officially unknown, unofficially his friend said most of the unit considered it magic.
1 Okay, so Thera is from our Earth. But it was a truly incredible explosion and what I consider the most likely source of the Atlantis myth. And with all the other myths referred to in the Sonicverse, Atlantis is probably in there as well. So Thera should be too.