S a l e t é I I

XIII - Cheveux - Six

Cassia had heard the occasional sound in the distance as they'd navigated the winding routes that concealed their warehouse base - a rhythmic sort of banging, clang, clang, clang, that would stop and start every now and again was the most prominent, but there were other, similar noises too.

As they left the alleyways behind - Cassia already weary of them and their tremendous walls - these sounds became more audible, a combination of the more open space and how they'd drawn closer to their sources.

They appeared to have entered some kind of yard; a central, open area marked its grounds, and the way into that zone seemed wide enough for vehicles to have once made use of it. The buildings present - all of them forming a tight, square formation around that central area - possessed what resembled garage doors as well as regular ones for people, with some of them stuck open whilst others were closed.

As she would have expected, all of these structures looked as if they were well past their prime. Various remnants indicated that the location as a whole had ceased serving whatever purpose it had been designed to serve long ago; piles of old, rusted parts adorned some corners, useless even for the most basic of things, whilst ashes and what remained of fires marked others.

The buildings, whilst not even half as tall as the warehouse monoliths behind them, were all well used and battered; windows were broken or clouded up with dust and cobwebs to the degree that they were impossible to see through, walls had holes in them at various points - whether they were made of wood or stone like materials - and the rooftops curled in places where they hung over the sides of the structures, suffering due to a complete and utter lack of any kind of maintenance.

The buildings must have all been searched by people, over the years, judging by their current states. Anything useful was surely long gone, taken well before her first look at their exteriors, leaving behind empty shells in just about every way. Calling them ghosts of their former selves would have been pushing it.

The yard itself was gritty, with what seemed to be a fine gravel covering most of it, below which was only hard earth and stone - the typical foundation of the underground district, from what Cassia could tell. Their footsteps produced a different tune as they walked across it, disturbing the land underfoot.

The skeleton of what might have been a small truck was discarded to the leftmost side of the area, from where they'd emerged, completely stripped to its most basic form, caked with rust, any original colour indistinguishable.

Old things got strange thoughts out of Cassia, that curiosity of hers playing up ever so quietly. Who'd owned that little truck? Where had it been, in is time? How had it ended up here?

It wasn't just the people that had stories.

It was quite a big sort of zone, and there were six buildings making it up in total. Why had it been left in such a state? It was as if everyone had just upped and left. With some repair work and some attention to detail, things could have been fixed up, surely? So why just... Leave it? It seemed like a terrible waste.

Monet and Uliana barely took any notice of their surroundings, clear signs that they'd witnessed them countless times before now. How could anyone just get used to such things? To the empty buildings, to the... To the vibe that the place carried...?

There was nobody around, only the signs that there might once have been life, a faded snapshot of what would have once been a busy place, and yet... The sounds that were ringing out in the distance, clang, clang, clang... It was as if someone, somewhere - just out of sight and out of reach - hadn't seen what they were surrounded by, and so they'd continued to work despite whatever ending had unfolded here.