Готовый перевод Ведомый / Follower: 10.

11.

* * *

Igor woke up feeling very well-rested, very happy, and very stiff at the same time, as if he had slept for at least a full day, which was later confirmed by a glance at his phone clock – twenty-six hours of sleep. He couldn’t even imagine that he would be so drowsy, but apparently, the tense moments of the last few weeks and the move to a new place of residence had taken their toll. With noticeable difficulty overcoming the bliss, he threw off the blanket and assessed the luxuriously sized stain on his shorts, clearly indicating that he had dreamed of something pleasant. An attempt to remember the dreams caused his face to blush profusely, despite the fact that he had seen only extremely vague images, in which almost only Elizaveta Albertovna appeared, not very well dressed.

Wiping the satisfied smile off his face, as if he'd slept with the real Elizaveta Albertovna rather than had a wet dream with her, the young man quickly cleaned up and changed his clothes, hiding the stains on his reputation deeper in the bowels of the wardrobe he'd been assigned. Dragging his bones into the shower, he was greeted by the sound of a grumbling coffee machine, slipping past the kitchen as quickly as possible, only issuing the standard, ‘Good morning.’ A contrasting shower, mostly cold, as some of the couple liked to bask in the hot water, having spent it all on themselves, washed away the remnants of sleep, bringing Igor to a fairly alert state. When he came into the kitchen already dressed and hungry, he was greeted by a mountain of primitive sandwiches, as there was nothing more substantial here, only what they had brought with them. Delivery was no longer working all over the city, and Elizaveta Albertovna had clearly not learnt to cook very diligently, if at all.

"A message had arrived from someone I knew." That was the news she'd given him when his hunger was satisfied and the standard morning conversation was over. "That artist didn't have a second home, but he had an ex-wife living just about the neighbourhood where you got your bomb response from. That's why I'm sure the poor woman was. They've already passed a decree, and by the end of the week, they'll start forcibly removing people. Even say they'll bring some Norwegians here to share their experience because they have their own anomaly, but it's smaller. Taking into account the political situation, we are facing a completely unprecedented level of co-operation between states. And we need to get out of here sooner, or we could be in trouble. Four, maybe five days. In that time, we need to kill the creature and get out of the city. I'll help you get settled in, don't worry about that."

Igor only nods, not even answering, because everything she said coincides with his own thoughts. He would have been the first to get out of here, even if he didn't care about the Step scale, which had filled up a little after the battle with the abris, but it was necessary to close the Step for Elizaveta Albertovna as well. An extra, fourth Vessel and general strengthening, strengthening of body, mind, and spirit, was too big a trump card. If everything works out, one can leave, joining the crowd of people fleeing from a fate worse than death. Surely many of the Exalted will be lost in this queue with them.

"Tonight, then?" He asked, calculating the distance to the target, and then, with a nod of approval, explained his thought more fully. "If it starts snowing again with a blizzard, and it seems to be starting already, the patrols won't see their fingers. You can't take a car, you'll have to walk, but it's about forty-five minutes if you go straight. If the weather's normal. In a blizzard, we can go much longer, but in any case, we need darkness to avoid being spotted."

"Yes, Igor, that's a sensible approach, and I share it. I propose to drink hot tea and fill thermoses, and I also propose to do it for you, boy, because you are closer to the kettle." As if waiting for the moment of this phrase, the light in the bulbs insidiously blinked and disappeared, and then the hum of the fridge, confirming that it was not the bulb burned out. "Yeah. Then, young man, take the kettle, as there's a gas cooker. And don't sigh so miserably, just help Aunt Lisa, be a good boy."

"Only if Aunt Lisa shows her big tits," Igor answered with a doomed grin, standing up and picking up the kettle, having managed to fill it with water before he realized what he'd just fucking said. "Uh-huh. I mean, that's not what I meant to say! I mean, I didn't mean to say it at all! Aunt Lisa, I mean Elizaveta Albertovna."

Turning around to face her, blushing and pale at the same time, he met her ironic and not even indignant, but a little mocking gaze, and realized that now he had been as stupid as he had been a couple of times before! And it just slipped out of his tongue, he didn't even realize what he had said. The woman sitting in front of him only shakes her head disapprovingly before unbuttoning her sweatshirt and pulling her tight beige T-shirt up in a single movement, exposing the very tits he had asked to see. Igor can't help himself as he stares at them, mesmerized, listening to the words of a slightly annoyed and indignant Aunt Lisa. That is, Elizaveta Albertovna, damn it. Listening, and at the same time starting to lazily jack off, knowing for sure that she couldn't see what he was doing anyway.

"Did you get a look, my dear?" The rhetorical question doesn't require an answer, nor does the unintelligible phrase she said, but he nods involuntarily before she leisurely adjusts her clothes, hiding her exposed skin. "Now, if you'd be so kind as to finish with the thermoses, and afterwards we'll talk about how you'll apologize for your words."

On that note, she finished her coffee, got up, and left, leaving Igor to jerk off alone in the company of exceptionally panicky thoughts. He thought these thoughts intensely, even managing to take his hand away from his groin as he began pouring warm chamomile tea with honey into one thermos, and strong black tea with sugar into the second. He went into the living room, which was also Aunt Lisa's room, as if he were going to be executed, drooping his head and again trying to keep the tension down, because the hard-on he got from seeing the naked breasts of the woman he had dreamed about as a teenager was unbelievable. Fortunately, she couldn't see where his hands were, so he wouldn't be digging himself an even deeper hole.

"I don't suppose we're going to pretend that nothing happened?" Again, a rhetorical question, though the unhurriedly and surreptitiously masturbating young man, straining to keep his face impassive, would have been perfectly happy to pretend he hadn't said anything. "Then I will choose your punishment. You're a grown man, and I'm not your mommy, so... You called my breasts tits, a vulgar and obscene word, though appropriate given the size of my bust. They're the ones you should be apologizing to. I think 20 minutes of gentle kissing on each breast is enough. Kiss them, but don't touch the nipples with your lips, kiss them like there's nothing else in the world."

Burning with shame, and even more ashamed of how much he liked this perfectly ordinary and logical punishment, Igor sat on the knees of the woman seated in the chair. The position allows him to jerk off just as secretly and unnoticed by her, only reducing the amplitude so as not to touch her belly, where he rested his pelvis. But all his attention is not on the process of self-satisfaction, and again on the naked breasts. It is Elizaveta Albertovna's tender breasts, not Aunt Lisa's big tits. He proceeds to self-punish, sincerely apologizing, albeit mentally, but his lips speak instead of his words, touching his lips around the breasts, in the hollow, near the nipples, lifting them and kissing them from below. They are big, very big, and the comparison with melons comes involuntarily; it is not clear why, but it is too crude a comparison, and he apologizes with new kisses for these thoughts as well.

The heavy breathing of Elizaveta Albertovna accepting his apology, her hand on the back of his neck, burrowing into his still short but too long uncut hair, directing fervent apologetic kisses. The soft and warm skin, the heady scent of expensive perfume, the unbearable desire to kiss the cherries of her nipples so close and so far away. His hand, which has almost stopped moving, is clenched around his penis, the head of which rests against the flat tummy covered only by the thin fabric of his T-shirt, soft and warm too. He sinks into this feeling of amazing balance and harmony, falling out of it the moment Aunt Lisa presses him as hard as she can. A sudden movement and a little more stimulation causes him to start cumming, viscously and somehow stretched out in time, as if reluctant to flood the woman's t-shirt with his semen.

She lifted him to his feet just as he began to erupt, and then sealed his lips with a kiss as demanding and hot as he'd ever had in his entire life... not that he was particularly experienced in amorous matters.... not that he was exactly experienced in matters amorous. He cums right on top of her, feeling his cock throbbing against her clothed body. He cums and kisses, responding obediently to all her caresses and not even thinking of taking the initiative. Setting him down in his own chair, she's on top of him, inexplicably getting rid of her pants and underwear underneath, sliding on top of him and, he could swear, almost instantly peaking with him. She's taller than him, heavier than him, just based on the height difference, and she presses him into the creaking chair, thrusting her hips up to some previously unknown peak and then dropping him down into the abyss. He almost cries out, but he is buried between her breasts, his cry drowning in her, in her warmth, in her softness and authority; he simply cannot refuse her and does not want her in the slightest.

"There, you apologized, and I accepted it." She breathed heavily, but quickly calmed down, moving her palm rhythmically and measuredly in front of his face, as if trying to hypnotize him. "You just apologized for what you said. You said you hadn't thought it through, hadn't woken up, misspoke, and I didn't hold a grudge and forgave you. It might have seemed to you, of course, that I let you lick and kiss my breasts, that I kissed you myself, that I made love to you in that chair, but it was just a fantasy, a play of imagination. You were so careful to hide your act of onanism from me that you got too caught up in the fantasy. I didn't notice anything, didn't realize anything, didn't see you pour out all your passion, and I certainly didn't make love to you, didn't kiss you, didn't bare your breasts. Blink. Blink again. Blink again. Again. Again. Good boy. I'm going to get up now, walk out the door, and then you'll forget the fiction and remember how it really was."

The whole time, Igor is watching her graceful palm, the way it moves with the precision of a metronome, trying not to miss a single movement. Not because he is directly mesmerized, it just seems impolite to him to miss the details of these movements, if Elizaveta Albertovna is so diligently showing him these movements. If she was showing him, it was necessary for some reason, wasn't it?

" Are you hypnotizing me, Elizaveta Albertovna?" He asks with a slight smile, relaxed and satisfied in every sense. "It looks very similar, really."

"No, of course not, my sweet boy." She affectionately ruffles his hair and gets up from him, starting to dress, wiping the traces of his passion from her clothes and skin with a handkerchief. "Elizaveta Albertovna is not hypnotizing you, Igor. You've already been hypnotized by Aunt Lisa. Bye-bye."

She walked out the door, and immediately, Igor breathed out a sigh of relief, frantically packing up the clothes he had removed or shifted without noticing. She hadn't noticed, but it was close! If she had only seen him twitching at her while he was talking, apologizing, and dreaming of her riding him right there in that chair, it would have been extremely embarrassing. All in all, it was very good that he managed not to let it show, and not to splash right on Elizaveta Albertovna. She would hardly kill him, he was too well-protected, but he didn't want to get into a fight and make himself look like a degenerate and a sperm-toxicotic gamadrile. By the way, he should have put on some protection and shine.

When he was sure that the woman had gone to the shower, Igor quickly changed his clothes, returned to his room, and started practicing the application of glow on the furniture. As soon as she was out of the shower, he would need to rinse himself, and the main thing was not to imagine that she would decide to splash in the shower with him, asking him to rub her back and soap her tits. At least don't fantasize today. He'd be going into battle soon enough, and he needed to be fully organized and ready, if anything, not to come back at all. He didn't want to die, he wanted to live, but it was hard to keep such thoughts away, even if Aunt Lisa and her big soft tits were nearby.

* * *

It was getting dark early, and another blizzard, covering the city in a fucking shroud of burial, was making it even darker. The two aggressive Exalted Ones stepped out into the darkness as tense and focused as taut guitar strings. The darkness behind the shabby door of the entrance seemed absolute, the cold was not behind it in terms of absoluteness, and the snow had covered half of the vestibule, so they had to open the door with some difficulty. Igor went ahead, and not because he was such a gentleman, he just had the opportunity to update the protection without the cost of Vessels, and this card has no gentlemanly gallantry beat. Under the protection, which was set to weather and temperature events, no cold and penetrating wind could play, so warm clothes and mittens were for a couple an element of disguise as ordinary people, not heating.

The degree of understanding of the Tablet's mystery had allowed Igor to adjust the protection so it perceived the snow like a standard attack. Even in places where snowdrifts were up to his waist and there was no clearing, he walked as if through a dense fog without slowing down. On the other hand, before and now, this “perceiving the touch of snow as direct damage” had drained his protection's charge as much as hammer blows, especially if he had to wade through streets completely covered with snow. It was just that now he didn't have to worry about the Vessels' charges, casting the renewed protection over and over again. And now the snow slid off his figure like drops of water from glass, allowing him and Elizaveta Albertsovna to sharpen their path, not caring about the decrease in charge. By the way, for the first five hundred meters, the protection was reduced by a third. So much snow was there.

They walked in a tight bundle, the woman's palm never leaving his shoulder, even though they could sense each other perfectly with their mystical powers. He through Modification, and she through the Sensory Tablet. They didn't want to separate anyway, for the dark and silent city was very unnerving, where there was no light even in the windows, where only snow, cold, and darkness reigned. It seemed to Igor that the air was filled with a background of cold, cold deadness, as if the Other Side was not somewhere nearby, from a specific source, but was just spreading like a cloud over the whole city.

Then, looking more closely, he realized that he was not imagining it, for there was a fuzzy vision of three Vessels spinning in a spiral, illuminating Elizaveta Albertovna. She, too, she said, had seen something like this. Not quite the clear illumination that signaled the presence of a nearby breach, but still too high a background. Dangerously high, especially for ordinary people. A couple more weeks of this shit, we could evacuate the residents to a mental institution for violent maniacs, that's for sure. Let people live here for another month and a half, there will be no one left to evacuate, only distorted creatures and dangerous carriers of the Other Side's evil power.

He had to additionally set up a closed-circuit cloak, just to be on the safe side, just in case. Who might they meet here?

There was a glimmer of light ahead, a few separate beams, and a loud and very inventive swearing was heard through the howling of the blizzard. The two Exalted Ones shift unhesitatingly to a snowdrift and dive into it, taking cover in the snowy whiteness, leaving only a small slit for their eyes. Their eyes caught a medium-sized crowd of two dozen people, among whom three soldiers in winter uniforms with automatic rifles and a very cold policeman were glimpsed. The civilians are dragging along children, suitcases, bags, pets, and a very high-quality dakimakura in the hands of Igor's yearling. He kind of even recognizes the guy, studying in a parallel course. Well, everyone is obviously saving the most valuable thing they have.

After letting the people walking towards the evacuation center pass, they continue through the yards, cutting off a few more times, running into a couple of foot patrols and one car patrol. They were just trying to fix not even a car that had broken down and stalled, but a Ural truck that had come to pull out the stalled people and had also stalled. Something was going on in that city with the machinery, especially considering the ability of some creatures to work with that machinery in a frankly mystical way. It was impossible to forget a Hungry babe - such a woman would be remembered for the rest of his life, and she might not be the only one wandering around. In one more alley, they found a frozen soldier leaning against a wall of a high-rise building and smiling such a happy smile that it was scary in contrast. Looking closer, they found two more, but these two were lying down in the snow as if they had just fallen asleep. The same happy smiles on their faces were unnerving.

They didn't touch the machine guns and other bullshit, only wrinkled their faces as they felt the faint, already slightly decreasing background of the Other Side in this place. It wouldn't have been a bad idea to arm themselves, but Igor didn't know how to use a machine gun. He had never even held one in his hands. Elizaveta Albertovna knew how to shoot a pistol and was quite good at it, but she would not even take the safety off the automatic rifle, having never held it in her hands. Not to mention the fact that the patrol would obviously be looking, as the radio of the man leaning against the wall was wheezing. They wouldn't be able to prove that it wasn't their fault. In their case, the shine was a much more effective weapon, and, importantly, not to be found during a search by kind people in uniform.

"We'll take them on the way back and stash them if they're still here." The commander said only her word, and with a touch of her palm told him to move forward. "I won't go into battle with unfamiliar weapons, there's too much risk, and no one will give us a week in the shooting range."

It was difficult to navigate the streets, where the lion's share of landmarks were covered with snow and mobile maps simply refused to work in the cold, but Igor knew the city, so he led them roughly in the right direction. To be fair, Elizaveta Albertovna also knew the city, but more from the point of view of a driver than a pedestrian. And there you have it, proof of the superiority of poor students over moneybags. It is quite likely that they passed by other corpses as well, for a whole cemetery or mass grave could be hidden in these snowdrifts, but that's why they passed by, because these corpses were hidden.

The only time the situation became dangerous was in the middle of their journey, which was already taking much longer than expected. The sound of battle was very close by, just over the fence from them, in the neighboring yard. They pressed themselves to the ground against the thick concrete fence, and then Igor punched two holes with his finger to see through. The weather made it impossible to see everything, but the fight was slightly illuminated by flashlights and the triggered abilities of the combatants. In the left corner of the ring was a trio, originally five, of frozen and icy dead men whose eyes glowed with a greenish shimmering light like the northern lights. In the right corner, there was a full and large shouting aunt, a young girl of unclear appearance, for, except for her voice, everything was hidden in layered clothes, a small boy calling for papa, and, of course, Papa himself.

With a capital letter. He burns up like the Pope, the Pope of Rome. The flame shining in his palms was something remotely similar to his radiance, though much more aggressive, more unruly, more angry. But it was still good, warming, cleansing, and liberating, and a good counterweight to the foulness of the living dead of the icy variety. The streams of frost and snow they sent out were powerful, they could frostbite the eyes and lungs of their victims, or even kill them. But the streams crashed like waves of surf against an indestructible rock against a very full man, a man who looked like Vernon Dursley from the movies. Only the rock was giving up, retreating backward, and had clearly spent its Vessel charges, for only one of the standard three was full. And that one was almost depleted.

The man twitched three times. The first time, when he felt their Vessels as they felt his. The second time, when all three ice-dead men broke through his defenses, stepping closer, reaching for him with ice claws growing out of their fingers. And the third, when he was covered at once by the protection and the shine, protecting him from a fatal blow. Realizing that the creatures couldn't do anything to him, and having infused the already bright flames with a powerful whiteness, he put the rest of the last Vessel into the attack, covering the entire trio with a natural flamethrower, leaving no corpses this time, just bits of burnt bones and ash. He turned back to the fence, or rather to the two fresh holes in it, with a kind of fucked-up look at the work of his hands, nodded awkwardly, or bowed, and said his thanks as if his throat had just stopped closing. His family, characteristically, shut up at once, apparently because the flash of radiance had calmed down a bit and washed away the Other Side that had soaked their bodies.

"Uh, uh, uh. Thank you, honored ones." Somewhat uncertainly, he utters, looking roughly to where the couple are already up on their feet, sensing their spiraling Vessels. "Uh, what's next? I mean, is there anything I can do to thank you?"

Igor and Elizaveta Albertovna look at each other. The young man sees and reads in her gaze a direct thought-order: take off the shine, and I'll send them to go wherever they go. It's not the first time the lad has noticed that this reverse stealth trick allows her not just to convey her thoughts with her gaze, but to literally have a wordless dialogue. She wants to remove the obstacle, who couldn't see their faces anyway, and is scared to death of such strong Exalted, one of whom has as many as nine, seven full-fledged and two fragile with regeneration, working Vessels. He doesn't mind either, but he realizes that a man with empty Vessels might not make it to the evacuation center, especially with a family already inhaled the Other Side. She silently mimics the fact that they are going into battle and can't waste Vessels on someone they don't know, and he suggests, through the echo of her transmitter, to put a shine on someone else's Vessel, and give protection on top. His Vessels will recover quickly after the protection, and by the time he arrives at the scene of the impending assassination, the shine will have rolled back.

Elizaveta Albertovna doesn't care about anyone who isn't with her, but Igor sensibly points out that it doesn't cost them anything, which pierces the skepticism in her head and the callousness in her heart, so she nods affirmatively and then takes the floor. Simply because she's not going to trust Igor with the negotiations, and the latter is very relieved to dump those negotiations on her. And all this exchange of meaningful looks, he is almost sure that the trick of reverse secrecy is not in stealth, just Elizaveta Albertovna's misuse of the Tablet, it took five seconds at the most, on the other side of the fence, they did not even have time to get nervous. Well, even more nervous, because the man looks like he's scared shitless, but he's keeping up appearances for the sake of his family, like he's a slightly overweight and overeating Vin Diesel at heart.

"Now the effect of whiteness will be fixed on you by binding you to the Vessel, this effect will last for several hours. You will be able to fight off creatures effectively." Obediently, Igor imposes a renewed blessing, and the man does not interfere, although he can refuse to give his Vessel under someone's partial control. "We'll also put a shield similar to yours on all the others. It will protect them from the Other Side, they've been breathing it too much. Now go where you're going, but don't talk much about this meeting. These effects will last a few hours, enough to get where you're going."

He clearly would not have minded asking for a ride to the spot, or better yet, for help to get out of the city, but he was sensible not to even mention it to those who were so much stronger than he was. Meanwhile, the fat man's family whispered in surprise, feeling protection and the peace it gave them. It was like being cut off from all evil, sheltered under a warm blanket - an incomparable sensation, the apotheosis of cozy serenity. Igor ironized himself regularly, because this was the very first Tablet his Lot had awakened for him, recognizing it as the most suitable for this bearer.

"Thank you". The man says very sympathetically and politely, once again doing something between a bow and a nod, backing away from the fence and waving his hand to his family to stop fooling around and run after him, especially his son, who is smashing the walls with his fists, taking advantage of his invulnerability. "We'll go then, yeah. I promise I won't say a word, yeah. Not to anyone, not at all. The grave, yeah."

"Collect the mist." Elizaveta Albertovna said in the end, overcoming her greed, simply because she didn't want to climb over the fence, and the rainbow cloud extracted from the dead wouldn't be of much use to her, it was too shaky. "Let's go."

She said the last word much more quietly, almost whispering it into Igor's ear, which was covered at once by his cap and the hood of his jacket, pulling him along with her, breaking the distance. After about thirty steps, the contact-connection disappeared, and they stopped sensing other Vessels, disappearing into the alleys of snowy streets, and Igor immediately concealed their charges with camouflage. They didn't encounter anything else dangerous until the point of arrival, unless they counted the patrols and people rushing through the city. Especially memorable was the courier with a huge Yandex Delivery backpack, who purposefully walked through the blizzard, guided by the indicators of a glitchy cell phone. And no, not the Exalted One, as Elizaveta Albertovna was sure of with her sensory abilities, nor was he a creature of the Other Side.
T.N. Доставка

Just a courier carrying someone's order - some people act like nothing happened.

The suburbs were snowed to the ruffs in some places, but they found their target even without the help of the navigator. It didn't reek too strongly, but it did, and it sensed like a thick coldness that seemed to be seeping through the closed interlocking system. It wasn't surprising, after the grenade, but it was still weird. It had been a while, he could have fixed the defense circuit, not to mention the fact that such a lure screamed of a trap. He wasn't the only one who thought so, so a couple of novice killers preferred to take cover in one of the neighboring courtyards, watching the gate to the courtyard of the artist's captured dwelling.

"I don't like the layer of snow in front of the entrance, as if someone had been there before, not so long ago." Breathing in his ear from a beautiful and desirable woman pressed close to him, speaking to him in an intimate whisper, could have been a very intimate experience, but the setting was too unconducive to such thoughts. "And then there was this background, as if deliberately left behind. If I had the opportunity, I would prefer to send the army in and have them raze the place to the ground. I doubt this person would surrender, and I don't believe he would be taken prisoner. But we don't have that option, and I don't want to walk into a very likely trap.... I don't want to."

"But we're going to get into it anyway." He didn't even ask, but stated confidently, quietly, too, though he couldn't fathom why it was necessary to keep silence when the wind was howling like that. "There are no options. For you in the first place, because he might not have reached me, but he knows you for sure."

"And you agreed to step into that abyss with me, all voluntarily." With a strange mixture of unreadable feelings, she looks at his face now, very strange but clearly positive. "Yes, we will step into it. And yes, I realize I may not come back from it."

It sounded, though not frightening, like another reminder that Elizaveta Albertovna was also a human being and that nothing human, including fear, was in the least alien to her. Strangely, it was more sympathetic to her than repulsive, showing that over there, under the iron plates of armoured social adaptability and legal cynicism, there was still a living human heart beating.

" Well, I'll step beside you." He said only, having neither strength, nor desire, nor even courage to say the standard reassuring-romantic phrases, if only because he had no idea how she would react to romantic rubbish. "Let's beat the old bastard up together."

"You're such a..." She doesn't finish the sentence she started, swallowing it in the middle, but instead adopts a collected look and makes a serious face. "Yes, we'll do it. Now kiss Aunt Lisa, Igor, kiss her and forget it right away."

Her lips burn in the cold as they cuddle right in the snowdrift for a few minutes before she pulls away from him, waving her naked palm in front of his eyes for a bit, pulling off her glove. Snapping her fingers as if really hypnotizing him to forget about her kiss, she turns away, pulling out her gun and then helping him to his feet afterward. They never got to the gate entrance, taking advantage of Eugene's experience in storming the sculpture studio, swinging over the fence, and entering from the window side. They did not hesitate; they were afraid of signaling charms and even found them, immediately destroying the shaky drawings on the wall of the barn and the empty barrel for the summer shower. It was as if someone had drawn them with a pencil on the dark surface. If they hadn't smelled the stench of the cold Other Side, and if their senses hadn't improved the potential of the Step, they might have missed these moments. But Elizaveta Albertovna somehow sensed them with her sensor, though not very clearly, especially in the sleeping mode.

A couple of slaps knock out the observers, who are already guaranteed to have their observations where they need to be, but the two intruders are already accelerating the pendulum of rapid combat, surging forward as if they were a single organism. In front of the wall of the house, viscous ink blotches appear on the white snow, as if the new creatures were not yet able to form a pattern on such a shaky surface. Also, importantly, they are unable to form it right under the snow, even if it's not clear why. Igor steps forward, tossing two handfuls of glow-infused sand, literally vaporizing the creatures before they take their final form. It's unclear what exactly they were going to use, but there was more rainbow power coming from them than from the watchers or the five dead ice creatures.

They did not knock on the thickly painted window, nor did they break it. Igor muttered quietly under his breath: //“This party urgently needs a normal tank, the support should not tank,” and then simply jumped into the opening, activating at maximum his protection and shine at once. The effect was textbook-cartoonish, ridiculous even: he went through the shutters and a piece of wall locked on the homemade painted bars, leaving behind an outline in the form of his own body. Elizaveta Albertovna jumped after him, easily and smoothly, as if she were not a grown woman of forty, but an athletically built girl-athlete. She had kept herself in shape before, but having overcome more than two-thirds of the way to the top of the Steps, she had become a track and field athlete without any training.

Behind the window was a dark room, brushes scattered about, paint cans and drawings in portrait frames standing and hanging everywhere that came to life. Behind the window was probably the thickest background of the Other Side that Igor had ever encountered during his career as an Exalted, fifteen percent thicker than the sculptor's, and that's on the low end. The guy goes tumbling as far as he can, successfully scattering the shining white sand handful by handful. The paintings hiss, squirming right in the frames and on the walls, some want to crawl to the ceiling, but Igor pays no attention to them. Elizaveta Albertovna doesn't react either, following the tank making its way, striving, as he does, to find the artist and saw him out before the scum manages to adjust the defenses to the point of their breakthrough. The sturdy wooden door is once again replaced by a stencil of a human body, and the first layer of the protection immediately bursts, granting a moment of invulnerability.

The black-robed executioner, standing just outside the door, tries to pick up his axe again, but is shattered by the slap of his palm. A moment later, Igor is already replenishing the lost protection without paying a Vessel. The companion comes out from behind him, her whole body hitting the wall of the corridor, as if she wanted to scratch her sides against that wall, but in fact, she erases the bleeding pictures behind her. An almost humanoid-looking and rather pretty woman comes out of the side passage, but the guy who knows where to look can clearly see that her clothes are painted on, and she looks like she's made of bone. A moment later, the disguise is surrendered, revealing to his eyes the true essence of the “Fortified Easel, Third Step, Tainted by the Mystery”. The strong jab in the head just ripped off that head, and he is immediately showered with a flood of colors, hissing over the protection as he pushes aside a corpse trying to claw at him, ready to turn into another portal.

The easel was dead, but it gave time for two “Self-Portrait Sketches, Third Step, Tainted by Mystery” to appear on the opposite wall, crawling out of some crevice. It was as if a dozen brushes oozing stinking paint had been swiped across his face and entire body, and this stuff was getting under the protection quite well, and the shine was only slightly weakened by it. In fact, the closed nature of the protection, which does not let anything outside its limits, was much more suitable for counteracting this abomination. It wasn't a negative effect, no, it was more of a scan, but a very deep and nasty one, capable of killing even a weak Exalted if there was no defense. Both outlines of portraits turned into images remotely similar to Igor and Elizaveta Albertovna. In some places blurred, in some places indistinct, in some places not drawn at all. And these doppelgangers, as it was not the least bit difficult to guess, were not just fucking drawings! Sensing serious danger for the first time, the fighting pair accelerated their movements, but the portraits were the first to arrive.

The one had been drawn from Igor reached for the active protections and the shine imposed on both of them, reached for the fragile Vessels, trying to dispel them all, involuntarily activating them, and all that. The third-level creature was not weak at all, but the curvature of the image played its part, as well as Igor's active opposition. It would have been much harder for a freshly Exalted One, for these creatures would have been able to use his Tablets even better than the victim himself, wasting other people's Vessels, because they had none of their own. Only a crooked copy-door to the control of the Vessels of those from whom they were drawn. Igor didn't panic, but fought off the attack confidently, blocking access to the effects imposed on him and those concealing his partner.

The second portrait of Elizaveta Albertovna did not attack at all, but winked at Igor and tried to rip off it skin, or pull off it clothes, exposing it large painted tits, or rip out it heart. Somehow, I immediately imagined what would happen to the “reflection” if the creature injured itself. Luckily, there was no need to check. Two sharp pops, two flashes of whiteness, as the pistol bullets struck the wall. They hit, knocking out potholes the size of footballs in those walls and damaging the wall behind the first one! Actually, if not for the conscious control of the shooter, who wanted to explode the shine on the specified point, these bullets could have flown a kilometer or two, knocking down a low-flying helicopter. Okay, that's overkill. If the whole emphasis of the shine amplification was on the flight distance, there would be no explosive effect, the bullets would hit the same way as ordinary pistol bullets that just hit atypically far away.

Of course, both creatures did not survive the contact with the weapon industry reinforced with skill, in the blows of which Elizaveta Albertovna had invested most of the reserve of whiteness, which was now slowly replenished in the vessel occupied by the glow. Yes, yes, the companion herself had ordered not to deprive himself of a reserve of strength, for her Tablets were of little use against these creatures, so it would be better for him to have an extra Vessel than for her. They pass through the next door by the usual stencil method, creating a hole in the wall without even using the door. Igor could sense a particularly strong concentration of Yznanka behind it. It was as if the door had a portrait frame with another portal on the back of it, as if inviting them to enter. It wasn't certain that they would be transported somewhere, especially under the active resistance of the amulet, but it would definitely try to drown them in ink and dissect them with a spatial anomaly.

The frame burst when a piece of wall collapsed, its very fragile and overpowered structure, and Igor and Elizaveta Albertovna found themselves in a relatively wide, as for a typical private house, studio hall, created from two rooms at once, from which an extra wall had been removed. And here was their main target, a disheveled, unshaven, long-unwashed and skewered man in his fifties. Igor had seen the picture of the bastard shown to him on his phone, and he looked like a presentable man in the prime of life, not this wretch with charisma inferior even to Vas-Vas. Not that selling his ass to the Other Side didn't do him any good, or that the hi-grenade in the form of a shoe spatula had said its word. It was more likely the latter, for Irka, who had bought that canvas almost for free, described this type as very charming, and he was already tainted with corruption.

A moment later, Igor realized he had been right. There were as many as two vessels in the body of the freak, rotating in a reverse spiral. Two disgustingly glowing lights that moved not inside the spiral, but outward, out of it, releasing concentrated and distilled coldness into the world. But there were also two other Vessels, empty and cracked, like broken cups or cracked windshields. The last two Vessels were nothing but a gaping void in which a drop of whiteness smoldered, for not even a shard of them remained. Which was odd because the Eye Modification had named this freak “Falling down, Third Stage, Tainted by the Mystery”. The number of Vessels did not add up, well, or the antipode of a normal player had these Vessels formed and added according to some other scheme.

"Hello, mister," Igor said hello, assessing the surroundings and involuntarily wanting to step back. "Why are you looking so funny?"

"You-u-u-u-u-u-u-u!!!" There was so much hatred in this address that if it could be converted into electricity, the energy crisis around the world could be solved in peace. "You-u-u-u-u-u-u-u!!!"

He didn't have time to say more, and not only was he yelling, but he was also sending a huge number of ++abris to attack. Fuzzy ones, mostly, and obviously flawed, unable to exist without this workshop's feed, as Igor was informed by his eyes, and without any Modifications: ink and paint were constantly dripping from them, soaking into the multicolored floor of the workshop hall. But no matter how flawed they were, there were nearly a hundred swarming Igor and Elizaveta Albertovna. They struck, as a single organism: a mental pause stunned the painter, making him freeze with his mouth open, from which not saliva but paints of different colors dripped, and Igor... Igor activated the shine, putting two separate charges into the paint-covered floor.

The floor boiled, bubbled, and even seemed to whimper like a little girl. He involuntarily remembered that, according to Elizaveta Albertovna, the artist's ex-wife, whose remains he had laid to rest twenty seconds ago, had also had a daughter, who stayed with the mother after the divorce. The fuzzy outlines squealed, dying in droves at once. They didn't even have to use the full burst, for the creatures crawling into the hall from all over the house, following the last order of the crippled and white-burned freak, were themselves dying in a combined aura of ticking area damage. Some lasted a little longer, especially those who came crawling from the far corners of the house with higher Steps, and some climbed the walls and ceilings to strike from a distance. One more portrait tried again to take on the appearance of Elizaveta Albertovna, again trying to pull off her clothes and skin, grinning at Igor, but it melted away like a snowman in the desert, much faster than it could form.

An epic battle with the main villain didn't happen. While he was drooling colorfully, the woman got closer to him, almost leaning the gun against his skull, and then fired another shot. The head burst in a white flash, bursting with multicolored confetti, blots of all kinds of colors covering the floor, the walls, and Elizaveta Albertovna herself. However, this stuff quickly dripped off her along the amulet or evaporated in the whiteness of the glow. For the next few minutes, they tensely stomped and slapped, destroying the sketches which followed the last order. They didn't meet any more really dangerous opponents like the portrait ++abris, and when the observer pictures, deliberately drawn with almost transparent pencil, began to appear in the hall, it became clear that now they had won.

"Ha-ah-ah..." Igor exhaled tiredly, who was soaked from the tap dance, directing more mist in the direction of Elizaveta Albertovna, but not forgetting about himself. "We've done it. Now, let's finish cleaning, close the passage, if we have something to close it with, and then let's go, I think."

"You think right." The expression of the woman's face shows unconcealed triumph because the limit of a thousand units of rainbow mist she is guaranteed to accumulate in this gingerbread house, but a moment later, she suddenly tenses up sharply and, turning on her toes, shoots somewhere under the ceiling. "That's not good, my dear, not good at all."

Igor even blushed a little at being called “my darling”, but he quickly pulled himself together, looking at the remains of an Other Side-stinking handicraft that had fallen from the ceiling. It was like a necklace of dog teeth and tails braided into a wide circle half a meter in diameter, with a dozen dog eyes on the inside of the circle. He assumed the dogs not only because of the color of the tails and the shape of the fangs, but also because of the very strong smell of dog, directly comparable to the stench of the Other Side. And just as unnatural, felt in his head, not his nose. The look on his partner's still-alarmed face makes him feel slightly uneasy. The bastard worked with paintings of various kinds. He was lucky to find people of art seduced by the Other Side. But here the pattern was completely different.

"From there, attention was directed at us." Elizabeth, meanwhile, voiced her worries, confirming Igor's fears. "It was there from the beginning, I just didn't realize it. No one, not even the authorities, is hiding the fact that the most brutal massacre took place on the outskirts of the city and in the industrial zone, where cannibalistic dogs became the enemy of the humans. And now this. I don't like my assumption, I don't like to panic in advance, but if the respected and late Lev Davidovich is closely cooperating with the master of stray packs, it's bad. I suppose we should leave. I suppose as soon as possible."

Another cause for concern was the lack of a breach to the Other Side even in this little house: a chilly muck oozed from the many empty portrait frames, from the pile of doors and cracks painted on the walls, from a very realistic entrance to the basement, which turned out to be a painting too and collapsed from the slap of a shining white palm. They spent less than a couple of minutes examining it, not wanting to linger here, then left through the same entrance they had entered, having extinguished both sources of shine in the floor for the last time, releasing their power and almost causing the building to collapse. Igor involuntarily looked inside himself, admitting that it was not in vain that he had come here, that there had been a benefit, and a noticeable benefit, even for him with his current development, not only for Elizaveta Albertovna, who, to her undisguised joy, had collected the treasured thousand units of rainbow fog.

Step: 1 [459/1000]

Closed Protective Charm: 27/100

Shine of Combat Unity: 31/100

Light Touch of Primordial Powers: Grant Fragile Chalice and Bodily Might: 74/100

It wasn't in vain that we went; it wasn't in vain at all.

Now we just need to go back and get out of here.

Two swift figures walked away into the night blizzard, and the wind howled after them like the throats of thousands of stray dogs.

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

Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/87876/586931

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP