Chapter 476

Chapter 476: Descent

Beneath South Port, the submersible control hall was brightly lit.

Light from gas lamps and electric bulbs poured down, making the entire hall as bright as day. A huge egg-shaped diving apparatus hung from steel cables at the top of the rail that led out to the sea. Undying engineers hurried everywhere, busy with the final checks and adjustments before the submersible entered the water.

At the steel-frame platform that held the submersible in place, Duncan sat on a chair, calmly watching all of this, waiting for Tyrian’s subordinates to finish their preparations.

Those Undying, whose faces were strange and ugly, even almost frightening, seemed very excited, with a faint joy and thrill about them.

A burly bald man with a nervous, uneasy look on his face walked over from not far away. He bent down awkwardly in front of Duncan and said: “Uh… old captain, it’s good to see you…”

Duncan looked up at the burly man in a seafarer shirt, his scalp shining, his skin as pale as a corpse. He compared him with the information he had learned before and nodded lightly: “You are Aiden, the one who followed Tyrian back in the days of the Vanished Fleet.”

“That’s me,” Aiden broke into a grin. “You still remember me?”

“I don’t,” Duncan shook his head. “Sorry, I have forgotten most things. Subspace damaged my memories. I only heard about you and the other first-generation Seafarers of the Sea Mist Fleet from other people.”

“Please don’t apologize, don’t apologize,” Aiden looked even more flustered. He shook his head and said: “It’s… it’s enough that you could come back. Everyone really missed you.”

“They should be quite afraid, I think?” Duncan glanced around the hall with a smile. Many eyes dodged in fear as his gaze passed. “It’s fine. Right now I’m only using an avatar form. If my true body came here, most sailors probably wouldn’t be able to work in peace.”

“More than half the people here are ‘second-generation’, and they really are scared of you,” Aiden said, scratching at his shirt buttons in embarrassment. “After all, their first contact with you…”

“I know. The encounter at Frostholm fifty years ago.” Duncan let out a slow breath and said it casually. As his words fell, Tyrian walked over quickly.

“The submersible is ready, Father.”

“Oh, looks like it’s time to go.”

A smile appeared on Duncan’s face. He rose from the chair and walked with Tyrian toward the platform that held the submersible in place. The diving apparatus, which carried the wisdom and hard work of countless people, was already waiting in silence—

The round hatch on its side was already open. Lights shone through the thick watertight chamber, lighting up the inside of the sphere. It did not look spacious. Aside from the many confusing pipes, valves, and control panels, the space left for people to move looked like it could hold at most three or four people.

Duncan gave the submersible a once-over, then stepped forward.

But in the next second he suddenly stopped, as if sensing something, and looked toward one side.

A spinning Ashen Wind suddenly rushed into the hall. It whirled rapidly over to the submersible’s platform and condensed into shape in front of Duncan, Tyrian, and the others.

Agatha stepped out of the Ashen Wind. She still wore that black long dress, with her hair hanging loose, dressed like a Blind Nun.

“I want to go with you.”

She did not waste words. She walked up to Duncan and spoke directly.

“You want to dive as well?” Duncan looked at Agatha in some surprise. “Why?”

“Because I want to ‘see’ with my own eyes what is really under Frostholm,” Agatha said calmly and firmly. “As the protector of this city, I cannot stay in the safe great Cathedral and just wait for your results, and besides…”

She suddenly stopped. After a few seconds of silence, she lifted her head. Through the thick black cloth, her “gaze” fell on Duncan’s eyes.

“Besides, this is a city of the people of Frostholm, and a matter for the people of Frostholm. In the submersible we built, there should be at least one person from Frostholm. Just think of it as… letting me go down in place of Governor Winston and all the past governors of Frostholm to take a look.”

“Those are good reasons, and you should already know the risks of doing this. Since you are prepared, I won’t try to talk you out of it,” Duncan said with a nod. Then he turned his head and looked at Tyrian.

Tyrian reacted at once and said: “By design the submersible can hold up to four people, so two inside is certainly fine, but…”

“It’s all right. I don’t need to breathe either,” Agatha said softly, cutting him off.

Tyrian froze for a moment, then stepped back. “All right, then there is no problem.”

Duncan smiled. He walked to the hatch of the submersible, turned, and reached out a hand to Agatha: “Good. Let’s go.”

He and Agatha climbed into the submersible. The heavy round hatch then slowly closed.

Two strong Undying sailors stepped onto the platform and tightened the hatch locks from the outside.

Thick steel sealed the inside of the submersible off from the outside world. The narrow crew compartment grew quiet. Only a few machines and pipes still gave off a faint humming now and then.

There were no seats in the crew compartment, so Duncan and Agatha stood in front of the control panel, holding the iron pipes on either side that served as railings. Through the thick, sturdy glass portholes set into the nearby bulkhead, they could see the Undying sailors around the platform loosening the steel cables that held the submersible and releasing the safety pins on the sides of the steel frame.

Tyrian’s voice came from a small device in the corner of the submersible’s control panel: “Father, Lady Agatha, can you hear me?”

Duncan stepped up to the controls. “Yes. Very clearly.”

“All right. I won’t say much about how to handle the submersible. Its functions are actually very simple, so you shouldn’t have trouble. I’ll talk about what happens after you enter the water.

“The submersible is powered by a small steam core and a generator linked to that core. In theory this is enough to run until all Deep Dive tasks are done. But if the steam core or the generator fails, there are also two batteries in the bottom of the hull. They can keep the submersible running for about two more hours…

“There are three sets of high-powered searchlights outside the hull, but in the Deep Sea their effect is limited, so please be careful when you steer. The resistance on the sea floor is also very strong. The drive system can only move the submersible slowly, so you need to keep that in mind too…

“The communicator on the submersible has an effective range of only three hundred meters. Once you go deeper than three hundred meters, we won’t be able to talk like this anymore. But your power, or Lady Agatha’s Psychic Resonance, should not be affected.

“And also… maybe I’m worrying too much, but even for you, please be careful of the dangers in the Deep Sea—once you notice anything wrong, rise to the surface at once. The lever at the top left of the control panel is for an emergency ascent. Pull it and it will drop the ballast structure at the bottom of the submersible and open the buoyancy spheres on both sides of the hull… In the worst case, just abandon the submersible. With your power, you can take Lady Agatha and simply Teleport back. We can always build another machine…”

Duncan listened carefully to Tyrian’s reminders.

To be honest, this former Frost Sea pirate lord really was a bit long-winded. Many of his warnings did not seem necessary to Duncan.

But Duncan still listened patiently to every word Tyrian said. Only after the other man’s voice finally trailed off did he speak in a low voice: “I understand. Let’s begin.”

Outside the submersible, at the command seat at the far end of the hall, Tyrian took a slow breath, then nodded to the subordinates beside him.

“Open the sea valves!”

“Flood the channel!”

“Disconnect the external cables to the submersible. Prepare to release the hooks!”

A deep rumble passed through the submersible’s steel shell, echoing faintly in the spherical cabin. A slight vibration rose from under their feet, mixed with the creaking and scraping sounds from the hull outside.

The sea valves opened. Seawater surged quickly up the tunnel beneath the facility that led straight to the open sea, slowly rising to the set level. The last two steel cables above the submersible began to groan and slowly paid out.

Duncan and Agatha first felt a sway, then a drop. After a brief moment of weightlessness, the submersible entered the water. They began to slide down the slanted tunnel and, under the guidance of a series of mental guidance rails, moved quickly toward a sea outlet near the outer edge of South Port.

Outside the porthole, seawater rose up, then slowly sank into darkness. In that darkness they could only sometimes see flashes of light. Those flashes came faster and faster, and the shaking of the submersible grew stronger as well—until at last all the vibrations faded away.

Outside the porthole, only an endless deep blue remained, slowly growing dim.

There was still sunlight shining down through the water above, casting bands of light outside the window that moved and shifted between bright and dark. In the water that was slowly dimming, bubbles rose from the hull. In the glow of the remaining sunlight, they looked like some kind of sea creatures wrapped in a dreamy light.

Agatha seemed drawn to the “view” outside the porthole.

She slowly left the helm, holding onto the handrail as she moved to the porthole. She leaned in with curiosity. Through the thick black cloth, her now empty eyes “stared” in a daze at that deep blue that was quickly sinking into darkness.

“What can you see?”

As Duncan got used to the levers and buttons on the control panel, which were not very complicated, he turned his head and asked casually.

“Light. All kinds of tiny lights,” Agatha said softly, as if talking to herself and as if lost in a trance. “They flow like rivers and form huge, complex currents that are still full of order… But outside has already fallen into darkness now, hasn’t it?”

“There’s still a bit of sunlight left, but it will be completely dark soon,” Duncan said as he slowly turned the submersible. “How about now?”

“An incredibly huge ‘curtain of light’, faint but filling my whole sight,” Agatha said. There was a hint of shock in her voice. “What is that?”

“It’s Frostholm,” Duncan said calmly. Through the porthole, in the weakening sunlight and the beam of the submersible’s powerful searchlights, he saw an extremely wide, rough, and mottled “cliff” standing quietly in the seawater. “It’s the city’s ‘base’.”