Готовый перевод Настучать в бубен / Hit the tambourine: Глава 3.2

* * *

The view from above shows a vast steppe, endless and beautiful, gradually focusing on a very large settlement consisting mainly of green-skinned people. But it is precisely that predominantly; there are also quite a few human steppe dwellers here, and even representatives of other races can be glimpsed, and we are not just talking about a couple of half-elf slaves in the chief's tent. It is clear to the naked eye that something large-scale is happening here; it is evident that many guests have arrived at the camp, and they have come with their detachments or even miniature armies. However, the gaze of sleep passes over the city-camp only briefly, lingering for a moment before moving on to the outskirts and beyond.

And here, near the city but far from the noise, another tent can be seen, huge, not much smaller than the leader's, old, faded with patterns, as if ready to fall apart, but only the walls of this tent can withstand the blow of siege spells. And its inhabitants can strike back just as hard. The tent is surrounded by silent figures dressed in thick and incredibly heavy armor, mostly made of primitively forged iron, although there are also high-quality steel examples. Humans, orcs, even lizards — there is no racial discrimination among the guards, just as there is no life. Every single one of the ordinary (and not only ordinary) guards here is dead, and their bodies are controlled not by the mold of a corpse, bound by necromancy, but by wild necromancy, combining shamanism and witchcraft. Witchcraft prepared the body for the spirit to enter and function, and shamanism allowed the spirit to be summoned and anchored in the reworked body.

Each guard wears an inconspicuous gray cloak embroidered or painted with the symbol of the person who hired them. And that symbol is known throughout the Steppe, from one end to the other, and beyond. Among the dead, dangerous, and far from ordinary undead, there are also the living—students, servants, hostages—who combine all these functions with their main task of being guides and leaders of the creatures under their command. The undead, possessed by spirits, are complemented by hosts of ghosts, also created on the basis of shamanic practices, as well as simply spirits who are one step away from incarnation, ready to tear apart and destroy those whom their summoner points out.

The gaze goes further, through the walls of the tent, to its very center, past all the other rooms, where, in absolute darkness, slightly dispelled by the light of a burner, sits an orc. Old, hunched over, twisted by age, he should have died long ago, but he still exists, even if he breathes more out of habit than necessity. He has looked this old and barely breathing for more than a century, but he is in no hurry to join his ancestors. He sits in complete darkness, surrounded by a host of spirits closest to him, adorned with necklaces of shamanic amulets and talismans made exclusively from various types of bones. Mostly those that belonged to intelligent beings. And the spirits around him are just like him — death, destruction, rot, decay, and bones, bones, many, many bone entities.

In complete darkness, his eyes scan the letters brought to him. Some are written on parchment made from animal skins, some on the still-bloody skin of humans or green-skinned creatures, and some on ordinary paper. He reads the messages one after another, literally absorbing them, inhaling the very essence of what is written in them, taking in not the letters of unfamiliar languages—the orc has never learned to read or write in his excessively long life—but the very meaning of what is written, what they wanted to say and convey to him. Some of the messages bring a barely discernible smile to his wrinkled face, while others elicit a discontented grimace. One of the letters, marked with the seal of one of the Confederate Houses, he crumpled up in anger and turned to dust, but most of the messages were to his liking.

"Who did it?" He pointed at the remains of the ashes from the letter he liked least. "Whose failure?"

"Venerable sir, everything possible has been don..." The student who brought the report, including the one that angered the teacher, didn't even finish the sentence. The young steppe dweller is simply turned inside out when the spirits begin to pull the flesh from the bones without taking life. "H-h-h-h-h-h-h-h..."

This rattle, terrible and audible throughout the tent and outside, did not subside immediately, clearly telling all who heard it in the higher spheres that the master was angry. And the old, ugly orc was incapable of forgiving anyone's mistakes, except his own. In an instant, flesh crumbles to dust, which is absorbed into the trampled bare earth, and bones, dry and full of suffering, still full of unlived life, knock against each other, falling like rain. With one movement, the shaman takes from behind his back a large drum, at least a meter in diameter, made of the skin of long-dead but still unable to die enemies and friends, relatives and loved ones, and then beats it, setting an unpleasant, repulsive rhythm in its chaos.

The bones of the disappointed orc apprentice fly upward, spinning in an endless dance, disappearing under the dome of the tent, where the bones of hundreds and hundreds of past victims, enemies, apprentices, or relatives of the orc have been spinning in the same dance for centuries. Right before our eyes, these bones partly turn to dust, partly break into smaller pieces, and only the skull of the unlucky gifted one remains completely intact. The student is dead, but he is the student of a student, slightly more experienced and slightly more valuable, a student who understood everything himself and sent his nephew to report on his failure, knowing what would follow. He no longer had any nephews, only his eldest son and two daughters, and the apprentice understood without a word that they would be the next to be blamed for the failure.

Or he himself, together with the children.

The old orc did not forgive anyone for failure.

Only for himself.

The old orc beats his tambourine, driving everyone mad with its hideous melody, but not a single note of this melody can be heard by the ears, not a single sound arises from the contact of his palms with the tambourine, only the invisible cry of the highest spheres, where restless spirits dance and scream in agony, tormenting restless souls.

Day after day.

Season after season.

Year after year.

Century after century.

* * *

A large, even naturally enormous hall, filled with pure and purifying Light, literally the materialization of God's grace, and inside the hall, many personalities of the human and not only human are fiercely arguing. Right now, beyond the walls of the temple where the conversation is taking place, beyond the walls of the capital where the temple stands, an army of demonic invaders that has crossed half the world continues to advance. An army that seeks to destroy the Temple, the capital, and all those who would seek to stop the demons. And as bitter as it may be to admit, their chances are excellent, because somehow they got here, literally crushing, tearing apart, or even capturing and converting all the armies and garrisons that tried to stop them.

The demons' chances would have been not just good, but almost certain, if it weren't for the last ritual, the last hope, with which the gods of this world turned outward. To where the will of other gods, much older and more terrible, reigns. And those gods responded, which is why a large-scale and very costly ritual was performed in the three main temples of the three continents of this world. A ritual that summoned the Heroes who were to stop the demons. On the continents of Himellat and Alevir, the summoned appeared alone. In one case, only the Hero himself, in the other case, the Hero, but with his extensive retinue. Here, in the central temple of the bright pantheon of the continent of All-Vankings, there were as many as three summoned possessors of the almighty Tablet of Souls. Either the venerable Vankings were in worse shape than the rest, or these three were weaker than the Heroes who arrived alone.

And this caused involuntary horror because none of the three seemed weak; they and each of their entourages were terrifying in their power. The cooperation was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that all three clearly disliked each other, and in the case of two of the trio, they would have tried to kill their “allies” if it weren't for the restrictions imposed on them by their Patrons. Those who gave the Tablet of the Soul to their faithful and devoted followers. And so they remain silent, as do their entourages, and the Heroes themselves are in no hurry to slaughter each other.

A very handsome and well-equipped half-elf stands silently, his aura barely visible beneath his disguise, making it impossible to even guess at his magical specialization. However, even a rough estimate of his power suggests that he is at least a magister. Behind the strange half-elf stand his comrades: a lovely blonde maiden, surprisingly frightening in how harmless and ordinary she seems; a gorgeous red-haired cat-woman, whose Beast's power is stronger than that of an army of werewolves; an extremely busty elf with the mannerisms of a battle mage; another elf, more like a diplomat, and behaving as such, and a real drow. A male. He looks at everyone around him, even his half-elf leader, as if they were small children, and almost asks aloud what he is doing here.

Not saying a word, a surprisingly unremarkable-looking man of indeterminate age between twenty and forty, also concealing his aura, but unable or unwilling to hide his specialization as an obvious mentalist and biomancer. His entourage, clearly altered in body and mind, is vivid proof of this, and it's not the pair of dark elves or the red-haired aristocrat wearily massaging her temples, who seems to be the only one not enslaved to him, but the huge two-and-a-half-meter-tall orc woman. Such musculature and such enormous breasts, combined with a pleasing appearance and dog-like devotion to her master, are rarely found in nature. Perhaps not the most ideal ally in the fight against the demonic army, where Greed and Lust form the basis of the legions, but he has already proven himself to be a somewhat dubious but extremely useful ally.

The last of the trio, still a young man of the human race, remains silent, clearly not entirely present in the here and now, as befits a monstrously powerful shaman surrounded by a host of spirits so powerful that even God's avatar would feel uncomfortable. In fact, they did feel uncomfortable when the young man almost revealed several higher and almost great spirits. His retinue consists of two slant-eyed shamanesses, most likely mother and daughter, who have experienced the wind in all its manifestations, an extremely impressive-looking and equally extremely busty bloodsucker, quite worthy of being called ancient, and a very young maiden with the habits and speech of a city punk. And an aura that drives all passing priests into catatonia and panic defecation, which is why it is not immediately possible to notice the features of this slum maleficarum that are characteristic of space mages and portalists.

All three remain silent, except for one, who is not summoned, but a local—Sir Judas Kissed, one of the most famous and celebrated paladins of the era, an excellent tactician and outstanding politician. Now, when the first weeks of the demonic army's unstoppable march had passed, and all the survivors were trying to catch their breath around him, as perhaps the only surviving figure of sufficient caliber and compromise, the remnants of armies, magicians, orders, and other guilds gathered, wishing to live rather than give their souls and those of their loved ones to the demons. And he speaks strictly to the point, explaining quite clearly why now is the time for a counterattack. Not ideal, and not even the most suitable, but simply the only one possible.

Now, while the demons are stretched logistically, while they are not ready for such audacity, while they do not know about the three heroes, while they are only preparing to storm the walls of Weissenstein, Snow White Rock, the largest city in the world. And even if the plan is somewhat dubious, the chances, especially with the help of the Three, are quite good. Everyone sees this, everyone understands this, and therefore accepts the proposed tactics. In fact, they have already accepted it and are only discussing the details and roles. What no one sees is the incredibly subtle and impossibly skillful illusion created by the half-elf, covering the already unrealistically hidden figure of another woman, a slant-eyed killer in clothes that conceal her very essence. She slowly appears behind the silent Sir Judas, just as slowly and carefully sticking needle after needle into him, paralyzing his aura, flesh, spirit, thoughts, and even his soul.

And he doesn’t even notice it until it turns off.

But everyone else noticed and nearly killed the secretive woman, despite seeing her in the mentalist's retinue. They would have killed her, or at least tried to, if Judas's disguise hadn't slipped. It concealed a carefully hidden, but clearly long-established infernal seal of servitude. The fact that the Asian woman had to tear off the knight's and paladin's heavy armor in half a second and bend him over doggy style to reveal the mark will have to be omitted from the chronicles. As will the location of the mark, yes.

"I've kept it," the mentalist exhales, clenching his hands tightly around the strange orb he'd picked up some time ago, oblivious to one of the dark elves wiping his nosebleed. "The feed has been intercepted, the signal has continued."

And the stream of thought images, the virtual live broadcast of the council's events, sent to the demonic command headquarters, was indeed intercepted. Despite the fact that the demonic puppet has been eliminated and is now practically being gutted by the hate-filled gazes of those who have realized why all attempts to rally forces or counterattack have thus far resulted in defeat and further losses. Yes, the signal has been intercepted and continues to show everything that transpires at the council, but the trouble is, it wouldn't be a good idea to show the demons such things, signaling that their agent has failed miserably.

"I'm keeping it." The half-elf isn't bleeding from the nose, but only now has the illusion lifted, revealing a face almost green with a bluish tint, along with pouring sweat. "I gave them a false broadcast, so they didn't seem to suspect anything, the assholes."

And they didn't suspect it because the illusionist, who had managed to take casts of everyone in the room, conveys a remarkably high-quality image; all the "characters" are playing as they should, continuing to prepare for the doomed counterattack. Which, perhaps, will indeed happen, but certainly not the way, not where, and not how the demons will calculate and expect. For once, the unpleasant surprise awaits the invaders, not the defenders.

"Well then," the shaman exhales, his spirits simultaneously helping to hold the thread of connection between the traitor and his masters and adding credibility to the illusion being conveyed. "As you can see, the plan you've been given is crap. Let's figure out how to feed the demons this crap and get us home. Otherwise, I don't give a damn about these shared group quests or my role as raid leader."

Yeah, a raid leader, with all the systemic bonuses, as well as a certain degree of authority over the questing party members and their retinues. Because the other two were willing to appoint a feeble-minded goblin to command their trio, just to avoid each other. The shaman refused to consider himself a feeble-minded goblin.

* * *

The last major fragment I remember is a red-haired girl with freckles on her face, dressed in a tight-fitting suit, reminiscent of both science fiction and spandex for aerobics. However, the woman is not quite doing aerobics, because the blue-skinned alien instructor with very prominent curves is teaching completely naked, and the image is constantly changing. One, or even half a second for each micro-fragment, which is selected porn, and the inscriptions that appear in the corners of the screen seem to flow into the subconscious of the red-haired aerobics enthusiast. The enthusiast herself drools onto her own chest from her wide-open mouth, rubbing her nipples through the thin synthetic fabric with one hand and lazily, slowly, evenly masturbating with the other.

A few hours later, the woman wakes up, blinking sleepily, simultaneously deleting the last video and sending a short message to an unfamiliar address via her messaging app, immediately forgetting about the first, the second, the reply, and the new instructional video scheduled for that evening. Instead, she remembers one of the many work contracts offered to her, one that seems more and more appealing with each passing day. Maybe she should actually sign it?

Towards the end of the dream, the images once again mingle into a bubbling soup; the sleeping mind sees space marines praising the greatness of the soup, and trolls in ballet tutus flying around, and a huge horned wendigo signing autographs for kids at some children's matinee while simultaneously telling a bunch of journalists, and even Rodislav Gastoldovich Yanin, looking at a petrified, crystalline mass of dead demons fused together, whose faces are full of indescribable agony, giving these demons an ominous failing grade.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Great+soup

* * *
Stepan wakes up slowly but surely, first rolling out of bed and pouring a full jug of cool water with drops of some citrus juice. From all the alchemy he had taken before and after the voyage behind the head of a bad man, he predictably experienced the wildest dryness. As usual, he has no memory of what he dreamed about, only separate fragments — the coat of arms of some Trading House, a dark tent inside which someone is beating a tambourine, a children's matinee with autograph signing, someone's sky-blue eyes, and, it seemed, spacemarines. Warhammer, you can't even hide from it in another world.

