The moonlight reflected beautiful highlights from the Fox's fur. Karina was sleeping on her back, hanging her cast leg, and Belyana was walking next to her, with a small bag in her hand and a long case behind her back, from which a pair of sticks peeped out.
“I’m thinking and I don’t understand why the hell I’m dragging her. Am I your donkey or what?” Fox asked in a creepy voice.
“Not my problem. Why don't you complain to her instead of me?” asking, Belyana lifted the bag a little. “Moreover, I didn’t get a job as a porter. Do you want to drag your clothes in your teeth? Come on, open your mouth one more time, I'll try to catch the fang.”
Either because of a spoiled mood, or Belyana's argument seemed convincing to her, but for the rest of the night she did not talk anymore.
The rising sun woke Karina with its bright, eye-catching light. She carefully sat up and stretched sweetly.
“Your spine is awfully stiff,” she said. “Everything hurts now.”
“You're playing with fire,” Fox growled.
“Just kidding,” Karina scratched her behind a huge ear, like a kitten. “I don't know what I would do without you.”
“Learn that,” Fox said to Belyana. “It's called manners, not the bucket of shit you made up for yourself.”
“I never heard your thanks for the exciting adventures.”
“Are you talking about a hole instead of an eye and the vast majority of my scars?”
“Why not?” Belyana laughed. “You're still alive. And if it comes to that, you lost your eye because of your own greed.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Fox muttered.
A settlement appeared on the horizon. Black clouds hung directly above it, sparkling with electric discharges. The rest of the sky was clear.
“Somehow I don't like it,” Belyana voiced everyone’s thoughts.
“Never seen anything like this?” Fox clarified.
“Saw, but magicians shouldn’t have enough power for such things,” she answered thoughtfully. “At least not yet.”
“Somehow it’s not relieving.”
Coming very close, they stopped near the edge of the shadow from the clouds, and Belyana began to pace around, peering at everything that could be seen. A small village, with fairly modern houses made of reinforced concrete blocks, was reduced to ruins. The iron pins that were visible here and there were either broken off or wrapped almost in knots.
“Now I admit - never seen anything like this,” Belyana commented at last.
Fox simply turned around and stomped in the opposite direction, along with Karina, still sitting on her back.
“Bad time for clowning,” Belyana said irritably.
“This is called - the instinct of self-preservation,” Fox calmly replied. “Why jump into the volcano crater, if the outcome is obvious?”
“What if there are people there?” Karina asked.
“I don’t give a fuck,” Fox snapped. “Get down, go yourself if you want - I’m staying here.”
“The inscription in the photo album: ‘The big and strong polyanitsa is trembling with fear’,” Belyana laughed.
“Haha very funny. Won't work. The smell of this place tells me to run the hell out of here, and advise you the same.”
Belyana tilted her head in surprise as Karina jumped off Fox's back with a groan.
“Okay, I'll consider it. Catch,” she threw a bag to her, which Fox had caught with an already human hand.”
Belyana removed the case from her back, pulled out the crutches and handed them to Karina. And then, the two of them crossed the border.
A monstrous noise hit the eardrums with an explosion. The clouds disappeared, and the sky itself turned red. The noise consisted of many different tonal sounds. Like millions of people are screaming without stopping even for a second.
An even louder sound drowned out the screams. As if someone had fallen on the piano, only the sound lasted a little longer. The wave was so strong that it was even felt physically - Karina staggered.
A few seconds later, the sound repeated. Blood flowed from one ear of Karina. Belyana noticed this.
“I have to admit - Fox is right, she wouldn’t endure this,” her voice sounded right in Karina's head, not even blocking the screams. “Let's hurry.”
“Huh? Why can I hear you?” Karina asked aloud, not even hearing herself, but Belyana replied anyway.
“No talking just jump. And how do you manage to pick up the time for questions...”
All the buildings, reflecting the red light of the sky, shone with some kind of moisture. The walls pulsated slightly, giving the surrounding scenery a sickening hue. Everywhere one could clearly see the brown mummified corpses scattered through the streets and sticking out of the pins of houses.
The longer they walked, the harder it became to bear the blows of the piano waves. Karina was already bleeding not only from both ears, but also from her nose.
In the end, they came to a strange rough egg, at least half a meter in height, which turned out to be the source of the noise. Karina looked inquiringly at Belyana, and she, in confirmation, only nodded.
At the touch, instead of slowly sinking, Karina was simply sucked in, as if through a vacuum cleaner.
She found herself on a light liquid viscous surface, which was slowly sucking her in. The dark space around was illuminated by an infinite number of blue eyes blinking at random.
“Belyana?” she asked, starting to walk at least in some direction, so as not to drown in an incomprehensible substance.
There was no answer. The longer she walked, the more liquid and viscous the floor became. As soon as she froze, the floor began to suck in even faster, leaving no options. Karina tried to emerge immediately, but suddenly realized that she did not even remember where. And how. And why. Eventually, the surface swallowed her up.
What was her name? She walked through a labyrinth with damp walls, along which peristaltic waves ran from time to time. She touched one of the walls with her finger, and it lost a whole phalanx. Glancing at the stump with annoyance, Karina did not react in any way, but simply continued to walk forward.
At some point, something was heard, and she went towards the source. The closer the source was, the more clearly heartrending cries were heard.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
It was coming from behind the wall. She just froze like an idol, and would have stood like that for eternity, if there had not appeared a semblance of a passage from which a thick slurry was flowing.
Inside was a gigantic hall. All its walls, floor and ceiling were in constant swirling motion. Hundreds, maybe thousands of human-like bodies writhed in pain. From skin, to meat, to organs, along with bones, they slowly crumbled to dust and gathered back, in an endless cycle of decay.
Through this cacophony, occasionally, the sounds of a piano could be heard, as if someone was trying to pick up a melody by ear. She searched for the source with her eyes, and nevertheless found in one of the corners an instrument assembled from the same screaming human carcasses. And behind it sat something amorphous, constantly changing, unable to hold any of the forms, but still managing to press the keys.
She, staggering because of the sickly moving floor, approached the piano, but only frightened off the one who was sitting behind it. He jumped with great speed, and then flew up.
The ceiling lifted, as if someone had just opened the lid on a dollhouse. Outside, wherever it was outside, there was only blackness, but at the same time, this blackness glowed, causing pain in the eyes. All the holes in Karina's head lit up with a white flame, as well as her eyes, but she continued to look, burning from the inside.
“Found you,” a huge shadow shielded her from the black light. “What the hell are you doing?”
Karina fell to the floor. The voice that came out was familiar to her, but the memory simply eluded her.
A small piece separated from the shadow, and climbed into Karina's ear. She screamed and wanted to swear, but almost immediately her memory returned to her.
“What is this nonsense around? And I called you, actually.”
“Huh?” Belyana was surprised. “I started looking for you when you started to burn. And what do I find? There is a fool, drooling, allowed herself to be almost completely swallowed up, even without really leaving the entrance.”
“It’s all kind of strange here,” Karina tried to justify herself.
“Of course it is. It's not a human. And you, instead of being more careful, I have no idea what you were doing.”
“What do you mean by not a human?”
“Exactly the way it sounds. Humans don't turn into eggs,” Belyana sighed. “Talk less, work more. Break the door. Just don't look at the ceiling anymore.”
When Karina and Belyana's shadow approached the center of the room, the floor turned into a door. The same semi-liquid as everything around, but at the same time strong enough to create a feeling of stone underfoot.
“And how to break it?”
“Same as usual. The principle never changed.”
Sighing, Karina began to look around and listen, wincing at the volume. Noticing something, she went to one of the crouching bodies. It looked plaintively at her with disintegrating eyes, but Karina only tore out of it a bone that was peeling off the body with viscous threads of pinkish mucus. Then she went to the piano and plucked a string from it, to which she tied the bone.
Returning to the center, she spun the bone like a sling, getting heavier with each turn, and then released it to the floor.
With a rumble that even drowned out the screams, the door shattered into pieces, and Karina fell down. The shadow arbitrarily controlled her movement, obviously not obeying the laws of this world.
The screams had already completely subsided, but the flight continued. Over time, the widely separated walls began to slightly luminesce with appearance is somewhat reminiscent of the entrails. Sometimes the semblance of letters shone through them. But still no surface.
Belyana flew from wall to wall, it was not clear what she was doing. She simply ignored Karina's questions, fully concentrating on her doings.
Karina has long lost track of time, but still, finally, the surface was under her feet. She did not even notice it right away, because the sensation of falling had not gone away, and her legs did not feel anything either.
Right in the center of the vast room stood a huge vertical stone plate, painted with the same inscriptions as the walls.
Belyana loudly uttered some kind of speech in an unknown language, echoing everywhere. To the questioning expression on Karina's face, she only replied that she had read it on the walls.
The plate creaked open with two doors, revealing liquid blackness behind it. They went inside.
There was another room, this time a small one. Through semidarkness it was possible to see that even it was built from meat carcasses, however, now inhuman. Nor were they like any other animal that had ever roamed the Earth. The room was moving almost imperceptibly and making a quiet sound, like measured breathing.
“Who you are?” a multi-layered voice asked, as if it were a choir speaking.
“It doesn't matter,” answered Belyana. “What are you?”
The room vanished, replaced by darkness. An army of white shadows appeared in the empty space, in the form of human silhouettes, twisting in a huge spiral.
“We are all and all is I,” answered the voice. “We are many, but we are all one.”
“And which one exactly are you?”
They returned to the breathing room again. A translucent cloud looked at them with blue eyes.
“I don't know,” the child's voice replied.
“The music told me who I was,” a male voice replied.
“The music told me what to do,” the woman answered.
“I can't hear it anymore,” the chorus replied again. “Why can't I hear it? I have always followed it, I have always repeated it.”
“Is there supposed to be a reason for that? Today it is, tomorrow it is not - such is life.”
“It is always there!” a monstrous scream, reflected from the walls, returned back, sticking into the ears with needles.
“But you don’t hear it,” Belyana replied imperturbably. “Even if it is, it is not for you. And who said that its importance is not exaggerated by you?”
“It is the very meaning!”
“You make it meaningful. Why are you making meaning out of what is no more?”
“What will be left of me if it doesn't mean anything? I was born to be it, I was born to follow it. Why can't I even remember it?”
“You are you. Music is music. Even if it was forced on you, it didn’t become you. There is no music, but you are. What does it say?”
“I'm an abomination. I am filth. My existence is unacceptable! For this it left me, for this it stopped talking to me. I must die, I must disappear, but I'm scared. Where does this fear come from?”
The cloud turned red, drawing in the surface of the walls. It built up matter and condensed until it turned into a little girl.
“You are aware of yourself. A consequence of life itself. Free will. The music took everything away from you, but now you are you. You are one, separated from the rest by those boundaries that you can raise yourself. You don't owe anyone or anything. Even to yourself. You are also free to choose. Now tell me, do you want to die or get out of here?”
The girl hesitated, as if embarrassed. And then she spoke in a whisper, looking around, afraid that someone might hear her.
“Get out.”
In the same second, a bright flash of reality marked that they had returned. From the clouds that until now were the red sky, it began to rain. There were no more screams or waves. The mummies, however, clearly reminded them exactly where they were.
The egg stirred. One at a time, it opened its four huge wings. Before them stood the same girl, only her entire naked body was covered with luminous blue eyes.
“Who would have thought that none of the six-winged freaks would come to this, but an ordinary soldier...” the thunderous stomping drowned out Belyana's voice.
Fox ran towards them. Her sarafan fluttered, and clouds of dust rose behind her. As soon as she got close enough, she simply jumped, intending to immediately finish the child.
“Stop!” shouted Belyana, but too late.
The girl dodged two blows, but she had to catch the third.
From the explosion, the earth took off like a wall.
When the dirt and dust subsided, a very surprised face of the Fox appeared.
“Are you serious?”
“Quite. She has free will.”
“Maybe you are just delusional? I myself saw how these motherfuckers pulled out people's tongues with their bare hands simply because humans ‘did not speak respectfully enough’.”
“Just check it yourself,” Belyan shrugged.
“Sure I will,” she said incredulously, turning to a girl. “God is a fucker.”
“Lady, are you stupid?” the girl asked in a thin voice. “Your dad is a fucker, because he literally fucked any animal he met.”
Fox even recoiled in surprise, and Belyana began to cackle wildly.
“You even managed to corrupt an angel,” she said displeasedly to Belyana. “I give up. Nothing similar with these dolls, except that she looks like vomit.”
“For that matter, were you holding back?”
“Nope,” Fox was surprised, having examined the winged child. “Really, there isn’t even a single scratch on her? Ugh, fuck, don't blink those sick eyes.”
“I see,” Belyana turned to the girl. “Although I recognize your freedom, your independent actions are too dangerous at the moment. Do you agree?”
The girl looked around thoughtfully.
“I do,” she replied. “Pretty obvious.”
“Then there will be no problems,” Belyana breathed a little with relief. “Just stay with me for now.”
She whispered something unintelligible, and the girl crumbled into blue cubes that flew away under Belyana's dress.
“I don’t even want to know,” Fox said, putting two fingers to her mouth, in imitation of vomiting.
Belyana simply pulled up her dress, showing naked half of the body. A silver snake, studded with dimly glowing blue eyes, was wrapped around her thin left thigh, up to the knee.
“And what did you expect?”
“Who knows?” Fox shrugged. “I’m still guessing because of the ax.”
“Sorry,” Belyana said, turning to Karina, whose face was covered in blisters from burns. “You did everything right. If you had been careful, the end would have been much sadder.”
Karina, who had been sitting on the ground in thought before, sighed and got up.
“It would be better if you climbed into such cloacas without me at all. Anyway I was useless.”
“But this is your power! I just parasitized it a little,” Belyana answered encouragingly. “Better let’s take care of your burns. We don't want your face to end up like Fox's eye.”
“Hey!” she was indignant.