Готовый перевод Настучать в бубен / Hit the tambourine: Глава 19-2

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Criss, rather than his father and mother, did most of the talking, using his personal acquaintance with his drinking companion, his sweet tongue, his companionship, and his ability to talk about things that interested him. Fanya, who could be very diplomatic if she wanted to, helped a lot, and her recent changes in appearance had turned her into a beauty, which made the honorable Nertm restrain himself with a kind of mnemonic meditative technique to avoid squinting his eyes where they shouldn't go. Stepan, who was sitting in a far corner behind the head of the security and power wings, did not risk getting into their defense, limiting himself to the gradually improving synchronization of surface analysis due to strong spirits called directly into the body, or more precisely, into the eyes, hidden by the Shroud.

Angry Tit, to her credit, didn't bother him, and in general, she was almost blatantly bored, giving only infrequent and often one-word answers to his attempts to engage her in conversation. She seemed to have one single phrase beating lonely in her mind: “Spirits, and what am I doing here?” - but that was her personal predicament, and the shaman would be the last person who would want to hold a conversation with her. To put it bluntly, the first flash of anger was due to the suddenness of it and a not-quite-full resentment at being unfairly accused of all sorts of things. Although, okay, for stealing grandfather's phrases, and using them in his, Stepan's, address, he would have awarded her with diarrhea, if he hadn't been so lazy to break a really high-quality defense, breaking through which, unnoticed by her entourage, would have been a real combat operation, like “Valdis's Boiling” or “Explosive Visit”. In general, he forgave her that too, amazed at his own generosity, but he didn't delete the preliminary sketches of Operation Brown Note from his notebook, he kept them just in case.

"Well, you, dear guests, have already appreciated our wine, so I propose to take carriages and, according to tradition, go to our shop and drink directly from the bottle," Criss says. Others respond with restrained and mostly benevolent nods and verbal consent. "Then let's not delay. There's a lovely evening chill outside, it's time for a walk around the city, it's really beautiful at sunset."

This, as Stepan already knew, was another tribute to the traditions of the high- and mid-range liquor trade - from beer to all sorts of rare brandies. Now, before concluding an already agreed upon agreement and beginning to draw up a contract, the venerable and staid Trabius Borshakl should take the guests to the best of his wine stores, and the young and haughty young lord Nerthm de Vicar, choose any bottle he likes, and the two of them will uncork the bottle, pouring some for the entourage as well. This old custom goes back to very deep antiquity, there are several legends connected with it, but the essence is clear without tales - a sample of goods, and initially random and therefore not prepared in advance, a show of respect and at the same time a conviction of honesty of intentions.

Trabius personally led the guests to their stagecoaches and carriages, which were not exactly de Vicar's, but were rented by them from trusted partners who operated in this city. This, by the way, was another level of negotiation, as Stepan knew, a little training by Sylvia - both an assurance that support was being provided and that there would be no competition because otherwise, the local merchants would not allow a non-local merchant to work in the financial field of Dantmark. So, he either managed to convince his partners that he would not take a piece out of his mouth, or that it was all just a one-time deal, or he decided to try to secure a part of the local market, from which one of the players had recently been kicked out to the parrots.

The Shaman had ridden as well, though second class, but not sent on foot. Trabius had his own presentable and enchanted by Jasper transportation for visits outside the city, and another one was rented too. To be expensive and rich and all that, because everyone around them understands, but you can't do it otherwise. The small ritual of uncorking a random bottle, which was checked for impurities anyway, and Jasper also checked it, and even the first one, or else, went smoothly, everyone drank a glass, enjoying the sunset that had almost begun, and even walked around the city a little. Criss told witticisms and jokes, telling funny and entertaining stories about different parts of the city, the guards unobtrusively dismissed casual passers-by, the guards, who, it seemed, had been paid separately to assist them, kept a watchful eye.

Stepan feeling a sense of deja vu, looked at the top of the magic tower shimmering in the sunset, the multicolored tiles on the top of which were not only arranged in ritual patterns but glistened in the sunlight. He had seen the image. He remembered the feeling, the presence in a crowd he didn't want to be in, the vision of a tower that carried a sense of menace. He rarely remembered his visions in dreams and rarely gave them meaning, but here, this particular fragment of the dream - he remembered it, he had seen it before. The realization came all at once, almost instantly, making him jerk, step back a little, and tense the aura beneath the Shroud. This was literally the embodiment of something he'd seen, something he remembered, and he didn't want to continue being here for a single second.

"Pann, what are you doing..." Pirius asked apprehensively, looking at the frozen and sharpened features of the face of the habitually calm magician. "What is goin..."

"Tower." He interrupts him, dryly and softly, but the steward takes an involuntary step back. "There's something wrong with the tower. Not the way it should be. We need to get out of here."

His words elicited a chuckle or slight contemptuous bewilderment from almost everyone, especially from the guest retinue, and Nertm, who was being interrupted and distracted by the shaman's quirks for the second time, looked at him with open disapproval. In Trabius' eyes, he could read everything he would do to Stepan if he ruined his almost-concluded contract. But the steppe shamaness was not confused and first of all turned to her spirits, repeating exactly what Stepan was doing, only faster, because she did not need to hide.

"Honorable Trabius, I respect you, but will you quiet your servant and give him something to calm his senses and mind?" Correctly, but with a note of carefully measured irritation, he asks in a way that makes it clear that it is not a request. "Such a nice day and at its end...."

"He's right. Something's wrong, I can sense it too. The Khao sense. The Khao see. There. At the top." The shamaness speaks out, and even turns to Stepan with a look of slight disbelief, realizing that he felt this tension in the energy flows even before she did. "There's magic there, strong magic. And it's like it's bubbling and taut. Like a thread. Like a ringing that reflected. Into itself. This thread, the khao see it as if it were....."

//“Resonates in a cascading loss of control.” - Stepan mentally finished after the shamaness, unable to find a suitable epithet, realizing that he should have forgotten about Pirius and fled. - “And with the support of the process of summoning, or fixing something not completely native to this world, but not alien, like spirits. They're calling for an elemental, it seems. Just like the one Sylvia was talking about. Except that their call seems to have screwed.” It was clear to Stepan, and a moment later to everyone staring at the tower already visibly pulsing in their magical vision. It was obvious even to the uninitiated, even if they didn't know about the fact of the summoning, because it was hard to say that everything was in order when you had a small explosion in your tower.

The detonation really wasn't too strong. It damaged the very ritual mosaic tiles, shredding them to shreds, but even that wasn't a problem. These patterns were designed to be removable, replaceable, and uninstallable. But in magical perception, it stung so badly that the shaman's teeth ached even on the ground, a block and a half away from the tower. It was a clear indication of a sharp and emergency burnout of the ritual circuit and storage, which dumped steam so that it wouldn't physically explode. Those who live near the neighborhood of magicians will definitely have a migraine, and those who were on top of the tower at the time of the explosion and sensory shock are guaranteed. However, sensory shock was the least of the problems of those on top of the tower at the moment of the trouble, if it was a problem.

"Fuck." Stepan commented somewhat melancholically and with a certain amount of pessimism as he watched a human figure wrapped in shields with the aura of a clearly wounded and badly beaten magician with a bias for water, and the figure had no legs below the knees. "That must have hurt."

The magician-master's figure managed to slow down the fall, and that was the only reason why it didn't shatter, but simply broke through someone's window and fell inside the building. Since the neighborhood was very rich, the house was protected, but the simple screen on the window opening did not resist contact with the exhausted but very powerful master shields, allowing the mage to hide from the wrath of what he and his colleagues called. An elemental indeed, and not at all ordinary and not at all watery, as Sylvia had predicted. Perhaps that was why he had disobeyed, why he had snapped. The entity that burst from the top of the tower and hovered in the air by a very strange form of levitation had a nature of earth and stone, but it was not solid, but as if it were liquid and fluid.

A two-component elemental of a complex type, with a very developed energy background and, apparently, partially intelligent, if not partially intelligent. Well, well, well, such a thing can be summoned and wrapped up without prior preparation. Such entities are sometimes more dangerous and frightening than spirits of comparable power. And the summoners have the wrong element and an imperfect ritual. It was time to say an ominous and doom-foretelling “ OOPS!”, but Stepan kept silent, thinking feverishly about what he should do if this shit tried to attack. No, it was obvious what to do, just take off down the tunnel. In his home domain cave, he could fight off a creature comparable to an elder spirit, and roll the guest in a jar. But it probably doesn't need to, because the entity is now as if blind and perplexed, it doesn't need to attack the enemy, only to go where nature itself calls it - underground and home. It just has to wait until it's on active magic or a weakened line of communication between Reality and Spheres, and there are enough of them in the city even without active shamans, and then it just leaves.

Stepan turns his head to his colleague, looking at her with the forgiving look of Rodislav Gastoldovich Yanin at the chronic resubmission student, smiles his kindest smile, from which the guards of the dear guests involuntarily understood to blades and wands, and then speaks. He speaks sincerely, purely, from the bottom of his heart and so tenderly, as a loving mother might say to her child, as the shaman himself would not say even to his theoretically possible beloved:

"You're such an idiot." And, seeing the indignation in her eyes, seeing the readiness to strike the summoned and actualized retinue in response to the insult, he continues. "That shit's coming at us right now because your flash, you stupid bitch."

And why the fuck wouldn't it come, if the call of three strong ones at once and the incarnation of a senior spirit quite familiar to Stepan personally had just become the beacon, the semaphore that guaranteed the weakening of reality and an open passage back to the native element? To be fair, without being placed directly into the eyes that cried scarlet tears of a very strong suggestor, on the verge of senior and with specialization in reading the motives of foreign entities, it was very difficult to understand the intentions of the liquid stone elemental. The behavior is not typical and extremely non-standard, because the standard would immediately attack the most magical part of reality, that is, the tower itself. Perhaps, though it was more likely to be so, it was because of its unconventional and tactically thought-out behavior that this creature did not let itself be shackled and enslaved according to the usual patterns of such rituals.

Her eyes widened in mild shock, and then it really hit her. She, realizing it was too late to turn back, began to incarnate her spirits even faster, trying to put up a defense. Well, it was too late to think, and she began to choose from the worst. Stepan did exactly the same thing but tried to do it covertly, without shaking Reality and causing even more aggression from the strange thing. Still, the thing was really out of the ordinary. Even now it seems to him that in addition to pure stone and earth, there are clearly other tricks up its sleeve, felt from the lump of magically active mass that came to converge with the speed of a falling pebble something reminiscent of spirits-exots with a set of strange and illogical properties in the aura. The steppe woman shouted something threatening and commanding, calling her servants, her attendant, and the main culprit of the celebration covered himself and the shamaness, trying to stretch a set of amulet protection for the two of them, the guards struck with wands and amulets towards the creature, Jasper and Criss tried to pull away Fanya and Trabius, who did not have such decent protection.

And then the creature showed exactly what Stepan in its auric and spiritual guise thought was wrong and illogical for a pure elemental. It strikes at the brains. The only thing that saved the young man was that he managed to activate the time stretch from the system meta-skill and didn't turn off immediately, he was just surprised at first that the creature didn't slow down. In fact, it had slowed down not him, but rather his mind and perception. The solid, stony, indestructible property seemed to pull at his thoughts, shutting them down and plunging them into a stasis-like stupor. Given that the entity was clearly going to attack with the more familiar elemental manifestations as well, it would almost be a death sentence. But that was okay. He activated the spiritual consciousness, stopping thinking with his brain and switching to the energy frame, compacted the spiritual body, strengthened the defense by pumping the amulet built into the aura, and strained the nodes and channels, but withstood the blow.

The Angry Mare had done well, too. Or rather, her amulets, which were part spirit houses, did, though a couple of bones on her robe burned and crumbled to ashes. And then her retinue struck, knocking down the creature's beautiful parabola and doing a very, very stupid thing. They should have struck from above, driving the foe into the stone of the sidewalk, and there it would have left on its own, it sought to leave. But the defending spirits almost universally belonged to the realm of the air. And what is the main battle doctrine of any elemental spirit manifested in the real world? That's right - move the fight to where their element is dominant, so they push the creature upwards, seemingly managing to nullify its weight as well. Where there's only wind, where there's not a shadow of solidity. Clearly, the lump of rocky slime that had already sensed freedom didn't like it, nor did it like the several very large pieces that had been torn off, shredded, cut off, or scraped off with the air-magic equivalent of diamond-coated sandpaper. Obviously, the creature struck again, but if the blow with clods of super-saturated earth magic was repelled by the air spirits, if the attempt to hit with stone stakes from under their feet was prevented by Stepan, calling a trio of strong spirits, ordering them not to let the stone change, then another mental crap spirit spent another hundred out of a hundred, just universal applause and reverence.

The shamaness, whom the spirits of the retinue, sensing the attack from below, lifted in a hover to a height just above her knee, looked with slight surprise at the ground shaking just a little and the stone of the paving stones flowing in some places, and then at Stepan, who was concentrated and furious to the max. And then the enchanted knuckle-amulet on Nertm's fist hit her in the face. The guy has a sense of style in terms of his choice of personal weapons. Oh, and some of the guards pointed their weapons at her. And all because the new influence, this time reflected by the corresponding spirit planted in the body, specializing in protecting the mind in battle, caused not only immobility, in which all the insufficiently protected victims fell with the arrogant young master. No, this trick also flooded the throats with inexpressible aggression towards those who continued to move. Why is she moving around when they just want to stand silently and that's it?

The guard's wands struck at the new threat of the defense, but the blow with a harsh knuckle was not so easy to stop. The spirit that held the panicked shamaness in levitation did not block it, but simply yanked her body to the side, like a leaf in the wind when you try to hit it with your fist, but only push it away with the currents of air. It was beautiful, quite dangerous, and tactically incorrect. She would have frozen immovable to remove the instinctive and inspired aggression of spiritual suggestion, but she had not had time to realize this point or simply could not use it due to lack of the right contracts. The aggression of those around her jumped by an order of magnitude, the ghostly blade snapped off the knuckle-jewel, sticking into the wall of air, and the elemental was already hitting with a new portion of direct elemental control, and already directly at the most agile and vicious target - the shamaness. The ground beneath her swelled and nearly erupted in a geyser, deadly sharp and seeming to squeeze her brains out through her ears.

A combination of mental-spiritual influence and the classic elemental aspect. This was definitely no ordinary elemental, and Stepan, deep down, understood perfectly well why they had tried to summon him. But that realization doesn't make him feel any better, even though he's not being directly attacked yet. He covered himself with a Shroud completely, suppressing not only the magical part of the aura, but the aura in general, becoming an empty space for the elemental used to perceive the world energetically. Such entities might have ways of detecting a target purely by optical analysis, but the young man hoped that even if the entity had such a tool, it didn't know how to use it. The geyser's blast was intercepted again, and it was as if the opening of the earth's yawn had been pierced by hundreds of spiritual thread-worms, which sewed up a miniature wormhole that led into the elemental reflection of the sphere of the firmament like a surgeon suturing a wound. Or as a housewife sews up the ass of a duck stuffed with apples before putting it in the oven because the pressure was great.

//“And yet this shit can see, who would doubt it.” - Gives out the shaman's mind, fired up by all means but another use of the meta-skill, saved for last resort for now. - “I'm just freaking out with these mages and the way they fuck up safety techniques for risky summons! That's the kind of thing no fucking pornhub would show.”

On the liquid-stone surface of the spherical elemental, which had decided to temporarily hover for the sake of attacking the offenders, hundreds of small holes-eyes-transparents opened, evaluating the picture of reality. They quickly found a discrepancy in that picture. One of the men did not feel normal to the entity's perception, but had mass, pressed its body against the stone, and optically looked as humanoid freak as the others. The small eyes folded into one huge hole, about half a meter in diameter, and then, with a startled shriek from a clearly shitting colleague, another psychic wave came out of that eye pupil. Again the manipulation of slowing down and immobilizing his thinking, specifically his thinking, not his energy, as his pathways locked. He was almost able to be convinced, once and for all, that he was a stone, not thinking, not breathing, not existing. A completely healthy vegetable as a result, and not that irreversibly damaged at all, but it would hardly be possible to restore such a psyche without the help of at least a Magister of Mentalistics with a secondary specialization as a healer.

Stepan, who'd been summoning the right spirits since the second he'd identified the creature's type of attack, had only wrinkled his face as if he'd licked a lemon when the deceptive spirit that had been imitating his consciousness for the external mental scanning began to think of itself as a pebble and disintegrated. It's nothing to the spirit. He'd come to his senses later, because it was his nature to accept the mental-corrective influence of a harsh type, like Sylvia's gaze or this crap, but some of the sensations were still transmitted through the back channel, and they were, to put it correctly, unpleasant. He didn't strike back, just strengthened his defenses even more, feeling the shroud start to crack and fall, instead sending an image-order in the direction of the shamaness, and himself attacking with a suggestive influence on the area, calling several strong spirits working in synergy with each other. He'd prepared this bundle specifically for a slightly different occasion, but it would work for now.

//“Knock him into the ground, let him go, he wants it that way.” - His thought flew to the shamaness, and he had to bypass a very competent defense against such mental contact, literally blowing other people's thoughts from the protected target's mind, causing the wench to twitch and look at the still motionless Pann lying on the ground in very great surprise. - “Just get him away from us, let him fall where it's less crowded.”

Suggestors struck, attacking the already damaged minds of those still trying to attack the moving shamaness. The most protected one was particularly furious. Paradoxically, the elemental-spirit's very exotic and somewhat tricky attack hurt the more the mind-protecting walls and barriers were stronger. The defense of the haughty and young was at a decent level, high, if not the highest price segment of those available in free sale for gold, and not only that, but it was too rigid and monolithic. That was what played against the poor guy. One could only hope that his brains hadn't been burned. That the remnants of those brains wouldn't be burned by what Stepan had unleashed on them. The blow of the spirits was complex and terrifying, literally. The instillation of fear, terror, and the desire to run anywhere but stand still was the first layer of the blow. The second layer, supported by the second and fifth spirits, indicated the direction, forcing to run away in the direction Stepan strictly needed. The shaman deactivated the third layer, which forced him to attack anyone who would interfere with his escape, and redirected it into an inversion, forbidding him to attack moving objects, suppressing the suggestion of hostile entities, forcing him to run away from them rather than attack them.

The fourth layer worked better than all the others, supported by the second, seventh, and also fifth spirits, simply burning out and confusing some of the memories, replacing them with delusional visions of all kinds of pink ponies and blue unicorns. A kind of mass panic, combined with mass amnesia, but designed to conceal the fact that the amnesia was intentional. The loss of memory over the last couple of days and the general distortion of that memory by a bunch of delusional half-sleeps should seem to be a consequence of the complexity of the attack on the minds of the victims so everything will point to the consequences of the stone snot hit. Total, no one would, as Stepan wanted to believe, ask why the fuck one young man was the first to notice something wrong, and then fought back no worse than a noble and rich shamaness with a bunch of ancestral contracts. This time, by the way, the Earthman even approved the selection of her retinue. It's not yet the level of paranoia that he considered normal for going out into society or taking a trip to a neighboring city, and the skew towards air spirit, but the work on mistakes was visible.

The elemental paid precious little attention to the crowd that ran away, like cockroaches in the night kitchen when the lights were turned on, and met the steppe girl's attack ready to follow the air ram and prepare to dive into the sidewalk, merge with the elements, and get the hell out of this fucking city. He almost succeeded, but the city intervened, which was almost forgotten by the fact that the battle was happening very quickly. Not even a couple of minutes had passed since the elemental had appeared. It hit the tower, obviously with something stationary and directed not by the master himself, but by some of the adepts, or even just students. The enchantments handled themselves from there. A very hot fiery blot reached the brightest aura in the area, which, fortunately, was still an elemental, and not an elder spirit summoned by the shamaness. But that was okay, because the next attack of the same artifact, directed by the same degenerate, was aimed at the shaman and the elder spirit that embraced her. Clearly, a siege variant, which is supposed to hit outside the city walls, working on the inner city only when all the polymers are already lost and raid groups are looting rich neighborhoods.

Stepan cursed mentally, and the shamaness also said something like “uk khamar-shad khanur marash-ka asar-man,” but they both had time to react. A few barriers of compacted air slowed the blot flying at the speed of a crossbow arrow, and then Stepan spat out a hastily summoned fire swallow that intercepted the charms and diverted them toward the city wall, ensuring that the attack would go beyond the residential agglomeration. The young man only hoped that the spent contract with a strong spirit would avoid casualties, and not burn some vagrant shitting in the bushes. In general, a couple of shamans deflected their share of attacks, but they didn't have time to help the elemental, and he was set on fire, burnt to a crisp, and drops of rapidly hardening stone slime poured onto the ground. And fuck it, the elemental, but the attack of the moron in the tower, who seemed to be preparing to strike a third blow as well, pushed the snot closer to the shamans.

It also made snot angry, as if the summoned entity was really butthurt, and Stepan was forced to pause the world again. The lump of bubbling crap was falling literally five meters away from him and about the same distance from the Angry Tit. However, she had lost her primacy in stupidity and malice against the background of the asshole who had started shooting siege magic at the city limits. Because the elemental, not killed, but seriously burned and injured, decided to hit those closest to it, i.e. a couple of shamans. And Stepan was sure that if it hadn't been for that farewell flame blot, the thing would have left without any problems, for it needed nothing but to go home. Once again, some asshole found him, Stepan, problems that threatened with mortal danger.

The bubbling drop of liquid stone is getting closer and closer to the sidewalk, and Stepan, who has pushed himself to the limit, realizes what is about to happen and that he won't be able to leave the attack zone even if he tries. Neither a jump through the spirit world at the expense of the contract nor the door to the shelter opened right under his ass will help. The Reality is already too taut, almost torn along itself. At the last moment, he opens the passage and makes the earth open up into a small hole a cubit wide so that he can slip his hand inside, fearing that the Door Opener will not be able to hold even such a tight and reduced passage and he will get his hand cut to the shoulder. But still, he manages, even with a small margin, to pull out of the dark hole a painted mask - dark wood and two palm prints, scarlet and white, which are in impossible superposition relative to each other, so that it is impossible to understand which of the prints is left and which is right. The mask was tightly clenched in his hands, the shroud was torn to hell, and the spiritual body went beyond the flesh as much as possible making armor, protecting himself from what he was destined to experience. Well, or not, the odds are not clear at all.

The bubbling lump of liquid hardness, as paradoxical as it was powerful, hit the sidewalk and fell into it as if it were water instead of stone, and the slurry itself was stone. And it would have been all right if it had fallen through, let it go in peace, but the bastard struck last. It struck hard and on the area, without distinguishing between right and wrong, seeking to cause harm and death in response to pain and attempted enslavement. Deep down Stepan even understood this snot, but it did not make it any easier, easier, or calmer for him: reality shook as if it were a ripple on the water's surface, and it was based on the ground beneath his feet. The spiritual vision was a shambles, the stone sidewalk was replaced by an uneven oil slick, constantly changing its shape, and it was already burning with a Greek fire, only the flame was not fire, but a trembling liquid solid.

The blur was replaced by a yawning failure into the depths of the spiritual plane much faster than Stepan could have tried to escape or retreat. The real world was tugged away like a blanket, leaving him alone with the underside of that world. His eyes could still see the scarlet sunset sky, which seemed to be getting farther and farther away, but there was almost no reality around, only a continuous abyss of astral space, where those losers who did not have time or could not escape fell. Reality was flowing out from under their feet like quicksand, and, more unpleasantly, it was disconnecting the dimension of distances relative not only to Reality but also to the spiritual world. Spirits, the original inhabitants of the space of Spheres, were carried away by this wave outside, into Reality, where it was inconvenient and dangerous for them. But heavy and material shamans, on the contrary, fell into the asshole of the asshole shit, like steel dumbbells thrown to the bottom of the swamp.

Stepan didn't even try to call his spirits. Under such conditions, he wouldn't have had time to call them and get help. It wasn't the kind of shit he'd counted on, going out for one last walk before his dismissal. If he were at full strength, with his mask already activated and his retinue called to the task... he wouldn't have been in the center of the city at all, keeping his legend. And even if he had, he would have managed, if not to destroy the enemy, then to give him a hard slap without getting into his anomaly. And once in the anomaly, he would have gotten out just as easily. The trick is specific, but knowing its nature and being ready, it is quite possible to protect yourself, your entourage, and even random witnesses, banally extinguishing the fluctuations of the phenomenon at the moment of small amplitudes, not letting it gain destructive acceleration.

Alas, he didn't have time for any of that, only managed to grab the mask and start covering himself with the vestments of the pre-door. But not in a protective formation, but as if creating a kind of tentacles, clinging to the escaping reality and matter, winning himself extra moments of seconds stretched by meta-skill. The events that seemed to take an eternity from the moment of attack with siege artifacts lasted less than a dozen seconds, slipping into an increasingly fierce and dangerous fuck-up. The isekai was still fine, though. He knew what to do and understood how to get out of the shit, even if theoretically and not without risks of the level of “with such chances of success, it will take a long time to knock the gear out of the bosses”. His woeful partner, who had become his personal Albatross, the Harbinger of Trouble, was now much worse and certainly scarier. Unlike the witnesses who'd been mentally assaulted, she didn't shit, but only because all her muscles were tight, but she has reeked with fear. Well, to be fair, in addition to the fear, there was also concentration, and willingness to fight for life without even knowing how.

She was in a much more unpleasant situation. The steppe mare with a bad temper still relied on her retinue, which was now being carried away again. She was able to hold on, just a step away from falling into the abyss where her material body would dissolve like a sugar cube, but she was like a light feather on the surface of a river. And this feather was carried straight to the turbulent waterfall, and she could not leave the zone of trouble on her own. She could not drag her physical body with her. Stepan couldn't either, he's still an elder shaman, not a higher one. He too is not equipped to think, to feel, to exist in the spirit world by himself, along with his material body, a vessel of flesh. But he has a spiritual transformation, which allowed him, limitedly and only in such moments of hovering on the border between reality and the depths of the spheres, to maneuver somehow in such an aggressive environment.

Roughly speaking, descending to substantive analogies, he was not a feather in the waterfall's path, gradually getting wet and losing buoyancy even before he reached the precipice. He was a drunken, limp, half-paralyzed, but very persistent water strider - not enough to follow the surface of the water away from the waterfall, but enough to maneuver for a while prepared to fall on his own, most comfortable terms. Not ideal, but better than ending up as a mere ungifted sugar cube and going to the bottom, dissolving into the current even before the fall of the waterfall hit. The first thing he did was spend a few hundredths of a second sweetly daydreaming about leaving the angry prairie tits to swim on their own: the fact that the elemental had attacked them specifically was her fault, at least in part. But in all fairness, she was doing what she'd been trained to do and, for once, at least listening to what she was being told and not lashing out in aggressive attacks at whoever was trying to help her - that was a stunning improvement on the past results of their interactions!

Stepan, still holding the mask in his hands and having released a dozen grasping limbs from the phantom body, crawled, like a real water strider, to the side-image-reality-dimension, where the steppe girl was trying to twitch and hold on, continuing her attempts to call the retinue, staying afloat. The mind was clear and extremely focused. The young man realized that if he messed up now, he would die, but it only added clarity and precision to his movements and directions. His mind was cracking at the seams. His eyes couldn't stand the sight-image of what this side of reality was despite all his development. He had not yet melted the spirit. He had not yet fused it and the fleshly body in the proper measure to become Higher. The times he crossed the Spheres, he was always accompanied by spirits who not only got him from point to point but also protected his spirit body and physical brain from being fried. Yes, he or any strong gifted person could survive some time of physical presence in the Spheres but only temporary, and preferably not so aggressive immersion. This is not an attempt to swim in a puddle, this is instant teleportation to the ocean floor without a bathyscaphe. You won't drown, you just won't have time. You will be smeared by pressure faster.

There was no protection now. There was no way to summon contracted spirits now. No way they could get through the storm even if they heard the call and tried to make it in time. There were a couple of reserves in the bracelets and necklace he wore without taking them off most of the time, masking the spiritual reflection of those amulets so that he couldn't see how powerful the retinue was. But even they won't make it in time. As soon as they started to leave the spirit house, the entities that came to their aid would be swept up by the current and carried upward, closer to Reality, and they would not have time to react, because they would be vulnerable on the way out. The spirits could not be relied upon, and he did not have enough power. He doesn't have the necessary state of body, spirit, and mind to continue to realize himself in such a position and condition. So, it was necessary to improvise, buy time, and try not to let oneself lose one's self. Otherwise, the song is over. So he has to ensure he keeps his mind for a long enough time to be able to swim back out.

Crazy thoughts and visions overtook his brain, but Stepan, who had switched to almost completely spiritual perception, could partially block this delirium, continuing his movements and in two moments catching up with the bitch who had already begun to swim. A jerk, a grip with his hand, his physical hand, on the collar of her robe, followed by a cascade of actions. A few clods of the stone of the sidewalk, which had begun to melt and disintegrate, became a support. The anteroom technique stretched to the limit and clung to them. Now it's not protection, but stabilization. It is even funny and ironic at the same time - he uses minor knowledge, the essence of which is to turn the realm into the anteroom of the Spheres, to turn the spheres into the anteroom of Reality. But there are no appearances around, only he and his colleague, only the stones of the sidewalk, and therefore he makes himself, her, and these stones the anchor for the anteroom. It's no protection at all, a finger poke bursts it, but he gets some sense of stability, his brains stop boiling, the madness recedes, and the flesh doesn't threaten to flow from his bones as soon as he gets distracted and loses control.

The shamaness regained consciousness a little, but acted very uncharacteristically uncharacteristically for herself, that is, smartly, not interfering with him and not twitching unnecessarily. The shaman clutched the mask in his hands, not putting it on, but making it a part of the maimed and completely distorted original meaning of the anteroom, adding stability to it. It's about time. He had already used the reserve replenishment token twice and had used up the simple charges of the meta-skill even earlier. If it weren't for the near-elite trait he'd received, which allowed him not to suffer too much from recharge and source renewal, he wouldn't have been able to withstand the strain. But the trait was there. But he had. He played out a little time, very little, for cracks had already begun to run down the surface of the mask, threatening to reach the eyeholes, and that would be the end of it, for they were the foundation of the mask.

\\“Don't fidget. Don't call. Don't strain your spirit. Otherwise, we're fucked.” - He thinks, sending jagged and chopped images back toward his partner, who is perfectly, masterfully even playing the role of ballast around his neck, breaking off into fragmented chunks of speech for the first time in a long time, which demonstrates better than anything else the limits of his mind's tension. - “We have a few minutes. No more than that. I'll try to transfer. The mask. Into a different mode. Weave a stronghold of manifestation. More secure. Concentrate and endure. “Attempting to call out will harm. The protection."

//“Understand. I see. I accept. Follow.” - Comes the reply, her panic, which he sees and feels with his entire spiritual body, recedes a little, letting the girl think more clearly, habitually, as if she's been practicing all her life, shifting perception so as to be led when paired with a stronger shaman. - “Lead. Direct. I Follow.”

The mask is getting worse and worse, they keep falling deeper and deeper, only by a miracle and too strong currents of astral streams not falling into the clutches of a pack of predatory spirits, the artifact of the master level of shaman-artefactorics is enduring the last seconds of life, prolonging the life of its owner. It can't be reconfigured or saved, just as this artifact, designed for something else entirely, can't save its owner. Stepan uses that trump card, which can be used to love the usual laws of magic and the universe in the same way that players of MOBA games love the mothers of the enemy team representatives. He activates two tokens at the same time - the first, responsible for mending, and the second, giving the effect of strengthening the artifact. He didn't dare to spend the latter for quite a long time, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking about the best way to spend it, up to the point of using it on Sylvia's doll. Fate had spoken its weighty word, demanding to improvise right now, or there would be no later.

Of course, the System could improve the artifact in such a way that it would not become more suitable for Stepan's survival, or even worse. But the young man was observant enough to notice some regularities in the way the System worked, and that's why he was sure that the property of adjusting the reward to the demands and conditions in which the player was staying would work even now. Well, that's why he was sure, because there was nothing else to believe in, except for Milf of all Milf to pray, but he didn't have enough concentration for that. A moment and the mask was intact again, as good as new, but still a little different, different from what it was before. The color seemed to be the same, the same scarlet and white handprints on the face, the eyes in the place of the palm, but the eyes themselves... they had not become deeper, they had been bottomless before, in fact, but now that depth was more active, able to leave the limits of the eyeholes.

And the shell of emptiness created by the mask, cutting off one layer of unreality from another, was now much stronger, as was the mask itself, which could be used to tank the blows of a ballista or a hammer. And this durability immediately spoke its weighty word, when the shred of the anteroom woven from the void and the stones of reality became more stable and no longer threatened to crumble from an awkward sneeze. The anteroom allowed them to keep consciousness and not to become a candle placed on a stove, while the shell of the barrier created by the mask, as if cutting off a piece of spheres-non-spheres, in which they hid from the main space of unreality, saving and hiding from the hungry gaze of those who dwell at such depths. The only thing that saved them was hiding.

\\ “We survived, but it's not over. We need to get out of the trap. We keep going at the limit of the spheres. We keep going down. And we will. “Unless we find a way to fall out of the vortex. Back to reality.” - He explains, inwardly hoping the angry bitch's mom gave her daughter something for the occasion. - “The fall is non-linear. We're circling. Spiraling. We need to catch the moment. At the top of the spiral. “To escape the trap. Like a pendulum. We've been devoured by the solid. But you're the wind. I can do it too. Call him. We will. One try. One call. It will break down the defenses.”

The main reason why he hadn't materialized a belt from his spiritual flesh and started turning his partner's ass into a scarlet tomato was precisely because of this plan - to lure a spirit, a strong one, but better still an elder one, and then jointly push off from it and at its expense, falling out of the spiral of immersion and surfacing into reality. The odds, oddly enough, were not so bad, he had played with worse. As was the case after his last encounter with this same steppe mare. Without her assistance he would not swing the pendulum, not immediately, he would have to create a spiritual deception-model of the second counterweight, and such a deception, alas, would not help in swinging, he would have to work for it too, and he would lose a lot of time, falling even deeper.

//“I am willing to help, khao-seran. I can summon the hao. What's with me. What is on me.” - She points, not physically, but with a stream of attention to the bones and feathers covering her robes that serve as the homes of her inner retinue of the first limit. - “There are many of them among them. Wind walkers. Khao-lanai. Khao-elai.”

An earthling spends several seconds not on thinking, but on deciphering descriptions-images of unfamiliar terms. Analogous to how systemic knowledge labels different aspects of related spheres. Whirlwinds and blows, winds and storms - these are what she means, these are what she plans to call for help, but she doesn't understand the main problem, which the more erudite and experienced Stepan is quite aware of. They had once been almost on equal footing, and the gal had surpassed him in pure reserve, but he had been training systematically since then, and she had been training normally, and that's how it turned out. She'd probably be offended if she realized he was the one who'd already told her to fuck off. She might have realized it by now, though, just kept quiet out of some sort of compulsion of her own. Or concerns. For example, trying to figure out how he'd gotten so strong in such a short time, and whether he'd been so strong the last time she'd seen him. It wasn't even clear what was worse - whether she'd see him as a sneaky asshole who'd gained her trust and pretended to be weak, or whether she'd just think about the Soul Tablet, which was a popular topic around the fucking world lately.

//“No. It won't work. The ones with you won't make it, they're far away. The ones on you won't help by showing up next to you. Without giving the pendulum a chance to swing. - It was unpleasant to destroy someone else's hopes, but what could be done if those hopes were so unsustainable and so likely to ruin them. - “We have to catch the other one. The one closer to us. Now. Behind that side of the defense. Lean on him. “Push ourselves away from him. And float. Somewhere.”

They must be looking cinematic now, and if it hadn't been for the wild nervous tension, the young man would have admired the picture. Both of them hovered standing, in a relaxed position, exactly opposite each other, but their faces and bodies were barely recognizable in the pile of pieces of sidewalk stone constantly swirling in bizarre orbits. The pieces ranged in size from the fist of a grown man to tiny grains of sand that were not even sand, but dust. The problem was that the dust and sand evaporated little by little, and the large stones were crushed when they collided with each other, and when they just crushed themselves. One would have to try very hard to make it before the material anchors became too few, before the mask and the anteroom could no longer cling to Reality. At that depth of the Spheres, they wouldn't last a few minutes. He still had plans to rely on a System that would keep his mind from disintegrating, to leave the physical body completely, to become a spirit and try to find a new receptacle, but that was also a game of roulette. He could fulfill such a task, in principle, many shamans could become spirits, he didn't even have to be strong, but he was sure that he wouldn't be able to cope with the task in such a way that his brains, along with his life and body, wouldn't fly away to warm lands.

//“I understand. Believe. Trust life. More than life. The Khao's are kept. The winds keep. Us.” - The images are full of willingness and thirst for life, intent on holding on to that life and overcoming adversity, behind which lurked an abyss of terror and unwillingness to die. - “Lead. Khao-seran.”

And he led.

The movement of the stone model of the planetary system stops abruptly, at least a third of the matter simply falls out of orbit, out of the grip of the anteroom, quickly dissolving into the viscous dimensionality of the unreal unreality. The mask's protection coalesces into a thin and transparent film, revealing two sweet and tantalizing souls to the hungry gazes of the local inhabitants. Luck, however small, is very important. None of the truly powerful entities at this bottom were close by, precisely not close at all. The bodies of the shamans intertwine their arms and freeze against each other like two sumo wrestlers or dance partners. The aura trembles and stretches. They jointly pressed on each other's spiritual body, merging the two separate calls into a single semblance of a catching harness. There is no time for dialog, no time to feed the wild stallion with affection, only the harness and the evil will of the one who orders khao, orders without the right to disobey.

throw

Stepan remotely realizes that the conjugation of calls causes a partial conjugation of wills, not a fusion of thoughts, but a very close and personal contact, not intimate, but very personal and frank. For a moment they become each other and the young man, who has never had the desire to compare his khao with steppe stallions, and the call with a harness, realizes that partial and, fortunately, temporary diffusion of minds cannot be avoided. He also realizes that he has never called spirits by the name of khao, deep, carrying a lot of meanings, and lacking the usual elegant academic brevity. And also realizes that just now his partner had calmed down and very much that she had deliberately intensified the contact, searching his will for a desire to harm her, to use her to save himself, to influence her somehow, or to gain her trust. She did recognize him, though, she just didn't show it, she recognized him by the manner of expression and the nuances of the images sent in the conversation.

search

Their catchcall is set as wide as possible. They do not care about the specification of the spirit, only its sphere and strength, and they find the target. They find it very quickly, but only the target is not a strong spirit, but an elder. Evil, full of shades of a cold blizzard, that chilly wind that blows the heat out of the dying in the wild tundra beast and man. You can't build a dialog with such khao. Singha will not tame such khao. She almost backs down, almost dooms them, for they won't make the second harness in time. Stepan shares his confidence in two and shares his will to win over another shamaness, because, after all, he has already summoned the elders. Yes, not under the right conditions, yes on his own territory, yes, with full training or special specifics of summoning, but in theory anything is possible. Singha doesn't believe but wants to believe, Stepan is sure but can't afford to doubt, and this balance remains stable when the woven basis of the call casts a catching harness on the spirit-khao.

tug

Stepan spills everything, and Singha can't help but follow him, also spilling everything and a little more. All the skills of a suggestor and brainiac, which only have a connection with spiritual dialog, are in use. Stepan and Singha's will is infused into the essence of the vehemently denying khao-elai. Reserves go to the bottom almost instantly, only to recover impossibly a moment later at the expense of the token, and then again, and once more on top. Singha isn't used to feeling this way, she would have been surprised and ruined both of them, though not panicked, but they are bonded and the fact that one of them is using the great gift of the Soul Tablet doesn't cause the other the shock that it should have. Together, with a united front and will, with a single impulse and desire, they throw the harness deeper and deeper, overwhelming the will of Khao-Elai, crushing it with a secondary suggestion based on the dialog of the first and third limits, jointly hiding the true purpose behind a banal attempt to enslave.

deceit

And the spirit, powerful and malevolent, was caught like a little child, thought it was his plan, his design, his decision, to put all his strength into the downward tug, while pulling the harness to catapult them both, the Khao-Seran and the future Khao-Seahar, closer to reality. Let him ruin himself, let him end up in the depths where he would be quickly torn from his strength and reserve, but he would push those two annoying gnats out of their home dimension, push them out and they would survive, even if the Khao didn't realize it. Everyone who can hurry and some of those who can't, the young man and the girl with him already feel the evil and hungry images of at least a couple of higher ones, or even three at once, just the third one hides better from the first two. But none of them are in time, only the smallest of them, which is stopped by the forerunner's defensive afterburner, burning the last shreds of paving stones.

lashing

pendulum

throw

They are carried forward, carried so fast that even the higher ones simply do not have time to follow them, the remnants of protection are washed away like soap foam under the pressure, but it fulfills its role. The young man does not let the maiden relax, shares knowledge, and images, understanding that they will be thrown out certainly not where they originally fell into the world of spheres, that they may well be thrown out under the water or above the ground, and at different depths or heights. A moment stretches into eternity and eternity shrinks into an instant, and then the eyes are blinded by a flash, the ears are deafened by thunder, and all the senses and consciousness are hit by a concentrated wave of familiar sensations, with which the phenomenon met the two prodigal shamans. Stepan had just enough strength to break the contact-connection with the shamaness, who floated even more visibly, to crawl away, slipping on some driftwood and almost falling face first into a puddle, and then to roll over on his back and look at the dawn sky. And then roll over on his back and stare up at the dawn sky.

Survived.

He survived after all.

Again.

* * *

Внимание! Этот перевод, возможно, ещё не готов.
Его статус: идёт перевод

Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/86785/580090

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP