by Vitaly Zykov
– A fire brigade down! Come on! – The captain, pale but unbowed, ordered to assistant Bernard.
Bernard who already was going to do the same, quickly saluted and rushed off from the deckhouse. Irung heard his harsh voice giving orders.
– Well, hold on! – Said the captain, first time retreating (or rather skedaddling!) from battlefield.
As he remarked, the enemy ships were performing a turn more slowly than his sea hunter, moreover they could only shoot strictly along their course. An opportunity for circular firing from the single, but so powerful weapon was not provided on the hostile ships. That greatly increased chances of the fleeing ship to escape.
Three ships were playing a strange game in the sea. Two terrible smoking ships were chasing the third one, sending exploding shells after her. But the pursued ship held on. Hers captain was smart enough to use her high maneuverability and now he was abruptly changing course, complicating aiming for the pursuers. Sometimes guns on the stern of the fugitive threw fireballs that hit neatly into the pursuers, but with no tangible results. From time to time some complex spells from the pursued ship shuddered Astral. All was in vain, these magic attacks did not bring any success and a weak attempt to cause a storm was failed too – evidently the magician did not have enough force or skill, or both.
– It's beautiful, isn't it?! – Asked a velvety-soft male voice. – This is a real naval battle, just like you wanted.
– Yes, dear, – answered a beautiful girl's voice. – Let's help to that one…
– Which one?
– The one running away, of course! – protested the girl. – Do you think that I would worry about the ships of Nekrond?!
– Well, – her companion was confused. – The ways of woman's heart are mysterious…
– So, will you help them or not?! – The owner of a beautiful voice stamped her foot.
Her companion did not answer, just politely bowed his head and walked out of the cabin. The girl was left in front of a wide viewing window by herself.
Her companion rose on the upper deck and walked to the captain.
– How is the sea?
– Everything is calm, warrek Minosh! We've driven away all the monsters.
– That's good. I want those two ships to exist no longer.
– As you wish, warrek! – The captain put hand to his heart. – Does warrek Minosh want do it himself or I should use the ship weapon?
The person called warrek Minosh, looked back where he had left the lovely girl, and after a thinking, said:
– Perhaps you're right. I'll do it myself!
– As you wish, – said the captain, but warrek already did not hear that. He was briskly moving to the ship's bow. He was going to perform an interesting experiment.
– I wonder, is it possible to destroy two ships at once? That's a problem! – He thought for a moment. – Perhaps it's worth a try…
Having made the decision warrek Minosh wasted no time to think, directing all his energy to achieve the goal. His muscular arms danced in a fascinating dance, weaving lace of the spells. His flexible fingers with long nails looked as if handling over threads of a web, and his thin lips barely moved, saying the words of a language, which had never defiled human lips. Dozens, if not hundreds, of small astral messengers created by his dark sorcery, were swarming around the magician. Finally, Minosh reckoned the provided preparation sufficient and spread his arms, as if to embrace the whole world, and froze feeling for the right wave in the changing sea of ether.
It was lasting for several minutes, and when the sought-for was found astral runners raced in all directions, drawn by the powerful currents of ether. Another pause. The magician was waiting for an answer. The forces to which he had addressed, were extremely powerful and proud, but mindless. It was a sin not to take advantage of that.
Somewhere inside his chest one certain spot started to ache. The pain was getting stronger and stronger, rising up to the limit when it was a notch away from get out of control. But the magician was holding on. During hundreds of years of magical practice he happened to endure even worse things. Moreover, everything was going within the confines of the ritual. Some strange sound appeared on the verge of hearing, rising from the low notes. It was rising until it reached the height of hurricane whistle. The creatures responded to the call. Now, there were only two ways for the magician – either to pay for the services with blood, a lot of blood, or to curb them by Art and Force. Minosh, as one could expect, chose the latter. What could be better than a deadly challenge when you either win or lose everything? He began struggle. There was no time for passes and verbal form of spells, he could use only power of his mind against the bare force of hungry spirits.
Sweat was flowing over his forehead, flooding his eyes covered with eyelids. Deep lines cut through his forehead, his claws dug into his palms. But Minosh did not notice anything. He was fighting in the Astral. He changed dozens forms of spells, not just trying to protect himself and his soul, but to build a suppressing weaving. The spirits knew that and tried to prevent it. But Minosh fought, he found a way to build a spell containing three meanings. The top layer was in charge of defense, the second one, which took the most of energy, had to tie up the essential spirits and to subdue them to the magician's will. The last one was controlled only by the corner of the trained mind. The weaving built by the magician was tearing every now and again and breaking down, but he was starting all over again and again.
The spirits felt a slack in the magical defense of the hated magician. Disembodied spirits always greedy for the sweet flesh and magical force of creatures having bodies, they hit with all their total power, breaking through the defense. And they succeeded. Almost. A thin probe of alien predatory magic came to the second layer, and the spirits concentrated all their forces to destruct that layer of the spell. At the same moment Minosh finished the third weaving. Like a free bird, it rushed out, and the hungry spirits froze. What was that? It turned out that they had pounced on their kin, while the magician was a couple of hundred yards aside by the measures of the real world. They could not tolerate that! No, he would not run away! And howling with rage, all mass of the ethereal spirits rushed to the new point. A moment late there was deadly whirling carousel. The ethereal spirits drew more and more water and air elements into their cycle, creating a giant water funnel on the spot. From outside it looked really awful: the smooth plain of the sea, the rushing ships and a giant crater fifty yards in diameter swiftly emerged within a second just below the two ships. Nothing could survive there. The ships so powerful just a few moments ago were no more, and the funnel immediately disappeared with them, leaving only ripples on the waves. Only one lone ship was promptly running away, and the ship of warrek Minosh continued her journey.
Minosh shook himself and went to the ship's bulwarks. The magic ceremony was ended, and the spirits got their food, not even understanding that the magician who had insulted them by challenge was not injured. He smiled and licked his lips. His clawed fingers clung the board. He looked pretty weird from the outside: completely bald, with matte skin, animal ears, cat eyes and strong teeth with obviously inhuman fangs. Minosh laughed merrily – members of his kinsfolk would be very surprised if they learned about the way chosen by their relatives. He shook his head and went into the cabin to his highborn girlfriend.
CHAPTER 8
Yaroslav had lost a track of time on the way to the giant tongue of bluish flame. Days and days were going by, exhausting his consciousness with painful uncertainty. From time to time, he climbed up a tree and surveyed the neighborhood from there. The aim of his travel was approaching very slowly.
Yaroslav slept on trees, albeit not such convenient as the first baobab, but also successfully defending him from night visitors. The night when he was attacked by the giant toad, taught him the main thing: if you want to live – do not be a hero. And Yaroslav tried the best he could to be undetectable. He hid, trying to walk as invisibly as possible. He always hurried to prepare lodging for
the night a good time before nightfall.
Sometimes he hunted animals, but more often animals hunted him. Most frequently his prey were either lizard-poodles or rat-snouts. He called «rat-snout» a creature, similar to an over-size rat, reaching the size of a big dog from Earth. Like the most of local animals, they were covered with bony studded armor, claws and huge teeth. They had magic too, of a vile type: the magic of invisibility. Yaroslav realized that invisibility was of course cool; for example, he wanted such magic for himself, but an invisible enemy was not the thing that his pampered body needed. He survived only due to his keen sense of danger and supernatural intuition. Yaroslav could not see the invisibles, but he was able to feel them, to anticipate their attacks and to determine their location. It was impossible to describe that sense in words, but he felt that. When he killed a rat-snout, invisibility slipped from its body like a cloak.
All animals of these places had one quite unpleasant feature: they were absolutely fearless. Apparently, wilderness of the nature had left its mark, and those creatures did not know what kind of beast man was. Therefore, seeing Yaroslav the stupid creatures immediately decided to eat him. Naturally, that was very unnerving. Especially frustrating was the fact that it became clear that the whip of Nergal, ideal for combating with lizard-poodles, had absolutely no effect on rat-snouts. This discovery cost Yaroslav some shattered nerves and a scar terrible to look at, but it was not life-threatening. He was saved only by an extremely lucky strike of his staff filled with Force. The first time when an invisible enemy inflicted him a bleeding wound, Yaroslav only had time to stop bleeding by an act of will and thrust his staff in a place that seemed most suitable. He drove his simple weapon straight into the open mouth of the beast, and literally smashed its head.
After each of those encounters Yaroslav immediately tried to disembowel the prey, trying to understand, as best as he could, the internal structure of the creatures, looking for the most vulnerable places, since such knowledge greatly increased his chances for survival. He forgot about fastidiousness, the scale pan on which lay his own life outweighed everything else.
He learned some pleasant things too. Thus, it appeared that eating organs he identified as liver and heart gave powerful energy which was feeding his body. That was especially important in the light of another discovery – Yaroslav understood the fact that he could be so enfeeble that would fail to open himself for Forces of the world, those pulsating flows of energy, which he was accustomed to use.
His savage life improved. Yaroslav even got some new things. He succeeded in making something like a bone knuckles with two protruding spikes. The spikes were the fangs of the lizard-poodle which Yaroslav had encountered first. The other exemplars were much smaller. It was especially sad for the pair that he had ruined, Yaroslav had applied too much Force trying to make the necessary grooves and furrows at the fangs' base, but the first step is always the hardest…
Shoulder bone of a rat-snout was the hilt, the right shoulder bone, the one over its heart. Its energy structure was significantly different from the left one, and Yaroslav intuitively made the right decision choosing it. He made the necessary form, then combined the fangs and the shoulder bone. In result it was a quite comfortable weapon. The hilt was easy to hold, and the two fangs, like two knives were looking out from clenched fist. The first fang was between the index and middle fingers, the second one between the ring and little finger. Attacking Yaroslav very naturally filled the knuckles with Force turning it into a deadly weapon. But in close-in fighting it was difficult to hit first…
Yaroslav ate fruit from trees and shrubs. His sense of danger properly informed him about threat of poisoning in some of them. Juice of some fruit could surrogate water, which could be found only in vile-smelling puddles. So Yaroslav's diet was quite sufficient. He even cooked meat on fire and tried to bake some fruit in ashes, but life brought new surprises.
Yaroslav thought that in the forest there were no predators who were a real, imminent threat for him. Lizard-poodles and rat-snouts moved alone and very rarely in packs. In cases of meeting with a pack, Yaroslav always had time to climb on a tree. This idyll, primeval Eden lasted for about a month, until…
It started with an attack of two furious rat-snouts. The trees were not too far, but there was no possibility to climb on them. Yaroslav clenched knuckles in his right hand and turned to the creatures hidden under a curtain of invisibility.
– Come to me, rats!!! Come on!!! – His voice was trembling with rage, his cheekbones was cramped with suppressed hatred.
Wild life enriched Yaroslav with new skills and abilities, but also awakened primitive instincts. Grinning and growling like a wild beast, he stooped to the ground, protecting his stomach and stood motionless with hand raised to strike. Fangs of the knuckles were ringing from excess of Force. Blood was pounding in his temples. The world slowed down as in a slo-mo video. In the last days, in extreme stress moments, the speed of Yaroslav's reflexes accelerated greatly, and the speed of movement of his body increased too. In those moments everything around seem frozen, all sounds vanished. There were only a man and the two creatures. He did not have to see them to know where they were. With his whole body, he could feel rolling of their muscles tensed for a jump, and saliva dripping from their half-open mouths.
Then as if shaking off the torpor, breaking the viscous silence, the creatures jerked forward. It was clearly that one beast was going to jump and knock the man down with a hit into his head. The second one was going to attack his feet. Their actions were well coordinated, almost rehearsed, as if an unknown tamer taught the animals to work in pair. But Yaroslav was not confused. At the last moment before the impact, he almost flatted on the ground, and smoothly moved to the left. The first beast jumped over him, its claws almost struck his back, while the second one, expecting that Yaroslav will move right to escape the blow, turned its muzzle there with a widely opened jaw. Yaroslav ripped its right side with a sharp blow and somersaulted forward. With a cry of indignation, the beast tried to grab its abuser, but he was no longer on the spot. Completing the somersault, he attacked the creature first. At this point the first beast came back and bumped into its wounded comrade. Both creatures were knocked down. Yaroslav seized the moment and slashed by claws of the knuckles the opened throat of the wounded animal. The blood fountained right and left, its feet scraped the ground in convulsions. The unwounded beast jumped to the side. The dying beast was lying just between Yaroslav and the ready to fight rat-snout. Yaroslav literally felt with his skin as the gaze of the beast was groping his body. He understood that death of the first animal would not stop the monster, which didn't know fear at all. The predator was seeking out for some weaknesses and preparing for a lightning attack.
The sense of danger howled even stronger. Strangely, but the danger did not come from the rat-snout, it came from behind Yaroslav's back. And this danger was rapidly approaching him, as if it was spreading along the ground. Instinctively, he made a rabbit jump to the right and ran towards trees. Something told him that he could not cope with this new threat. The stomping behind said that the rat-snout rushed in pursuit. He had no chance to run away from the four-legged beast and Yaroslav prepared to make a sharp turn away from the path of attacking jump when suddenly came a panicky, dying cry.
«No! I would not look back!» – A thought flashed in his head like a meteor and remained far behind. Yaroslav sped up and jumped on a branch, which was at the height of about three yards. Without stopping there, he climbed up and looked at the battlefield from there. And there was something to look at. The beast which was a fearless hunter, a predator and the enemy of Yaroslav a few seconds ago, now was lying like a dead pile, and some kind of thing was crawling over its body. The thing, because it was not an animal. It can be described as a yellow skeleton of boa, but moving extremely fast and killing. The snake skeleton entangled the rat-snout's body like a chain and squeezed it, squeezed with all its strength, which was clearly enormous.
F
inally the thing slipped off the body and curled aside in rings, only its skull with black hollows of eye sockets, was turned towards the prey. Its lower jaw dropped and from the mouth flowed tongues of gray mist. At that moment Yaroslav came up with an idea to use magic vision and shuddered in disgust. On the place of revived skeleton appeared a vile dull-white worm, and from its mouth flowed even more vile substance, covering the dead body of the rat-snout. Switching to normal vision, Yaroslav saw as fog covered the corpse like a blanket and began to devour it with silent champ. It had been lasting for few minutes, then with a hissing whistle the fog was drawn back into the jaws of the bone snake. Now there were only white clean bones on the place of the dead rat-snout.
«You can absorb food well!» – desire to meet this serpent closer disappeared completely. Yaroslav looked at the monster in magic vision again and shuddered – the grayish abomination composing the bulk of the monster, gradually paled, until finally disappeared. In magical vision, there was vacuum in the place of the skeleton. «Wow!!!» – Yaroslav understood why he didn't feel the snake approaching.
As if in response to his thoughts, the skull turned toward him and the empty eye sockets stared blindly at the man. And, as in the half-forgotten case of the toad's attack, Yaroslav felt somebody else's invading his mind. Sleezy worms of the alien will started to burrow into Yaroslav's mental barriers, and these barriers were not a serious obstacle for this enemy. Panic was rising like a dark wave, sapping the already unsafe barriers. At this moment Yaroslav decided to breakthrough. He caught the gaze of the empty eye sockets of the skull and literally threw the blade of his will there. He gained strength from his own fear and rage, from hatred and contempt of his weakness before this pile of bones, from the experienced dangers and victories. He strained his every sinew, devastating his soul. And now the serpent began to defend itself. Its barriers differed radically from those used by Yaroslav. The snake's flexibility, the enveloping viscosity of fog, the searing power of summer heat, all that were intertwined in the alien defense. But nothing could stop Yaroslav. He dodged and slipped, and somewhere breached through, inexorably moving towards the depths of the snake's mind. And the creature got panicked. All obstacles collapsed like a house of cards, the way was free. Yaroslav inexperienced in such battles froze for a moment, and at that point the snake's mind was enveloped in a silvery swirl, and Yaroslav was kicked out of its consciousness.