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Description
July 22, 1877; Morrison, Colorado

Morrison ultimately did become the next destination for Evelyn, Marsh, and Chaytan. The abundance of fossils reported and described in the area by a local college professor named Arthur Lakes practically became a glaring beacon that they followed, and the hype thankfully proved to be very real. Dozens of new species were pulled out of the ground by their team, animals of all shapes and sizes the likes of which they had never seen before. They found a huge herbivorous dinosaur with bony plates and massive spikes along the length of its body, which Marsh named “Stegosaurus”. Not to mention a creature that Marsh hadn't named yet but seemed pretty set on calling it “Diplodocus”. It was larger than life, absolutely, uncomprehensively enormous. 80 feet long and a third of that length being the long neck and whip-like tail. It was a graceful giant that Evelyn couldn't wait to see on display in museums in its full glory. It would definitely be a sight to behold.

She was deep in the mines that day, working a bit farther off from the other members of Marsh’s dig crew. Partially because she liked the higher chances of making a discovery on her own, and partially because what Custer had told her about Marsh was still tapping at her brain. Destroying skeletons just to keep them out of the hands of his rivals… that couldn't be true. That went completely against what science stood for: making discoveries and sharing them with the world. Marsh's personality sometimes left a little bit to be desired at times, sure, but would he actually do that? Surely he loved his field more than he hated Edward.

She hoped.

She tried to shake it from her head. It was just a dying Templar trying to get into her head, she told herself. One last attempt at a mind game before he spoke no more. Yes, that was surely it. She shook the thoughts out of her mind, focusing instead on getting the fossils out of the lantern-lit walls of the mines.

“How difficult is it to determine fossil from normal rock?” Chaytan asked her as she used her pickaxe to delicately chip away at the stone. He was the only one she let stay nearby her. She enjoyed his company, saw him as a friend rather than a co-worker, and his legitimate curiosity and inquisitiveness towards her work certainly helped keep her spirits up out of the gutters. Every passionate word she spoke made him smile, and that in turn made her smile as she worked and talked.

“It depends on the dig site, honestly,” she told him. “Some bone fragments are small and fragile, and when they get worn away easily over the millennia. Sometimes it's impossible to tell a pebble from a tooth. Other times, however, you'll get beautiful preservations of creatures, almost complete in their full beauty.”

“But never with skin or muscle?”

“Unfortunately no. Only bone. And even then, it isn't truly bone. It's all stone through and through. See, when an organism dies, assuming it gets buried rather quickly or falls into very damp areas like swamps, then that keeps the skeleton safe from the elements after decay claims the soft tissues. Then once the skeleton is encased in soil, and the soil becomes rock, the minerals in those rocks seep in and replace the bone material, leaving an exact stone copy for us scientists to dig up centuries later.”

“Fascinating!”

“Sometimes you'll get the occasional trace fossils, like impressions of soft tissue that were left in the stones. Like for example, there's this one species called Archaeopteryx that was discovered about 15 years ago. It was a little bird of sorts, and a couple fossils have been found with impressions of the wing feathers beautifully preserved.”

“Rather interesting how the past can be preserved in such a way.”

Evelyn chuckled. “Indeed. And that's only a fraction of it! There was another thing about Archaeopteryx that's been rattling the scientific world.”

“Oh? What other astounding insights did this ancient bird have to offer?”

“Well see thing is, it wasn't really… fully a bird. It seemed to be a sort of odd scramble of a bird and a reptile. It had hands on its wings, clawed hands like a dinosaur’s, and a long tail with feathers fanning out from it. And a beak full of teeth if you could believe that!”

“If it were coming from anyone but you and your brilliant mind, I wouldn't believe it,” he laughed. Evelyn smiled blushed, turning away to hide it.

“It's a brilliant animal, and it's solid evidence of a major theory that was proposed back in ‘59 by a brilliant man named Charles Darwin. He calls it the ‘theory of evolution’, and it says that species change ever so slightly with each generation, and each change will either cause those individuals to die quickly or become survival powerhouses. Those survival powerhouses live to pass on their changes and their offspring end up having their own changes and failures too and eventually the ones best suited for their environment end up coming out on top and survive to thrive in the ecosystem.”

“So all living things must spawn from ancestral forms by that logic?”

“Exactly! And Archaeopteryx seems to make the case that birds are the evolutionary descendants of the dinosaurs! Isn't that fascinating?”

“Absolutely fascinating! It's a very interesting window into the story of life itself.”

“I know right! It's brilliant! I love it so much! Ever since I was a girl the ideas of ancient worlds full of ancient life that slowly transformed into what we have today was always so mind-blowing and I always wanted to know more and more!”

“One with such a passion for knowledge and understanding as you is truly an honorable one. Never lose sight of that passion, Evelyn. It's going to take you far in your life.”

“Thank you, Chaytan. That means more to me than you know.”

He simply gave her a big friendly smile, which she gladly returned. At this point she didn't care that she was blushing anymore. He made her feel important. He made her feel welcome. He made her feel wanted.

God how she wished she could tell him how she felt.

She went back to picking out a small bone from the rock. She carefully brushed away the dust and dirt from the wall, doing her best to preserve the ancient remains as she dug it out. She was about to dig her pickaxe in and pull the last bit of it out, but then suddenly there was a slight shaking in the mine.

Evelyn quickly froze, even as the fossil was shaken out of the wall and it bounced off her boot. She looked around. “Did you feel that?” she asked Chaytan.

“I did…” he said, equally on edge.

Then another shake came, still small but enough to clearly be felt. Dust fell from the roof of the mine and Evelyn could hear the men up above starting to chatter.

Chaytan was looking deeper into the mines though, into the darkness. “It felt as though it was coming from that way,” he said.

“You think something's down there?” Evelyn asked.

“I do. And whatever it is can't be good.”

“Oh joy… exploring in the deep dark chasms for unknown dangers.”

Chaytan laughed and offered her to hold his hand as he grabbed a torch. “Come. It isn't going to investigate itself.”

“Well you never know, maybe it will,” she nervously joked as she followed her friend deeper into the mine shaft.

They continued deeper into the dark stone tunnels, climbing down from steep drops when needed and using the rumbling to guide their way.

“Careful!” they suddenly heard as they came into a chamber and hid behind a large stone. “This mine is already unstable without our tinkering! Leidy wouldn't really be pleased if we all got crushed beneath these stones.”

“We're doing the best we can, Mr. Haines,” someone else said.

“You'd better do better given how much coin we line your pockets with.”

Evelyn and Chaytan peeked out over the rock to see what was going on. They saw a small group of men messing with the stone walls of the chamber. At the center was a large man in dark clothing with a bright red Templar cross embroidered on his coat’s mantle. He had dark eyes watching over all his minions, making sure they didn't step out of line with whatever it was they were doing.

“How the hell did the Templars get down here?” Evelyn whispered.

“More importantly: what are they up too?” Chaytan responded.

Evelyn tried to get a better look at what they were doing to the walls. Her eyes widened when one of them moved away enough for her to observe their work.

“That's dynamite!” she gasped. “Bloody hell that's enough to bring this whole mine down!”

Many of the Templars seemed to be backing away from their work, seemingly finished and satisfied with it. “Fuses are all set, Mr. Haines!” one of them called to the man in the center.

“Good,” said Haines. “All of you make your way back topside and then I'll detonate the fuse once I join you.”

“I still don't get why we gots to blow up all these bones,” another man said.

“To keep the Assassins and their allies from digging here and getting the leg up on Leidy and Cope.”

“Fair enough I guess.”

Evelyn looked in panic at Chaytan, who returned the look. The Templars all began to walk out the other side of the chamber, leaving nothing but a room full of armed explosives. Evelyn and Chaytan didn't waste any time.

They bolted.

They ran up the mineshaft back towards all of Marsh's men, Evelyn yelling panicked profanities as they did. The second she saw someone from their team, Evelyn called out “Run everybody run!”

The men barely had time to even look confused before the entire mine suddenly rumbled and shook violently. The walls started cracking and falling into pieces as the ground shook beneath their feet. The whole of Marsh's excavation team started sprinting and screaming as the mine caved in. Evelyn and Chaytan ran and jumped over the piles of rock that fell out of the ceiling and threatened to crush them. They ran and ducked and dodged until they were graced with the sight of sunlight at the end of the tunnel. They didn't risk slowing down. They sprinted as hard if not harder than their legs could handle until they thrusted themselves out of the entrance, just before it was shut for good and returned to the earth.

There was a chorus of coughing and painful moans as the dust slowly settled around them. Chaytan held Evelyn as she coughed clouds of dust out of her lungs. He carefully helped her sit down onto a large stone and he comforted her as she hit her own chest.

“Bloody hell…” she said.

“What the hell happened in there?” Marsh said as he came storming up to them.

“Leidy’s men,” Evelyn told him. “They rigged the mine with dynamite to destroy our dig and the fossils inside. Hypocritical bastards!”

Marsh stomped his foot and rubbed his eyes. “Damn! Cope and his rats are getting just as desperate as I am it seems.”

“What?”

“I hired a few men to steal a few of Cope’s fossils and destroy them if they couldn't. I guess the snake wanted to stab me back the same way.”

“Wait you actually had fossils destroyed?!” Evelyn suddenly felt like she got punched in the chest. Everything Custer had said to her was true then...

“Only when I could not have them recovered for myself,” Marsh said, checking on a few of his nearby team members to make sure they were alright after the cave in. “Cope does not deserve to have his grubby hands ruining our rightful finds.”

“Dr. Marsh!”

“We'll have to discuss this later, Ms. Arlie. I must go check on the university lads to make sure they're in good health. This isn't what they volunteered for, poor lads…”

Before Evelyn could respond, Marsh walked off to do exactly what he said to do. Evelyn stared, and then looked at Chaytan. He gave her an apologetic look. She rubbed her temples as he patted her back in comfort.

“Why do I get the feeling this mine isn't the only thing falling apart?” she said.

Description
July 22, 1877; Morrison, Colorado

Morrison ultimately did become the next destination for Evelyn, Marsh, and Chaytan. The abundance of fossils reported and described in the area by a local college professor named Arthur Lakes practically became a glaring beacon that they followed, and the hype thankfully proved to be very real. Dozens of new species were pulled out of the ground by their team, animals of all shapes and sizes the likes of which they had never seen before. They found a huge herbivorous dinosaur with bony plates and massive spikes along the length of its body, which Marsh named “Stegosaurus”. Not to mention a creature that Marsh hadn't named yet but seemed pretty set on calling it “Diplodocus”. It was larger than life, absolutely, uncomprehensively enormous. 80 feet long and a third of that length being the long neck and whip-like tail. It was a graceful giant that Evelyn couldn't wait to see on display in museums in its full glory. It would definitely be a sight to behold.

She was deep in the mines that day, working a bit farther off from the other members of Marsh’s dig crew. Partially because she liked the higher chances of making a discovery on her own, and partially because what Custer had told her about Marsh was still tapping at her brain. Destroying skeletons just to keep them out of the hands of his rivals… that couldn't be true. That went completely against what science stood for: making discoveries and sharing them with the world. Marsh's personality sometimes left a little bit to be desired at times, sure, but would he actually do that? Surely he loved his field more than he hated Edward.

She hoped.

She tried to shake it from her head. It was just a dying Templar trying to get into her head, she told herself. One last attempt at a mind game before he spoke no more. Yes, that was surely it. She shook the thoughts out of her mind, focusing instead on getting the fossils out of the lantern-lit walls of the mines.

“How difficult is it to determine fossil from normal rock?” Chaytan asked her as she used her pickaxe to delicately chip away at the stone. He was the only one she let stay nearby her. She enjoyed his company, saw him as a friend rather than a co-worker, and his legitimate curiosity and inquisitiveness towards her work certainly helped keep her spirits up out of the gutters. Every passionate word she spoke made him smile, and that in turn made her smile as she worked and talked.

