The mansion was dark. Even with the cracks in the walls and the holes in the ceiling, here on the ground level the pale green luminescence of the sky over the city barely trickled down past the debris and detritus of the collapsed upper floors. Despite that, the function of the next room Marie entered was obvious. The only surprise was how well parts of it had been preserved.

  Sure, everything was half destroyed, but the fact that the few remaining physical objects hadn't disintegrated over the centuries they'd been sitting here was borderline miraculous.

  Given the nature of this world, perhaps it was miraculous. But then why hadn’t the rest of the city been preserved like this?

  Because whoever lived here was rich, and the rich have the best things, bah oui.

  A shattered wooden dining table ran down the centre of the room, cracked in half lengthways, looking like nothing so much as a crushed centipede. The cause of its collapse was obvious, with great grey stones and chunks of plaster or mortar embedded into its length. She took her gloves off to snap a picture with her phone, the flash lighting the room for a moment - perhaps the only real light this place had had in a millennia - and picked her way over the splayed-out legs to get a closer look, wondering where on earth the chairs had gone.

  Besides the obvious, the rest of the table was remarkably undamaged - just a few scuffs marring its surface.

  Definitely unnatural.

  Turning round she examined something the flash had picked up: sconces.

  There were a handful around the room, though only one still on the wall. They were made of some unknown metal; not copper or silver or gold for sure. Given the size of the room she wondered if there was a chandelier buried underneath the massive blocks that now resided in the middle of the table.

  After a few more pictures, she looked over to the other dark doorways.

  The way branched out, and after trying one that would have led towards the opposite side to the main entrance and finding it blocked, she chose instead one of the two that led further south.

  A corridor. A few rooms too ruined and full of rubble to hold any answers.

  Only a couple at the end of the corridor, or gallery perhaps, given its length and the empty alcoves that ran along it (rich people liked to be fancy about names), had anything immediately obvious.

  The kitchen still had a few stone work surfaces in place, though they were cracked and pitted, and bones (though thankfully not animated in this instance) were scattered round.

  They looked like human bones, and from the bits that were missing and their distribution across the room, Marie wasn’t too keen on trying out her [Glimpse of the Forgotten] on them.

  One pile of bones she was keen on though, was in a discarded pile in the corner of the adjacent room - a scullery?

  “Let’s see what you were all eating then.”

  This time the image lasted a good four minutes or so, and Marie spent every second of it jotting down notes of the animal, bird and fish carcasses she could see: how they’d been cut, what had been discarded, the different ratios of the amounts she estimated. She even sketched out a couple of creatures she didn’t recognise.

  It wasn’t just meat (though that was the main element of the glimpse into time she was granted), but vegetables and grains as well, not to mention the intricately-woven basket they’d been stored in.

  No sign of any fruits though - unless some of the unidentifiable elements were of that nature. Maybe this civilization had disposed of fruit-based leftovers in a different manner? Or perhaps it had been a rarity here that not even this wealthy individual could afford?

  Was this all from the preparation of the last meal served in your dining hall that day? Or a collection from the kitchen over time?

  How many people did you serve with this?

  What would you do with these scraps?

  What did you waste?

  The Skill was amazing. Useful. It gave her information that she would have no way of otherwise knowing.

  But it didn’t answer all her questions; that was the beauty of archaeology: the mystery. Maybe there was a Skill that would do that too, though part of her wondered if that would ruin the thrill and end the enjoyment… much like something had ruined the city and ended its people…

  Either way, when her Skill ran out she had half a page of notes on her clipboard, and the rest of the room to catalogue.

  A cauldron, in remarkable condition, but obviously too heavy to carry.

  The layout of the washing area (she’d caught a hint of it when she’d examined the waste corner).

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Some sort of small brick oven? Though it could have been a storage space with a door that had rotted away.

  If there was time, she’d come back to the room and try her Skill again; there was a surprising amount you could learn about a society from what they did with their food.

  Returning to the kitchen proper, she conducted a more thorough search, working quickly and in silence, pulling out her brushes to sweep a select few tiles clean so she could document the faded designs with her camera.

  She donned her headlamp and adjusted the strap, turning the high beam on to illuminate the dark spaces under worktops and on shelves as she methodically searched the rest of the room.

  A knife.

  One minute later she was disappointed, until she started to leave and noticed a section she’d avoided - owing to the disembodied spine lying in it - was not a solid pillar, but a walled off corner of the room…that had been used as a storage area…

  …full of stone shelves and dozens of pots, pans, roasting spits, toasting forks…

  …a ladle with a bent handle - by design, or through damage?

  …and even a tiny grater.

  And there it was again, the thrill of excitement.

  The pots would be too much to take - she didn’t have transportation - but the knife and ladle and grater all went in individual specimen bags and hooked onto her waist.

  She was about to pull out tags and a pen when she realised she didn’t need to make a note of where she’d found them.

  “[Precise Cartography]. Huh. That is even more useful than I thought.”

  Her [Glimpse of the Forgotten] was ready again, so she returned to the dining room (or perhaps Banqueting Hall) with her headlight picking out details she’d missed on the way, her camera out to capture them.

  It was only as she entered this time with the light on that she caught something glinting underneath the table, and as she approached and bent down to examine it closer she found a silver fork, unblemished, almost hidden under a pile of loose stones.

  Her [Baseline Appraisal] Skill flickered.

  Heart pounding, she began sifting through the rubble. She got lost in the work for a good ten minutes, finding a spoon and a smaller fork as well, though both were bent and dented. If only she’d found a knife… a full set would have been something.

  “Ah, mais pas de plaintes.”

  All three went in another bag and joined the growing collection at her waist as she began to hum to herself.

  This was a find. Screw the house with a mosaic.

  …actually, don’t screw the mosaic house; the art style and creatures depicted could tell us more about their diet or their livelihoods or their myths.

  Berating herself as she realised she’d missed the chance to look into a snapshot of history when her Skill had recharged, and probably could have done so again since then, she debated her options.

  The dining room had already yielded more than she’d thought. The entrance hall - foyer - would be the last thing she passed through on her way out, so maybe she should try…

  …the north wing of the house next?

  There wasn’t much in the first room off the north side of the entrance hall, but she suspected it might have been some sort of reception room or study. Perhaps with some sort of cloakroom function.

  She wasn’t basing it on much, just its shape and size and position in the house, and she could always check it later. It just didn’t seem important enough to waste her next Glimpse on - she’d rather do the main hall.

  However, as she took a few steps in and shone the beam of her headlamp around, she saw it opened up within a few yards into a much larger and grander room - even semi-destroyed - and that was where she decided she needed to use her Skill.

  Even with most of its contents lost to time, there was no mistaking what this room had been.

  A library.

  The few ornately carved stone shelves that remained had even fewer piles of dust on them, but doing an initial sweep round the room with the high beam she found something that made her heart skip a beat and she let out a gasp and spun to check.

  Books.

  There were two.

  One was on the bottom-most shelf in the southwest corner of the room, and she could see the edge of another on a higher shelf on the west wall.

  She approached the one she could examine.

  It was ancient, cracked and faded. From the side, the pages looked yellowed.

  But it was intact.

  She took a picture, then another couple. Just to be sure.

  Even if she couldn’t translate it… if she couldn’t translate it yet… this was…

  “Incroyable.”

  Her voice was the merest whisper, as if she were worried her very breath would cause the book to crumble.

  Did she dare?

  Marie hadn’t needed her final Scholar Skill until now; she didn’t even know if it was always on, like [Direction Sense], or if she had to do something, like with [Swift Blow].

  She pulled out another sample bag - she was running low on them now, all from this one place - and whispered the Skill… just in case.

  “[Preservation Touch]”

  The book held as her gloved hands slipped it with reverent care into the plastic sheeting, and, shaking slightly, sealed it tight.

  This was too valuable to carry around; this needed proper storage.

  It took a few minutes for her to return to her backpack through the gate and clear out the specially padded pocket most archaeologists had for this reason and this reason alone - one that had a thin sheet of wood built into the back to keep it rigid. There was still a chance it would get damaged - particularly if she had days or longer traipsing through wilderness until she found civilization - but it was too amazing an opportunity to pass up; and once she left here, there was no chance she was coming back to the cursed city again.

  Even if she did yearn to know what had happened here…

  The skeletal hound had followed at her heel when she’d come out with her find, and once it was secured in the backpack - and the other artefacts had joined it in their own (less secure) pockets - she gave it a quick scratch on its skull and eyed the perpetually overcast sky. She tucked the spade into the corner and propped the rucksack up in front of it

  “Another hour or two. Then we’ll head back. D’accord? There are still some memories I want to see.”

  In the hound’s case, silence meant consent, at least as far as she could tell, and she returned to the manor, swearing softly as she walked through the once-grand entrance hall and realised she’d not turned her headlamp off when she’d gone out. She spared a glance towards the gate and hoped the bright light hadn’t been seen. Perhaps she’d check in ten minutes or so that nothing was moving down there, but she still hadn’t used [Glimpse of the Forgotten] again…

  If she’d been paying more attention to her immediate surroundings, she might have noticed that the mound of rubble that had filled the doorway on the left had shifted slightly.

  Or that the skeletal hound was not lying down now, but standing erect, leaning forwards as if straining to enter the mansion, jawbone for once clamped tight against its skull.

  Or the shadow as something began to move behind one of the many openings deeper in the first floor…

  …or the dozen others that followed it.

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