Emerge: The Captive: (Book 3)(52)

These guys have zero chance of success anyway. They don’t know what they’re up against.

“Quinn, Santi? What do you know?” Livia demanded, snapping her fingers for them to join the discussion.

Quinn stood with a sigh. He would never forgive himself if this led to terrible things for the queen or the Scholar. He glanced down at Santi and she gave him a shrug as if to say they didn’t really have a choice.

“What does your teaching tell of the last Indriell queen?”

“She was the best of them all. And if she still lives, I wouldn’t underestimate her,” Quinn said.

“Where would she go after she dismantled Indriell?”

“It depends on where you believe Indriell once existed. When Queen Alísun banished the first mortals, she laid waste to the entire realm and sent the remaining Immortals to the far corners of the world. She left no trace of her kingdom. Some believe Indriell must have existed around Mesopotamia because that is the cradle of all civilization, but the earliest known civilizations emerged around 3200 BCE. We’ve existed since long before the mortal cradle of life.” Quinn moved a stone marker to modern-day Mesopotamia, placing it at the center of Eastern Turkey, Syria and Iraq before continuing.

“During the banishment, Alísun sent her mortal subjects as far away from Indriell as possible. Some believe she couldn’t have sent them very far because that kind of travel wasn’t possible back then, but this was during a time when most still wielded the pure power. They could do more than we can ever dream. Some believe they traveled the world much as we do today. Not in airplanes, but through other fast means of transportation fueled by the power. It is possible the queen did send them to the ends of the earth, but wherever they ended up, it took centuries for those mortals to figure out how to exist on their own. The banishment is believed to have occurred sometime around 5000 BCE. So what happened to those mortals in the nearly two millennia intervening? Did they stay wherever she sent them? No. They were nomads. They went where the food was. So if mortal civilization emerged in Mesopotamia and Egypt, how far did they travel from their original location?”

Quinn had the whole room’s attention as he paused to take a breath.

“Immortal records indicate the first mortals were sent across two oceans before they reached the queen’s destination. Then, for nearly two thousand years they wandered, so it is safe to assume some of them ended up in Egypt while others drifted to Mesopotamia.” Quinn placed markers on the map at both areas of the world. “Scholars have suggested that the two oceans they crossed were the South Atlantic and the Indian oceans, and the original banishment took them to India along the Arabian Sea.” He placed stone markers on each.

“How do we know this is accurate information?” Michael asked.

“It’s accurate,” Quinn said.

“Have you spoken to these scholars?” he replied with a sneer.

“I have.”

“The scholars do not mix with the rest of us. They keep to their own. How can we trust this boy?” Selena asked.

“How do you know this information, Quinn? Tell me,” Livia demanded.

“My great-grandparents are scholars. That is all I will say.” Quinn folded his arms across his chest and refused to speak further about his grandmother’s parents.

“Go on,” Livia said.

“If they ended up in India and crossed two oceans to get there, Indriell couldn’t have existed on the same continent, right?” Quinn removed the marker representing the nation of Indriell in the Middle East, and placed it off the map. “Indriell wasn’t just a small city-state with a single thriving city as most believe. It was the seat of the world and it was enormous. But there were earthquakes in the Great War. Massive ones that probably changed the map of the world, making this nothing more than an educated guess.” He gave Livia a hard look to make sure she understood his words shouldn’t be taken too literally.

“So where was it?” Livia asked.

“South America.”

“Where in South America?”

“The entire South American continent was likely the nation of Indriell and it was nothing even remotely resembling what it is today.”

Santi nodded. “It’s true. The Mayan Immortals have records that would confirm much of what Quinn is saying. We believe the Maya just didn’t go very far after Indriell was destroyed.”

“But the Scholar has been in Chile for years,” Selena said.

“He already went back to where it began.” Quinn nodded, looking at the map again.

“So they could both be heading there now, and all his travels recently have just been a ploy to throw us off his trail?”

“The Scholar is said to be something of a trickster,” Quinn said. “He likes messing with people. And let’s never forget he has the knowledge of the world at his fingertips. He has constructed the history of … everything. He’s leading you on a goose chase. He’s going to meet his wife where it all began—where Indriell fell and the banishment happened. The banishment caused many of the issues our world still struggles with today. They are circling back to where that struggle began. The banishment probably happened somewhere along the coast of Brazil. They traveled across the South Atlantic Ocean around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean to their new home.”