“It depends on the dig site, honestly,” she told him. “Some bone fragments are small and fragile, and when they get worn away easily over the millennia. Sometimes it's impossible to tell a pebble from a tooth. Other times, however, you'll get beautiful preservations of creatures, almost complete in their full beauty.”

“But never with skin or muscle?”

“Unfortunately no. Only bone. And even then, it isn't truly bone. It's all stone through and through. See, when an organism dies, assuming it gets buried rather quickly or falls into very damp areas like swamps, then that keeps the skeleton safe from the elements after decay claims the soft tissues. Then once the skeleton is encased in soil, and the soil becomes rock, the minerals in those rocks seep in and replace the bone material, leaving an exact stone copy for us scientists to dig up centuries later.”

“Fascinating!”

“Sometimes you'll get the occasional trace fossils, like impressions of soft tissue that were left in the stones. Like for example, there's this one species called Archaeopteryx that was discovered about 15 years ago. It was a little bird of sorts, and a couple fossils have been found with impressions of the wing feathers beautifully preserved.”

“Rather interesting how the past can be preserved in such a way.”

Evelyn chuckled. “Indeed. And that's only a fraction of it! There was another thing about Archaeopteryx that's been rattling the scientific world.”

“Oh? What other astounding insights did this ancient bird have to offer?”

“Well see thing is, it wasn't really… fully a bird. It seemed to be a sort of odd scramble of a bird and a reptile. It had hands on its wings, clawed hands like a dinosaur’s, and a long tail with feathers fanning out from it. And a beak full of teeth if you could believe that!”

“If it were coming from anyone but you and your brilliant mind, I wouldn't believe it,” he laughed. Evelyn smiled blushed, turning away to hide it.

“It's a brilliant animal, and it's solid evidence of a major theory that was proposed back in ‘59 by a brilliant man named Charles Darwin. He calls it the ‘theory of evolution’, and it says that species change ever so slightly with each generation, and each change will either cause those individuals to die quickly or become survival powerhouses. Those survival powerhouses live to pass on their changes and their offspring end up having their own changes and failures too and eventually the ones best suited for their environment end up coming out on top and survive to thrive in the ecosystem.”

“So all living things must spawn from ancestral forms by that logic?”

“Exactly! And Archaeopteryx seems to make the case that birds are the evolutionary descendants of the dinosaurs! Isn't that fascinating?”

“Absolutely fascinating! It's a very interesting window into the story of life itself.”

“I know right! It's brilliant! I love it so much! Ever since I was a girl the ideas of ancient worlds full of ancient life that slowly transformed into what we have today was always so mind-blowing and I always wanted to know more and more!”

“One with such a passion for knowledge and understanding as you is truly an honorable one. Never lose sight of that passion, Evelyn. It's going to take you far in your life.”

“Thank you, Chaytan. That means more to me than you know.”

He simply gave her a big friendly smile, which she gladly returned. At this point she didn't care that she was blushing anymore. He made her feel important. He made her feel welcome. He made her feel wanted.

God how she wished she could tell him how she felt.

She went back to picking out a small bone from the rock. She carefully brushed away the dust and dirt from the wall, doing her best to preserve the ancient remains as she dug it out. She was about to dig her pickaxe in and pull the last bit of it out, but then suddenly there was a slight shaking in the mine.

Evelyn quickly froze, even as the fossil was shaken out of the wall and it bounced off her boot. She looked around. “Did you feel that?” she asked Chaytan.

“I did…” he said, equally on edge.

Then another shake came, still small but enough to clearly be felt. Dust fell from the roof of the mine and Evelyn could hear the men up above starting to chatter.

Chaytan was looking deeper into the mines though, into the darkness. “It felt as though it was coming from that way,” he said.

“You think something's down there?” Evelyn asked.

“I do. And whatever it is can't be good.”

“Oh joy… exploring in the deep dark chasms for unknown dangers.”

Chaytan laughed and offered her to hold his hand as he grabbed a torch. “Come. It isn't going to investigate itself.”

“Well you never know, maybe it will,” she nervously joked as she followed her friend deeper into the mine shaft.

They continued deeper into the dark stone tunnels, climbing down from steep drops when needed and using the rumbling to guide their way.

“Careful!” they suddenly heard as they came into a chamber and hid behind a large stone. “This mine is already unstable without our tinkering! Leidy wouldn't really be pleased if we all got crushed beneath these stones.”

“We're doing the best we can, Mr. Haines,” someone else said.

“You'd better do better given how much coin we line your pockets with.”

Evelyn and Chaytan peeked out over the rock to see what was going on. They saw a small group of men messing with the stone walls of the chamber. At the center was a large man in dark clothing with a bright red Templar cross embroidered on his coat’s mantle. He had dark eyes watching over all his minions, making sure they didn't step out of line with whatever it was they were doing.

“How the hell did the Templars get down here?” Evelyn whispered.

“More importantly: what are they up too?” Chaytan responded.

Evelyn tried to get a better look at what they were doing to the walls. Her eyes widened when one of them moved away enough for her to observe their work.

“That's dynamite!” she gasped. “Bloody hell that's enough to bring this whole mine down!”

Many of the Templars seemed to be backing away from their work, seemingly finished and satisfied with it. “Fuses are all set, Mr. Haines!” one of them called to the man in the center.

“Good,” said Haines. “All of you make your way back topside and then I'll detonate the fuse once I join you.”

“I still don't get why we gots to blow up all these bones,” another man said.

“To keep the Assassins and their allies from digging here and getting the leg up on Leidy and Cope.”

“Fair enough I guess.”

Evelyn looked in panic at Chaytan, who returned the look. The Templars all began to walk out the other side of the chamber, leaving nothing but a room full of armed explosives. Evelyn and Chaytan didn't waste any time.

They bolted.

They ran up the mineshaft back towards all of Marsh's men, Evelyn yelling panicked profanities as they did. The second she saw someone from their team, Evelyn called out “Run everybody run!”

The men barely had time to even look confused before the entire mine suddenly rumbled and shook violently. The walls started cracking and falling into pieces as the ground shook beneath their feet. The whole of Marsh's excavation team started sprinting and screaming as the mine caved in. Evelyn and Chaytan ran and jumped over the piles of rock that fell out of the ceiling and threatened to crush them. They ran and ducked and dodged until they were graced with the sight of sunlight at the end of the tunnel. They didn't risk slowing down. They sprinted as hard if not harder than their legs could handle until they thrusted themselves out of the entrance, just before it was shut for good and returned to the earth.

There was a chorus of coughing and painful moans as the dust slowly settled around them. Chaytan held Evelyn as she coughed clouds of dust out of her lungs. He carefully helped her sit down onto a large stone and he comforted her as she hit her own chest.

“Bloody hell…” she said.

“What the hell happened in there?” Marsh said as he came storming up to them.

“Leidy’s men,” Evelyn told him. “They rigged the mine with dynamite to destroy our dig and the fossils inside. Hypocritical bastards!”

Marsh stomped his foot and rubbed his eyes. “Damn! Cope and his rats are getting just as desperate as I am it seems.”

“What?”

“I hired a few men to steal a few of Cope’s fossils and destroy them if they couldn't. I guess the snake wanted to stab me back the same way.”

“Wait you actually had fossils destroyed?!” Evelyn suddenly felt like she got punched in the chest. Everything Custer had said to her was true then...

“Only when I could not have them recovered for myself,” Marsh said, checking on a few of his nearby team members to make sure they were alright after the cave in. “Cope does not deserve to have his grubby hands ruining our rightful finds.”

“Dr. Marsh!”

“We'll have to discuss this later, Ms. Arlie. I must go check on the university lads to make sure they're in good health. This isn't what they volunteered for, poor lads…”

Before Evelyn could respond, Marsh walked off to do exactly what he said to do. Evelyn stared, and then looked at Chaytan. He gave her an apologetic look. She rubbed her temples as he patted her back in comfort.

“Why do I get the feeling this mine isn't the only thing falling apart?” she said.