Egon looked at the desk clock on the bedside table, which showed five o'clock in the morning. He turned from his back to his side and closed his eyes and saw nightmares and felt dizzy. They came to him again in the dreams, they walked around him, tried to say something, but no one understood each other. Gennox. He opened his eyes and felt sick, he got up and looked at his abode, a hut that had not been repaired in many years.

"So much money," he thought, "and I live as if I've been working for free for a year."

In front of the door of his room were two rusty cylinders with gears for turning hot and cold water on. Blackened aluminum wall, worn shelves. Yellowed books that he bought but never opened. The house has always been for him a place where you eat before going to bed, wash and do not stay long. A kind of expendable material, an insensitive thing that works autonomously, not connected by history, life's vicissitudes and dramas.

He went to the toilet, washed his face and looked in the mirror, in which it was difficult to see himself because of the abundant dust, ingrained dirt and traces of splashes. He went to the window in the kitchen and saw nothing, only emptiness, snow and old worn-out lanterns forming dim circles on the road every ten meters. Just go there and jump into light gateways and find myself in another world.

He put on his raincoat, leather jacket, picked up his one-handed sword from the floor and put it in the scabbard and hit himself several times in the face in order to clean himself up and remove drowsiness. He went out into the night street of Agernox and went to where he thought he would find answers. Egon walked for a long time, constantly replaying the upcoming conversation and options for the development of events in his head. Everything around was black, gloomy, the lights in the houses were turned off. He met several families with no fixed place of residence. They were warming themselves by the fire, wrapped in thick blankets. Their faces were thin, there were bruises under their eyes. The dead in the body of a living one. They did not pay attention to the passing traveler, everything that was in their eyes and everything that was important – the fire that gives life, gives food.

Two streets away, there were twenty-story cranes with special blinking red beacons installed at the very top. The work was in full swing. Agernox grew before his eyes, rushing to heaven, closer to God. Another couple of hundred years and every house will resemble the mythical Tower of Babel.

By seven in the morning, he was on the spot in front of a huge manufactory. There were no guards at the door. He stood for a moment and looked at the building. Then he noticed a little boy in his old raincoat lying in the trash among his bottles, in a small palm he was clutching the money left to him – he did not spend it. He was shivering from the cold. Egon felt sorry and went up to him and woke him up and asked:

"Why didn't you spend the money I gave you?"

"And what to spend them on?"

"For food or shelter."

"The shelter is too expensive, and I'm used to sleeping here, I sleep here all the time, and I like it here."

The boy rubbed his eyes with his dirty hands. He was all stinky, his teeth are yellow, and the front ones were completely missing. The smell around him was so strong that you can feel it for a kilometer with a stuffy nose and you will bypass this place fearing like somewhere nearby lies a rotting corpse.

"Is anyone hurting you?"

"No."

"Do you want to earn some more money?"

"Who doesn't want to."

"What do you hear on the streets?"

"The revolution."

"Something that I don't know."

The boy raised his eyes and looked up, as if remembering what he knew.

"Nothing comes to my mind."

Egon sighed and said:

"If you find out something interesting, find me, tell me, and I'll pay."

"How can I find you?"

"Ask someone your age, they will tell you."

The boy nodded, then put his hand under his head and continued to sleep. Egon entered Willy's factory and saw nothing but emptiness and darkness. He ran around and screamed. No one responded.

Where did everyone go?

Egon went into Willie's office – nothing but a pile of paper. He went to the secret passage, but it was walled up, apparently by a powerful spell.

"The bastard ran away from the city."

He tried to break through the wall for several tens of minutes, but in vain, useless, he is not a metentis and he does not have enough strength. Egon remembered about his stagecoach, which they had hidden in the forest and decided to check it as soon as possible, he went to the exit, upset and depressed about what was happening and heard a stagecoach drive up to the gate, the engine turned off, conversations were heard. An inner sense of danger prompted him to return to Willie's office, go to the toilet next to it and hide in one of the booths.

***

Thomas went inside the manufactory piercing the thick blackness with his red eyes. He looked around – not a single soul. There was sand and dirt on the floor with someone's footprints that led him to Willie's office, then the tracks ended due to the lack of sand. Thomas knocked down the door to the office with a bang and shouted:

"Willie! If you can hear me, then show yourself in the name of the Inquisition."

The echo spread throughout the manufactory. Thomas listened. Not a sound. He began to look at the documents, letters and statements left on the table and under it he found a check for an astronomical amount issued by the treasury of the Holy Inquisition.

"What the hell?" he thought.

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He came out of the office and saw another door and went inside. It was a toilet. He looked at three half-closed and one closed stall, several suspended toilets and cleared his throat. He walked to the end of the room and examined the wall, opened the first stall, checked for a secret passage, destroying the toilet with one kick, then the second. He went over to the suspended toilet and knocked it to the floor too, as if attracting someone's attention with a crash.

For the next few seconds, he stared at the only closed stall, thought for a while and swore:

"There's fucking nothing here."

Then he examined the walls for underground tunnels or something like that for an hour. Having achieved no results, he went outside and sent a request to the main headquarters of the security bureau in order to find out how "Grandfather" was able to disappear from the city. Perhaps there is a traitor among the guards at the gate. It was necessary to sort everything out. And he went to the treasury of the Inquisition – so far, the only thread leading to answers.

***

Outside, the rays of the rising sun reflected in the hardened snow and blinded his eyes, he squinted, looked once more at the little sleeping boy and went up to him and woke him up. Egon asked if he had seen what had happened here last night, and the boy told about a huge number of stagecoaches and people who had stopped inside, but did not leave. Egon nodded, did not give any money, and went to the eastern gate outside the city to check the presence of the stagecoach and money in it.

A few hours later, when the sun was hiding at its zenith behind gray cumulus clouds, somewhat resembling a mountain range in their shape, Egon found himself in the forest. The air became noticeably more rarefied, the smell of coniferous trees cut into the nose. The branches of the fir trees bent under small snowdrifts, and there in the darkness of the forest, not far from the edge of the forest, there was a whole stagecoach, completely untouched, except by nature.

Egon went to it, opened the door and saw that all the chests were in order. He opened the one that belonged to him, took about twenty gold coins in an armful, put them in his coat pocket and headed back to the city, through the snow, surrounded by serenity and silence.

***

Attila gathered five of the best metentises from among the inquisitors around him.

"We'll storm the fort with all our strength and the most powerful spells. Spare no one."

Then he turned to the several generals standing behind him and ordered them to make sure that no one attacked them in the rear. If there is a commotion or something suspicious, then shoot a flare in the air.

They went to the enemy fort, located on a hill. The serpentine leading to the main gate surrounded by walls of red and white sandstone, and twisted like a snake. They did not stand on ceremony and used a "magma volley" and destroyed the first and second defensive rows. The earth turned black in an instant, pools of magma formed. The next goal was the arched main gate with a height of a ten-story house, from which there were protective towers and a special passage for sentries on the left and right sides.

They jumped to the very top and there was a city with empty streets, modern metal houses of black color and an innumerable multitude of birds. Attila went down with the inquisitors, they split up and began scanning the area, checking every house, starting at the first rustle. When they joined in the square in front of the huge government building, they noticed how the previously killed and mutilated inquisitors were hanging on stakes. The dead looked like lifeless puppets with unnaturally twisted arms, legs and the head lowered to the side. The bodies rotted, and a flock of crows pecked out the last remnants of their eyes.

"We need to take them off," one of them said.

"Don't touch anyone. Nothing to do here anymore. We'll avoid the fort and go straight to Porhol land."

From behind the walls of the palace, the sounds of the firing of a trebuchet sling were heard. Attila used the "dome of darkness" (rank 4), defending himself from the attack in advance. But a second later, he saw the corpses, dressed in black cloaks with a red sign, fly in an arc over his head and fall in the direction of the south gate from where they came. Immediately, a signal flare appeared in the sky.

Before Attila could explain their further actions, the air seemed to him too cold and thick. People in blue cloaks appeared around them, with already accumulated energy for using a powerful spell in their hands, which was immediately released. This was an attack by an unknown element, disorienting and destructive. There was a heavy crackling and rumbling in their ears. Attila felt immobilized and saw with his peripheral vision how his comrades were burned, incinerated and destroyed. He was left alone.

A man came up to him, bent at the knee and said in a pleasant voice, without anger:

"You're coming with me."

Then he touched Attila's shoulder and teleported away.

***

As soon as Attila came to himself, he vomited, he did not understand what had happened. His head was buzzing, his eyes were dark. The body weight felt several tens of kilograms heavier than he actually was. He was ready to give the last fight, to sacrifice himself, just to take away at least a few enemy lives. Attila tried to use the spell "Funnel of Darkness" (rank 5-self-sacrifice), but nothing happened. He realized that his vitavis had run out in his body, and his physical strength had disappeared.

"How do you feel?" a man's voice asked, calm and confident.

"What have you done to me?"

"I teleported you to Porhol land, in the very center of the capital, which Agernox declared war on."

Attila got to his feet, his eyes clouded with fog. The world seemed to melt in his eyes.

"You'll come to your senses soon. Everyone who teleports for the first time feels the same way as you do now."

"Teleports?" Attila asked and groped for a small cloth-covered chair next to him and sat down.

He strained his eyes, tried to make out the person sitting in front of him, but it did not work out.

"Yes."

"Who are you?"

"I am the supreme ruler of Porhol land. My name is Erving."

"Erving?"

"You heard me. Teleportation doesn't affect hearing in any way."

"Erving has been dead for five hundred years."

The man did not move, he sat and waited. Attila rubbed his watery eyes and felt a wave of nausea come over him again.

The silence lasted for five minutes, until Attila came to himself and saw a man sitting in front of him in a long blue cloak, with a wrinkled and fresh, young face at the same time. His blue, if not azure, pupils with white veins stared at him intently.

"Is this some kind of metovis?" Attila asked. "You look just like him."

"Because I am him, Attila."

"This can't be true. I personally saw your corpse."

"Do you remember Blake – an old friend of mine?"

"I remember. He ran away like a rat, leaving us all to die."

"When I told him about the plot against me, he gave me an amulet that brings the owner back to life after death."

"Such gifts are not thrown around," Attila said and looked at the room. A spider-shaped lamp with a built-in light crystal hung on the ceiling. There were small boiler rooms along the wall to preserve heat. Yellow wallpaper with patterns in the form of flowers. Brown curtains with strange signs, similar to the head of a deer. And a strange device in the corner, next to the front door. It resembled a column without a capital and an expanded base. Inside of which there were spheres for elements. The floor was made of tiles of brown and dark orange colors, alternating with each other. And opposite, on a leather sofa, he was sitting - the ruler of Porhol land, Erving.

"Prove that you are really him."

Erving bared his shoulder, and Attila saw the numbers twelve and one.

"What the hell is this?"

"Since that moment, I've made great progress in using metovis."

"Only a real you would be able to achieve an impossible skill for an ordinary metentis. I can't believe my eyes! What happened to you after that?"

"It's a long story."

Attila paused and glanced at the curtains.

"What will happen to me?" he asked.

"You don't have much choice. But it is there."

"Join your ranks or die?"

"I won't kill my friend. I'll let you go back if that's what you really want. But the Attila I know is a man in search of strength and truth, he is unlikely to miss his chance to stand on our side and get his freedom."

"I won't be free until I die. Gennox will kill me as soon as everyone finds out about what happened in the square. The contract cannot be broken."

"Have you forgotten my numbers?"

Attila's eyes watered. His voice trembled.

"Do you know how to free me?"

Erving said nothing, just smiled, stretched his neck and looked at the curtains, then at the interlocutor:

"Is that what you want? Are you still the same Attila I knew five hundred years ago?"

He grinned and looked into his azure eyes and nodded.