316. Ruins of the strong, 5

(Bleue)

As it's been decided, we're settling around here. Where precisely is the question.

We will meet at the top of this hill in two weeks.

Rose and I will split to explore the surrounding area and city. Ana will be able to fly between us, carrying messages if needs to.

It's a competition between us.

Who will win?

Finding the best possible house to settle in includes a multitude of parameters to take into account.

The aspects we're competing for are as follow:

Size, location, risks, eases of reach and provisioning with supplies, repairs required, difficulties of access and escape, depending on the kind of monster that could appear... Et caetera.

That's just one of the aspects though.

The next one is the available resources. Whether it's a well with clean water nearby, a warehouse filled with edible food preserves, or even a stock of clothes and shoes for examples. The one of us who finds the most useful treasure wins that aspect.

The third one is for most useful treasure found meanwhile, but easy to carry unlike the previous.

There's an emphasis on useful rather than precious, which treasures usually meant. So jewels and gold bring nothing.

We're looking for tools. Things that are versatile, easy to use, light. A set of artisans tools would be a good catch.

Weapons could count as well.

The fourth aspect is the most wondrous life form we can encounter. Because in a city of this size and charm, we're bound to meet something we've never seen before, sooner or later.

And the last aspect, to make it an odd number of points and avoid a tie,, the most wondrous natural oddity we can find. Something that's not clearly a living thing, though might be as well. Something like the patches of sky on the ground, or the occasional flows of materials that go against the normal magnetism of gravity.

Some anomalies don't need biological support to exist. They're rarer, but they also are scattered around.

Let's see what we can find of curious nature.

Before she left, Rose held my hands tight between hers. She was a little anxious.

Ana chose to go with me for the start.

Rose headed for the northern side of the city, toward the largest canals and broken island blocks, the most uneven part of the city, where streets end abruptly on cliffs or streams after a few blocks, all of them, making travel difficult.

I went on the closer south western side, nearing the more verdant outskirts.

~

I entered a block of residential buildings and mansions. A few houses that are a few stories high at most, and seldom bigger buildings with apartments.

Here and there, the colourful walls and facades collapsed into the streets, creating a very uneven road with piles of rubbles randomly spread all along the kerbs.

Some are so high that I can enter an interesting building from its third floor, climbing with ease on the rubbles from other collapsed buildings and its own façade now mixed together.

I only find wrecks and everything you could expect from old ruins. Moulds and rusts, everywhere.

Doors fallen and transformed into stains, like human bodies.

In another block, I find a house still standing, and with every visible door and window still solidly shut. It's impossible to get inside this very strong and sturdy looking house. It's a shame as it looks like a real castle.

Making my way around, I find that the collapsed building behind has made a mountain of rubbles against this house, high enough to let me reach its roof no less. I climb up there.

I reach then a window on the last floor from the roof above, and break it open. A weird smell vents out. Air is sensibly vacuumed.

B - It's like opening an old can. This place was sealed. Do you think we could find something nice down there?

A - Hyaa.

B - You're right.

I draw my sword before heading inside.

There's more light than I expected inside. It's mouldy. The carpets and wallpapers are a little damp. I'm not sure we could healthily live here.

I find an inside garden. The large patio of this house is a very large greenhouse, covering a surface that is at least half of the building.

Inside that greenhouse, everything is long dead.

It... reminds me of an old dream, walking in these rich corridors, to reach an open view to a garden in ruins.

Sunlight is filtered and dimmed through the layer of dirt covering the glass ceiling.

All I see from this floor's balcony are dead trees and plants far below.

A smell of rot is filling the place.

I shiver a little from nausea, carrying Ana there, while looking at them.

It really feels nostalgic in a weird way...

Everything is quiet though. There's only the sound of us rustling and my heartbeat when I'm still.

It's the kind of place that should be haunted. But everything larger than microbes is apparently already dead. Including ghosts.

I think they died as well.

I end up exploring this house with less care as I realize this.

The doors melt between my fingers like warm butter when I try to push them open.

There's only this lingering smell of alcohol and rotting plants that I find noteworthy so far. I still explore methodically every floor and room, as it really feels to me as the kind of place that could hold one of the aspects of our competition.

Something unusually weird. Alive or not.

My eyes eventually caught up something looking below from another balcony to the patio. A trail. Stains on the ground floor near the greenhouse.

I climb down the last stairs to reach the ground floor and enter this garden.

Everything here really has melted a long time ago. It's a picture of desolation. Still has a weird charm for itself though. Like a master's painting of vanity. There can be great beauty in desolation, even when it's meant to be unsettling.

There can also be great opportunities I'm sure.

I see and follow hints that something unusual happened there, before following the footprints.

The plants are long dead but what remains is telling something.

They are all gouged out, ripped and peeled, trees and bulbs alike. As if something didn't like to eat the skin of its vegetable.

I follow the stains that look like footsteps.

The floor suddenly collapses below me.

I see Ana remaining up and above in her jump, while I fall into darkness.

~

I wake up hearing Ana yelling like an angry crow at me.

Rubbles and dust are still falling. I wasn't out for very long, but that's still not good.

I look up. I can sort of guess Ana, looking at me from the edge of the sink hole. She's worried.

B - I'm okay!

I really am. No wound, nothing hurting me. I grab my electrical torchlight from my backpack and begin looking around.

An even mouldier place is revealed. Shreds of fleshy cloth hang from the ceiling here and there. They are kind of algaes. The air really is damp and warm down here.

But I notice that the mushrooms that grew here also are dead like the plants above.

My eyes notice the footprints again. They went below the greenhouse from another place. From that impromptu shortcut after them, I open a door that still stands, and creaks from its rust.

It looks like I found some kind of sanctum, as it looks like a temple to me. It probably wasn't but with everything rotten, the wallpapers turned into mush, and the walls glistening of dripping organic oils from the moulds. The walls look like weird paintings with varnishes that melt over heat and time.

Here lies a corpse. It's rare to find bones. But these are not human. Close, but not quite.

Something inside of their pile is reflecting the light from my lamp but shifting its colour. My white light hits a prism, somewhere inside that large ribcage of a wide body. My sight sees something unusual does lie there. I can easily guess what it is now. A wish stone.

I carefully extend my hand between the chaotic arrangement of ribs and other bones.

A slight spark runs along my arm as I get my fingers on it and grab it.

~