Настучать в бубен / Hit the tambourine: Глава 19-3

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Camrad_RIP 09.11.24 в 07:34

He lay there not for a long time, but certainly not less than a couple of hours until the sun began to blaze and the humid air made it hard to breathe. He was too lazy to get up, but a quick call of an old spirit from the earliest times, which allowed him to look at the ground with the eyes of an eagle, even if there was no eagle, showed him a piece of the surrounding landscape. And this landscape was as if taken from a poster of a tropical jungle. If it weren't for the magical field that had been stirred up, albeit surprisingly weakly stirred up, there would have been a lot of local fauna, mostly insectoid. They should have come now, while the shaman was lying down, but by some good miracle the beasts didn't bother them, and the insects were sufficiently affected by the weak background spike. Sylvia's library had a funny and interesting little book about the dangers of being a tourist in the jungles of the far south, and it was full of descriptions of the kind of crap that belongs in a horror movie. Or porn. Or porno-horror.

Camrad_RIP 09.11.24 в 08:51

A quick call, without words and invocations, referring to old contracts, gives the result - the humidity decreases, the heat of the sun and stifling heat recedes, mosquitoes and parasites that got too close die, the rest change direction and stop bothering the shaman. After a little thought, he stretched the defense and on his companion in extreme diving. She had worked hard, and helped, even if she was part of the reason why help was needed in the first place. The system flashed images on the edge of consciousness, but there was no strength, moral first of all, to accept its gifts at all. With a groan of hatred for all living things, he lifted himself to a sitting position, surveying the landscape with normal eyes.

Camrad_RIP 09.11.24 в 08:53

They ended up on some small hill. The shaman's eye identified a number of very useful reagents for future offerings. Having listened to himself, he not without difficulty, but still finds the response of his central totem. So still in the same world, he fell out, though very far away. Sleeping totems in Lyady are hardly felt, he won't even point the exact direction to them. Combined with the weakness of the response of the Dantmark totems, it could be said that he had been taken either to one of the sections of the neighboring continent or to the farthest corner of the inhabited continent, considered the Ecumene of the civilized and not so civilized world. I wanted to believe in the latter, because the former is bad, to the far continent, or continents, there is still not clear, only rare expeditions go there, and even rare attempts at colonization were eaten up either by local fauna, or flora, or completely unidentifiable varieties of all sorts of aggressive shit, or all of these together. Some points of civilization survived for a while only on the coasts, but in all known cases nobody lasted longer than a couple of years, either sailing away with their tails between their legs and dwindling in numbers, or simply disappearing under unclear circumstances. That was if Sylvia's words were to be believed, but she was hardly lying.

Camrad_RIP 09.11.24 в 09:40

In theory, he could try to set up a teleportation ritual on his hideout, or at least close to it, but that was the theory, though he'd cast his fishing line to the right spirits. With a frustrated groan, he stood on numb legs, trying to figure out where he'd gotten to and what to do about it. Nearby came the quiet groans and steppes curses of his personal Nemesis, whose every appearance in his life resulted in a very harsh shitstorm barging into said life with a flying kick. Granted, they'd only met twice and never in person, but the trend was alarmingly close to a pattern. The shamaness, who sat on her ass and almost drowned in a puddle - lucky she fell into it with her back and not her face - crawled out of the puddle, dirtying and hopelessly ruining her expensive robe. She twitched a little, examining the perfume covering him, and reached for her spirits, but cautiously, keeping her wary and frankly frightened gaze on him.

Camrad_RIP 09.11.24 в 09:43

The latter was not surprising. He was no longer hiding his aura, nor was he hiding his own spiritual transformation, turning one of the pieces of sidewalk that had fallen into reality with them into an anchor amulet or a spirit house billet with a ghostly limb. He hadn't decided yet, but he made a good impression. Does not panic this pest only because she is exhausted and has not yet recovered from the contact of consciousness, during which involuntarily and subconsciously checked the degree of his danger to her. In his heart he understood her, but he also understood that it was impossible to let her go. They had united their thoughts, even if only partially, superficially, but she was sure to catch the Tablet-System in those thoughts. And if she didn't catch it, those who would ask her about what had happened would catch it later, somehow. And they will. They will. The event is very weighty and ugly, and everyone will be fucked with unsheathed logs, magicians first of all, Herbert de Dantrel secondly.

