Scene 2: A Doorway to the Heavens

As you press deeper into the fungus, there was that ever preset gnawing sensation at the back of your mind like you were being watched. It was accompanied with a quiet yet clear music, it sounded like smoldering, barely constrained rage. Though you could not hear it, as it was in your head, it was coming from Veronica. The soft chanted "voice" in it had the same timbre as her voice.

Quiet as it was inescapable. The more you tried to tune it out, the louder it seemed.

As you drew closer to the structure tell-tale signs of violent conflict was evident. Stipling in the petrified fungus, like high caliber automatic weapons fire. Aged craters, like high explosive. As you came to the tower, seated at the base of the staircase, a human skeleton. Cause of death, self inflicted gunshot wound. What appeared to be a handmade pistol, still in hand, locked in his jaw. Fragments of his skull bones were on the stairwell leading up. His ribcage was horribly deformed, while it was impossible to tell what had caused the deformity it looked like bone cancer.

Mold had consumed much of the skeleton's effects. His clothing may have been a uniform, it had the cut and was made of canvas. There had been some metal on it, as evident by oxidation, but it was no longer recognizable. The handgun he carried was rusted as well, a single shot breechloader. The action had rusted shut, but it was easily identifiable as holding a centerfire cartridge. Familiar, yet alien, whoever built it had no consideration for ergonomics, its blocky shape purely utilitarian.

It was still quiet, near dead silent as the wind died down this deep in the fungus.

Messer approached and examined the body. He poked and prodded with a pen for a few minutes and sighed. "Male, in his seventies, looks like he had been syphillitic, and some kind of tumor grew in his bones. I could do a necropsy, but these are old bones. Decades old." Something caught his eye on the steps and he picked it up. A piece of lead, smashed by extreme force, it had blossomed out like a flower before flattening. "Looks like a jacketed hollow point." Messer offered it to Donahue as he was the expert. It was indeed a hollowpoint, and Donahue didn't need calipers to identify the projectile, it was a 10mm round, he had fired tens of thousands in training. If he could examine the casing he could find out more, but the state of the handgun left it dubious if the relic would survive handling.

Donahue takes the handgun, from the skeleton and marvels at how lightweight it was considering its size. As he opens the breech it swivels easily, it could use a cleaning and oiling but the handgun was intact and he surmised it was in operational condition. The brass in the breech had been expertly handloaded, it was nearly free of corrosion and stamped in German.

It was clearly a 10mm Mauser. The barrel had been handrolled, painstakingly, and rifled by hand tools. It was well constructed and with a bit of TLC would make a fine sidearm, bearing that it was a single shot only. The most noteworthy trait of its construction was that it was not steel or aluminium, some kind of alloy.

As a matter of fact, Veronica was feeling ecstatic. While there was still a strong desire to kneel and stretch before the larger of the two suns(as if on instinct for some kind of yogic meditation), she was feeling more energetic, stronger, sharper than before. Than ever before. It wasn't the same as stimulants, which left the liver and kidneys sluggish and dirty and came with the general malaise of stressing the body. It was more akin to having slept perfectly. Regarding sleep, she felt not the slightest trace of fatigue though she had been working moderately hard for hours walking the alien landscape. Likewise, she was not hungry, nor thirsty.

Asher found the entryway to be a bit cramped, every dimension inside the carved fungus seemed just slightly too small for comfort. The dwelling, for it became immediately apparent through the furnishings that it had been someone's home, was spartan. It looked almost like it had been furnished from a magazine, though with a minimalist standard. As he entered he noted that the space had been carved, not cut. The tool marks had taken time, a precise and thought out practice. The toolmarks formed a flowing mosaic that blended all the walls and ceilings, though the floors and stairs had been scratched purposefully, the material looked quite smooth there.

The rooms had no doors. Each was separated by tapestries, though they were ruined by age the quality was evident that they held up this long. This place had been abandoned for decades, he could tell as he looked at the weathering. There were many decorations made of reed or bamboo, they were more crude, utilitarian. And the ones made of ceramic and glass doubtless made by similar craftsmen that had carved out the dwelling, having both carved ribbing, and the same puposeful scratching.

Elias saw what he would have called a stele if he had seen it on Earth. It was a magnificently carved depiction of a man and a woman. It was carved into the petrified fungus and set in a well lot area. Pottery that once contained some kind of incense trees had been in the corner so long that the incense trees themselves had petrified.

Stairs leading up to a second floor lay ahead, as well as a metal canteen that had rusted from decades of exposure. It was in better condition than the uniform on the skeleton outside. Though the leather had rotted to fragmented dust, it was clearly a Straid M31 canteen. The wool insulator was in decent shape, though badly stained from rust., The tin cup had rusted through and the cap was in terrible condition.