Chương 550: Chapter Five Hundred and Thirty-Five - A Man Out of Time

"So..." I said, stretching the word out. I'd just explained what happened to the others waiting outside of the Historical Research and Studies office.

"Do we just pop over to Celiga's house and say hi?"

"I suppose there's no harm in trying," Awen said.

"Do the Deepmarshers consider it a faux-pas to visit people in their homes without invitation?"

"I don't know," I said.

"It can't be all that bad, we're visiting for a good cause, right?"

"Sating our curiosity is a good cause, now?" Amaryllis asked. I worked my jaw, then nodded.

"Yup! Plus, it sounds like Professor Celgia was really passionate about the Black Avatars. I think that most people who are really into a thing are happiest when they're talking about that thing!"

"You always seem insufferably happy. Does the same thing apply to you?" Amaryllis asked. I grinned back at her.

"Maybe? Who knows!"

"Alright, well, unless ny'all plan on standing here all day, maybe we should start makin' our way back to the Beaver? Or to the old professor's place, hmm?" Calamity asked. He was hanging out at the back of the group with Bastion, and I think they'd been walking about boy stuff on their own back there.

"I think we should at least try to talk to the professor," I said.

"If he's not there, then we can set up a meeting at least, and it'll give us an idea of how to reach his place."

"That's reasonable enough," Amaryllis said.

"Besides," Desiree added.

"We've journeyed all this way, surely it would be a shame not to explore the city a bit more."

"Then it's settled!" I said with a chipper clap of my hands.

"I just hope your new friend doesn't call the city guard down on our heads," Amaryllis muttered.

"He certainly won't," Desiree declared.

"The professor is a political pariah, isn't he? The local constabulary won't lift a finger in his defense." My smile got a bit fixed, especially when Amaryllis inclined her head like Desiree had made a good point.

"... Well!" I said, hoping I hadn't paused too long.

"Let's get moving!" Getting to the Sixth Quarter, the location of Celiga's house, wasn't as easy to find as I might have hoped, but it wasn't as hard as I feared. We were still getting the hang of the city's layout, with all its weirdly stacked pathways and such. Caprica took the lead again, with Bastion to one side and Amaryllis on the other. The imposing (even if he was a bit short) paladin did a good job of clearing people out of the way for us just with his presence.

The rest of us kept pace behind, sometimes taking a moment to point at something weird. There were a lot of tall, narrow 'slit' windows along the exterior corridors, some opened up to let in a muggy breeze. It was nice to pause next to one of those, because the air in Deepmarsh's big buildings was only getting thicker and more humid as the day wore on. The professor lived in the Old Quarter. That wasn't its official name, but whenever we asked someone for directions that's what they called it.

I gathered from the way people were talking that it was one of the first four home pads to be built. The homes in it were a smidge larger, and some well-off families had taken over entire floors of the Old Quarter building. I supposed that in a city laid out like Deepmarsh, there wasn't really room for stuff like mansions and big estates. We found the ninth level of the Sixth Quarter after climbing a narrow stairwell that zigzagged its way up the corner of the pad, then followed painted numbers to Apartment 48.

It was tucked in a corner hallway, beside a laundry line strung from one balcony to another. A few grenoil kids leapt across the bridge above us, cackling as they chased each other. I stepped up and raised a hand to knock, but paused with my knuckles an inch from the door.

"Okay, how should we approach this? Polite and curious and friendly? Friendly and enthusiastic and friendly? Quiet and respectful and friendly?" Amaryllis rolled her eyes.

"Careful Broccoli -- those tactics might not be friendly enough." I gasped.

"I forgot friendly and friendly and friendly," I said. Awen giggled, and shook her head.

"Let's try being polite first?"

"We can fall back on friendly if that doesn't work," Amaryllis said.

"And threats as a close third." I smiled brightly, then rapped my knuckles against the door. Nothing happened for a long moment. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Then, just when I was about to knock again, there was the sound of several bolts being undone, one by one, followed by the clunk of a latch and the metallic squeak of a hinge that had not seen oil in a few weeks.

The door creaked open, and a pair of tired, bloodshot grenoil eyes peered out through the crack.

"Yes?" came a man's voice. It was almost a croak, and I wasn't saying that just because he looked a bit froggy.

"Hi!" I said while putting on a smile that I hoped looked friendly and welcoming.

"Are you Professor Celiga?" I asked. He scoffed.

"Who's asking?" His eyes narrowed, then jumped from me to each of my friends in turn. I saw his brow perk up a little as he stared.

"My name's Broccoli Bunch! I'm from the Exploration Guild, and these are my friends, Amaryllis, Awen, Calamity, Caprica, Bastion and Desiree. We heard you were something of an expert on the Black Avatars, and we wanted to ask you a few questions." The man blinked.

"You're an entire menagerie," he said before opening the door just a few more centimetres. It was enough to reveal a tired-looking grenoil gentleman, someone a little older, wearing a bathrobe and big dark pouches under his eyes.

"You're here for the Avatars?" he asked. I nod-nod-nodded.

"We found something that referenced them, but it wasn't much. And people keep saying they're not real, or just a fairy tale. But it didn't sound like a fairy tale. Ah, it's a long story, actually. But when we started to research, we stumbled on your book. The Lost Histories of the Black Avatars. So far, it's been our best source about them."

"Come in," he said after staring for a moment. We filed in carefully. The apartment was... cozy, in a kind of cluttered-expert-historian way. Piles of books were everywhere, the furniture didn't match, and half of a large tapestry had been pulled off one wall and lay curled up on the floor. A truly impressive number of empty beer bottles and wine bottles littered every available surface. The place made me itchy to start cleaning.

Professor Celiga led us into what might once have been a respectable sitting room, but now looked like it had lost a battle with at least three competing systems of "organization." Chairs were buried under drifts of books, piles of books were serving as end tables, and the end tables had worn seat cushions perched atop them.

"Don't touch the purple books," he said.

"Or the teapot. And ignore the cat."

"Cat?" I asked. A loud mrrt came from somewhere in the room. Then I spotted a very round, very fluffy feline lounging atop a bookshelf, its eyes half-lidded with judgment. It didn't blink when I waved at it.

"You have a cat?" Caprica asked, perking up a little. She was immediately distracted, moving across the room to make tutting noises at the kitty to get permission to pet it. The cat was more focused on Calamity, both of them giving each other half-lidded stares.

"Hmph," Celiga said. He flopped back into a plush armchair, then looked at those of us who weren't as distracted.

"So," he said.

"The Black Avatars." I nodded, then leaned forward.

"They were real, weren't they? You wrote that they lived a long time ago, but that they disappeared." I'd had some time to finish reading his book. Um... I didn't actually use that time to finish reading his book, because I was a busy bun with other things to do, but I'd flipped through a lot of it. Celiga snorted.

"They disappeared because they chose to. Not for lack of gold, and especially not power. They had both in spades. But they saw something coming, something they didn't want to be part of. So they removed themselves from the world."

"Why?" Awen asked.

"It seems... extreme." Celiga reached over to a stack of books, slid it aside, and pulled free a thin leather-bound journal. It looked old, with a sun-faded spine and a cracked seal on the front shaped like an ornate black sun. He held it up.

"Because they were corrupted. Or, rather, they feared they would be. Too much power, too much influence, too many people calling on them to fix things that they had no business being the ones to fix." Desiree stepped forward, eyes narrowed.

"You are saying they abandoned the world to protect it from themselves?"

"Something like that," Celiga said.

"A group of the most powerful individuals Dirt had ever seen. Each chosen not just for strength, but for moral clarity. For the goodness in their hearts. And they were good--truly. But even the brightest candle flickers under a storm."