Готовый перевод Настучать в бубен / Hit the tambourine: Глава 20-15

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The main healing barracks in the northern part of the city were allocated for those who had suffered from demonic devilry but were unable to secure a personal prayer service even at a huge discount, and were not valuable enough specialists to be given such a service on credit. The building is old, rarely used, but regularly renovated. They don't mess around with epidemics here, and are quite adept at treating them, probably even more effectively than Earthlings are at neutralising Earth pandemics. Not that this is such a high praise, but still, but still. After several rather lengthy dialogues with Sylvia and careful study of the matter, he couldn't even accuse the local authorities of neglecting the demonic threat. They were indeed working, if not out of concern for the victims, then for the desire to keep themselves safe from more trouble.

It was just that the extremely dense infernal field formed by such an uncharacteristic breakthrough played a role here. Usually, even if a breakthrough happens, and demons come out of the Inferno, most of the victims will be enough just to attend a couple of prayer services and then go to the temple every decade for another year, preferably without forgetting to leave donations. In this particular case, the mortals were covered with a too dense veil of perversion, which caused them to suffer serious enough damage that they could not be put back on their feet as massively. And an individual prayer service at the altar... It's not even a matter of finances, although they've been taken care of. It's the altars themselves that can seriously sag from such a load. And it would have been a matter of sincere believers, but most of the victims were those who prayed, to put it mildly, through their teeth. And it was sincere faith that increased the effect of prayers, making the cost of miracles cheaper and relieving the altars of the burden. So, at least part of the shaman's claims to the priests had to be removed, because they did indeed do their work, even though they were not particularly keen on making money from their work. Rather, the money was simply a way to filter out those who needed to be saved from those whose fate should be entrusted to Fortune, at least in part.

It was partially because they had done a lot for the rest. The barracks they were stacked in were certainly not the VIP ward of a private clinic, but they had the thick and pleasant atmosphere of a prayerful place. The temple relics placed on special stands radiated grace, the servants and junior priests wandering between the beds, accompanied by a couple of quite experienced comrades, prayed incessantly, applied compresses with consecrated water, and smoked quite good incense. The water impregnated with godly power and the incense were not cheap by local standards and certainly more expensive than the lives of some of the victims. Healers, too, were wandering among the bunks, also younger, often not at all gifted nurse-brothers, as well as nurses. They poured some kind of potion down the throats of the heaviest, and tied the heavier ones to their beds. Many of them are beginning to go crazy under the influence of filth and lust.

The night was dark and silent, and even the moans and screams of Inferno's victims did not break the silence. For that, they had muffling amulets. The guards standing outside the barracks, supported by the secret guards and a couple of adepts, did not sleep, though it was boring. What kept them awake was apprehension and fear. Demons were feared in this world, no worse than in the Middle Ages, but here it was not superstition. Priests came out now and then, either to get some fresh air or to pull out another body. The bodies of those who couldn't overcome the curse often bore the marks of a mercy strike, and all of them, without exception, were wrapped in shrouds covered with holy symbols, stacked separately from each other, and adepts also powered up a standard barrier line to prevent the bodies from going for a walk.

Stepan, who was watching the case and preparing his exit every time a body was brought through, only the second one before his eyes, and there had been seven or nine of them during the day, depending on how you counted, was in a strange mood. His mind began to play the famous ‘Tear and Tear’, and his thoughts slipped into the fact that with his System, once he had reached the hundred-plus level, he could try to give a certain infernal Mistress a fun adventure in the spirit of Doom Slayer's visit to her house. Even his unwanted partner, who is now probably helplessly frantic in some unknown place, not having the strength to get to him and make him cancel the deal that is binding for her, and she would be happy to help his past bosses to autodafa with special cynicism and cruelty. But everything comes to an end, even his preparations, so it was time to stop wondering and start working on the problem, even if it was not quite his own.

The shaman didn't sit on the roof, but watched through the spirits, using the already summoned elder as a central hub. He was hiding himself, covering the smaller seekers, and looking for ambushes. There were ambushes, but he wasn't even the one being ambushed. Rather, it was just a response team, which was to come to the rescue if the victims began to turn into demon puppets, and then merge into a single mass of flesh, on the basis of which will form a portal-transition. No, this is not an exaggeration, but a standard practice of reinsurance, which arose because many times this trick has been pulled by demons. That's why, by the way, they didn't let the affected bodies lie any closer to each other. That's why they were wrapped in special shrouds. The young man was sure that today was not the day to expect such shit. The main creature had spent so much that it was better to save now, but he approved of the locals' reinsurance. Even though he had to circumvent or neutralise them.

The first thing he did, as soon as he had identified all those who hindered him, was to move from one circle-amplifier to the neighbouring one, starting another call. The darkness of the cave was dispersed only by the barely visible lights of incense sticks, the sickeningly sweet smoke entering his eyes and nose, and literally, becoming for a moment something too alive and tangible. The hum of totems, chest chanting, the glittering of ritual signs carved on the skin. Everything was forming into a single rhythm. To the beat of the rhythm pulsed, as if beating hearts, a few dolls-interceptors, which will have to help the shaman, if he happens to fail the call. He'd done without them before, insuring himself more classically, but the battle with the demons had shown the usefulness of this tactic, so let them be. Like with a magnum of fifty calibre taken for a walk in the park. Better to have it and not need it than to need it but not have it.

Another group of puppets is waiting for its time. They are designed to draw demonic energies into themselves, and they will be used not on him, but on the victims. In another corner, the farthest one, there is a model of a piece of the street, on which the barrack-treatment centre is located. The sand had to be taken from the beach near the city, having diluted it with additives bought through the system. The Envolt is not particularly persistent, not sufficiently ingrained in the world, but even so, it allows a lot. Around it, there is a circle of spirits, both seekers and suppressors, which have an influence on the area and on the area at once. The first tacts of this influence are completely unnoticeable, because the point of application of forces is here, next to the shaman, and not up there. At first, nothing serious, only a little bit blurred not even attention, no, just imperceptibly for all observers their magic vision and just a sense begins to work, as radio operators would say, on a slightly different frequency, just in such a way that Stepan's further actions could not be seen.

Then comes the effect on the world itself, a piece of space, which in the reflection of the spheres begins to acquire the features of a closed lacuna, very strange, hardly worthy of being called such, but the process of morphing is completely invisible to the available sensory charms. And when a new tact begins, when whole groups of rat-like spirits with spheres of space and aspects of transference pick up numerous wood chips, dragging them through the fabric of reality to the right points.... these spirits were not noticed. Under paving stones, in walls, in gutters, on roofs. There, these chips emerge, and then their reflection changes, the witchcraft that transmuted one thing into another disintegrates, and the chips crumble into particles of sand. Another mound of sand, left in the underground shelter, crumples sharply and turns into a little melted, like plasticine, but still recognisable wooden block. It so happened that the horde he had summoned charged for each piece of transferred matter, so if he had made them carry each grain of sand separately, he would have been ruined; it was easier to change the physical image of wood and sand. That's how witches turn people they don't like into frogs, but they can't do that to a person without killing them on the spot. It's a level far above mere skill, even if it's a non-gifted person; it's much easier to cast an illusion and make the victim believe that the illusion worked.

After the sand delivery, the envolt layout is somewhat more complete, and the observers, thanks to the past warps, have not noticed anything strange, nor have they seen the activity of the spirits dragging sand. The young man exhales tiredly, stands up from the call circle, and moves closer to the layout, leaving the “cleaning” to another group of spirits. They will stabilize the edge, extinguish the background fluctuations in the totems themselves, eating the remains of the circle and scraps of energies as payment. They are still garbage collectors, not every garbage they will go to work on, but in such situations, they make life very easy. The Earthman doesn't even look at the result of their activity, quickly piercing each of his fingers on the left hand, dripping a drop of blood from each, immediately absorbed by the sand of the layout.

The strength of the connection, its completeness and the limits of available influences on the territory of the layout grows in a jerk, so sharply that it makes him a little dizzy, but Stepan is ready, he is not even worried, though the trick is risky, he also partially opens, he can be noticed that way too, if you know where to look and what to look for, if you wait. They don't wait for him, they don't know about him, they don't look at him. Sylvia was right. No pro, no matter how experienced he is a hundred times a hundred years, would ever get the idea to wait for him here. And those who are already there are distracted enough by the past tacts, they do not even feel the shadow of his presence here, everything is muffled by the steadily powerful background of divine grace, while otherwise the distorted background and the changed mode of magical vision are enough.

