Alexandra awoke beneath the canopy of leaves and branches. The night came and went without incident. The party quickly ate a light breakfast and packed up their camp.
They continued the march that they had begun the day before they encountered something that stopped them in their tracks.
About half an hour after they left camp, the party entered into a small clearing; smaller than the campsite they slept in the previous night. In the center of it stood a wooden structure; something that Alexandra was hesitant to call a house. It looked like a small log cabin with a steeply-sloped wooden roof, save for two features that made the building completely impractical for human dwelling.
The first of these features was the height of the walls. The walls were so short that even someone like Alexandra would only be able to stand near the center of the building’s interior. To make matters worse, the door, which was located towards the center of the side of the building facing the party, was so short that one would have to enter it on their hands and knees. Unfortunately for anyone who wished to enter this strange structure, it stood on four large stilts that were all three imperial paces high. The stilts splayed out in three directions on the bottom in a way that reminded Alexandra of chicken feet. There was a wooden platform that ran along the front of the building (where the door was), but it was only about as wide as a fully-grown man’s shoulder width.
“What is that?” Alexandra asked. This was more of an outburst than a question directed at a particular person. For some reason that she couldn’t explain, she had a bad feeling about that strange wooden building.
“Looks like a Bergman storehouse. They would build them in isolated locations in case they needed to hide out somewhere,” Schwartzbaum answered.
“We’ve seen a few here and there during our service to the count, though I don’t recall any records of a storehouse within this forest...” Fahim added.
“Okay, but why is it built… like that?” Alexandra asked.
“The stilts are for keeping bears out,” Schwartzbaum explained. Alexandra nodded. Fahim then turned to Schwartzbaum.
“Sir, I think we should search it,” he suggested. Schwartzbaum nodded.
“Agreed. Can’t be too careful.” Schwartzbaum replied. He then ordered four of his men to approach the storehouse. Two of these men remained on the ground and boosted the remaining two up to the platform in front of the door. Alexandra watched with great anticipation as the two men on the platform drew daggers from their belts as several men on the ground trained their bows or crossbows at the storehouse’s door. The two men took one long look at each other and readied themselves.
Alexandra had her eye’s glued to the door as one of the two men slammed the door open and swung himself into the storehouse while holding his dagger in front of him in a reverse grip. He disappeared into the structure and his companion soon followed after him.
What followed probably lasted for ten seconds, but it felt like an hour to Alexandra. A hundred horrible things flashed through her mind. The storehouse burst into flames. Then the storehouse revealed itself to be a monster that ate the two men whole before lunging at Alexandra. Then the mangled bodies of the men were ejected out of the storehouse into the clearing, followed by the creature she had seen in Weisshart.
“There’s nothing here!” A man’s voice shouted from within the storehouse. The two men then emerged from the structure and climbed down to the ground. Both were completely unharmed.
Alexandra exhaled. All of Schwartzbaum’s men seemed to loosen up in the moments following the announcement.
“Alright, show’s over. Everyone get back into formation and resume the march!” Schwartzbaum shouted. The men did as they were told. Schwartzbaum then turned to Fahim.
“So, you said that there wasn’t supposed to be one of these things here?” He asked. Fahim nodded.
“Yes, sir. If it was in the records, I would have noticed it,” Fahim answers.
“I believe you. What I want to know is why it wasn’t in the records…” Schwartzbaum said. Fahim didn’t think the question was directed at him in particular, but he still wanted to come up with an answer.
“It’s probably a genuine omission on the Bergmans’ part,” he said.
“What makes you think that?” Schwartzbaum inquired.
“Well, either they were ignorant to the existence of this structure or they were intentionally hiding it from the count. If it was the latter, then they have gone to great lengths to hide an empty wooden box in the middle of nowhere; something that would be of little, if any, value to them in the event that they were to rebel against the count. Logic dictates that the simplest explanation to a mystery is the one that is most likely to be true,” Fahim explained.
“You have a point. When we get back, I want you to inform Jargal of this. If what you’re saying is true, he’ll probably want to send some of his men out here to check this place out,” Schwartzbaum responded. Fahim nodded.
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“Understood, sir.”
Schwartzbaum then began to walk away from the storehouse. He wanted to forget about that strange building, but there was one thought that refused to leave his mind: Why did the Bergmen just forget about this storehouse? He had worked alongside many Bergmen for sometime. To Schwartzbaum, many words were suitable for describing the Bergmen, but neither ‘stupid’ nor ‘forgetful’ were one of them.
About one hour later
Within an hour they arrived at the western edge of Einsamer Hill. They were then able to identify the start of both the north-west and south-west paths without any difficulty.
Following the plan they had laid out the previous morning, they then set out for the dome by traveling along the south-west edge of the hill. It wasn’t long before the hill’s gentle slope gave way to a steep rock wall. This was just as Alexandra had predicted, but she quickly realized that there were things that her map had not told her.
The treeline, which had hugged the hill up until this point, was much further back in the south-east side of the hill. No tree grew for some distance. This however, was the least of Alexandra’s concern. What was far more unusual was a cluster of small gray buildings huddled up against the south-east side of the hill.
“Fahim!” Schwartzbaum barked. The tan-skinned man turned to face his employer.
“Yes?”
“Did you see that on our maps?”
“No.” Fahim responded while shaking his head. Without any hesitation, Schwartzbaum ordered his men to stand on guard. Schwartzbaum then turned to Alexandra.
“Did you know about this?” He barked again; the potential danger rendering ‘Alexander’s’ status as a prince irrelevant.
“No, sir! This wasn’t on our maps either.” Alexandra responded. Schartzbaum’s eyes scanned the grey structures, searching for any sign of danger. He then ordered his men to search the area. One group of mercenaries began a methodical process of searching every structure for attackers, much like how they had done with the Bergman storehouse, while the other group maintained a close watch on the perimeter.
One by one, the mercenaries cleared each structure. Eventually, one of Schwartzbaum’s subordinates, a man with a large battle-axe and a thick Metrovingian accent, informed the mercenary commander that the area was clear of hostiles. Schwartzbaum, Fahim, Alexandra, and Ekkehardt then began to move towards the structures.
As they approached the buildings, another man jogged up to Schwartzbaum and said something to him that Alexandra could not discern. Schwartzbaum nodded and peeled off from the group before disappearing with the cluster of buildings. Alexandra and the others took a moment to stop and inspect the first structure they came across.
Upon closer inspection, the buildings appeared to be roughly the same size as the houses Alexandra had seen in Weisshart, though, unlike those houses, all of the buildings appeared to have a second floor. More disparately to the houses in Weisshart, these buildings were all perfect rectangular prisms constructed entirely out of a hard gray material.
Once Alexandra and the others got up close to the buildings she could see they lacked any of the hallmarks of a man-made structure that she had known of. There were no bricks, wood, mortar, thatch, stones, daub, or terracotta. It was thought the building was one solid piece carved from this strange gray material. Alexandra reached out to touch the building, only to discover that the gray building material was coated in a thin layer of another soft and transparent material, not unlike a thick lacquer. The buildings had no windows or doors, but cut-outs for such fixtures were present in the buildings.
Alexandra peered into one of the dark interiors of one of the buildings only to find that it was completely empty. She couldn’t even enter the structure, as there was no ground floor. If she were to attempt to walk through the entrance then she would fall two or three imperial paces onto a floor made of the same gray material that comprised the rest of the structure. Similarly, there was no second floor, despite what the window-hole placement and height of the structure would suggest. It was as though the building was an empty shell in which a house was supposed to be… or perhaps once was…
“Do you know what this stuff is, Fahim?” Ekkehardt asked as he ran his hand along the surface of one of the buildings.
“I’m not sure. The hard gray material appears to be similar to Reman concrete, but the transparent substance is a mystery to me. I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Fahim answered.
“So you’re saying this is a Reman structure?” Ekkehardt inquired. Fahim shook his head.
“I doubt it. I’ve seen many Reman ruins, not just in the empire, but also in Mizraim, Ibnathamra, and Iberistan. They don’t look anything like this.”
“But didn’t you say that it was made out of the same material?” Ekkehardt asked in confusion.
“I don’t know anything about the material, but there is no way this can be Reman,” Alexandra interjected.
“What do you mean?”
“These buildings have none of the features of Reman architecture. No arches, no domed roofs, no vaulted ceilings, no mosaics, nothing.”
“So if it’s not a Reman ruin, what is it?”
“I don’t know…” Alexandra responded. The group began to pull away from the building when Schwartzbaum returned to them.
“Your highness, I think you’re gonna wanna see this…” He said. He then guided the group towards the center of the cluster of buildings. Alexandra’s eyes widened as she saw the thing in the center of the ruins. Never before in her life had she felt relief and dread fill her body in equal measure. A part of her wanted to celebrate what felt like a partial vindication, real tangible proof that her quest may not be a wild goose chase. Another part of her wanted to run away, because she knew that there was an inherent wrongness in the thing before her, that it did not belong in her world. She found the dome.
