The Great Ring rose over the horizon, casting the landscape into deep indigos and the sky a bright crimson. The murmurs and grumbles of the night dwellers quieted, giving some much needed silence to the land before the awkward songs of the bird-things welcomed in morning.
Light trickled into a small crease in the land – a valley, it's called – where the crumbling memory of civilization quietly eroded away. Among the pines and firs, brick structures cracked and crumbled, bleached white by the light of the Ring for who knows how many years. What were once roads were now gravel, plant life writhing and sprouting from beneath what was previously pavement.
But the light of dawn only reached the surface. Hundreds of feet underground, beneath gravel, plant, rock, and sediment, was a massive storage bunker. A massive, twisting complex of concrete and lead. From what was once a basement entrance – now a hole in the ground leading to a cavern – a gigantic steel bulkhead sealed the storage bunker from the world above.
At least, it was supposed to.
By the time the girl arrived at the bulkhead, it had been mostly reduced to a slick, strange-smelling stain on the cavern floor before the entrance.
A river ran through the valley just north of the cave's entrance. The water had seeped into the ground, eventually making its way through the cavern ceiling.
As time marched on, as it does, the bulkhead began to rust. The rust built up, and was washed away by the water, leaving behind the slick stain on the floor.
As the girl passed through the threshold of the bunker entrance, where the bulkhead once stood, she stepped on the stain. Her foot flew out from underneath her. She landed shoulder-first into the red, iron-y gunk with a thud.
"Ow! Shit..." She muttered to herself.
She quickly rose to her feet. Noticing her now stained coat, she attempted to wipe the gunk off, only succeeding to make the splotch even bigger.
"Man," She complained, "That's a really nice coat, too..."
The girl passed over the stony spikes, past the slippery stain on the floor, and descended further into the bunker. The further she went, the more the sounds of the river water dripping onto the cavern floor waned. Eventually, its sound was swallowed up by the silence.
YOU ARE READING
Fool's Beginning, Fool's End (At The End, Everything is Okay: The 0th Story)
AdventureSam Martin has spent a lot of time in an underground stasis chamber. After a few millennia, he is awoken by a strange girl who tells him that he is eligible for a refund on his Life Preservation service. Freshly awakened -- and thoroughly confused...