A new beat, now the shaman takes in his hands the bells standing next to the model, reminiscent of those Chinese things that hang at the entrance to a store instead of a doorbell. The subtle chime echoes in his ears with the rustle of radio interference, but that's good. If he had heard a clear and pure melody, it would have been time to sound the alarm. Another senior spirit planted in a material object, summoned to the extreme simple and does not require special payment, other strong called and came much more reluctant. Except that the spirit, a suggestor, working through hearing and sounds, did not categorically make a difference between the targets, trying to influence the shaman who called him in the first place. This is literally part of the nature of the essence, to change this attitude can only be forcibly subduing and literally depriving the spirit of control over himself, but just this is very difficult, not for nothing the essence was senior in right of power and antiquity.

Training with Lemira had helped. It was thanks to that training in suppressing her voice that he'd remembered the summons. In a different situation, it would have been too much of a challenge to spend a lot of concentration on keeping the spirit from screwing with his head. But here he simply used the same method, but with different settings, preventing himself from hearing the key sounds that opened the path to the victim's mind. Inaudible and audible at the same time chime of bells sounds above the layout, the bells themselves are already hanging in the air and ringing without any help from him. And all this non-sound passes over the maquette, using the blood bond as a base and a bridge. The wounds on his fingers have healed without Stepan's help at all; here, in the place of his power, he doesn't even do anything; a bunch of good spells and healing auras supported by spirits ensure his regeneration is as good as that of any other shifter.

The shaman waits, listening to the “radio interference” in his ears, watching the sandman figures wandering around the model, moving, talking, scratching their asses. The summoned entity performs one of Lemira's favorite tricks, the same decrease in concentration and attention, not dangerous and untraceable, because the victims don't fall asleep, don't stare dumbly at one point, don't show any signs of mental processing, no, they just become very inattentive, fixated in their thoughts and not going beyond them. And only when the marks-images from the spirits-observers under cover of the senior, as well as the sand figures on the layout show a satisfactory level of processing, he makes a new move.

Literally. He simply crosses through his passage, finding himself a couple of meters from the wall of the building next to the barracks. Some kind of city warehouse under the Guardians, nothing interesting except for the fortunate location. He steps out from around the corner, completely hidden by the distraction, invisible, weightless, almost intangible, stopping a step away from the door to the infirmary. He is dressed in a heavy traveling cloak, his face covered by a mask, his body slightly distorted in proportions from the spirits planted in it. Shrugging, the gesture coming out very unnatural, as if his body had become too full of bones and joints, he pulls a small ball of clay from his sinus, breaking it in his hands and blowing dust right onto the door. The dust passes through the matter, soaking into it and seemingly ignoring the thick atmosphere of grace, but only seemingly. The spirit, whose thin body was embedded in material clay, soaked in the same grace to the point of being a relic, wasn't just the kind of spirit that could ignore grace, no, it almost fed on it. And the others, who had already been summoned beforehand, also knew how to work with divine miracles, were used to hunting for crumbs of heavenly powers, and now found themselves on the buffet table.

They don't attack, they don't try to devour the grace, as there would be a reaction to that, no, the entities just stay in the atmosphere that is pleasant to them, filling it with themselves, not weakening it, but even strengthening it, but at the same time temporarily and unobtrusively taking it out of control. And the divine relics are still standing, still shining with grace, only now this grace is temporarily controlled not by the priests and not by the relics, but by Stepan, well, through his spirits. Next comes a harder, but still very imperceptible blow of suppressors, which turns off first of all experienced priests, turns them off before they realize the attack and beg for help. Because they would have been given help, and the shaman would have had to abruptly shut down the shop, so he tried to act with a lot of reassurances and complete overkill, but he acted in time and succeeded.

Everyone, everyone is asleep, the medics are resting in their chairs, the priests are leaning against the walls, the novice of Damokar and the priestess of Gaia are leaning against each other with their eyes closed and breathing deeply, the man is drooling in the young lady's cleavage, and the shaman is cautiously slipping through the door. His influence, the pressure through the spirits who have taken control of the grace, has already put the victims to sleep, and they are stirring and moaning in their sleep, but they are asleep, unable to see or hear. The cloak opens again, releasing whole swarms of healing spirits, small and strong, many of them. The shaman doesn't wait for this crowd to stabilize the patients and patch up damaged auras, heading straight for the relics, or rather, the most important one. A statuette of a pregnant and large-breasted woman, naked and even beautiful in the form of a statuette, stands on a special pedestal in the far corner of the infirmary, as if looking at all her children who are suffering from illness.

The mere presence of this elbow-length statuette made pain, anxiety, fear, and despair go away, and the one in front of her gaze felt like being bathed in warm milk and wrapped in the arms of his own mother, and it was in the magical-spiritual aspects that it was so felt. Although the Life Giver aspects were quite in favor of the continuation of the family and pleasant intimate adventures, the essence ... The essence was completely different and yet very qualitatively counteracting exactly infernal lust, replacing its shades with quite normal desire for carnal love, to procreate and multiply. The shaman shook his head, throwing off a slight obsession and carefully, with all reverence, tied around the statuette a few strings of beads, a fifth of necklaces, and placed at her feet a smoking stick, already lit. Then he did the same with two smaller relics, only simpler and with a different set of witchcraft spells.

The second belonged to the Church of the Fertile, and was also a statue, but smaller in size and simpler in terms of grace saturation, more reminiscent of Scythian women than a work of art in the genre of photographic realism. The latter belonged to the Keeper of the Oaths, serving more as a testimony and assurance of how the work of cleansing the auras and souls of the victims had been carried out. The guardian's divine grace had no particular effect on the victims of the corruption, a role given to Gaia so that her Fertility could defeat the more primitive and less profound demonic Lust. Around a small marble ball with completely smooth surfaces that, if not for the background of grace, could have been mistaken for a simple billiard ball, the shaman laid out an amulet circle of a small silver chain and a second one poured with salt. The god had always been famous for his powers of observation, and his grace was too strangely unyielding, especially against the background of the easily intercepted power of the Life-Giver.

When he was done with the disguise, the shaman exhaled, checked the walls again for tracking charms, and then abruptly released the many clawed hands and tentacles of his ghostly body and began to work. The entities planted in him helped to fix the situation with the heaviest lesions, the spirits of simpler spirits treated those who suffered less, but the main work fell on his intangible hand-feet, which he used to remove from the corners of the aura and the spirit the remnants of filth, hiding from the background of divine power. No, it's not intelligent, it's just like physical reactions, where one magnet repels the other. Where there is a place for grace, there is no place for filth, and vice versa, but since filth is less here, and it is much more vulnerable to grace than vice versa, it is ‘pushed’ deeper, and it easily penetrates into the depths and hides its presence.

Suggestor groups treated the minds where the shaman healed the spirit and aura, and the bodies were fine as they were; they were not allowed to mutate or distort, except that the patients lost weight. Here was an aunt who had developed nymphomania with a sadistic bent, when the aura of the demonic Mistress brought out the darkest and most evil that Lust could give her. Even now, under anesthesia, under shamanic and priestly anesthesia, the image of his vaguely remembered mother is doing all sorts of naughty things in his dreams. The little brat, who seemed to be one of those homeless kids who packed drugs for the druids, was tossing and turning in her sleep when her mind was crushed by images of things she didn't understand yet. Stepan didn't think, didn't get distracted, and just saved lives and fates, spending his own reserve and forcing his spirits to work. His namesake would have had a lot to say about “saving the lolies”, but for the shaman, everything was extremely simple and utilitarian. If you can help someone without harming yourself and your plans, help them and get out of here without waiting for thanks.

He paced between the beds, not lingering over individual patients, correcting their conditions piecemeal, only once starting the heart of another street kid, this time a boy of about ten, because his body's motor could not withstand another injection of hormones into the bloodstream. The treatment of psychological consequences of such bombardment of pleasure was completely dumped on suggestors, who carried out, in fact, point brainwashing with induction of amnesia and darkening of memories to overcome addiction in the bud. Any director of a rehab would have sold his soul for such methods, which gave a hundred per cent cure even for dezomorphine addicts at the last stage, but, alas, there was no magic on Earth. He doesn't think so. And so who knows, maybe there was a Harvard somewhere out there, just ordinary people were not told about it?

