Golden Valley

Yanley awoke with his head throbbing. He prayed to the gods that the images his brain now held had all been a nightmare. Yanley rolled over and felt someone kneeling beside him. It was his friend Darmon. Yanley remembered their conversation as if it just occurred.

"Yanley, lay still." Darmon told him.

"Darmon, what has happened?" Yanley asked, confused and groggy with pain.

"Terrible, terrible things my friend. We have been captured by evil men and our village has been destroyed."

Yanley then realized that he was living his nightmare, and his head throbbed with pain even more.

Darmon was sobbing next to him; "They're all dead Yanley. The children, our wives... all gone."

Yanley felt anguish engulf his body, as nausea washed over him in sheets of dread and rushes of pain. He could hear Darmon uttering to himself, "There was nothing we could do... nothing we could do." Like a mantra.

The anger and the fear he felt at that time was unlike anything he had ever experienced. It would have been a merciful release to cry, but he found that he was unable to contact his emotions fully. He felt as if he was encased in a bubble of agony, suspended in grief. He willed his analytical side to take over, that side of his personality which made him a great leader and respected member of his clan. Although he felt disassociated from his actions, Yanley took a mental inventory of his surroundings. He was in a cage fashioned of black metal bars along with three of his fellow brothers. There was barely enough room for the three of them to sit side by side on its cold floor. He turned his attention to the nearby cages. It was then that he saw Hollan. The look of grief and pain on Hollan's face epitomized that of a tortured soul. It all seemed so unreal. His numbed mind slowly realized that Hollan's wife and children must have been killed as well. They were all gone. Flashes of his destroyed hut invaded his mind. His beautiful Tania, his unborn son.

Yanley shook himself from this remembrance.

The tears streaming down his face dry were drying in the coastal wind. He knew these memories would never fade from his mind, but he was always surprised by the clarity of their pictures and the raw pain they evoked.

It was dark now and the moon was shining overhead. Something had awaken him from his trance? Yanley stood and turned towards the valley below. His body stiffened like a predator watching his prey. He tuned his senses to the environment. It was the castle, it was the humans, something had happened to a friend. He had to go.

Johnathan Cann lurked through the small encampment. A tiny fire flickered in the darkness, illuminating the small guard station. He crouched behind a supply box, contemplating his next move, knowing that tonight was the end of a long and arduous journey. Assignments never lasted this long. He'd been undercover for over two years. First, he dove into learning background information, educating himself to the fullest in the area in which his alias was dubbed an expert. Although he could have spent several more months in preparation, his employer insisted that he join the team and take up his new persona. Day in and day out, he was someone else; pretending to be passionate about a potential discovery that he didn't even really believe existed. Johnathan didn't mind the undercover work, in fact he liked pretending to be someone else, it took his mind off his own troubles. This was different though. This was the longest he'd ever been undercover and he knew that tonight it would end. It was time to shed the skin of this alias and take back his old life.

Although his instincts told him not to take the job, Johnathan Cann could never resist intrigue, even if it meant risking his life. His employer purposely left him ignorant as to the many dangerous complications involved in this particular assignment, but he traversed each difficulty as it arose. Johnathan was the best in his field, and that was why he stood to become a very wealthy man upon the completion of this assignment. Tonight would be his final coup, the brilliant ending to his secret life at the encampment. If he were caught, all he'd worked to accomplish would be lost forever. The time he spent completing background research with the archaeology team was worth every penny. His newfound training and knowledge was a perfect mesh for what was needed in his work as assistant to Dr. Yoshima. At first, Johnathan kept his distance from everyone on the site, believing his time there to be short-lived. But, as time wore on, he made acquaintances, friends even, and he was slowly drawn into the work Dr. Yoshima was completing. Finally, after years of research, Dr. Yoshima's team had derived evidence leading them to this site.

It was situated just a few miles outside Dingle, Ireland in the Munster Province on the island's western coast in the County Kerry. Their site was not located far from the North Munster Project, a location studied by The Discovery Program, Ltd. out of Dublin. During their excavations of the area, recovered artifacts consisted of specialized bronze and gold work, involving a high degree of craftsmanship for their Late Bronze Age time-period. Also discovered were ramparts, hillforts, and several circular dwellings indicating a prehistoric village containing some social structure. When the North Munster Project?s findings were published, Johnathan was immediately whisked to his current site. The team worked around the clock for several weeks, working in a meticulous frenzy to uncover what they believed was hidden beneath the rich Irish soil.