After getting up and doing some quick exercises, the shaman, undercover, headed back to his usual job, first checking the spirits that had been put into his body so he could better play the role of a person in love. Singha would be walking around the city a lot that day, and given the recent discoveries, her security would be tightened, and her entourage expanded. This was quite clever. Few would know that Stepan would be hiding inconspicuously in her retinue, playing a minor role. It was like a lady's pistol taken out of a handbag, only instead of a pistol, it was a self-propelled 155 mm Paladin artillery unit. Not quite what you'd expect when attacking the woman carrying the handbag.

We should add that the honorable Fourval de Lomer, Mrs. Singha's beloved uncle and brother of the equally honorable Urvag de Lomer, was still staying at his house. It seems that some important issues arose with several Trading and Noble houses, in which August de Mont Ross personally acted as a separate party to the negotiations. Therefore, he had to burden his brother with his visit. In fairness, he did not burden him too much, and he arrived with such gifts that it was even a little awkward.

Singha has only recently finished riding an extremely rare Halif breed gaited stallion, of which there are now only a few left in the entire confederation. The issue is not even that they are so damn expensive, although yes, they are expensive, but that they are rare, and only a true connoisseur can appreciate the breed, of which there are few in the Confederation. This lover of expensive horses constantly updates and replenishes her personal “horse park,” and horses that have already been broken in are sold or given away.

In general, it was noisy, tedious, and still nerve-wracking. As Stepan understood, after thinking everything over, Urvag did not tell his brother about the attempt on Maega's life, which in itself was telling. No, they all lived in harmony, and their brotherly love was supported by very serious vows, but it was still tedious. Uncle Furval had no direct benefit from killing Maega. Nor was there any benefit in moving Urvag, but the little man who whispered about Lodermark was one of Furval's men, even though he worked for Urvag, like Figaro serving two masters. That's reason enough to hold back. Especially since Furval can't help in this matter anyway, or maybe he can, but not much. Not enough to really attract him.

Not at this stage, at least.

One could say that the Morgrave representative office of de Lomer gradually shifted to a semi-military state, were it not for the fact that this representative office had been in that state since the arrival of the head of the entire House. Yes, for Stepan, the trap that had been set for him and the attempted kidnapping were undoubtedly extraordinary events, but only by the standards of earthly society. For Maega and Urvag, it was certainly not a simple Tuesday, but it was far from a disaster. Attempts on the lives happened with annoying regularity, but they were usually of noticeably lower quality. Poisoned letters and attempts to slip alchemical bombs into barrels of wine were mere trifles by the standards of local high society.

The super bombs, specially prepared for your aura and class, located exactly where you were supposed to be, are already much more dangerous. So no, everyone remained calm, without unnecessary panic and without showing any signs to outside observers that they had noticed any cause for concern. The good guy Stae had no choice but to silently salute and carry out the orders of Master Lavis and the youngest Mrs. Singha. And to work as her bodyguard on the side. For free, or rather, for the salary of a simple, gifted footman. Urvag was extremely lucky to hire him; on Earth, he would have been immediately taken on as head of the personnel department.

"Y-yes, of course, Ms. Singha, Master Lavis." He emerges from his thoughts and light meditative trance, automatically adding a slight hesitation to his voice and general kinesthetic movements, thanks to the infused souls, and then heads to the neighboring shop for spices. "It will be don. That is, it will be dane. It's done. Yes. It's done."

He muttered the last words under his breath, adding a barely audible “I'm such an idiot,” and moved toward his destination. The security guard who had unobtrusively accompanied him, and it was indeed a security guard, not just an entourage member, was struggling to suppress his laughter. To be fair, he was laughing at Stae only in a good-natured way, but it was still a little embarrassing to be treated like a clown. And yes, the fact that he is accompanied by a single escort, who doesn't even try to pretend that he is not there for his direct protection, is due to the fact that the shop is literally in the next room. In fact, they are all now in a separate courtyard, a micro-market located in the middle of a large market.

The entire complex of small shops and warehouses belonged to one owner, with whom de Lomer was on good terms, as was Urvag himself. They traded not only in spices but also in a whole range of goods from different corners of the world, including special exotic items from the jungle region. The mistress of the house, Veronica, despite her thoroughly Confederate name and upbringing, was a half-breed Khotta, one of the phenotypes of the local black population. In fact, it was thanks to her connections with her father's homeland, who was not the least important person in the court apparatus of Ngabo-Khele, that this very attractive woman achieved her heights. Many would like to push her aside. Many would not refuse to take her trade themselves and get a very large area right in the central part of the Upper Town market. They would like to. Only then would goods from the black lands be sent in different volumes, with different tariffs and at completely different prices.

Stepan knew all this from the reference materials provided by Urvag. Moreover, they came from his personal archive, complete with all the seals (he only asked that they not be taken out of the underground cave, just in case). De Lomer's intelligence worked very well. The folder dedicated to Veronica s'Lbaga (that is, the daughter of the venerable Lbaga) contained not only a detailed description of her goods, but also a bunch of other unpublished details. Right down to which of her assistants she liked to sit her very juicy ass on the face of on languid evenings. Or that she killed a couple of her competitors who crossed the line in their competitive measures (in the opinion of the venerable mistress Veronica) in exactly that way. Literally by strangling them, yeah.

The more he learn about this world and its customs, the more he freaks out and can't seem to adapt. And she's still a lamb compared to the local CEOs. Not because she's such a saint. It's just that, with her father's influence in the jungle, she simply has no need to resort to dishonest and despicable methods. She even brainwashes her lovers by mutual agreement, with agreed terms and a bunch of safety clauses. She hasn't had any simple lovers with undistorted brains for seven years. Not after one of them almost strangled her in bed, successfully deceiving both her contract and Veronica's protective amulets and her personal guardian spirit. Strong, very, very powerful, bordering on senior, but not crossing it.

The shaman knows so much about this, in earthly terms, Latina, that he became interested in her spirit, so he spied on her a little. And not on the woman and her bedroom, but on her spirit, as paradoxical as it may sound. The fact that he had unwittingly observed her games with her lovers caused a strong feeling of awkwardness in the earthling's soul. Fortunately, it was successfully suppressed. And yes, all of her contractual bed toys are crazy about her dark ass. It is literally a central fetish, not too far behind in power in effect than the same “oiled milk glands of the inhabitants of rural pastoral life.” And they oil her with all kinds of oils, too. Another reason Stepan was a voyeur, scanning people engrossed in active games for another trap set by the demonic bitch.

What is all this for?

It's all about the fact that the shaman wasn't too worried about going to pick up a bunch of rare herbs, including some for calls. Pulling off another attack here would cost anyone way too much reputation or put the operation at even greater risk. That's why there was only one escort for the “groom.” The subject, we repeat, had not yet been given any hint as to why he had been brought to Mrs. Singha. Stepan literally walked out of one shop, took exactly thirteen steps, entered the next one, and greeted a respectable-looking man of about sixty, by earthly standards. Well-groomed sideburns, a city hairstyle, a short beard, expensive dark brown clothes — a surprisingly pleasant image.

If it weren't for the fact that Stepan, directly from Singha's images, took the appearance of the local seller. And if it weren't for his own perception, heightened by his Sensitivity, which allowed him to notice the well-disguised co-owner of the shop (the second share of each shop in this “supermarket” belongs to Mistress Veronica). The co-owner slept quietly and peacefully, covered with light rugs and empty containers of herbs. Alive, healthy, and completely knocked out. A slight touch of mental magic, and his companion began to rapidly sink into his own thoughts. It was a kind of internal fixation, an embedded suggestion: “Let them talk here, but I'm not listening, I'll think about my own things.”

"Hello, young man, my name is Ricard, and you, I presume, are Stae-e-ekh?!" The shaman didn't wait for the fellow to pull some kind of magically imbued amulet from a secret pocket lined with insulating material in his left sleeve, striking with a spiritual limb extended from under his Shroud, its grip clutching a complex, witch-type neutralizing spell. "Huh? Huh-huh-huh! Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh!!!"

"Yeah, yeah, don't shout, dear Ricard, I completely agree with you, this is a complete disgrace." He didn't remove the effect from the guard, but even strengthened it, starting to check on his now-murderer, or perhaps kidnapper, again. "Hmm? Really? A one-time-activated negator wand for mental and subtle-etheric orientation? And why the hell were you planning on poking me with it?"

Stepan's first thought was the classic “I slipped,” meaning that they intended to tear off his Shroud, suspecting its very existence. That's why he struck a little harder than he would have liked, disabling enemy amulets and bypassing quite decent personal mental defenses. He definitely gave the old man a migraine, even if there were no injuries. And then, during a rapid interrogation conducted according to all the rules of intelligence operations and using three flocks of entities summoned from the spirit houses inside Stepan's clothes, he was involuntarily shocked. And even without any ulterior motives, treated the old fart's migraine and slightly weakened the chronic and deeply ingrained flatulence that had grown out of a once-missed, not-so-joking curse.

He wasn't a murderer or a kidnapper, but a real savior, damn it! It turns out that his gradually manifesting absurd and obvious crysh on Singha could well be interpreted as the work of a gradual and not particularly subtle love spell. In fact, many people perceived it that way, but he, Stepan, missed that moment, being too busy playing the role itself. Somewhere nearby, a disappointed sigh seemed to be heard, and the unbearable weight of existence and someone else's disapproval fell on his shoulders, but, fortunately, the presence of Rodislav Gastoldovich Yanin, who was once again giving him a bad grade, seemed to the earthling.

In summary, this old gas generator was simply going to quietly turn off the guard. To discreetly use a one-time amulet wand (by the way, most likely, it would not have worked, Singha and her entourage of spirits would have noticed the use of the negator so close by, although there was a chance), and then calm poor Stae, who had realized the wickedness of the treacherous steppe dwellers, and, giving him a very good anti-search amulet as a souvenir, let him escape. Actually, it was a very good plan. When a love spell is suddenly removed, the victims' brains continue to function poorly for some time, and their emotional state changes to the opposite — from love to persistent hostility. Then, with careful words and hints, the fear of being “under a spell” again can be cultivated in a couple of minutes of dialogue without any magic.

Of course, there was always the option of Yurik or Veronica. It was a fair deal before resorting to love spells, but it was hard to believe. The locals knew Maega too well. It didn't add up. It all looked like an attempt not to marry an excessively low-born stallion, but to use him and then get rid of him. There had been such cases in the Maega family, sometimes “getting rid” of an unsuitable father in a very radical way. But even if Stae will be caught, he would have to be literally tied up and taken by force, because too many love spells on the father could make the next daughter of the ancient family extremely vulnerable to those very spells. Even if Stae did not run away, de Lomer would still have problems and trouble out of nowhere.

And no, the charming fart-maker didn't do all this out of the goodness of his heart. He was a mercenary, and a very high-class, expensive one at that, who didn't work for just anyone. He didn't take every job. He was known for his ability to fix complex problems without unnecessary fuss and, even more unusually, without bloodshed. His client was an anonymous intermediary, but that didn't fool the old man. He managed to uncover the truth by figuring out de Vicard's House. The very House that de Lomer had almost become related to, and would have become related to, if a certain Nertm hadn't taken Singha with him to Dantmark. He even felt sorry for these guys... but not very sorry. However, they didn't order him dead, which was quite a lot by local standards! It wasn't out of mercy. They just didn't want to exacerbate the possible consequences and Maega's enmity, but they still asked for “no corpses.”

Ricard gathered information, talking to people, sometimes using spiked drinks, sometimes his personal charisma, sometimes bribery, and sometimes blackmail (one of the junior administrators had stolen something). He then talked to that man about the perfumes purely to divert suspicion and to keep Maega on her toes. He assessed the situation and really felt sorry for the little boy, who was destined to be, at best, a walking dildo, but more likely to quietly disappear immediately after Singha's healthy daughter was conceived. That's why he spent part of his reserves on not making the newcomer impotent, not crippling his aura and spirit with very specific injuries or otherwise making his fatherhood undesirable, but simply letting him escape and continue his story somewhere else.

An honest, principled, and compassionate professional mercenary! It's so surreal that it's somehow awkward now to kill this old man or make him mysteriously disappear in some other way. It's even kind of sad and depressing that the shaman has become so accustomed to all the meanness and nastiness of the inhabitants of his new world that, when he encounters such a unique personality, he simply gets confused and doesn't know what to do. He immediately signaled to Singha that everything was fine. He was just a little delayed. The man had to be paralyzed and put into a catatonic coma, then a small breach had to be made in the shop's defenses, and he had to be thrown into the dungeon. Getting caught red-handed is a death sentence. Maega won't forgive him, the owner of the shop won't forgive him, and the de Vicars, who got caught up in the mess, won't forgive him either.

* * *
"There seemed to be no one there, that's it." The guard just nodded absentmindedly, as if to say, yes, no one had met them. "We waited for a while, I called the shopkeeper a couple of times, but no one showed up."

"So..." Although Maître Lavis was not as seasoned as the comatose Fartman, he was still a very experienced individual and immediately suspected something was wrong, turning to the salesman right away. “Please contact the honorable mistress. It is unlikely that Basil simply stepped away to relieve himself; he knew exactly where to deliver our order. Miss, please be careful, I beg you.”

No one laughed at Lavis' paranoia, even Singha didn't argue or roll her eyes. Although Stepan's signal helped here. Three minutes later, they found the snoring salesman. Ten minutes later, a quiet and inconspicuous alarm went off. Half an hour later, they were finally given the herbal remedies Singh had ordered. No one made any complaints, simply because no one was hurt. Even the salesman had just had a good night's sleep, and both de Lomer and the daughter of Lbvaga could have said something bad. The former because something clearly bad was being prepared on her territory for Singha. The latter because they had come to de Lomer, and she had a market, not the Bank of Undermountain, to provide ultra-elite protection for her customers. She didn't need any problems either.

Four hours later, after reporting to Lavis several times and finishing charging some of the household and not-so-household amulets belonging to Mrs. Singh's close entourage, the tired Stae successfully collapsed into bed in his little room. Ten minutes later, having finished adjusting the decoy mannequin, the shaman was already in his cave under two cities at once. It took him twenty-six hours of deep memory scanning and smooth suppression of the parts hidden by oaths to reliably check the old mercenary. He did not regret using the meta-skill “partially selective temporal fixation of a room with the possibility of preliminary preparation for action” in order to be sure to succeed and not fail the quest.

And so, having finished bringing the victim to consciousness, Stepan looked with a kind smile straight into the bulging face of Ricard the Polite, a highly renowned mercenary, a master of subtle operations, and simply not the worst person on this sinful earth. A man who mentally cursed himself for getting involved in a deal that smelled too fishy, where his sixteenth sense sensed something amiss, realized that he had misunderstood something. But they paid very well, and there was also the opportunity to casually dip the insolent steppe bitches in horse manure, reminding them that this was not the Steppe, and the locals were not khanur-yalom, whom you could put a noose around the mind at will.

"Hello, Fartman." The old man didn't even wince at his long-buried nickname, which no one ever called him because he'd successfully battled flatulence without showing symptoms in public, but barely resisted rolling his eyes. "You've had a rough time, haven't you?"

"I won't even dispute that fact, sir... surely not Stae?" He shook his head, casually checking how well the paralysis had been lifted and the extent of his movement. "And what have I gotten myself into? Sulskhama-bey decided to end his trade with Morgrave and repeat the islanders' raid?"

The question was rather insidious, and it was asked in a tone that suggested the speaker understood that he would hardly leave this strange cave alive. Stepan paused to think before it dawned on him that yes, a shaman of such power, hiding from everyone and everything, in the company of Maega's daughter and Maedra's granddaughter, was indeed a reason to suspect an imminent attack by the Steppe army. The more he thought about it, the more he believed it — if he were in the old man's place, he would surely think the same. Well, simply because this option was the most reasonable and logical, the others were even more stupid.

"I don't even know what your Sulskhama-bey wants. I didn't ask. I have a question for you personally. Business-related, so to speak." The farthead immediately put together the puzzle in his head. He'll feed you bullshit, promising you life if you tell him everything. But he didn't show it. “How about a permanent employment contract with one specific employer? I promise excellent health insurance, excellent benefits, lots of hard and deadly work, and a full guarantee that you won't die in your bed.”

To his credit, Richard the Polite Fart was skeptical but open-minded when he received the offer.

* * *

"You know, pet of mine, in any other situation, I would be furious that you chose to play the good gentleman in a completely wimpish and spineless manner, instead of enveloping this old dog's mind with your will." Naked Sylvia, sprawled on silk sheets, still pressed her cool body against the tired Stepan, sometimes scratching his ribs with her fingernails, sometimes stroking him with her fingertips until he felt ticklish. "But considering the power of the oath you used and the number of auxiliary blocks in it, as well as the erasure of part of the memories of your conversation, suppressing his will with all your art would have been less reliable than the method you used."

Yeah. But that doesn't mean she thinks it was impossible to use the oath together with targeted influence on the personality and the obligatory “hand of the executioner,” which would have allowed her to eliminate the Politely-No-Longer-Fart at any convenient moment. By the way, it was precisely by removing that curse from him and correcting his aura, even before he woke up, that Stepan bought Ricard literally with his guts. Well, okay, it's not that simple. He's too beaten down by life. You can't just buy him like that. But the shaman managed to achieve not only humility in the face of the need to obey, but also real enthusiasm without the intention of throwing off the collar at the first opportunity and then stabbing him in the ass with a dagger.

In the end, Stepan really did have something to offer the old mercenary. And it wasn't about the Tablets, which he had no intention of giving to this man just yet. He didn't mention the Tablets System at all, although such a seasoned specialist, who knew all about the Master, quickly suspected that Stepan was the Master. The only thing that convinced him was that the earthling had started to negotiate rather than brainwash him. Well, and also a wild, not high, magical gift. Here, as with Maega, it turned out that Stepan's aura did not match the characteristic markers that had been trumpeted to the whole world. It did not match so much that there was simply no way around it.

In the end, Ricard made all the vows, and the earthling paid him off almost immediately. He may not have bought his loyalty until death, but he did win over this unique individual very seriously. And no, it's not about meteorism. It's just that once you open Ricard's memory, it's hard not to know a person's main dream. After all, with the right approach, the skills of working with thoughts and the mind allow you to gain someone's loyalty without any direct influence... but with the wrong approach, they turn a brainwasher into a natural social invalid, incapable of normal communication without brainwashing.

It so happened that the old man once had a family, and no, that family was not brutally murdered or stolen away by evil thieves, nor did the family betray their patriarch, leaving him to die in a ditch. The thing is, the family, consisting of a mother who was an adept of spatial magic and her twin students of the same school, went on a very long expedition. A risky one, of course, and dangerously deadly. And they disappeared, vanished without a trace, sank like a stone into a bottomless pit. But even though more than forty years have passed since then, the once promising, weak adept with a penchant for household magic has long since grown old, gone downhill, and become a mercenary specializing in delicate matters... but the carefully kept amulets made with the blood of his family have not yet burned out or even cracked.

To this day, his family is alive and in relatively good health, wherever they may be. Somewhere in the endless sandy expanse of the Great Desert, full of all kinds of spatial anomalies, monsters, sinister cults, and desert witches, whose coven is considered perhaps the strongest in the world, while also competing for the title of the oldest. As soon as Stepan promised Ricard to perform a search ritual focused on his family, Ricard was basically ready to take any appropriate oaths. He could not perform the required ritual.

Let's just say you'll have to invest so many resources there that even a high-level mercenary couldn't even dream of. And that's not even mentioning the help of the mages who will have to perform the ritual, which isn't exactly a five-minute, in-and-out affair, unless, of course, you consider it a direct reference to that very meme. Incidentally, the system successfully assigned him the quest. It was not a small or minor one, of course.

Summing up this strange meeting and equally strange deal: Stepan saw the Polite One as an improved version of Tahira, only male. In the sense that, without access to the system, he could be a trusted agent capable of performing a wide range of tasks and doing so quite willingly. The shaman was quite capable of paying for the specialist's services and equipping him properly at any time. So the deal could not fail to be concluded, because both sides sincerely wanted it.

Having finished summoning the necessary spirits, securing the oath on the main totem of the lair, and creating a flexible, floating structure that could block memory reading or biased interrogation, erasing or distorting memories dangerous to Stepan, the shaman transported himself to Dantmark. Yes, it was the middle of the night, but Sylvia was still a night owl, or rather, a bat, so she welcomed him warmly. Still, he had been under excessive stress for the past few weeks and needed to relieve it, and in the arms of an experienced bloodsucker who was ready to do anything for her beloved pet, that stress was forgotten faster than her corset was pulled off.

And then swap places with his mannequin doll again, get up, wash his face, wipe the satisfied smile off his face, and slip back into the role of the absurdly lovesick Stae. Amulets, shopping, helping with a very specific search ritual to find the stolen item, constantly being by Mrs. Singha's side, and all that. He is used to it now, honestly. The ritual, by the way, couldn't work. The stolen belt bag was hidden very securely, but the shaman added a little something to the ritual. The hardest part was doing it in such a way that the gifted leader of the ritual didn't realize he was being helped.

He didn't realize it, but he became very proud when he realized that with a fairly simple, albeit non-standard, search ritual, he had uncovered a hiding place with pretty good protection. And the bag, along with all its contents, was returned to them by the mafia. They were politely hinted that this was not the right thing to do. Well, they paid the ransom, about a quarter more than they would have gotten for selling the stolen goods, but three times less than they were actually worth. Stepan did not understand such treatment of outright thieves, when you know that they have robbed you, but you prefer to talk and negotiate rather than reward them all with curses of varying degrees of severity.

But he could always ask someone who understands, and not only about the peculiarities of coexistence with the night folks

"The House de Faral, newcomers to Morgrave. They only recently opened a local representative office, after the raid, but had already annoyed many." Urvag needed only one glance at the illusion of the coat of arms, created from memory of a dream, to immediately give an answer, supplementing it with competent comments. "The boy Gion, the head of the office, is sharp for his age. Blood is Klaus's blood; there's no denying it. He managed to squeeze into a temporarily empty market and outsmarted many... Including me. I didn't really care about the remains of de Yoner, it's not really my thing, but I wouldn't have refused a piece of the pie. But I didn't take it. And no one else took it either, except for the boy. He's a good breed, a good one. Why are you asking?"

Stepan simply shrugs, thinking for a moment about whether to answer at all, but then decides that there is no particular secret in this, Singha already knows, he almost literally once mentioned in her presence that sometimes he sees omens in his dreams.

"I dreamed about him, and the image stuck in my mind." And then he adds a request. "Can I get a summary of them? For personal reference, nothing more, of course."

"Yeah, I'll order it to be delivered to my office. Come and pick it up, Pann." The man's gaze was clearly filled with skepticism, despite his attempts to hide it. But you can't hide things like that from a specialist of Stepan's caliber. “To be honest, I have a fair amount of prejudice against fortune tellers. It's based on practical experience, not just hearsay. Does the Tablet really make even such a charlatan path of development, which I wouldn’t even call magic, worthy of study and mastery?"

In principle, the earthling understood him. All his knowledge confirmed that ninety-eight percent of fortune-telling and other nonsense was simply very unreliable or often completely false. The fact that powerful clairvoyants exist and pose a huge threat only means the immense amount of time and effort they spent on developing and honing their natural gift, transforming it from a means of predicting tomorrow's weather into something worthy of attention and respect. Within the system, this means dozens and dozens of talent points invested in knowledge and abilities that yield far too little for what has already been invested in them.

"No, I haven't developed any divination skills. At most, I can see a little bit of everything in my dreams, almost always delusional, but sometimes..." He pauses, seeing Urvag's still-hidden, albeit wavering, skepticism—a skepticism shaken precisely by the recognition of the almost complete futility of his dreams. "The last time I received a clear sign from my dreams and then ignored it... Well, it was the day your daughter arrived in Dantmark."

Silence.

Long silence.

Very long silence.

"I'll have it delivered right now. And I'll also give a few additional instructions to the spies so they can keep a closer eye on de Faral." A couple of breaths later, after a moment's thought, he sounded a little hesitant. "Maybe you dreamed about something else?"

He had to read the report on De Faral late at night instead of sleeping, once again indulging in a light and harmless, but still stimulating alchemy. The earthling couldn't help but sigh heavily, regretting his difficult life as a lackey, because these aren't the problems you expect when you become a stranger in a fantasy world. Complex magical rituals, dangerous battles, sinister secrets, and incredible adventures are, of course, also part of the mix (and it would be better if there were no battles or adventures at all). But between each adventurous battle, there are days and months of dull, boring routine and, worst of all, constant overtime.

And it would be fine to work overtime for the sake of leveling up or interesting rituals to the higher entity! But no. He's working overtime again for some bullshit! He wants to live like some fairy-tale elf queen, with no worries, no boring routine work, just balls, entertainment, orgies, and all kinds of revelry in a dance of decadence. Yeah, right. Maybe the real Queen of the Forest lives the way Stepan would like to, but where is Stepan, and where is the Queen? That's it, unfortunately, class inequality in all its glory, and once again the commissar's overcoat begins to sprout on the spiritual body.

Returning to de Faral, they turned out to be the legendary Kolobok, who is a meat pie. A very old and influential family, which is in fact a whole conglomerate of families, sometimes changing their composition while remaining under the same coat of arms. Unlike Noble Houses, all kinds of Merchant Houses are not so tied to specific lineage, noble ancestors, and other pomposity. In this respect, they are more like corporations, albeit (pseudo) medieval-magical ones. In theory, if some goat shepherd amasses a huge fortune, joins such a House as a junior member, and then, through intrigue, dirty tricks, or successful deals, takes the place of the head, no one would be surprised. Actually, no one is surprised, and the head of de Radmar before last, until he died of old age and an enchanted knife from his lover, was considered a very good head, one of the best in the history of the House.

And he perceived the nickname Goat shepherd, which he was called behind his back, with a mixture of humor and well-deserved pride.

Alas, even though Urvag provided a very detailed report on what exactly de Faral represented (sea transport, maritime trade, maintenance of several shipyards, custom shipbuilding through connections with allied nobles, several very large monopolies on the trade of grain and meat, and, more recently, cosmetic alchemy, luxury lingerie, and dildos for bored ladies), it took me a long time to understand the meaning of my dreams. Until he came across recent reports and read that Gion de Faral had already conducted several very profitable transactions with a certain Ursula Lotzen. And he regularly met with her at his office, yeah.

Well, after that, any questions disappeared, and a ban on approaching this Gion and the House de Faral in general was entered in red letters and capital letters in the system's notebook. Especially when the venerable Ursula came again to negotiate deliveries, however, judging by what Stepan had read about this Gion, communication with Ursula could be considered karmic retribution for this piece of shit. Stepan strongly suspected that Gion had a similar folder which proved other people's shittiness, and that it was dedicated to Urvag. The cycle of mutual compromise is in nature; there's no other way to put it. It wasn't that the shaman didn't trust his allies, soberly assessing the overall benefits of their alliance and the complexity of betrayal due to the multi-layered mutual oath-deal, but he was aware that Urvag de Lomer was as much a resident of this world as Gion de Faral.

And this awareness must be constantly kept in mind.

Or he can lose that head.

Reflections on people, meanness, and honesty in the context of interaction between Trading Houses were interrupted by a rather characteristic sensation of needles pricking along his back. When the shaman was choosing a way to alert himself that one of his allies was trying to obtain permission to enter his lair, he settled on precisely this set of sensory stimuli. This was to ensure that he would not miss anything, even if he was asleep, even if he was drunk, even if he was in a medically induced coma, or already dead and turning into an undead creature. Well, he also added the melody of his doorbell to this complex of several totems and spells. The one that was still on Earth.

Rolling his eyes, switching between modes of perception, he checked the response of the stranger's amulet and the markers of the aural-spiritual bodies before opening the way. Singha appeared in the cave, somewhat agitated and a little angry. Moreover, she was angry at no one in particular, as if at everyone around her and at herself. Glancing around the interior that opened up before her, she even forgot her anger a little, so striking was the authentic-looking desk, but grown from a stone floor, soft armchair, bright table lamp, and a pile of documents spread out on the table.

"Is this a mark from my father's catalog?" She recognized the documents unmistakably, even though she had hardly been in that file cabinet with special data, if ever. She wasn't that way. "I want to know?"

"House de Faral. I dreamed of their coat of arms recently." The shaman's answer instantly made her much more serious, more serious even than Urvag, because she could perfectly well understand all the shades of meaning Stepan had embedded in his words. "I think I even understood why exactly. It seemed like the problem had even resolved itself. And what's wrong with you? You look like you want to kill someone."

Singha unceremoniously sat down on another chair, or rather, a huge pillow lying directly on the floor. For several minutes, she remained silent, her emotions fluctuating between embarrassment and anger in equal proportions. The shaman already had a rough idea of what had happened to her, but he was in no hurry to extract this information from her. If she wants to talk, she will; if not, then not. He had almost forgotten about her, reading a rather amusing report about a free captain-asshole who, together with his bitch assistant, tried to cast a spell on each other, ending up engaged and signing mutual vows of eternal fidelity, love, and happiness. Now they have their third child.

He forgot, but she reminded him, speaking anyway:

"I received an assignment. The one tinted by the will of your ilash-khao-tar." Well, now I understand the confusion, although Stepan himself has long since ceased to be embarrassed by Automilf's jokes and just sighs. "An assignment. And a gift for the previous assignment. I hate it! I hate it when it's like this!"

Stepan does not interfere, allowing Singha, who has gotten back on her feet, to pace the dungeon and speak in increasingly foul steppe language. One cannot help but want to learn all three variants of the steppe dialect oneself, so that one can use the same colorful expressions when the occasion arises. But jokes aside, he won't stop Singha from talking about this problem with anyone. After all, the fact that she still hasn't brainwashed him, despite all the friction between them and her lingering personal animosity towards him, is an excellent reason to show a little concern for the girl's mental health.

"I am calm. I am the wind of the heavens and the solid earth." Slowly finishing this soothing mantra, the girl is finally ready to speak her mind. "A task. It is shameful. For me, not for you. You are also part of it, but... There is nothing, nothing... like that. But for me. For me! I hate myself! I understand your hatred! For your ilas-khao-tar! It's... I have to choose! My pride? Or a great gift? No one will know. No one will tell. Only I will know. Only I will remember. This task is only very indirectly related to you, Pann, and will not cause you the slightest humiliation, will not leave a single arcane on your will, not even a shadow of it. The only one humiliated will be me. And I. I hate the whole world for not refusing it!"

If in the middle of her monologue, she managed to force herself to speak calmly and in long sentences, coming out of her shamanic trance, by the end, she was hysterical again. Her fingers even began to clench, as if she wanted to grab someone by the throat. But the earthling understood her and looked at her with a mixture of touching indulgence and sincere sympathy, like, “I know that feeling, bro.” Well, not bro, but sis, but the concept remains the same. Somehow, gloat crept out of the depths of his soul, gloat from the fact that at least someone now understands how Her Milfness's jokes sometimes pissed him off.

Most likely, Singha received a quest from Milf, demanding another indecent act from her. She had received such requests before, and she conscientiously refused them, especially remembering the big assignment of convincing Stepan that he was, so to speak, Stepanida. And that he was not obliged to work as a lackey for Singha, but as a personal maid. Proper dress, breast growth, and speaking with a Neirat accent were included, while personality remained unchanged and untouched. When he read the description of the reward, he involuntarily felt a pang of greed beyond the limits of logic, although he would never admit this to anyone ever.

Now Her Divine Milfness acted more cunningly and slyly, giving an assignment that would first require some kind of perversion from Singha herself. Now, while completing the quest for servility, the earthling did not receive such assignments, but he remembered perfectly well the assignments that had come before. Especially at the beginning of his career as an isekai, yes. Now, the local resident, who had absorbed the understanding of the value of her gift and magical power with her mother's milk, was torn by conflicting feelings. Pride and logic tell her that she will eventually receive everything that is being offered, but that same logic and her habitual upbringing demand that she cast aside her stupid doubts and inappropriate shame and AGREE-AGREE-AGREE-RIGHT-NOW.

In the past, Singha's anchor had been her oath and her personal gratitude to Stepan, forcing her to repeatedly reject new and new options for how to take advantage of Stepan for the benefit of the entire de Lomer family and her bloodline. But now that the shaman was completely or almost completely safe and could no longer lose his honor and dignity because of Singha's actions, a new assignment broke her.

"Singha, damn it!" He interrupted her yet again, not letting her get more than a couple of words out, preventing her from either falling into hysterics or going berserk. "I understand you, and I believe in you. I believe you, damn it! Seriously, after all those times when excessive trust turned into shit for me, that in itself is the best recommendation for your personal qualities. Now look at me carefully."

He abruptly moves closer to her and grabs her hands, calming her gestures and causing her to freeze in surprise. Well, or she simply thought he was about to attack and almost unleashed her own spiritual retinue. Whatever the case, the girl took his words calmly, only her cheeks flushed slightly from the fury she had experienced, her heartbeat quickened, and her pupils dilated, although the latter may have been due to the lighting.

"I respect you. I respect you for your talent in magic, which you cultivated without any Tablets. For your straightforwardness and honesty, for the courage and willingness to help you showed in battle, for the fact that you, damn it, restored my faith that it is possible to talk and negotiate with the mages of this world." Well, he said something wrong, because her cheeks blushed more. "What am I getting at? I'm getting at the fact that I believe in you. And I believe in your choice. Whatever it may be. You know my opinion about Her Perversion's assignments; you know why I don't accept them. You know that you can achieve everything you want on your own. But it's your choice, always yours. I have no doubts about you and will not respect you any less, no matter what task you are given, and perversions are required of you under the terms of the assignment.

It seemed to calm her down, although her confusion had certainly not disappeared. Taking a deep breath and exhaling, even partially leaving her body, a trick she had first seen Stepan do, just to calm her nerves, the shamaness politely said goodbye and left the shaman to continue his research. Well, for those three hours that the potions he had taken had won him, before he had to go back on duty as a lackey. To be honest, he had a suspicion that soon, very soon, too soon, he would look like the alter ego of old Derden, thanks to his eternal lack of sleep. But what wouldn't you do for a great cause? Any sacrifice, any baseness, any betrayal, or feat was committed by people in the name of such causes of varying degrees of greatness.

Some were even willing to work ten hours a day.

* * *

The old mercenary, who was no longer quietly farting, turned out to be the owner of a surprisingly smooth handwriting, with which he wrote his report, sent to an anonymous box. Literally a box buried in the ground in a working-class neighborhood. Only a slit covered by an illusion remained, where the letter fell, then moved to another storage facility, underwent a full check for beacons, was scanned by a special spirit, destroyed, and only then did the spirit transfer what was written onto fresh paper. Another spirit copied the images and impressions onto a small but high-quality recording crystal, putting what it had captured into a similar but clean one. The old man turned out to be quite a good professional and, equipped with gear, managed to dig up several very important details that Urvaga's people had inadvertently overlooked.

Actually, after waking up in his own room, rented for the duration of the operation in Morgraf, the old man was quite nervous. A partial memory loss, a hefty purse of gold, and an even bigger bag of equipment, a letter from himself to himself, and a copy of an anonymous employment contract — that's what greeted him that morning. He checked himself quite paranoidly, but was still inclined to believe that the unknown shaman, part of whose conversation he still remembered, was honest. Simply because he, Ricard the Polite, was not worth all the effort it took to kill him, frame him, or leave a mental mine in his head.

After reading in his letter (three layers of code, such that even with full access to his memory, Stepan did not immediately understand the last layer) that his new employer was willing to help him find his family, the man showed remarkable efficiency. He arrived in the ill-fated Lordemark in barely two days, first traveling through a portal and then by high-speed magical courier carriage, along with a cargo of wine and other luxury items for the local aristocracy. Urvag's men arrived later, which is why they were almost killed on the spot. Sensing a rare chance to solve the mystery that tormented him, Ricard toned down his usual good nature and reluctance to shed unnecessary blood, and could well have killed them.

They were saved only by the fact that he recognised one of the three as Urvag's man, and also by the fact that Stepan warned about de Lomer's allied-neutral status. This automatically formed a picture in Ricard's mind in which the Mysterious Employer was a secret ally of de Lomer from the depths of the Steppe, who may have helped find poor Stae, who had become a bargaining chip in other people's games. The Polite One had no intention of saving the poor guy again, because doing a good deed when it benefits one's own cause and does not contradict the order is one thing. But for the sake of his family, he would have slaughtered Stae a hundred times, at most, drinking to his repose afterwards.

In general, no one saw the old man. He preferred to search in several other directions and, characteristically, found what he was looking for. While the quite competent detectives-assistants of the Trading House were checking the house of the deceased intermediary and everyone who entered and left it, the Polite One befriended the local homeless people. The community of beggars in Lodermark was very closed; strangers were not allowed in, and it was also somewhat religious. The guys belonged to a rather rare sect of worshippers of Lortan, the god of deception and deceivers, the patron of criminals, spies, agents, and, oddly enough, the homeless as well. Yula will confirm this; she herself prayed to him, as did all the other Dantmark rabble.

With a wallet full of copper coins, a truncheon hidden in his sleeve, a kind word, and swear words, he managed to negotiate with the local chief homeless person and part-time spiritual leader. Not a priest. Lortan has no priests, which is stated so often and so insistently in all religious texts that there is absolutely no doubt that someone is not telling the whole story. They were not talking about the interpretation of the holy scriptures, of course, but about something more specific. The homeless were just that, homeless, not a super-secret cult of powerful killer-priests-vampires. Although Polite One wasn't sure about the leader, there was something about him that wasn't right. So the copper coin and the promise of two more of the same and one smaller silver coin motivated them quite well.

For the next three days, the man crawled through mud, shit, and sewage drains, searching for the right place among the half-collapsed tunnels. And he found it. He found the very place where someone had placed the damn bombs against Maega. Or rather, that's not quite right. The anti-shaman bombs were located in cavities under the house that did not lead to the public tunnels, but were placed there using a kind of short teleportation. On a shamanic basis, damn it! Stepan understood this when he read the report and examined the crystal with images from Polite.

The old man found only traces of the ritual carved into the stones of the catacombs, and only later noticed the faded marks, the still lingering scent of burnt bone, and the suspicious sterility in the magical background. But something had been forgotten. The smell, a few bundles of unburned herbs, an uncleaned drop of white dove blood, scraps of some leather straps. The samples were delivered to Stepan in separate vials along with the dirt that the blood had soaked into. All this allowed the shaman to restore the ritual, a rather simple one, which “united” the catacombs. In an instant, the prepared mines were in the catacombs under Lodermark. And now they are back there again. Just at this very moment, the space for these deadly ‘gifts’ became defined as “in the catacombs.”

Anywhere in the catacombs.

Here they are within the ritual lines, and now they are already under the house, and there are no traces of digging, no vibrations or illuminations left in the spiritual world for the packs of aerial entities.

Polite and his couple of unscrupulous assistants searched everywhere, even finding the place where the ritualist-shaman had climbed up, and then the agent questioned everyone who was hanging around nearby. The last piece of paper in the envelope turned out to be a fairly decent, albeit very sketchy, sketch of this guy's appearance. He disguised himself well, hiding behind a sidelong glance, but in one of the houses nearby lived a half-wit enjoying a well-deserved four-week binge, a pretty good bricklayer, by the way. The diversion had no effect on him due to his natural resistance, and for a barrel of good beer, he agreed to draw from memory the face of that “narrow-assed fucker” whom he had glimpsed and remembered.

That's why he remembers that “narrow-assed” people didn't really show up in Lodermark, only occasionally stopping by. From there, it was easier to track down where he stopped, gather rumors, and do everything that Urvaga's people did, who took the easier route. The trio stupidly checked everyone who had recently arrived in the city, paying special attention to steppe dwellers and green-skinned folk. He didn't hide very well, although he covered his tracks, but only as a cautious merchant who didn't want to leave any hair or fingernails behind.

That's why only Polite had a cast of the magical gift, which the ritualist hadn't completely dispelled, as well as the villain's true appearance. To the credit of the tUrvag's men, they still realized that the jerk's face was somehow very viscous and unattractive, not completely masked by illusion (which is a much higher level, especially if you hide your face so that it is not noticed during scanning), but slightly distorted. But the half-dwarf saw the real face, temporarily without any disguise. Summing up the results of someone else's investigation, Stepan awarded his new employee a bonus without hesitation, as he deserved it. And he decided not to put off the quest to find his family for too long.

"What a bastard." Maega doesn't even show her usual rage. She just stares at the portrait of the villain, and her gaze is so furious, not just angry, but full of deep-seated hatred, that the shaman almost feels afraid. "I don't know this boy. But his face resembles his father's. Ublar-Tumai, their blood, they all look alike. And everyone, from grandson to grandfather, with everyone in between, serves one name. Akshtar, rot on his family, dust on his blood, pus on his bones. Akshtar the Mute Tambourine, may he be cursed by all the khaos that guards the wind and life."

She doesn't even scream or rage, as is usually the case when this woman with an extremely difficult personality is provoked. She simply speaks. And that makes it even scarier, especially since Urvag seems to understand the extent of his wife's malice even better than Stepan. What's more! Singha looks at that damn piece of paper as if he is about to unleash the whole pack, and the air in Urvag's shielded office is buzzing, despite the protection. Faithful spirits, serving this line of bloody heritage for centuries and generations, sense their hatred and fawn, begging for orders to tear the flesh of their chosen target to the bone.

Stepan will almost certainly survive such an attack and will be able to use the prepared evacuator without any problems, but he still feels uncomfortable and cold after all. He is in the center of a foreign power and might, where even the walls are oppressive. Someone else might have tolerated the wrath of the mother and daughter with pathos, but Stepan did not suffer from excessive pathos, so he did not tolerate it either:

"Reduce the pressure, or the Shroud will blow off my aura." To their credit, they looked ashamed, and then quickly calmed their retinues. "Who is this? I mean your drum-beating one. What is he famous for? How dangerous is he? Where does he live? And how long has he been living in this world?"

Judging by the response he received, he didn't just get stuck in this world; he got stuck in line for continuous execution. This very Akshtar the Mute Tamburin is known not only by an ancient relic, that very tamburine, the beats of which are heard only in the Higher Spheres, but also for deafening ears and breaking the will with impossibly loud silence. This guy, who has almost the entire western part of the Steppe in his blood enemies, and a significant part of the central part as well, is not without reason considered one of the strongest shamans in the Steppe. And if we consider only the dark and dead spirits of the dark and dead spheres (at the same time revealing almost from scratch a bunch of facets of the specifics of the use of necromancy in shamanic practice), then he is the best, without any “one of”.

A pure-blooded and very, very old orc, invisibly ruling over a considerable part of the “green” Steppe. He did not belong to any clan, camp, or family, always standing apart, but his opinion was comparable in weight to that of the strongest among the renowned khans and chiefs, and the less renowned chiefs and khans walked on eggshells around him and were afraid to fart. There are confirmed cases of him summoning higher entities, and the cemetery spheres of death and bones obey him even more easily than the wind obeys Maega. In fact, as bitter as it may be for Maega to admit, in direct combat against this individual on her home turf, in her own home, she would only be able to hold her own or even force him to retreat. In an open field, she has no chance, unless her mother, daughter, and grandmother fight alongside her, and even then, considering how Singha's powers have grown thanks to the tablet and new artifacts.

All because an orc is a pure fighter, a killer, a destroyer, and a curser. His calls do not heal, do not provide harvests, do not ease the path through the Steppe, no, no, no, there will be dozens of these “no's.” But in battle, in curses, or other vile deeds, Akshtar is incomparably cool, downright awesome. And it is extremely disadvantageous, dangerous, and damn nerve-wracking to have him as an enemy. In fact, the representatives of the Maega clan, those very three grandmother-mother-daughter, died five times at his hands. And if he killed three times (grandmother, grandmother, and mother) in the redistribution of land and trade routes, when the steppe dwellers and the greens fought against the greens and the steppe dwellers, then twice he deliberately and sensibly slaughtered and disemboweled his victims (mother and mother) on the altar. In one case, he organized a raid on a large trade caravan, and in the second, he kidnapped them directly from their native camp.

After that, no spirit of the Wind Sphere would voluntarily go to serve Akshtar, preferring to attack on the spot or flee, but he didn't give a damn. His main Spheres were a pure graveyard, and they remained so. At that moment, Stepan couldn't help but ask if Maega was very nervous when she saw in Singha's no longer closed memories one specific bone-dead call used against Ichtiander Uking? After all, there were bones and death, and the general background roughly corresponded to the images that the shaman had conveyed to the stranger during their dialogue.

Maega admitted that she later checked her hair for gray hairs, imagining for a moment that Singha had fallen into the clutches of this guy or his numerous disciples. Numerous and regularly replaced, killed for any mistakes or simply because there weren't enough bones for the next bone reading. To his credit, he teaches conscientiously, knowing how to strengthen the gift of the very weak, even if it cripples it so that no spirit of any other type will come when called, except for the death and cemetery spheres. This suits everyone, and many are not even too concerned about the risk if there is a chance for power and authority. He does not kill everyone, although he kills many, which is why representatives of normal families are very reluctant to give him their children. But they do give them to him. Because hard to say no to such a person. After all, he was one of the reasons why the elves had not yet finally resolved the green issue, being an extremely experienced mage-commander. Not in the sense that he leads the army himself, but in the sense that he commands all the mages and shamans in the caller circle.

Summing up. It would be difficult to find a more conceptual enemy of the Maega's family. There are others, of course, but only this extremely long-lived monster, who not only killed her ancestors but also nearly drained the power bloodline of its entire clan, could be considered the nemesis of the entire dynasty. He will soon reach the age of eight hundred, and that's from the moment he arrived in Baldyr-Saray, where he bought himself a tent and the right to perform shamanic rituals, even though he was already old and worn out.

Oh, neither Maega nor Maedra, nor those who came before them, remained in debt. Many of Akshtar's students suffocated in their beds, burst from explosive decompression, or were literally slaughtered on the altar. The Steppe family was also familiar with dark entities. Stepan remembered perfectly well what Maega had summoned when she was looking for Singha's spirits, lost in the rift. But still, the weight categories were slightly different. An experienced and agile master of sports in the lightweight, at best middleweight, category against a seasoned super heavyweight champion, to simplify the analogy. What saved him was that the necro-orc had enemies throughout almost the entire western Steppe. In his opinion, they were traitors to the Steppe who had sold themselves to the tree-lovers, the bearded dwarves, the white-faced humans, and everyone else who would pay. So Maega and her kin were not alone in sharpening their knives for this person, not alone at all.

Oh, neither Urvag, nor Maega, nor a bunch of other people are against killing this individual. Especially since he seems to have licked his wounds and moved on to actively searching for new victims for his rituals. At the same time, he is doing his best to annoy his enemies, managing, if not to reduce their numbers, then not allowing them to grow too quickly. Alas, according to the de Lomer family, killing the Mute Tamburine was a task comparable in difficulty to the elimination of August de Mont Ros, along with all his heirs.

It could be done, Stepan could manage it, but with considerable risk and a lot of problems afterwards. Just as Augustus is backed not only by his close associates, but also by the interests of the Forest, so Akshtar is backed not only by a third to a half of the Steppe, but also by the protection of the Eastern Empire, which benefits from the green plague near the borders of the Forest, the patronage of the Caliphate, and even the Dead North has almost officially declared him its ally. Maega realized that it was not worth rushing to kill one of the strongest high shamans in the world right now, as the chances of failure were too high, while time was on her side. Weeks and months, not decades, would pass, and her daughter would absorb the power of the Tablets. After that, she herself, without the help of Stepan, her mother, father, or loans, would strangle the degenerate in his own tent.

The unspoken detail that Maega would feel uncomfortable increasing her debt to Stepan even further was carefully concealed, but not entirely hidden. The earthling was not directly opposed to helping eliminate the green and incredibly greedy Rumorias Krellb. If even a fifth of the list of his crimes was true, it would be enough for a hundred years of execution in the electric chair, that's for sure. And Stepan had some doubts that Maega had lied to him, or at least greatly exaggerated the situation.

"How untimely it all is." Urvag rarely shows his fatigue, well, when communicating with Stepan, but now he looks as if he last slept a decade ago. "We need to take care of security, contact your venerable mother, dear, and prepare everything we can ourselves. Inform my brother. I'll tell him myself when we're done here. If I remember correctly, that green-eyed shithead likes to hit several places at once when he starts sending greetings."

Stepan started coughing. Not because of the curse, but because Urvag had spoken like that for the first time in his memory, and not emotionally, but calmly. It was as if he hadn't called someone a dirty name, but simply stated the plain truth, which was beyond doubt. And all because Stepan had gotten to the bottom of the truth... although, what the heck, he just got there before everyone else; Urvag's people were also close to figuring it out.

"It's strange that with such a love for organizing assassinations, he's not afraid of something similar happening to himself and his loved ones." Stepan wasn't exactly burning with the desire to go kill the orc scum, but his acquaintance with this particular representative of the ethnic group hadn't gone well. "The sword of mutual visits of hitmen is an unpleasant thing, primarily because it's double-edged."

It wasn't Maega or Urvag who answered, but Singha, who giggled a little nervously, the kind of person who'd probably been told scary bedtime stories about this asshole. She looked at Stepan as if he were a clueless child, then raised her right hand, pointing as high as she could above the floor.

"That's how big it was. That's how big a mountain of horse shit he had piled up. On the life and death of all his chao-satt. His disciples. His retinue. His vassals, nukers, yaloms, and payats." Well, okay, she explained clearly, although the question of the ancient monster's own safety remained. Singha, as if reading Stepan's thoughts, continued to explain. "And don't think that they didn't try to kill Akshtar. To kill him completely. He is powerful, intelligent, and cautious. He hardly ever leaves his tent in his physical body. And in the worlds of khaos... even you wouldn't want to meet him there. We tried to kill him. Wariors of Haylan Khan try to kill him, and even the eternally young children of the Forest constantly try to kill him. And I, too... will not try. I will kill him. And soon. I just need to become stronger. Much stronger."

Maega looked at her daughter with such pride that it would have been touching, were it not for the general atmosphere of impending trouble. But atmosphere aside, no one stopped discussing the new circumstances surrounding the ill-fated assassination attempt. And who was to suffer for it? That's right! Poor Stae, who suffers from chronic sleep deprivation, had already been given sedative tonics by Maître Lavis and advised to go to the temple of Gaia to confess if the nightmares began to torment him after the kidnapping.

It's not nightmares that torment him, but their absence! Give him an extra eight hours a day for healthy sleep, and those nightmares will run away from him if they foolishly creep into his dreams and somehow manage to get through all the defenses!

* * *

Stae was in his little room doing something surprisingly peaceful—reading a very interesting book. It was so interesting that the shaman did not even bother to absorb its contents through the invocation of the spirits of meaning, preferring to read it with his eyes. The book was called “Like Ears of Corn in the Wind: The Principle of Righteous and Responsible Service to a Noble Master”. It was, in fact, a guide for training personal servants of the body. It was published in the Forest, albeit by a human, but a very experienced human, who was the former personal administrator and valet of the Supreme Emissary of the Forest, among other things. Having clearly passed all possible levels of censorship, including a couple invented especially for it, the book combined the features of an adventure novel, a textbook, everyday fantasy, and a collection of anecdotes.

Having successfully retired, having sworn all possible oaths of secrecy, and voluntarily giving up some of his memories, this lively grandfather conveyed in his work the very essence of working as a personal servant to an extremely distinguished and demanding individual. All the pros and cons of such a role, all the sleep deprivation, constant rushes, even assassination attempts. And not on the Supreme Emissary, for he is too high a bird, but on the steward himself. Because how could they not take revenge on the insolent human who did not let the noble-eared "lord" to his boss right now, not caring about working hours? He, the noble "lord", has a VERY IMPORTANT matter!!!

Although Maître Lavis had given him this book as a textbook, Stepan read it with pleasure and not at all as a textbook. Even though the book is almost four hundred years old (not this reprint, but the original work), it has not become any less interesting or relevant. The entire essence of working in the elite service sector is contained in this one volume, along with a bunch of funny details, comments, and practical examples. If only all textbooks were like this, maybe Stepan wouldn't have to retake Rodislav Gastoldovich Yanin's exams. Although, he would have to retake it anyway. Out of all the people on the third planet from the Sun, there are probably only two and a half who automatically passed his exams.

Singha entered his little room like a cat about to steal cream from the table: sneaking, looking around, and covered by several layers of camouflage. She was also dressed only in a thin silk bathrobe, which immediately evoked extremely indecent associations in Stepan. Of course, he almost immediately realized that there must be a reason for the shaman's dress code, but the first association was indelible. In general, he took control of his thoughts and hid them deep inside, because the situation was already awkward enough. Judging by the look on Singha's face, who was trying in vain to hide her extreme embarrassment, she herself understood how it all looked.

"Hey, Pann. Want to see me cum sweetly?" Stepan nodded, looking puzzled at Singha's face, which was still burning with shame and strange excitement, and spoke in a completely incomprehensible way. “I need power. I need these gifts. And I will not damage your honor. Your dignity. I will not! I will not!”

She literally shouted the last sentence, angrily and slightly offended, throwing her robe off her naked body and throwing it on the floor. Whether from the cold or from excitement, her soft pink nipples were already erect, and moisture appeared on her pubic area. Unlike many local girls, the shamaness was not smoothly shaved down below, although her triangle was well-groomed, short, and narrow, covering almost only the pubic bone and a little on the sides. This, as Stepan knew from Sylvia, was a peculiarity of steppe culture, where a smooth pussy in a girl signified the status of a concubine, slave, or prostitute. A free, unmarried shamaness from a noble, powerful family could not have undergone such depilation.

Among the orc women who have not become “keepers of the hearth,” consider the very suggestion to remove or embellish their pubic hair to be a mortal humiliation. Mortal enough to try to kill the person who suggested it on the spot. Most often, this is suggested to provoke a duel or deliberately humiliate someone, by the way.

"Beautiful." He said almost involuntarily, staring at Singha, who was lying on top of her robe and looked really good, especially when she was so aroused, as if every second she was being overwhelmed by an involuntary passion. “I've seen you naked before, but back then I wasn't in the mood to admire you, unless you count that story with the stone bathtub, your token, and the whore snake woman.”

She closed her eyes and almost whimpered, looking so cute that Stepan felt a little embarrassed himself. But he didn't stop watching as she pulled out of thin air — she must have bought it at a Sistem Shop — a relatively thin phallus made of transparent material, a bottle of some kind of alchemical cosmetic oil, and a strange device that vaguely resembled either a microphone or a Hitachi facial massager. A moment later, the tip of the “microphone” actually vibrated, revealing a ridiculously high-quality enchanted toy.

"Please, Pann, don't comment, I'm so ashamed, khao-lamarr, how ashamed I am..." In a few movements, burning with excitement, she threw her legs over her shoulders, pouring oil on her crotch and, strangely enough, despite all her tension, began to relax, the ring of her rear passage. – Khao! Khao, why does it feel so good to do this?! I, um, I just can't, please, look, look at me, heavens and wind, look at me, Pann!"

"Yes, I'm watching, Singha, really. I wouldn't give up such a sight for all the riches in the world." He answered honestly, not trying to suppress his excitement as he watched the phallus easily enter the ring of her ass, immediately finding itself in a tight grip when the ring suddenly tightened, and the tip of the vibrator was pressed against the blood-filled bud. "You become very cute when you're embarrassed. It seems like you're about to come now, by the way."

"I know, Pann, I know-ow-ow-ow! Please. Please! Please-please-please, Pann, look, look how I caress! How I caress-s-s-s-s! Khao-laat, my wind, everything khao at once, I can't-t-t-t-t!!!" She sharply, even rapidly, increased the pressure of the vibrator on her clitoris, simultaneously moving and slightly jerking the dildo in her ass, literally in ten seconds, achieving the logical result. “Ha-i! Ha-i! Ha-i! Ha-a-a-a-i-i-i-i-i-i!!!”

The last time Stepan used the token on her against her will, she also experienced a squirting orgasm, but the shaman thought it was a result of the token's effect. But now she came even more violently, surely waking up half the estate if she hadn't covered his room with a sound-blocking barrier. He covered himself as well. Otherwise, she would have literally sprayed him, unaware of what was happening. Singha's face was the very picture of a hentai “ahegao,” only not in hentai. It looked strange, but exciting and somehow surprisingly cute, especially her embarrassment and demand to still watch as she brought herself to climax.

"That's it... I'm finished." Then she seemed to wake up from her bliss, showing that it is possible to blush like a crab even if you are not Caucasian, and began feverishly wrapping herself back in her robe and gathering her few belongings, forgetting about the phallus in her butt, which fell out just as she bent down to pick up the bottle. “Please don't look, I'm running away, sorry, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!”

"Yeah, always happy to help, especially if it means getting to see something so enticing." Stepan isn't lying; he's even trying to compliment Singha. "Seriously, I was totally blown away. I never would have thought that even in a normal situation, you could experience what they call “splashing ecstasy.” Well, back then, in that clothing store, you were under the token influence..."

Instead of keeping up the conversation, Singha squealed in embarrassment and just ran away, without even getting dressed, and lost the dildo that slipped out of her oily fingers again. Stepan shook his head in silent disapproval and started cleaning up after the “young, damn, lady.” Okay, the oil stains and the smell of it left in the room were bad enough, although it was a pretty good aphrodisiac, a very powerful one at that, but to leave her own intimate secretions and personal toy for pleasure unattended and without proper cleaning? This is truly irresponsible and could lead to something unpleasant if such traces fall into the bad (or, conversely, too good) hands.

Quickly finishing cleaning up, the shaman looked for a few seconds at the unfinished book, at his own schedule, and at the almost imminent bedtime, which he wanted to steal exactly four hours of. And then, not caring about anything, he stepped into the lair, from there to Dantmark, straight to Sylvia's mansion. Five minutes later, he was already fucking the bloodsucker who had thrown her legs over his shoulders and placed her hands on her cool breasts. She seemed to be wondering aloud what had come over her beloved pet, but the shaman didn't even deign to answer her, allowing the algorithms of suggestion to fill in the necessary thoughts about why she had allowed him such freedom in the first place.

It didn't seem like anything particularly intimate. Singh just masturbated a little in front of him and came, almost splashing him all over—but he got so turned on that he took Sylvia and Jaspera three more times. The last time, he was lying relaxed on the bed while the two of them gave him a double titjob, squeezing out the semen they so desired. He got much less sleep than he wanted that night, but he didn't consider himself completely dissatisfied. Sometimes you need to relax, don't you?

"You forgot it in my room yesterday." That was the next evening, when all the de Lomers and Stepan gathered once again to discuss upcoming actions and just talk. "When you showed how sweetly you come. And you didn't clean up your own spills, by the way. As an experienced paranoid and someone with specific knowledge, I can list a bunch of problems you could have brought upon yourself."

No, he expected her to be a little embarrassed, but from the look on her face, grabbing her toy and hiding it behind her belt, she was now ready to sink through the earth straight into Hell, to ask the demonic fiends for political asylum! Well, better to be overly nervous than to leave a drop of blood, a hair, or something else like that in enemy hands. And so far, she had been surprisingly competent in this regard, keeping track of everything, special spirits literally devouring her every touch, fingerprints, fallen hairs, and other traces of life. Well, except for the toilet, but there were separate amulet complexes there, which automatically destroyed or magically resonated almost all waste until the prints were completely lost — a simple and very reliable thing.

Shit cannot be used in sympathetic magic at all. The very nature of this mass is that it has already been rejected by the body, even if it retains its imprint. In principle, all these effective amulets and other means of protection are only slightly more reliable than a banal village outhouse, where aural and spiritual imprints are finally mixed and lose their individuality. Returning to the topic of Singha and leaving the topic of shit behind: he did not expect such carelessness from her, on the level of a village witch, and not just any witch, but a particularly stupid one.

"That's right, my daughter." Maega looks at her heiress reproachfully, while the heiress puts herself into a trance to avoid hysterics. "Don't make such mistakes again. We'll talk about this. But later, not now. Just the two of us."

No, why is she so nervous again? It feels like Singha is about to faint. At one point, her mental defenses were so down that he couldn't help but scan her superficial thoughts. No, he's glad that the system threw her a few freebies, even if he's wildly jealous of it. But why does she consider the gifts she received to be “punishment and reward for her shame”?

She is still very strange at times.

On the other hand, what strong gifted person is not strange?

* * *

Today, the de Lomer estate, which is also the commercial representative office of the same House, was completely packed. However, there was a reason for this. This was because the negotiations between the venerable Uncle Fester, who is Furval de Lomer, and the office of August de Mont Ros, together with August himself, had finally reached a logical and expected conclusion. It was one of de Lomer's largest contracts in recent years, albeit not entirely related to Morgrave. Yes, the issues of the upcoming deal could only be resolved here, but the main flow of money and goods was supposed to go through Astmark. Many humans and non-humans somehow habitually forget that Duke August owns not one Free City, but three. It's just that the other two are lost behind the Pearl of the Seaside.

What did de Lomer buy or sell in glorious Astmark? It's very simple—they bought the right to use Astmark's largest magical source, which is quite comparable to Morgrave's strongest source of magic. The only thing is that this source is, to put it mildly, a little cursed and generally harmful. It is literally kept blocked, using a second source of power as the main one, which is many times smaller and more modest. If this source, which cannot be used to power amulets, replenish reserves, or even be used in rituals, were normal, then Morgrave would not be the Pearl, as the inhabitants of Astmark say.

They are lying, or simply deluded, the shaman could say with certainty. The great city, the strongest and richest in the Confederation, if you don't count Neirat, which is essentially a separate compact kingdom, is not made by magical sources of any kind, but by an extremely convenient bay, a cove, and the Dantra River flowing into the Middle Sea. However, we are still talking about a magical source. This source constantly changes its characteristics, which is why any attempt to connect an amulet complex to it, even if assembled with the rigidity and toxicity of the energy in mind, ends in the complex burning out. The toxicity itself is already known — try to feed your gift with such crap and you can say goodbye to your gift in a month.

The thing is, the source, although very bad, is completely standard. It is quite possible to make it stable and rid it of toxic notes. It would still be undesirable to connect a personal gift to it, but it would be possible. For example, during a siege. And twenty or thirty years after the initial cleansing, even the remnants of harmful rigidity would gradually disappear. The source would become simply perfect. But to power the resident weaves of protective formations, mass harvest spells, and amulet complexes of guilds — please, even a day after the completion of purification and stabilization, just sign up for your turn. Roughly speaking, by earthly standards, the purification of the source could be considered analogous to the launch of a not-so-small nuclear power plant.

The problem is that purification, although possible, is extremely expensive and will take at least several years in the most optimistic case. No one in the city could afford such an operation. None of the local inhabitants of Asrtmak, who had been licking their lips at this source for two hundred and forty years, ever since the day it sprouted on the surface, having broken out from somewhere in the Underground. Augustus received many proposals regarding this source, especially from Neirat. He was already in power at that time, thanks to the connections he had with the Forest, which had given him almost five hundred years of life, so that he was still spry, just so as not to upset his pure-blooded, big-eared wife, and his connections with the Undermauntin were only slightly less than those with the Forest.

Yes, yes, not one or two magisters offered to cleanse this Source almost for free, personally and with their retinue... But with the right to gain authority over that Source, even if it was stipulated in a separate contract. It is not difficult to guess that Morgrave and Augustus, to put it mildly, did not need this — such a powerful magician, and one who had connections with Neirat, not in Morgrave, but in Astmark. Astmark, whose population had long been accustomed to being residents of “one of the two cities owned by de Mont Ros, apart from Morgrave.” They were accustomed to it, but still harbored a desire to become not “one of,” but their own. Many of the families and Houses that remembered the arrival of Augustus and his wife were still alive. They remembered how, back then, they had twisted the arms of the city council, buying some off, eliminating others, and removing from the game in more inventive ways.

The same hereditary head of the Council, after the mysterious disappearance of his father, spent most of his life polishing every inch of his dark elf slave's body with his tongue. Her brainwashing had begun under the heir's grandfather. The one who was supposed to become the head of the Council in a critical situation, but the heir himself was brainwashed, if not more than his eternal warm-up girl, then much more skillfully. Characteristically, he continued to behave relatively normally in public for a long time, making promises and giving hopeful speeches, saying that he was negotiating and looking for allies. When the hour of aggressive absorption of one Free City by another finally came, no one was ready.

In general, Augustus did not want to give Astmark such a powerful lever for the growth of free thought as the city's Source of such power. A Source on which it would not be shameful to build a tower for a magister, not a pair of sworn rival masters, who are the elite of Astmark's magical community now. And so the source remained ownerless. The only expense was the regular ritual of “sealing” it so that the toxic power would not leak out. And then the de Lomers arrived. Not alone, but in the company of the Noble House of de Campal and another Trading House, de Fabegé, with the consent of a couple of masters whose names were not mentioned, but whose identities were clear to everyone.

They offered something beneficial to Augustus—no tower, no city magistrate, just an extremely large factory for producing various types of amulets, enchanted materials and tools, a couple of smithies, and a mandatory workshop for making wands. Yes, all participants are investing very seriously. Yes, the purification will take at least three, but more likely five years, unless the Forest is enlisted to help... or a trio of modest shamans who try not to stand out too much. Yes, it will take at least ten years, but more likely fifteen, to recoup the costs. But in the magical world, rich people live long lives, even if they are not magicians themselves.

It's not the deal of the century, or even the deal of the half-century, but it can certainly claim to be the deal of the quarter-century by the standards of the Confederation of Free Cities. It was clear that all possible interested parties were on edge, keeping their amulets on, checking each other for nasty curses or suggestions, and security measures had been taken to a new level of paranoia. As a result, even if Urvag had wanted to, he could hardly have come up with anything else to strengthen security. In such conditions, he simply could not, did not have the right, to tell the guests to leave and put the house under siege. Even Maega would not have understood him, let alone his relatives!

The deal itself has not yet been finalized. It will be signed in Astmark, where the final details will be discussed, but the most important part, obtaining agreement in principle, has already been accomplished. It is equally beneficial for all parties to obtain such a powerful source of not only money but also resources. The issue of such a large manufacturing facility, where even by rough estimates at least fifty talented people will work, and more likely all seventy, is already a matter of politics. And where there is politics, there are always a lot of hidden dangers, so everyone around was afraid of provocations of one kind or another.

Against this backdrop, the evil orc from the depths of the green Steppe was not exactly an extra, but far from the main source of problems and worries.

"Just recharge, boy." Stepan assumed the boy was addressing him, but Stae couldn't respond that way, so he silently pumped some power into the game board, which resembled a cross between chess and wargames, causing all sorts of illusory pieces to move more quickly and the image to stop flickering. "Yeah, that'll do, get lost."

Stae gets lost, mentally saying everything he thought about his dear guest, a distant relative not even of Urvag, but of his distant relatives. He wanted to send everyone and everything away, jump into the nearest dark corner, and not leave the underground lair for the next few days or even weeks. But he always wanted to do that, so he had to overcome himself and continue the humiliation. The list of those whom the shaman would send a couple of days of diarrhea grew and grew, which is why his future revenge would clearly be taken either as mass poisoning or as equally mass terrorism, if he did not have the sense to disguise everything as the aforementioned poisoning.

Singha, who was currently fending off verbal attacks from her paternal aunts, looked at Stepan with such sympathy in her eyes that the rumors about Stae's status could well have gained a few points in credibility. One of the aunts, with a keen eye comparable to modern optics, clearly noticed something, and it seemed as if the wheels in her head were turning, thinking about how to use it to her advantage. Well, they definitely were spinning — the protection there is not bad, only superficial emotions and moods could be caught, while the thoughts themselves were hidden as if under a gelatin cap.

The formal part of the event had long since ended. Now, everyone had scattered to the corners and broken up into small groups based on their interests, and poor Stae had gotten so tired of trying to please them all that he almost regretted not staying with Singha. But they hadn't left him there precisely so that no knowledgeable eye would see the Object “Stallion.” And yes, no one said anything to Stae, which is for the best. Thanks to Master Lavis. When his reserves began to dwindle and his previously powerful aura began to fade, Stepan-Ste was finally given the go-ahead, and he went to rest. Entering his little room, he suppressed a roar of rage and began to quietly hack the amulet that had been stuck here at some unknown point in time.

Previously, Maega herself had placed protection on his room, “unofficially” and“ inconspicuously” so that everything would be clear to everyone. And the fact that someone had bypassed this protection, which was more of a sensory system than actual protection, which Stae himself could not notice, and left a little gift, caused a dull irritation. Now he had to investigate this too, taking away hours of his own sleep! Looping the image of him already lying down to sleep, the shaman glanced at the bed itself, at the fresh linen, and at the layer of alchemical powder on top of the sheets, almost invisible to both spiritual and aural vision. An aphrodisiac that guarantees erotic dreams, combined with a two-component activator of “passionate obedience,” tied to the scent of some very decent perfume.

He is sure that he smelled this scent at the party, but he can't remember who was wearing it. In general, the plan is quite clear. When he meets the woman wearing the perfume, his upper head must turn off, and he should be more agreeable. As for the observer amulet, it seems to have been placed either to monitor restless erotic movements in his sleep... or it was placed by someone else who didn't know about the potion. How fed up he was with local life and society, where they try to brainwash people with love spell almost more often than they simply kill them! He wouldn't be as offended by poison in his bed as he is by this filth.

Giving up on everything, he decided to think about it tomorrow, putting the mannequin doll to bed and going down to the underground sleeping quarters, where he simply collapsed onto a soft mattress, wrapped himself in a blanket, and passed out. He had his usual dreams. He especially remembered some textbook Azari from the Mass Effect universe chasing after a one-armed guy in a space suit, while he yelled at her that it was all a trick, a trap, and that he wasn't going to climb the gangway. Three people in similar space suits watching this show and munching on popcorn, except that one of them was a relatively young-looking man, the second was a typical factory worker, and the third was a beautiful red-haired woman who commented very emotionally. The latter, by the way, cursed the one-armed man in a particularly inventive manner.
T.N.

One dream followed another, but he was jolted awake by the wail of an alarming siren and the invigorating effect of a couple of spirits left behind specifically for such an occasion. He and Singha each had a pair of bracelets with very interesting little spirits. The spirits sat in both bracelets at the same time, making them the perfect means of transmitting primitive messages that could not be blocked by anything less powerful than the ever-memorable Cauldron of Worms. There were only a few signals: “come by when you have a chance to talk,” “come by when you're free,” “come by in the evening,” and so on. This allowed the de Lomer family to request negotiations with Stepan without attracting attention.

There was also an option to send all signals at once, which was perceived by the shamans as Morse code, something like: “FUBAR IS COMING, HELP.” The earthling thought for a long time, three and a half seconds, but then jumped up almost instantly, changing into his combat gear on the fly and contacting Singha through a communication amulet based on a strong spirit. Through it, he could literally exchange images, like in an out-of-body dialogue, instead of signaling... He chose to ignore the fact that such a connection would be perfect for suggestive influence on Singha. With his knowledge, it would be possible to use any connection in this way.

\\“What happened?” The shaman asks his rhetorical question calmly and without panic, hiding his irritation, because his spirits would not have allowed the world coalition forces to storm the estate in search of Master, and everything else seemed to him to be surmountable. “Why should I prepare the retinue?”

\\“Trouble!” That was the answer he got, followed by a cascade of unfiltered images that the shaman's mind easily perceived and immediately understood. “Help me, Pann, I beg you!”

Part of him, it must be admitted, wanted to say something like, “That's not my problem,” but he was much more concerned with covering up, disguising himself, spending time and energy on a veil of secrecy for himself, rather than trusting Singha and her family. Because that would be the smarter and more correct thing to do, as all his intelligence skills were insistently telling him. But that was another part of Stepan, not the one that shouted at the ceiling shrouded in darkness, full of wild rage and promises to hurt someone mortally:

"DA FUUUUUUUUCK!!!"

* * *

Stepan entered the special meeting room, the most secure one, used only occasionally, with a flying kick. Literally, because he fell out of the closet again, where he managed to quickly and swiftly make his way through. If they hadn't opened that path for him, there's no way he could have gotten in here so quickly. He fell out of the closet, let's be honest, in a very stylish way — in a cloud of paper sheets with all kinds of notes raised by the movement and someone's negligee on his face. Who left a woman's negligee in a closet with secret documents is a big question, but it's not the place to ask it. Again, then he would have to ask himself how he managed to forget to put on his mask in his haste, still holding it in his hands. Although, okay, screw the mask, the memory of any extra witnesses will have to be wiped clean anyway.

Throwing aside the item of clothing that had enraged him and kicking a nearby chair against the wall, the shaman poured out a bunch of healing spirits from a couple of totems he was carrying, covering Furval, Urvag, and, more importantly, young Ullis, who had suffered the most. Having mastered magical vision despite his practically non-existent gift, Furval saw these spirits and was stunned, falling silent. The shaman brought with him no more than Maega had already summoned. And he, like Maega and Singha, was just beginning to summon the strongest contracts.

In her last words, she couldn't hold back her emotions and began to convey to him a condensed version of the events that had taken place. One of Urvag and Furval's relatives, who was already in a supporting role, and now with a deal in the works that would squeeze his latest profits into a new super-manufacturing project, decided to influence events a little in his favor. Was he just an idiot, or had he lost his mind? It's unlikely we'll ever find out now. He died too reliably. But the green grandfather fucked him over with a special steppe cynicism. Before his death, already dying, he confessed with a childish resentment that he thought everyone present would be horrified by the very unpleasant effect of a “cotton body,” when it is difficult to even get out of bed.

This would delay the deal on the source of magic for some time, just enough to take care of his own well-being. Or even manage to break the deal altogether, collecting payment for it from a simply indescribable pile of interested parties. He planned to pin the sabotage on the Astmark bosses, as they were the ones who had the least to gain from an even tighter grip by de Mont Ros on their throats. For generations, they had cherished the dream of cultivating that source themselves, accumulating funds, gaining leverage for bargaining, and more equal relations with Morgrave. They almost managed to accumulate the funds twice, but each time it ended badly. Thanks to Morgrave's agents and August's beloved wife, who did not shy away from personally planning those operations.

He circumvented his oaths of allegiance to de Lomer with several rituals performed in advance, accepted alchemy, and the fact that his bomb was not supposed to cause any direct harm. Moreover, he sincerely believed that breaking the deal would only benefit the House, for it was better to have stable decorative lizards in hand than dubious investments in dragons soaring in the heavens, which were unlikely to pay off. Moreover, he even shook some money out of the green ghoul, as he thought, guaranteeing certain problems and reputational losses for Maegi as the mistress of the house. And under oath, he bought the bomb from him, of course, checking it in every way possible to make sure it was exactly what he paid for.

What was this idiot thinking, as if he didn't know about the Mute Tamburine's habit of passing on the consequences of broken oaths to his closest disciples, with dire consequences for the disciple, or even to the bones of those disciples who had disappointed him? There were not even rumors about the green one and his treachery, but confirmed conclusions. The whole Steppe knew that the Mute Tamburine's oath was worth less than the scroll on which it was written. He clearly wasn't thinking with his brain. Stepan would definitely check it out using necromantic methods later — somehow, he had survived until this day, despite the complete absence of said brain.

As a result, the bone plate, which had been checked four times by different specialists, was struck with a simple but almost harmless blow. More precisely, it also struck them, eating away a huge chunk of the traitor's aura, long before he could hide it in an inconspicuous place. No, the main blow was hidden deep within the structure, which was literally the flesh of the higher spirit, a materialized curse, one of Akshtar the Inaudible Tambourine's most iconic weapons,

The Curse of the Prickly Bones.

That's what it was called.

It was this crap, tuned to the aura, blood, spiritual imprints, and almost the soul of Maega, her Daughter, and even Urvaga, as her husband, that struck gathered people. It was powerful crap, deadly to anyone else, but it was Singha who took the brunt of the blow. Thanks to her increased skill and a whole series of completely new contracts with benevolent spirits, which she now summoned with ease, she was able to suppress the attack. And the will of the higher spirit flowed through her defense, moving further along the chain — going to Maega, who had already managed to get her bearings and also defended herself, and from her to those who were close to her in spirit and body.

Urvag and his son, young Ullis.

Only if Urvag and Furval, who happened to be nearby, went to the ball in full regalia and wore all possible protection, would they be caught at the very last moment, although it was still very dangerous. And the boy, who was not yet strong enough to carry many powerful protective artifacts, had unfortunately just come out of the bathhouse. And it got him through a dozen enchanted walls, through blood and will, through a spiritual path, straight through the higher spheres. It hooked him, and then resonated back to his father and uncle. Maega and Singha too, but they were ready and repelled the repeated impulse, while Urvag and Furval were hit hard, though not as badly as Ullis. Fortunately, at that moment, Maega and Singh's retinues worked perfectly, and the repeated double impulse of the piercing curse did not affect anyone else.

The most powerful weapon for the elimination of the damned orc. Literally a signature move with enormous recoil. He never used it more than once every fifty years, and the last time he used it was almost a hundred years ago. Everyone had almost come to believe that he had lost this sinister contract or had worked it out completely. The crap is terrifying not only because of the abomination of the curse, but also because of the resonating and repeating impulse. It affects one member of the clan, and the connection between husband and wife also works. The attack is repeated on all those who remain nearby. Again and again, until the clan is wiped out to the third generation.

All of the de Lomers could go watch cartoons together today on Death TV.

In fact, this is exactly how the Mute Tambourine got rid of his enemies, whom he multiplied at an incredible rate. He literally slaughtered them by the family. In history, there were only four or even four and a half cases when victims were saved after the Stinging Bones had already seized them. Three of these cases involved elves who were rescued by entire conclaves of magicians, and another involved a representative of the Neirat Conclave. The half-case was a halfling who was saved by Gaia's frantic prayer. Apparently, she liked the appeal of the halfling, who did not even stop fucking the priestess he had seduced during the prayer. But the curse did not really take root there. There was too much grace.

It's easier with secondary marks. At a time, the curse kills only one individual with maximum intensity, affecting the others with a fifth of its power. If a ritual sacrifice is performed on the one who has been affected right now, the rest of the chain, that is, Urvag and Furval, can still be saved. Yeah. And the only one who could perform such a ritual in a short time was Maega. How could a mother choose between her beloved husband and her equally beloved child? How could she make such a decision? But in general, Stepan, who had read about Yula's ancestral curse, immediately understood where the green one had plagiarised his ultimate curse. Well, or vice versa. Spirits are often older than other gods, and many curses embody a similar effect of “one sacrifice in a complete chain.”

Only this is especially disgusting.

The boy's legs were affected. It was from there that the nasty effect began to spread, gradually reaching his pelvis, forcing Maegu to simply paralyze the boy and numb him as much as possible. He couldn't put him into a coma, as that would speed up the spread, and there was a high chance he wouldn't wake up. And it was impossible to completely numb the pain; at most, he could make sure the victim didn't go crazy from the pain. The pain comes from bone needles growing directly into the body, each thinner than a cat's hair, covering the entire surface of the bone. It won't kill you right away, but it will kill you for sure, killing you painfully, agonizingly, so painfully that it's easier to tear your own throat out while you can still move.

The worst thing is that this is not just a physical effect—the aura and spiritual body change, healing effects simply do not help, but only accelerate death. The aura and spirit perceive these thorns as the standard state of the body, and any attempts to cancel them are seen as a violation of the standard. Add to this reactive growth and a regenerative factor, thanks to which all victims temporarily regenerate faster than trolls, and it becomes almost impossible to repair such damage. Furval was only touched on the tips of his fingers on his left hand, but he cut off his entire palm. But it was too late, part of the hand had already regenerated, and the spread of the curse was only stopped with the help of several specific spirits of Maega. It's no surprise that she has such spirits in her arsenal — her family is not the first generation to be at odds with the Mute Tambourine.

Urvag was even less fortunate. His arm was injured up to the elbow. He did not even attempt to cut it off. Instead, he surrounded himself with amulets, almost floating in the body of a spirit that had partially manifested itself, looking like a small milky-white cloud, as if it had just been plucked from the summer sky. But Ullis was dying, and there was no changing that, even the new Stepans senior spirit was powerless here. You can't heal a wound that doesn't want to heal; that isn't a wound in the full sense of the word. Stepan casts spells, knot by knot, trying to stop the spread of the filth on the spine, but then notices that some of the villi are already growing inside the spinal cord. A moment later, at his command, Maega notices it too, but allows herself only a quiet sob.

Singha looks like a pale ghost, and the shaman sees death in her eyes. A cruel and fierce death, not meant for him or anyone else in the room, but for someone far away in the Steppe. She never looked at him like that, even when she caught him around a pocket inside the High Spheres, eaten of foul spirits, even when she considered him Master and was ready to collapse her lungs just to avoid falling into his captivity. Stepan continues to chant, new totems roll out of the open cabinet, right onto the scattered papers, signs of a protective charm are burned into the floor and the luxurious pile carpet, but he realizes that none of this will help, that it is the same agony as the torment of a petty shithead.

"No," he says. "We won't achieve anything like this. The body is doomed."

"We must! We have to! We have to try!" She would have attacked him right then and there, if not for the restriction of her oath. "Don't you dare! Don't you dare! Say that! Don't you dare turn away! My son! Alive! Alive! Alive, not just a body!"

"Damn it!" The shaman politely parries her remark, causing Furval to swallow a piece of his bitten pipe, judging by the smell of smoke filled with select hashish. "Thank you. So here's the thing. The boy's body is doomed. We can't save him; that's what the curse was created for. So, we make our move, heh-heh, and try to trick this bastard. The blow was aimed at the body, the aura, and the spiritual layers, but the main focus was still on the body and the upper layers. The deeper layers serve as markers; damage is inflicted on them, but they themselves do not suffer from the thorns. Do you get it?"

She couldn't get it, even though she was racking her brains, pushing them to their limits and a little beyond, but the shaman himself had not yet fully realized the plan that had formed in his head, and therefore could not convey it directly through images. Taking a deep breath, he looked into the eyes of several spirits at once, changing the spectrums of magical and spiritual vision, causing the color, shape, and number of pupils to change with great frequency.

"I have a way to restore the body, specifically the flesh, from practically anything, even if it's a severed head or being cut in half. I've tried it myself." He says, trying not to look into the mother's eyes, burning with desperate hope, or into Urvag's stony, calm face, his teeth clenched until they creak. "We need to preserve the basis of the aura and the spiritual body. You are his mother; your blood and your womb gave birth to him. I'll rip him out of his body, forcibly and traumatically, but there's no choice. Then we'll wait until the bones grow back. We'll seal the curse inside and burn it out. Then we'll restore the body as best we can. And we'll try to put the boy back into himself. As best we can."

Silence, during which both shamans digest his idea, but there are no other options anyway. All the others are even worse. Either kill Ullis or lose Urvaga too, because the curse will pass on to him. Although it's worth mentioning that Furval is an extremely brave man, because he sincerely believes that Maega will not forcibly transfer the curse to him... and he doesn't know about this possibility, but suspects it, senses it in his gut, not with a magical gift. Maega, by the way, herself does not know how she would act if she had to choose again.

"I have. The Gift of the Tablets. Free talent. For the assignment. And one more. Transferable. To you, Pann." It was Singha, in whom, despite his extreme concentration, something like a hint of awkwardness flashed. "I will choose the right khao. Khaos-uvalar. I saw it among all the gifts. It will restore everything subtle. Vatayat lam shata. But more will be needed. To sew. The body and khao. You too. Find. The one who will help. Pay with my gift."

Yes, that would help. He knew about the skill point Singh had at his disposal, as well as another transferable one. He just hadn't looked at her status in enough detail to read all the options for spending those points. And she, it turns out, had just read it. He did the same thing himself, often fantasizing before bed about where he would invest the system gifts available to him. In principle, if you think about it, if you calculate everything carefully, they have a chance to save the boy. Small, a shadow of a shadow, but it's there.

"Ahem! I apologize, but I think this is an appropriate moment to announce that I am prepared to take any oath or even voluntarily sacrifice part of my memory, confirming that what I have heard will not go anywhere." Now he seems to be getting nervous, perhaps following a family tradition, mistaking Stepan for the damn Master. "But before I lose my memory or any other outcome, I demand to be allowed to punch my brother in the teeth. Brotherly."

Maega suddenly giggled, almost bursting into hysterics—by the end, her laughter sounded almost like crying. The shaman grinned, appreciating her docility and quick wit. Judging by the superficial thoughts that the shaman read, the man, upon hearing about the Tablet, also noticed the discrepancy between the mentalist-artifactor and the pure shaman-spellcaster. And he made far-reaching conclusions that Singha didn't make at the time. However, the reason may have been that Master, who had almost captured an entire god, was not really seen as Singha's lackey, and he would hardly have allowed a brainwashed puppet to yell at him like that.

"Even if you hit him twice, he's not my brother, and it's not my teeth." The shaman smiled, releasing his spiritual limbs from his body and becoming like some kind of ghostly creature that had entered a human body. "I'll start, you follow. Now!"

It wasn't difficult to literally tear the soul out of the boy. Although Stepan thought in passing that Lakhgan's help would be truly invaluable and appropriate right now. Although, obviously, they would have tried to beat him up if he had suggested letting such an ally near the dying child. And Lakhgan would have been the first to strike, because only an idiot could come up with such an idea, which would have risked her losing access to the Tablets due to the death of its bearer."

In fact, he acted very quickly, and everything happened in an instant. Three phantom hands struck, the dying child's body twitched in agony, and the spirits of all three continued to sustain its life. Maega cried out as she took a sparkling, blue-white cloud of strange mist from his phantom hands, temporarily visible even to the naked eye. In an instant, she placed this cloud in her chest, directly opposite her heart, warming it with maternal warmth and preventing the aura from being destroyed. Still, the kid is not a shaman and is not gifted. He would never have been able to survive such a traumatic procedure of being pulled out of the body. Under the heart, again, is a perfectly normal option. Returning it to the womb is, of course, safer, but then a severe Oedipus complex (if such a term even exists) is almost guaranteed at the onset of puberty. He would be drawn to his mother at the level of a strong and natural love charm, yes.

In general, Maega did everything right.

"We need to call." Singha seemed completely calm, even though she knew as well as he did how difficult it was to summon a higher spirit on the first attempt and without preparation, even if he was contracted through the Tablet system, which is why there was almost no hope that they would make it in time, or that they would succeed if they did. "Right now."

"No, no, no, the odds are so slim that I won't even try." He silenced Maega, who had already opened her mouth in indignation, with a phantom fist to her nose, explaining his thought. "I have a way to buy some time. It's expensive. But, bitch, it's worth it for the kids. Get your asses up and run to Narni... I mean, damn it, dive into the closet. Hold the kid, Maega. There's a disturbance in space; it might shake."

And again, they obeyed him without delay, following in his footsteps. In an instant, they were inside the cave. Another moment later, time stood still when the meta-skill renewed by the token was activated. The renewal token itself would soon be completely depleted, but another meta-skill came to the rescue, one that could replenish the tokens' charges. Not in all cases, not always, and not indefinitely, but still, still.

"So, I already sent Singha a description of the effect, but to put it simply, time has stopped everywhere in the world except in my cave. We have 24 hours to prepare." Singha seems to transmit the essence of the effect directly to his mother. "And now, I fucking hope I don't regret this. Yes, Singh, you understood correctly. Maega, grit your teeth and get ready. This has a big impact."

And with these words, he sent a request to the eldest shaman to join the group, fervently hoping she possessed as much decency as her daughter. Or at least a comparable amount. And, although he would never admit it to himself, he also hoped that, if anything happened, Great Milfi would pull him out from under her heel. Although even if she did, it certainly wouldn't be right away, that was a fact. Maega, to her credit, didn't even lose her concentration, though Singha was ensuring that the hold on her precious brother's soul wouldn't be broken.

There wasn't much time left ahead, but there was still a lot to do.

* * *

For poor Urvaga and Furgal, it clearly looked a little comical. Three shamans hide in a closet, and a second later, they come out. Only they come out fully assembled, literally hung with all kinds of amulets and auxiliary talismans, and each of them drags a couple of totems behind them. Stepan got it especially bad. His load was iron. Yes, yes, a totem made of alloyed gnome steel, a solid ingot weighing three Stepans and another Stae, bought from the heartless System at a relatively normal price. There were lighter options available, but this one was also cheaper, which settled the question of the purchase.

When the shaman placed the totem, covered with symbols resembling runes, directly on the floor, the floor nearly collapsed, and had to be reinforced. And then... then you could say that the routine began. It was deadly dangerous for the dying and partially dead (the soulless body was gradually cooling down, despite the support of the spirits, and the fibers had successfully sprouted on the inside and outside of the skull), but it was routine nonetheless. Considering the supplies they had purchased, the time spent on preparation, and Maegu, who had managed to meditate and absorb the skill point she had earned — the second of those Singha had received for completing a certain assignment — they had a better chance of success than failure.

The curse was about to break free from Ullis's dead body onto Urvag when Stepan and his wonderful team began to work. In principle, it was possible to try to save Urvaga's arm, but he said that a month in a coma and an expensive prosthesis were better than his son's grave, and he no longer needed to masturbate. Furval bitterly joked that he would have to ask his beloved wife for a handjob, and she probably wouldn't refuse if he used his skills of eloquent speech well. Yeah, he'll work his tongue.

"Have you lost your fear?" Maega was somewhat surprised, almost falling out of her meditation, while Stepan and Singha placed the totems in their places and modified the protective barrier. "Or has your mind been clouded?"

"I've gotten myself into such a mess that I consider my lost memory a stroke of luck, and it gives me indescribable pleasure to finally be able to say to your face everything I've wanted to say over the long years of our acquaintance." He smiles almost happily, glancing at his arm, which has been cut off almost to the elbow, and taking another drag of the magical hashish. "I appreciate and respect you immensely, and I recognize and accept my brother's choice, really. And if I had the chance, I would give my arm, heh-heh, my arm, to save your little boy. By the way, I like him much more than you, heh-heh-heh. But you are insolent, rude, coarse, self-centered, uncouth, malicious... hr... hr-r-r-r-r!"

There was a second's pause and all eyes turned to Stepan.

"What?" He asks in a businesslike tone, as if nothing had happened. "The man clearly overdosed on drugs; he would have said so much that no one would have been able to keep track of who said what. And, by the way, in his defense, he didn't lie about respecting and appreciating you, or about his brother. And as for the rest..."

"What?" She was even a little taken aback, to be honest.

"What?" the shaman mimics her. "I breathed in a bit of that stuff too."

Urvag coughed just then, rather than laughing at the situation. That's exactly what he would say to Maega, and to Stepan too, if it happened. The joke lightened the mood somewhat, so they proceeded with the summoning in a slightly better mood than they had been in recently. They didn't even plan to hide the summoning; at most, they would slightly blur the energy background so it would be unclear what entity they had summoned. And so that no one would realize that there were three summoners, not two. Maega would have to explain later why the call did not take place in her White Yurt... although no, she wouldn't have to, because men are not allowed there, or rather, they are allowed, but only once in a lifetime. Only Urvag had been there before, according to Maega, so they performed the call right in the protected hall, whose walls served as an insulating barrier.

They are in a hurry.

They rush recklessly, incredibly, madly, suicidally, but it is impossible to delay the inevitable any longer. And an extra day won't help, even if he spends his last charge of the chrono skill. To prepare perfectly, they would need at least a couple of weeks, or better yet, a month, which no meta-skills could give them. Even if he had a fully charged token. And so they begin to chant, which looks crumpled and somewhat hasty, but this only highlights the skill of all three shamans.

First come the supporting spirits belonging to Stepan, mother, and daughter, acting together and hardly interfering with each other. Reality begins to melt away as usual, becoming softer and more malleable. Urvag occupies his designated corner of stability, quietly puffing on an abandoned pipe, either for pain relief or for courage. Furval snores in his small circle, seemingly having farted loudly and thus scaring away some small spirit of purity. Fortunately, the line was duplicated five times over. Stepan thinks in passing that Furval truly trusts his brother, since he did not run to the healers or the portal, which could have taken him to Neirat.

Yes, it wouldn't have helped at all, but it's still a telling moment. All it took was for Maega to say she knew roughly what to do, and for Urvagu to say he believed Maega, and the fat, unfunny uncle immediately made his decision. This requires not only courage, but also inner strength. As a successful head of a Trading House, you have to maintain the right to trust those you value. Well, and also a bunch of cross-oaths on altars and contractual anchors, joint ventures, and completely separate spheres of interest.

The trio of powerful spirits looks like birds that are constantly changing their appearance, sometimes falcons, sometimes owls, sometimes eagles, sometimes sparrows, sometimes all of these birds at once, but none of them separately. Each bird-like appearance slightly shifts the constants of the world of Spheres, making their area as suitable as possible for the entities that will arrive a little later. Another group of spirits, also powerful but bordering on minor, takes the form of paintbrushes. These brushes simply poke at seemingly random spots on the walls, ceiling, and floor, leaving dots that are invisible to the eye and even difficult to discern with spiritual perception. These dots do nothing, but they are present, marking the point of convergence and arrival.

The Entity summoned by Maega is like... a hand, a five-fingered palm woven from snow-white purity. Purer than snow, purer than thought, purer than love or conscience, purer than anything in the world, purity itself encased in cool mountain air. The Sphere of goodness and winds, aspects of purity and inviolability, immaculateness, and unattainability. It could be a battle shield, a healing touch, or even a recreational bath, but the essence remained the same: within the limits of the Five Virtues, there was no place for evil; a priori, there was not, could not be, and could not exist. In an instant, the abomination that was still devouring the bodies of Urvag and Furval simply sank into this palm, unable to tarnish its purity even in the slightest.

Three very tense seconds later, the evil left Ullis's body, mutilated, disfigured, twisted, as if covered with bonsai bristles, but paradoxically still alive. Alive because the essence of the Prickly Bones is not in the killing itself, but in the sensations transmitted to the spirit, in such sweet and alluring, distilled and purified agony. The exposed areas of the boy's skin resemble the body of a bird-eating spider — the same fine hairs, only in reality they are not hair, but thin bone spines. They no longer contain the evil, the materialized will, the direct essence, the very nature of death from bone torment that defined the cursing and cursed spirit. Not just dark or evil, but literally a step, half a step away from unspeakable wickedness. The personality of the Mute Tamburine must be very, very, very extraordinary to persuade such a being to sign not a one-time contract, but such a long-term one.

This time, it takes even less than a moment for Stepan to invoke his meta-skill, instantly restoring his body to that of a normal young boy. Maega, who has been sobbing, cannot hold back the tears rolling down her cheeks, but her movements are steady, and she works with her spiritual body no worse than Stepan. And this is despite the fact that he has a spiritual transformation, while she acts without one. The property-blessing she has taken, “the warmth of gentle hands,” allows her not to harm her son's naked essence, allowing her to normally insert the central part torn out with flesh into the grooves. But, speaking in allegories, the torn wires, bent gears, and broken microchips of the general mechanism of Ullis's subtle body have not gone anywhere.

And here, in the floor, walls, and ceiling of the extremely expensive, fully protected conference room, hundreds and hundreds of identical holes appear. Right on top of the dots left by the brushes, right where they are most comfortable to appear. A triphobe's nightmare, to say the least. In each of these holes, a breeze whistles, whistles slightly differently from the others, whispers, bites into the consciousness, gets under the skin, leaves a single word in the mind, almost shouting it right in the face, shouting, screaming, moaning, crying. A word that repeats the same thing over and over again, the same thing: taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor-taylor...

These threads are invisible. They are invisible, but they pierce every detail, every torn or mutilated part of Ullis's subtle body, fastening them to the base, healing the wounds, restoring functionality. It doesn't end right away; this nasty melody of wind and a single word doesn't fall silent right away. Urvag had to open his ear nerves, but he was still pierced by this filth, which made him wildly envious of Furval, who was snoring loudly and had launched another gas attack.

And yet they managed.

That wasn't the end of it. They summoned seven more powerful spirits and one elder spirit, and they had to amputate Urvag's completely destroyed arm. Then, with some surprise, albeit pleasant, realized that it had returned to its place at the cost of another meta-skill charge. They had to check Ullis's body and spirit several times, finding several places where “Taylor-Taylor-Taylor” had worked a little too roughly. In the future, this could affect his cognitive functions or result in chronic aura dysfunctions. But honestly, these were really minor issues compared to what they had already managed to overcome.

Then there was Furgal, who had come to his senses. He honestly said that he had prayed very hard to Damocar that his last day would just be a dream. He also briefly, and under Stepan's watchful eye, sent several messages through the amulet, demanding that they not interfere, or else they would be punished by a backlash of everything that this crazy... that is, the venerable spirit summoner had called upon for their salvation. Urvag also made several comments, including a brief but intense conversation with August de Mont Ros himself. Even if it was through the amulet. Upon learning that Urvag and his kin were alive, he congratulated them and expressed some hope that they would later explain to him what the riot of magical forces that had just taken place in his city was all about.

Stepan diligently ignores the system messages flashing at the edge of his mind. Maega and Singha do exactly the same at his request. The brothers, who love and appreciate each other, look intently at each other. What Furval did not lie about was that, before he began to discuss his future with Stepan, he actually punched Urvag in the teeth. The blow turned out to be surprisingly good, and the man himself boasted, slapping himself loudly on the belly, that in tavern fights in his youth, he had no equal. Maega, tired and therefore slowly healing her beloved husband's broken jaw, did not comment on this, but looked at Furval in such a way that he involuntarily began to hide behind Stepan's back.

And Stepan had a clear feeling that he had again found himself in some fucking circus with unfunny clowns.
* * *

Внимание! Этот перевод, возможно, ещё не готов.
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Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/86785/594693

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP