Chương 552: Chapter Five Hundred and Thirty-Seven - Unpublishable

"Why would it ruin your reputation for the Black Avatars to be Riftwalkers?" It was a great question, and one that I was happy to not be the one to ask. I nodded to Calamity, trying to non-verbally thank him for asking in the first place. The mention of Riftwalkers had taken me aback a little. They'd come up here and there as I wandered around Dirt. Rainnewt was one of them, of course, and there had been a few others... that Commodore Megumi lady, for one, and that strange man I'd met not so long ago in that mine.

Actually, now that I was thinking about it, most of the Riftwalkers I met were a little... well, not ideal citizens. But maybe those were just the Riftwalkers that stood out? Maybe there was a bunch of them who found a nice farm somewhere and lived out a quiet, idyllic life, or who lived in some city somewhere, paying taxes and... doing whatever normal adults did. Like getting a job and stuff. It was just the louder, more obvious Riftwalkers that stood out.

"That's... hmm," Celiga started, then paused with a hum.

"Your lack of knowledge of the historical community is showing."

"How could nya tell?" Calamity asked, then flushed. He cleared his throat and adopted a more serious tone.

"Um. That is. What do you mean?" Celiga leaned back in his armchair, then reached over to the side. There was a sort of pouch built into it, and he pulled out a small lacquered box from within. I leaned forward, curious, but when he opened it there was just a pipe in a small inset made for it, next to a small baggy. He started to fill the pipe with some sort of stinky herb.

"In the broader community of historians, not just in Deepmarsh, but across the world, there is a... let's call it a fallacy."

"What sort?" Caprica asked.

"Oh, not one of those argumentative ones. It's more of a mistake that a lot of young, inexperienced historians fall into. It's said that if an archaeologist finds something they don't understand, then they'll say it must be ceremonial. Well, if we historians find something we don't understand, we have a tendency to say it must be the fault of a riftwalker."

"Really?" I asked.

"Oh yes. From political assassinations, to peace negotiations, to the discovery of important dungeons. Did you know that Deepmarsh, the city we're in now, is settled atop not one, but three dungeons? It's one of the locations on Dirt with the densest dungeon placement. Three of them, all so close to each other that you could have seen their entrances from one to the next. It's a Riftwalker that discovered them."

"Whoa," I said.

"Indeed. In any case, that leads to a lot of young historians looking for Riftwalkers. They start seeing them in every shadow." Amaryllis huffed a 'I know better' huff.

"And I imagine that they don't always find them?"

"Oh, World no. For every important historical event with a Riftwalker somehow involved, there are three without. But the presence of a Riftwalker is notable and interesting so it stands out."

"I believe that I understand," Desiree said.

"Your discovery of the veracity of the Black Avatars' existence was already controversial and had stricken you with ridicule. If you then tied your discovery to the presence of Riftwalkers, your delicate reputation would be stomped into the mud, on the grounds that you had sold your soul to a sensationalist history cliche in the hopes of drumming up popular interest." Celiga pointed at her with the stem of his pipe.

"Got it in one, strange fox girl," he said.

"And besides, I can't exactly go out and publish what's basically an opinion held together by circumstantial evidence at best."

"What evidence do you have?" Caprica asked. I'd noticed that she was very much not looking my way. When Celiga first mentioned Riftwalkers, Awen and Calamity both turned to give me a glance, but some of my other friends were a smidge more subtle. Celiga snapped his fingers and created an ember with a little spell. He lit his pipe, slowly puffing out a cloud of... actually, it smelled kind of nice?

"So, this is one of those things that I had to leave out of my book, and trust me, I'm not the sort to leave out much. But I did manage to identify at least half a dozen of the Black Avatars. Early on, they weren't making as much effort to disguise their identities."

"Oh?" Amaryllis asked.

"So, there's a man that appeared one day in the eastern reaches of the Trenten flats, next to a very powerful, very dangerous dungeon, one that had been spilling out monsters into the region. One thing led to another, and the early Cervid government wasn't able to take care of that dungeon. This man, however, did."

"Was he strong?" I asked.

