Nora Varn's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Nora knelt beside the meltwater pooling at the excavation base. The collectors stood behind her, watching as she pressed her gloved fingers into the cold water. Something dark showed through the ice beneath the surface, deeper than the artifact chamber they'd been drilling toward. She pulled the telescope from her pack and adjusted the lens, pressing it against the clearest section of ice. The water magnified what lay below — carved stone, enormous and geometric. An altar, its surface covered in symbols she didn't recognize. Not from the culture that had left the bone artifact above. This was older, far older, pressed into permafrost layers that had been frozen for millennia. The discovery changed everything. The artifact she'd come for was suddenly just the surface. One of the collectors leaned over her shoulder. She heard his breath catch when he saw it. In three hours, the melting wall would collapse and flood this entire site, burying both discoveries under water and refrozen ice. She could drill toward the altar now, abandon the artifact she'd risked her license to claim. Or she could stay focused on what she'd come for and let this older anomaly disappear back into the ice for another thousand years. The telescope trembled in her hands. Nora set the telescope down and stood. She walked to the wooden stakes marking the excavation perimeter, where layers of permafrost showed dark soil between bands of ancient ice. Each layer was a different era, a different people. The altar belonged to someone whose name had been forgotten long before the bone carvers ever walked this ice. She turned back to the collectors. "We dig for the artifact first," she said. "We document the altar's position and depth. When we come back with proper equipment, we'll know exactly where to find it." The collector nodded slowly. They both knew she was choosing to let the greater discovery wait. But she also knew exactly what she'd found, and that knowledge was something she could carry forward.