How did the key come into the hands of the first consul?

This is the issue that Agatha cares about most at the moment - because no matter which historical record, whether from the perspective of the queen's supporters or from the perspective of today's city-state authorities, the description of the "uprising" or "rebellion" half a century ago is consistent in one point, that is, there is an irreconcilable contradiction between the Frost Queen and the rebels.

The two sides are enemies, there is no possibility of reconciliation or cooperation, let alone any "inheritance" relationship - then why did Queen Lenore's key end up in the hands of the city-state governor? And Winston also called it a "curse" and a "gift"?

Thinking quickly, Agatha lowered her head and looked into Winston's eyes: "There is another truth behind the uprising back then - was there an agreement between the Frost Queen and the rebels..."

"There is no such dramatic turn, Madam Gatekeeper, although this does sound like a good story - the crazy city-state ruler and the leader of the rebel army sympathize with each other and use a major uprising that can end the chaos of the previous dynasty to complete the transfer of power and responsibility. Screenwriters and novelists will like this theme, but unfortunately, there is no such warmth in real history.

"The great uprising is inevitable. The rift between the Mad Queen and her subjects is irreparable. She was once great, but her failure in the Abyss Plan has pushed the city-state to the brink of collapse. The first generation of archons rebelled against the queen for the survival of more people. There was no room for peaceful dialogue between them from the beginning.

"But you are right about one thing. There is indeed a certain 'tacit understanding' between the queen and the rebels. The queen knows that her overthrow is an inevitable outcome, and the rebels also know that the queen's crazy behavior is not just 'insanity'. She must have many secrets.

“So, on the night before the execution, the leader of the rebels, the first Archon, found the imprisoned queen. He wanted to find out what secret the queen was hiding.

"So the queen gave him the key and told him that once the execution was over and her life was over, the person holding the key would know everything."

Winston paused, a mocking and helpless expression on his face. He lowered his head and stared at the brass key in his hand. After a long while, he smiled bitterly and said, "Do you know what the last words she said to the leader of the rebels were? This has never been described in later history books. This sentence is only known to successive consuls.

"'I tried my best. If you think you can do it, then it's your turn now' - that's what she said after the first consul took the key."

"...Every choice has a price." Agatha sighed softly after listening to this unknown history.

"Madam Gatekeeper," Winston suddenly raised his head and held up the brass key with a strange smile, "Would you like to try it? Take the key and take a look at the scenery that Lenora once saw?"

Agatha suddenly hesitated. She stared at the key that Winston handed her and felt her heart, which had been beating slowly, begin to beat again. A low pressure spread from the key, as if it contained half a century of darkness and malice - but after a few seconds of silence and hesitation, she took a deep breath and reached out for the key.

A slightly cool touch came from the fingertips.

The next second, countless phantoms suddenly emerged from the boundless darkness. Chaotic fragments of light and shadow swept in like a storm, filling Agatha's mind. Amidst these madly attacking fragments of information, scenes of illusion began to flash through her mind -

In the endlessly dark deep sea, some huge and terrifying dark limbs are slowly growing and growing;

The ancient and chilling gaze looked down at the city-state from the deep sea, scanning the earthly beings with indifference like an indescribable ancient god;

Dark and terrifying substances overflowed and surged from the deep sea, turning into replicas of the real world. In the transformation between reality and illusion, those substances sometimes turned into shadows, and sometimes turned into entities. The boundless deep sea was densely packed with chaotic and filthy figures, looking up at the city-state with empty eyes;

And in the more distant places, in the darker and deeper seabed, the whole world, the entire boundless sea, and hundreds of cities were all shadowy, as if the old world had sunk into the endless darkness, and abominations were growing from the ancient corpses, constantly surfacing, constantly surfacing...

And deep in these countless illusions, Agatha could always feel a kind of "gaze" - it was not a gaze, nor any kind of will with a clear source. She felt as if she was being stared at by time itself, something older than history, larger than the city-state, and even seemed to come from the deepest part of the world...watching her.

There was no emotion in that “gaze”, no malice nor kindness, He just gazed, like a soulless empty shell looking at an uninvited guest who ignorantly broke into the truth, and said indifferently -

"Oh, you're here."

"boom!"

Agatha felt a rumbling sound deep in her consciousness, and her remaining sanity made her desperately float up in the countless layers of illusions. In the process, her perception and thinking were suppressed to the limit. She could feel that there was more information, more fragments of thoughts surrounding her, which might even contain the will or words left by Queen Lenore, but she could neither see nor hear them.

By the time she regained control of this body, all the illusions had ended. She opened her eyes in the darkness and chaos and saw that Archon Winston was still in front of her, even maintaining the last posture in which he handed her the brass key - it seemed that only one second had passed.

I am back in this strange, creeping dark space again... Wait, something is wrong, something has changed!

Agatha suddenly noticed the strange changes in her vision, and she raised her head in horror and looked around herself.

The darkness in all directions seemed to have receded a lot compared to the beginning, and those black invisible things that were slowly creeping and deforming in the darkness seemed to be gradually condensing and transforming into entities. In this constantly creeping virtuality and reality, she also saw many things that grew out of the surrounding space out of thin air - they looked like dry tree branches, but their size was densely packed and filled the entire space. The black "tree branches" bridged and aggregated each other in the nothingness, and faint flashes of light wandered between them, just like...

A capsule of express cargo being transported quickly through a steam pipe.

And deep in this complex network of "branches" that was like a thorn bush, through the layers of phantoms, Agatha saw a huge... limb.

It was a sturdy limb like a tentacle, and its huge size seemed like a giant pillar supporting the heaven and earth. The surface of the pillar was covered with dark blue lines, and the patterns formed by those lines... looked like countless pairs of eyes.

Mental pollution? Illusion? Borderline madness?

Countless thoughts flashed through Agatha's mind. She closed her eyes immediately, but found that the "giant pillar" that supported the heaven and earth still remained in her vision. She tried to pray to the God of Death and use magic to stabilize her will, but found that she was conscious and showed no signs of being eroded at all.

After several quick emergency measures failed, she realized one thing -

I am not crazy, but I am sober and rational. I saw a "scenery" whose location I don't know and whether it is real.

She stood in this magnificent and terrifying "scenery", as if she had lost her mind, until the voice of Governor Winston pulled her back: "Oh, it seems you saw it."

The middle-aged consul said, slowly raised his head, and sighed softly: "It's spectacular, right?"

Agatha hesitated and lowered her head, only then she noticed that what Winston was "leaning" on was not a tree stump at all - it was actually part of the huge "branch" structure around it, the end of a section extending from the branch, and there was a faint black structure on the top of it, extending all the way to the deepest part of this strange space.

"These...these branches..."

"This is the thought of the ancient gods, and it is manifested in the eyes of us mortals like this," Winston said calmly. "This is the first time you have touched the key, and you can see very little, but I have been with this key day and night for more than ten years... What it tells me is far beyond your imagination."

Agatha seemed to be in a dream. She slowly understood Winston's words and repeated subconsciously, "The ancient gods'... thoughts?"

"Isn't it incredible? These tree-branch-like things don't really exist. What you see is probably just a thought that flashed through the mind of a god at a certain moment, and this thought was strongly imprinted here, turning into the huge structure you see - oh, don't try to decipher anything from it, don't try to understand the laws of the transmission of those flashes, you will go crazy."

Agatha turned her head suddenly: "Did someone go crazy because of this?"

‘Yes,’ said Winston, laughing. ‘Have you forgotten? Her name was Lenore. . . . . .’

Agatha was speechless for a moment. After a few seconds, she spoke softly: "Then...what is that thing outside the 'thorn bush'?"

"It's the Lord of the Deep," Winston said calmly, "a small part of Him that penetrated into the city-state."