Его не звали, но он приперся / They never called, yet he is here: Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 19:38

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Camrad_RIP 23.05.23 в 19:38

"It'll be easier!" If sarcasm and venom could be translated into a tangible form, Taria's words would have already flooded the whole damn dungeon to the brim, and it would have spilled out onto the city as well. "The defenses are destroyed! The only thing left to do is get there! I can fucking see how much more there is!"

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 11:18

To tell you the truth, I understand my companion. I can see that she doesn't want to make a fuss but is just scared shitless for herself and us. Why the fuck shouldn't she be, considering the depth of the asshole we were in at that moment? I would have shit myself if I hadn't switched to a partial Shadow Form to increase control over the citadel and feed it with my reserve. And even that was just enough to keep from failing on the Trails and moving forward without fearing for said asshole. Apparently, when they sealed that thing up, they worked long and thoughtfully, gradually laying out the route, not as I do now - stronger shield, straighter route, and if there is a barrier somewhere, it's not my problem. Honestly, it would have been better if I had taken Ygra with me, for, with her strength and temperament, breaking the walls and stone would have been another fun.

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 11:21

"Taria, calm down, please," Losius answers her as the only one not engaged in anything, not counting Hestia, who has fallen out of the conversation and is not a master of consolation at all. "Your excitement is understandable but of no practical use."

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 11:23

He's the one who's not panicking now because he's getting too freaked out by the Shadows squeezing right up against him. The fact that the Shadows are diligently protecting his aristocratic ass does nothing to relieve the strain on his perception or the desire of those Shadows to devour his protected ass and soul. In general, Losius was in a state where panicking just doesn't work because you're already in an endless state of misery.

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 11:24

"Calm down?" Looks like the poison rank has increased several levels of toxicity all at once. "I'm calm as a fucking rock! Can't you see where we're going and what's going on behind the barrier? I'd rather be out there cutting grass in a downpour than standing here for one more second."

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 11:26

Though she didn't stop panicking completely, she pulled herself together after such a firm rebuke. She responded more because of her temperament. For her to end an argument without having the last word was almost physical torture, even if it was moral. Even now, she's already got her nerves a little calmed down. I would have cheered her up, but, with the Form working, my voice might serve not as an encouragement now, but as an excellent remedy for constipation, with the side effect of graying and stuttering.

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 20:07

"Shut up! Shut up!" Hans, on the other hand, is certainly not going to be polite or understanding, for the man's nervousness is not childish, and it is seasoned with the awareness of what he has to do shortly.

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 20:08

Taria was confused by this rebuke, but it was only natural - our tracker was the only one in the group who was more open-minded than she was. And anyway, they both live on the same wavelength since they both came from the commoners, both of them are the same kind of wreckers, and both can't stand officiousness and high style of communication. Maybe that's why she was silent - Hans didn't interfere in the altercation and didn't even ask to stay out of the way, but literally yelled at her. And the man had always treated Taria with a light touch of tutelage, rarely getting serious with her. Losius, especially at the beginning of their acquaintance, was not shy at all about putting the bandit down, riding on all her shortcomings with typical noble snobbery. Hans, on the other hand, had only yelled at her seriously on a handful of occasions and always in such situations when there was no need to be offended, for it was necessary to save the skin. It was this association that flashed through her mind, triggering her reflex of going into fighting mode.

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 20:12

She had been prepared for combat before, but being in such an environment, when nothing depended on her and her skills, and all she had to do was go forward, under the protection of scary and very unpleasant creatures, straight into the jaws of the anomaly. It knocked her down pretty badly. If there was even a far more dangerous creature, albeit legendary, but which has clear boundaries and a body from which you can either run away or shoot, she would not even raise an eyebrow. The girl had seen enough fear shit to not be frightened by another one. What frightened her was the unfamiliarity of it, the very foreignness of what was confronting us. It was frightening because it didn't confront us at all, it was just there. Its existence alone was the end of the alien existence, the existence of any entity whose existence intersected with the existence of the anomaly.

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 20:16

After defeating the Keepers of the Seal, it seemed at first that all the difficulties were behind us. That is until we began to move toward the last tier of the catacombs. It had no number, for space was so wrapped up that these tiers were divided into several new ones, then merged into one, then disappeared altogether. There was only my clairvoyance, gradually beginning to reverberate with long-forgotten shades of headache, and Hans's skills, which allowed me to find among the thousands of constantly changing, multiplying, and breaking off paths the one that we needed. Leading to the heart of the anomaly, to its beginning and its end.

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 20:17

It was already very close, so close that I could see the fuzzy and deformed remains of a ritual outline beneath my feet. It had once been carved into the stone floor, poured with silver and a dash of mithril, and sprinkled with the blood of several hundred victims. Now all that remained were barely discernible lines and threads, one by one fading away completely. The remnants of what kept the anomaly from changing metric and position in space too much were dying before our eyes.

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 20:18

We were in the central point of the catacombs, a huge underground grotto, more natural than man-made. I can only assume that originally it had an oblong-oval shape and was about three hundred meters long with a considerable height of the ceiling, lost in the darkness because of the scattered dust of ancient lamps and lamps. What shape it had now, no living soul, even one who by nature is supposed to know all sorts of interdimensional bullshit, could tell.

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 20:19

The spheres were shut down, and I disconnected myself from it as much as possible so as not to strain my already strained brain. The walls of the dome became almost impenetrable, barely transparent, hiding from us most of what was going on in the surrounding reality. But even what our eyes could see would be enough to splatter our brains all over the walls if an unprepared person looked in. We weren't unprepared. We were soaked in potions that increased mental stability and reduced the damage to consciousness. But even so, Taria was hysterical, and the rest of us weren't too far behind her.

Camrad_RIP 26.05.23 в 20:22

I can't tell exactly how much of the distance to the center node of the already vanished circle we've walked or if we've walked any distance at all. I can't tell if we've been on this path for minutes, hours, days, or years. I just know that I must lead us there. I must walk leaning on Hans's shoulder, and my stubbornness. I must bring us to the right point and put an end to a heroic adventure that had exhausted me to no end.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 05:49

And, at some point, we did make it.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 05:49

"Fuck." Hans, tiredly wiping away his sweat with the sleeve of his quilted shirt, didn't even break out anything more emotional. "Whew. Give me a minute to breathe, and let's get started."

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:19

We were standing in a kind of eye of the storm, rapidly shrinking. Only a few meters in the center of the entire hall were left of the contour, but that was where the center of the anomaly was located. The formation was being chewed up, taking away its last seconds of existence, and with them, the imprisoned essence was being released more and more.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:21

Right now, we're safe - even the citadel can be shut down if I choose to do such a foolish thing. But once the eye of the storm is gone, and for the first time in centuries, the Trail Spawn will give us a chthonic blender. I can't be entirely sure, but somehow I have a feeling that after a long "stillness" this shit will try to "shake out," so I don't envy the future us the moment we try to survive this sipping sleepy bear.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:23

"Look, I can get us all out of here right now." I wanted to say it in a conspiratorial and penetrating way, but I was no longer strong enough to maintain the right tone, especially mentally, especially after being in the partial and sometimes full Shadow Form for so long. "There's a clean patch of reality here. I'll dive deeper, and then we'll fly. Yes, it won't be a pleasant journey, but I guarantee your cover and survival. At the most, Losius will have to be treated, with his attitude toward the Shadow and its inhabitants."

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:25

I suggest quite seriously - if my comrade doubts his strength for even a second, I won't even listen to the answer. I'll just knock him out and evacuate him. Then I'll have to go back on my own and work out a backup plan, which is connected to a possible breakthrough of the shadow plan. The city, of course, will shatter with a guarantee, but the casualties should be less than from a wandering legend. In theory, of course.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:26

"Nah, I can do it." His answer doesn't sound so sure, but there's not much empty bravado in it, either.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:27

"Can you justify it?" Politely and trying not to show disbelief, I ask because the madness going on around us looks very impressive.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:28

"Yes, I can." And, without waiting for me to start beating someone over the head for giving rhetorical answers, he continues. "You just can't feel it, but this shit is, like, hanging by a thread. So thin that if you kick it, it'll burst. If we hadn't crawled over here, if it had broken free, I'd have been the first one out of here to change my pants. Am I an idiot or what?"

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:30

"Do you want an honest answer, Hans, or can you guess?" Taria did not miss such a moment, having had time to come to her senses, although she would not miss such a moment in an inadequate state.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:31

"Oh, who's to say?" The man was grinning kindly, though, into his mustache. "You might remind me who ate too much the orcess' honey, and then, that very evening..."

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:32

"Silence!!!" The scream of the furious fury in the woman's body made Losius flinch, and even Hestia, who had time to start meditating while we were discussing here, flinched in surprise. "Ahem. Yeah. You didn't finish the explanation there. Here."

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:33

If I hadn't been so lazy, I would have strained my clairvoyance to get the story in front of me, but I don't remember any of it. It must have happened while I was on my next outing. And anyway, my head hurts too much after laying the route to waste the remaining "clairvoyant stock" on such insignificant details.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:34

"What's there to say?" Hans was either intimidated by Tarya's cries or just pitying her pride, but didn't continue. "It's scary even now, like my great-uncle's mother-in-law. When that seal of yours collapses, it will be twice as scary. One Walker can't kick that shit out. Neither can ten. But the second it drops the chains... it's vulnerable. It's still painfully harsh for me, but we've got a barrel!"

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:36

He said the word "barrel" with a kind of aspiration as if he were talking about some sacred relic rather than something so mundane. And he also made a face, you know, spiritualized, as if an official who had repented of corruption or a roadside thief who had decided to live a righteous life. A silly face, all in all.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:38

"What the fuck, Hans?" I'm running out of words. "I've told you three hundred times that it's not a fucking barrel, it's a flask, just a really, really big flask, but it's still a flask!"

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:39

"Tin, even I know that flasks are not the size of my two heads. This uneducated individual bluntly dismisses my objections. "So it's a barrel."

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:44

The subject of the dispute was the composition assembled on my knees and smelted, with the help of essentialism, out of the nearest boulder. The composition itself I created by using as reagents ready-made potions, my own imagination, a few suitable reagents that I had not yet used for potions, and, of course, a lot of profanity. This weapon of mass destruction had to be poured into a container fashioned out of ordinary vials. It resembled not some vulgar barrel... but the three-liter jar for preserving cucumbers, which was the source of my inspiration.
картинка

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:46

"First of all, not two heads, but at most one and a half, or even 1.2 heads." Calmly I object, drawing peace from my inner reserves. "And second, it's not a barrel!!!"

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:50

"Oh gods, Tin, nobody gives a shit!" The dancer intervenes, for whom this topic has recently become a trigger and a berserk button at the same time, for she has listened to a hundred times more arguments on such an important subject than she would have liked, and she wishes she had not heard them at all, not even a single time.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:51

"Okay, let's move on, Hans." I'm calming down, not because I admit defeat, but simply because the wisp of the storm's eye is getting smaller by the minute. "And you, Hestia, get that flask out. You didn't lose it, did you?"

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:53

Instead of answering, Hestia silently pulled out a large glass ink-black cylinder from the backpack entrusted to her. The color is not accidental because I had to darken the glass so no one could observe the multidimensional whirling that was going on inside this jar. The transparent liquid is pure enough to make the jar seem empty. With prolonged contemplation, dizziness and hallucinations occurred. The purest spatial chaos trapped in the bottle. Storm in a glass in all its glory.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:57

In essence, this compound is a weapon. It can penetrate even a good shield, but luckily it doesn't react immediately, giving you time to move away. Well, it's also a hedge in case Hestia drops it on the floor. The glass there could withstand a crossbow shot, but with our luck, it would have been fired with a ballista.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 06:59

"If move on, then move on." Dutifully, the man agrees as he continues his explanation. "If you twist that crap out of the bar... flask, right into the heart of that shit, and give it a good push. Your brew, it's a little bit like all that shit. It's a piece of Trail, too, but liquefied, like moonshine. So when they're all bubbling together, I'll have a second to push it in the right direction. And it'll all move."

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 07:01

"It is too easy to hear the unspoken "but" in this heartfelt speech." Hestia, who is tired of being a silent listener.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 07:02

"And how without it, our misty one." With a slight irony, agrees the Pathfinder. "The workload will be so great that, without potions, I will not take it. Not without very good potions. The very best. And if I can't do it in one heartbeat, I'll be fucked up in the second, like that groundhog who ate a briquette of explosive clay."

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 07:05

"I want to know the background to that phrase," I say even before Taria, who was about to say the same thing. "That's a story you didn't tell me, or I would have remembered."

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 07:06

We take a little time to describe another ode to the army's fuckheadedness, thanks to which the soldiers fed the unfortunate animal with the explosive substance. The poor creature burst right during the parade in honor of the arrival of some bigwig from the capital. The story seemed funny, and Hans laughed while pouring into himself an extremely toxic set of enhancers until he remembered the not-so-funny details. Seven guys hung up, of whom only two were guilty, long days in the brig and the other pleasures of medieval military service.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 07:10

He'd taken off his mask, so I could easily see the dark blue veins through his skin. He was blinking strangely, too, as if he had to make an effort not to fall out from Reality on the Trail when before he had strained to get on it.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 07:13

"You're gorgeous." Taria's comment was accompanied by a raised thumb, a gesture not only international but also inter-world, immediately mirrored by me and, after a pause, by Losius and Hestia. "Kick that shit properly."

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 07:15

I, meanwhile, began to restore the dome of the citadel because, during the short heart-to-heart talk, the piece of stable territory shrank to a ridiculous two meters. Here it is still there, and we are standing, huddled in a tight group, inside the gradually strengthening cocoon. Here the floor under our feet grows dimmer and dimmer until it becomes completely black - the top and bottom have simply ceased to exist, and the Shadows have created new support in place of the missing one.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 07:16

And then several things happened at once, merging into one brief moment, into a series of blurred and inseparable events. Events that decided the fate of this city.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 07:17

The restraining formation broke without any external manifestation, and in sensory perception, it was also inaudible, unlike the easily discernible destruction of the Seal. Either this moment could not be caught at all without affinity to the right plan, or my deliberately coiled senses missed it in the flow of the chaos that had overwhelmed us. The only way I could recognize the fall of the last nail that prevented the coffin that Tavimark was about to cover from opening was through clairvoyance, but even there, I reacted belatedly.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 07:18

But Hans, flashing more and more often, faster and faster, had time to understand the situation and act much faster. The Shadow Dome didn't even move, letting his figure into the chaos outside. It even seemed to me that the Shadows, though they wanted to devour him, as they always did, didn't mind watching the pathetic little man get twisted in the meat grinder.

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 07:22