"It's not that much of a fall, c'mon."
...
"Soooooo...Are you gonna do it?" Aya asked beside Ullr.
"I'm preparing myself mentally, and you're not helping." The raging winds still hit his back. He had to decide sooner or later, but still, the darkness below them made him doubt.
"The more you overthink it, the worse it's going to be!" Aya said, bumping her shell against his head.
"That's easy to say for a flying lightbulb!" Ullr shot back while swatting her away with his hand.
Aya faked a gasp, her shell fanning out in a crude imitation of shock. "You did not just call me that!"
"What if I did!?" Ullr shouted back.
"Just jump already!"
"Fine!" His hands pushed off the windowsill. Darkness swallowed him before the crash. Ullr shouted in pain as his body slammed against a metallic heap, feet first. Clattering metal echoed across the room as he rolled down the scrap hill.
Finally hitting the cold floor, Ullr continued screaming while Aya hovered down to him. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" Her lens lit the place as she came down. The only answer she got from him was incoherent mumblings of pain. One of his legs definitely had a bone sticking out.
"Here, let me heal you." Aya's shell expanded outward, a light sphere surrounding her before snapping back into place and enveloping Ullr in light. The radiance vanished, taking his injury with it.
The pain vanished, causing Ullr to grab his leg. The bone had mended itself. This was the second time Aya had healed him, but now, seeing it, it felt surreal.
"There you go, brand new legs. Ain't I awesome?" Aya gloated at the clear bewilderment on his face. "Ohhhh, that's why the door wouldn't open." Right behind Ullr, the giant pile of junk and broken machinery he landed on also blocked the side of the building where the entrance was.
"It's a good thing we didn't stick to the door plan." Ullr stood up, unimpeded by his previously broken leg.
"Well, in my defense, there was no way of knowing from the outside that it was blocked."
The building rumbled again as thunder roared outside. "Are you sure this place will hold?" Ullr asked.
"Oh definitely. Unlike residential buildings, these ones were built to take a pounding. That's golden age architecture for ya."
Aya turned around, lighting the room. Machinery filled every corner, stripped down to bare bones. At the end of the room, a few corridors spread deeper into the complex, all of them bathed in darkness.
"Now that we're here, let's look for something useful, or at least somewhere you can rest," Aya said. Now that the danger had passed, the idea of a soft, warm bed was tempting. His body didn't take his resurrection well, he could definitely feel the exhaustion. But first, they had to venture deeper into the building, and those hallways unsettled him more than he'd care to admit.
"Any idea of which one to choose?" Ullr asked
"Your guess is as good as mine"
Great. All smooth sailing from here.
────────────────────────
Ullr took a deep breath and clenched his hands, trying to stop the shaking. Aya perched herself on his right shoulder as he began walking to one of the many corridors.
Sweat trickled down Ullr's forehead the further they walked. The darkness was so dense they could see only a few meters ahead, even with the light coming from Aya's eye. The sound of water dripping from broken pipes, combined with the storm outside, was starting to fray his nerves. His body tensed, ready for anything that might emerge from the hallway shadows. He knew it was probably all in his head, but something inside him wouldn't let him relax.
It didn't take long for them to come out into another open room similar to the one before. Broken machinery and metal containers everywhere.
"Wait, stop." Only a few steps in, Aya's voice made him pause. "Look over there, that box. Do you see it?" Aya's light illuminated a metal box lying on the ground. One corner of the box bore a bloody handprint, now dried with time.
"What do you think happened?" Ullr watched as Aya scanned the box. A hundred possibilities flashed through Ullr's mind, making his heart beat faster. They were clearly not the first to arrive.
"No idea. But! We can find out!" Out of nowhere, blue holograms shaped like footsteps began appearing on the ground, all leading away from them, deeper into the complex.
"What is this?"
"A lead! There is a faint trace on the floor from whoever the blood belongs to, wherever they went, we can follow. Luckily, I can actually detect it. Oh, and the blue thingies are to guide you; only you can see them due to our connection."
"Neat trick, but I don't think it's the best idea to follow these."
"Maybe there's something we can use. You're still covered in rags, and we have zero food. Worst case scenario, we find nothing, but it doesn't hurt to look."
She was right, they really had nothing with them, and he knew it. That didn't mean he liked following the bloodstain to wherever it led, but they had no other option. "Come on then." Ullr could only sigh in resignation before following the trail.
"Yay!" Aya cheered.
The footsteps stopped before a half-rotted wooden door not far away. Turning the knob, the door opened a fraction before hitting something on the other side. "It's blocked," Ullr said.
"Let me have a look at the other side." Aya squeezed through the door. Her shell made it difficult, but she managed to slip through.
"It's just some locker blocking it, just keep pushing." Aya shouted from the other side.
This was his second round against a door, and Ullr was not going to lose now. His shoulder settled against the door, and with a deep breath, Ullr pushed with all his strength.
"Are you pushing? Because it surely doesn't feel like it from here."
It was hard to answer between grunts. "I don't see you helping out here!"
"Hey! You know I can't do much in the physical department!"
With one final push, it swung open. Ullr stumbled inside before losing his balance and falling to the ground with a pained groan. "Are you okay?" Aya asked, scanning him for injuries.
"Yeah, that just caught me off guard. Ugh! What is that smell?" A foul odor assaulted Ullr's nostrils the second he breathed in.
"That would be our friend over there." Covering his nose, Ullr turned toward whatever Aya was indicating.
Ullr went still the second his eyes landed on it. There, slumped against the wall, was an almost decomposing body. The corpse still had its clothes on, most of them rotting along with it. Little bugs and worms squirmed all over the body, some coming out from the empty skull.
Bile filled Ullr's mouth at the sight. The disgusting taste of his stomach acid was the tipping point for Ullr as he vomited the near non-existent contents of his stomach right below him.
"Take slow breaths," Aya said next to Ullr.
"How are you fine with it?" Ullr managed to stammer out. His chin was dripping with spit and vomit, eyes locked to the ground, away from the body.
"This is common now in the world. Everywhere you go, it's weird not to find a skeleton or two. This one was fairly recent, only a little more than a month old. I got used to it, and you will too. Also, I don't have a sense of smell." This is what the world became? Corpses littering everywhere like decorations someone forgot to take down. It made Ullr want to puke again just thinking about it.
His knees trembled as he tried to get up from the mess he had made. "I know this is the last thing you want to hear right now, but some of the things it has would improve our survival chances by a lot."
That phrase short-circuited Ullr's brain. Aya placed herself in front of Ullr at eye level. "Look at me." His eyes found hers, and neither said anything for a second.
"I need you to grab the boots and cloak, okay? They're in rough shape, but it beats anything you got on right now."
Ullr did not answer at first. His head turned away from Aya to the body, crawling with maggots. "Ullr?" she called to him again.
"Alright," He whispered before moving to the body and kneeling.
"It'd be easier to start with the boots," Aya noted at his side. Reaching with both hands, Ullr grabbed one boot and pulled. The boot slid off with no resistance, letting out a squelching sound. Any flesh inside that would have made it harder to take off had long been eaten by the larvae filling the boot. All that remained was a viscous liquid.
Ullr grimaced as he shook the boot upside down, letting everything inside fall to the floor. "You could eat those, you know." Aya said.
Ullr looked at the bunch of maggots writhing across the floor. "That's disgusting."
"'That' is food, full of nutrients and all that good stuff your body needs to function," Aya shot back.
"My loss then." Popping maggots inside his mouth like popcorn was where he drew the line. Ransacking the corpse of a dead man was bad enough for his stomach.
Wait. What even is popcorn? Another thing of his past that escaped him.
Once both boots were done, Ullr set them aside. Only the cloak remained. "What do you think happened to him?" Ullr asked, tugging on the cloak.
"Her, actually. And she was running from fallen scouts." Aya shone her light over the woman's midsection. "There, do you see it?" Hard not to. The shirt she wore had a gaping hole, the edges blackened and burned. "They got her with an arc bolt, from a shock pistol most likely. She hid in this room to tend to her wounds, or maybe just to rest, but the shot was fatal. She never had a chance."
Ullr looked at the woman's face, or what was left of it. He tried to picture her appearance in his mind. The face of the woman who got her insides burned and still pushed through until her last breath. How would someone like that look?
He looked down at the cloak between his fingers, then closed his eyes.
He whispered a quick thanks to her before softly pulling her cloak one last time, slipping it off her shoulders.
The silence was broken as a small gun clattered to the floor from the cloak. Aya quickly moved over the weapon, shining her scanner down on it. "Jackpot! She must have hidden it before dying. It's our lucky day!"
Ullr swatted Aya aside and picked up the gun. It was a makeshift pistol, put together from parts that barely fit together, all worn out and rusted. "Do you know how to use it?" Aya asked at his side. It fell comfortably in his grip. It was familiar, like it belonged there.
"I've got no idea." The pistol settled nicely in his hand, but that was all. He was pretty sure he would only miss if he shot at a still object. A small spring on the side of the gun caught Ullr's attention. Pressing it, the magazine dropped out of the pistol. He barely caught it before it hit the ground. Ullr glanced at the side of it and sighed. Only two rounds remained, plus the one already loaded in the chamber. It seemed their luck could only take them so far.
"Well, I don't think there's anything else in this room that could help us. No point in staying around. Let's go" Without waiting for him, Aya flew out of the room. Not wanting to be left behind, Ullr grabbed the boots and cloak before heading to the door.
Before leaving, Ullr turned to the woman's body one last time. Her boots and gun grew heavier in his hands. He was surprised one last time as he noticed something he hadn't before, on one of her bony wrists was tied some sort of handmade bracelet. A braided string tied to both ends of a small piece of wood.
"Are you coming?" Aya's voice brought him back from his thoughts.
He looked back at the bracelet. "Yeah."
They had to move. He could dwell on it later.