The shaman was fully immersed in the work. Divine grace, intercepted and enhanced by spirits, provided a perfect anaesthesia for all involved, the sleeping priests occasionally woke up, sleepily blinking their eyes, looking in the opposite direction from the shaman, and then reported that everything was normal, without changes, to fall asleep again a moment later. Stepan was not going to seek recognition of his merits, and so he carefully disguised his actions as a full-fledged divine miracle, took ghostly hands, surrounded by a protective layer of spirit-gloves, particles of Gaia's grace, which there were plenty of, and covered the healed areas with these particles, wiping with them the already very implicit and hidden traces of his own actions. Of course, it was the priests who had a chance to realise that their gods had not arranged heroic cures here..... but it won't come to pass immediately, or even without much notice. The Life-Giver would hardly mind the increased faith in her in Dantmark, not to mention the fact that you'd still have to hear from her priests not the usual ‘thank you, O Greatest’, but ‘friend, was that really your job, with those patients over there, on that date?’. There is a great difference in these approaches. Hardly even the gods have often come across the fact that a crowd of sick and crippled people were healed by someone free of charge and of high quality on their behalf and demanded nothing for it, leaving them with all the glory and faith. It's a bit of a stretch to fit such behaviour into conventional paradigms.

Already finishing the healing of another homeless kid, who had to have a doll placed on his chest, with a drop of boy's blood in it, in order to get out of his body not only the filth, but also the alchemical toxins accumulated from the overdose of soothing alchemy, Stepan heard the sound of a vessel falling, as well as a muffled mate. The young man was so immersed in his work, and the spirits supporting the field of soporific grace and putting the priests and medics to sleep were working so finely honed that he did not even immediately switch to combat mode. With a slight perplexity, he turned his figure round, in an unnatural and crooked movement, thanks to the same sub-settlers in his body, thanks to whom he had more bones in his body than he had been given by nature, and stared straight into the face of a vaguely familiar female brat. The same sharp features, slight thinness, boyish clothes, short but long uncut hair the colour of tar, and the same frightened look of green eyes. For some seconds, they look eye to eye, or rather eye to eye in the gaps of the self-repairing mask, and then the shaman bursts:

"Are you following me?" From surprise he even forgets to make his voice normal, the throat distorted by perfume creates double and triple echoes, and sounds like the creaking of poorly greased door hinges, so that the reaction of the girl, who had already assessed the sleeping priests, and opened her mouth for a full horror of screaming was simply inevitable and from all sides logical. "Silence."

The first thing he did was to deprive her of her voice, then to immobilise her, literally making her forget that she could walk and run, and only by the third spell-conspiracy he forced her to calm down and let her mind become incredibly clear. The girl, who had suddenly calmed down and, thanks to her logical thinking, realised that they would not kill her, at least because they could have killed her long ago, exhaled the air in her chest, and then spoke in a normal and not loud tone, just when the shaman had returned her speech and removed her paralysis.

"How the fuck is that?" She asks a question, and then he asks her a question. "Cho? What the fuck am I following, am I out of love with my life? Who the fuck are you? What are you doing with me? I wasn't like this even under the powder when I inhaled it foolishly. What are you doing? You mean you. Yes. Honourable sir. Here. Why don't you leave my fry alone, eh? You better take Sabz the Iceman, he's a big boar and doesn't keep his hands to himself..."

The shaman, who is rapidly returning to normal, begins to realise that some shit is wrong here, this little thing shouldn't be in his consciousness. Yes, he didn't hang a separate suggestor on her, as well as on other patients, putting them to sleep by the forces of intercepted grace, so there would be no traces afterwards. But how the fuck did she wake up from a sweet dream? She woke up so fucking awake that she didn't give a fuck about this field at all! And even a moment later, he realised what she had said, trying to protect some of the little sorting kids, over whom she was obviously the eldest, by pragmatically feeding the evil chthoni to her old foe.

"Are you fucking nuts, little girl?" He asks in her usual manner and then answers the question himself. "Yeah, you're fucked up. Do you think I have nowhere to get material for sacrifices, only in the building guarded by priests to steal children? I'm treating you retards, and you spit in my face, you punk."

The mosaic that had not been put together in her sleep also came to her, when she realised that the three different shit she had seen in the short time she had been there were one and the same, just under different guises: a pile of hobo rags, which she mistook for a beggar, a nightmarish white goat-man, who for some reason addressed her as if he recognised her, and about which she naturally did not say a word, as she did not want to get into trouble with the priests and secret guards, which saved herself and the shaman some nerves, and this black cloak with a lot of ghostly claws. And the first nightmare she'd had had such limbs, too, just not in the real world, but in the delirium she'd seen while holding his hand. All these thoughts flashed in her head, formed into a stable picture, which was read and transmitted to the shaman by the spirit readers, then she just fell to her knees and faced the floor. She knew very well how magicians, especially strong ones, could express their displeasure, especially to the small scum.

"So, fuck it," Stepan speaks, in a normal voice, though still not quite human, but no longer incontinent, and with a decisive order to the spirits he pulls her to her feet, even before she opens her mouth. "I don't like that sort of thing, so stand there silently and answer if I ask. What the fuck are you doing awake, sickie? And why the fuck are your aura's fucking shreded up again, only slightly weaker than it was before the treatment?"

At the same time with his question, the shaman anaesthetised the poor girl, and added a spirit to the back of her head, which turned off the filter between thinking and speaking, and at the same time completely removed fear as such. The girl blinked perplexedly, and then held the palm of her hand over the back of her head, where it felt like a thin icy needle had been poked, and began to answer, not gibberish, as with a standard ‘talker’, but thoughtfully and deliberately answering.

"I have no idea. It was great at first, I was so happy, but at night I was afraid to sleep, you're such a walking fuck, I almost died and shit myself." She didn't immediately realize what she had said, but she got it pretty quickly, and her eyes bulged funny. "Then it got worse, I started trying to do magic more actively, and I always did it, but it didn't work well and it was really fucked up afterwards. Like, I don't know, crawling through a gap that was too narrow for me, or jumping so far that it didn't seem far, but in fact it was like jumping twice, well, one and a half times. {speaks in heavy slang, is surprised at how disrespectful she is to speak to such a powerful mage.}"

She tried to ask this question several more times, and even suggested that he had “shit in her head”, complaining that her friend, who was a supervisor of street boys all over the city, had once been “fucked by a fly-by-night brainiac”, and asked if he would behave the same way with her afterwards. Then she added that she didn't mind so much, because she would spread her ass for a living, though she was disgusted by it, and he also made her feel scared to the point of trembling and complete absence of any arousal. But for the most part, she was describing how she was getting worse, and she was surprised that it was because she attempted to master the gift of magic. In the sense that she had guessed before, but had not matched all the facts, but here, under his boon, that accelerated brain, it became obvious at once. But the greatest deterioration of her condition, to a level even worse than it was before meeting Stepan, caught up with her here, in the infirmary.

She was so sore that she had to drink painkillers, despite the fact that she hadn't grabbed much infernal filth, but there was some kind of reaction in her aura, and her aura was rubbing her like a grater. In fact, if it wasn't for the applied area boon that strengthened her body and deprived her of pain, she wouldn't have woken up at all. And it was not divine grace guided by spirits that helped her, it was classical shamanism that brought her to her feet, the same small spirits that flew around the infirmary and helped those who were the worst off. The shaman took a closer look at the blackened dots on the thin bodies, which were breaking through to the spirit as well, affecting literally the entire triad of body-aura-spirit and almost the soul. And the more he looked, the more he saw, the less he liked it.

"Did your parents shit on every altar of every temple in the world?" He removes the chattering spirit from her, which makes the girl immediately shut up and turn pale with horror as she realises what she's just said, but he doesn't let her apologise again, or face the floor, or just talk, shoving one of the best dolls he had with him into her hand. "Okay, here you go. Puncture your finger, there's a needle in the lining, drip some blood, and clench it in your fist. I just can't understand what the fuck this is, I couldn't put this shit on myself even if I was shitting myself, and this is just... Anyway, hold the doll and stay here. I'll finish the rest."

For several minutes, there is only silence, heavy breathing, groans of the sleeping, and dry words of occasionally waking observers, who report to the amulets about the condition of the patients. They're so competent, they don't let anything go to chance, and they're watching them as if at any moment these poor people could be molded into one demonic golem of flesh and go to demolish the city tower. He was almost finished, but the last checks would take a long time, as well as covering his tracks.

“Honorable, and this, and why did you, well, us, them, them, well, me, in short, to treat?” It seemed to be physically hard for her to keep silent, and the unknown was more frightening than even the need to distract the scary bogeyman from her nightmares. “What's going to happen to me, huh? What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I dying?”

