The Best Way In

Arriving back at the plane Maelyn told everyone, "Ok folks! Here's the plan! Daughtry! You're the one with the GPR and seismometer so you get to do a quick walk around of the site with me so we can at least get a quick read of what we're looking at so we'll know where the interesting parts are before we get started. The rest of you I want to unload everything now that we are allowed to and get us a camp set up so I can get started while all you lazy bums are getting you a full night's sleep so we can get started full force in the morning!"

"Sir! Yes Sir!" One of the other architects teased her as he did a military salute.

Meanwhile one of the students continued the tease by bowing down to his knees and saying, "Yes Our Most Forgiving Mistress!"

Waving them off, Maelyn dismissed them saying as she walked away, "You two volunteers get to set up my tent! And if I find even the lamest prank set up in there when I get back you're both sleeping in that caldera up top of this volcano tonight! Hear me!"

Walking with Daughtry up to the area in front of where the cave had been covered with lava Maelyn surveyed the terrain they were going to be exploring and clearing of the ash and basalt from the volcano's flow of lava down from a full caldera at the time. Behind her was where the lava had pooled up as it had started to fill the cave before a separate flow had descended and flowed over the top of the cave's mouth to create a solid wall blocking access to the cave. To her left was a steep rise to the side of the start of the small valley the kingdom's palace had been built in due to what ancient trade records from surrounding countries described as the rich and fertile soil that had been blessing the kingdom with plentiful crops of a rich variety of grains and fruits before the lava flow that had buried the palace as well as most of the lower part of the valley.

To her right was the visible path that the first flow of lava had took as it flowed down from a weak point in the side of the caldera up above them. That path then continued on after pooling in the area they had landed the plane down to the palace where the wall that were meant to protect the palace had instead trapped the lava flow and cause it to fill up the area inside the walls like they had been a big bowl built to hold a massive amount of soup that instead turned out to be molten lava. Then, below the palace, the lava had stopped after it had buried another twenty feet in all directions around the walls in another foot of lava before it had stopped flowing and solidified as it cooled down and left them with the two square miles of basalt they were preparing to dig into.

Walking at a slow pace that was still too fast of a pace for the ground penetrating radar to pick up more than a rough scan of the area underneath, Daughtry spent the next two hours walking in a big circle that grew ever smaller while Maelyn walked along beside him to make note of spots with interesting readings and surface areas of interest until they got to the palace walls. After reaching the walls they had a group of students set up a long ramp in place to enable them to walk the machine up to the flat surface caused by the lava pooling up inside the walls before it had started overflowing right before the lava had stopped descending from the caldera.

Once they had gotten the ground penetrating radar and seismometer up to the top of the huge cube of basalt created by the walls they slowly walked back and forth across the surface of the humongous block to make a more detailed scan. As they neared where the palace was located inside the basalt Daughtry asked, "Hey Mae, you want me to go even slower to get an even more detailed look of the palace? Or is what this slower read gonna be good?"

"The read we get from this pace should be fine Dave." Maelyn offered, "We're going to be going super slow on chipping the rock away from the walls of this place anyways. I'd love to be able to get a slower read from the inside of this palace though. That way we'll already know what where the more interesting spots are going to be."

"You mean the spots I won't want to see?" Dave told her, "Cause you know I'm not one for dead bodies. I mean, skeletons I'm fine with. But dead bodies that haven't even been able to fully decompose due to being enclosed inside this airtight block of basalt is just too icky for my stomach thank you."

"I've never understood that about you." Maelyn laughed, "I mean we are basically coroners and are looking at dead bodies at ever dig we do but your weak stomach can't handle the sight of bodies that haven't decomposed! I mean, you even got queasy when we found those mummies at that Egyptian dig a couple years ago!"

"Yeah." Dave laughed back at her as he teased, "But this weak stomach can handle finer foods than your picky little gut can! Like how I loooove me some guacamole in my enchiladas but you turn as green as the guac when you even see it!"

"Hey now!" Maelyn chided, "We have agreed to never speak of the guac! So don't speak of the guac!"

"Sorry officer!" Dave teased, "But you know I have to tease you about that every chance I get! And with it being just us up here I couldn't resist."

As they had started walking across the area that was over the palace the GPR started making staticky noises. Looking at the screen Dave informed, "Looks like we've found our first spot of interest! Something down there is sending back weird readings. It's even sending back a different frequency than what the radar sends down when it sends back a reading! And the funky part is that its not even always sending back a reading!"

"What do you mean?" Maelyn asked perplexed, "Is it reflecting it in a different direction? Or is it something that might still be moving after all these years?"

"No." Dave told her as he pointed to the screen, "See here! The shape remains the same so it's not turning! And if it was reflecting it in a different direction I would still be getting some type of reading from it! This think absorbs it or something because it will periodically show up as a black shape!"

"Huh." Maelyn replied as she tried to see what was showing on the screen, "That's awfully weird."

Dave then paused the screen's reading when the black shape next appeared and laughingly informed her, "This is good Mae! It looks like this Dragon Queen liked dragons because whatever is messing with this radar is about the size of my fist and is shaped like a dragon!"

Looking at the image, Maelyn told him, "Alright. This will definitely be a point of interest!"

As they moved on to cover the rest of the palace area they found a total of eleven dragon shaped spots where the radar signal was getting similarly altered with the biggest spot of interference occurring right next to a body in what appeared to be the throne room. After they had finished walking the radar and seismometer over the rest of the area they then descended back down to the camp and showed the rest of the group what they had found so they could all determine where each team wanted to focus on.

Seeing a spot that he liked, Dave offered, "I'd like to take this spot right here by the wall. It looks like it has a couple of items scattered beside what might have been a bench of some sort."

"I'd like to check out this area about twenty feet away from it." Offered one of the other Archeologists, "It looks like it may have a knight's armor and sword there."

When all but Maelyn, her three students, and one other team had picked their sites, Maelyn told them, "Well Greg, Looks like we get the fun job of digging our way to the palace."

"Why do you want six of us to be doing that?" Greg asked, "just you and joseph could get into the palace in like a day's time!"

"Not if we wanted to preserve all of the stuff that we uncover along the way!" Maelyn objected, "We've got at least a thousand feet of rock to dig through before we even get there!"

"No you don't Maelyn." Greg gently revealed to her, "You're thinking inside the box. The quickest and easiest way into the castle would be to dig down from the top up there to a window. Yeah you might have to cut the glass out, but it'd be the quickest and easiest way in. That way you two could get started covering an area that you're gonna have to cover inch by inch and take way longer with just the two of you than it's gonna take all of us to clear and detail the grounds around the palace and that path up to the cave."

Smacking herself, Maelyn replied, "Ugh! Big Duh! I don't know why I didn't think of that!"

"Probably because this is the first site either one of us has ever done that had a straight approach to the front door instead of the entire area being buried and requiring an aerial approach." Greg reasoned, "And look, I'll take your student team under my wing tackling that walkway while you and Joseph get started on that palace."

"Thanks." Maelyn offered, "I probably wouldn't have even thought of that until I walked upstairs and saw a window. And thank you for offering to take Harry and Whitney. They would have been stuck on their own once me and Joseph got inside. But I'm also gonna have to curse you at least a little but because I wasn't looking forward to having to deal with oh so wonderful Mister Prime Minister Alwuzar again for awhile."

"Well, if it helps," Greg teasingly told her, "If this guy is so high faluting as it sounds, I'm sure he's gonna hate having to get dirty and then climb through a window to get inside this palace he so desperately wants inside of instead of being able to casually walk through those front doors that all palaces have."

"Hey!" Maelyn laughed, "That is gonna be a wonderful sight to see and make it all worthwhile! Thanks for that!"

"No problem." Greg replied with a laugh of his own then continued in a more serious tone, "But we will have an ever growing problem we need to figure out though."

"What might that be?" Maelyn wondered.

"Where are we going to put all of this basalt we're gonna be clearing out to get to these sites?" Greg asked, "I know with other digs we could just put the smal pile off to the side, but with this dig being inside a huge block of basalt, we're gonna be getting a bigger pile and we're gonna have less places to pile it up. Especially with that city being less than a mile away."

"Hmm..." Maelyn considered then answered, "I think we'll just have to do a return to sender deal."

"What do you mean by that?" Greg asked then, realizing what she implied, laughed and replied, "And how are we gonna find volunteers for that duty?"

When Harry then asked, "What duty?"

Maelyn replied with a chuckle, "We have found our first volunteer!" She then explained to the whole group, "Here's the plan of how we're going to dispose of all of this basalt we're going to be chipping away bit by bit to reach our sites. As we fill our buckets we're gonna take them to a wheelbarrow and, when it gets full, whoever is the team contributing the last bucket will then push that wheelbarrow up this lava flow to the caldera and dump all of this basalt back into the pit it came from. Deal?"

Each of the groups reluctantly agreed and Maelyn concluded the meeting by asking, "Everybody clear on tomorrow's plan of attack? Any questions?"

"Umm, Miss Khadim," One of the students asked, "What about these observers? Are we going to have to get their approval to dispose of the rick like that?"

"Don't worry about that part, Sean." When they get here in the morning I'm gonna let them know what the plan is and, if they have problems with it, I won't hesitate to send Prime Minister Anton a message letting him know that his people volunteered him to be responsible for cleaning up the waste."