"So it was for alcohol." Calen commented. "I’m kinda starting to doubt will find any important information here."
"I mean, there has to be more to this place – look how thick this book is."
"It’s the history of a place that existed for centuries, of course it’s long. The problem is that being long doesn’t equal being important."
"Well, I’m still going to read it."
After the new lord was chosen things were relatively peaceful in the fortress – outside of scheduled military training the place was empty and unused.
Decades passed, and finally the lord drew his last breath; it was time to appoint a successor.
The lord did not have any heirs, so there was another selection, very similar to the previous one – this time the castle ended up as a storage and logistical center, due to its large capacity.
A few decades later, the same situation.
And so went the cycle, with every new lord cane a new idea and a new way of operating the fortress.
Through the centuries of its existence the castle was used for many bizzare things, but ultimately none of them really made a good use of the fortress.
It was also clear that the later monarch’s didn’t care as much about the plausibility of the ideas, and more often than not they chose the first person appointed for the trial.
Things only really changed when Aurelian came to power – he thought that the fortress wasn’t being utilised properly, and decided that the first lord he was going to appoint will be the person who comes with actual plan on how to do it, not just an idea, but a solid, sensible plan.
Naturally, he failed miserably for many years and couldn’t find anyone whose idea would even approach what he wanted. All the suggestions were too... mundane, boring, uninspired.
The one to propose a real solution was surprisingly one of Aurelian’s royal guards – he came from a small noble family in Mountainfall, and heard legends that the city could move along the Emberwall whenever it wanted – not only that, but this astonishing of magic was achieved by a single archmage.
He suggested that the kingdom could employ several prominent archmages to do something similar, allowing the castle to travel between battlefronts and final make use of its powerful defensive capabilities.
Aurelian loved the idea – a castle that could be dispatched wherever it’s necessary? Which monarch wouldn’t find such an offer enticing, especially since it seemed to be fairly achievable.
There were a few powerful archmages with debts to the kingdom, a promise to void all of them should be enough to secure their help.
A few weeks later the archmages in question gathered, and the King explained what he wanted to do. Their reactions were mixed – they were interested to make a state-sanctioned project of this scale, but at the same time they weren’t able to promise the results.
The magic circle in Mountainfall might have been made by a single person, but that person was the Fool, a truly legendary archmage specialising in spacial magic – the group here wasn’t quite on his level just because they were also archmages.
Nevertheless, they agreed to the deal under the condition that they won’t have a strict deadline, and the King wouldn’t hold them responsible if it didn’t work out, essentially giving Aurelian a ’we can try, but don’t get your hopes up’ answer.
The king obviously accepted, and gave the mages all the funding and resources they needed to replicate the enchantment.
Because they were very open about the fact that even if they succeeded the construction might take many decades, they were left to work in peace, with no need to make regular updates on their progress.
At first the research went well – all of them were powerful magic users with centuries of experience, figuring out how a magic circle should work wasn’t particularly difficult, nor was creating its basic structure.
The problems started when they focused on finer details; each part of the circuit was intertwined with countless others, making the design very prone to issues with magic flow and conflicts in rune interpretation.
It was a very frustrating process for the archmages, they were unaccustomed to failure after all – each and every one of them was considered to be a genius.
Not just anyone could become an archmage, while magic was available to anyone who was willing to put in enough hard work, you needed actual talent if you wanted to achieve true mastery.
But it didn’t mean that all archmages were equal, as some people are simply more talented than others.
There were those who could merely glimpse greatness, and those who were simply great.
Unfortunately the archmages contracted by the King belonged to the former, while the Fool was one of the latter.
Still, they managed to complete a good chunk of the circuit before giving up on the design, and probably came out of this project with a ton of new knowledge and experiences, so it was a net positive for them.
The project was officially put on hold around seven years before the invasion, and nothing came of it afterwards.
Calen completely didn’t expect the story to go in that direction.
"Wait, so there’s an almost finished improved version of the magic circle from Mountainfall somewhere in the castle?"
"Apparently." Elira nodded. "I wonder if it’s possible to actually make it work."
"I don’t think Isa is quite on that level yet, but once she crosses the threshold and reads all of the Fool’s inheritance she might be able to complete it." Calen admitted. "If we could make use of this enchantment, and find some way to reliably recharge it, it would make moving around the Kingdom much easier."
"And you thought there wouldn’t be anything important in here."
"I concede that I was wrong, but to be fair it’s not information can help us at the moment." Calen pointed out. "Are you going to take that book with you?"
"Of course, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to create a physical copy – plus we only skimmed the information about most of the lords, perhaps I’ll find more interesting things in there."
"Whatever you say. Let’s go meet the others and tell them what we learned."