Chapter 2
The café surroundings vanished. Sam and Dean were on the bottom of the ocean surrounded by water, fish, and seaweed. Somehow, they were still breathing.
"Can you hear me?" Sam asked.
"Yeah," Dean replied.
Both brothers saw it at the same time. There was a structure which looked like towers spiraling out of the bottom of the ocean, except that it was made out of coral and pearls. Strands of seaweed intertwined around the towers. Some of the plants had a bioluminescent glow.
"I think it's in there," Sam said.
"No, I think we need to check out the local Red Lobster," Dean replied. "It's that way." He pointed towards an actual lobster, which scuttled away from them.
"Very funny. Come on," Sam said.
Atlantis was a beautiful place, but the dangers that lurked therein were many. Even from a distance, they could see guards, fierce mermen carrying copper tridents.
"Do your abilities work underwater?" Dean asked.
Sam concentrated and held out his hand. An orange ball of hellfire glowed eerily.
"Awesome," Dean replied. He took the handgun out of his pocket.
Slowly, the two swam toward Atlantis. The first guard who saw them was a dark-haired merman with a beard. He held up his hand and spoke loudly in some language neither of the two understood, but the sentiment was universally understood. *Stop, or else.*
Dean fired a shot with the Colt 1911 at the first guard. He hit, but the guard was still up. In response, both of the mermen grasped their tridents. The weapons began to glow with a strange blue energy.
"Uh oh," Sam said. He released the ball of hellfire, turning it blue in the water. It froze the second guard in place.
The blue energy from the trident lit up all around them. As Dean fired off another shot from the Colt, the two of them felt themselves falling asleep.
"Stay 'wake," Dean said, slurring his words a bit as he felt very tired.
The bullet hit the guard in the chest and he slumped over. The light on the trident went out. Dean grabbed the trident as the guard's grasp on it loosened.
Sam fought against the rushing tide of sleep. Somewhere, in his pockets, wasn't there…yes! He found the package of energy drinks and tossed one to Dean. "Bottom's up."
"I'll drink to that," Dean said.
The energy drink allowed them to combat the sleepiness. Dean searched the first guard and found a hexagonal copper tile on him, which appeared to light up as he approached the door. The tile had inscriptions on it in some foreign tongue, probably whatever the mermen spoke. The door slid open with a whooshing sound. There was some kind of force field keeping all of the water out, but Dean and Sam were able to enter.
Inside, Atlantis was lit naturally by the bioluminescent seaweed. No other lights were apparently needed, as the seaweed was bright enough. The floor was a combination of coral and marble in a hexagonal tile pattern. There were no symbols on these. There were no decorations of any kind visible, not that any were needed.
"We might just be the first humans to see this place," Sam said. "How do we even know where we're going?" he asked.
"I don't know. I don't suppose our cell phones work here," Dean said. He took his out and flipped it open. It read: No signal. "Awesome," he sighed.
"There's got to be something going on with these hexagons," Sam commented. "They're everywhere. These guys must be mathematical geniuses. Or, at least, whoever designed this place was."
"Why is that?"
"A magic hexagon is a way to arrange numbers in a pattern. You have a certain number of cells on the edges, and each of the numbers on the edge adds up to a magic constant. There's actually an algebraic formula which you can use to solve them. The solution of order three is pretty common. They're actually non-magical from a supernatural standpoint; the mathematicians just call them magic hexagons. But I have to wonder why hexagons are all over Atlantis. The merfolk even use them in the keys to this place."
Dean looked at Sam in the glowing seaweed light. "I guess it's a good thing you're a total nerd. I would have never made that connection."
"Ha, ha. We need to find the Ark," Sam replied.
"It's probably under lock and key somewhere below here."
"Yeah."
"So, let's head down."
They looked around and found the stairs. It was an extremely long, winding staircase that led to yet another long glowing hallway. This one had a pair guards at the end of it by the opposite staircase.
"More guards," Dean sighed. "Awesome. Ready?"
Sam nodded. He froze one. Dean lifted the trident up and grabbed it with both hands. It did not light up.
"How do you work this thing? Please tell me you don't have to be one of them or something," he said.
Dean finally found a rather tiny, and of course, hexagonal indent. Pressing it made the trident glow. The merman guard yelled in his language as he was surrounded by bright blue light. The guard fell over, fast asleep. Dean searched him and found another hexagonal key. This time, it had different markings.
"Hey, I recognize one of those," Sam said.
"What is it?"
"It's a rune. Strange that it would be here, though. It's actually Ansuz, the rune of Odin."
"Why would a guard for Poseidon have a rune of Odin?" Dean wondered.
"I don't know."
