While they approached, in stages of glimpses through the trees, they started to get a bigger surprise and realized that the structure was a castle, and the scientists started arguing over whether it was of human construction! Yet many structures could exist on other worlds with same structures as on Earth! There were only so many basic constructions available for good buildings!
Its presence drew them there and was like it were glowing with power through an area drained of power, shining out like a lighthouse in a dark sea, and supernaturally glowing!
Chapter 5
The Phantom Castle
They proved that it was a castle when they reached it, and after studying its structure most were sure that it had been built in the style of an Earth castle.
The size of the castle could not be properly seen or measured by the scientists as it went out into the thick jungle and undergrowth, and it was colossal and they were sure that it was about 10 miles long and wide, especially by using the photos that they had taken from hill, before they had come down and entered the jungle.
Its height was great, but lower than the alien trees there, and staggering for a castle, reaching up at least 60 meters high, and as high as an average sixteen-story building.
Bryson was staggered at it and had thought that he had seen the biggest castles in the world, and wondered how they would even find the entrance of it!
How could they explore such a structure with such an immense size? The builders were clearly not of ancient times, and had given it shapes of the castle boulders with highly advanced equipment.
The builders were unknown, and its date of construction was far older than any of them could estimate. It was built on rock and for some reason the ground over time had not properly built up about it as it normally did, or in the jungle.
The reason for its construction baffled them and Bryson wondered why an advanced race would build a castle? Castles were built for defense though! Yet with such technology why would they have built a castle and not a more advanced structure? Bryson considered it was for some sort of defense? Yet the place must have been occupied by thousands at least?
It would have been far easier to defend a small castle or structure than it at its size! Yet it could have been built by a strange civilization that was a combination of different things?
It could have been the remains of an old race returned to their original earlier civilization and ways of doing things, and still with the technology of an advanced civilization? Or it was a civilization that got hold of some of the technology of an advanced race? And they could have built it easily with some form of technology and used it to defend their entire small civilization?
Yet it might have shown the immense power and wealth that they had, and an army would also have thought twice before attacking such a construction as they could easily have thought it held a far greater and more powerful race.
What existed before the jungle existed there confused them as it was out in the middle of an empty region and crater and there was no sign of anything else!
The island could have been on any world or worlds just about anywhere and could have been inhabited by anything!
It would have taken them a great deal of time to build? Yet the race could have been trapped there on another world when it had altered to another dimension?
He and the others were growing determined to solve all the riddles, and prepared themselves to go to lengths to find proper answers to it all!
He was determined to ignore the events of the past few days and concentrate on what was in the castle. He had seen little of it so far, and in the dimness there, and it was cold and smelled of dampness, and nobody had left the location.
Many of the archeologists and scientists thought there were possibilities of it still holding some of its inhabitances, but they all agreed that they were best entering it for safety as the jungle could easily grow dangerous again.
Most of the evening was subjected to false alarms of the things in the wood reappearing, and they had been glad when they finally started following the structure’s wall to find an entrance.
Bryson followed Parker with Merton and Mortimer and were surprised when an area empty of trees appeared and they saw the structure in the light of day! They were surprised at how powerful it was and disappointed at how hard it would be to enter it!
The roof seemed to be made of real solid rock boulders for some reason. He wanted to check it, if they ever found a way to climb up to it!
It was unbelievable and historical looking, and had not fallen into being derelict in any noticeable way, and the scientists studied the material that it was made of trying to figure out what it was and why it had not deteriorated, and one of the archeologists smashed a piece of the material off it and were surprised when they returned there and found that it had somehow repaired itself, with no sign of the damage being there.
Bryson was surprised when they damaged it again and watched it repair itself, and they had a discussion on if it had artificial intelligence or was just detecting a fault and fixing it, and most of the scientists left it open until they knew more of what was there, as they never wanted to underestimate anything there after what they had witnessed there so far.
The fact that it repaired itself gave them a great deal of information about it, and far more than anything else that they had come across. It explained its presence and state after the amount of time that they believed it could have been there! It also showed that the interior could be in perfect condition, as they would have a bad time staying there if it was not.
Bryson studied regions of the exterior walls about it, and its immense shape.
They wandered about it checking what they could but nothing new came into view, and Bryson had a hard time realizing how they had been able to build it and wondered if the material built itself, and from what the owners had planned it to build? Why had they allowed such a valuable construction to become derelict? And he realized again how old it could be!
He also realized again its deadliness! He thought the last castle had been bad and confusing but this one was deadlier beyond belief at an entirely new and different angle!
He wondered if they should have just left it! If they could not get what they wanted there they could be playing with something of great danger that could result in an immense amount of deaths, over the next years.
Bryson made a rough drawing/map of it as they wandered on, exploring the jungle at different regions and what the side of the jungle was like, and suddenly one of the archeologists ahead of them called out and he instantly saw an entrance at where he had looked before and had seen nothing!
Chapter 6
The Interior
The castle door silently opened as they approached it leaving them staggered and searching inside for human occupants, and they searched through a long corridor that led straight into the castle, and Bryson switched on his light and marched in first.
Yet as he moved in, with Parker and Mortimer directly behind him, with the others in a line behind, he saw that there were lights shining there and he turned off his light without saying anything, and felt good again that he was inside and away from the jungle, and actually exploring an ancient castle again.
It felt the same and this time he was surprised that the castle itself seemed to have intelligence, which he had not even considered before!
He wondered if it was the only castle that had a form of artificial intelligence or intelligence that had visited the Earth!
He realized more than ever how much he had enjoyed exploring the last two castles and their hidden secrets, long corridors, ancient untouched rooms, where anything could exist, and them uncovering secrets and secret chambers.
He wondered if they were actually the first humans to visit the world and immense galaxy that it was in, which he had seen starting appear outside, as the world’s rotation took it round to it, with a few magnificent stars exploding into the horizon.
The long corridor led into
a hall, where there were corridors going out everywhere going up to the top, with spiral stairs going around the hall up to the high roof, and their group formed there and explored there.
Bryson realized immediately that the deadliness of the jungle never existed there, and he could tell that they all thought it. Yet he sensed other things of danger and mystery existed there!
The rooms in corridors went away into the distance until he could see nothing!
It caused confusion amongst the scientists and they could not believe that such a structure could be a mere castle and place of rest, and many of the scientists argued constantly!
As they moved along the corridor nearest them, and the outside, going along in the direction that they had come from outside, they saw different shaped and sized large rooms everywhere, which were modern or more advanced looking rooms, with various objects that were clearly advanced technology, and human type beds in many.
The majority of it was confusing and he found little to answer his queries, and why such a construction existed! And he considered his theory that the place was built to scare off enemies with its magnitude and value, and he wondered why it existed. They looked complex and advanced people that never used their rooms for more than basic living functions.
He wondered where they had gone to when they were not in their rooms? Perhaps further out in some central region?
When he checked Mortimer he was trying out some of their communications equipment and listened to the static response, and considered it as though he thought that entering the structure would alter it.
Eventually all the scientists and others either rested, trying to get some sleep, or used their highly advanced equipment to try to get a detailed investigation of there, and Bryson realized that their food supplies would soon run out! Even though they had everything else they wanted!
Chapter 7
The Highly Advanced Technology
When Bryson awoke, in the room he had chosen, he never knew what time it was or if it was day or night, and going by their new day and night times, and he wished that he had brought a watch.
He sat upright and turned on his room light, which was about the only function that they had found out how to operate.
He considered if his tiredness was caused by his earlier exhaustion, lack of food, or from something in the castle influencing him.
He recalled the dreams that he had been having and how incomprehensible they had turned, surely caused by the environment and occurrences.
None of it made sense and had been full of freakish occurrences and things happening to him at places that they had visited, and something like a colossal vortex, where he never did anything, and it had been like he never existed and experienced what was there.
He liked the room around him and it had a warm appearance, and he had a hard time believing its age and it being far older than the other castles put together, and he wondered what he would witness there if transported back in time!
He could not even properly understand how the lighting there worked. The light appeared from out of nowhere from regions of the walls, with no visible source. It was generated within the air in front of the walls!
The room seemed to have a way of repairing any damage done to it like the outside walls of the castle, and surely cleaned and repaired any deterioration and damage done to it.
It was strange being surrounded by an invisible intelligence everywhere that they looked and he wondered what sort of technology was behind it, and what the various scientists would be thinking of it, and how they would solve how it worked and if they could recreate it, and what it would be worth back on the Earth.
The problem was that nothing was visible or shown to be happening and they could not find where it was! What was in the walls that could carry out such tasks?
It was like cavemen trying to work out how their electronic technology worked, with no experience of seeing anything like it!
Merton was in the room next to his, near the castle door, with the jungle through the large outer room wall, and Mortimer’s room was next to that, and Parker was in the room next to Bryson on the other side, where he was next to his scientists, and many of the Exploration Association and archeologists were together at the opposite side of the corridor.
Bryson noted the air suddenly cooled and never seemed to have any scent! The only really normal thing there was the bed, which he thought the owners of the place kept for pleasure. Though it was also made of strange materials that had intelligence that cleaned and repaired it, and it looked just like a normal altered version of a bed, and he realized that they had found a way to program materials to carry out functions, but he could not understand how it generated things that it created or how to go about properly investigating it.
He remembered earlier being in a huddled posture with his blankets tightly wrapped about him, with him reacting to being cold and the blankets making his warm, and he recalled that it had made his body warm itself to the right temperature.
For a moment he recalled a dream and that he had thought he had died and gone to some form of afterlife and he tried to recall everything that he could about it. If only he could find a way to get information from the place!
The sky outside the structure would be blazing with the stars of the immense galaxy, and exploding with energy going beyond his comprehension!
And he imagined normal stars and light being there and illuminating the outer structure instead, and he realized how far they were from the world and that there was nothing normal!
Yet it was so peculiar that he liked it more than he should have! His normal life and things he encountered were too repetitive and he relished finding abnormal things to do and explore, especially when they had new outcomes and findings!
He wished that there was a window in the room though, so he could see the jungle through the wall and see what was happening there, and he fantasized it there instead and was amazed when he looked at the wall in front of him and saw what looked like a window looking out into the ancient jungle, and realized that the wall had detected his thoughts and had carried out his wishes and had taken a view of outside and created a window view for him, as though he were standing at a real window.
It made a shiver run through him when he realized that it had detail to it that could not have been made up and that he was really looking outside there, and he tried to make it show him the deadly things that were there and that they had encountered there but none of it showed there, and he realized that it was because there was now nothing there.
It was another world and they were put there to explore it to him, and it was like a world without a proper sky with an immense galaxy and at the opposite side thousands of light years of empty space between it and other stars.
The world outside was a dark landscape shrouded in deadly things with energy, and he tried to imagine various things to change the view to, but nothing worked until he tried to see things that were in or directly outside the structure. And it showed him different views from its walls if he concentrated on them appearing enough!
He was sure that it was the answer to controlling the other technology in the room and about there!
An array of door knocks made the solid but light door shift about, making him consider if it had been done by him, reminding him of the dangers of the place, and he wondered again why it had such advanced objects and structure.
He slowly marched over and opened it, which had been clearly expertly manufactured, and he watched Merton and Mortimer standing glaring at him from the dimness in the corridor, and they suggested something was along the corridor. Bryson nodded and left and allowed the door to close behind him as he followed them along the outer corridor.
He decided to make the corridor about him brighter and mentally turned the light that it created brighter, and Merton and Mortimer watched it happen with surprise, and he realized that they had not yet discovered it and was about to tell them when the corridor returned to its dim state, and h
e realized something had done it, and he left it until he had more information.
He considered how tired he was and what they were up to and thought of other things that they had done that had been the same, and of them awaking him early, and as he recalled situations he gasped suddenly realizing that he could hear sounds emerging from somewhere further ahead, and he gasped even more when the sounds seemed to magnify.
He also realized that the sounds reminded him of an earlier dream, but he could not notice any connection or why.
“What happened?” he moaned, asking them, rushing along the corridor after them, seeing them rushing towards something!
He felt like slapping his face to awaken himself further, vaguely looking like he had a hangover, and he recalled him taking alcohol with him in his bag but he was keeping that for emergencies, and if they also ran out of painkillers. Things were bound to happen there, and they had no known way of returning home.
As they entered a region further along the castle, going away from the entrance, where nobody had been, they explored what was there, and they slowed and became cautious, and Bryson started to consider questioning them firmly on what was there and why they suddenly thought that there was something there!
Yet as they approached a region of the corridor he heard the sounds again and far louder!
He wondered if they had found another haunted castle, and wondered how such a modern structure could be haunted and realized again the tremendous age that it must be!
The disturbance, if it was a paranormal disturbance, seemed as if it had different states to it and regularly altered, and Bryson was amazed that the paranormal scientists had found something there at such a place!
He imagined it as a warp through in space and time causing many different things to occur and create sporadic sounds about the location, and he recalled his dream and he wondered if he had been affected by it.
The Lost Treasure Map Deluxe Book Collection (2017 Edition) Page 74