"I'm helping you because I can, why the fuck not? And don't look at me like that. I have my own interest in it. It's just that I have nothing to take from you anyway, and what I can take, I don't need even for free." He hinted at the thought that flashed in her, that men usually take from girls who can't pay with anything else. "And you, my dear, have a curse. A strong one. Old. Really old and blood-bound. Not the kind fortune-tellers use to scare clients for silver, but a real one. It's funny to me to know who your parents were, what's left in you. They won't waste such a thing on just anyone, so remember, remember everything you know about those who gave birth to you once."

She hesitated, trying to remember something but finding nothing, simply because she knew very, very little. She had grown up practically from childhood on the streets. She was bright, skilful, quick, and ready to tear the world apart with her teeth, so she'd risen in the hierarchy of street kids and become a gofer in one of the city's gangs. Small, but with prospects. The position of a senior behind the little kids from the herb sorters, those who sort drug herbs and pack simple herbs. It's more for growing up. It's the kind of place where they check what a person is good for. Again, you need attention to keep an eye on the little ones, and denomination with the topic, so as not to let the little ones kill themselves by licking their hands after sorting, and a share of ruthlessness, because the packers do not live so long, they get poisoned sooner or later, despite the fabric masks on their faces. Yula, not a name but rather a nickname. But she had no name, disliked her position, and tore her heart out, sometimes to her detriment, in order to save some of the children. She used to hang cloth masks on their faces almost by force, having learnt about this trick from a healer's apprentice. Yula disliked her position, but tried hard to get higher, dragging the brightest of those who grew up with her.

The shaman, reading her through, would not call her a good person. She robbed, stole, and killed, too, and together with other hoods, she could slaughter a straying river swimmer if she couldn't steal a purse quietly, which by the standards of the Earth made her a real hardened criminal. By the standards of this cursed world, she was, if not a saint, there were enough worthy personalities, and he had seen them himself, then just a good one. She was almost a statistical anomaly to the city's underbelly. Largely because she was used to walking around with the idea that she wouldn't live long, suffering all her life from a painful weakness, and only by wit, cunning, and the ability to find mates, managing to make her way up. So he was truly curious to understand what she had been so rewarded with and why? For whose sins?

"No, I don't know." She said after a pause, though Stepan had already enlightened her memory. "My mum was a river wench, and she got pregnant there. I didn't know her myself, she died of fever when I was three years old. An aunt cares for me. She's not a relative, just a friend of my mum's. Then she died too. I didn't know my father, and I didn't know my mother either. I'm going to die, aren't I?"

"We all die at some point." The young man replied grimly, finishing to remove from the last patient a lump of liver, which was moving suspiciously, disintegrating the demonically mutated flesh, and then activating explosive regeneration and fuelling the man with his own life force. "But I'll try to work something out with you. Give me the doll. Yeah. (chuckles) There you go."

The raggy thing with straw as padding was already visibly smouldering. It looked as if it were covered with drops of black tar. It was not the curse itself, but its shadow, its image, its mirror image, only even that, being only an image, was frightening. He didn't touch this stuff with his hands or any parts of his spiritual body, but used a spirit with the ability to telekinesis, instilling it into his index finger. The finger lengthened and grew an extra phalanx, but the doll levitated as he wanted, not falling to the floor. With an act of will, he unlocked the bond between the doll and Yula, and then sizzled the envolt, frowning thoughtfully and deciding whether he needed the problem at all. It was another problem, but where else would he get a chance to work with divine curses of such level and skill, and without having to be blown to smithereens? It was someone else's problem, but it was his own, his leveling.

"Okay, here's what we're gonna do. Now I'm going to block your memory so that in the morning you'll think you just slept through the night." Seeing the indignation flash across her face, mixed with the instinctive fear of losing her will, he shuts her up with another warning gesture. "And don't argue, I know you won't talk, but it's also possible that the people you're going to tell everything to without opening your mouth. The memories will come back when you leave this place. That's when you'll come, as discreetly as possible. Yes, this alley, near the flour mill. I've imprinted the image right in your head. Come and wait. I'll pick you up from there. The curse is in your blood, and your blood is killing you. I've got a friend who knows a lot about blood, so we'll go see her first. Then I'll give you a proper checkup, and then I'll find a treatment."

In her eyes, there is wild hope and suspicion, almost panic, disbelief, and desperate desire to believe, and she realizes that the real villain will do nothing, but still desperately looking for a way out of the deadly trap. She does not believe for a moment that there is a kindly wizard who wants to help her unselfishly. She wants to believe, but she doesn't; she is too scared of life. The shaman realizes she will immediately run away from the city wherever she can see, as long as not into the jaws of an incomprehensible creature. Then she realizes that she is dying anyway, and maybe it's better to go to the creature, at least there is hope there.... but she represses the thought. Because for free - will not help, stranger - will not cover, and she has nothing to pay and no use for.

"Stupid." The shaman summarizes, reading her thoughts, and she understands that her thoughts are being read, her consciousness, accelerated by him, compares the work with memory and reading of thoughts into a single specialty, she has heard about mentalists, though by rumors, but she has heard about them, there were such amateurs among the ragamuffins, who liked to divvy up a stranger for money under the word of honor to return and then to erase his face from memory. "I don't give a shit about you per se. It's your curse. I am interested in such a task to consider, it is interesting to understand what kind of crap and how to fight with such a thing, and then suddenly I deserve something similar to myself. I'm not particularly conflicted, of course. but I'm getting killed like a fucking hexenbiest every now and then by assholes who don't take care of themselves. No, I can give you my word not to harm you and let you go as soon as I'm no longer interested in you, but how can you verify such an oath?"

"I fucking can't." She finishes, looking at him with such hope, and sincerely, and not trying to make him feel bad, that it makes him uncomfortable. "Whatever's gonna happen. I'm all in, it won't get worse. Ahem, are you sure this, forgetting in the head, will not hurt? There was one guy, so he too, once, too much seen and heard, was taken to a magician-brainiac, to take his memory to fuck off. So he couldn't walk for a fortnight and spent another year pissing under himself at night."

The shaman even checked himself, but no, she hadn't read his thoughts, and his spirits hadn't mistakenly broadcast his thoughts into her head; she'd understood his feelings herself, though it wasn't hard. It's hard not to, if he, the master of fucking brain-working, was compared to an illegal understudy, running for the gangsters, who couldn't even perform amnesia properly, damaging the victim's autonomic nervous system! If he had been a normal local magician, he would have torn off her tongue and sewn it back on, maybe even in the place where you tear off a tongue in such cases. Shaking his head, judgmental and even a little tired, he points her back to the empty bunk.

"Go to bed and sleep, I'm already behind schedule because of you." There was something in his words that she bowed silently, lay down in bed, and, closing her eyes, fell asleep at the same moment. He did not have time to put her to sleep, it was enough just anesthesia. Without pain in the body and burning in the veins, the girl switched off at once. "Oh-ho-ho. Well, let's continue our plan..."

And he continued, wiping away the traces of his actions, carefully undoing the attention-diverting spells, feeding the spirits that controlled the relics, almost praying that the true owners of these relics would not react. The latter was unlikely, though, as he was not stealing some of the grace, but rather fuelling the relics. In such a situation, when the cleric's effectors by morning will be almost stronger than they were at the moment of Stepan's arrival, there is no reason for the gods to interfere. It's not like they're as omnipresent as ordinary people think. They can react to an attempt to desecrate or destroy a relic, it's like a mosquito bite to them. Only here is there no bite, even on the contrary, one benefit, and even with quality anaesthesia, so they do not pay any attention. But even if some fleeting flow, just a light check on the theme ‘is everything normal’ and pass through those statuettes and ball, it will be able to deceive the celestials, or rather, the smallest part of their consciousness.

He left the infirmary at dawn, but the sandy envolt and its effects were undone, and the spirits recalled at dawn. By that time, not a single sick or unhealthy person was left in the infirmary, except for Yula, but even she had been treated to the maximum, and he had covered her aura with a cloaking layer that should be able to withstand even a careful scan. He prepared for himself, in case of failure or damage to the shroud, summoned a senior spirit, and additionally strengthened the false picture of the aura with witchcraft. Only unlikely that each of the sixty-three victims will be checked by experts at the level of a competent adept, and for each it will take a lot of time. They would write it off as a divine miracle, they should, but if they didn't, he'd made a few signs on the back of Yula's palm in invisible ink that would help him keep track of her, and he'd also made her envolt doll, which was of high quality, even though it was a standard billet. If they started checking her directly, he'd take control of her and her aura, hide anything that could be hidden and fool even a comprehensive scan.

That's it.

A good job was done, quite a good quest to pump up knowledge related to the treatment of curses was found, and morale was brought to a steady plus. For a full sense of complete and utter victory, it lacked only the sudden death of one demoness, as well as...

Received: "basic methods of healing the aura and spiritual bodies from damage by other-planar energies"; increased affinity with the spheres of healing, unity, and alienness; increased probability of acquiring knowledge and properties of the healer, executor, and priest branches.

The acquired talent is added to the Player's overall status.

Yeah, that's exactly it!

It's definitely almost-almost awesome now, if not to jinx it.

* * *

He was already taking in the new knowledge in his own sanctuary. He wanted to fall into the soft bed of the mansion, preferably not alone, but he didn't risk it. The chances of his actions being noticed and discovered were low, close to zero, but he was still afraid, even though he didn't know what he was afraid of. He didn't even sit in meditation, just lay on the bed, occasionally distracted by the connection with Sylvia's doll, which was receiving information about what was going on in the city. Judging by the fact that nothing much was going on, his little exploit on medical topics had not gone unnoticed, but it had not caused a furore, only a spontaneous prayer service to the glory of the Life-Giver, which did not even turn into a riot. It took only nine hours to learn the knowledge, albeit very advanced in terms of rarity, but staying at the first basic rank. Much more than ‘simple’ knowledge in the same basic version, but also the gift of the system turned out to be very, very intricate.

It was indeed a healing branch, all so tied up in working with injuries deeper than just wounds on the body. And as the shaman realised with some surprise, the knowledge was quite helpful not only in healing after demonic blows, but about healing wounds inflicted by miracles and grace, a lot of “knowing” too. Fighting tricks, set up to quickly bandage himself in the conditions of time pressure, and then continue the fight, agent tricks that will hide the background of corruption coming from the wounds, or the same background, but good, if the miracle drilled into the flesh and it still needs to be removed from there. Witchcraft practices, conspiracies on the territory, which increase resistance and regeneration after demon-miraculous attacks. Numerous methods of contractual transfer of wounds, when you literally force someone to get a curse instead of yourself, but then give the blow to the priest of the same god in the name of which you cursed or wounded. Envolt practices that he had already used, just this night, only brought up to date and as detailed as possible.

It wasn't anything mind-blowing, but combined with his existing skills in healing and countering curses, he could already consider himself a very interesting specialist. Not a master healer, although the senior shaman himself was a bit of a master in everything if he prepared, or not a master in anything if he didn't have time to prepare, but the owner of a very rare and well-developed specialty. Not to say that not in demand, and if the damage from demonic attacks in the world usually do not happen often, and if they begin to happen often, then there and the world is already a little shaky, then the grace ... for a healer who can, for example, try to at least partially offset Gaia's curse of eternal infertility, or help recover from a broken promise certified by Damocar.... such an individual would be ripped off with arms, legs, nose and any other protruding parts of those who get in the way of the ripping.

As Stepan realised as he analysed his new knowledge, even the most basic skills of treating specifically divine injuries were very, very rare knowledge that there was simply no one to learn from. Demonic wounds? Here, the priests themselves were willing to share skills, workshop, and all. There was an episode in this world, albeit a long time ago, during which the world almost became demonic. He did not delve into this history, and there was not much accurate data, but the memory of the fall of the Eternal Empire, now deflated to a mere Eastern Empire, sat firmly in the memory of the population, especially those gifted with power. As a reminder not to flirt with outright atrocities against the peasants and other lower classes, or if the heavens don't answer prayers, they'll always be happy to knock from below.
С низу постучали.

They will also give you a discount as a premium client.

In general, they knew how to cure those afflicted with foulness by magic and magical practices. Enough of the knowledge that had been gained by extensive practice and had ‘“passed through the centuries since the Ages of the Fall,”’ to quote directly from the treatise that Sylvia Malter had quoted to him, albeit in thought-images. Again, it was much easier to cure and burn out the foulness, simply because it was too alien and on the level of the laws of the world. About the same as the same gravity, only in relation to the magical sciences, not pure physics, she had no right to be in the world. The other thing is the wounds of grace. There was much less practice here, and the priesthood of all the clergy was in no hurry to reveal the secrets of how to resist their punishments better, and the gods themselves did not particularly want to spread such types of magic. Undoubtedly, the locals knew how to do something, that's a fact, but against a really harsh divine curse or direct wounds from the gods' wrath.... let's just say it's easier to ask for help from another god, preferably one that competes with the one that got you a favour and a nice gift to his temple. There would definitely be analogues of the knowledge Stepan had gained in the world, and there were those who had raised it to an advanced level.

But he could say with near certainty that there was no healer who could raise this or similar knowledge to the level of mastery. Maybe it was just a mistake in his intuition, but logic told him the healers would have nowhere to get their knowledge and practice from. They could not be masters, but magisters with specialisation of healers, they could, but this direction of development they would not be able to develop in any way, maximum developed, maximum advanced developed, and that hardly. But even this advanced level of knowledge would have to be acquired under the patronage of extremely influential persons, otherwise, they would not be able to practise, nor would they be able to survive the polite warning of the clerics.

With such cheerful thoughts, the shaman finishes his meditation and assimilation of the information package, then quietly dines on the foodstuffs brought from the mansion and warms up a bit, checks every last totem, stares at the Cube for a while, which is still working normally and does not show a single disturbance. It doesn't mean that he wasn't searched; it just means that no one got through the limit of the search pulse power set by the shaman. Lucky for them, they hadn't broken through, considering the artefact's second mode with Autodivine features. After peering at this pathetic substitute for a wall rug, the young man stepped out of his shelter and into the sunny street. By now he was wearing a completely different look, a slightly altered version of his real face, too different to be confused, but identical enough to make it easier for the spirit on his face, which had taken on a lump of special flour dough, spreading over his skin and replacing his real face, to work.

This time he didn't come out at the mansion, or even close to it, but almost at the other end of town. He had one more place to go, so he'd better get out on the way. He didn't turn into the craftsmen's quarter, nor did he turn into the smaller streets that ran away from the central one. Still, this isn't an Earth metropolis, but a city of magical medievalism, even if it resembles medievalism normally about as much as a shower resembles a lawnmower. Even on Earth, if you went into the wrong neighbourhood, you could be questioned on what street you came from, and here, such a thing was almost obligatory. Here, a street or a quarter, a neighbourhood or a courtyard is rightly considered a small town in the city, where everybody knows everybody and strangers are not welcome, especially those who are loitering and not on important business, and even without the name of somebody important who sent them. In his time, when he was working for Trabius, he was stopped several times by local cool guys, with respect and without much aggression. They learnt that he worked for an honourable merchant and got off, occasionally offering him some services or goods. Especially, he remembered those who wanted to give him a chewing root to expand his consciousness, saying that a gifted man would definitely need it. That's why the shaman preferred to walk under a slightly and barely perceptible spell of gaze aversion almost all the time.

Now, however, this diversion is not cosmetic, even ungifted can overcome it, if the will is strong and if you need something exactly from this young man in clothes, equally suitable for the assistant merchant, and came out in the people of the artisan, and handyman from the port, and a small official too. Demons - big fans of playing with the mind, they are natural born sensualists-mentalists, and working not through classical magic, but through the corruption, from which only better in their business become. Is it any wonder that now every reinforced patrol of guards has at least one amulet hoop on its head? And they watch such hoops exactly in a mode that sees all sorts of illusions, compulsions, and other webs of consciousness. He had not seen it, but one of Lemira's friends had shared a funny story with her, which she had already retold to Sylvia. Some man who had bewitched a beautiful townswoman and was taking her, smiling, to some unknown place, had been caught just like that, having just noticed the obvious and crude charm performed through paired amulets. They beat him long and with feeling, taking out fear and big eyes of that fear, because at the first moment it seemed to the guards that they accidentally noticed a cell of the cult of those demons, which over there arranged that disorder.

The shaman reached his destination not without adventures in the form of an attempt to cut off the purse, which he neatly stopped with a stone turned in time. The thief didn't fall, by the way, only tripped and lost the moment, at the same time mentioning the purse of Lortan, the local Thief of the Gods, that is, the God of Thieves. Also spies, deceivers, liars, but not virgins, mockers, and instigators. It is said that under every major city, there is a temple or at least a shrine dedicated to this individual, as always illegal and as always highly sought after by all. The shaman had studied the matter a bit, having had a couple of conversations with Sylvia, who was very knowledgeable on the subject, largely because the defences against finding any such shrine were largely based on principles very similar to those used by the Opener. The only difference is that not summoned spirits, but a divine miracle, provides an analogue of quantum entanglement that prevents those who are not welcome there from finding the shrine.

By the way, they say about this god that he has no priests. No priests at all. None. And it seems even quite possible, there are those entities that live just by the constant inflow of faith from those who will believe anyway. Thieves and other criminals, literally praying to the very shrines and blessings of Him. But something told the shaman that if about the god of deceit is stated something so reliable, confirmed from all sources, and also having no other official versions, the conclusion can be only one - bullshit. And also this god was famous for the fact that he did not make any restrictions on race, sex, age, species, belonging, and place of work of those who offered prayers to him. His blessings fell on everyone, even vampires. Sylvia and Lemira had received them a couple of times, despite the fact that each time it had been extremely expensive, and not in money. Stepan suspected that even Laghan could have come to the temple of the head thief and stayed there, but she had nothing to pay.

He found the right building, just like the first time, by the weather vane with a cherry tree, and he went there in a fully alert state of mind and spirit, having been cleansed of past influences and knowing exactly what and from whom to expect, he was not so afraid for his brains. But still, his gut was clenched, remembering too much how the vile thing had fucked him, how it had bypassed all his defenses and made him its brother, beautifully, with experience and skill rather than sheer luck or mistake. Would have made it to the end if it hadn't been for help from above, and from the kind of help he didn't actually want to receive. His nose inhaled completely clean air, filtering the aromas of herbs, there was a thin barrier around his skin, which did not let in a speck of dust, even now sell it to earth surgeons for sterilization, his consciousness was in a protective cocoon, duplicated three times, The consciousness was in a protective cocoon duplicated three times, the eyes and ears had a strong spirit, and the body was already preparing to grow antlers and break the distance under the most powerful diversion of eyes and invisibility, immateriality, or even through the world of spheres, in the arms of a spirit-teleporter, who would carry it after him.

"Oh, hello, Pann, and I was just about to close up shop!" Gelda greeted him in a cheerful and carefree tone, immediately bending over, sticking one finger into the neckline of her dress, and shaking her tits-tits-tits-ti.... "You want a quick one between my melons, hmm? The juicy, sweet melons of a country mommy?"

The shaman was momentarily taken aback, reflexively repulsed by the blatant and completely unlikely to work through all his defences, the attempt to influence his mind by evoking the already forgotten feelings of adoration for the big-breasted villagers. He didn't attack, mindful of the terms of the deal, but damn. He'd expected the attempted attack to be something noticeably more, more calibrated and dangerous, not a barely demonstrative kick to the head. Well, either she was playing on his paranoia, trying to hide something non-obvious behind the obvious. Most importantly, she had the brains to not waste a drop of demonic power, just pure seduction skill, itself being hypnosis on steroids. There was nothing exactly magical about the movements of her heaving breasts, the tone of voice, and the pauses between words, but without magic and tonnes of experience, such skill could not be achieved.

"That's enough." He orders, and immediately the order is obeyed. A moment later, Gelda is standing behind the counter, modestly frowning and tucking back her almost puffed-out breasts. "I've come to pass on the new orders, and not to you. She sees through your eyes?"

"I see, my dear, and speak with her mouth." In the same voice, but subtly changed by a quarter of a tone, in a completely different manner of speech, correct and almost academic, against Gelda's village reprimand, the creature speaks to him. "I listen attentively. I'm also a little offended. You could have played along! Or at least get a little more angry, imagining that you're crushing me to dust and trampling me into ashes?"

"Then listen to orders." Stepan does not enter into a polemic, does not relax for a moment, even though, according to the terms of the Autodivine deal demoness can not start a new attempt to seduce too immediately, because there was a footnote ‘unless this seduction will not be part of a comprehensive plan’, and the evil shaman is much more vulnerable to induction, hidden in mocking attempts to piss off. "My orders are: no risk of..."

Most of the clarifying commands, which the visibly dull-looking creature listened to with full attention, were aimed at the fact that she couldn't give away his secrets or hint at them in any way. Technically, she couldn't hurt him in any way before, but little did she know if she could somehow manage to convince herself that giving him up to elven or dwarven intelligence agencies would be very much to his advantage. Or it wouldn't be a big deal if she took a little liberties with a couple of his special secrets. Or whatever else came into her head. The shaman commanded at length. Some commands were expectedly met with counterarguments and compromise, others were shattered by those arguments. Demoness pressed experience, and to outdo the demon in that experience was unrealistic, helped only by the absoluteness of the contract and a direct prohibition to use the lacunas of his orders. Not Stepan's prohibition, but the one listed as his Patroness.

After leaving the shop, which was already closed by then, he returned to his hiding place and spent a couple of hours checking himself by all means, at the same time parsing their dialogue by the second and checking with the clock from the system, trying to find lapses in his memory. I didn't find any, so I calmed down a bit. Apparently, the creature had attacked his mind only to try to make him angry, infuriate him, and make him want to break the deal and thereby untie its hands. Which only convinced the shaman more strongly not to tear up that deal under any circumstances. The thought of a distant creature gnashing its teeth, realising that it couldn't force him into the only option it wanted, made him feel a little better.

He went to the mansion not even in the evening, but at sunset, passing by closed shops and passers-by hurrying about their business. Night is the realm of thieves and other banditry, and a decent man and not a guard at this time, has nothing to do on the street. The shaman glided at a leisurely pace, realizing that he was already on time and was even a little surprised when another obstacle did not get out of his way. Not because he had stopped to sell a piece of stone, but because that was what had happened to someone else.

"Come on, eh, what's the hell's going on? Ah, I'm not handsome for you, am I?" The drunken, but still firmly standing on his feet, river sailor, obviously already drunk and looking for some adventure, or love, and looking aggressively, was in a state when refusals are not accepted. "Psh... Come with me! I said shh!"

"Leave me alone, drunkard, or I'll call the guards!" The old woman, whose rather gloomy appearance told better than anything else how much the sailor had drunk, was not a timid person, and she was able to say her words in such a tone that even the shaman, but, alas, not the drunken man, wanted to get away.

Feeling like a hero of a lousy TV series, just that he rescues from drunken solicitations not a beautiful maiden, optionally also an elf, but a dull and dreary woman about fifty years old, the shaman with one flexible step, without slowing down and without changing the rhythm of walking, comes out from behind the man, having previously poked him in the spine and put a simple witchcraft message: simultaneously a shot of pain, weakness and sobering up, which made the man, who felt the full force of the hangover that had overtaken him, take two steps, stumble and sit down against the wall. Stepan was about to say something like the sacramental “get out of here and do not go alone” to the aunt, but the aunt showed herself much more unusual than at first glance. She obviously missed his approach, and he was already under a much more powerful diversion of eyes, complex and multifaceted, because there were fewer guards on the street, and a lone passerby caused involuntary attention. It was impossible to merge with the crowd due to the absence of the crowd. But instead of shrieking or any other frightened emotion, the aunt broke the distance with a smooth, sharp, and flexible movement, looking at him with an attentive and expressionless, almost snake-like gaze.

A second of silence.

Second second.

The man, who had an instant hangover, farts sharply and very loudly, and a moment later a loud snore comes to him and his aunt. The shaman perceives the world around him and sees neither ambush, nor the aunt's accomplices, nor anything suspicious at all. For a moment he is tempted to check her with all available means of perception, to twist her and interrogate her, but then she starts to do it first, screening him. Her eyes remain the same, not shining and not changing color, but it is definitely an illusion, the shaman felt with his whole spiritual body as if a giant anaconda looked at him. Blinking, realizing the second snake association, he looked at the aunt suspiciously, beginning to suspect that she was an expert in the use of wild magic, if not an ogre reptiloid in disguise. The same beastmaster or specialist in the use of familiars.

"Are you after me?" She asked dryly, in a completely impersonal tone, not finding anything unusual in him, just a gifted young man with the gift of a strong student and a specialization in witchcraft. Then, seeing the sincere surprise that broke through the renunciation, she asked another question. "Or not?"

"Auntie, I actually wanted to help." He said honestly, making equally honest eyes, and then adding an equally honest comment. "But you, I see, don't need that help at all. You look so much that your whole aura is choking. It's the first time I've seen you, honestly, aunty. Can I go now?"

He plays quite well, primarily because he doesn't have to pretend to be a good-hearted young idiot with a magical gift, a love of night walks, and a way of helping people whenever possible. Except that he would give himself a ten out of ten on the Stanislavsky scale, but his opponent, though not attacking, does not lose her suspicion. Her face is obviously fake, as is her voice, and he would scan her disguise, scan her whole, but then the last chance of passing for a passerby would go to the known place.

"How had you approached unnoticed?" No threats, no orders to answer, but a normal young apprentice of a village witch could have been driven to wet trousers by such an emotional blow of fear, not to the point of a pale face due to the blockage of part of the vessels in the body, and an authentically trembling voice. "How did you move so quietly?"

"It was my grandmother's amulet, an inheritance." At that moment, he was carefully remembering the ruby pendant left on the Earth, thinking about it, and therefore his answer was not a lie. "It's night, I'm walking using it, so as not to be touched by dangerous people."

"Show me." Again, not a single threat, but a powerful pressure, as if a snake ready to lunge is looking at you, and you are just a mouse to it, breakfast in a terrarium. "Oh, wow. What was the grandmother's name?"

This dry “wow” was said to a stealth amulet he had made himself, a rather ordinary and not too cool amulet. But that was by the standards of the shaman, who, having decided to practice, spent on the thing reagents from the token and a little bit bought in the store directly. And so it is the work of not a master, but a very cool adept, high-quality, and good. If she wants to rob him now, he won't even laugh, he'll just bury her here silently, because there's no point in answering good with evil, you crazy bastard! Although it might be a problem to kill her, he intuitively felt that she was ready to fight and tried, without removing the shroud, to look for signs of the prepared blow. Something under the paving stones was definitely moving, growing, sprouting spines, and he was also ready to bet that the snake or snake-familiars were ready to attack him, too. Consequently, right under the shroud settled the best of his strong spirits, which were able to neutralize poisons, including magical. Ironic, but the species-image of this spirit was also a snake, which right now curled around his heart.

//"I was just walking home from work! "I don't even want to go outside the fucking walls! But I'll find problems there, too..." - The shaman's unhappy thoughts do not prevent him from concentrating on his role, the same half-suffocated squeak giving out the pure truth, he did not dare to lie, not under this configuration of the shroud and not taking into account the fact that he does not know the method of reading lies, used, it seems, also by the Druidess, not only by the Beast Mistress. A double specialty, both very advanced - no joke, but questions about who he'd met this evening?

"Ev-v-v-genia." The name isn't exactly local, but it's not exactly alien either, it might well do for some one from the far corner.

"I didn't hear that." Says the bad woman, and then continues. "But it doesn't matter. Indeed, a blind accident, maybe even a lucky accident. Breathe. Deeper. Don't think. Speak. Answer. Who are you? Where are you from? Who will come looking for you?"

The shaman breathed honestly, taking deep breaths to inhale the colorless gaseous compound she exhaled, a will-suppressing poison that could be considered an excellent truth serum. It wasn't even too harmful. In time planted spirit calmly this poison, which by the way was a lot of snake images-notes, analyzed and removed from the blood and aura. To be fair, he would have taken out the poison without the spirit himself, perhaps just as imperceptibly. He had more strength than the apprentice, and his resistance was naturally higher, and the effect on the apprentice was calculated. He still did not want to check, honestly forcing himself to believe in what he said, honestly answering another made-up legend, only instead of grandfather-shaman, he now had a grandmother witch. Agent skills, as well as the fact that he had rehearsed this legend, albeit slightly different, many times already, allowed him to lie confidently and not get caught. And the fact that his poisoner seemed to believe him quickly and stopped being interested in the details of his past, only to clarify that he was definitely not an agent of the secret guard who had come for her.

But the questions about who would look for him, and so on. He didn't like that, but the shaman answered honestly. No one. He just arrived in the city. He looking for a job, and thinking of joining the Adventurers. The compulsion imposed on himself made him believe in what he said, and that's why it was true. It was a very useful skill, perfect for a lying spy, even if it was a course in acting. His aunt's perfectly immovable face, not the real one, which was obvious, expressed nothing, but he also scanned it with whatever means he could without disturbing the interlocutor, which made it clear that she was interested in him for some reason. For some reason, she needed a young, healthy, gifted in witchcraft guy, whom nobody would look for. And it would be all right if there was blood in these images, but according to his superficial thoughts, which he was already confidently reading. Nothing was threatening his life, health, and freedom. He was not going to be captured for a long time. The shaman was about to prepare his blow, to burn out at once the three snakes he had caught, thin as pencils, but poisonous as Rodislav Gastoldovich Yanin's sarcasm, and to prevent the druidic billet from striking under his feet, drawing a pack of spirits and applying exorcism and path-locking at the same time.

A new exhalation of a slightly bluish cloud, even in the night darkness, into his face, the spirit easily blocked this poison, and then the magician came behind his back and began to whisper in his ear her seemingly irresistible orders. The shaman, who was one millimeter away from attacking and not attacking only because he was not sure whether he could deal with this enemy stealthily and whether she would not have a cover group, almost jerked himself with an evacuation switch. Hidden under the Shroud spirit, which could instantly take him to the dungeon along with the body, by the way, could well deliver them both, and there he will quietly ask the interlocutor about why she is so nervous and ungrateful.

"The house on Burnt Clay Street, fourth house from the turnoff from the potters' artillery, tiled roof and windows with blue-painted shutters. Memorize it. Repeat." After waiting for him to repeat what she said in a monotone and floating tone of voice, which he knows is how an individual drugged with will-suppressing alchemy should speak, she continues to command. "You'll be offered a job there. You know that for a fact. You are sure of it. You'll be there in three-- five days. In five days, you'll remember that's where you'll find a place in the city, only there. Nowhere else. Now forget. Forget me. Forget the meeting. Forget everything. You're just going to your inn. Just a little lost. Forget it. Forget. Remember. Repeat."

The whole process, rough and frankly unprofessional in Stepan's opinion, took hardly fifteen minutes. He wanted to turn on Rodislav Gastoldovich Yanin and tell the poisoner what a crooked amateur she was and that she wouldn't get credit. Even if he were exactly what he pretended to be, he would have had every chance to get off the hook because of the vagueness and unreliability of the commands. And the effect itself could be overpowered, for example, by drinking strong alcohol, and in his drunken mind, not being able to synchronize the desires inspired and his own. In general, the whole unprofessional attitude even offended a little bit. And also she never noticed the mark hung on her, because she was watching herself, and the shaman struck through the snake, almost ovovyavshaya on his shoe. A thin thread of ghostly tentacle stuck into the rhombic head of the creeper, then left a mark on it, and pushed it toward the woman.

That's it, she's hooked.

And he would probably still visit her with reciprocal thanks, which she would hardly like. Well, if she realizes and remembers them. The memory and data from the head of a deep-seated and highly professional agent would be useful to Sylvia. And it would also be useful for him to know how they were looking for him and what such pros knew about him. She came to the city incognito anyway, as another answer seeker. Agents of such a level, which even through the disguise shines through with a strong, very strong aura, do not come to Dantmark to rest and get laid, do they? Waiting for the moment, he “woke up”, looked around bewildered, poked the toe of his boot at the still snoring man-asshole, pretending not to notice the last of the snakes, which followed the way he left, looking bewilderedly at the darkening sky and shaking his head. After getting away from the snake, he did not go to the inn where he said he had rented a room, but returned to the dungeon. There, he checked himself for any influences, cleaned his body and aura from traces of poison several times, collected remnants of that poison from his clothes and skin, purely for analysis, and then went where he had originally gone. To the mansion.

This time he went straight there, because fuck such walks!

* * *

He slept like a dead man until the morning, ignoring Sylvia, who came to wake him, even though she whispered in his ear with her cold lips that she needed a taste of her favorite pet. She did wake him up, though. But eventually he woke up, already pouring into her mouth, meeting the sly and mocking gaze of her scarlet eyes with a sleepy look. Letting her swallow all that had been pumped out of him, he leaned back tiredly on the pillows, stroking his loyal doll's head. In spite of everything, he appreciated Sylvia - for her hypocrisy, cynicism, meanness, and deceitfulness, because it was only because of them, regularly demonstrated, that he had no conscience at all to use the bloodsucker as a tool, a handmaiden, a slave, and a sex toy at once. He lay like that for a while, while Malter covered his loins with small kisses, almost bringing him to the second peak, slowly and without full-fledged caresses, only hints of them.

