Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 84237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 421(@200wpm)___ 337(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
“I’m told you do not speak Portuguese,” he said in an accented English.
Oh thank god! They’d brought him here because someone spoke English. “I speak very terrible Portuguese, I should say. I’m glad someone here speaks English, as I don’t speak German, either. My name is Dr. Samuel Hunter. I’m an archaeologist.”
He blinked slowly, like he needed the motion to process this. “I’m Lester Jaeggi. Why are you here, Dr. Hunter?”
“Well, I’ve been looking for the Sousa Clan. I believe I’m in the ruins of it now, am I right?”
“You are.”
Sam was downright giddy. He’d have danced a jig if he’d been without an audience. Finally! Fucking finally, he had found them. After spending a good chunk of his life searching for them. It meant more than just a dream fulfilled. It meant hope.
It might well mean that he could properly stay with Dimitri.
He’d celebrate this later. Right now, he had to convince these guys that he was friend, not foe. Sam wasn’t quite sure how to do that, all things considered. Jaeggi and dragons were not known for being friends.
What he needed first was information. “If you don’t mind my asking, why are all of you here? You’re very, very far from home.”
“We’ve been here for some time.” The man shrugged. “Our fathers brought us here just before World War II.”
…Come again?
That made absolutely no sense to Sam.
“Why?”
“Hitler, at the time, was digging into anything that might give him a quick, decisive victory in war. He turned to magic as one of the possible methods. Some of our fathers convinced him there was untold magic here, secrets that no living mage remembered, and he funded an expedition. The initial wave was of twenty scientists, archaeologists, and linguists. Most of them were Jaeggi. When the war officially broke out, Hitler either lost interest or time to pursue this avenue. He pulled his people back from it and cut off funding. But our fathers had too much hope invested in this place by then. They were only too happy to be left behind. They also sent for their families and settled in, making a life here as they studied the records.”
The full situation dawned on Sam. He breathed, “They wanted to fix their magical cores.”
Lester’s eyes narrowed. “You know of this.”
Sam snorted bitterly. “I’m of Jaeggi descent on my father’s side. It’s my understanding a small group left the Jaeggi and traveled west before the Dragon Wars. My core is just as broken. I came looking for the same fix.”
“Ahh. Much is explained, then. If there is any hope in restoring what Kaiser Jaeggi broke within us, it is here.”
So they were on the same page, then. Good. Lester seemed to realize Sam wasn’t a threat with this information, so he dared to push it a little further. “You said your families have been here ever since War World II. Have you had much contact with the rest of the Jaeggi Clan in Germany?”
“Not really. Occasionally, we’ll send a letter or email, check in, but I think it’s been a good five years since anyone bothered. We haven’t heard a word from them in reply in at least a decade, maybe two. All communication has been curt. They are hyper fixated on another project. We haven’t delivered anything, after all, despite the promises we’ve made. Not for lack of trying. We believe we have been abandoned by the rest of our clan.” Lester’s shoulders slumped, appearing weary and defeated. “We want this to work too. We know it can! This can save all our people.”
“You never thought to go back in all this time?”
“Go back to what? A dwindling clan filled with broken cores, hated by both dragons and mages? Go back to the evil insanity Kaiser Jaeggi keeps cooking up?” Lester shook his head, looking all the more resolute. “The answer to our clan’s problem is here. Not in Germany. Not anywhere else. We know it. The only thing tripping us up is that we’re not able to fully read the records. The Sousa Clan spoke a variant of the language of the time, and it’s been difficult to read.”
Sam swallowed hard and glanced back at the only exit. He hated to admit it, but he calculated whether he could make it out of the door before anyone caught him, because there was something they really needed to know. It was only right, and it might be easier to hear from him instead of the dragons. He was related to them distantly, and he could definitely understand the pain they’d been through in their efforts to fix their cursed cores.
“Um. I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Sam started slowly, scrubbing one hand through his sweaty hair. He looked away, trying to figure out a gentle way to say the words.