433. Ruins of the strong, 8

(Rose)

I travel with reasonable ease lately.

The land keeps changing as I follow the hollow roads.

It’s cheerful as ever with wild life in these lands.

I’ve hunted down one small boar a few days ago. I’ve eaten all of it since.

I probably smell bad now, since I haven’t found a river to wash in quite a while, and I got my clothes dirty from the guts of the boar.

But aside that minor smelly inconvenience, I’m doing very well.

I still miss a little adventurous or whimsical excitement though.

I’m following a trail on that regard. My eyes caught a slight oddity in the flows of invisible creatures in the air. There’s an odd hollow area in the sky in the far distance. A void of invisible things out there.

I wonder what could stand on the ground below, so I’m following the paths going there.

I’m smiling.

~

A few days later, I reached the gates of the wide property. Rusty but sturdy gates. This place is a modern castle, with walls and fences guarding a small town and its fortress.

Except this town is a series of office buildings, and the castle, I can tell by its peculiar architecture, is a nuclear power plant. These cooling chimneys are easy to recognise.

The river behind made parts of this small town collapse and sink. I avoid climbing above the barbwires by passing through the collapsed area.

I ender a domain, a beast domain? The air feels different. The wind is gone.

The invisible insects avoid this place far above me and all around.

There is something new to me around here.

My sword in hands, I proceed to inspect the first buildings.

The offices buildings have indoor gardens, growing wild and conquering all the hallways and desks. The jungle is localised inside the buildings, while the grass outside still looks trimmed neatly.

The melting trees inside bear fruits. Something between pears and apricots. They taste good. I realise by the warmth inside that these buildings act as greenhouses for these odd jungles.

~

I went to the real factory building, the power plant.

These giant coils look like the cogs of a giant spaceship to me.

It takes a while just to go pass them.

In the building behind, passing some broken doors, I reach the outside layer of the heart.

The wall is without window to look inside. It’s also a labyrinth of narrowing down corridors, but I end up finding my way inside.

The air feels heavier as I begin stepping in the sanctum.

I know the bare minimum about radiation poisoning. I know I can’t smell it, and that we’re not supposed to be able to see it, radiations and radioactivity.

But to some extent, I kind of can now. With a strong focus inside my eyes, I can manage for a few seconds to see very different things.

I see the glows. I see the stains. If I went inside, further inside, I would probably get really sick.

But only a few metres away from me, is what I’ve been looking for. Not a beast as I first expected, but its remnants. An artefact.

And this one seem also unusual to me.

~

I crafted a makeshift hook on a very long pole. It took me half a day to scavenge the pieces, and another half day to make it work. But eventually, it did and I made it.

Pulling back slowly the irradiated pole, I got my piece of rag onto the powerful artefact that had lied there.

It was a prism, with irregular shape, but shining of every colour like a giant diamond.

That thing absorbed or reflected the ambient radioactivity as if it were normal light.

It looked safe to my eyes though, not emitting much.

Still, I wrapped it well and never touched it directly.

The heart of the reactor was a no go area.

There was a last place to inspect in this compound now. The garage. It was more a warehouse, where a few trucks were decaying.

In one of them, I found a box of very neatly secured and colourless pellets. Small stones, shaped in cylindrical pellets, like thick coins.

I had a weird feeling about them. I felt as if I had encountered them before but forgot about it.

I had a hunch about these. I took one cylinder of them.

~

My hunch was that they are nuclear fuel. I wish my friend was still around to teach me about these things.

Anyway, whether I’m right or wrong, what I want to try is to blow one up.

I grin, fully aware that it’s likely a very bad idea.

I want to know.

I tried everything normal, without any success. Fire did nothing. Shooting them broke them, but nothing else happened. Nothing works as I expected.

The next day, the skin of my fingers that touched them had become dry and flaking. As I tried to peel one, it ruptured my skin to the blood.

I thought it was enough playing with fires I don’t understand; and I put everything back where I had found it. I kept the artefact though. I know better how to handle this magical power than the industrial ones surrounding me.

I still vomited as I went outside the compound.

The nuclear power plant I had visited before was safe. This one, I should have been more careful.

I just... love fire too much. I will never learn I think.

But I can react.

And I have another worse idea.

I went onto the field right outside. In there, I broke a bit of the artefact, the size of a fingernail.

I held it and made my wish.

I opened the shady gates of T.I. inside of me.

I consumed that fragment to expel all the radioactive infection out of my body, I think.

After that time, I began urinating twice the usual amount for a few days but stopped vomiting. Everything went into the kidneys I guess. I felt better afterward.

The thing is, my idea, is that the toxic fires and fumes in there, they could be used for something else.

Something immoral.

I have one enemy I haven’t forgotten, also looking for me. Priest.

And I was looking for a weapon that could really damage his invincible body. A weapon able to damage him thoroughly.

Maybe that monster could heal himself like I just did. But perhaps not.

Perhaps he doesn’t know what radioactivity is and how it works. I barely do myself.

It’s worth a shot.

I will set my radioactive traps here.

And then, I will summon that priest to come to me.

I’m sure he will be as eager as I am to meet again.

~