Chương 553: Chapter Five Hundred and Thirty-Eight - Fortress of Solitude

Celiga shifted in his seat.

"I've mentioned how I started to look into the Black Avatars some time ago, yes? Well, initially there was a lot of scepticism, on my own part most of all. The last sightings are only a little over a hundred years ago. That means that... well, frankly speaking, that's recent history. That far back means that there are people still alive who might have been present."

"So you asked them?" I wondered.

"Obviously," he said.

"And they confirmed something for me. The idea that the Black Avatars are a myth doesn't make sense. There are so many pieces of circumstantial evidence, and so many people that encountered one or the other... it might be the kind of thing that gets surrounded by misconceptions over time, but the historical validity shouldn't be questioned."

"And yet, it seems to be," Desiree mused.

"Exactly," Celiga said. He waved his pipe around.

"I started to suspect a grand conspiracy, but if learning about history has taught me one thing, it's that conspiracies are rarely grand. They're usually out in the open. The 'open' in question just tends to be the open halls of a royal ballroom or a noble's parlour." Amaryllis snorted.

"Conspiracy is what people on the outside call it when they're not aware of the people pulling the strings. Convenience is what you call it when those tugging the strings are peers." Celiga harrumphed.

"Maybe, maybe so. In any case, there are other powerful groups out there that we know to be historical fact. The Band of the Owl Cloth, for example."

"The who?" I asked.

"They're a band of cloth merchants turned explorers and adventurers," Celiga said.

"Or rather, a group of the former hired by the latter. They explored and exploited a dozen dungeons at the foot of the Harpy Mountains some three hundred years ago and became quite rich from it before disbanding over some internal scuffle. Or the Order of the Southern Aurora."

"Ah!" Desiree said. She stood up straighter.

"I know of these."

"You do?" I asked. Desiree often seemed to know... well, about as much as I did, and I was literally from a different world. In her case, she was from some land across the... southern ocean. I realized why she might know about this Southern Aurora Order thing at the same moment she started speaking.

"Yes," she replied with a nod.

"They were a circle of wandering knights, set on reaching the far south. Were they foxkin such as I, surely there wouldn't be a single one without at least three tails upon them." Celiga stared at her for a moment.

"The Order was a group of knights, mostly from Pyrowalk. Some of them went on to be founding members of the Mattergrove nobility. They also had a number of Ostri members. They're not well-known here, but they did leave their mark on the continent. Again, another group of high-levelled, multi-classed individuals from a long time ago."

"Would the Paladins count as such as well?" Caprica asked with a glance towards Bastion. The historian nodded.

"Of course. However, the Paladins are an existing organization. I could point to the Exploration Guild, or the Royal Guardians of Deepmarsh as well, but no one doubts that they exist because they're still active. The Order of the Southern Aurora and the Band of the Owl Cloth no longer exist, they're part of history, but their validity isn't questioned." Celiga gestured with his pipe like he was accusing an entire university class of unbelievable foolishness.

"The Black Avatars should be just as accepted history, only they're considered a myth. It doesn't add up."

"Hense your suspicion of a conspiracy," Amaryllis said.

"Ah, could it be something else?" Awen asked. A few of us turned her way, and she hesitated a moment before elaborating.

"Um, see, that band and the order, they're important to a nation, and they have people who consider them ancestors. What if the Black Avatars aren't linked to any nation, and don't have, uh, children left." Celiga hummed.

"A possibility. Some small organizations disappear and most mention of them fade away as well. The bakery two floors down isn't a national staple, and when it closes down one day, no one will remember their meat tarts."

"That's kind of sad," I said.

"History remembers the big things and strange things," Celiga said.

"Peaceful times are oft forgotten, though they are the best to live in. Ah, but yes, the Black Avatars. The conspiracy ld me to digging further. It felt, at times, like I was pitting my skills as a Historian against someone trying to disguise the truth."

"And what did you find?" I asked.

"Earlier, I mentioned their ship, the Black Sail of the Lost Orient."

"Yup," I said.

"Well, we were able to chart its comings and goings. Ports tend to have long memories and longer paper trails. A few letters sent to colleagues across the sea and we had a good picture of where the ship had been. Then one of my peers in the Endless Swells mentioned that if I wanted to find out more about the Black Avatars, I could just visit their old fortress."

"They just... have a fortress?" Amaryllis asked.

"We could have just flown there! It would have saved us all this questing around." If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"That's how I felt!" Celiga said.

"I was never angrier in my life. I packed my bags as soon as I confirmed its location, blew my research budget for the next three years hiring an airship, and took off."

"Did you find it?" I asked. Celiga bit the end of his pipe and sat back down.

"No. But also, yes." Amaryllis crossed her wings.

"Can you be any less specific?" He nodded, then with a grunt of effort, stood.

"I took pictures," he said.

"We had a camera operator from the university with us. I have some of the originals here." We watched as Celiga looked around through some old books, then he returned with an album of sorts. It looked handmade, leatherbound and filled with photos clipped into pages. Opening it up, he leafed through a dozen photos, all in a sort of brownish-sepia colour, until he came about a full-page picture that he turned towards us. I leaned in.

Curving along from one side of the photograph to the other was the shore of an island, or maybe a peninsula. Near the shoreline, a few small buildings were clustered around a lake. Small stone ones that looked like they belonged nest to a castle instead of this remote stretch of coastline.

"I don't often see lakes that are so... squarish." Calamity frowned. Huh. He was right. The corners were all regular right angles.

"I think..." Awen started.

"I think this was a... basement? Did someone demolish the building on top of it?" It kind of did look that way. An irregular, square-cut lake, with edges that looked like they could be stone blocks draped in overgrowth. Some of the buildings even ran right up to the edge, like they were once part of something greater.

"What are we looking at, exactly?" Caprica asked.

"This is on a small island just off the northern coast of the Silverstar Forest. Not too far from the city of Southerfell," he explained.

"The people of Southerfell have their own myths and stories about the Black Avatars, including how the Avatars purchased a great deal of stone and furniture and hired some locals to work on some grand project that they were sworn to secrecy about."

"Wait," Calamity said.

"Are nya saying that they built themselves a big old fortress and then it... what, poofed one morning?"

"Close enough," Celiga said.

"The story goes that one day, a great storm began to brew around the island. As the winds turned harsh, fishermen came to shore for safety, and families sought shelter in their houses. But a few brave souls kept watch, waiting for the storm to either end or worsen. And so they saw, illuminated by the flash of lightning, the vast fortress of the Black Avatars shift against the gloom.

It was merely a dark shape amidst the driving rain, but still they witnessed it rise up into the swirling clouds, never to be seen again." The historian puffed on his pipe.

"All those witnesses were quite old by the time I interviewed them, of course. But they all swore that's what happened. And other islanders agree that the fortress vanished after a great storm."

"Impossible," Amaryllis said.

"Trust me, I know how much lift would be required for such a thing. A fortress, made of stone? You'd need... well it depends on the size of the fortress. But it would be some ridiculous number like a thousand of the best lift engines in the world. Modern lift engines--so even more if you're using the garbage that they had back then. That's bad enough, but the fuel requirements would be obscene. Where would they even get it? They'd need some giant secret refinery, then tankers to transport it... and the balloon!

It would be the size of an island, and of course it would be torn apart by the storm you're describing." Celiga tapped the edge of the photograph.

"I would agree with you, Lady Amaryllis. By every current measure we have, such a feat should be impossible. And yet, there is evidence that something did happen."

"What kind of evidence?" I asked. He smiled thinly.

"The hole. If you examine the surrounding stone, you'll notice cut marks, clean ones. The sort is only made by careful construction, not by natural erosion or a collapse. The foundation stones are still there, precisely where they would need to be to support a fortress. It's as if the entire structure was lifted clean off its base." Amaryllis scowled, her wings rustling behind her.

"Or it was dismantled block by block." Celiga nodded slowly.

"That would be the logical conclusion. Except there are no records of any such deconstruction, no debris--not even on the seabed, I had a hydromancer check--no ruins beyond what you see here. And the legends are strangely consistent, even in neighbouring towns."

"I don't care if you were an eyewitness yourself, that's not possible with current technologies," Amaryllis said.

"I'm not dismissing it as entirely impossible. There are methods of flight that are not yet understood, natural spells more efficient than what modern mages can reproduce exist, but... but it sounds exceptionally far-fetched to the point of stretching credulity beyond the breaking point." I was a little more inclined to believe that it was true, though. After all, I lived on a flying boat, which was also impossible back home, so a flying fortress? Why not? That sounded awesome!

"Can you give us the coordinates to that island?" I asked.

"Maybe we can go see for ourselves?"