Готовый перевод Ведомый / Follower: 11.

12.

* * *

The ambush was waiting for them at the very end of the return route, just two alleys away from the house, when they unwittingly relaxed a little, thinking that they'd made it, as if they'd thought they'd missed it. The parallels with the time he had fallen into the arms of the raggy dildo were very direct, but Igor was not interested in philosophy or distracted thoughts. They were going well. No adventures, encounters with all sorts of trash, nothing at all! Except that they couldn't take the trunks of the frozen soldiers, because neither trunks nor soldiers were there anymore. Either the coworkers took them away, or they got up and left, but this mystery remained a mystery. In any case, everything was fine until it became bad. The ambush and all that followed from it. In spite of everything, the creatures couldn't get to them unnoticed. Elizaveta Albertovna jerked sharply, raising the barrel of her pistol upwards, pointing at the wall of the five-storey paneled building they were passing by.

The creatures were right up against the wall, as if they had changed their gravity vector. It looked a little funny, to be honest. They were big, overgrown, and battered dogs that looked like typical backyard mutts, only angry and rabid, and also too big, unnaturally big. Well, they stood on a vertical wall, not worrying about such a thing as gravity, which had the effect of mild amusement, yes. The creatures attacked synchronously, as if they were Olympic swimming champions, simply by ceasing to stand on the wall. It was a special case of dog rain, heavy rain to say the least. The howling of the storm intensified, wind picked up a shroud of white snow that swirled around them like a whirlwind. Along with the dogs, a dense blanket of cold abomination struck from above, covering the entire battlefield at once, seeming to soak the snow even more, turning it into one of the weapons of their enemy's will.

The dry pop of the pistol shot and the whiteness of the bullet contact killed one of the creatures as it landed. The thought flashes through his mind that they should have taken those machine guns. They didn't really need bullets against the dead freak's artwork, but now their disregard for firearms was biting them in the buttocks. The first dog fell dead, the second almost fell on Igor, but the latter, already aware of the attack, oriented himself and stepped aside, kicking at the falling target. His leg was nearly chewed off, as the creature was somehow repelled by the air and maneuvered even in free fall. Okay, to be more accurate, it tried to chew his leg off, leaving saliva and blood stains on his boot as the oncoming blow shattered the doggie's head. The power of the shine, converted into a kinetic attack, threw the creature into the snow drift, dead. The bloodstains were gone from the protection, burned away in the whiteness of the snow at the same moment.

The third, fourth, and fifth creatures landed on their feet, raising not even a whirlwind but a wall of snow, and under its cover, they rushed into battle. He met the thrust of one of them with his whole body, neutralizing the attack with a protection, feeling only a light jolt, which did not bend his back, instead of hitting the hood of the accelerated car. But the bones of the dog that bumped against him crunched. As dog itself became a victim of a car accident. The mass of the creature, however, weakened the protection, and the wounds did not prevent it from using its maw. The first bite with teeth bleeding with scarlet light finished the protection. The reverse impulse knocked out some of the teeth and almost shredded the jaw. A second of invulnerability allowed him to simultaneously slowly renew the torn layer and put the palms on the neck of the dog, squeezing them tightly.

White light poured out from under Igor's fingers, and brownish-burgundy, rusty, the color of dried blood, came towards him from the stiffer steel bristles of his fur. A moment of confrontation, and the doggie's shield collapsed, followed by a torrent of whiteness from its throat that soaked even the gushing blood, the scarlet power of which was no longer there. Its insides, especially along the spine, were baked to a cinder by the glow, and all that remained was to throw the mass of the dead and not even twitching body away. There were too many new and fresh opponents at the guy's disposal - a huge fucking assortment.

Two more shots blew apart the head and sternum of the creature that jumped at Elizaveta Albertovna, and another that attacked from the back just froze, dripping scarlet foam onto the snow, sizzling from contact with the liquid. The woman turned on her toes and put another leaden-white gift into the dog's face, then warned about a new batch of creatures falling on them from above, coming straight from the roof, or rather from the transition portal open somewhere there. Igor doesn't hear her words, only a brief shriek, but he already knows that there are eight targets at once, that they are not weaker than these, and that she began to smell them only in the fall, and the roof of the five-story building itself seems empty to her. The already unpleasant situation becomes even more disgusting when the same form of telepathy tells both him and her that the second group of creatures is rushing through the snow from the side of the playground covered with snowdrifts. Apparently, the dogs are coming from a hole in the children's sandbox, which is the actual portal.

A bottomless den of stray dogs.

Three pops and a dry click, signalling the end of ammunition, and then they stood back to back, fighting off the dog rain. A long shoe shovel, which Igor uses as some kind of machete, falls out of his sleeve into his fingers, which are not freezing under the protection. He cinematically cuts one of the dogs in half in a leap. The cinematography ended at the moment when the guts, blood and other guts, glowing scarlet-rusty, that fell out of the belly of the dog, in an instant sagged through the upper layer of the shield, only at the expense of a second invulnerability, allowing to shake off most of the dangerous mass, which was also trying to cling to the killer's body, to braid it with guts smoking in the whiteness. In Elizaveta Albertovna's hands was a long steel ruler of forty-five centimetres. An object of her university youth, where calculators had already been invented, but were forbidden in every possible way, and all kinds of Autocads were considered black sorcery. Ridiculous types of weapons under the shine did not look funny at all, but it was impossible to be prosecuted for them in case of inspection by the valiant authorities.

The hounds that rushed at them had experienced this stuff for themselves: their mass could not knock down the individuals protected by the shining Tablet, and a well-powered one at that, nor could they hold them back, restrain, or confuse them. It just didn't work. All attempts to squeeze, press, and bind them in a clinch slipped off the people as if they were wet glass. The puddle of crimson rust on the snow was growing. The vapour rising from it is toxic and cursed, but it is burned out by the ыршту, and also slightly disperses the veil of blizzard. Igor can't see through it at all. He relies on reverse stealth in conjunction with the sensorics that Elizaveta Albertovna uses to flash his targets. A throw of a stone, a handful of broken glass, a kick of a foot, a swing of a blade, and, of course, the renewal of the protection on himself. He tries to take on all the attacks. Not out of a desire to protect the woman, though not without it, just for him, the lost protection was worth nothing to renew.

Elizaveta Albertovna had already lost three of her layers of defence, so he used up one of the Vessels in passing, renewing one and then, following a good moment, adding a second one for free. Only to immediately lose another when another creature tried to nibble the woman's face. The woman had already used up her own Vessels, leaving only the spare single-use healers from the ritual, and she had used them to good effect, holding off a few of the stronger creatures and letting them fight back. There was a wide range of creatures: Stray Mutt and Evil Dogs of the first Step, Sick Kabyzdokhs, Dog Dogs and Lichen Bitches of the second, even a couple of creatures of the third and fourth Step. The reserves were sagging, but the creatures were dying, the third batch was already falling from above, and the second was fleeing from the sandbox, and they were moving away from the panel to avoid the risk of getting half a tonne of dogs on their heads. Such a blow from above could eat up half the strength of the amulet itself, but taking into account the defence covering the dogs' fur, the amulet was torn off at once, only by invulnerability protecting the next layer as well.

But the dogs were torn into confetti by such a landing on active protection..

It seemed they would even be able to retreat, for the first panic had passed, and the enemy could not penetrate the monolithic defence or repel the power of the shine, but this enemy had not yet shown all that he had prepared. At the very least, the two Exalted did not sense the one or the ones who commanded the dogs. Elizabeth sensed the other's control with her sensory technique, even somehow made the creatures lose their rhythm and stop acting like a single organism by expending one of the fragile Vessels, but her tricks did not allow her to get through to the puppeteer. You'd have to be a pure mentalist or something, rather than a creative use of sensorics. And also be badass enough to break into the coordinating network created by such a powerful creature, perhaps.

A new dog jumped out of the snowy embrace from a new direction. Igor had missed it, for it was smaller, more compact, and so on. But he had relaxed for a moment in vain, because this Dogskin of the Fifth Step had an almost human face. Shaggy, crooked, like that dog from the meme about Leha, but quite recognisable both to him and Elizaveta Albertovna, who sighed with surprise. It is hard to live in this city and not recognise the face of someone who has been its respected and (un)legally (un)elected mayor for several terms. This gentleman with British citizenship has a name, of course, but the native population knows him under the operational call sign Zhora the Concrete. And not only because he rolled his competitors in concrete in the nineties, but also for regular corruption schemes with construction and procurement of that very concrete through the firm of his favourite daughter. The price for that concrete was only slightly lower than the price for a metre of living space, by the way.

For a moment Igor even thought that he saw the true culprit of the party, which was particularly ironic, given his wife's zoo crazines, which made it completely forbidden not only to shoot, but even to catch and sterilise ‘poor little dogs’, but, alas, the situation turned out to be much worse. Both for Igor and for the grief-stricken mayor, who, it seems, was really locked up in a dog. The creature-entity opened its mouth, unnaturally wide open, and instead of a tongue it had .... a puppy, or rather something in the shape of a puppy, absolutely bald, skinless, and simply disgusting to look at. But in the puppy's teeth, like a parody of Giger's stranger, was a piece of flaming paper. Somehow, it became obvious that the dog-mayor was not a combat unit, but a mobile isolated container. There was more Other Side in the burning paper alone than in the entire art studio and the sculptor's lair at once.

And it was concentrated, that's the problem!

In a flash, the battle scroll released all the power it had gathered, causing the puppy-tongue and the former Mayor to burst into a rusty purple flame, their fur to burst, releasing bloody veins of symbols that drew themselves on top of that fur, creating a pattern of said fur that began to grow into itself. A portable ritual, a mobile and deadly powerful Bone Tablet that was directed at two people. Igor had time not only to daze, but also to bring his concentration to the limit, trying to strengthen the control over the protection of himself and Elizaveta Albertovna. Then, time ran out, and the two Exalted covered the two people with a murky and stinking wave of structured Iznanka.

Yelizaveta Albertovna fell at once, as if she had been cut down. Igor didn't have time to help her because he was saving himself as much as he could. To be fair, he couldn't do much. The flow of destabilising power had forced both fragile Vessels to break, and even their effect-regenerator had been washed away. Or even licked away by a huge and hot dog's tongue, only by a miracle, not to shred the flesh from the bones at the same time. It was even worse for the woman. Not only had she lost the last additional vessel, but the other four were blocked as well, as if they had frozen, as if they had fallen into something viscous. The Vessel occupied by the ыршту was also empty, washed away from it the imposed blessing, leaving not even a trace of whiteness in the thin body. Fortunately, she did not die, but simply fell asleep, even fell into catatonia, a complete paralysis of thoughts and feelings, which she was unable to counteract. Igor managed to stay on his feet and kept two full Vessels intact, the one occupied by the shine on top. The first thing he did was to use one of the vessels to renew the first layer of the зкщеусешщт on himself, starting to apply free defences on top of it.

The creature, or rather what was looking at it with the eyes of the mayor, transformed into something like a transmitter, was quite surprised by such tenacity of its prey. The surprise did not disappear from its face even when the shoe shovel in the hands of the young man accomplished and embodied the rosy dream of the lion's share of the adequate population of not only the city or the country, but probably the entire globe. It knocked out a corrupt official of high rank. Zhora Mutt's split skull was just falling onto the snow when a new batch of creatures jumped on him, two of which he somehow managed to knock out on the spot, before another small mongrel-trap flew out of the snowstorm, in which he no longer saw the targets illuminated by Elizaveta Albertovna's ability. This one also had a human face, Igor even vaguely recognized it, he had also seen it somewhere on TV, but he didn’t have time to think more.

A new wave of filth, no weaker than the previous one, turned out to be too much for him. He simply did not have time to prepare to repel it, and until the very end, he did not see the creature crawling through the snowdrifts. It is difficult to fight without sensor illumination in conditions of almost zero visibility. Especially if the enemy sees you perfectly well.

Again, the flow of the Other Side conveyed the conceptual sensation of a dog's tongue, which pulled three layers of protection that were available at that moment from the body, cleaned the shine, emptied the last working Vessel, and, it seemed, all the forces. He did not even immediately understand why his weapon became so heavy, slipping out of his fingers, why that snowdrift rushed towards him, hitting him in the face? And some insidious beast grabbed him by the eyelids and stuck a lead weight on them, forcing him to feel like Gogol's Viy, because Igor himself, for some absurd and incomprehensible reason, was unable to lift the heavy eyelids.

He fell into a solid, hot, and disgusting darkness that grabbed him with its tentacles.

Only the unbearably suffocating stench of wet dog that surrounded him glimmered on the edge of his dormant consciousness.

* * *

Igor woke up completely suddenly, as if a light had been turned on. Now he was gone, and now he was back, and he felt surprisingly well. There was no cold abomination in his body; it did not break his bones and did not eat away his insides with its deadly stench. However, there was no power of the Other Side in him, but there was plenty of it around him, even though it did not touch him for some reason. And there was no such familiar flickering of Vessels moving in a continuous spiral. A look inside showed that all seven of his Vessels were completely empty, and the spiral movement had frozen and was barely moving. The period for restoring the supply of strength in at least one of the vessels should now be many years, if not centuries, because it is in movement that strength and life are. It is the movement of the Vessels that replenishes their depleted reserves.

Following his gaze inward, he looked outward, realizing that he was hanging on a vertically standing autopsy table, the only difference being that he was not hanging like on a rack. No, he was carefully and even thoughtfully secured, just as thoughtfully deprived of the slightest possibility of movement, if you don’t count the eye sockets. There was some kind of plastic gag in his mouth, preventing him from saying a word, and also, for some reason, he was sure, preventing him from biting off his tongue or otherwise cutting himself out of the world. His rack-table was in the middle of a large and very empty room, which Igor, with some hysterical laughter, recognized as one of the large auditoriums of his native university. Only most of the furniture had been taken out, and the teacher’s podium had simply been dismantled right down to the concrete floor.