Camrad_RIP 09.11.24 в 10:45

“What will you do to me, stranger? I won't be able to resist. But I will not live. Not to one who glories in evil deeds, evil words, not to one who breaks other people's spirits and minds for fun.” Judging by the fact that the wind spirit, summoned stealthily, as she thinks, is ready to collapse her lungs and squeeze her brains out of her eye sockets, she is extremely serious, just frightened and holding on with all her might. “We, o-our house, did not do or wish you harm...I'm r-ready...”

Camrad_RIP 09.11.24 в 10:47

By the way, she lied, then realized he realized she'd lied and paused, probably picking a streamlined wording. Judging by what he'd managed to grasp without getting into the deeper layers of her mind and spirit, using only the intent readers in his eye sockets and ears, her family was clearly drawn to his, Stepan's, search. And now that she knows his name, and remembers the taste of his magic, she is only stopped from ordering the spirit that has squeezed her life by the fear of death and the even greater fear of not being able to do even that. So, looking at the deadly frightened and unwilling to become a brainless whore girl of beautiful, albeit exotic, appearance and great shamanic talents, Stepan sighed tiredly, made a strong facepalm, and with pure, sincere, and dislocated anger said what was on his mind.

Camrad_RIP 10.11.24 в 19:48

"Oh, my God, how does this asshole manage to fuck me up even when he's in the middle of nowhere?! I want all his porn deleted from his hard drive, I want all his cloud backups encrypted. I want all his hentai manga frozen. I want him to never see tits for the rest of his fucking life!" He said in one breath to the obvious bewilderment and no less danger of the shamaness, who was as tight as a spring, and then asked more calmly. "What makes you think that your fucking Master and I are the same fucking person, you stupid neurasthenic mistake of the gene pool? Even I know that the fat pimply hikkan dubbed Master is an asshole mentalist and a classic, beat him in the skull with an ice axe like Trotsky, a magician, not a shaman. Do you understand the difference between a magician and a shaman, or is it too complicated for you? You specify, I'll explain it in a simpler way, like for morons."

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 19:02

She didn't fully believe him, but she calmed down a little, if only because she stopped preparing to die right away, but she didn't put away her suicide belt. And she believed him in a very limited way, wanting to believe rather than really agreeing with his arguments. Well, he understood her, because if he were in her place, in front of his namesake, who had already managed to develop the appropriate class, he wouldn't hesitate to use the most powerful postmortem spells possible, ensuring if not death, then impotence of his opponent.

Camrad_RIP 10.11.24 в 19:57

"The-that-draws-in-the-Soul, the Tablet - you have it, I know, I saw it when I shared a look, lahao-nehar, there's no deceiving it, no hiding it." She speaks calmly but carefully, trying to break the distance slowly and imperceptibly. "And that meeting. Then. You were weaker. A lot weaker. Khao-seran, but not Khao-regazar! You tricked me, didn't you? You tricked me!"

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 10:58

"No, if I had been then as I am now, I would have just bent you, a stupid mare, spanked you with a spiritual belt on your spiritual ass, and kicked you back into your body. It's just that I'm pumped up really fast." He smirked and calmed down, but he stopped being angry with her because she was already so scared that it was hard to hold a grudge. "And the best argument in my favor would be the simplest of deductions. If I wanted to enslave you, I would have done it already, instead of trying to calm you down and prevent you from ruining your life."

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 11:01

"You can't, you wouldn't, the khao hold my breath, my heart." She objected, truly believing what she was saying, causing another twitch of her eyebrow. "If you tried, if you try, if you dare, I will die, but the wind will carry the last words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words, words..."

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 19:30

The shaman was sick of playing these games and sick of being afraid to sneeze lest he get bits of her brains on his face, and she was telling the truth. A posthumous will would have carried her last images and what she believed to be the truth, even at this distance. Not the fact that the whole, not the fact that there would be no losses, not the fact that it would carry it at all, but the chances of deanonymization and a lot of hunters on Stepan's tail would be great, forty percent, no less. And as it was, he had already managed to quit today, almost die, fight with an elemental of a very unusual type, and play matador cowboy with an elder spirit of the cold wind of some distant tundra. As it seemed to him, that was enough adventure for one day, so he decided to disarm the girl before she really nailed herself and set him up, otherwise why the fuck was he even saving her.

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 11:03

Twice.

