The facility loomed ahead of them, an imposing structure that dwarfed anything Aira had seen in this or even her own world. It was enormous, a testament to the advanced technology and resources of the old times. Before everything had gone awry. Only the most powerful mages in Aira's world could construct buildings of such magnitude, and even then, they rarely did.

The place was immense, with its roots built into the side of a mountain. Probably, a reasonable part of it was hiding within the cliff. But besides that, it occupied a considerable part of the whole valley, rising in the sky higher than the ridge on which Aira and Lila camped the previous night.

Two women approached the building cautiously. Their footsteps were utterly lost in the vast emptiness that surrounded the facility. The entrance, shaped like a massive archway, lured them. Once-polished metal was now tarnished and covered in moss. With vines snaking their way up the walls and trees growing in random spots on balconies and overhangs, reclaiming the structure bit by bit.

According to Lila's story, it has been centuries since humans occupied that building. But it still stood there and hasn't crumbled. Truly magical.

Carefully stepping closer to the intimidating arch, they checked the surrounding area. Now, they stood out like pieces on a tabletop game board. For some bizarre reason, the plaza in front of the facility remained free of trees. Still, there were no signs of other people nearby, which was both a relief and a cause for concern. If not humans, maybe some other dangers were lurking inside?

Aira checked her senses. Nothing there as well.

As they stepped through the entrance, the scale of the interior became apparent. The first hall they entered was vast, with ceilings so high they seemed to touch the sky. Skylights, with glass that shattered long ago, allowed beams of sunlight to pierce through, illuminating the dust motes that floated lazily in the air. Debris covered the hall's floor—broken pieces of machinery, crumbled cladding and decorations, unrecognizable remnants of furniture that had long since decayed.

"By the Elders' breath, this place feels like it's been frozen in time..." Lila commented, her voice echoing in the cavernous space. "It seems that not a soul has crossed these floors in years."

Aira nodded, her eyes scanning their surroundings. The place sent shivers up and down her spine—a testament to the might of the old ones, who built all that without magic.

Lila read Aira like an open book. "Magnificent, right? And if this place still holds any secrets, we'd better uncover them! Maybe they will help you with your... quests."

She glanced around, her eyes narrowing as she took in the extent of the destruction. "But first, we need to find our way deeper inside. Where it isn't such a mess!"

As they moved cautiously through the halls, stepping over twisted metal beams and piles of rubble, Lila recited some of the myths of the civilization before the fall. It was a strange time—a time of wonder and miracles. And Lila's voice trembled with awe.

Most of the knowledge of old age was limited either by the lack of surviving documents or by the conscious choice of the Elders not to aggravate the uneducated townsfolk with things they couldn't comprehend. It was good enough that people could and were allowed to use some of the gadgets and larger machinery scavenged from facilities like this one.

"You know," said Lila, "It always boggled my mind that we've got all this old tech still ticking along after all these years. When some of it snaps in our hands, we don't know the first thing about fixing it. Only hope is finding anther stash."

Aira looked at her companion with concern. And then took in her surroundings with a new level of apprehension.

If she had judged the chance to find anything worth their time by the state of this facility, the heritage of the past would have been mostly pilfered by now. During the centuries since this civilization's decline, survivors had scavenged everything they could grab. And the rest was destroyed either by time or by accident.

This... building... whatever its purpose was, wasn't an exception. By the broken remnants, Aira could figure out that ages ago, many of the walls were covered with panels, similar to her tablet. Most of them were removed, though only the unusable parts remained. Snatches of unusable wires hung here and there. It was clear that the facility had once been a hub of activity, but now it was even less than a shadow of its former self.

Aira was astonished by this display of power and technology as much as Lila. Maybe even more. The approach was absolutely different in her world, with magic dominating all aspects of everyday life, governance, war, and everything else. They wouldn't even consider creating something like that when there were simpler solutions.

But she could imagine that humans of this world had to get creative in the absence of arcane powers.

As they ventured further, there was even more evidence of the facility's decay. Room after room, hall after hall. Some of them were as vast as the first, others smaller. Still, they saw the same scenery everywhere. In places, ceiling sections had collapsed, creating treacherous piles of debris, they had to navigate carefully—remnants of old tech, furniture, and some unrecognizable objects. The air was thick with the smell of mold and rust, and the sound of dripping water echoed eerily through the space.

"Stay close," Lila whispered, her hand resting lightly on the hilt of her knife. "Spirits in the shadows... who knows what's lurking in these halls? Never seen an undead in places like this, but it isn't that I frequented them."

Aira nodded, her senses on high alert. However, her powers didn't warn her about anything alive, hiding anywhere nearby. Or anything undead, if she could hope to recognize the signature of an undead being. And unlike Lila's town, this place was devoid of that type of energy produced and used by human machinery. It has all been empty and dead for a very long time.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

They reached a large set of doors at the end of the hall, their once-shiny surfaces now dull and covered in grime. It seemed that the humans of the olden times had to make everything grand. It was as if they were defying some higher forces, showing them they could achieve more and rise to the skies.

With some effort, Lila pushed one of the doors open, and they stepped into another cavernous room. This one seemed to have been a central hub of sorts, with a large, circular control panel in the center and rows of desks and chairs scattered around. Many of the tables were overturned, and a few ancient documents covered with some kind of protective film littered the floor. The strange substance on them probably was the only reason some papers survived. Everything else, books, sheets, and fabrics, were fragmented, with only small pieces remaining.

Aira stepped, her boots crunching over the debris, and noticed something like the spine of a book. It probably had some color in it centuries ago. But now, all that remained was an ugly dark-brown shade of the past. She tried to pick it up, but it crumbled in her hands as soon as Aira touched it.

She looked at the surrounding area anew. The floor was covered with the same type of fragments. There had to be hundreds of books and documents here. Maybe even thousands. Such an immense treasure trove of knowledge was astonishing to Aira. But now, everything was lost. Only a few words could be deciphered from the fragments.

"This must have been some sort of command center," Lila said, her voice filled with awe. "You know, my grandfather used to spin tales about places like this. Said the folks here had more gadgets than we'd know what to do with—used them from dawn till dusk like it was nothing. It has got me rattled like a loose gear just thinking about it. Maybe we can still find something here? At least some information? Even if the chances are slim after all these years of decay."

Unfortunately, Lila's predecessors had vandalized all the tech in the room. The screens shattered, control panels ripped apart, and wires dangled like severed veins. Everything usable was removed long ago, and neither Aira nor Lila could decipher the writing.

Pouring some of her arcane power into the devices, Aira tried to find at least some tech that survived the time. But, alas, it brought no results. The destruction was thorough, deliberate.

"Well, root me sideways," Lila muttered, kicking a piece of debris out of her way. "Whoever came here before us made sure nothing could be salvaged."

Aira sighed and nodded. "Let's keep looking," she wrote, showing her journal to Lila.

***

They spent the rest of the day mapping the vast building. The facility seemed endless, a labyrinth of large and small rooms interconnected by winding corridors. Aira and Lila found storerooms filled with rusted tools, offices with disintegrating furniture, and labs that had long since been looted of anything valuable.

Despite the decay, they managed to find at least some useful items: a few small tools, some intact cables, and a couple of old but serviceable flashlights. Aira was even able to charge them with her powers. The training of the past days wasn't in vain.

By the time the sun set, they had covered a significant portion of the facility's ground floor but had found no sources of power or intact tech. So, they chose one of the inner rooms for their temporary camp. A small office that even still had a door they could close for peace of mind. The room was sparsely furnished, with a single desk and a couple of chairs, but at least it was clean and dry, unlike some of the outer halls.

Lila set up a small campfire using some debris they had gathered. The flickering flames cast a warm, comforting glow in the otherwise dark and cold room. Aira watched the fire, her mind racing with thoughts of their next steps. She had to explore her powers more and find their limitations. But if there were people with access to the System in this world, she would have to find them. They may be her only hope for recovering her old self and finding a way out.

"We'll need to be cautious," Lila said, breaking the silence. "By the frost on the pine, this place should be clear of undead... but I wouldn't put a shadow past it. Anything can happen in a ruin like this."

"Anyway," Lila continued, "they tend to stay in the old cities, the destroyed areas of steel and concrete where all humans are prohibited from going. But that doesn't mean we're completely safe. In the end, like the ancient cities, this facility is also a remnant of the old world. Who knows what attracts them to these places."

She paused and looked at Aira. "Maybe you know?"

Aira rolled her eyes.

Aira nodded, appreciating the warning, and wrote: "So, are there any relations between the humans and the undead."

Lila knew it was a discussion that had to happen at some moment, especially considering their unlikely alliance. "I can't really add anything to what we already discussed," she said. "There are some legends from the past. And there is this shaky balance that exists today."

"There are talks that undead are the old humans transformed," she continued. "Like they lived for hundreds of years. There was some cataclysm that destroyed the old human world and split it into two: humans and undead. But to me, all that sounds like nursery tales. Sometimes, something makes a human turn. Elder's beard, I've seen that once. No one knows why that happens. At least, I was never told. But thousands of humans turning overnight? That sounds ridiculous."

She paused as if considering if it was reasonable to continue. "Before, it was the tradition to kill them on sight. I guess that's one of the things Garrick wanted to return when he came to power," she put her palms forward in front of her in a protective gesture. "It isn't anything you didn't know before. I mentioned that to you. But in the past years, there have been rumors of negotiations with the undead. Even some sort of trade alliance. Maybe that's one of the reasons the council declared that all undead have to be safely delivered to the town? I don't know. And now it all doesn't really matter."

Aira wrote: "What about this place?"

Lila shrugged. "It's hard to say. Nobody knows its function. Sometimes, we find facilities that weren't plundered. And can even salvage working gadgets or at least spare parts. This one... It was known ages ago. Whoever picked through this place last left it dry as an old stump—stripped everything down to the roots. That's one of the reasons it may be safer than other locations, no stray ranger party should go here. We patrol places like this, but nobody goes inside."

"But then," she continued, "this place is massive, and who knows what kind of secrets it holds? If we are lucky, maybe we'll find something worth our time. And we'll have a map of the place if we need to skedaddle in a hurry. At that's least something to keep us busy while we figure out our next steps."

Aira nodded, agreeing, her determination unwavering. She felt a strange connection to this facility as if it held the key to her understanding of this world and her place in it. She couldn't connect to any parts of it. Yet. But there was something there, like a dormant force, that her powers could awaken. Aira couldn't explain it, but she knew they had to keep searching.