Last time, when it seemed that we would be able to establish completely civilized contact with the local civilization, everything took a very unpleasant turn and we came into conflict with a certain Empire that was capable of defeating an entire platoon and at the same time correctly assessing the situation with technologically superior opponents , that is, us.

Since then, after that failure, we also did not hope to quickly establish peaceful contact due to the language barrier that stood between us and the natives, but now we had hope of establishing peaceful contact, but this time we were acting from a position of strength, and not as equals to each other.

It was with difficulty that we managed to restrain Fred from his manic scientific questions about the “spells” our captive mentioned. I didn't hear that, did I? She said it was a spell? As if what we saw on this planet can be called magic, but this is not true. How is this even possible? Magic exists only in fairy tales and cheap Katian TV series and nothing more. This is simply a non-existent phenomenon that physically cannot exist in nature.

Fred probably thought the same thing and decided to find answers to his questions by interrogating the captive, whose name, by the way, was Incartia. Of course, after the death of almost the entire crew of the shuttle "Persia", we could not so easily trust the natives, and therefore kept them tied to a tree trunk.

The girl was scared especially when Itami threatened to kill her and this is not surprising. Ultimately, she is just a girl and obviously she could be afraid of heavily armed men with the strongest weapons in this world at the moment, but we were also afraid of her, or rather of her ability to burn us out from the inside as Yasmi did before her.

She had the ability to command “magic”, although I don’t even have a clear idea of what it even is. It may not be called that way here, but definitely the word “spell” can be attributed specifically to this phenomenon.

Thinking like this even gave me a headache. Instead of resting, I received so much information that needs to be carefully analyzed and put into folders in my head. Frankly, I manage to do this with great difficulty. And instead of participating in the interrogation, Will asked questions and at the same time did not forget to introduce himself like any civilized person:

“My name is Will Averbon, sergeant of platoon C1-2-2-D4, currently commanding in place of Second Lieutenant Boris Kipito, he is in very poor condition and cannot lead the platoon.”

Will looked at me, and the girl looked away in my direction, gulping when she saw a mummy instead of a person. Now she sees that we are vulnerable, this will force her to loosen her tongue, but I hope this will not encourage her to do anything stupid.

Will, meanwhile, sat down opposite the girl and continued introducing himself to her:

“We are from the Republican Armed Forces of Humanity of the state of the Federated Human Republic of Earth. Does it sound too formal?”

Will asked me, and I could only shake my shoulders.

"Well."

Will turned his attention back to the girl and asked her the first pressing question, apparently in order to let go of Fred, who was eager to push everyone around and interrogate the girl.

“We didn’t hear it right, did we? Did you say «spell»?”

The girl nodded at first, perplexed, and soon answered:

“Y-yes. This is the spell I learned to communicate with you."

“Especially for this?”

Will clarified, and the girl nodded again.

“I see, but tell me, what is a «spell»?”

“This... this will be difficult to explain in your language.”

Incartia said, barely finding the right words in English, as if she was just using a translator in her head, but she herself did not know our language.

“Then it’s not worth it.”

Will sighed and asked another question.

“It turns out you learned our language?”

"Not really."

Incartia immediately answered.

“It’s all about the spirits, they help me understand the singing of your souls, and they also help me change my singing into your language and therefore you understand me. It’s not enough to know, you also need to feel it, but you can’t, because the spirits are wary of your bodies.”

“Um... I don’t quite understand.”

Will raised an eyebrow, turning to everyone else.

The entire platoon also did not understand the girl’s words. Apparently this is what she meant when she said it would be difficult to explain. Although, probably, Fred understood some of what he heard for himself, immersed in thought and coming up with hundreds of theories that he was too lazy to voice out loud, and Will, meanwhile, asked the girl a new question:

“Well, we will have time to discuss all this, but now I want to know three things:”

Will said, starting to unclench his fingers in his fist.

"Who are you? Why were you heading here? And why shouldn’t I kill you here and now?”

Hearing the last question, the girl swallowed again and trembled slightly, and I, seeing her fear, grinned. Of course, Will was not going to kill her, or indeed any of the natives, but we still needed to intimidate her, show her that we are not sheep, but a pack of wolves capable of killing anyone who gets in our way... if, of course, we have enough cartridges.

In this case, it doesn’t matter how she answers the last question, but we are still not going to kill her, especially when we set ourselves the task of establishing first contact.

"I am a wizard."

Incartia immediately answered with a slightly trembling voice.

“I am studying the art of magic. I... I came to you to talk... to get to know you. That's what the teacher told me to do. Find out who you are and what you did in the dark ruins. This... this is the reason why you should not kill me. If you harm me, then my teacher will punish you... just like that.”

“So you are a wizard... everything is clear now.”

Will said nodding and asked the next question.

“What is the name of your country?”

"A country? Uhhh~... I... I don't remember."

The girl lowered her head, hiding her gaze from everyone.

“How can you not remember?”

Will was surprised, and so was I.

“I just... live with a teacher in the forest, not in the city, so... I wasn’t interested in people and that.”

Send a girl to talk to us without giving her the information she needs? Perhaps whoever did it intended it that way, but still, to me it seemed unnecessarily cruel to the child. Didn't her teacher think we might kill her? Or did he do it on purpose? If so, then why? Check us out? Or is he somewhere nearby watching us right now? Shouldn't Will be able to detect something with his bioscan in this case? Damn it! I do not understand anything.

“So there’s still a city somewhere nearby?”

Will asked.

“Yes, but it’s a day away.”

"Okay, what are your friends' names?"

"Friends?"

The girl asked and turned back to where Will was looking at the tied up white-haired girl and a couple of men.

"A! These are the adventurers I hired. They were supposed to protect me. Her name is Kamelia, and those are Furgur and Ashwani.”

«Stop! What did she say?»

I was surprised and Will was no exception.

"A? Ashwani? This can’t be true!”

Will exclaimed. It wasn’t easy for me, but I took a closer look at the young guy and he really had a similar face to Ashwani’s face. A tanned, dark-haired guy with a sharp face, not too unattractive, but not a freak either, just a young man.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

If it's true Ashwani, then why does he seem so much younger than he should be? And what is he doing here with these natives? Is this even him? I, Will, and everyone around me have too many questions about Ashwani.

“Boris, my memory is failing me. It is he?"

Will turned to me and asked me, and I nodded.

"Yes? What is he doing here? He's disappeared! You said it yourself!”

“First we need to find out if it’s him.”

Fred intervened, examining him with a medical scanner.

“Do you... do you know him?”

The stunned girl asked, not understanding the reaction of those around her, and Will leaned closer to Incartia and asked her a clear question:

“What is he doing here?”

Will pointed to the boy.

"Answer me."

“He... he decided to accept my task and... and went with me. I don’t know him well... to be honest.”

The girl stammered, embarrassed to look Will in the eyes. There were no more questions from Will. It was clear that we had encountered another oddity of this planet. The rest of the platoon didn’t remember Ashwani, but I, Will, Forn and Itami did and knew for sure that it was him.

I thought he had disappeared, been erased from reality, and yet he was here all these weeks? Hiding among the natives? How did this happen? Why? When Will captured them why didn't Ashwani raise his hands? Why didn't he speak English? What actually happened?

There were too many questions to which there were simply no simple or logical answers.

"Fred, is this a human?"

Will asked the senior medic, and Fred shook his head in response.

"No. He does not belong to the human species. I don’t think at all that the Ashwani you were looking for is him. This is a native."

"So... he's a native."

Will said calmly, turning to the girl.

"Shit! We will consider him as such until we talk to him in person. Can you arrange this?”

"I? But…"

Incartia did not understand.

"What's the matter? You can not?"

"The spell only works... on me."

Incartia lowered her head.

"Sorry."

Of course, we were full of questions, but it’s better to calm the girl down for now, otherwise she won’t answer any questions at all in the future. She has a strange power called "magic", but it doesn't look like she's going to harm us. We just found out that she was heading here to negotiate with us, to find out who we are. It seems that we were one of the first to meet the first contact delegation and almost destroyed it, but still it was strange to meet Ashwani in this delegation.

At this moment, Will, sitting down next to me, turned to me:

“I don’t remember him anymore, and you?”

"It is he."

I confirmed.

“This is definitely Ashwani... but I don’t understand how he ended up here?”

"Ha!"

Will grinned.

“Don’t ask me, I know less than you.”

“So we need to tell her about that stone, maybe she knows what happened to Ashwani.”

Will nodded, agreeing with me:

“I will do so. After resting, I will continue the interrogation and ask her about it.”

At that moment Fred came up to us and shared with us information about Ashwani:

“The native has an artificial heart working in his chest.”

"What?"

Will and I blurted out in unison, almost jumping out of our seats.

“I have the same question: «what?». At first I didn’t understand what kind of impulses were coming from this guy’s chest. Having examined his chest with a scanner and analysis, I discovered traces of a surgical operation, very subtle and skillful. The scanner showed that his heart was much larger than it should have been, causing him severe chest pain. Also, his hands are different from each other, as if they were from different bodies, and his right eye has also been replaced, there are completely different DNA molecules there. It looks like someone conducted an experiment on him and released him into the wild. He is clearly an unusual native. Under current conditions, it is not possible to study it in more detail. I need a laboratory."

"I see."

I answered.

"Wow."

Meanwhile, Will was surprised.

“So... the natives can perform surgery?”

Fred was skeptical about this.

“We have yet to find out, but I’m not sure. You understand what their level of technological development is. They are a pre-space civilization and are unlikely to have the means and knowledge to perform complex surgical operations.”

“What about Magic?”

Will suggested, but Fred just snorted in response.

“Magic is just a bunch of tricks performed with the help of science or simply an invention of all sorts of idealists who believe in the preservation of the soul after death. They are clearly using alien technology unknown to us, but they call it magic. This is natural for backward civilizations. If there was a tribal system here, they would call fire magic.”

