Juxtaposition

The strangers in red, the young woman, and the dozens who followed them along the narrow path drew nearer to the structure at the road's end. He could make out its details now. It was graceful, in its own way. The walls were not built haphazardly from chunks of stone stacked together, studded with countless small gaps and held erect only by friction. These walls were taller than all the others. Their component stones were cut into blocks, fitted and held together by some other material. They stretched across the narrowest part of this end of the room in an impenetrable barricade.

One opening existed in the wall, wide enough for three to walk side by side. Some of the strangers in red stood there. They welcomed their brethren and took the young woman into their custody. The ones which trailed behind shouted words. They were barred entry. The red-mantled guards used their weapons to threaten the surging press backwards.

He crept by them unnoticed.

Inside the large wall was different from outside them. The structures here, invisible from without, were ordered, constructed with a similar care as the large wall. They were ornate and decorated. Carvings were incised into the rock, symbols of importance to the strangers in red.

Some resided here who did not bear the red mantles. They looked akin to the fire-tenders in the outer settlement, ones who lacked apathy and frailty like many of the others. They worked at tasks more complicated and important than mashing those luminescent pustules into a glowing paste. He recognized some of the containers of legless scarabs, where they worked to render the insects into a crushed slurry blended together with liquid.

Others hammered at shafts or shards of metal with stones and crude mallets, working the edges of the material into a cutting point for use in weapons. He saw that some of them had long hair. He had not taken note of hair until now. Those ones had hair with a color similar to that of the mantles worn by the strangers in red.

The strangers in red milled about this place, but they were not as perpetually present as they had been in the outer community. While they watched the others at their work, the residents of this place were allowed to go about their business without molestation.

Only one structure came close to matching the outer wall's size. It was a sprawling edifice constructed against the rear wall, opposite the opening which led back to the outer community. The top of the ceiling slanted down to meet the top of the wall, enclosing it.

The young woman and her escorts were walking to this place. It had an opening which was sealed behind a pair of stone slabs. Strangers in red pulled these slabs apart to reveal a hallway within. The interior was lit with numerous flasks which held the glowing sludge. They entered. He followed

The structure's inside was divided by walls of stone into hallways with rooms branching off from them. It was evocative of the ruined structures so far above. He felt this was intended. Strangers knelt within some of them, heads bowed as they recited words in a peculiar cadence. They ignored, and were ignored by, the young woman and her escort.

They traveled deeper into the place. He was surprised at its scope. Parts of the surrounding walls were not made of the fitted stones, but were natural extentions of the rock comprising the outer wall of the large room in which this structure was built. They passed through more hallways and tunnels, past rooms stocked with containers and rooms stocked with weapons and rooms in which the strangers knelt and slept.

They stopped in front of one particular section of the wall. Some of the strangers in red maneuvered a flat stone, similar to the ones at the entrance, aside and revealed a room beyond it. He entered the room. It was small, but not so small as to be uncomfortably cramped. The young woman was shoved into the room by the leader of the strangers in red, who said some words to here. She did not reply.

The stone was pushed back into place and everything became black.