"Maybe," Celiga said with a shrug.

"I don't often care much for levels and that sort of strength. Plenty of the strongest people on Dirt are carefully minding their own business somewhere quiet, and that's fine enough. I care for those who leave a mark on history. This man's name was Adam Romanov. He had a peculiar class that had to do with dentistry. The dungeon he conquered was known to produce these large, alligator-like lizards that walked on two feet."

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"Details strange enough to survive a retelling or two," Caprica observed.

"So, a few years later, Romanov disappeared. But there's a Black Avatar in a group of them who has strange abilities. Would you care to guess?" Celiga asked.

"He had teeth magic and... lizard bits?" I asked. Celiga nodded.

"Just so! There's a half-dozen stories not too dissimilar to that. Strange coincidences that stretch the definition of coincidence. Now, keep in mind that these are records that date back a century, sometimes two or three. They're prone to error, sometimes written in archaic forms, and often there aren't second and third sources to corroborate things, but that Adam fellow is one of six Riftwalkers that I can place as a member of the Black Avatars."

"How many Black Avatars are there, overall?" Calamity asked. Celiga shrugged.

"We tried to track that. But the fact is, there might have been as many as three groups of them travelling across Dirt at one time, and their membership numbers seemed to change. And some were more... subtle than others. I can't say. Over the course of three hundred years? I'd say as few as twenty, as many as two hundred."

"That's a wide range," Amaryllis said.

"It is what it is," Celiga said.

"My most reasonable estimate suggests that there have been at least fifty members active at one time. That being about two hundred and fifty years ago, when they were at their busiest. That's when we have decent records showing at least three groups claiming to be Black Avatars in different places at more or less the same time, with different group compositions. These ranged from three to seven members."

"That doesn't add up to fifty," Calamity said. Celiga sniffed.

"That's a guess based on another historical precedent. There have been knights and paladins of some power in the past, wandering heroes, and Explorers more recently. They rarely travel on their own. For every powerful member of one of these groups, there's always one or two other members that are with them. Lower-levelled people, there to help and assist." So...

if I was comparing the Black Avatars to my friend's group--not that we were particularly powerful or anything--then my friends would be the Avatars, and the Scallywags and the Beaver's crew would be these other members?

"They didn't travel alone, then?" I asked. He shook his head.

"Sometimes, maybe. But often they'd come in as part of a caravan, or aboard a ship in coastal regions. One of those ships is actually the easiest Black Avatar entity to track. The Black Sail of the Lost Orient."

"Ships, even archaic sailing ones, should leave quite the paper trail," Amaryllis said with a nod.

"Creatively adjusting so many of our port records has been an expensive endeavor." I blinked.

"Wait, what?"

"What?" Amaryllis asked.

"We have people that aren't fond of us, Broccoli. Do you think I'd leave such an obvious trail behind? The Beaver is already a strange and somewhat memorable ship. We don't need to leave hints on top of that. Besides, the documentation is technically legally valid." I stared at her, mouth open. We were committing crimes?!

"Have... we been committing fraud this entire time?" Caprica asked.

"Not fraud... creative accounting," Amaryllis said.

"Awa, isn't that just another word for fraud?" Awen asked. Celiga chuckled.

"You're an interesting bunch, I'll give you that. So, is there anything else I can tell you about the Black Avatars? Based on what little real knowledge I have, I mean."

"Where are they now?" I asked.

"Wait, what?" Calamity asked.

"Nya think they're still around?

"Not going to ask if they're even real, first?" Amaryllis asked. I shrugged.

"It feels like they're something we could be, so I don't see why they can't be real. And a hundred plus years isn't that long ago, right? People live long if they have higher levels, right? And there's like... elves and stuff that live longer too. They could still be around." Celiga snorted.

"Well, to answer your question... I think I do know," he said, which honestly surprised me.

"But it's hardly somewhere a normal person can reach without a few challenges along the way. Else I'd have visited the space myself."

"Where, then?" Caprica asked. She was still giving Amaryllis a look, but seemed just as curious as I was.

"No, first, I ought to tell you what I know. And why I never went there myself."