"Are any of these other symbols runes?"
"If they are, they're not Elder Futhark." Sam looked at them, and then took out his iPod.
"What are you doing?" Dean asked.
"I wrote a couple of apps for myself. Figured we might need them. Since this exists on the iPod itself, no Internet connection is necessary to use it. It just needs a charged-up battery. You never know when you might be without Wi-Fi." Sam flipped through some images. "Ah ha. This one is the Egyptian hieroglyph for day." He flipped through even more symbols. "This one is the Ancient Chinese symbol for fire." He flipped through more symbols. "This one is the Babylonian symbol for star."
Dean looked perplexed. "So what are all of these symbols doing in Atlantis?"
"Good question." Sam turned off the iPod and put it back into his pocket. "I don't know."
"Well, let's keep going," Dean said.
Down the stairs they went. After hours of searching, and several more hexagonal keys obtained, they found a huge copper door at the end of one of the tunnels. There were six hexagonal indentations in the door, which appeared to match the size of the guards' keys.
"How do we know where to put the keys?" Sam asked.
Dean shrugged. He stuck one of the keys in at random and got an electrical jolt. He wound up dropping the key and had to pick it up. "Guess that wasn't the right one," he said, as his hair stuck up straight.
Sam tried not to laugh, and failed. "I wonder if it's some sort of math problem," the younger Winchester brother mused.
"What, you mean like those stupid word problems we had back in high school?" Dean asked.
"Could be," Sam replied.
Dean looked annoyed. "I hated word problems back then, and I still hate them."
Sam laughed again.
"I'm glad you find this so amusing."
Sam took out his iPod and spread all of the hexagonal tiles out. "You got a piece of scratch paper?"
Dean took a notepad out from one of his pockets and a pen.
"Okay. This is gonna take a while. Cover me, just in case."
"You got it," Dean replied.
After about fifteen minutes, Sam had figured out what all but two of the symbols meant. He was still puzzling over them when it hit him.
"That's it," Sam said. "They have to be numbers."
"What?"
"These characters. They're not any letter known to man, but I wonder if they're numbers." He flipped through another database. "Ah ha! Yes, they're Enochian numbers for one and six."
"What are Enochian numbers doing in Atlantis?" Dean asked.
"Good question. Okay, so, this hexagon contains the symbols for fire, day, star, one, the rune of Odin, and eagle. Interesting," Sam said.
"So?" Dean asked.
"Look, we can't reach the topmost slot from where we're standing. I'm tall and I can't even reach it. Poseidon would have known that humans couldn't reach that far. At least, not most humans. Let me put it in."
With the Odin rune side facing up, Sam used his telekinesis to put the key in the uppermost slot. There was no jolt of electricity, and in fact, it glowed blue.
"Great. One down, five to go," Dean said.
"Yep. Okay, so this one. The symbols in order clockwise are the number six, night, earth, ice, the Chinese symbol for death, and the ancient Egyptian glyphs for Osiris. Osiris was the underworld god. So, I'm guessing this goes in the bottom slot." He turned it to the edge of the Osiris glyphs and put it in. The glyph glowed blue. "Four left."
It took Sam about ten minutes to figure out the remaining glyphs by means of logic. "Hmm," he mused as they all glowed.
"What?"
"The interesting thing about this is that there aren't numbers on all of these keys, but some Chinese symbols sound almost the same as numbers in the language. The number four sounds like the word for death and considered very unlucky. The number eight in Chinese sounds like the word for wealth."
"So this lock is a magic hexagon?" Dean asked.
"Probably," Sam replied. "It's impossible to know what the solution is without knowing what numbers all of the symbols are supposed to represent, though."
The copper door slowly opened with a rumbling sound, and then they heard the sound of thrashing in water. It was a very large thing thrashing in water, and there was a sound that vaguely resembled that of a large animal bellowing.
"I'm guessing that's Fluffy," Sam said.
"Yeah."
The Winchester brothers crept closer to the sounds. They could see Fluffy in the darkness, in a large pool. The hydra was, in fact, quite large. It had three heads, and currently two of the heads were tearing apart a shark, which was not a happy shark. There were a couple of merfolk guards with tridents standing near the hydra. These guards had belts made of copper with green gems in the center.
Behind the hydra's pool, there was another door. This one appeared to be made of another kind of metal, which was actually the first time the brothers had seen any metal besides copper in Atlantis. Even the tridents were made from copper. They had no idea what the metal was. It was bluish with silver swirls. The door was covered in runes, and there was a hexagonal indentation in the middle.
"Let's distract them," Dean said. "We don't want to take on two guards and that thing at the same time."
Sam threw a ball of orange hellfire across the room. It exploded on one of the walls. The guards raised their copper tridents and ran over. Dean used the trident on them, but the guards appeared to be immune to its effects.
"Awesome," he sighed. He tossed the trident aside and took out his handgun.
"These must be elite guards," Sam said.
"Yeah. Try freezing them."
Sam did. The blue ball of freezing hellfire hit the first guard, and he got a few icicles in his beard, but it didn't seem to have much of an effect beyond that.
"Great," Dean said. "I think we need a plan B."
"What's plan B?" Sam asked.
"Run like hell," Dean replied.
The first guard took out a copper rod of some sort and pointed it at Sam. Seaweed tendrils rose up from the floor and wound themselves around his feet and legs.
"There goes plan B," Sam said.
Dean took out the Colt 1911 and shot the first guard. The bullets seemed to bounce off of him and landed with splashes in the water. "They have some kind of force field."
"I was afraid of that."
"Try throwing lightning at them," Dean said as seaweed entwined itself around his feet. "Maybe it'll short out the force field."
Sam concentrated. He hadn't really gotten this particular ability under control. Sparks flew across his hands for a couple of moments, and then vanished.
"Sam, do something!"
"I can't, Dean. It's not working."
"Well, try something else, then," a frustrated Dean shouted.
As luck would have it, Sam felt the beginnings of a migraine coming on. The sharp piercing in his head that would soon become incessant pounding had begun. Wonderful timing, he thought. He concentrated on the trident that Dean had dropped when the sleep effect did not work. It floated over within reach.
"Maybe physical damage will affect them?" Sam wondered.
"It's worth a shot," Dean said, and grabbed the trident.
He shoved the weapon into the nearest guard, aiming for the green gem on the belt. It felt like the weapon hit a wall. The guard forcibly grabbed the trident away from him and raised his own trident. The energy drink was not strong enough for him to resist sleepiness.
Through blurred vision, Sam saw his brother struggling with the guard. Then he felt the other guard grab him from behind. He wondered if going Darth Vader would work. At this point, he didn't have much else to try.
Sam craned his head back and did his best to concentrate on the guard behind him. The question was, could he get through the force field with telekinesis? He concentrated harder. The guard's expression went from one of hostility toward one of fear as his throat was constricted. Blood was gushing down Sam's face, but he didn't stop. The intense pain was like a sharp knife twisting in his head.
Finally, the guard had to let go of Sam as he was gasping for air. Sam concentrated just a few seconds more, and the guard went down. As the guard fell, the seaweed around Sam's feet retreated back into the floor.
Dean was no longer on his feet. He fell to the ground as sleep overcame him.
It was just Sam against the other guard. The merman raised his trident, preparing to attack him. Sam focused on his attacker's throat. Mermen or not, they needed air to survive.
The guard thrust his trident in an attempt to break Sam's concentration. He was forced to dodge it. At least, he was no longer rooted to the ground. He reached down and grabbed the trident Dean had been using.
The guard swung at him again. Sam blocked it, and then sent a telekinetic wave toward him. The guard was forced off his feet and went sprawling into the hydra's pool.
The head that was not munching on the shark saw the guard and went for him. The other two heads dropped what little was left of the shark and joined in. The guard's inhuman screams were what woke Dean up.
"Wha…?"
"We got 'em."
"What about…"
"Fluffy is distracted. Come on."
"Your nose…"
"Don't worry about me. We have to get the Ark."
Sam searched the guard that he had choked and found a hexagonal tile on him. This one was made from the same bluish metal as the door. He grabbed Dean and floated over the hydra. One of the hydra's heads saw them and snapped in the air, but could not reach them. Sam landed on the narrow ledge of the shiny blue door. Dean grabbed the wall for support.
Sam looked at the tile. The symbols were completely different from any of the tiles they had previously seen.
"Oh, great," he said.
One of the hydra's heads lunged toward them. Dean shot it with his handgun between the eyes, and the hydra bellowed in pain, dropping the guard as its head reared back in pain. "Hurry up," he shouted.
Sam pulled out his iPod and searched through the database while Dean fired more shots.
"These symbols are not in my database," he said. "That means they're probably native to Atlantis, and nobody on Earth speaks or writes Atlantean, that we know of."
"Great," Dean said. "How do we get it to work?"
"No clue."
"Well, try it randomly. What's the worst that could happen?"
"Uh…have you seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?"
"Yeah, why?" Dean asked as he fired another shot at the bellowing hydra.
"I don't think choosing poorly would be a good idea here."
"Hmm…good point."
Sam examined the key and the lock a bit more closely. The edges were very smooth on both, so one could not determine how the key went into the lock by that.
"I'm going to make an assumption here, and hope that it doesn't screw us over," Sam said.
"What?" Dean asked as he fired another shot at the hydra.
"If you believe Plato, Atlantis existed above water until it sank. This means that humans had a hand in how Atlantis developed, at least for a time."
"So?"
"Their language has to have been developed from something we know."
Dean fired another shot at Fluffy. The head that he had been firing at slumped over, dead. The hydra bellowed again. "So?"
"These don't match anything we know of exactly, but some of them are similar to Enochian symbols, and some are similar to ancient Greek. It might have developed from both languages. The angels had to have worked with these people at some point."
"Great. Can we open the door, please?" Dean reloaded the gun and fired a shot at another hydra head.
"I'm getting to that. Based on what I know of Ancient Greek and Enochian, I think these symbols are numbers. I need some time to work this out though."
Fluffy's second head lunged at Dean and missed him by a few millimeters. He dodged, precariously balancing on the ledge. He shot the head as it opened its maw, and the head dropped.
"Yes! Two down!"
Sam frantically punched numbers into the iPod's calculator. His head still hurt, but he had to ignore the pain for now. He caught glimpses of bright flares out of the corners of his eyes. That was never a good migraine symptom.
Dean fired yet another shot at the hydra's remaining head. It roared as it reached over. Water splashed over the pool in huge waves as Fluffy turned around to face him. Fluffy was pissed. The hydra's sharp teeth gleamed in the eerie green light from the seaweed.
"Yeah, I'm not exactly having a good day either," Dean said. "Play dead, Fluffy." He fired a shot, aiming for the hydra's eyeball.
It hit right in the middle. The hydra bellowed with agony as it thrashed around. Blood spurted everywhere from the head, hitting Dean in the face.
"Ugh. Gross."
The hydra snapped at Dean, but not being able to see him very well, missed and hit the wall. It slumped down and slid into the pool.
"Got it," Sam said. "It's a base six hexagon." He fit the key carefully into the lock. As he did, his finger was pricked with a sharp metal object.
"Ow," he said.
The blood from his finger flowed into the key. The key hummed as it snapped into place, and began to glow a pale blue color. There was a rumbling sound as the door began to slide open. The brothers grabbed onto the walls for support.
The door opened to reveal a dimly lit room. There were torches on the walls. A few of them were burning. In the middle of the room was an ornate box, resting on a pedestal. There was nothing else in the room except for a blue metal door on the other side. That door did not have a lock. This floor, unlike the rest, was made of white marble. The walls were also white marble, which they did not look like from outside the room.
"That's gotta be it," Sam said.
"Yeah. Finally," Dean replied.
Both brothers headed toward the box.
"Hey, Balthazar, you can send us back now," Dean shouted.
There was a bright flash of light as the angel appeared. "Ah, good! You found it."
"Yeah. So can you send us back?"
"Sure, in a minute. I just want to check it," the angel said.
Balthazar slowly lifted the lid of the ornate box. Inside, there was nothing but an ancient scroll. He set the lid down and unrolled it. There were words on the scroll, and they were in English.
"Gotcha! Poseidon, did you really think I would give you the real Ark, you pompous jerk? Up yours, Gabriel."
Dean craned his neck to look at the note. "What? You mean I slew a hydra for nothing?!"
The angel sighed. "Looks that way. I gotta wonder where the real Ark is, though."
Sam coughed up blood. "Can we go home now? And can you do something about this?"
"Oh, yeah. Sorry." Balthazar waved his hand and a flash of light surrounded Sam. "That should help for a while."
"Do we still get the orb?" Dean asked.
"Well…not exactly, since you didn't get me the Ark, but I do have this for you." He held up what appeared to be an ornate sword, shaped like a thunderbolt from the same metal as the outside door. It was nearly as tall as Dean.
"Is that…" Sam asked.
"Zeus's Thunderbolt. He'll be pissed when he realizes I stole it, but it'll help. I'll shrink it down a bit so it's more manageable for you." The angel muttered a few words, and the Thunderbolt shrunk to the size of a normal sword. "This should help," he said, handing it to Dean.
"How do I use it?" Dean asked.
"Just use it like a normal sword. It has powers, of course, but it should help you against the Leviathans."
"Thanks."
"I'll bring you back," the angel added.
Meanwhile, in the home of a writer known by his earthly name as Chuck, there was a nondescript, ordinary looking wooden box labeled "Fragile" and "This Side Up." It was in a dusty basement. A very old blanket was draped over it. There was nothing extraordinary about it whatsoever, and certainly nothing about it that would make anyone curious. A stray cat was currently using the box as a napping spot beneath a window, where the rays of sunlight hit it just so.