Chapter 12 #2
I shoved them all aside. Focus, that’s what I needed.
I shouldn’t be thinking of how sweet and thoughtful my big, grumpy companion was.
Or how much pleasure he gave me whenever I let my guard down.
I should be focused on getting out of here in one piece.
I could spend as much time thinking about whether I wanted to mate him or not afterward.
We picked another hallway at random, in the opposite direction and just hoped for the best. There were many options and I suddenly wondered how long we’d be down here, picking one hallway after another only to discover a dead end yet again.
I’d have to start marking the walls with chalk or something, to make sure we knew where we’d already been.
Iave never lowered his weapon, swinging his head left and right to check every corner, every nook and cranny that we passed.
He definitely thought something was here, so I was on high alert too.
My bow clenched in my fists, my eyes double-checking each place he’d looked at.
Then I started noticing the scratches. Some skating along the bottom edges of the walls, some almost reaching down from the ceiling.
There were many doors that were broken and torn the further down the hallway we went.
This area wasn’t meant for labs. I was pretty sure this hallway had been lined with barracks and housing for those who had once inhabited this place.
It looked like someone, or many someones had tried to break down every door here but each room that we peeked into looked empty.
How long ago had this lab, this base, been abandoned?
Long enough for bones to turn to dust? For any sign of casualties to disappear?
Then we reached what I suspected was some kind of shared common room, maybe even a cafeteria type of place.
It was located at the end of this hallway, probably indicating another dead end and a strange smell was coming from the space.
Despite feeling the urge to turn around and abandon this hallway, Iave and I ducked our heads around the corner to look inside.
Empty, but scattered all over were metal tables and chairs in complete disarray.
A bunch was piled in a corner like a giant rat’s nest, and more debris was scattered in front of a set of metal double doors at one end of the room.
It looked like those doors had taken one hell of an attack, dented and scratched up, the metal was one big slab of warped, pitted, and sliced chunks that had only barely held together.
I didn’t want to know what had done that.
Iave had a nasty set of claws on each hand, but they weren’t long enough to match those marks, and thankfully retractable.
I hadn’t looked close enough at the suspended dead Naga creature in that one tank that was still whole so I wasn’t sure if something like that that had done all that damage.
“Let’s see what they were so desperate to get to, yeah?
” Iave asked, his tail nudging against my hip to urge me into the room.
Everything was dusty and grimy here, the stone floor beneath my boots sticky and crunchy.
Look inside? Was he crazy? We should be high-tailing it out of here.
But now my curiosity got the better of me too.
Had it been people or things behind that door that the clawed creatures had wanted to get to? My money was on people.
I followed him slowly, bow and arrow ready and my attention divided between the broken door Iave wanted to get a look at and the open portal at my back.
To make sure I wasn’t going to end up separated from my only source of light, as Iave still had the last flashlight, I switched one of my spares on and hooked it to my belt.
The pale blue-white light cast a pale circle on the floor around my feet, eerily illuminating the detritus of a bygone civilization, most of it reduced to nothing but dust and shards.
When we got closer to the set of metal doors I realized they were the access to some kind of cold-storage unit.
Not odd, considering that the benches and dull metal box-like objects set up in a U-shape nearby looked like they could be the remains of a kitchen.
There too a whirlwind seemed to have struck, many of the surfaces damaged and scratched.
Iave poked the edge of the door with the blunt end of his ax handle. Then he reached out to me with the tip of his tail, wagging it in invitation so I crossed the remaining distance to take it with one hand. “I do believe these hinges have started to give, I can force it open without much trouble.”
I slipped his tail from my hand to loop it around my arm instead, “If you think we can do it quietly. If there’s something here with us, we don’t want to draw its attention.
” Those claw marks made me think that whatever had made those, had claws as long as my forearm, I was pretty sure I didn’t need to meet a creature like that.
Iave gave me a nod, “I agree, but I think it’s a risk we should take.
I believe all these marks here are old; whatever made them did so long ago.
If there is functioning technology inside we could use that.
” His brow lowered as he glanced away, contemplating the badly damaged door again.
“My friends want to return to the Clan, to Thunder Rock, they need bargaining power for that.”
Bargaining power such as technology that worked that the Clan could use.
I got it. Iave didn’t want to return to Thunder Rock, but his friends did, and he wanted to help them if he could.
I liked that, and I liked that he was willing to take a risk for it, with me here.
He wasn’t shying away from that just because he felt he had to protect me.
“Okay, do it. But I suspect that was a locker for food, anything inside probably perished long ago.” Unless they rushed here to hide when whatever calamity struck this base, if any struck at all.
A frozen food unit was a good defensible position if they’d dialed the temperature back up.
One way in, reinforced door. It was just as good as a safety room in a pinch.
Iave picked up a piece of metal from the floor, a chair leg possibly.
Wedging it with precision between the door and the hinges, he used the long piece for leverage, and with a groan metal started to shift.
My attention shifted from the door at our backs to Iave, his chest bulging, his arms straining as he used brute strength and leverage to lift one of the two doors off its hinges.
Then it was only a matter of bending it all back far enough to create a gap for us to look inside.
I wasn’t hopeful that we’d find anything interesting, but I snuck closer to peer around his shoulder and cast my own light around the previously hermetically sealed room.
Holy shit, the last I’d expected was to find dead bodies, but somehow it wasn’t a surprise either when you thought about it.
Whatever had tried to get in hadn’t succeeded, but maybe it hadn’t left, and these unfortunate souls hadn’t been able to escape either.
Iave and I didn’t enter the former cold storage unit, we just gazed at the three desiccated Naga bodies.
With no air and no exposure to any kind of elements or animals, it shouldn’t be surprising that they had turned into mummies.
It was still shocking to find three long bodies curled into fetal positions side by side against the back wall.
The scratches in the wall above their heads were even more morbid to me.
They weren’t tally marks the way I knew them but I could guess what it meant anyway.
A sinuous spiral, bisected by half a dozen little slashes.
Was that how many days they’d been stuck here before they succumbed to hunger and thirst?
Their scales still bore the hues they must have had during life.
One a vibrant green, another as red as the Bitter Storm Naga that had chased us, while the third bore a striking resemblance to Iave’s own dark blue.
Like the shells of scarab beetles, their husks had remained mostly unchanged, just dried in and collapsed where they lay.
“Well, at least it shows that your ancestors worked together, doesn’t it?
” I murmured, feeling extremely unsettled by the sight of that dead Naga with the same colors as Iave.
They weren’t nearly as big as Iave was, maybe that was because they had mummified, but I was pretty sure they really were a lot smaller.
I tried to focus on that detail, not on how much the dark blue sheen of Iave’s scales was echoed on that one mummy.
“It does seem that way,” Iave agreed with a grunt, “Not that I could ever imagine working together with a Bitter Storm Naga.” He curled his lips in distaste as he said that and then he added a shudder and I had to smother a laugh.
Yeah, I could see why he’d think that. Taking a chunk out of his shoulder hadn’t endeared them to me either.
But the red-scaled mummy was curled on his side, coiled tail hooked around the smaller shape of the green one. That one didn’t appear to look any more noticeably female but I had a hunch that it was. A couple; and the red one had curled around his mate, even in death trying to protect her.
“See anything useful?” I asked as I tried to shake the sudden rush of emotions from my head.
Searching these bodies for valuables seemed a little disrespectful.
How long had they even been here? How long did it take to become completely mummified?
Iave shrugged, but then he wedged his wide shoulders through the crack he’d created and slipped into the small room.
There had been metal racks along the walls but if anything had been on them, it had all rotted and disappeared.
The only things of interest were the things scattered around the bodies.