Chapter 253

Chapter 253: Frostholm’s Great Uprising

Tyrian’s story finally reached a pause, but to Duncan, this bizarre tale ended far too abruptly.

“Everything ended? It really just ended like that?” He could not help looking across the mirror at the Pirate Lord, his tone full of doubt. “One submersible, with a bay full of explosives, diving down to one thousand meters, solved a ‘runaway’ extraordinary phenomenon that was still getting worse? Let us not even talk about how much power those explosives could unleash at that depth. Just from the view of the supernatural field… could an explosion like that really destroy a supernatural studies phenomenon?”

“We could only think so,” Tyrian said. He was clearly not surprised by Father’s question. “In truth, no one knew what really happened in the water one thousand meters below. No one knew what the No. 4 submersible saw there. Our only link with the deep was the fragment of perception the priest shared with us through psychic echo… a scream, a roar, and a blast. Those tiny shards were nowhere near enough to piece together the truth.

“But in fact, after the No. 4 submersible exploded, there really were no more ‘No. 3 submersible’ replicants rising from the Deep Sea. So we could only assume… the matter was resolved.”

“The matter was resolved…” Duncan frowned and shook his head. “Fine. Let us assume it was resolved. Then the Abyssal Trench Project…”

“The Abyssal Trench Project did not end. That is exactly what was most wrong about it,” Tyrian said bluntly. “After something like that happened, after we paid such a heavy price and finally dealt with the strange crisis around the No. 3 submersible, we should have reviewed the Abyssal Trench Project and stopped that dangerous scheme. But Her Majesty Ray Nora pushed back against all opposition. Not only did she announce that the project would restart and the No. 5 submersible would be built, she even raised the priority of the Abyssal Trench Project to the very highest level, and she spent an unusual amount of manpower and resources on it.”

Duncan’s gaze suddenly grew deep. He faintly sensed that the real “runaway” part of this matter might have begun here. The queen’s “crime” and that rebellion in Frostholm half a century ago all came from this point.

He turned his gaze on Tyrian’s eyes: “From the sound of it, you did not support your queen at the time.”

“I argued with her. We fought bitterly over it. That is why I say that after the depth of ‘one thousand meters’, I was no longer directly involved in the Abyssal Trench Project,” Tyrian said slowly, his voice low. “After that, I felt the whole thing was sliding toward danger.

“But thinking back, I should have done everything in my power to stop the Queen of Frostholm, not avoid her. I trusted her too much and did not realize that she could make mistakes as well.”

“You believe the Queen of Frostholm really did make a mistake?”

“The Abyssal Trench Project brought a chain of crises to Frostholm and gave her enemies an opening. That ever more extreme exploration finally even cost Her Majesty Ray Nora her life. At least from that point of view, it was a mistake.”

“…After Ray Nora insisted on pushing ahead with the Abyssal Trench Project, what else happened?”

“After that, I did not take part in the project directly, so I do not know much. But from what I heard now and then, the plan did not go smoothly, and… the strange and horrible events kept getting more frequent and more serious,” Tyrian said calmly. “The No. 5 submersible was completed. It used the most advanced engineering techniques and the toughest materials of the time, but every dive it made was accompanied by all kinds of accidents. It was as if something in the dark was blocking humans from going any deeper into the sea…

“People working on the project started going mad. Some were injured for no reason. Some vanished and then wandered back into the city in a daze. The explorers who dove in the submersible became suspicious and violent. They were no longer the careful, respectable scholars and soldiers they had been, but more and more like grim, eerie fanatics. It was even said that the No. 5 submersible itself began to change during those dives. It showed changes no one could understand, and its inner workings became more and more like some kind of… living thing.

“The strangest part of all was that even with all these changes, even as the whole project grew more and more terrifying, the Abyssal Trench Project still went forward without the slightest hesitation. No one involved in the project, no one who lived with madness and accidents every day, and not even the people who were already frequently injured and traumatized, backed out. No one questioned or resisted the orders from above. It felt as though…”

Tyrian stalled. He seemed unable to find the right words to describe the atmosphere back then.

Seeing this, Duncan spoke softly: “As though the Deep Sea was calling them.”

“Yes. As though the Deep Sea was calling them,” Tyrian said, startled. He nodded at once, then gave Duncan a strange look. “That is a very… accurate description.”

“Do not think too much about it. Go on.”

Tyrian looked away and gathered his thoughts again: “That was how it was. The whole project seemed to be called and pushed by some power. It even felt as if the ‘project’ itself had grown some kind of will and was stubbornly marching toward the Deep Sea, while the people working on it had all become cells in that huge will.

“And in that kind of atmosphere, the No. 5 submersible unknowingly passed the depth of one thousand meters. I do not know how deep it finally went. All I heard was… it was an astonishing number, very, very astonishing. From the view of engineering, from the view of materials, from the level of technology at the time… it was a number that should have been impossible.

“The Deep Sea embraced the Abyssal Trench Project. The Deep Sea accepted the No. 5 submersible. That ever stranger machine and its ever stranger crew moved easily through the dark Deep Sea at several thousand meters as if they had gone home. But in the waters around the Abyssal Trench Project… strange incidents grew more and more common.

“Merchant ships began to see ‘reflections’ of themselves near the surface, ships that looked exactly the same as their own. Thick fog began to fall again and again over the eastern part of Frostholm. In the fog drifted shadows that looked sometimes like ships and sometimes like giant beasts. The city-state also began to see… ‘strangers’. A great, great many strangers. They gathered near facilities tied to the Abyssal Trench Project and all claimed to be part of the project. The number of these strangers was even larger than the actual number of people working on the project.

“In such a situation, rumors… in truth, they could no longer be called rumors. Sayings began to spread everywhere. At first people only said the Queen of Frostholm was doing some suspicious research. Soon, people said she was studying Subspace. After that, they said the Queen of Frostholm was colluding with Subspace, and that she had already reached an agreement with the great leader in Subspace, Captain Duncan…”

Tyrian let out a slow breath and spread his hands. “And after that, you know what happened. The Frostholm Great Uprising that shocked the whole North.”

The little storeroom piled high with “antiques” fell silent for a time. No one knew how long had passed before Duncan’s voice slowly came from the mirror: “It is understandable that people linked this to Subspace. But dragging the Vanished into it… that really took too much imagination.”

“In fact, it was a very normal chain of thought. That line of thinking was even related to me,” Tyrian said with a bitter smile and a shake of his head. “After all, I am your son, and I just happened to serve the Queen of Frostholm, and I had been part of this terrible project in its early stages. You should know, people who love conspiracies always have the strongest imagination.”

Duncan did not comment. After a brief silence, he said again: “Looked at this way, that Great Uprising really was not without cause. The Abyssal Trench Project that Ray Nora insisted on pushing was too dangerous, and from what you describe… her mental state at the time was not quite right either.”

“That is exactly what I wanted to add a few words about,” Tyrian said suddenly. “I know that all signs suggest the Queen of Frostholm had already lost her reason. She looked like a madman led on by something, stubbornly walking one single path. But I know that she… was always clear-headed. Very clear-headed, very rational, and fully aware of what she was doing.”

“Oh?”

“I argued with her, but I was still the general she trusted. I could meet her up close. In fact, the other city-state officials could too. They all knew that the queen had never gone mad and that she had no plan to destroy the city-state or threaten the world. Yes, they knew… but they became afraid, and they hesitated. Some of them were bought off, some were lured away. They were not as firm as I was.

“But I know that maybe the other people in the Abyssal Trench Project were indeed being slowly affected by something. She, however… she clearly resisted that influence and was using it in reverse.”

“You mean the Queen of Frostholm actually had a clear and ‘safe’ plan, and she was confident she could finish it, but she did not tell anyone. She did not even explain it to you,” Duncan said, looking at Tyrian with a thoughtful gaze. “And you still trusted her without question? Because you believed that even if something under the Deep Sea threatened the city-state, everything was still under Ray Nora’s control?”

“In your eyes, that kind of trust must seem too blind.”

“Whether it is blind or not is your business,” Duncan said, shaking his head. “I only mean that the Queen of Frostholm clearly did not manage to keep ‘everything under control’. She died in the hands of the rebels in the end, and the Abyssal Trench Project was buried completely. Things did not unfold the way she planned.”

“…I really could not argue with that.”

Tyrian let out a helpless sigh.