And then he nearly jumped out of bed when the invisible etheric link between the shaman and his personal hypercube abruptly echoed with a jab of alarm. Someone was not only searching for him, but was also a good enough searcher to penetrate the first edges of the cube's disguise, forcing the cube to use a counterstrike from the Autogoddess' arsenal. The shaman had a rough idea of what his new artifact was and could do, and therefore had a rough idea of the effort it would take to force it into full mode. There had to be a near-full-star search ritualist with source support and plenty of free time. Popping out of bed and dressing quickly, he described the situation to Sylvia in three words, relaying in images that didn't fit in those words, then quickly ducked into the closet, finding himself in the sanctuary. He was in such a hurry that he stumbled and forced himself into a roll like a Dark Souls hero, despite the fact that with his characteristics, his coordination problems were still in the not-so-distant past. The shaman got to his feet, trying to slip one of those legs into his pant leg, staring with all spectrums of vision at the shimmering cube that was noticeably more active.

The search was not an impulse-response, as a standard ritual, not even a frequent shroud or net, but a narrowly focused beam, and of a controlled direction. That is, if he perceived the cube's readings correctly. The shaman knew a lot about the methods of clairvoyance, but superficially, it was too unreliable, too difficult to master, he had enough just increased intuition, and rare prophetic dreams, what the fuck else to understand whether they were prophetic or not. But even the meager knowledge he had was enough for him to understand the simple truth: he was looking for an extra-class pro, an elf of the eightieth level among all the fortune-tellers and oracles, against which Stepan himself was a n00b.

The Cube shimmered. The squares on it were changing tones and colors while the artifact was confronting a living creature that didn't know what kind of fire it was playing with or that it was being confronted at all. Judging by the fact that the counterattack by the method of Autodivine perversion had not been applied yet, the unknown Delphian was protecting themself no worse than watching. The indicators were changing at breakneck speed. The shaman did not have time to analyze them, but it was clear that the cube had already caught the seeker's attention beam, but it could not create a normal impression of the person who looked at it so attentively. The artifact acted imperceptibly and very stealthily. The shaman was quite aware that if he had used up the artifactor's strength and skill that had been spent on this stealth for the sake of a direct blow in the style of burning out brains, the seeker would have been in a bad way. However, then Her Milfness gift would not be her style at all. The shaman rolled these thoughts around in his head until about two hours and thirteen minutes later, when the search had almost ceased and the ray-perception was no longer penetrating, it seemed, even the memory of the stones of the sidewalk and the rustling of the wind, the defense of the unknown finally gave up.

"Well, well, well, really an elf of the eightieth level." With a slight sarcasm and a share of irony, said the shaman, wiping away the sweat of excitement. "Vanga, damn it. Well, I'm not guilty because I can't change the artifact anyway, and I did everything to prevent it from triggering on every random search. No, you were looking for me, you were looking for my soul, so you got it... and by the way, what did you get?"

The image-blindness of the elven Farseer was very clear, revealing the image that appeared on the glass surface of the Cube. There it was again, that feeling of not being able to hide from the WH fans in a mirror, even in a different world. Typically beautiful for their race, with snow-white, exactly snow-white, not gray or blonde hair, a slender figure, wearing only a simple white dress. And also completely blind, looking in front of herself with pale blue eyes, seeing only her visions. A radical way to enhance the gift of prophecy. However, one of her eyes did see perfectly well - the third. And no, it wasn't the chocolate one, as its namesake would joke, but the third eye. It was some kind of magical artifactual prosthesis-amplifier, if the shaman understood correctly the signature of what the Cube had recognized, and it was intended for a clairvoyant, amplifying and concentrating the eye of such a clairvoyant to the values that were even uncomfortable.

If it wasn't for the artifact, this girl in a dress with no underwear would have found him. Not exactly him, but at least some of his images for sure. Which ones, it's not clear, but it's still unpleasant. Especially if the specialist is that good. His face and aura cast? His place of residence or images of his lab-shelter? His connection to Sylvia or the Mare of Mares? Or to a demonic bitch-slime-fucking-ass creature altogether? Yeah, he'd chosen his artifact very wisely, very wisely. If he had known about her attention, he would have been able to stop her in any way, but if he hadn't had the cube artifact, he wouldn't have noticed her gaze. And she would have seen him, clearly, as if standing next to her, receiving a blowjob from Sylvia Malter, right in Dantmark - and then it would not be difficult to find the place and the identity. I'd have had to sell my ass to Herbert to cover her from the ear specialists, but it would hardly have helped. Elves are the local hegemon, if they want something, they get it almost always.

Slightly shifting his perception and continuing to stare at the levitating cube, he tries to understand what exactly the artifact rewarded the seer with, quickly finding the answer to his question. An embedded and gradually sprouting belief, confidence and intention, linking the image of sex in general and blowjob in particular with the feeling of gratitude and favor. That is, now this lady will be inclined to suck a blow job instead of thanking someone or paying them double salary? Well, not instead of, but together, yes. It's not a fetish for prostitution or paying for services with one's own body, as it would be with the elf, if the nearby part of the mosaic works, no. There is an underlying confidence in the rightness of the desire to thank the one to whom one is sincerely grateful with one's body, lips, and tongue. No matter whether it is addressed to a man or a woman.

But it hurt her only slightly. On the other side, both the elven woman and those she worked for were well aware of the dangers of active clairvoyance and the methods of protection when using it. They especially tried to protect the mind, feelings, and thoughts, taking into account that such tricks, though complicated, are possible. Stepan knew how to do such things, just worse and not so ultimatum fast. It was even strange that the artifact got through all those shields and barriers without illuminating the earthling even more. It was a Supercube, a Hypercube even. In principle, this lady could live hundreds of years of her elven years without ever once activating the sprouted compulsion. In order for her to seriously intend to suck someone's dick as a reward, she must be overwhelmed with a very strong affection for someone, with maximum gratitude.

Considering the skills of this eared girl and how much she could demand for an hour of work that even a pile of gold couldn't buy, to make her feel so powerfully grateful to someone.... no, he just can't imagine the conditions under which the bookmark would activate and work. Which is probably a good thing, because if it had gone full force, the victim might well have started sucking up to those who brought her coffee in the morning or cheered her up with a funny joke. This is a really noticeable distortion of personality, and even in the one whose sanity is definitely watched with all the attention. In the current situation, even if someone managed to activate the suggestion, it would be necessary to perform such a feat in the name of the blind eyes of this curious stalker; any form of gratitude would not be surprising at all. Well, and since she is quite beautiful, as well as any elven woman in general, graceful, has a good figure, rather lush for their race buttocks and breasts of about the third size, it is unlikely that the one to whom she will express “gratitude” will have a strong desire to resist.

Well.

He fought back.

As the classic saying goes, “I'm not scared, I'm shitting myself!” - That's exactly what the shaman's association with the morning surprise was.

He returned to the mansion only after another three hours, having thoroughly studied the image and the cast of the elf, but he did not do anything with this image: neither to prepare an envolt, nor to select a flock of spirits to match what he had seen through the cube of protection sharpened. Such a clairvoyant may well trigger intuition just for the very fact of preparing some kind of mischief in her address, and he did not want anything bad for her. For what? For doing her job and searching for a personality that flashed during a very strange and uncharacteristic demonic breakthrough? That's where any sane individual would start digging up everything they could dig up. No, let her continue to live quietly, not flinching and not looking for those who want to do her harm, or she will find, even through the cube will find, if she has a clear response in the form of a plan to harm her personally!

Sylvia, who had already managed to go under siege that morning and then lift it when she got a soothing message from the shaman right in her head, wanted to sit on her pet's face, caressing his cock with her fingertips, but the young man was in no mood. He was too frightened to look at the cube's indicators until he had a migraine, so he simply shifted Sylvia's perception to the fact that she would go and lick the pussies of all her chicks one by one as punishment for his transgression, while he would stay in his chair and know for sure that it was not him who was enjoying the pleasure. Grimacing at the bloodsucker's triumphant smirk as he described how humiliated he must be by his mistress's behavior, he almost dozed off in his chair. Or rather, he did doze off, just briefly. Sylvia hadn't even finished with Jaspera when he suddenly received a System Message.

* * *

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Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/86785/585346

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP