The Rossem Project is close to success, and will allow a hand picked expedition to explore other worlds, searching for the threat that faces the planet Tharia, but as they begin their mission they discover that there are many other threats out there...
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It was a week after their discovery of the shelter, and Thomas and Lirenna were back aboard the Jules Verne.
They were both exhausted from hours spent in the hanger deck, staring at magically created copies of the crystal-preserved papers in the hope of gleaning additional insights into the lives of the Citybuilders. Saturn had been working them mercilessly, along with Tassley and Braddle, and the wizardess had had some success at restoring the pictures back to something like their original condition, although they would never have the depth of colour they'd originally had.
Everyone was awestruck by the scenes they revealed. Towering cities of glass whose streets thronged with human, animal hybrids of all description, while above them strange craft crossed the skies, some of them so high that they were mere points of reflected sunlight trailing long, white contrails. Thomas was struck by the similarity between these images and those revealed by the ancient artifacts possessed by the rak Gannlow, whom Tak had killed three thousand years before. There was no evidence that the ancient race that had inhabited Tharia in the unimaginably distant past had ever experimented with human, animal hybridisation, but even so Thomas couldn't help but wonder whether the two civilisations had ever had any contact with each other.
Braddle, meanwhile, had met with complete failure as he tried one divination technique after another on the mummified bodies and their possessions. The artifacts were simply too old. The para-memory traces that the spells relied on to read and reveal the objects' history had faded almost to nothing. His only success had been to confirm that they had never, at any time, held any kind of magical charge, either ordinary or Rossemian, supporting their theory that the Citybuilders had known nothing of magic.
At last, therefore, Saturn had conceded that they were unlikely to discover anything more of importance and had released the other wizards from their intensive research, allowing them to leave and get some rest. Thomas knew that powerful divinatory artifacts back in Lexandria University were undoubtedly being used to probe the original relics, though, and there was always the hope that they might be able to discover something.
More interestingly, Tassley had overheard a conversation between Saturn and Natan Crowley in which they'd been discussing a request by a pair of wizard sages back in the valley to come to Veglia with a small staff of assistants to continue the excavation and exploration of the buried city. Saturn had been keen on the idea, having a long standing interest in archaeology, and was keen to hear what they discovered.
The Director had been ill at ease with the prospect, though. The research team would be completely cut off, after all. Able to return home only when the Jules Verne came back for them, and Veglia seemed to have a much lower density of ambient magic than Tharia, meaning it would take much longer for the wizards to absorb enough magic into their bodies to cast their spells. They might never be able to cast high level spells on that planet. The wizards' ability to defend themselves against attack would be severely handicapped. In the end, though, each wizard could do whatever he liked outside the valley, so there was no way Natan could stop them, and the decision was left up to Captain Strong, who would have the job of transporting them and their equipment.
