They were rafting along a small cave river on a small ship, the oars of which were rowed by four pairs of bone hands. Candles were hung along the walls, which immediately lit up on their own, as soon as ship caught up with them.

  “Yeah, it’s utterly secret,” Fox quipped, noticing the inscription “Vasya was here” scratched on the wall.

  Belyana was sitting on Zemlyana's knees, and they were kissing. Fox grimaced as she turned and saw this instead of an enthusiastic audience.

  “Why not just fuck here?” she asked displeasedly. “First of all, you look like fucking twins. It's disgusting. Secondly, she,” Fox pointed to Zemlyana, “In fact, the mother of everything. This is doubly disgusting. In all its aspects.”

  “Grump,” Belyana only said. “The face is young, but the behavior gives out age.”

  “And how old?” without a second thought, Karina asked.

  Fox just coughed in embarrassment, causing Belyana to burst out laughing again.

  “Whatever,” Karina muttered. “What about food, by the way?”

  “Obviously,” Fox replied. “It’s not only all rotten, but also wormy. Even one bite dispels this illusion. You would vomit further than you could see.”

  Karina only trembled.

  Ship finally approached the exit from the cave, from which a bright light beat.

  “Mary, shield,” said Belyana.

  A huge ball of transparent threads appeared around the ship, which would not even be noticeable if they did not refract light.

  As soon as they swam out of the tunnel, an ultrasonic scream was heard, and the shield burst into flames.

  “Holy fuck!” Fox jumped up in surprise, “What the hell is this?”

  “What it looks like is what it is,” Belyana answered imperturbably. “Firebird.”

  A huge animal hovered in the sky. Her golden wings and unimaginably beautiful tail, somewhat reminiscent of a peacock, blazed with flames, and the bird poured fire on their ship.

  “Why the hell is she acting like a dragon?!” Fox shouted over the bird. “She must eat apples and sing!”

  “Who cares,” Belyana said indifferently. “Mary, knock down the chicken.”

  In a second, hundreds of transparent threads wrapped around the mythical creature, and it simply burst, torn into particles. Bloody rain dripped from the shield like a glass dome.

  “She is too noisy,” answered Belyana to bewildered glances. “Besides, she is deathless anyway.”

  After a while, they sailed to the shore of a green island. In the midst of natural splendor, a huge golden palace towered, blinding the eyes with reflected sunlight.

  Fox and Karina went downstairs, but as soon as Fox turned to ask why the others were so slow, she immediately grimaced. The hands of Zemlyana and Belyana were already under each other's dresses, and they were clearly in no hurry.

  “And this is another reason why when they are together, it is generally impossible to deal with them,” Fox sighed. “Let’s go, they’ll catch up. I guess.”

  A neat tiled road led to the castle, along the edges of which stood wooden houses. The windows and doors in all were boarded up, and they themselves were rather dilapidated, clearly hinting that no one had lived here for a long time. Warriors in golden chain mail guarded both the road itself and the castle. However, as soon as Fox said that she and her friend wanted to enlist in the army, the soldiers stopped bothering them at all, and generally paying attention to them.

  The interior of the palace turned out to be somewhat more ascetic, consisting entirely of wood. After wandering back and forth, they reached the great hall. On a golden throne, with her muscular legs on the handle, reclining, a young woman was reading a weighty book. Her blond hair was braided into a very thick and long braid, hanging down to the floor, and her light-blue eyes even seemed to glow. She was wearing only a knee-length white shirt, trimmed around the edges with weaves of Asiatic dayflowers. Next to her was a tall stand on which sat a large falcon, looking at the guests with curiosity.

  “Good morning, guests,” she said in a voice like a song, without even taking her eyes off the book. “What for did you visit me?”

  “We want to sign up for the troops,” Fox replied.

  “Oh, are you, girls, oh, are you, beauties?” the melodiousness of her voice gave some special charm to the causticity. “The wind whispered in my ear that the graceful Firebird had a different opinion.”

  Morevna turned the ring on her finger. Thirty-three huge twin warriors in shining armor appeared in the middle of the hall, holding heavy clubs in their hands. Without giving even a second to think, they immediately attacked the invaders.

  Fox took a deep breath. There was a loud bang, with which she simply disappeared from her place.

  Ragged holes appeared in the armor of the men, and they themselves, with an iron clang, fell dead to the floor.

  The wave of air was strong enough, but Karina still managed to stay on her feet, and Fox was already standing next to her again.

  Morevna sighed, slammed her book loudly, and stood up. No matter how impressive Fox seemed, against the two-meter Morevna even she looked small.

  “Oh, Finist, sing a song to me

  About the scarlet rivers.

  The evil always must to be

  Obedient and shivers!”

  “Grab fast!” Fox screamed.

  The bird flowed in streams into Morevna's outstretched hand, turning into a sword almost the same size as Morevna herself. The blade had several serrations, and the hilt was adorned with silver feathers.

  Karina grabbed the back of Fox, who had already turned into an animal.

  Almost immediately, Morevna appeared right in front of them, and Fox vibrated, catching the sword in her mouth.

  With a wave of her head, she threw Morevna aside. She crashed into the wall with a whistle and a rumble.

  And Fox immediately rushed in the opposite direction, punching a passage for herself and Karina right through the walls.

  As soon as they jumped out, Morevna already appeared, with sawdust tangled in her hair.

  Karina pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and threw it on the ground.

  The ground was replaced by a huge uneven stone surface. Of course, there was no sense in this, how could Morevna be delayed?

  Then Karina threw a comb. Behind them, a whole forest of slimy tentacles appeared, immediately reaching out to Morevna, trying to grab and wrap her.

  With one swing of a huge sword, so fast, as if the weapon weighed nothing, Morevna cut down all this abomination at once, without even slowing down.

  Karina threw the coin last. A kilometer-long mountain grew out of the ground, consisting of moving, decomposing bodies, which, one after another, lingeringly begged for death.

  First, the sound of an explosion was heard, and then Morevna appeared directly above the mountain, flying over it in one jump.

  And her loud cry resounded across the sky.

  “Mother Earth, hear my call,

  Leave no signs of heads at all!”

  “Shit,” was all Fox managed to swear at.

  Morevna landed with the blade of her sword on the ground. The impact caused an earthquake, and a real forest of various kinds of steel cutting tools grew out of the ground, turning Fox and Karina into minced meat and bones instantly.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

***

  “Oh, they already lost,” Belyana giggled.

  She walked like that, holding hands with Zemlyana, and Mary trudged behind with a yoke on which two buckets of water hung. The guards not only did not bother them, but even, for ten meters, went around in circles, as if bumping into an invisible wall.

  “My love, don't you think that you are too cruel?” Zemlyana asked a little displeased.

  “You can see all my thoughts,” Belyana answered, bringing her companion’s hand to her face and kissing it.

  “But you also see that I do not approve of this,” she relented.

  Belyana was silent for a bit, only after that she answered.

  “Sorry. I sometimes forget that faster isn't always better. It even backfired once.”

  Zemlyana kissed her on the forehead.

  “Don't even think about it,” she said. “I did what I did, it's not your fault at all, and never was.”

  They came to the field of swords, where birds were already feasting with revelry. Zemlyana only lightly stamped her bare foot, and all the steel turned into earth, returning to its original state.

  The frightened birds scattered, but Zemlyana sang a couple of rhyming lines in an unknown language. Not only birds, but also every other small animal gathered in a pile. And all of them, at the same time, vomited pieces of swallowed flesh.

  Mary placed buckets next to the minced meat, and Belyana began to sniff these buckets.

  “We should have signed them after all,” she said, in the end. “One stinks of rotten stuff, the other is just shit. And which one is dead, which is living one? Mary, cut open your finger.”

  Blood dripped from it, and Belyana lowered her hand into the first bucket that came across. The blood didn't even mix with the water, it just disappeared. The wound unnaturally healed, tightening its edges with meat threads right before their eyes.

  “Well, rotten is dead one. Time to collect the mosaic,” she said again to the indifferent Mary.

  And the transparent threads of her began to restore the stuffing piece by piece, collecting bodies from them.

  Belyana, in turn, drew water from a bucket with thick syringes, laying them out in a row on the ground. Suddenly, Zemlyana giggled. Surprised, Belyana turned, looked at the bodies, and found that they had their vaginas and mouths mixed up.

  “Bad taste,” she said, after which she looked at Mary in surprise. “Who would have thought that she didn’t burn everything. I'll take care of you when we get back. But now, fix it.”

  And Mary did not need to be asked twice. For several hours, Belyana and Zemlyana were busy carefully, trying not to spill even a drop, treating each line of the mutilated bodies with water. When they finished, Belyana simply dipped her fingers into the second bucket, spraying the lying ones on their faces.

  “Pfu, pfe,” Fox cleared her throat. “Why there is taste of dick?”

  Karina just slowly sat down, trying to remember where she was.

  “Who knows?” Belyana shrugged, pretending not to have a clue. “Don’t put everything you see in such shape inside your mouth.”

  “And anyway, what the fuck? It just wasn't fair.”

  “What's more, now we'll get back to her!” Belyana laughed.

  “Are you crazy? Or do you mean to say that you have an eternal supply of water?”

  “Oh, right,” Belyana turned to Mary. “Take the buckets back for now - we need to return everything that is left. A contract is a contract, but there is no need to anger the guard.”

  And Mary hoisted the buckets on the yoke, and went in the opposite direction.

  “Anyway, we have already taken everything from her,” Belyana explained. “However, Karina will finally have to learn how to dive from a distance.”

  “Huh?” Karina was surprised.

  “There is not a single condition under which Morevna will be able to calm down. At best, Fox will not let her finish you off.”

  “Encouragingly,” answered Karina.

  “And ask me?” Fox asked irritable.

  “Why ask you?” Belyana unexpectedly run her finger between Fox’s legs and showed hand to her. “It's wet here, and your face is on fire.”

  “You would have gone back there anyway,” Zemlyana said. “Even if only death awaited you there.”

  “Okay,” Fox chuckled. “That's where you got me.”

  Karina eventually realized that there were no more clothes on her either, and somehow shivered. Belyana only sighed, trying on her dress under her eye, but realized that it would not fit in any way.

  “You'll have to endure that I suppose,” she shrugged. “At least it's warm outside.”

  When they reached the groaning mountain of bodies, Belyana giggled.

  “Well, she has nasty toys after all. Where did you toss the coin? In the center or on the other side?”

  “No idea. Fox ran too fast,” answered Karina.

  “Yeah, it’s a good idea to complain about it,” Fox muttered with displeasure. “If we died in the palace - it would be end of the story. It is foreign, water would simply not work inside it.”

  “Oh, so you decided to pretend that you knew about something for which there were no prerequisites?” Belyana sneered, and then added coldly. “The reality is that you made a mistake, died yourself and took her with you.”

  “And here you’re right,” Fox answered calmly. “My mistake was to rely on the fact that you know what you’re doing, and not decided to fuck on the sea waves under the guise, and then pretend that you were doing something important.”

  They just rounded the mountain. When a golden wall with a hole appeared before their eyes, Mary, indifferent to everything, was already waiting for them there.

  “Book! Look for it!” from the cry of Morevna, the walls trembled even outside.

  “Did you snatched,” Fox was surprised, “Even that?”

  “Rather, we started with it,” said Belyana.

  “And when she began to run around everywhere, leaving everything else, we took this everything too,” said Zemlyana.

  “You?!” furious Morevna stared at them from the hole.

  “Mary, shield Karina,” Belyana said instantly.

  The blast wave swept in all directions from the impact that Fox had stopped.

  “We played enough, now dive in,” Belyana said quietly, but the sound of her voice could still be heard through the explosions.

  Blow after blow, their sounds were more like machine gun fire, so high was their speed and strength. It seemed as if the air around them even glowed.

  Morevna's shirt, like the ribbons woven into the braid, simply decayed. Under the clothes, no matter how ridiculous it was, there was chain mail, the rings of which were red hot.

  Both of their hair flowed in rivers of fire, white and orange. Morevna's beautiful face was distorted in a monstrous grimace of rage, while Fox's face looked rather indecent - she was definitely in ecstatic pleasure.

  Under the dance of death of the warriors, patches of earth flew up every now and then. They themselves were either on the ground, or practically soared into the air, until someone's explosive blow sent the enemy back.

  “And how, in your opinion, to do it...” Karina whispered softly, rather under her breath.

  Zemlyana simply stepped over the barrier that protects from shock waves.

  “Close your eyes,” she told her gently, putting her hands on Karina’s shoulders. “Do you feel your body?

  Feel with the pores.

  Hear every sound.

  Feel every scent.

  Perceive all feelings at once, let them merge into one.”

  Morevna suddenly changed her trajectory, jumping towards Karina. Fox immediately jumped after her, but could not have been in time in any way.

  “Do you hear a quiet, quiet rumble?” Zemlyana slightly stamped her foot, and in front of them a giant wall grew right out of the ground, completely absorbing Morevna's blow. “Listen to it.

  Somewhere the rumble is weaker, somewhere stronger.

  Somewhere it is distorted.

  Furious and chaotic is Fox.

  Deaf and fading is Mary.

  Do you hear the one that sounds like the rustle of leaves, under which someone is crying? Let it take you with it.”

  Karina found herself in some kind of wooden room even before she realized that she had already dived. No noise, no rumble, no shaking ground.

  Firewood crackled softly in the oven. A pretty old woman was sitting in a rocking chair, knitting something. She did not care about the intruder - she did not even pay attention to her.

  “What you are doing?” Karina asked.

  “Sitting. Knitting,” the old woman answered without raising her eyes.

  “Why?”

  “What else to do?” now she, after all, looked. “Everything else is meaningless, the world is done anyway.”

  “But the world is in place, since we are talking?”

  “Now in place, then not in place. You can't save it anyway, what's the difference?”

  “Guard?”

  She did not even have time to react, as the old woman, with a piercing cry, turned into a huge toothy hole, and sucked Karina into herself.

  A huge pillar of light, surrounded by millions of winged soldiers in the middle of a field that was once a city of some kind.

  Warriors in golden chain mail attack, but angels come down from the air and seize them, tearing them in half with their bare hands like paper.

  Bursts of firearms that don't even reach enemies.

  Soldiers running in panic, in the uniforms of all nations, meet their death either from acid rain, ending in vile puddles, or turn into ashes under the swing of fiery swords.

  White and orange flames fly all over the field, coping, however, much better than the rest, thinning out the ranks of the enemy, dotting the ground with winged corpses. But there are simply too many enemies.

  “And what's the point?” asked an old woman's voice. “My self-confidence, my past, consisting only of victories, told me that I couldn’t lose. After all, I've always been the chosen one. And what did it lead to?”

  “But didn’t you win?” Karina asked uncertainly. “It's over.”

  “Millions of soldiers died. Billions of others died. This is victory? This is just an ode to my insignificance.”

  Karina spun in the air, trying to find a way to land.

  Instead, space itself has changed. Black sky, gray earth. Karina saw the Earth swaying up and down in the sky.

  She sat down and abruptly jumped towards the bottom of the planet, immediately ending up there.

  Something humanoid was standing on a huge turtle. His eyes bulged from the effort, his ears bled, and his rectum protruded down at least a meter. The muscles of this creature bulged out as if they were about to burst.

  “Aaand, one, aaand, one, aaand, one,” he repeated to himself, raising the planet like a barbell.

  “It won't help you get stronger,” Karina told him.

  With a bursting sound, blood also gushed from his eyeball, and he growled, but did not even think to stop.

  Karina sighed, and lightly flicked the monster's forehead.

  The click, of course, was weak, but the monster was thrown very far.

  Karina began to tear off the top of the shell from the turtle, and turtle tried to bite back, twisting it long neck.

  The monster flew back, but Karina was already holding a huge plate in her hands.

  As soon as the monster came close enough, he immediately got hit on the head with a ribbed board.

  Karina did not wait for him to return again, and this time jumped after him, and so she continued to beat him until he got tired of punches.

  “Okay, okay, I give up, I give up,” he growled in a deep voice. “You are stronger, but that doesn't change anything.”

  “I'm not stronger,” she replied, ripping out the heart of the gaping monster with her bare hand. “I'm just doing what needs to be done.”

  “I'm sorry, mother,” Karina immediately heard a melodious voice, as soon as she dived out.

  “Everything is fine,” said Zemlyana, hugging the crying Morevna and stroking her head. “We'll find him someday.”

  “By the way, until I forgot,” Belyana suddenly said.

  In her hands was a small leather pouch, which she untied and turned over. Gold bars rained down on the ground.

  “Roughly a hundred.”

  “Are you kidding?” asked Fox.

  “Nope,” Belyana laughed. “How to carry it is not my problem.”

  After Zemlyana returned Morevna the book and the sword, and Belyana returned the same wallet, they all went back safely.

  Fox, with an extremely dissatisfied look, was carrying a cart behind her. Karina, every now and then, looked at her hand.

  “Huh?” Belyana asked when she noticed this.

  “Somehow it was too easy and fast, even boring,” Karina answered.

  “Not really surprising. It was more like a little weakness of hers with big consequences, but it's not typical for her at all.”

  “Also, I think I have a broken finger.”

  “What can I say,” Belyana answered in her usual tone, but looked at Karina very strangely. “You are no stranger to plaster.”