An Englishman in Castle Aincrad

Floor 13 - Chapter 3 - The Village that Time Forgot

The surreal atmosphere hadn't faded much by the time the group headed through the nearest ''settlement''.. if it could even be called that anymore. The phrase settlement implied there was life there, that people or creatures lived there, or that those same beings went about their lives there. There probably had been signs of life once upon a time, but those signs were long since burned into the nearest walls or the sea of cooled magma they walked on. All that remained of the village were the buildings, and what few signs of life were still there - the entombed remains of the unfortunate souls that hadn't made it out before the pyroclastic flows inevitably hit.

Along almost every ruined street, what had once been people stood, almost as if they were left here to guard the village from unwanted travellers, their entombed corpses keeping a watchful eye wherever the group headed. The buildings in the town hadn't fared much better either, many now buried under the combined weight of the cooled magma and ash, or dilapidated and collapsing into the sea of rock below, only a single large building having survived in any useable state, on the edge of the village.

Even the usual expectation of monsters hadn't been founded, with the ''statues'', as Rain had taken to calling them, of a number of monsters found throughout the village as the group investigated. It really was a village forgotten to the eons, continually smothered by the same cloud of ash and magma that had wiped out the life there, generations ago...

With the complete lack of any signs of life or sustenance, the group had decided to split into two again, to explore the ruined village. A silence hung over the pair, neither wishing to speak and disturb the fragile peace of the village. The eerie quiet that told them just how little life really remained here, as Jet narrowly avoided treading on the tomb of a very unfortunate rodent...

Through the silence, Rain spoke, asking a question she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer to. ''Reckon they'd have felt it? You know, becoming...''

''Nah, they'd have been dead before they knew what hit them. At least once the magma hit the village, anyway.'' Jet answered, looking through the remains of a building for any signs of... well, anything. ''Doesn't make it any less creepy though.'' He admitted, turning away from what he believed to be the resident of the house. The remains of what he believed to be a mother, desperately shielding her child in a futile attempt to save their life, at the cost of her own, lay in the corner of the ruins, eliciting a shudder from Jet, before he muttered something to himself.

The one thing that stood out, amongst the rubble and ash though... the graffiti on the wall. The words ''The fire is alive.''

''What the...'' muttered Jet, as he put a pair of glasses on, and rubbed a finger over it. Pulling his finger back, a black substance came with it and Jet held the finger under his nose. ''Eurgh, that is vile...'' he turned, and wiped his finger on the charred remains of his coat, before turning back to Rain, who'd found the debris that had once been the child's toys, the largest one being some form of stuffed animal.

Rain stood there, just looking over the area around them, before sitting down in the ash and magma, an expression of someone seeing just how cruel nature could truly be on her face. Jet didn't blame her really. As it stood, today had been an awful day for them, and Rain had finally discovered where her breaking point was. It was wandering around a town lost to time, and discovering the remains of a family, after being nearly scorched by a field boss.

Jet took a seat next to her, and looked over the town properly himself. The only reason he was holding it together at this point was that he'd read up on Pompeii as a kid, and had all of these realisations back then. That being said, it was a very different feeling between reading it in a history book, and seeing the rather clinical descriptions, than it was to see it in person, alongside the horror it truly was.