Crown of Horns

by Alex Sapegin

  Andy slid into the “suit.” Overcoming his uneasiness and disgust, he went up to the slimy puppet and climbed inside as if climbing into a sleeping bag. First, he thrust his legs, then the rest of the body disappeared into the “bag.”

  “Very well,” the owner of the puppet theater rejoiced. “Now I will activate it. This will be a little unpleasant.”

  Andy lay inside the warm body and watched as the opening closed up from bottom to top. Suddenly millions of tiny but sharp needles shot from the inside surface of the pseudo-Miur and dug into his skin. “Unpleasant” wasn’t the word for it. He felt like a red-hot rod had been inserted into his spine; his head, arms and legs were covered with invisible fetters.

  “It will be disgusting right now, but still, open your mouth,” Andy heard through the red mist.

  “What?” he wanted to ask, but onto his face, covering his eyes, mouth, and nose, something like a mask fell from which a whole bunch of live tentacles instantly penetrated into his mouth, down his esophagus and into his lungs. At the same time, Andy felt some substance being pumped into his blood which made him “swim” and immediately pass out.

  “Is that it?” Illusht asked, surprised.

  “I will check.” A slap to the cheek brought Andy back to life. Roaring like a wounded dragon, he jumped up from the sheet and grabbed the male by the throat.

  “I’ll kill you, creature!”

  “Let him go, you will strangle him!” Illusht cried. In his rage, Andy dropped the big brain and picked his “sister” by the neck. The male ran under a table and let out a frightened yelp. Andy tossed the heiress to the throne away and chased after the quick scientist, but apparently, this wasn’t the first time he’d run away from frenzied customers. He employed his super speed and disappeared behind a thick iron door. The slaughter spell sent after him knocked helplessly against it and dissolved. The clever cats had thought of everything….

  “Magnificent synchronization and excellent response. The dragon aura is completely camouflaged; it is no different than a Miur mage’s aura,” the voice of the big brain was heard from inside the box near the wall. “I, perhaps, will refrain from the rest of the tests, but I will warn you. Since the puppeteer is a dragon, do not expect more than five days. The puppet is not designed for dragon’s blood. In five days, it will be deactivated and wither. The lady will tell you about the ways of quick release from the outer shell and self-deactivation.”

  In the box, something clicked; the instruction was completed. The last thing Andy heard from him was muffled cursing at the stupid dragon who decided to treat him to an unplanned jogging session, from which a brutal appetite always awakened.

  “Have you calmed down?” Illusht asked, looking sadly at the bent bracelets on her right wrist, victims of the small skirmish.

  “I am calm,” Andy answered, forgetting to use the female grammatical form in his speech. Illusht corrected him.

  “You will have to forget that you are a male for a few days and carefully watch your tongue. Is that clear?” She stood on her tiptoes and looked into the “cat’s” green eyes.

  “I will try.”

  “Do not try—do! Let us go to my apartment. I will teach you what you need to know, how to act. We will talk for a long while. You do not know any of the local customs. I will have to explain all the nuances and make sure you remember them well, as well as all the information the Great Mother gave you. Yes,” she stopped near a low table on which lay some sort of suit, neatly folded. Illusht handed the outfit to her new tribeswoman. “Put this on.”

  “Oh, now what?” Andy swore: the outfit included something like a corset and a D-cup size bra. “I will not put that on.”

  “As you wish.”

  “What do you need puppets for? Why do you have this lab?” Andy asked, pulling on the string of a wide shalwar.

  “Shall I ignore you or lie to you?” the cat answered, annoyed.

  “I see.”

  “Let us go. We have little time. We will make sure you ‘see.’”

  Andy picked up the giant bra with the tips of his feline claws. What that heiress wasn’t telling him to do! But, oh well, he did not have long to endure. An ugly grin stretched across the face of the puppet. The whiskers on her snout fluttered belligerently. The real Miur leaned back a little, suddenly realizing that beneath the whiskered shell, paws, and tail was hiding a far from harmless individual and angering him was not worth it if she valued her own safety.

  Nelita. Miur territory on the border with the Principality of Ora.

  Andy, urging the dragons on with shouts, touched the communicator amulet with his hand. He could not shake the feeling, more like the confidence, even, that Irran had not said everything. The experienced Miur would not have created an unreasonable rush, a crazy hurry for no reason, especially not because of some regiment of steppe orcs that were more helpless in the forest than a blind kitten. A hundred and fifty border guards reinforced with gunners or fifty “ghosts” would have dealt nicely with the orcs, but the commander ordered them to retreat at the pace of a race car. Something was fishy. The situation was clearly worse and more complicated than previously stated.

  “Irran, what is really happening?” he put on his helmet and asked through the amulet.

  “If we do not leave here in ten minutes, we will have nowhere to hurry to,” Irran answered. “The dead do not run.”

  “Okaaay, apparently, the orcs feel the same way about the scouts as I do about yellow-winged butterflies.”

  The dragons’ troxes suddenly twitched in place and flapped their short wings. Something was troubling the birds. Andy listened to the roar from the opposite entrance to the gorge.

  “On the ground, activate protection!” was heard in the communicator amulet.

  “Get down!” he yelled at the top of his puppet lungs, knocked Ania from the saddle, and covered her with his body. The rest of the retinue did not wait to be thrown down in such a rude manner. They quit their saddles in a hurry. A low rumble abruptly passed and turned into a piercing whistle. A deafening clap sounded. The air became stuffy, and the troxes and those who disobeyed the command and remained standing were knocked down.

  “Stay down,” Irran’s magically enhanced voice cooled the fervor of some hasty men who decided that the danger had passed.

  There was a whistle, a second clap… and the treetops cut off by an unseen force fell on the detachment. A boom. In the hustle and bustle, no one bothered to lay the troxes down on the ground and cover them with protective domes; now half of them lay torn to shreds. Hell was going on in the gorge. One boom followed another. The air was filled with the whistling of stone fragments flying in all directions; the trees surrounding the meadow turned into chips. Ignoring the instructions, Andy formed a communication channel with the protective perimeter and pumped mana into it. The defense he built covered the entire detachment. A cloud of dust hung over the ground that mingled with the woody juice and bloody sludge from the dead birds. The brown-gray-green waste flowed down the arch of the tangible protective dome. The princess’ virk and Miur were saved by their magical artifacts and armor. Without them, many, not holding out for Andy’s improvisation, would have repeated the fate of the feathered transport.

  “Run out of the canyon until they hit us with an ‘acoustic fan’ a second time,” Irran commanded.

  “Where’s the cover?” asked one of the Miur, dirty as a chimney sweep.

  Irran’s response was untranslatable.

  An incomprehensible anxiety and a sense of discomfort piled on Andy. Understanding nothing, he looked around for the cause of the anxiety. Targ! Burning with unbearable heat and making the hair curl over his head, several giant fireballs flew over the gorge.

  “WE RUUUUN!” Irran shouted, throwing the elf who had remained without a means of transportation over her shoulder, and taking ten-foot strides, rushed to the exit from the mountain trap. Behind them were the troxes and the other “ghosts” who insta
ntly picked up the “horseless.” None of the dragons sneezed at that method of movement, not a peep of protest. They very much wanted to live.

  They were almost there. Most of the detachment crossed the low crest that separated the gorge from the exit to the plain, but Andy, his three and a couple of the princess’ entourage members were hit by a shock wave. The earth trembled violently under their feet. The sounds behind them were deafening. At the far end of the gorge, where the orc regiment was supposed to be, hundred-yard-high tongues of flame rose to the sky. The roaring fire flooded the narrow stone sack between the mountains. An air mass, hardened from the explosions of red “balls,” which absorbed a myriad of broken stones and chips of broken trees, struck the backs of the escaping riders and Miur. Andy caught a glimpse of the outlined contours of individual magical protection around his companions and the dragons. As chips and stones hit him in the back, an unprecedented force picked up the remnants of the detachment and carried it through the air, shooting them from the narrow mouth like a cork from a bottle of champagne. Stuck in the body of the puppet, Andy’s feline instinct to land on four limbs played a cruel joke. No matter how he controlled himself, the events of the last few minutes and the involuntary tumbling flight deprived him of his orientation for a while. The landing was hard; a “cushion” formed in time which extinguished the speed, but not enough. The wide breastplates of the puppet’s armor were squeezed inward from the impact on the sharp stones. The defense amulets planted during the attack of the orc shamans were completely out of power; there was no time to recharge them. Convulsively opening his mouth and trying to breathe the air knocked out of his lungs, Andy rolled over on his back….

  “Targ…,” he wheezed, diving into the astral and erecting a multi-layered dome around himself, but a several-ton piece of rock struck his unfinished defense and hit him in the left shoulder, throwing the puppet body back a dozen feet, then rolled on. “Aaah!” Only the ability to control and suppress the pain, honed by the multi-month incarnation, saved him from losing consciousness and allowed him to retain his reason. The magical construction did not crumble, which saved its owner from the rest of the avalanche, in which, praise the Twins, there were no more giant boulders.

  The collapse completely covered the way out of the gorge. If any of the orcs in the regiment were left alive, following their own two legs would be pointless, and the Imperialists had no griffons.

  Andy’s internal chronometer stopped. There was not a single crazy thought in his head. He did not feel the passage of time. It was nice and pleasant for him to lie on the bare stones and look unblinking at the sky as it cleared of the dust and at the white clouds huddling near the horizon. But all good things come to an end. The shuffling of steps on his right and the dirty head of Irran that appeared in his field of vision interrupted the thoughtless contemplation.

  “Was that a cover?”

  “Indeed it was,” said the commander, leaning forward and picking up something from the ground.

  “With a cover like that, we do not need any orcs with imperial dragons. If we had delayed only a little, we would have been smeared on the rocks. By the way, what is going on?” Andy asked for the second time. Theoretically, the situation was understandable without unnecessary words, but he wanted to receive confirmation of his conclusions from another source.

  “The invasion,” replied the Miur, squatting down in front of him. “Lie down,” she stopped him trying to get up. “Milla! Here! Hurry!” cried the feline, and again turned to Andy. “Lie down, now Milla will help you, sorry, your arm cannot be saved.”

  At first, he did not understand what she was talking about. A dull pain awakened in his left shoulder, and a bloody stump in Irran’s hands put everything in its place. The boulder that struck his shoulder tore off the puppet’s left arm. Pain flared again; a red fog fell over his eyes. Illusht had not warned him that between the puppeteer and the artificial body there was such dense communication. Or was this a feature of his own organism, previously unknown and not taken into consideration?

  “Milla!” he heard from somewhere far away.

  Andy dove into settage. His inspection of the body revealed an unsightly picture. If his body was more or less normal, not counting the bruises on his back and injuries to his left shoulder, the shell of the puppet began to change, and not for the better. The five days the feline declared were now reduced to a maximum of three. Black and gray areas of dying tissues and a crimson blot around the shoulder spoke for themselves. The big-headed cat was right about one thing: these puppets were not designed for dragons.

  “I am alright,” Andy said, coming out of his trance and pushing Milla’s hands away. He didn’t want the healer figuring out who Anrisha really was. The Miur in the detachment were informed that the new girl was a secret ambassador, but they did not need to know that she was a Russian nesting doll. “I am a mage. I will make do. Are there any fatalities?”

  Irrand showed two fingers. If she was surprised by the behavior of the wounded, she didn’t show it. The feline guessed that armless cat had incredible power. To herself, she thanked Manyfaces for the restraint and wisdom of the ambassador, who did not get into a dangerous situation with unnecessary advice and did not try to show off her power.

  “Who?”

  “Vishmarna from the second group and Maruel from the princess’ retinue. Covered with boulders. Maruel is not a dragon, Ilirra confirmed, so she has no chance.”

  They urgently needed to contact the Great Mother. The situation had changed radically. A light walk turned into an exhausting march. It was necessary to coordinate their actions. Andy leaned his right hand on the ground and sat down. The strap of his fire-starter slid off his shoulder. He couldn’t feel his backpack on his back, and he did not remember losing it. Targ only knew where and when it left its owner. And this was not good. Apparently, the amulet of direct communication got fried along with the backpack. Why couldn’t they have just sent a communicator amulet in a spatial pocket?

  Andy composed the “fiery palm” interweave and burnt the wound on his left shoulder. He did not know and had never tried to find out if the Twins really existed, but virtual games with Hel never ended well. Today the goddesses had smiled on him again, and two souls went to their halls, where the souls of the orcs went, too. Andy realized it was time to take the initiative, not just passively swim with the current and obey circumstances. It was high time….

  “Irran!”

  “Yes, Milady!” The cat woman caught the change in the ambassador’s voice and felt the change of power. Wow, quick. The girl will go far, if she survives, of course. Let’s hope Death will not look at her.

  “Invite the princess to me. Also, as we descend into Mellorny Forest, do whatever it takes, but provide communication with the Great Mother.”

  “Yes, ma’am. What is the password?”

  Well done, she immediately grabbed the gist. Glancing at Milla, Andy leaned over Irran, whispered the code they’d set up in advance and one of the passwords in her ear. He had already realized that life throws all kinds of crazy scams and scenarios at you, including those that you do not expect at all. And the loss of the family communication amulet could be one, so they immediately stipulated reserve communication methods with Illusht. After hearing the ambassador, the cat woman banged her fist on her chest and ran off. Andy, whose puppet suffered a great loss of blood, beckoned to Milla. Leaning on her shoulder and supported by the healer, he hobbled off. Halfway down the road to the natural bivouac, they were met by Ilirra, accompanied by Torvir and Renat.

  “So, boys,” said Andy, “step aside, I need to talk with your lady. Without you.”

  “How dare you,” Ilirra began to boil.

  “I dare.” Andy snapped his fingers. The two male dragons were instantly covered with invisible chains and curtains of silence. Torvir and Renat’s arms and legs were bound. They resembled fish, soundlessly opened their mouths and rolling their eyes, but the bonds held. If the �
�boys” were in their true hypostases, they would have been able to free themselves… And they would be free in about twenty minutes. “Your Grace, listen to me carefully, I will not repeat myself. I am the Voice of the Great Mother.” Ilirra gasped. “I hope you understand that my words have the power of the miur ruler’s words?” The dragon nodded. “Very well. You can guess many different things about the latest developments, but the true cause is war!”

  “And you know the reason?” Ilirra blurted out, accidentally using the informal form of “you.” She tilted her head to her shoulder. Her aura blazed with all the colors of the rainbow, among which anger, irritation, and fear were particularly prominent. The princess tried to hide her trembling for her defiant “you.” The “acoustic fan” had left an indelible mark in the soul of the young dragoness. For the first time in her life, she was so close to death that powerful adrenaline fluids and the smell of wildflowers literally beat Andy in the nose.

  “You,” he corrected her, using the formal address. “Be so kind as to observe etiquette,” he snapped at the nervous beauty. “I know. Both the reason and the purpose I will tell your father. Prince Ora should learn about them as soon as possible. Now, about how to achieve this. We are now going down to Mellorny Forest where I will contact the Great Mother and where your virk ends.”

  “The virk ends in Ora!” Ilirra said, somehow not sounding too confident. Andy’s and the puppet’s blood, which contained a healthy portion of adrenaline, surged through his veins. Now there’s an idiot for you!

  He hissed like a steam locomotive, put on his defense, grabbed the princess by the dress, and pulled her to him. The dragons accompanying the mistress writhed like flies in a spider web. Young people, what can you expect?

  “The virk will end in the forest at the foot of a stone scree. There you will change hypostasis, grab the Miur in your paws, and fly to the nearest stationary portal. From there, we will be transferred to the prince’s palace. Building a portal near the mountain does not make sense; the spatial shields will not allow you to make a coordinate reference. The emperor’s attack on the Miur is a distraction maneuver. Hazgar’s real goal is the Principality’s territory. You can cling as much as you like to your traditions, but I do not give a shushug for them,” Andy said rudely. “If we do not hurry, the deaths of Vishmarna and Maruel will be in vain. And the future deaths of thousands of Miurs, dragons, and subjects of the prince will be an indelible stain on you, Your Grace. Decide, can you take on such a burden?”