//"I never thought I'd be back at my Alma Mater," flashed through his almost empty head. "And so quickly, too."

On the floor, walls, ceiling, and all surfaces in general, numerous ritual signs were visible, alas, not normal, but serving as conductors of the power of the Other Side. Without actively opposing Vessels, it should be painful to even look at these signs, but the strange protection around him protected him from this, too. Exactly opposite him, in the center of the circle on the edge of which his bed was located, stood another exactly the same example of sinister furniture. And on it, just as carefully and efficiently, was fixed completely naked, Elizaveta Albertovna, whose only clothing was bracelets made of dog hair and dog fangs worn on her arms and legs. In addition to these ropes, she was entangled in completely ordinary ropes, thereby revealing a real example of BDSM, especially around both breasts. A slight sympathy for the woman passed fleetingly, whose tender and soft breasts were so harshly squeezed by the rough household rope.

And then came a more significant thought, which formed the question: how did he even know what Elizaveta Albertovna's breasts looked, felt, and even tasted like? The answer came a moment later, along with a slight migraine and a swathe not even of memories, as he had never forgotten anything, but a realisation of what had happened. Igor replayed in his head the whole scenario of their relationship after all this mystical bullshit had started. Her visit to his house, which he had promptly forgotten. Then she'd simply questioned him, checking if he'd seen her at night, coming back clearly from a pumping session, and in someone else's company... and wished him to eat well and take care of himself for fuck's sake. He saw her through the peephole one more time, also returning in the middle of the night from a raid, but she sent him to bed right through the door, with no direct eye contact. And after that... after that was their ‘meeting’ and the interrogation in her flat, when she had already cured him and put him to sleep. She had put him to sleep, he was obviously too unnaturally tired and drowsy!

And then there were those dreams! Vague, even now he doesn’t remember them completely, but after them, clearly unnatural things and behavioral reactions began to seem completely obvious to him. That sex right in the chair was, of course, the best in his life, and the kiss in front of the artist’s yard also left an extremely hot impression, but at the same time, dammit! Not even that. DAMMIT!!! Igor, like that prostitute from the joke, only now realized that he was literally raped. Well, or violent actions of a sexual nature were used against him, because according to the law, only a man can rape a woman, but not the other way around.

//“Fuck, I can't believe the nonsense in my head!” - The young man's mind was in such a turmoil that he couldn't help but laugh, and that was only because of the gag that covered his mouth. - “I believed her, didn't I?”

If she had suggested it, Igor would have jumped over the tops of high-rise buildings in a hurry to sleep with the woman he liked so much. What's wrong with that? If she was so turned on by mind games, hell knows if he'd be adamantly opposed to them or not? Or was he the one who now thought he liked those kinds of women, that he wouldn't be adamantly opposed to her fetishes, but in fact, his tastes were quite different? Maybe he had not fully recovered from the stupefaction he had been under for the last few days without realising it? And he could have guessed, he could have guessed! The Tablets of the treacherous bitch themselves literally said directly that her Lot is to work with minds and feelings, with memory and thinking. And all right, if those suspicions had been artificially removed from him, he would have been angry, but not at himself. But no, no! He himself, solely on his own faith in the kind aunt Lisa, did not even think about the fact that she had whistled to him about her Lot! He didn't want to realise the danger of such a thing at his side!

The most frustrating thing was that Igor really had absolutely every reason to believe and trust her. She had helped him so many times, unselfishly and for nothing, had done so much for him. If Elizaveta Albertovna had been just a conniving bitch who'd screwed him over through the effect of surprise and his own stupidity, he would have suffered much less. It hurt. It hurt because he had a reason not to doubt her, not to suspect her, because for him the woman had become even closer than his own aunt, who had been so demonstratively indifferent to him. The gaze of the bound and gagged woman, who was now looking directly at him, however, expressed fear, horror, and unwillingness to die at the same time, but what was not there was certainly no remorse for what she had done. If she even realized that he'd stopped, not remembering what she'd asked him to forget waving a palm in front of his face and shook her naked breasts in his face.

If it were otherwise, he'd have succumbed to his emotions. It's unclear just what kind. He would have sobbed like a girl, or he would have gone berserker and started tearing the throat out of the bitch who'd cheated him of his best feelings. But the situation didn't lend itself to hasty action, or any action at all. He was still hanging on the torture machine in the middle of the ominous ritual hall, bound, exhausted, and threatened with a fate worse than death. The only thing that reconciled him a little was that this deceitful woman shared the same fate.

The scent of dog came to his nose, and his ears scratched at the words that came out of the throat of the creature that had brought them here. The voice was high and soft, a professional rhetorician's voice, almost whimpering in its pronunciation, but it made him feel cold, and his bladder didn't empty just because he was hungry and hadn't even drunk water. The voice was completely sexless; it could have belonged to a man or a woman, but there were in it notes frankly beastly, so unnatural that it made one feel nauseous, and the heart sank with some instinctive and uncontrollable conscious horror. The horror of a man in front of not even a beast, but something too close to a man, but not a man, and yet not a beast either.

“Wow, you're calmer than I thought at first, puppy.” Such patronizing treatment did not embarrass Igor, who tried to glance in the direction of the individual speaking, for he was too frightened for any form of indignation. “I was expecting at least an indignant mooing or something. And I'm sure my ritual cleansed you completely, cleansed you of everything, but her compulsions didn't have time to ingratiate themselves. They couldn't have.”

Igor remained silent in response, sincerely hoping that the silence was skeptical and suggestive, not deathly frightened. Apparently, his acting didn't convince his interlocutor, as she was speaking of herself in the feminine gender, but he got a certain change in his condition. Touching something cold to the back of his head and then the gag-spacer left his face, falling to the ground, and Igor was surprised to recognize it as a sex shop gag. Well, it was a logical choice, though a little outrageous. A moment later, the one who was talking to him, albeit one-sidedly, appeared before him, and the young man barely kept himself from fainting shamefully.

She wasn't ugly in the sense of ugly, though she wasn't any good-looking either. She was tall, over two meters tall and hideously skinny, androgynous, covered only by a shapeless, sleeveless coat of dog hair. Her face, while retaining human features, seemed to be the face of a yard dog, despite her generally quite model-like features. A slightly different accent, a slightly different nature of facial expression, irregular body movements, just as the late mayor was easily recognizable in dog form, so the dog was easily recognizable in her form. She reeked of the foul stench of the Other Side, and when he focused his gaze on her, she smiled an unnaturally wide smile, showing the most ordinary of human teeth, only the dog's grin was so obvious in that smile that it almost hurt. And, as if seeing his gaze, she lowered the canopy of her disguise slightly, letting him see the Vessels spinning in a reverse spiral.

All fucking thirteen of them, filled and ready to fight.

The already absent fighting mood after this demonstration died in a twitch, laid in the same grave as the trust and faith in the best that had already been shattered. Igor, in fact, was amazed at his own mental fortitude, amazed that he found a place for humor at least in his thoughts, because the situation was not even bad, but just a complete fuck-up. Meanwhile, the creature in the guise of a man, smiling with the smile of a petting dog, walked around him, checked the work of the signs, removed the gag, and clearly enjoyed his silence, the fact that he simply did not know what to say. The creature wasn't even frightening; it was terrifying. Primarily by reasonableness and repressed insanity. In the faces and behavior of the previously killed servants of the Other Side, the stamp of degradation was visible, the fact of losing not so much intellect as the framework of reasonableness.

This one was different, not a rabid cur at all. No, before him stood a seasoned man-eating dog, able and loving to use the spark of reason.

Her madness was like a carefully tamed and chained beast, trained for blood, and had much in common with a blast furnace, where deadly flame and heat were subject to an unwavering will.

"What awaits us?" He was the first to break down, despising himself for how his voice trembled and how obvious his fear was. Despite all his attempts, he could not hide it even in the smallest things. "What awaits me?"

"Oh, how pleasant this division into me and us is, how sharp the fragments of meaning are, like pieces of bone rubbing against broken flesh.? She laughs a yapping and whimpering laugh that makes me feel unnaturally nauseous and even more horrified. "What awaits you both? Change and the power of the One Who Takes, the Greatest Mistress, the Boundless Cruelty. There is the Other Side waiting for both of you, infinite and flawless, but it just so happens to be waiting for both of you in different ways. Interested to hear more, pup?"

Her playful treatment, behavior, words, and manner of conversation naturally made him sick, and he was not the only one, for he saw how the body of the suspended Elizaveta Albertovna was covered with sticky sweat, and knew that he looked exactly the same. Knew that answering this cunt, even just talking to her was already dangerous to his psyche and common sense. Knew that he didn't want to know the details of exactly what this scum had in store for both of them. He knew that nothing depended on his reluctance at the moment.

"You wish, I can see it. You wish, but you're afraid to find out, puppy. - She caresses him affectionately on the cheek, so that Igor does not vomit on himself and her hand, but only by sheer effort of will, she continues to reveal her plan. "The Other Side awaits you both, but it will wait for her at the tip of a knife, and for you, you Igkhor, it awaits in the hilt of that knife. A path to greatness and madness awaits you, which you will curb and put at your service. And I will. I'll help you, I'll lift you up, and you'll stand at my Mountain of Bones."

There was so much genuine surprise in his eyes that he forgot his fear for a moment. What he hadn't expected was the villain's classic ‘together we will rule Galactica’ speech. But the creature's face was absolutely serious, absolutely cruel, eager to show its cruelty. There was no way to see it as an operatic villain, no way even to laugh, because no one would laugh at being one step away from something like that, one short touch away from it.

"Don't be surprised, puppy. You know the answer yourself, you suspect its nature." The words flow like the yapping of a pet corgi and the barking of a poodle, molasses in his ears, poisoning his mind, and robbing him of his will. "Exactly the same reasons as dear Lisa, only I was more honest. I'm giving you an ultimatum, puppy, a choice between two paths, one of which you will have to choose. Your Gifts, that's what it's all about. Oh, you have no idea how valuable you are, how much they mean. You will accept the Almighty, one way or another. Her touch will destroy all but one of the Vessels, burn out all but one of the Tablets. But the Gifts. Oh, the Gifts will stay with you. And, of course, with me too, pup."

She steps away from him, eliciting an involuntary sob of relief, steps back and strokes Elizaveta Albertovna, who is trembling in frosty terror, through her hair, runs her fingers along her cheek, touches her neck and collarbones. There is such disgust and horror in the woman's eyes that he almost feels sorry for her, in spite of all she has done to him, in spite of the way she has deceived him. And the creature finished its caress, as if it were stroking a dog, only it was a dog itself, and that made it even nastier, and stepped aside, pointing at the crucified ‘ally’ with a broad gesture.

"Here she is, before you, as are all her deeds, which you now know and remember." In her voice, in that rotten whining growl, a true solemnity cuts through, even grandeur, as far as this is applicable to her image. "You were deceived, but I will not deceive you. You were bewitched without knowing it, but I will never stoop so low. I will not hide your chain and collar from you. Take a knife in your hands, cut open her belly and body, taste her insides, and accept the Omnipresent into yourself. Preserve, and then pervert your white shine, for you, puppy, cannot even imagine how valuable your Tablet is. It, even in a new guise, will allow you to preserve your mind, preserve your will, and the ability to use it. It allows you to be like me immediately, from the first hours, not after centuries of gnawing to death. It allows you to be like this always, not just for the first few days, while your mind melts like salt in boiling water.

Igor listens attentively and carefully analyzes what is said. He cannot help but listen and analyze, he cannot tear out of his ears the whining of hundreds of dogs, the yapping of puppies, and the growling of a pack tearing apart its prey. This also has some kind of effect, but not on the mind, but even deeper, noticeably deeper than any limits of the human psyche. She was not talking to Igor, but to the beast inside him; she was talking to the same yard dog, thirsty for life, satiety, thirsty to tear apart a competitor, to continue the family line, to always be well-fed and content. Therefore, her words could not be simply discarded; simply shutting her mouth or his ears did not work either.

"You have noticed, pup, that the Name of your Tablet hides the actual brightness of its essence, haven't you? That's right, you did, but you just didn't seem to think about it, did you?" She chuckled a little, again creating the image-illusion of a yapping dog, plunging the mind to the brink of insane terror. "Oh, believe me, if you can develop the Tablet again, the Shin in it will be replaced by Gleam. And you will not only be able to bless and burn with it, pup, no. It will give you much, and it will give you much to me, for I will help you, explain, and guide you. I've been down this road before, pup, I've been down it, I'm just starting it again. I see you are surprised, but believe me, believe me and try to look with new eyes, with the eyes that the first of the Steps gave you."

The request, essentially an order, was accompanied by a slightly altered pressure from the ritual, which made him feel some control over the Ward and the subtle bodies return to him. It's not enough to start replenishing the Vessels or trying to break free, but enough to activate the modified eyes and look. The image of the inscription in the creature's essence concentrated into a picture that did not at all please him, denoting the extremely disturbing words, “Bitch's Daughter, Descending, Ninth Stage, Tainted by the Mystery.” And the most disturbing thing was not the ninth Step, which he instinctively realized was the last for the Rank. No, the true terror was her Name. Real and far more profound than one could imagine, for she, dubbed the Bitch's Daughter, had the true Right to that Name. In the brief image that two words described, there was an abyss of bloody maelstrom, centuries of struggle for survival, a relentless fight against her own madness, and following her nature.

"H-how?" That was all he could exhale, realizing the scale of the problem, even if he didn't understand the reasons why he was so overwhelmed by the vision of the Name, fortunately, his interlocutor understood his question perfectly.

"The right to a Name... You can't even imagine how much it means to you or me, how difficult it is to gain even a shadow of that right." In the whining notes of her speech, pride, hatred, anger at the whole world, and many liters of spilled blood simultaneously flash. "I lived for centuries, took many Steps and Ranks, knocked them out, tore them out of the world with fangs and howls. But I was able to get a Name only by squeezing myself into the thinnest crack, coming into this world as an insignificant puppy, the first Step of the first Rank, but, yes, but with a Name. It does not give anything by itself, especially at the low stages of our path. Don't grimace, puppy, it is ours. This path is the same for everyone, it's just that some Fall, and some Rise. And for everyone, those whose Spiral moves them in the opposite direction seem wrong, that's okay, I'll explain it to you, puppy, I'll show you and prove that I'm right. Look at me, look at what I've become and what I was!"

He looks again, but now he sees behind her a blurry image, like a superimposed picture. He sees not an androgynous human body, but a huge mountain of dog flesh, barely fitting into this auditorium, propping up its ceiling with its back covered in tufts of falling hair. A huge dog, a cur, a bitch thirsty for blood, that was who she was standing before him! He saw not reality, but a controlled hallucination, an image imposed on him, and only with feverish efforts did he convince himself not to fall into this image with all his mind. He forced himself to see an ugly and hungry creature, and not a beautiful omnivorous predator, strong and powerful, a true alpha who would protect the puppy in his pack. She tried to brainwash him, not quite directly, but much more aggressively and fatally than Elizaveta Albertovna did; another would have already fallen in his place, but Igor, by some impossible miracle, continued...

//golden web around

...to remain sane, which clearly surprised and slightly angered the creature, who was determined to break him with her appearance, or rather, the appearance of who she used to be, before she obeyed the will of her Mother, stepping into a new world to hunt. Stepping in order to open the door here and let in the entire Pack, to let in the servants of one of the higher entities, who are rightfully considered the apostles of the Upside Down, its angels and heralds. Although they differ in strength. Although some of them serve more powerful ones. They were all the pinnacle of what Those Falling into the Other Side can become. What they fervently dream of becoming, but what they endlessly fear.

She told him of these creatures that bore Names as one, giving those Names to their subjects, hordes. She told him of the Mother of Bitches, of the legions of Sons and Daughters, each child bearing a Name, damned and cursed, each of whom could have devoured this city alone, but never did, for untold millions of creatures were in the litter of each such scum. The one who had acquired her cherished name, though not quite her own, but only the name given to her by a stronger creature, spoke of the Great Seed that was destroying worlds by the thousands every second, spoke of how those worlds were perishing, gradually sinking into the Otherworld and becoming part of it. Part of one huge super-world, a huge and breathing corpse, a cadaver that never lived a second and therefore could not die.

“I'm bad at counting, even now, pup. In the world where I first tasted the flesh of a dog, there were fewer people, fewer things, no complicated machines or anything like that.” She spoke of the journey between worlds so casually, as if it were a trip to a neighboring village, that she was astonishing even to a young man desperately clinging to his reason and will. “But I have learned. I know what the world is like, past the way of machines. I know and know and know how much meat there is here, still living, still breathing, still ignorant of my and your Pack's will. Your world will fall, pup. Maybe it won't be devoured by the Hound's army, or the servants of the Bitch Mother, the Ever Hungry, or the Guide of Packs, maybe. Who knows if this fruit will fall into the jaws of the Brush Maestro or his beloved Paint Gatherer? But the world will fall. They all fall. Few survive the first cycle, fewer will survive the second. I'm not killing you, pup. I'm giving you a chance. So take it, take it and step with me, renounce what the Tree gives you and the tiny leaf that is this world, renounce and accept my help.”

Igor was shaking, he did not even try to argue or speak, he was being persuaded not by words, that was the trouble, but by the images those words carried. He now saw, now believed that those freaks killed with his participation or by him personally might not have been such freaks from the beginning, that they too had been subjected to similar pressure, that it was only because of him that they had become what they had become. Pity, characteristically, did not wake up, as well as conscience, only a timid hope that if he would get the same pain, there would be a kind person who would cut off the way for Igor. And the creature talked and talked, sprinkled the names of higher creatures like her mother, mentioned, obviously with caution and the deepest reverence, those creatures who were her superiors, and also pressed. She pressed, pressed, pressed, pressed, pressed second by second, did not let him breathe, concentrate, and convince himself of the arguments against.

"I have devoured many. This doomed stronghold did not contain as many throats as I had gnawed into, nor as much blood as I had spilled." He loses his sight, the suffocating darkness of impending fainting, but he holds on, holds on and doesn't faint, because then he's done for sure, holds on and tries to fight back. "Deal with it, pup, deal with my strength. I may have lost Steps and Ranks, I may have lost most of the Tablets, but I kept some of them, pup. And some of it I re-learned, which is easier, even faster, if you know how. I have a shine, too, and I'm not strong only with dimness, silly puppy."

If anyone is worse off now, it is Elizaveta Albertovna, who is barely holding on, even if the pressure on her is in a much milder form, not directed at her soul. Yes, but she is still a listener of this villainous speech and clearly understands that she is not just a listener, but a victim. The one who would be the last step before his, Igor's, actual Descent, and in a very biblical sense of the word. It was the death of the Exalted One, who was connected with him by a single thread, that would open the floodgate for the Otherworld, allowing it to fill his essence at the same time sharply, but smoothly, without crippling him more than necessary. Yes, the intellect may temporarily diminish. Some of the traits of the Benefactress will replace the native personality, making the puppy a bit of a puppy quite literally. But these are trifles, very real trifles against the background of what a traumatic transition does to mortal meat in a normal situation, without the support of an experienced assistant.

"Understand, puppy, you are already mine, you will be mine anyway, and there is no way out of it." Again she strokes his cheek, and it seems to him that it is not the skin that touches his cheek, but the stiff and dirty fur of a stray beast, while he himself wants to growl and howl, these desires rising from the depths of consciousness, now desperately trying to etch out of himself what was inspired. "But you can be a puppy, petted and almost loved, loyal and worthy of me. Or you can be another mutt, useful, irreplaceable, possessing a unique gift, but a brainless beast, only growling and chewing, only obeying the beastly. It's just that the first one has to go this way by himself, by his own will... and the second one, puppy, I won't even ask. So what are you to be, what are you to become? What's your choice? Will you step with me or stay silent until the end? Tell me, tell me now, puppy, tell me, will you choose me?"

Everything and everyone has a limit, and Igor had already exceeded his limit; he was already thinking with great difficulty, and such an impact could hardly be called a free choice. His thoughts suddenly became extremely clear and precise, and the young man realized, understood as he had never understood anything before: he was doomed, he had lost, and there would be no miracle. Unless, of course, he tried to arrange the miracle himself, and so he, having found the gold threads of obscure crumbs of common sense, suppressed his whining dog part of consciousness, deciding to play one more time. Probably, the very last time, betting everything not even on zero, but on the chance that the roulette ball would fly away from the wheel, falling into the open mouth of the dog-headed croupier, making him choke and suffocate.

A small chance, a tiny one. He saw in one of her not even reservations, no, a suspicious paralipsis, when she spoke to him, spoke of him, the creature indirectly indicated that she knew how all three of his Tablets worked. Especially the one she was most interested in, the one she emphasized more than anything else. But, what an oddity, she never once mentioned the improvement it gave him in moving beyond a hundred units of Understanding to the new scale. Was it because her ability, whether bone or spirit, simply didn't allow for such a deep reading? Quite possibly, that he was wrong, it was very possible that he had just forfeited even the chances of retaining the shattered mind he had been offered. Well, so fuck such chances, such offers, and let the one who offered them go up in flames! All these thoughts were bubbling in him, hiding behind the face of the broken and determined to submit captive, while Igor was calling on all his skills as a prankster who had grown up among theater actors. There is no need to cry out particularly hard - why pretend to be scared and crushed by the events that have come upon you when you are already scared and crushed?

"Y-yes." He wheezed, and the creature smiled, the grin like a dog's grin, and the creature stepped back, nimbly getting to its feet, crunching its slender neck, and with a wave of its hand, making the shackles on him just crumble into a clump of soaked fur. "A-agree."

"Right choice, puppy, very right." She was clearly pleased not even with the victory, but with the fact that this victory happened before Igor began to growl and bark, too soaked in the dog spirit of her strange pressure on the psyche. "Good boy! Now, wait, here, take it in your hand."

In his hand was clutched a strange-looking knife, seemingly alive, though it was made of a solid piece of corroded iron. It was as if the melted rebar had been given the features of a sharpening blade, but it wasn't just a piece of iron; Igor could feel the Vessel in it. Or no, not an entire Vessel, but its empty and decrepit semblance. Somehow, he immediately realized that someone had been stabbed with this knife, though the knife had obviously not been the simplest before. Meanwhile, the creature carefully touched several lines and patterns on the walls and floor with its fingers, and then moved closer to the prisoner, who still couldn't even stand normally, placing its palm on his back, right in front of the Spiral. The boy almost vomits in disgust, but he holds on, believing in himself and his chance.

"I didn't make this blade, puppy, I can't do it, it's not my way." She said, pressing her palm tighter and tighter, almost dropping his face first into the dirt floor. "All children of the Bitch Mother, whether sons or daughters, named or not, seldom make things with their own hands. Our skins, paws, and fangs are our tools; with them, we take our prey and change the world. That meat the sim tried to take me with a knife was from you locals. Strong, sweet, tasty. I was still weak, and he could have, oh, he could have ended my eternity in that alley. Instead, he became my fodder, became the one I molded into a new essence for this iron."

The warmth didn't come from the palm of her hand, no, because the creature's palm even burned with it as it ran it through the lines of the ritual without touching it. The Vessel, only one, but still, filled with pure and normal power, making the paralyzed Spiral barely but stagger into motion. It didn't last long: a new flash of the ritual's lines, and he felt, as if watching from the sidelines, as that ritual, a bone tablet of unclear rank, strengthened by a very careful alteration of the structure of the entire lecture hall, began to conjure for him. The glow activated involuntarily, as if a needle had been poked into a nerve ending, forcing the body to twitch as the poked one needed, with the difference that the needle and the body were intangible, existing in the realms of ephemeral energy.

The shine fell on the sharp rebar as if it were an integral part of the vessel, absorbed into the shards of the vessel, keeping it autonomous, not blocking Igor's energy charge. And the creature, carefully removing from his fingers the weapon that had been someone's death and was someone's life, pressed its palm against his back again. Bare skin scratched his back with bristling dog hair, and the breath of the named abomination became much heavier. Oh, it was not easy to give her these manipulations, in fact, the opposite power and essence, not at all easy. Igor felt that the power flowing into him, filling its one Vessel, did not belong to the creature, that someone, also Exalted, in this room had died, had been slaughtered, tortured, devoured. There is no blood or bones on the stripped floor, however, nor are there any other creatures, as if mere dogs are not allowed to see what their leader and leader does, not allowed even a glance to smear the ritual of their alpha.

"Get up, puppy, this is no time to lie down." He was tugged sharply by the arm, forcing him to note in passing how much strength there was in the skinny body of the dog, and then he was placed exactly opposite the prisoner, who looked at him tiredly. "Here is the moment of truth, here is your choice: puppy or mutt, greatness or chain with a bowl of scraps. Look at her, look into her eyes, into the eyes of the one who betrayed. The one who deceived. The one who is no longer your pack. Who didn't even think you were a puppy, just her bitch. Come on, puppy, it's time to grow up and be a dog."

Igor looks into those eyes, feeling the irresistible, no, golden web in his head and body, the almost irresistible will and spirit of the named creature washing over him. She looks into those eyes and sees no pleading or remorse there - only unwillingness to die, fear, a desperate search for a choice, a search for a solution that no longer exists for her. All around her, on the rack and beneath it, in the walls and ceiling, the symbols drawn inside the skull are screaming and whimpering. Igor hears the hungry howls of the dog pack. He almost sees the thin lines of bonds that hold him and her together. One blow and her death will create a flash, and that flash will draw the base of the breach to the depths of the Other Side. A breach far deeper than the ones he'd closed before. From that passage, leading somewhere to the dens and rookeries of the Bitch Mother, his destiny would come to him, using the conduit he had laid to change and re-shape the useful bearer of super-valuable Gifts.

He saw it, as if it were real, saw it, and for a moment he almost gave in. Resentment stung him as much as the creature's words, resentment and incomprehension, unwillingness to remain loyal to the one he trusted. Igor looked into the unreadable gaze of the doomed to die, but he saw no tears there, no request for forgiveness, no hope. In a way, Elizaveta Albertovna would have made an even more fierce bitch than he would have made a dog. Her thirst for life, her readiness to fight even when there was no chance left, was like an unreasonable beast that did not realize the fact of its fate. It was quite fitting for the nature of the creature that captivated them. Igor looks into those light brown eyes, now almost gray from the feelings he is experiencing, and then he makes a final decision. Probably making the biggest foolishness in the rest of his life, he addressed the Daughter of Bitches in a trembling voice, almost whimpering, not daring to turn to face her.

"Between mutt and puppy, I'll choose to be a..." He thrusts the dagger over the prisoner's exposed breasts, then delivers his blow, screaming at the top of his lungs. "A FUCKING DOGHUNTER!!!"

The creature had expected something like that, couldn't help but expect it, and so it wasn't even surprised, only yapped insultingly and mockingly, managing to let the sound of disappointment sink in. And a promise, of course. The promise that no further illusion of choice was meant for him, left to him, or to be bestowed upon him. Igor struck at once at full power, detonating the charge in the Vessel, but directing it not at the creature, which was obviously protected by something. Especially, he did not like the shapeless shirt made of dog hair, which stank of something ominous even in the already ominous environment. No, he put all his power into his left heel, stomping his foot like a child in hysterics.

Only children in hysterics do not have a burst of whiteness that would pierce all the lines and symbols of the ritual that covered the floor, filling them with whiteness and literally burning out the Otherness and its power from these symbols. The ritual of the Bone Tablet, or even two or three of them combined together at once, had lost a part of its gears, the key part, the most important one. Yes, the creature had ways to duplicate the system, ways to keep it from destroying so much work. It couldn't help but use them, since it had spent so much energy on Igor. She was ready for his last attempt to break free. The ritual structure on the ceiling shone like a mirror, intercepting the disintegration, and the walls shuddered as if they were covered in fur and sores, like the sides of a huge dog.

Igor stepped towards the creature, technically retreating from the blow with his armature-blade, trying to poke it with the compressed pick with the built-in Vessel and release the power of the artifact already in the wound, under the protection, not outside it. He steps and then flies backwards into the wall, dropping his weapon, for the bitch moved so swiftly that it almost blurred into a blur for him. He slams his back into that wall, feeling the woolly surface trying to sprout on and through him. It tries, but cannot penetrate the second layer of the renewing protection. The expression of inordinate surprise on the creature's face, which only for a moment appeared from beneath a vicious muzzle full of superiority, was worth any agony. Igor's last bet played out as a victory, though not a crushing one, but something that could become one if he tried hard enough.

All seven Vessels in him renewed instantly, but one of them was immediately spent on the protection. He cast all five layers for the price of one. The second he expended when he reactivated the shine in burst mode, this time striking the ritual again, finally breaking it. The bitch had based her tactics on the fact that Igor would be able to strike once, but no more. And the music to his ears was howl full of bitterness, anger, and hatred, as only a creature can make, who did not make backups for six months, and now sees a burned hard disk in front of it. The creature struck in earnest, striking out, emptying three vessels at once, but Igor had never remembered that he had been able to set protection so quickly. It was as if someone was helping him and guiding him with golden threads, not his hands, but his inner energy. Four layers on him just cuts and licks, but the double layer of protection on Elizabeth “Traitorous Bitch” Albertovna only halves. From her, not standing in the direct path of the attack, tears off only the top, free, leaving the first, holding the blow.

The attack looked like the same sweep of a dog's tongue that should lick away mind, thoughts, flesh and skin, but it came out blurred; the blindness of the flash and the rollback of the ritual forced the creature to strike higher, and Igor himself stumbled in time, as if catching his ankle on a stretched golden thread. The creature dashes at him, trying to strike him with its whole body, and he sees how the cloth that covered it moves, how the fur that grew instantly over its face-muzzle comes out and falls out, taking the blow of the shine and hiding back. The young man does not attempt to renew the layers of protection; instead, he does something he had never done before. He knew he could have, but he didn't want to risk it; there was no reason to. The risk is high, and to a normal Exalted one, this approach would simply make an example of suicide, but Igor has a Gift that has strengthened the foundation of his Exaltation. Enough to make him risk his life, health, and permanent destruction of the Vessels.

After all, it's hard for him to imagine a more desperate situation, let alone worry about health and injury!

Igor renews his shine.

And then renews it again.

And repeats his action for the third time.

Not taking any more risks, he felt like a balloon that kept being pumped full of hot helium. A white sheen began to emerge from under his fingernails, from the microcracks in his skin, from his ears, eyes, mouth, nostrils, and even, it seemed, from his ass. A shine as bright as he had simply never seen before. His instinctive understanding of the Tablet was screaming that he was a retard, a degenerate, a fool, a dickhead, and a hundred other insulting words. His instincts were screaming that a normal Exalted would have crumbled to white dust on the floor by now, but he was nowhere near normal, he had two gifts with the prefix “Great,” so let his instincts go to hell, but he could handle it! Stepping under the creature's blow, not trying to dodge, and for the first time seeing the sincere panic on the dog's face, Igor makes a synchronized burst of all three charges, concentrating it this time on the enemy.

To say that he was shaken would be a fucking understatement in the choice of appropriate vocabulary and the degree of its profanity. To say that it shook the bitch was not to say nothing, but to cut out his vocal cords with a chainsaw in the maternity ward of the hospital. As if in slow motion, he saw how quickly the creature tried to break the distance, how the individual hairs of its coat scattered, forming a voluminous shield, how its entire body was covered with dog hair, climbing out from under the skin, changing even the shape of its face, turning it into a flexible and not at all anthropomorphic figure of a quadrober's dream. And then the world became white and there was nothing but white around, there was nowhere, not even Igor himself, so that he could be reborn a second later. To his shock, the hall was completely cleared of any signs at all, leaving only muddy and shapeless formless divisions in the farthest corners, but it was practically unaffected physically.

At most, the whitewash fell off the walls, but it was always falling on my head before. The dean's office loved to wash off money on repairs, as if deep down they also wanted to be Zhora the Concrete.

Staggering on his feet, he involuntarily looks into himself and realizes that these three Vessels will be replenished not for an hour or two, but well, if only for twenty-four hours. But, in all other respects, he is not hurt at all, only very battered from the whiteness that has passed through his body in extremely large volumes. Neither was the lying bitch who fell from her bed, tearing off the ropes that entangled her, as if they had become of a consistency comparable to overcooked macaroni. And she was rolling away toward the door, clearly not intending to linger here for even one extra moment, which Igor even understood, but he couldn't leave, leaving a couple of things unfinished. One of those things was the one who had been hit harder by the white flash than the other two.

There were no burns on her. She looked completely intact, though she wobbled on her long, skinny legs, though she twitched her thin neck convulsively, glistening with a now naked androgynous body that would have made him even more nauseous, but Igor had used his standard of disgust for years to come. She was intact, but only externally - four of the thirteen Vessels in her reverse spiral had survived, and only three were full. The others were either crumbled, or so damaged that they didn't work, or were twitching from the whiteness that filled their guts, ready to spill back into the body. Igor, who felt remarkably clean, as if he had burned away all the brain-destroying mucus that she had fed to the prisoner, realized with a tinge of involuntary respect that the creature had deliberately sacrificed this pair of Vessels, piling more whiteness into them, saving what it could still save.

They stared at each other a moment longer, and then Bitch Daughter let out a single growl, not even with hatred, but with a kind of rabid anger that transcended comprehension. She did so to rush into battle, without words, without promises of vengeance, without attempts to intimidate or negotiate, just like a wild, stray dog fed on a diet of human flesh. Its mind-boggling speed, which had made it physically impossible to fight, had diminished, and though the bitch still moved very fast, faster than Igor, it was no longer the speed that had broken the back of his hopes. The blow with open palms, on which claws, teeth, and hair, dog hair, obviously, grow in the moment before contact, removed a good third of the protection, but Igor did not hesitate.

He attacks rarely, more concerned with renewing his protection, but the last vessel spent on the shine makes his rare strikes very dangerous. The creature is like a beast. Not a mad beast, but light and agile. She circling around him, scaling the ceiling and walls, clawing at them with teeth and stiff bristles that have grown instantly at the points of contact. She looks for a moment to attack, but Igor is no longer a toothless puppy to her, but an equal opponent! And in the real world, of course, it's very dangerous to meet a stray dog attacking you, but people rule that world. For now, at least. He continued the fight, falling to the floor and rolling over when the dog's tongue was released from its chain, releasing two of the Vessels that the creature had left.

She struck again, using up a single charge to remove three layers of the shield, but Igor was already restoring them. He also throws his palm forward, taking advantage of the fact that the bitch can't attack the Tablet and move so nimbly at the same time, taking advantage of the fact that she needs to slow down for a moment to strike. He manages, manages to grab her ankle, pulling her toward him, dropping her to the floor, as she weighs little more than he does, despite her enormous stature. The active and automatically triggered defense-wool burns his amulet, tingles with the curse even through the protection, but the whiteness of the shine burns out the curse, and Igor lets go of his leg, falls on top of the creature, clutching both palms on its thin neck, trying to choke it or tear its head off.

There is nothing intimate about their position, despite their mutual nakedness. Igor is sure he'll spend hours washing himself clean from that touch, if he survives, of course. But the beast's fury is enough for two. Igor himself, calmed and partially cleansed, fell into a kind of meditation in which only he and his target were. A simple, clear, and correct goal, which was that the named creature, which had almost made him its puppy, would never exist again, that it would cease to be. His hands, from palms to elbows, glisten with a whiteness that makes his fingers invisible, as if he were wearing the whitest opera gloves in the world. In his hands is the power of the shining Tablet, whose name contains that very same shine, but the creature does not yield, the creature fights for life with the fury of a rabid bitch who knows no fear or doubt, who has forgotten pain and the very possibility of defeat.

The creature, like him, fights silently, hearing only heavy breathing and the rumble of blows, accompanied by flashes of mutually applied magic. The creature hits him with clawed paws, which appear at the moment of the blow in the place of palms, but Igor only silently presses, spending all his strength to support the shine and constant renewal of the layers of the protection. And also on adjusting that protection to the type of attacks used by the creature that had fed its active defense-hair with the last active Vessel. This trick of hers seemed to be of the same nature as the shine, sealing the Vessel but giving a constant boost to the passive-active enhancement. Igor did not smile, did not bared his teeth, not wanting to resemble his opponent even in a small way, only pressed, pressed and controlled the protection, transforming himself not only into an armored stock, but also into a stock immobile, as if a hundred sticky threads clinging to his position in space at the level of not weight, but the concept of immovability.

No amount of physical strength, which the Bitch had in abundance, could move him, throw him off, force him off of her and allow their fight to devolve into the same multi-dimensional, wall-jumping plane it had been. For a moment, she stops punching, grabbing at his wrists, trying to unclench them, covering the whiteness of his ‘gloves’ with a woollen carpet. He doesn't pay attention, he just presses and presses and wishes he could detonate the last vessel, otherwise it would still burst from the inside, having overdosed on the allowed doses of shining whiteness. The creature presses through him, slowly and inexorably, elbows apart, depriving him of his leverage.... but not in time.

A terrible howl, full of pain and despair, cut through his ears as the wool under his fingers pressed through, and the young man's hands clenched around a dog's neck. The howl chokes, turns into a gurgling whimper as the flesh beneath his fingers parted, as he simply tore through the trachea, the vessels in his neck, and the muscles with one hand grasping the spinal column. With one hand, for there wasn't enough room with the other, but weakened by half, if only for a moment before he transferred all resources to his right hand, the intensity of the shine allowed the creature to complete the manoeuvre. Whipping his arms up, she forced him to lose his balance, letting out a bare spine, successfully shaking the man off of himself, knocking him backwards into the wall, getting to his feet. Swaying, trembling, drenching the floor in scarlet blood, but standing and acting, not dying from the wounds that should not just immobilise her, but kill her.

She wasn't wasting any time either. Igor didn't notice that in almost a minute while he was strangling her, as well as in a minute and a half while she was jumping around him, the creature had managed to clear the white-filled Vessels. How exactly it had done this, Igor didn't know and couldn't even guess. A creature that had lived for many, many centuries before it ‘went on the roll’, beginning its journey anew, but with the Name, could not but have full sleeves and pockets of trump cards. And now, triumphant and grinning, she focused all her energies on the young man trying to get up but failing to do so, and then began activating the dog's tongue. Igor has already seen how it does it. He already knows that the creature will lose these Vessels, but the last blow with their use will be even stronger, because it will carry the tainted remnants of his own attack, his personal shine.

Spurting streams of blood from the torn but already slightly fused around the spine, it opens its mouth unnaturally wide and.... stumbles backwards, perplexed, trying to reach for her temple with her hand. That hand froze in that gesture, falling powerlessly along its body, unable to pull the shining white piece of sharpened rebar from her skull. On the face of the creature, ancient and mighty, which had every chance of restoring and increasing its power by orders of magnitude, a perfectly childlike expression of perplexed resentment flashed across the vicious face of the Bitch's Daughter. And then she darted a glance of dimming eyes at Elizaveta Albertovna standing in the doorway and slowly and unhurriedly settled down on the blood-stained and mangled floor.

Igor looks into the eyes of the woman who saved him, into the eyes of a dishonest rapist, traitor and simply a vile bitch and understands that she did not run to the door then, but for the rebar knocked out of his hand. And, judging by the sagging protection, as well as traces of blood on her palms, some guard dogs were still here; it's just that the main creature did not let them near the ritual hall, even giving the order to wait in case of a battle. The scum was sure that she would triumph in a quick battle, that the prisoners would not be able to do anything to her. Igor himself has not yet decided what exactly he wants to say, whether he wants to talk at all, or whether he would prefer to immediately beat, and to the death. Because it was at this moment that the shining whiteness permeating his body and essence finally calmed down, and the agitated energy and immaterial essence of the novice Exalted decided to take an interest from him for his suicidal behavior.

The flash of pain throughout his body and beyond was taken by him completely calmly, as if granted. He didn't even scream, he simply couldn't open his lips. And then the floor, heaving like a sea wave, hit these lips, forcing him to think that not all the charms and traps of the filthy dog had burned out ​​in white fire. And his consciousness, already barely holding on in his body, trembling from the overload, could not withstand this blow, taking Igor into the realm of the heavy faint that had overtaken him, relieving him for a while of some of the burdens of his exhausted and tired body.

And there was only darkness, enveloping and cold, like a blizzard raging outside the university walls.

The darkness was so thick and dense that even nightmares could not find the slightest place in its evil power.

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Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/87876/586932

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP