p_zombie: переводы

→“Great,” I sighed. “Now, run and get me my toys, Alfred. I’ve got a long night coming up.”

→“UNDERSTOOD, WARDEN,” the entity said with a bow.

→“Sure,” I said in the most cavalier fashion I could. “After all, that’s only half the arsenal. And as soon as I leave, I want the full defensive measures of the island activated. Nothing gets in or out. Understood?”

→That’s the kind of power level we were talking about.

→Alfred sounded . . . slightly intimidated.

→“YOU WISH TWO OF THE WEAPONS?”

→“To the shore, eh?” I said. “All right. Get me the knife. And a binding crystal. And the placard.”

→But if the storm coming for Chicago was as bad as I thought it was going to be, not using it would be unthinkable.

→I had one locked up in the island’s armory. I’d stolen it from the God of the Underworld, from the same shelf as the Shroud and the Crown of Thorns. If it truly was what I was pretty sure it was, then using it was going to put me in a long-term pickle.

→An athame is a magical tool—think magic wand, but in the form of a knife. They’re powerful tools for ritual magic.

→“I AM A JAILER, NOT A BOUNTY HUNTER,” Alfred replied. “PERHAPS TO THE SHORES OF THE LAKE—IF YOU USED THE ATHAME FROM THE ARMORY.”

→“From how far out?” I asked.

→“IF YOU CAN PERFORM THE BINDING, I CAN HOLD HER,” Alfred said.

→“Yes,” I said simply. “Can you hold her?”

→“PHYSICAL SIZE IS NOT A FACTOR,” the spirit replied. “METAPHYSICAL MASS IS A DIFFERENT CONSIDERATION.” The creature’s green eyes suddenly flashed fiercely. “THE LAST TITAN IS ON THE MOVE.”

→“That won’t be necessary,” I muttered back to the spirit. “Alfred, how big a being can the cells contain?”

→So I kind of had to wonder—what else could Demonreach be hiding from me?

→But Alfred was apparently able to hide things from me. The spirit could hide its presence from my intellectus of the island, for example. And it could hide the innate terror of the island’s inmates, preventing it from taking a toll on my psyche.

→And I’d been assuming this whole time that it had to.

→Which . . . bothered me. I mean, my intellectus of the island was essentially without limit. With a minor effort of concentration, I could have known how many ants were on the island, how many birds, how many fish in the waters off its shores. But I couldn’t find out more about the inhabitants of the cells without dragging my brain through their psychic rap sheets, experiencing to some degree everything they were and had done. And I couldn’t sense Alfred or his movements. I mean, the spirit had come every time I’d called.