Atlantis

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It was well into the first month of the wet season but not a drop of rain had fallen. Concern in the first week had turned to fear by the fourth week. As the water level of the deep moat fell, so did the will of the occupants of the capitol city. Anxiety was spreading like a sickness from person to person and mother to babe.

The city had taken the people over five hundred years to build. Within its watery protection lay all their wealth, memories and the graves of ten generations of their ancestors. It was the most advanced and beautiful city on the face of the planet.

Thousands of miles to the west, Charlemagne was being crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the Eternal City, but this place deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia dwarfed even Rome in comparison. It was the center of kingdom extending south to about the Srivijayan Empire of Sumatra and the Shailandra Empire of Java. To the northeast, the Tang Dynasty of China ruled, while to the west, in the Middle East, the tide of Islam was rising. The capitol city of Angkor Kol Ker, the heart of the Khmer empire, held architecture the likes of which Europe would not see for half a century. But within the empire lay a Shadow-a dark place, which closed off all travel toward India and the world beyond.

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