“You think it’s technology?”

I asked Fred and he nodded.

“Yes, because I have no other explanation for this. Everything in our material universe has answers to questions, you just need to find them and then ignorance will not excite our fantasies. The same magic... is also part of the material universe and interacts with it according to principles unknown to us, but I’m sure everything is much simpler than it seems, we just don’t know it yet.”

“Magic may well be the cause of all the anomalies on this planet.”

Will suggested.

"We need to discuss this thoroughly."

"How?"

Asked Itami who appeared, and Will continued.

“Fred, you say that magic is just a technology that the natives use, but what does this technology do? Turns the planet into a hologram, where part of the population can modify it? Or allows the brain to control matter?”

"I don't know."

Fred crossed his arms.

“At the moment, the justification of magic by unknown technology is the only logical explanation for everything that is happening here.”

"I have another explanation."

Forn said suddenly.

“What if magic is a completely new form of energy that only exists here?”

Fred just laughed at these words and turned towards the Martian.

“You know, it’s not difficult for me to spend whole hours retelling lectures on quantum physics, but I’ll say it simpler: any new form of energy should have already changed this entire planet, the entire space around it, to the point of complete unrecognizability, and it’s unlikely that even the usual laws of physics would exist for us now . I’m saying this as simply as possible, but as I said, it’s not difficult for me...”

“Yes, we understand you.”

Will raised his hands to calm the senior medic.

“We have too little information to discuss this.”

“What I was talking about.”

Fred snorted.

“We must continue to look for information, analyze it, and not make stupid guesses and believe them like some brainless idealists. We're not going to fall even lower than the Elarasians, are we?

"Right."

Will said.

“Then let’s discuss something else...”

For some time we continued to discuss the details we heard from Incartia. The girl was still tied up, but at that time she was being spoon-fed by Sigrun while the rest of the captured natives were unconscious.

It seems that the Alsian woman is ready to make friends with anyone on this planet since she enjoys a favorable reputation with everyone she can. I, in turn, was still too weak to discuss the details of our position on this planet and instead, waiting for the results of these discussions, I listened as Sigrun talked to the girl:

"Delicious?”

"Delicious."

The girl nodded.

"What is this?"

“Porridge from dry rations. I kept it for just such occasions. On other days we eat dried meat and drink purified water.”

Sigrun sighed sadly.

“It tastes so disgusting.”

“Do you drink purified water? Do you have magicians?”

Sigrun laughed at the girl’s words.

“Ha ha ha~... no no no. We filter the water in these jars and purify it.”

Alsian showed a special thermos that each of us had.

"A? Are you doing this without magic? But... but how?

“There is not one among us who could use... magic. Where we come from, magic is not available to us.”

"Can't be!"

“But it's true.”

Sigrun smiled.

“Everything we have is made by human hands, and sometimes not always directly, but with the help of machines.”

“Machines? A? Exactly... I heard this word from my teacher... «machine», what does it mean?

“This is... uh, a mechanism... although I’ll be honest, until you see it with your own eyes, you won’t understand what a machine is.”

Incartia lowered her head, but then decided to ask a question:

“If I may ask?”

Sigrun already guessed what the girl wanted to ask:

“Why am I black?”

“Y-yes. It looks so strange. Is this some kind of disease? A curse?"

Sigrun smiled again.

"No. I was born this way. All people from my planet are like that.”

“Your «planet»? A planet is a celestial body... so you’re not from here?”

“Yes, I’m from another planet, like each of us.”

Sigrun looked around the entire platoon.

“My planet is called «Alsis». It is so close to the star that it fries anyone who comes to the surface into a steak. The year there is short, and the planet itself practically does not rotate around its axis, being in tidal lock; in other words, day and night do not replace each other there.”

“Wait... I didn’t quite understand... huh?”

Before the girl had time to ask the question, Sigrun hugged the girl and quietly whispered in her ear:

“You still have time to understand everything, baby. I'm so sorry that you have to sit tied up now. Just wait a little and they will let you and your friends go too. Now just rest. You need strength."

"… Okay."

Incartia answered quietly and closed her eyes.

After Sigrun fed Incartia, she went to Stern to check his exoskeleton, although most likely also in order to get him out of it before Stern ended up in a kind of coffin, and at that moment I heard a female moan from a fair-haired girl.

Will ran up to the sleepy Incartia and asked her for a favor:

“Can you be a translator for us?”

“O-of course. Yes."

The girl answered half asleep.

"So that's great."

Will said cheerfully and sat down opposite the second girl, not forgetting to point the barrel of the gun at her chest.

The white-haired girl slowly opened her scarlet eyes and looked around, saying something, and then was surprised when she realized that she was tied to a tree trunk. At this moment, Incartia is also surprised, apparently because of the words that her friend said.

"What's the matter?"

Will asked.

“She... she says: «Who am I?». She doesn't remember who she is."

Incartia spoke with fear.