e werewolf watched the retreating rider and walked several times along the road, crossing it from curb to curb. Starosta Listovoy loudly distributed instructions, dispersing people to their homes and forcing them to get ready for the road right now for the night. The villagers obeyed, but the werewolf was still surprised by their slowness and incomprehensible disregard for danger. He already realized that very strange people live in Miros - who care little about their own lives, but are ready to defend the defense of their own kingdom to the end. Or not strange, but simply different than he used to see next to him - not like in Reet, not those who care only about their own good, but are ready to stand with a mountain for their relatives, for neighbors, for their people. The villagers calmly and busily loaded carts with their belongings, seated children on top of the bales, harnessed horses, tied lowing and bleating cattle behind. Ownerless chickens, which no one tried to catch, ran
He took off from his seat and rushed towards the approaching danger. He circled the people in an arc, but they noticed him. Two women, each pulling the hands of children holding each other, and a single middle-aged man armed with a gnarled stick, falling from fatigue, made their way between the trees. They involuntarily stopped, watched him go, the man even screamed, trying to warn him. Vic was only interested in their pursuers. The swaying figures, in a friendly group of seven dead men, rather quickly followed the people. He drew his sword from its scabbard on the move, threw it to the level of the necks and, without stopping, crashed into an uneven formation. The sharp blade easily ripped open the half-rotted skin, cut the vertebrae of the first victim and separated the head from the neck. The corpse, having lost part of its body, immediately lost its rhythm and stomped on the spot. Vic stepped forward, swung his sword at the next neck, then another, dodged the twisted fingers th
Vic growled quietly, the paralyzing effect of the magic sword taking its toll on his own condition more and more. The hostile energy running from the hand like prickly fire was already felt at chest levels and began to flow to the legs. The blows were getting weaker, and the movements themselves were slow. Another dead man received a blow to the chest, and not to the head - the hand did not rise higher. Vic stepped back, watching as the enemy staggered, trembled, but did not fall. Behind someone pulled at the clothes, pulled on himself, almost knocking over on his back. The Vistolets twitched, turned around with a jerk, realizing in some kind of stupor that the hand holding the weapon no longer obeyed him. The fingers unclenched by themselves, and the sword flew to the ground. Vic stumbled, his semi-paralyzed legs almost causing him to fall. He slowly took a step back and quickly looked around. The dead confidently closed the circle in a multi-row crowd. The nearest ones were alread
A heightened sense of smell alerted him to the presence of a guest before he turned the corner of the corridor. Yarsi slightly slowed down his pace, and then drove the expression of alertness from his face and, raising his head high, went towards Velislav, Daitra's heir, who was waiting for him at the door. He silently looked at the approaching prince. Yarsi just as silently stopped in front of the Daitroite blocking the passage. "Hello, Yarsi," he smiled wryly. - Long time no see. You've lost your temper, prince.- Well, yes, I became taller than you, - Yarsi slapped Velislav on the shoulder. - How long have you been standing here? I decided to take a walk before bed. - Didn't know that werewolves sleep.- And I'm not an ordinary werewolf, - the king of Reeta smiled with all his fangs. “Sometimes I sleep, sometimes I don’t. If you're not afraid, then come in, I'm glad to see you. The visitor snorted and stepped aside. Yarsi was the first to step into his own chambers, he hear
Yarsi took a deep breath and paced the room. A childhood friend did not just appear that night. This visit could be interpreted as Daitra's great hope that Miros was still her protector. The Daitras are too accustomed to living behind the back of a strong, warlike neighbor. Their own army has long existed only for appearances and mainly consists of palace guards, those who really wanted to be warriors went to Miros. Yarsi grinned gloomily, yes, the war has not yet begun, but most of the army is already drawn to the western border - the border with the lands of Tinasa. In the forges, swords are reforged day and night - silver is poured into their blades. But Yarsi placed much greater hope in the archers. The longer they can keep the dead within sword range, the greater the chance for the living. In addition, silver tips required much less material than swords. And the fact that silver acts on the dead, he had already seen during the battle at Keront. True, the sword that Vic held i
A low tree freely spread its branches over the darkened walls. Powerful branches had long ago pushed aside the masonry of the stone fence, and the bricks, unable to withstand the pressure of nature and the past years, lay in piles on the ground. But here and there a dilapidated wall still stood, hiding from prying eyes a squat one-story house, immersed in the greenery of a wild garden. This small plot with a house was located at the outer wall of Eleard and only huge gardens of neighboring estates adjoined it. It was believed that he had an owner and that's the only reason no one has touched him until now. Still, someone else's property, and no one knew where the owner himself was. And the guests here were not frequent, sometimes random travelers wandered in, turning in the wrong direction from a good road. Under their feet lay a path overgrown with thick grass, into which the once flat, stone-paved path had turned. The travelers looked in bewilderment at the branchy thickets, which
The sun's rays pierced the foliage with too bright strokes, making it impossible to enjoy the flight. Vic hissed through his teeth, the blinding light in his eyes causing him to lose his bearings over and over again and fail to dodge the branches. They mercilessly beat him in the face, lashed his shoulders and clung to his wings. Tired of fighting, the Vistolet dived down and immediately stepped into the shadows. The wings obediently pressed against the back, even no effort had to be made. This action turned out to be so natural, as if he had been a winged creature all his life. The Vistolet chuckled grimly and broke into a run. It was close to the meadow. Vic rounded the parking lot and, keeping under the trees, went out to the children, trying not to turn his back or sideways. However, the front of his clothes was also quite tattered, and through the tatters, curved scratches were visible, deeply tearing the skin. The Vistolets strongly hoped that they would soon be delayed, but s
The first houses greeted them with indifferent glances from empty windows. The travelers involuntarily stopped. A short, thin boy waved a long stick, as if it were a staff, whispered something softly and twisted his head in surprise. The tall figure of his companion was completely hidden by a thick cloak, a hood was pulled over his face, but the look of his eyes, protected by a thick shadow, ran along the massive walls, tenaciously caught the only movement - the curtains blown by the wind in the windows and glided into the distance of the wide street. He shook his head in distaste and pushed the two girls closer to their brother, standing behind their small group himself.- Well? Still want to go? he asked.“I have to make sure that I can’t help them in any way, Lirta’s parents are no longer young, they need to leave here, just like the rest of the townspeople,” the guy said stubbornly. - A strange place, where did everyone go?“They turned into the dead and left,” Vic grinned gloomil
The soft, very smooth movement turned into a jerky wave of the hand, the silver of the blade sparkled in the setting sun and sank into the insides of the half-decayed body. The corpse swayed, a bloody-fiery reflection flashed in the empty eye sockets and immediately went out - it hid in the depths of the skull. Hidden. The dead man stared straight in front of him for several long moments with blind holes in his eyes, and then began to sag, kneel down, scrape the ground with his knuckles and hiss menacingly. He did not want to leave, there is too much energy here to stay.Vic smiled crookedly, the creature was found to be tenacious, already three necromancers, after meeting with this walking monster, lay in the nearest forest and pretended to be dead. Until the time - until it's their turn. It could be assumed that this dead man was once a sorcerer, even such rumors circulated. Didn't really listen.He stepped back abruptly, knuckles ripping through the air, aiming at his legs. The Vis
Radolyub fell to his knees, rested his forehead on the ground and could not stop himself in order not to laugh. His whole body shook with hysterical laughter, tears flowed from his eyes, his fingers scraped the ground, raked in dust. Mida looked at him blankly. A large crowd of the dead had gathered around their dome. The walking corpses snapped their jaws furiously, hissed furiously and fought against an invisible barrier. The only free place where one could look and not stumble upon their faces distorted by death was the sky.“We beat ourselves,” the mage said with difficulty through spasms of laughter. – They beat… But he was a man, Mida. Understand? Human in essence. King of Reeta, dragon and human.He turned with difficulty and looked at the sorceress.- You do not care?"We did what we had to do," the woman said coldly.- So, what is next? Your pride, your hatred, your arrogance - how will they help you now? We ruined our world, Mida!She closed her eyes, slowly sank down next t
The horse wheezed, shreds of foam flew from the bit. Elena looked ahead with despair, she had long been separated from the rest of the horsemen, but this did not make her feel any better. I wanted to find wings like Vic's and fly up into the sky and cover the distance to Keront in a few moments.This was not necessary, the city flashed as a blurry streak on the horizon, and right in the middle of the road a monstrous action unfolded: a black streak flashed in the air, strangely resembling a giant blade that hung vertically behind ... Yarsi. The blade turned, resounded in breadth, and now, instead of a blade, an oval funnel was spinning above the ground.Elena realized that she had already seen this, once a green-eyed demon, who called himself Brother Yarsi, had gone into a similar portal, and then King Bortan created something similar and also left this world. So doesn't this portal mean that Yarsi must now leave?The girl gritted her teeth and hit the horse with her heels, forcing th
In the approaching twilight of the evening, the city seemed strangely lonely - the walls had lost their colors and were filled with gray tones, the crimson reflections of the sunset fell on the roofs, making them ominously bloody.Radolyub kept looking back, glancing at Carival. Like saying goodbye.Their little band was trotting towards the Valley of the Wind. He took only five magicians with him - young and very capable, from those who took the coming of dragons very close to their hearts. They hardly had to explain anything, everyone was ready to sacrifice themselves for the sake of destroying the monsters.Radolyub with hidden trembling peered into their faces, they will serve only to divert attention, but the main blow will have to be dealt to him. Or will it be Giton? Or maybe Mida?The woman and eight magicians from Bitra joined them at the crossroads with Tinasa, they slipped out of the hills like shadows, silently nodded and did not utter a word. Radolyub carefully ran his ey
His own movements reminded him of the attempts of a seriously ill person to get on his feet, his body almost did not obey, but Kim, with desperate persistence, forced himself to move, crawl, flounder in place. Yes, anything to get out of this lingering pool of weakness. The vague gaze now and then stumbled upon the motionless figures of the sisters, their pale faces, disheveled hair and barely rising chests. It was terribly unusual to see restless, cheerful girls like that ... A feeling of guilt before them firmly settled in his mind - he used them and could not protect them.He put his hand on the ground and got down on one knee. A cloud of ash shot up around, hung in the air and reluctantly fell. Kim almost did not notice how Vic flew away, suddenly the Wistolet was simply gone - he disappeared, disappeared among the endless whirlwinds of what was happening. And left them here. Next to the dragon.The guy ran his hand over his face, smeared soot on his cheeks, shook his head, trying
“My son, a flame lives in you…. My heir!”What is the heir? The indifferent look of almost colorless eyes continued to live in my memory. Inhuman eyes! Too cold and almost dead.You only came to life when you met your mother, and then you killed her....His head was torn from an endless stream of images. Shadows, color pictures, some fragmentary memories suddenly decided to merge into a single round dance and fall on the mind. Right now, right at the moment when clear thinking was needed.Perhaps this is how they start to go crazy?I saw double, jumped from the distant cloudless sky to the deformed wasteland of the Valley, then to the forest, to the endless line of the dead, continuing to advance from Tinasa and again to the strip of mountains framing the black, ash-like earth, split by faults.A wide road ran along the edge of the Valley, dust was raised by the hooves of horses. A long file of horsemen trotted out from behind the hills, all in battle armor, well-armed, all but three
They sat on the ground, trembling. The girls quickly came to their senses and even smiled sadly. Mila ran her finger along the wing, nodded thoughtfully and quite like an adult.- Now you are very beautiful, Vic ...Sarsha's hand carefully lay on her head, stroking her hair with a barely noticeable movement. A moment... Vic slowly pulled away and gathered his wings behind him, nodded to Yarsi, then turned to Erto. He stared at him with wide eyes, his fingers gripping the hilt of his drawn sword so tightly that they turned white. Vic chuckled wryly and drew the thorn across his throat in a very unambiguous manner. Erto stepped back, clattering his weapon back into its scabbard.“I don’t know what kind of creature you are, but now I’m not going to find out,” he said in a hollow voice."Vic is my friend and that's enough," Yarsi said calmly. So, what else do you know about dragons? What's next?Erto raised his head to the sky. In the pale blue, a black shadow slowly glided, rising higher
With each step, a thick cloud of ash rose into the air. The smallest black particles resembled homogeneous weightless dust and were torn off from the slightest movement. Ordinary ash is not like that. And there is no such thing as fog. And the frost crystals remaining after it should not dig into the ground with spikes and harden with ugly thorns.The earth was dying, underfoot, instead of soil, a lifeless stone rang. The ash was not just an outer cover, it became a death shroud for this forest...The border of living trees moved a huge distance, edging the black, cracked wasteland. The disfigured land stretched all the way to the hills, from behind which a string of walking corpses continued to crawl out. The swaying figures, paying no attention to anything, stepped into the ashes and indifferently wandered forward.Yarsi was forced to move away from the main scene of action in order to remain under the crowns of trees. The gigantic skeleton of the dragon turned back to the dead. Sno
Inside the body, something irritatingly crunched and shifted quite palpably so that Vic could hardly restrain himself from screaming. A recently seen picture immediately arose before my eyes - new bone outgrowths come out of the dragon's skeleton and begin to crawl, intertwine, strengthen the backbone. But what happens to his own body?The Vistolet moved cautiously, sat up with difficulty, hoping very much that he would not begin to turn into something new right now. The skin of the back kept the feeling of icy cold, which stuck into the flesh with needles and continued to twitch with pain. He tried to look around, all he could see was a shoulder covered with countless red dots."Dragon's breath," Yarsi said, a mocking smile on his lips. “Your skin is strong, Vic, don’t worry. You were almost unharmed. Can you create such a protective zone again?- Wh-what? The voice sounded hoarse, he coughed.- Do not sleep, Vic, now there is no time to delve into yourself. Accept everything new at