Camrad_RIP 09.11.24 в 10:47

Carefully, he rose to his feet checked his body's bending, and approached the shamaness, who was repeating the same word, but who was aware of everything, but did not see the slightest problem in it, not noticing the strong spirit with a very small source, invisible and extremely cunning in its attack. Designed to work with a woman's mind, and a woman who was close to the world of the spheres herself, a witch or a shamaness, it was a rather situational tool, but in the current circumstances, it was extremely effective. Having cast an unreadable look at the beauty still sitting in her wet and dirty robe, he even thought for a moment whether to brainwash her, because the mark of destiny was still there, and it would be possible to do without beads. His inner Stepan the Fatty raised his thumb and nodded, “Keep it up, bro, come on, bro, do it, bro."

Camrad_RIP 10.11.24 в 19:58

Nodding in response, the young man habitually acted strictly the opposite of his namesake's advice, finally throwing aside the immoral and vulgar version of the development of events, with a ghostly hand withdrawing the spirit that did not expect the attack and did not have time to react on the border between the younger and the stronger, and then forcefully shoved it into one of the molded stones-amulets, obtained from the remnants of paving stones. He sat down again, only now on a relatively dry area, having expelled a poisonous and evil scolopendra, he just as carefully deactivated the influence of the spirit-suggestor with the aspects of cycle and repetition, returning to his unwilling interlocutor the ability to speak and think normally.

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 11:05

"... words, words, words, words, words, words, workhdsss! Y-you...” She lost her train of thought, but she didn't even have time to panic, she was just filled with a huge bewilderment and hurt incomprehension of what had happened, and the shaman didn't let her finish what she'd said.

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 19:32

"Is the demonstration convincing? If so, then, in the name of all gods, spirits, and holy divine boobs, why don't you stop pissing me off and let me think about what to do next, huh?" The Earthman speaks with such a look as if he is not him, but Rodislav Gastoldovich Yanin, addressing the debtor who came for the third retest in a row, and the one who has not even learned the subject's name. "Can you call home, punishment for my sins? Still, a full-fledged altar with a bunch of separate totem arrays in your family should be."

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 07:46

"No, I can't, only touch the singing of familiar khao, the very edge of it, like the sound of a distant wind in the middle of a complete calm. I can't see anymore. It's like an oncoming storm." She didn't answer immediately, but she did, coming to her senses, though not calmly, but it had to be said, his arguments were indeed persuasive, even if not soothing. "Don't do that again. Ever. Please. I do believe you. Now."

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 11:07

The young man looked tiredly at the flattened and visibly embarrassed interlocutor, listening to his own feelings and realizing that he, too, had reasons to worry. And much more visible and obvious than his colleague's tantrums or threats. He too is trying to interact with his totems, reach out to the underground shelter, and realize it's not just the distance alone. Yes, the sensations are there, he's picking up a signal, but the callback, the attempt to tune in to this call, either does not reach him, or they penetrate very partially and fragmentarily, or they bump into a previously indistinguishable and only for a moment appearing obstacle. It was strong, monolithic, powerful, and clearly had existed for centuries, or even millennia. A barrier that locked not Dantmark and Morgrave, but a separate, albeit rather large, piece of this jungle. A barrier that was not created by humans or their kind, that was too much animal instincts and simple, primitive, but very effective witchcraft. A barrier that wasn't really a barrier, but a...

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 11:42

"A cage. It's a cage, not a storm, and we walked right into it. And what worries me most is the question of whether we got in by accident or whether we were deliberately dragged here like a trap net." There's a sense of universal weariness in his voice, and my buttocks are already anticipating the next adventure or even the Adventure that will fall upon them. "Get up. We need to get ready and draw some amulets in case they decide to eat us. This cage wasn't designed by humans, but it's very much a pen. Or a farm. And stop looking at me like that, man. If you want to live, you walking misery, the harbinger of my misery and suffering, then move your fucking ass!"

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 11:10

"I have a name, given by my mother, accepted by the winds and khao - I am Singha, daughter of Maega! Well, or Singha de Lomer, if by her father's name." She said it without fear of him, but with a quickening fear in general as the gravity of their situation came to her. "It's not like I'm insulting you... I'm not sure I realized your name correctly when we shared the khao-yashar."

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 11:12

The young man was terrified. If not terrified, then anxious. There was so much power and skill in the barrier that even a conclave of senior shamans would be hard-pressed to break it, and the two of them would not be able to. Combined with the fact that the place was definitely wild, but the average magical background was very high, it indicated a high probability that there were strong wild sources nearby, as well as no less strong guards of these sources. And, according to his feelings, which he had experienced while trying to analyze the echoing connection with his native totems, these guards or guards were really ancient, so ancient that it became uncomfortable.

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 11:21

"Just call me Pann, like everyone else, without sons and grandsons, without honorable and respected, and I certainly don't have the prefix de." Well, he will give her a tiny, microscopic, credit, and if she starts to be naughty or tries to set him up, he will go back to the variant that both his namesake and Her Milfness would approve equally. "The call feels strange like you're trying to pull it through ice. I can't summon the spirits that sleep in totems, not all of them, but I can try to summon individual contracts. Those with active contracts. The barrier does not prevent you from calling here, nor does it prevent you from leaving, as I understand it, but only if there is no physical breach. There's no way to build a portal to this place, no way to get it through. By means unknown to me. And something else, I don't understand the nature of this stuff, but there's more than one function. You stay out of it. And I'm staying out of it, too. We'll send lock picks. Do you know how to use your aura as a decoy?

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 11:34

"Hai, I can. But not well. Only for catching khao-thash or khao-rechars on a decoy. I have to prepare, tie blood to blood, make a totem." Despite the unfamiliar terminology, they were both shamans and quite capable of exchanging not only words but images of what was behind them, so he understood the rough mechanics of what she could do and how exactly she could do it. " I can't say I can do it, especially if my echo gets echoed by the evil witchcraft embedded in this cage."

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 19:58

It was a reasonable concern because he was sure that if he just poked the thing with sticks, there would be a defense against the cunning, and that defense might well be active. A good deceptive jumper would help, but what good would it do if Singha - it was unusual to call her that even in thought, instead of the venerable fucking mare - was used to making her deceptions denser and bloodier, making them more suitable for envolt strikes. And she can't do the safety-type bridges, alas, and she can't learn them fast enough, even if she were to be taught. Well, or take her in a group, taking the second of three possible slots, only, it seems, that's what he'll have to do.

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 20:53

The spirits were summoned in haste, a protective line around the hill drawn by one of Stepan's amulets, the Lizard and the Pig Trio summoned on the verge of incarnation, a few separate observer spirits and a whole host of small patrolling protectors merged into a single network, with life and nature and water summoned by him, and airmen provided by Singha, who had the appropriate spirit houses with her. They both dried themselves off, the shaman had even more house spirits than his partner - a habit of comfort multiplied by the perception that shamanism was a tool for working with the world, not sacred knowledge. According to the girl, she also knew a lot about household shamanism, as did her mother, but they were much less likely to use these household trivialities, as they already had everything from servants to household magic in their mansion. The shaman remarked a bit sarcastically and bitterly that he had neither servants nor a mansion at the moment of acquiring the Tablet-System, but he had a wild forest, a lot of domestic problems and the need to solve them, and not to go dirty, smelly, flea-ridden and suffering from helminths.

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 21:14

This petty dispute, which calmed the shamaness much more than it did Stepan, giving her a sense of normality, did not prevent them from setting up a primitive call place on the hilltop, right where they had fallen out of the astral. The Earthman fashioned a stone slab from the tropical soil, Singha provided a few amulets, and she wore enough jewelry to make a gypsy baron jealous, and then they sat back to back and began to call carefully. The young man left the body first, not forgetting to give unspoken and hidden from his colleague commands to his retinue to nail the insolent bitch if she decided to kill him in the moment of distraction. Next, he called in a couple of guards working from inside the spirit world, covering the shaman, and then Singha emerged from the shackles of flesh. She did it no less naturally than Stepan, because of her extensive practice and excellent heredity - not spiritual transformation, but increased plasticity of certain parts of the subtle body.

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 11:52

Then there were several series of image exchanges and the summoning of new spirits, mostly by Stepan. She had no such specialists on her fast contract call - exotic and rare. Creation of auric casts and masking of lockpicks, followed by the creation of a double chain of bridges, which will have to extinguish a possible retaliatory strike with some witch's curse, looping it in the chain, so that it would not come to those from whom the image-lock was taken. And then cautious study of the surrounding space and the crap that covered it not even with a dome, but with a very frequent net, a whole pleiad of nets that were superimposed one on another and constantly moving a little. You can pass through one such net, though it is difficult. You can find one loophole but through a dozen or a hundred? You will be crushed between the cells of the network. You'll be ground into powder, burn out the mind and spirit, turn into an empty shell, and this is at best. At first, they didn't use lock picks, they just maneuvered in the spiritual world, watching this horror from a distance - as far as the concept of distance was applicable when entering the High Spheres.

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 14:15

//“Tough shit, no doubt about it. And as old as mammoth shit.” - Stepan gave his verdict, confirming what they knew before. - “Active defense is definitely there, it hurts to even think or look closely at that stuff. If we weren't covered by the sense lens, we could burn out our spiritual sight along with our eyes. And it's not just protection in there. There's something else, so be careful. There's something wrong with this barrier, as well as the signaling of my totems. If we try to reach them, we could get hurt.”

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 14:56

//“Hai. I'll be careful.” - Unlike Stepan, who had already seen shit and summoned a higher spirit, albeit according to a ready-made contract, the girl this sight - the image of a pile of hungry nets, where each cell is like a mouth with fangs and a bunch of tentacles-tongues, as if woven from vines, rocks and lurking behind the first layers of camouflaged worms, was quite shattered and now she preferred to hide in the shadow of the presence of the spirits covering their images-consciousness. - “It's like it's waiting. Like a hao, but not a hao. Waiting and like it's watching. Not of us. But everything. All at once.”

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 14:51

Still, in this world genetics and eugenics work objectively much better than in the fantasies of one mentally unstable artist. The partner noticed what Stepan himself realized, even though she could not interpret what she saw. But he, alas, could, which did not make him happy. So much so that he wanted to check his guess with lock picks just to be wrong, but he knew he wouldn't be wrong. One by one, the commands to his lock picks went out, which took the form and shape of the two of them, as if they, two shamans, were trying to leave this place on a spiritual journey, for example, to tell their relatives and friends where they were. The dupes don't even destroy or atomize them so that the respective spirits can then be reborn and reincarnated. They are gobbled up, swallowed alive by a hungry mesh of wormy vines, swallowing whole and even reaching out with images of what was supposed to be the body of the dupes. This is not spirit planting, but in essence, this witchcraft was so ancient that it had developed a semblance of self-consciousness. It became a pseudo-entity, which had the will and the desire to manifest that will. It was mainly in terms of capturing empty bodies and remaking them into something new if Stepan understood everything correctly.

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 14:18

Ordinary shamans would not only have been killed and devoured by it. No, this will would have filled the jettisoned bodies, changing them and directing them somewhere else, leading them to the center and base of the ancient charms. Stepan was not ashamed to admit to himself that he flinched when the attention-will of the network of worms passed him and slid along the specially prepared chain of deceptions. Devouring it all, the whole chain at once, not the first two or three links! And thanks to Autogoddess's tits and his personal paranoia that he had not only made the chain long, but had looped it back on itself - the worms had pulled the chain of deceptions in like pasta, and if Stepan and Singha had been on the other end of it, it would have pulled them in too, whether there were seven links or a hundred. Although, okay, he could have fought back or cloaked himself with a shroud, and the reserve spirits would have taken the blow, swapping places with the shamans, becoming them for a moment. But still - a very revealing humiliation of their self-importance.

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 15:49

Despite the fact Singha, figuratively speaking, was shaking with her whole spiritual body, and Stepan was not much inferior to her in that, the willful decision of the senior in their bundle forced both of them to continue analyzing the depth of the asshole in which they found themselves. Both of them had seen such willful decisions in the grave, but they could not remain blind and deaf in the zone of the most powerful witch territorial field that covered the territory, it would be suicide and both of them realized it too. The number of spirits and analyzers was decreasing disastrously fast, and with irrecoverable losses, though the young man had learned to withdraw the last groups before their sad end, not without the help of Singha, who had taken on some of the load. They finished near the new evening, soaking wet that no rain was needed. The shamaness, as soon as she was back in her body, rolled to the side and began to vomit. The sight, though not optical but spiritual, of this wormy stuff was a tropical hell. Stepan took pity on her and himself, defeating his greed and giving her the auxiliary alchemy he had bought from the system, which was intended to compensate for the sensory shock of shamanic practices.

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 15:50

"What an abomination. An abomination. An unbearable abomination." She had drunk an alchemical preparation that was at least half alcohol, and she was slightly dazed, still swaying slightly, her arms wrapped around her knees and looking deeply unhappy. "It will not release my call. Nor your call. No one's call. It won't."

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 16:04

"Yeah, he won't let go. High fucking witchcraft, even though it is primitive in the extreme - it was primitive once, but now it's just fucked up. It's so ingrained that it can't be penetrated or weakened. It works because it works, and it doesn't give a shit about the usual laws of magic." The shaman kneads his back and thinks feverishly at the same time because they don't have much time. "Working with noospheric acceptance, top-notch. As long as someone is willing to leave or transmit a call for help from this place, as long as the grid picks up any signal. It is possible to call spirits, but it is worth trying to make messengers out of them, as the net will perceive them as food. Everyone in no one out, blank wall, even the cauldron. And we're boiling in it."

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 16:07

The latter was true, and that was the worst of it. The same witchcraft, curse, and other people's will worked on those who fell into this cauldron-net, gradually changing their consciousness, mind, body, and even their aura into some kind of shit. The only thing that saved them was that they didn't go through the net of worms, but were already inside, so there was no curse mark on them. Witchcraft works, but it doesn't see the target, and if anything, they are affected by the general magical background with a little bit of the curse's energizing influence. This is also a disaster, but even without doing anything, they have at least a couple of weeks before the first symptoms, and if they purify and protect themselves intentionally, they can last a month and a half.

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 16:09

"We're either going to die or worse than die, Pann. I was just supposed to take a walk with Nertm, to look at him and have a bit of fun!" She said, not even hysterically, but with childish resentment, tossing one of the twigs into the campfire where Stepan was calling the spirits of ash and reflection, making a cloud of sparks that almost hit the shaman in the face. "I don't understand how it could have happened like that. Damn khanurs, why did they decide to call what should not be called on this day?"

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 14:23

"Well, to be fair, an elemental with exotic spirit traits as one of the city's defense lines was a good reason to take a higher risk." Stepan's reasonable remark, surprisingly, did nothing to calm her down. "It's a very strong entity. A normal elemental, even of the same power level, would have been demolished by your retinue without your participation. And a regular elemental wouldn't have escaped. The boys were drawn to the exotic, but the exotic almost chewed them up. Classic. I've just found myself in the middle of the action again. It's not a life, it's an adventure."

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 14:27

"Every encounter I have with you, Pann, is an adventure, as in stories and fairy tales, only very frightening. - In response to the shaman's bulging eyes, in which the fire of all the nine circles of Hell began to burn, she hastily completed the thought. - I mean, I understand that I caused trouble that time with my hasty judgments, almost giving us both to the Khao-Thash. You were weaker then, weren't you? I... I hope you made it out without wounds on your anachao-lash? Ouch! Sor... ry"

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 06:54

Instead of answering, Stepan opened a stream of images and showed the process of escape from the crowd of creatures chasing him, as well as his thoughts at that moment, including purely obscene thought-constructions addressed to the blushing girl, her mother, father, grandparents, pet hamsters and dogs of neighbors of his wife's brother's wife's friend's mother-in-law's eighth-generation nephew. To her credit, she did not become indignant, and the image came out very colorful, and then she must have flashed the thought that if he get out of that shit escaped without any losses. And the gesture with the given fugitive butterfly was just a beautiful gesture. After a bit of thinking, seeing no more reasons for secrecy, he also gave her a part of the images of the battle with that armada - anyway, he would have to either erase her memory, or take such an oath, which was even more reliable than erasure, and against the background of the secrets already known to her dangerous for him partial disclosure of the images of protection and disguise of Lyady glade is a trifle.

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 07:29

"Well, the general features of the problem are known, but now we need to think how to solve this problem better before it solves us first." Stepan becomes as serious as possible after warming up and falling down again on the ground tamped with spirits. "So, here's what I think about it. And you think. If you know something, tell me, because I'm not completely sure of my plans, and they are risky even by the standards of my adventures. So, uh..."

Camrad_RIP 12.11.24 в 06:51

Stepan derived the essence of his idea from the observation of the territory of the wet and teeming with life jungle covered with a network of worms. They were not exactly homogeneous. An uneven oval spot with an average diameter of about eighty kilometers did not appear so initially and expanded over time. And not the usual method of witchcraft gradual growth of two centimeters per month or year, although not without it, but jerks, very large jerks. The spirits, who could fly around the inside of the cauldron with the purpose of reconnaissance, easily found three main sources of magic, large and old, quite worthy to build a tower on them and settle a magister there. There were smaller sources, but they had clearly not become part of the overall system. The network of worms relied on these three and those who keep it. But initially, the network was supported and branched by only one of the three sources, the strongest but also the most invisible, as if something sitting on it had the brains to cultivate this source and constantly feed the network with its power.

Camrad_RIP 09.11.24 в 08:35

There, under a layer of jungle, vines, and earth, was an ancient city in the style of the notorious Mayans and Aztecs, though not without differences in architecture. A city is almost hidden, almost gone underground, but clearly not completely. Visible and the tops of pyramids, towers, houses, and how many underground tunnels there should remain only the spirits know. Or rather, they don't. The city is covered with no less powerful and much more compact and dense dome of worm-like networks, so the spirits are afraid to approach and even look at it. A couple of those who were too attentive to perceive this defense were devoured by it. To go there is not even suicidal, but something even more stupid, and no amount of money will make Stepan even look at it with one eye. It was there that the net- pot was born, from these stones, these lianas and, probably, worms, though the latter were not observed visually, but they were definitely there.

Camrad_RIP 09.11.24 в 08:39

Tracking spirits had even found relatively new and very old traces of how different creatures, mostly large animals, had entered the ruins, but there were no traces leading back. And the traces themselves, if they were read more deeply, would show that the animals entering the ruins were already wrong as if they were also filled with the same magic as in the net and the city. His subconscious was drawing pictures, but there was nothing he could do about it because the young man had a clear suspicion that the creature lurking there had the properties of some kind of parasite, a worm if you will. The guests passing through the barrier from the outside receive a mark that allows the parasite to take root in the victim - if not materially and physically, then spiritually. With every hour, with every day, the victim gets closer and closer to the city, more and more particles of magic and the spirit of what dwells in the city, more and more influence on the mind and thoughts, and then, it completely gives itself to that city.

Camrad_RIP 09.11.24 в 08:41

It smells like the notes of scary movies, as well as the sound of Isaac Clarke's plasma cutter, which is categorically against becoming united. In this case, the shaman is quite supportive of the video game character, and he, in a way, is a game character. The further away, the scarier.

Camrad_RIP 09.11.24 в 08:42

The second source clearly joined the general field of the witch dome much later, there the difference is not for years, but for tens of centuries at least, it feels like a “junction point”, where a new part of the worm network sprouted almost from scratch, using the city and its base as a donor. That source was a huge tree, combining features of baobab, oak, and all manner of tropical stuff. It was a simple tree, not a mellorne or any of the original magical flora, the shaman would have sworn on his Steam account, but over the millennia of growth at the powerful source, very little of the original tree remained, and the giant was close to two hundred meters tall, with a thickness that would make any baobab blush with envy. There was also a guardian, and it was much easier to see him, because he was a classic spirit, a very strong higher one, at least in terms of raw power and in the feeding from the source comparable to another great one. It would seem - an ideal candidate to ask him to help dump, to negotiate shamanistically, but no, because the spirit, despite the relatively good natural light direction, literally fountains with malice and thirst to kill bipedal humanoids, and not necessarily humans.

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 11:49

The spirit literally hated the sentient life of the material world, hated it so fervently and so passionately that this hatred literally oozed out of him into the picture of the high spheres, and the shaman was one hundred percent sure that it would be better for him not to even show his face, let alone come with offers. Now they were under pressure only from the general witch field, woven into the magical background, and then they would start a targeted hunt. He would not be able to get away from that hunt. With his powers, he wouldn't be able to escape from such a spirit, even if he summoned his entire retinue. If only on neutral territory, but it's not a sure thing. Here, near the source of the spirit's power, there's no chance. So the earthling would not have a successful record of negotiations with a powerful higher spirit, he would not, but it was a pity.

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 11:52

The third source was the newest and closest to their mound, and it had become part of the worm network just a few centuries ago, one millennium at most. The antiquity of the main city was ridiculous. And even though the source was strong, even though it was partially cultivated in such a way that it clearly had a master, some kind of limitedly intelligent, or maybe just intelligent, monster, it was there that the finest fabric of the network of worms was woven, and it was there, relying on the flow of magic from the source, that they could try to get out. They'll have to try hard, they'll have to get a very strong summoning contract, most likely spending free points on it, they'll have to summon the whole retinue and get into conflict with the guardian, but there are still chances, they can't help it. Otherwise, all that will be left is to give up and wait for the spiritual body to start sprouting worms.

Camrad_RIP 11.11.24 в 11:54