Among the destroyed buildings, under the gentle light of the sunset, two young women walked slowly, as if on a stroll. One directly along the road, or at least it was once such - only pieces of molten bricks and broken asphalt remained from it. Although she walked barefoot, she did not even look at her feet, somehow managing to avoid stumbling. The second one walked at a distance, not wanting to deal with the path that looked like it came out from someone's sadistic imagination. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, she stopped, peering into something in the distance.

  “Hey,” the first one called out to her in an unexpectedly deep voice.

  Whoever you asked, no one would call her an adult, so petite she looked. But this was not only unusual. She was Asian girl with dazzling white hair barely covered shoulders, and her only visible right eye was navy blue, while the left one was hidden behind a bandage, as dirty as her dress. Probably both were once white, but their current shade was like something between gray and brown.

  “Karina!” she raised her voice only a little, but it still echoed.

  In Karina however, if anything was special, it was only that there was nothing special at all, in contrast to her companion. Medium height, although against white-haired she seemed pretty tall, a light-brown bob, gray eyes, T-shirt with sort of baggy pants and a sneakers - clothes clearly chosen out of comfort, without the slightest claim to beauty.

  “Huh?” she replied lazily.

  “We're not walking in the park after all. What's in there?”

  “That cloud,” she pointed with a finger, “Looks exactly like a whale copulating with a kitten.”

  The white-haired girl clicked her tongue.

  “Suppress your instincts even more, then one day you’ll definitely begin to see nonexistent stuff” she said in a displeased tone. “It's just a cloud. And it looks like a cloud. And in general its shape is round. Such beauty is everywhere, but she examines only clouds.”

  “You have strange concept of beauty,” Karina replied and kicked a skull lying in the way, so it rolled away. “Devastation and bones, almost sure human, everywhere.”

  “That’s not me, who turned most of the planet into this,” the girl said sarcastically. “It’s even not fair of you to ignore the consequences of your own actions.”

  “Round and round,” she sighed, “If I remembered at least something of what you ascribe to me, maybe it would make sense. Whatever. My legs are aching already - we wander all day, and see no one. Are you even sure the wizard is here? After all, this town doesn’t look like as if anyone can live in it.”

  “But all you need is to look around,” the other one sighed this time. “We have already arrived.”

  Although Karina became uncomfortable from her absent-mindedness, she did not show it, instead began to intensively explore the surroundings.

  A building, bones, a building, a mountain of bones, another mountain of bones. And nothing instead of that.

  “I don’t want to admit it, but I don’t see him. Nowhere.”

  “It would be strange if you seen,” the white-haired laughed, “At least, you finally focused on why we are here.”

  Karina looked at her, tilted head doomily, but decided not to answer anything else, fairly judging that this will only waste much more time. So, having resigned herself, she just continued to walk, following the girl.

  When the sun had completely disappeared beyond the horizon, leaving behind only a reddish line in the sky, they finally stopped near a decent size of a pile of bones, enough to hide a small house under it. The girl immediately began to rake the bones with her hands, while Karina decided to just wait. Well, she wanted, but it would be strange if the second did not notice.

  “Wouldn’t you like to join?” she asked. “Only you complained that we spent all day here.”

  “Somehow it is not very hygienic,” Karina answered, “These are bones, it’s not clear whose and where from. What if they’re even contagious?”

  “Oh, really, how could I not have thought about it,” she said, demonstratively plopping down on the ground and crossing her legs. “Fine, let's wait until these remains turn to dust on their own.”

  “Sometimes you are unbearable,” Karina grimaced, but instead of engaging in an obviously senseless skirmish, she came up and carefully, almost with her fingertips, began to pull out the bones.

  White-haired girl, either out of naughtiness or for some other reason, remained sitting. As a result, Karina raked the pile herself. However, only about five minutes were a limit for her patience - not a trace of disgust remained, and she was already scooping out the bones to the full length of her arms.

  In the end, someone's head appeared, and the two of them stretched out the body, which turned out to be a man of, who knows, how many years old, so emaciated that if it were not for the presence of hair, it might not have been noticed among the remains at all. Karina shuddered.

  “Is he even alive?”

  “Almost. The domain hasn’t yet been destroyed, although it doesn’t extend beyond the body.” the girl answered. “But if it bothers you – feel free to check his breathe.”

  She shuddered again.

  “No thanks.”

  “She herself wants to know, but she expects the answers would fall from the sky”, she gazed at Karina. “Come in. We've really been here too long, it'll be a shame if we're late.”

  Karina, continuing to struggle unsuccessfully with disgust, sat down next to a man and carefully touched the forehead of a lying body, which vaguely resembled a human, with a finger. She closed her eyes and began to dive into the fluid darkness. After a few seconds, when she felt the hover, she tried to see something through the darkness, but it remained unchanged.

  “Belyana,” she called in a muffled voice, as if heard through the water column. “There's nothing here.”

  “Every time I’m surprised how little patience you have, but how long do you able to tolerate anything, when you don’t need to do it at all”, Belyana’s voice answered in a monotonous sound right in her head, even when it was clear from the phrase itself, that her real tone was, at least, not neutral. “You yourself saw that he was barely alive. Obviously, there is almost nothing left on the surface.”

  “If everything is so obvious to you, maybe you want to dive instead of me?” she waited for an answer, preparing the most stinging arguments that only came to her mind, but there was only silence. And the feeling of annoyance that constantly, as soon as she actually can talk back, Belyana begins to simply ignore her.

  The darkness pressed more and more. The deeper she sank, the stronger the pain became, started from the eyes and eardrums, now spreading throughout the whole body. She began to feel what a little more, and she would simply be flattened into a meat ball. But as soon as she surrendered and was about to emerge, with a loud painful pop and a bright flash, the pressure disappeared so abruptly, that it even seemed to her for a moment as if she had exploded.

  The night sky, full of stars of all colors of the rainbow, was the first thing she saw while stood on it. Or not. Fragments of land of all sizes floated in space in random positions. On some of them, quite familiar flowers and trees grew, on some - an unimaginable something, which was also flowers, judging by the petals and leaves. But unlike plants, they marched and snapped jaws full of teeth, similar to those of a bear, either saying something silently, or frightening someone.

  “Hey!” Karina shouted, listening to the echo and unnaturally twirling her head, like a locator, trying to find a direction from which it would not return.

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  The marching flowers stopped, turning towards the source of the sound, and immediately jumped in her direction. She hesitated, but quickly came to her senses, took a piece of land about a size of a small island, hovered nearby, as if it weighed nothing, and threw it into a kind of army. The island remained where it was, while Karina herself, with a completely unimaginable speed, was thrown to the opposite direction. She flew, however, only an instant, after which she fell to the ground of the planet that was in the way, leaving a giant crater with her landing.

  She shook herself off, put her hand to her eyes, shielding from the blinding blue light of an unknown star, and after found the hole in the sky through which she had arrived, peered into it attentively.

  “4 minutes before the guard. They’re fast and for some reason they strongly didn’t like me, but there should be enough time,” she said.

  “For some reason,” the monotony of Belyana's voice in Karina's head has not changed, “After all, it’s absolutely impossible that the savior of everyone and everything could annoy someone. Do you want me to build a monument to you? I can start right now. You just decide, from bones or bricks? There is a lot of any material here.”

  “It’s impossible to talk to you at all, sit there with yourself, entertain without me,” she answered irritably.

  “Actually, you know, I’ll do exactly what you suggested. Here, quite by accident, I appeared to have a camera, and two bodies of different sexes in an unconscious state.”

  “Ignore it. Ignore it. Ignore it. Ignore it,” like a mantra, Karina repeated to herself several times.

  After some of deep inhales and exhales, she finally looked around. An endless field of bright scarlet grass - not a bush, not a tree. Not the slightest hint that someone might be here. Resigned to the fact that her vision would not help her, she shifted her attention to hearing. The world lost its clarity, but she heard a quiet crying from afar. Although she could not determine the source, she simply went towards her shadow, in part because the local star was too blinding, in part because it coincided with the direction in which she flew in here. By the way, she already had some experience in these travels, so it was difficult to make a mistake here – this kind of target was always on a straight line from the entrance, she just needed not to confuse the side. A few steps later, the world changed dramatically, turning into a town, not yet destroyed, and a child was sitting on the ground in front of her, crying loudly.

  “What's happened?” the best question she came with.

  The boy turned and looked at her with reddened from tears eyes. His face was full of cracks, like a crumbling statue, and through the holes where the skin was least left, she seen the city buildings, taking bizarre curving shapes.

  “ImnobodytoyouyoudontneedmewhatisyourbusinessleavemealonegetoffIdontneedyou,” the boy said in a choking voice, not even trying to pause between words.

  “That is not tr...” she began, but almost immediately was interrupted by a shout so loud, that even the earth trembled, as if it were not a voice, but explosion at least.

  “Filth!”

  She immediately turned to face the source, which in same moment grabbed her with the hand large enough, to fit her entire head. Before her was a man, covered only with a loincloth, so handsome that she even caught her breath. The only thing that was strange about him is six wings, two of which he waved, soaring in the air. Admiring him, she realized too late that he actually squeezed her head – it crunched, surprisingly, with a sound like a bursting watermelon.

  “Whoa!” she jumped up with a scream. Only the timely evasion of Belyana saved her from an inevitable hit to the chin.

  “And what exactly are you doing?” she asked accusingly.

  “There ... This one ... With wings ...” she began to make excuses confusedly.

  Belyana looked at her inquiringly, and then cackled in a completely unpleasant way.

  “You are so fortunate,” she replied to the puzzled Karina, when calmed down a little. “First, the town destroyed by your little war. Then the magician, who clearly saw it and somehow miraculously survived. Then he also turned out to be the one who was able to adapt the image of an angel to his consciousness.”

  “Angel ...” Karina said thoughtfully, completely ignoring Belyana's obvious amusement over her. “It explains. So, what to do with him?”

  “Deaf ears as usual,” Belyana replied, rolling her eyes.” Image. Nothing has changed, we are dealing only with this body at last gasp. Less emotion, especially for something that has already extinct, more analysis, otherwise you just won't come back one day. That's all.”

  Karina really wanted to snap back, but still restrained herself, there was too little time. So without wasting more of it, she instantly dived back, using the path she had made for herself the first time.

  The angel did not gone anywhere, except that he was a little further away, standing near the child and was holding a flaming sword in his hand, which for some reason had slipped out of her sight the last time. He turned around, and uttering the words with the same thunderclaps, headed towards her.

  “You do not belong here, abomination! Disappear!” he raised his sword, clearly intending to use it.

  “Why am I an abomination exactly, what kind of shamelessness it is?” she shouted back. “To judge random people without knowing them at all!”

  He looked her straight in the eyes, which caused feeling of a giant centipede to run down her spine, and screamed again, seemingly simply unable to speak normally.

  “Doubting the will of the Lord is a sin! Punishment - obliteration!”

  He struck with sword, from which a wall of fire flew in her direction, extending from the earth to the very sky. One more swing, one more – fire walls appeared for each.

  Acting on intuition rather, she stamped her foot on the ground - a crack formed in that, from which a geyser of bones gushed out, becoming a kind of shield.

  The first wall met a fountain. The bones protected Karina from the flames, but the hot shockwave still knocked her down. The second threw her away. For the third, she had already prepared a little, burying her feet in the ground - this at least, was enough to hold her in place. She began to pluck the grass and sculpt something out of it.

  After a few strokes, the six-winged monster, which did not looked so handsome to her anymore, apparently noticed that this way he would not be able to break through the bone barrier. He swung the sword down then sharply raised it up, and a pillar of fire went into the sky. The ground shook again from his scream, but Karina was too focused on her actions to understand a single word from him.

  The bone geyser, in turn, did not even weaken. Those bones that were not burned by the waves and fallen untouched to the ground, began to stir, gathering together and forming skeletons from themselves, which stood up and ran towards an angel.

  He completely ignored them while they grabbed him and each other. Skeleton after skeleton, they formed a whole bone web, which completely immobilized the angel before he realized their intentions and looked away from the sky.

  Clouds have begun to cover recently clear sky, shimmering with green and purple hues.

  Karina finally finished her seemingly pointless activity - she stood up, holding a knife with a bright scarlet blade in her hand.

  Drip. The first purple drop fell to the ground, leaving a smoking hole in it. Drip-drip.

  Karina screeched. One of the drops fell on her hand and immediately burned through her palm, which she, foolishly, held out. Some pitiful remnants of skin hung from the edges of the hole, turning into a substance that looked more like mucus. She bit her lip with all might, trying to suppress the pain with sheer willpower. There was no time left at all, she would not have a second chance - only on this thought, repeated over and over again, she rushed forward.

  The rain only intensified. There was even smoke coming from the gradually collapsing skeletons. The once strong web was already insufficient to fully hold the angel - he had enough freedom of movement to try to free himself.

  Karina ran, leaving a trail of slimeskin behind her. Her vision blurred from pain, she even begun to feel, like any moment her consciousness would fade. She screamed, but did not hear her own voice, only felt the drying throat, and the air passing through it.

  The angel completely freed his hand with the sword and swung, so that the next wave would turn now defenseless Karina into ash.

  She caught up with him. Her fail was almost unavoidable, but the flame stopped right near her head. The knife pierced his heart with the sound of gurgling lava, and the angel himself immediately spread into a thick brown slurry with a corresponding smell.

  Exhausted, she finally allowed herself to fall on a ground, gasping for air. She could not breathe normally, every attempt was painful and futile. The rain burned through almost everything that was possible in her body.

  Hearing a sob, Karina turned her head to its source, showing to child a burnt face, in whose empty eye sockets were visible parts of the skull and brain.

  “Now you see? Even...” she began to speak, rather hissing, trying to pronounce sounds with melted cheeks and a palate dotted with holes, but the rest of the phrase was drowned out in a snapping hum.

  And not a second passed from the appearance of the sound before the flowers already surrounded her, and like the hungriest animals in the world, they began to tear her body apart, devouring it piece by piece. She no longer had the strength even to scream.

  She opened her eyes, probably for the first time being sincerely glad for the presence of Belyana, and burst into tears, burying herself in her shoulder, trying to wash everything away.

  Little a while, the half-dead man gave signs of life, wheezing, as if trying to say something, but apparently, even these muscles in him had time to atrophy so much that they stopped working normally. Belyana glanced at him, then gently touched Karina's head, and quietly spoke.

  “It’s time. We're still late, unfortunately.”

  It was already night when they left the town. Belyana was carrying a cart, not clear where she had found it, but in it lay a man already asleep, dumped there, as if not a human, but just a carcass of meat. Karina for her part, like a child, walked holding on to Belyana’s dress. The pain had already been forgotten, no matter how amazing it was, and the tension subsided, but the fear, fear that she could be pulled back there, did not recede. And the fact that the source of that dilapidated world was right under her nose only made it worse. Perhaps someone could rightly notice that in the eyes of the wizard there was only guilt, when he tried with his last strength to say something. But truth is, his eyes were so sunken that he looked more like a cartoon villain, trying to make excuses, when he was just caught red-handed.

  “So what do you think about it?” as if with a mockery, Belyana suddenly asked. “Any discoveries, maybe some moral of a story?”

  “Angels are freaks ...” she answered thoughtfully, not noticing any hint.

  Belyana laughed quietly.

  “That is also true.”