479. Ruins of the strong, 9

(Myls)

After a few days, we reached another city, still clear from god’s wrath.

A city of the old kind. Abandoned before the white day, and thus that had time to be covered by nature before nature itself mostly froze up as it was. Things don’t grow like they used to.

Blume runs fast. She’s growing even faster. It doesn’t take a genius to understand what she wants to do.

On one hand she looks more and more scary as she seems like she’s abandoning her humanity.

On the other hand, she actually looks more and more flowery. From behind, she’s a very flowery sculpture with petals, pistils and varied colours. It’s almost cute.

From the front, she shows she’s pissed off.

We have a few days before the next magenta sunrise.

This city has old sturdy compounds and industrial complexes we want to investigate.

The few documents I find inside dusty offices are in Russian and Chinese, I think. We’re in the right area of Eurasia.

Funnily, with the size of her growth, Blume can’t fit through narrow openings anymore. A normal doorframe is getting difficult for her to navigate even.

So I do the speleology in the older buildings by myself, while she carries all the stuff outside.

I use a light and crawl through a collapsed corridor. I grab the crowbar she handles me afterward.

Dust flies. I have a last glimpse at her face. She’s a mixture of things now.

I force open an elevator shaft that goes way below ground floor level.

I tug on the wires to check them, and use them to repel down.

I barely remember a world with people living in places such as this...

My family disappeared on that fateful day.

I reach the deeper ground floor. I smell something I recognise in the dusts flying because of my weight.

Gun powder.

Close. It’s in the air.

I open the doors next and enter an underground vault. Our guess was right.

I pass shelves of rotten and molten equipment. Some phosphorescent mushrooms grow over decaying crates of ammunition.

A crack in the ceiling and stalactites brought humidity, damaging some of the stocks here, but not all.

A treasure. At last.

I can’t believe I survived so long without bullets in my handguns.

I found the right calibre of warheads, more than I could ever carry. I take with me only one box, heavy enough to hurt my back.

My torchlight quickly brushes other weaponry lying there I have no interests with.

Though I step back, because I’m curious about the biggest cases on another shelf.

Inside the tall luggage are rocket launchers. I seriously hesitate. I never played with something like that.

But like for hand grenades, I prefer to avoid things that could really blow me instead of my enemy.

Chemistry mostly is as we expect it to be, but sometimes you might be unlucky.

Better to be with a limited amount of explosive dust than something like that.

Some vehicles are parked a little further. Mostly military vehicles, but some are civilian as well, or more random.

And in a corner, I found something nicer.

Today must be my birthday.

It’s not a chocolate cake made by Zes, but it’s almost as sweet.

~

I managed to open, and by that I mean destroy, the garage doors. I cleared an access out for a single vehicle.

It’s a modern motorcycle I’m pushing outside.

I slowly brought it where Blume joined with me. She looked at it with bewilderment.

M - You never rode one of these?

B - ...

That machine has no brand logo like in the historical centuries. But it’s clearly an engine made in a factory. It’s likely from the last war time. It has no computer, only sturdy mechanics, built to endure.

Blume accepted to use some of her power to regenerate the fuel inside a drum that had likely gone bad over time.

Filled up with water and grass, Blume worked her magic into it during a few hours.

It seems so easy to ben chemistry to her will.

We tried it. It also needed a spark that Blume again provided.

The engine soon after coughed a cloud of soot, staining careless Blume.

Her sooty face without a smile looked sad to me.

That motorcycle was practically a tank on two very large and full wheels.

M - Hop on.

Blume sat behind me. The combined weight of her body and luggage made the metals cringe slightly.

Still, it worked, and we were moving.

The crate of ammunitions was loaded in front, along with the barrel of fuel for balance. The weight made many parts creak.

B - You’re taking too much.

M - You prefer to run aside?

The engine roared, and we built up gradually a nice speed, away from this city.

The roads were empty fields, not cluttered mess like in western Europe.

We could go further and faster.

I only wish it was someone else holding onto my back.

~

Blume had found clues about where we could find something useful.

M - A nuclear missile silo?

B - Nothing like that. I don’t think it will be easy to find such a thing in a land that once was at war against Solaris. Everything is gone.

M - What then?

B - Well...

She showed me a tattered paper she had gathered up in the city. A rough map.

With coordinates to the area called Ömnögov. Somehow I shivered.

I’ve heard what happened there in history. Everyone says the place is haunted. Or used to say...

That map meant we’re already not that far.

So we’re heading to the ruins of Solaris...

The second city of the sun, from ages ago.

That city once caused a long and grim world war, maybe a century or so ago.

I wouldn’t expect anything to be left useful out there.

M - What will we find out there? Nukes?

B - You should really give up on that idea. That will be hard to find. No. There should be computers out there. Using them and the remaining network, we could finally find preserved technologies and a way to go.

M - A way to go?

B - To space...

Ah... To reach Magenta.

M - Or a nuke to blow it away.

B - Spaceports are easier to find than nuclear weaponry Myls. They are on maps.

M - And you think a spaceship or rocket able to go to space nowadays is any more likely?

B - A little, yes.

Given neither of us has a degree in old computer technologies, it sounds either way like a long shot.

But I’m willing to bet on it.

Okay to investigate the cursed ruins of massacre, to find whereabouts of either an inhabitable rocket, or a ballistic one.

M - We’ll see which one of us made the right call then!

I speed up over the roads becoming gradually dry dust and sands.

~