I entered the hall with the information altar of cognition, closed as much as possible, hiding everything I could hide, and what I couldn't hide, I hid anyway. From the side, no matter for living eyes or soulless security charms, a desperately yawning Pypysh entered the huge, soccer field-sized hall, completely empty except for the stone altar of snow-white marble, cursing his curiosity, the late hour, the Second of the Three, and the whole universe in general. With the same expression of "I shouldn't be doing this at this hour, but I can't put it on someone else," he began to remove any protective amulets that might interfere with him, at the same time pulling off all his clothes except for his loose linen pants - the structure of the altar (the real name of the artifact, amusingly enough, was never mentioned anywhere, always slipping into impersonal) might react nervously to unnecessary items.

The Altar...

It was the very Google I cherished in my dreams, in which I am banned by virtue of being transported to another world. An omnipotent artifact capable of pulling knowledge literally out of the ass. Any records, any scrolls - anything once entrusted to paper, leather, birchbark tablets, or knotted writing. All of it sooner or later falls into the net of cognition. Something almost instantaneously, with the same speed with which the letters written down by the author are rendered on paper. Other books, properly protected, which have never been brought to the Library, or even never brought to the capital, come here after many years. Other things come without records at all: secrets, events, conversations, and deeds. In time their images, purest and filtered to crystal clarity, comprehensible even to an individual far removed from the craft of seeing, are poured into the altar, hidden in the whiteness of its smooth stone, in the silence of the always quiet and deserted hall, where no one ever dusts or cleans, but where sterile cleanliness reigns from century to century.

When I learned from the hobbit's memory of the existence of such a miracle, I almost had a stroke. Fortunately, let no mystery escape him, but it does not come immediately. Uncovering intrigues and plots with an altar, though possible, is no better than specialized legendary artifacts. The better the mystery is protected, the further away from the capital it occurred, and the longer it takes to absorb. We're not talking weeks or even months, but years or dozens of them. I was, after all, protected by un-existence, hidden in labyrinths of mirrors and all sorts of precautions. No, such a tasty story as the death of one of the imperial princes would surely fall into the arms of the altar, but not immediately.

Apparently, much of the Empire's success in the political arena, as well as the preference for defense tactics by its generals and the same defense strategy of development, came from this miracle of the miraculous. Yes, you can hide a lot of things from those who see and from the Eyes, but only for a while. Sooner or later, and more likely sooner, any secrets, any preparations, any plans of their enemies will become known. It's hardly possible to interfere because this shit is too slow to react, but it's almost unrealistic to hide from retribution, to cover up the traces of their dirty deeds. Someday, maybe not in this decade, but the truth about my nature and my self-given great mission will be known.

I'd have liked to pump as much Dream as possible through Misty, to smash everything here, and to drown the indestructible altar at the bottom of the river of forgotten dreams so no one would find it. Alas, all the experience and memory of Pypysh directly said that if not even to hit, but just wrongly touch the altar, as you simply will not be. It takes away.

Although the hobbit often felt threatened by the smooth stone, I couldn't distinguish anything. I mean, I could sense the threat, and it was so bad that the bricks from my ass were flowing, threatening to collapse the imperial building materials market, but somehow I was sure I could successfully try to hit the altar. I couldn't destroy it because it was connected to the very structure and nature of the Library.

Pypysh finished undressing and put his dry palms on the cold surface of the stone, falling headlong into a huge catalog with thousands of thousands of links, each of which hid the same thousands of new links, and another, and another, and another... For someone unfamiliar with the concept of the Internet, this amount of distilled knowledge could drive one crazy with the mere realization of his insignificance in front of this infinity. Even for me, it was hard and quite shocking. The Internet might have exceeded the amount of garbage accumulated in the altar, but not by orders of magnitude.

Knowledge.

Comprehension.

Mysteries.

All of them were before me, all of them forever...

...the hobbit's body takes a deep breath.....

...there...

...his mind, his mind begins to search, to make inquiry after inquiry, and Misty and I, hiding behind Pypysh's mind, sorted through and either discarded or looked a little more closely at yet another mystery...

...locked...

I was almost at the end of my disguise - just enough to reach the possessed man's rooms and eliminate the connection - when the palms of sweating and bone-chilling Pypysh's hands came off the altar, and he stepped away from the altar, staggering and lurching, trying to regain his breath. I'm not quite sure what exactly I got from this operation and whether I got anything at all, but I can be sure that the case of finding the nature of the Shackles has clearly moved from another dead point.

I need to think really hard about this.

I should set up a lair in some small town, perhaps even a large village, and create another clairvoyance amplifier like the one I'd recently created. All the more so because I could feel how close its creation had brought me to get another title, and some system message flashed before my eyes, but I didn't have time to realize it. Maybe I even got the title. My actions over the last 24 hours fit into the theme of suicidal and insane behavior. Yes, I should lay low, create the right conditions, and then take a long and thoughtful look at everything I had gotten from this day.

Explore.

Create a plan.

And start acting in a way that's not completely random.

Before the story of the Stone, I was poking at the walls of obscurity like a blind kitten, and I stumbled upon the fortress itself purely on pure luck, Grandpa Losius's Diary, and the blessing of Saint Randomius. So to speak, it was a lucky roll of the dice, without which I could have spent years looking for a place to start my Quest until I'd pumped up my clairvoyance and mirror class to the right level to get this information.

Operation in the Eternal is no longer blind poking but rather working in total darkness and without night vision, by feel. It's not easy either, but you already know what and where you're looking for, even if you have no idea what it looks like and what form it has taken. I would have finished this stage sooner or later, even if today had been an epic failure. The Eternal and its book depository were not the only good Library on Alurei.

But now.

Now a new milestone in this millennia-long quest has begun.

The possessed man, still grumbling, but now thoughtfully rather than grudgingly, dressed, activated his amulets, and strode toward the exit from the hall. They always come in here without any helpers, so he would have to go out on his own, despite his fatigue, because there was no one to give him a shoulder to lean on. He would have to explain to the Bookworm Council why he had come here because it was not for nothing such a valuable artifact was almost always idle and rarely used for its intended purpose. Even if you remove the risk of simply disappearing without ever returning from the hall, any use of the altar is extremely exhausting to the body and mind, and also rapidly accelerates the build-up of wall pressure - the very debuff that makes junior staff members have to take regular vacations. Pypysh would soon need to spend a week or two in the fresh air, too, despite his level and affinity for the walls. Not only he has not left his workplace for decades and never intended to do so, but he also knows a lot of secrets, some of which simply forbid him to leave the other dimension, where there is all possible protection. The story with the scepter of mythical grade, which is planned to be handed over to the undead sitting in Alishan's rear!

When he got about halfway to the door, the halfling stopped and froze, sensing something strange, wrong, and not him in his thoughts. I, as the one who was controlling him right now through that very "not his" shoved in him, was pretty fucked up since he simply couldn't notice my presence. He wasn't at a level and class set where Misty, even beaten up and having spent a fair share of his resources, could screw up the perception and thinking distortion.

But it wasn't me he noticed, no. Another influence, equally subtle and beautiful in its lightness, enveloped both the mind, the aura, and the essence of the elderly bookworm, preventing him from realizing it. He could not notice this influence even with a greater degree of "impossibility" than my own, so perfectly calibrated was it. It was as if someone had taken a long, hard look at all his defenses and distorted them to use them against the one being protected. Even for me, the level of "I'll repeat it, but it'll be hard!"

The only thing was, I'd twisted and jumbled his defenses, and the very presence of Misty actively conjuring inside him was interfering with the second portion of the distortion even more. Strong enough for the hobbit's mind to notice some irregularity. Strong enough to make my panic level rise a thousandfold, and the traitorous thought flashed through my mind that I'd been ambushed and that Kostik should have listened to Aunt Tia instead of charging forward with pure arrogance and pathos.

I tried to distort the host's perception on the fly, making him just silently move on, pretending that everything was fine, wanting to buy some time to cover my tracks, but after such an eloquent pause in his movements, it wasn't even funny. Stanislavsky would not have believed it, and neither would the ambush regiment.

Pypysh's ears heard nothing, his eyes saw nothing, and only his well-developed intuition had time to prick him with a sense of distress at the last moment. He still had time to turn around, and I began to prepare for the collapse of Misty and all the immediate surroundings, as the face flashed in front of the face of one of the employees of the internal sectors of the Library, and quite high, even though the halfling had almost no contact with him, and then frozen in shock good-naturedly smiling man smiled lightly, almost gently touched the cheek of the old man as if caressing his beloved wife.

And the old man died.

At once.

Not with a body or even a shell.

His soul died.

It was as if that soul, from which Misty had distanced as much as possible for the sake of disguise, had been flooded with an unbearably sweet syrup of purest tenderness, a bliss beyond which there was nothing else. And the essence of a reasonable man who had been pumped up to forty, incredibly stable and impossibly strong, dissolved without a trace in a few heartbeats, leaving only an untouched and empty shell. The lights were turned off for a while, cutting me off from controlling or communicating with Misty.

Something I don't understand.

I was tempted to drop everything and run away, but I couldn't. There was still Misty, who was too much my creation for me to let anyone study it or even just poke at its remains appear after the construct self-destructed. I gave the zero-level readiness signal, which included being ready for anything, even before I tried to re-establish communication. Strangely enough, I didn't sense any opposition or attention, as if no one was going to open the possessed man. And come to think of it, did they even know about me? It felt like it was the librarian who'd been killed, not the weirdo who'd taken over his body.

"...will be terribly displeased!" The man's voice, a pleasant baritone did not sound panicked or at least agitated, but there was a touch of nervousness in it. "Terribly, terribly displeased! Why the hell did he come here in the first place? You swore that Popyatchev would not break the sleep regime until he received an order certified by the Eternal Edict! Did I or did I not, dear Shmielae?"

The body's memory was surprisingly well accessible, despite the absence of the soul and the fragmentation of its memory. So Misty, who had taken the deceased's place and covered itself with the remnants of the soul and almost an entire auric shell, for example, "remembered" Shmielae was a half-breed beast folk whose mother had escaped from the Empire of Arms and arranged for her daughter to be an expert in closed fields. A very high-ranking lady, though inferior in influence to Pypysh, she is not the least of the team. She was also checked for lice three hundred thousand times as an immigrant and officially had never even met the very security officer who had killed Pypysh.

Slowly, I take control of the dead man's body, ignoring the threat of exposure. I see through the slits of the eyes what I could not see before because of the veil of concealment, which was as good as my own. I see the bodies of several dozen living and dead sentient beings stacked in a corner, among which I "recognize" several employees, as well as unfamiliar and obviously involuntary people whose whole appearance screamed "sacrificial material". Even the face of Justine Reneal, who seemed to have gone on vacation and was absent from the Library, flashed among the familiar faces.

"...load..." There is no strength in the body, the body is not functioning well, and the hearing does not want to submit to the remote control, picking up only pieces of words or unintelligible sounds, and all the forces are spent on the gradual unfolding of the mirror field of "I'm not here".

"...impossible, we've already lost too much time..." It's the security guard who's indignant, saying something to the catgirl with her ears pressed to her head, her tail flicking through the air around her like a whip.

"...the raised Shroud is not strong enough, it may open its eyes again, and we won't be able to close them a second time!" Almost shrieks another conspirator or something, kind of like an archivist. "We need to complete the Patch now, raise the Veil and the Net, or there's no way to take this out."

Besides the old and decrepit - blow on him, and he'll crumble - archivist lay several open bags covered with glowing runes, which Pypysh's memory also recognizes as a very expensive kind of portable spatial artifacts suitable for transporting living beings. A dream for any saboteur of epic rank but rather a weak legend, and there were three of them. At least now we know where the victims came from. And not only victims but also a bunch of ritual devices that turned a quarter of the hall into a huge sacrificial circle of unknown nature. A circle that I-halfling didn't notice, even though I walked on it with my feet. What about me? This thing was somehow not noticed by the will that ruled here, which always took away any number of visitors more than one!

Whatever the creature guarding (or what is it doing here?) the Library is, it seems to have been fooled and, if I'm deciphering the three conspirators' hurried negotiations correctly, is about to be either sedated or subjugated. And if the clairvoyance gradually turning on through the proxy is anything to go by, they have a good chance of success. Even without the alchemical flair, I can tell you that I can't see a single amulet, reagent, or artifact below epic grade! And all this should merge in ecstasy under the hand of obviously not a simple archivist but a ritualist of the highest class, and this ritualist is a sacrificer by specialty.

And even the presence of Justine and a couple of other similarly lucid but paralyzed servants is necessary to establish a strong conceptual connection between the ritual circle and.... the Library itself? That's why the defenses didn't open me up! It's barely a third of its strength even outside, and inside the hall, it doesn't seem to be working at all.

Waito!

Is it so that if I quietly self-liquidate right now, this fraternity will not only unnoticed anything but will cover all my shenanigans, as long as I don't fall under the punitive hammer of those whom they offend with their actions? That is, given the clearly hostile intentions towards the treasure of the whole Empire, not to fall under the hammer of the whole Empire?

It's worth admitting that sometimes I do get lucky enough to not just get into a story but to do so in an extremely successful, convenient, and useful way for my plans. It's like accidentally stepping into something but not into shit, but into a puddle of water of life, which will restore your youth, youthfulness, erection and grow hair on your long bald head, and all this for free! Having taken a look at the slaves and the hapless Justine, I start activating the schemes and processes that have long been embedded in Misty without the slightest doubts about my actions, so after a second, I can calmly and painlessly...

"Ho-oh-oh-oh, what a bunch of you wicked, wretched bastards, who are trying to offend old, respected intelligent people." In the typical manner of a provincial halfling farmer trolling his surroundings, as Pypysh often did himself, I reproach the evil and unkind, carefully rising to my feet and finishing the transfer of the Misty into combat mode. "It's not God's way. Mother Earth will not approve of it. It's not good to do that.

Well, I can't go away, after all, smartly, without having used all the combat tools sewn into the construct, can I?

"I have pleased your soul, honorable one." Politely said the once fit and somehow subtly changed security guard, keeping his gaze on the breathing and consciously active body of what he had previously thought was a still living but now soulless dead man. "You can't live."

Not a threat, not a surprise, or even a question - just a statement of fact, calm and balanced. Somehow this man makes me nervous, and whether he's a man at all. Now when he's ready for a real fight, his good-natured face, warm smile, and cheerful glint in his eyes look so unnatural that I don't have a single doubt in my mind this is just a creature that has stretched the skin and body of a formerly living man. Perhaps it had done to the soul of the real owner of the body just as it had done to the soul of the halfling half an hour earlier.

"The soul of a true owl is immortal and eternally free, even while in a cage... kind of," I answer arrogantly, buying time to assess my opponent just as much as my opponents are assessing me.

T.N. The owl is a reference. Owl is a slang word for a bitards sitting on the chans late at night. Since there is no registration system, the owl can't be kicked and can come back at any time. That's why the MC says that the soul of an owl is immortal. And able to come back any moment.

The old man shifted his gaze to me, distracting himself for a second from arranging the bone figures in some special order, obviously not made of simple bone, and humming with something subtly evil. The catgirl squinted her eyes and began to purr faintly, mixing something into that purr, but the nature of this sonic (is it sonic?) attack was not yet clear to me. The mimicry fearmonger remains silent and politely assesses my response without commenting. The old man, by the way, clearly gave some signal, and clairvoyance amplified through hundreds of mirrored grains of Misty suggests it was he who demanded not to let me damage the circle being prepared.

"The Nightbird Cult?" The cat exclaimed with genuine surprise, even stopping the purring attack doing something to perception. "But what do they have to do with this? Those shamans have never sent spies anywhere further than the Beastmen tribes! If they could put their initiate in your position through all the loyalty checks and Eye scans, they wouldn't be sitting in the middle of nowhere! And may the night owl be able to retrieve the soul of a fallen fellow in its beak, but not restore it from please!"

How she was hurt! The Soul of Mocker had helped me, allowing me not just to step on a sore callus but to punch it with a fist, press it with a heel, drop an iron on it, and spit on it. It was not just a pain in the ass. It was almost hysterical, knocking down the iron, in fact, self-control of this fury.

"Well, yes, of course, but if you need it, it's a little bit no, just a little bit." Without changing the simple manner of rural coloring, I rebuffed, meeting the pleading gaze of the paralyzed Justine. "If anything, I'll tell everyone that you're right, yes, owls can't do anything like that, only sit in their bakeries without going out to fart."

For a moment, I thought she was going to lunge at me right away. Her hand, at least, quite obviously reached for the seven-tailed whip attached to her belt, which would have looked much more appropriate on a sex shop shelf. She was signaled off by both of her companions at once, bringing her to her senses and giving her peace, focus, and incredible motivation to keep me from doing anything, even screaming.

"You're good, mrrrrmaster kmrrrrlaaa." Abruptly she switched to a purr that enveloped the brain like absorbent cotton. "Can we talk?"

It wasn't just a racial trait that some types of Cat folks possessed, but some kind of extremely harsh mental technique, literally crushing the will and mind, lowering the consciousness to the most primitive level. The ability was clearly enhanced by a one-time amulet or by a title that had a long rollback, but this thing could turn even a warrior of Pypysh's level into a lustful animal without prior preparation, not to mention an administrator not adapted to such tests.

But there was no Pypysh anymore, and it was useless to subjugate Misty. There was no place to put new subjugations and settings, and it was impossible to make this entity even more lustful than it already was by any means I knew. I pretend to stagger, falling on one knee, but in fact, my connection with the puppet is almost absolute, so complete that only distortions of the body and growing new limbs will do.

They deliberately let the cat speak, just in fear of some tricky trick. The thing that pulled on the man as skin is much stronger, but it's not sure it can do it as fast the second time without me raising the alarm. And the cat's reception is obviously designed for such force majeure when you need to urgently shut up at least a couple or three warriors of the fortieth level at once.

"Mrrrr, mroi mrrab, wan mroi pynee?" She purred softly as before, lifting her thin blouse and exposing human breasts with bright pink nipples tense as two diamonds.

Pynee is, according to Pypysh, the crude and deliberately rustic equivalent of "tits" in the halfling language, or, more precisely and literally, "ripe melons that can be fucked." I have no idea how Pypysh would react to that, but I suppose that under such mental pressure, he would hurry to fuck those pynees, even if he would be put directly into the sacrificial circle. I only rested my body with my hands on the floor, leaning even lower, and then I looked up and met with sincere shock in the eyes of the brainiac (and needless to say, no one ever mentioned her talents?), whose best trick, her strongest trump card, turned out to be beaten.

"I don't need your pynees, Shmele," I'm intentionally misrepresenting her name, because she may not understand the reference, but the classics don't die. "I'm already vdryzhne!"

And maybe my words would have seemed dumb if I hadn't heard a barely audible, but at the same time, such a sound that one couldn't help but hear it even more than Schmielae's purr. The chime of pieces of mirror grinding against each other was accompanied by indistinguishable rustles and whispers of nightmarish dreams long ago dissolved in the river of time.

Dream as a phenomenon was absent in the spaces of the Eternal Library. Dreams were always just dreams, and mirrors remained simple and harmless mirrors. In the space of the Eternal Library, there was no Dream. Not until the day when an idiot who couldn't just walk away from a vat of shit without diving into it found himself in its domain.

Because he brought Dream after him.

The attack field I had created struck suddenly and, more importantly, unexpectedly, directly from beneath the concealing mirror configuration and under the hood of un-existence. The very title he had received for killing the Hero who had failed to step into the portal allowed me to do many things that had previously been unattainable but required long preparation and favorable conditions. Now I had the preparation, the conditions, the bonus from the title, and an opponent who was not expecting a trick from me, or rather, such a mean and weighty trick. But the opponent might have been inferior to the murdered uncle, but he was waiting for something, so there was no beating of babies.

My attack crumpled reality, making it flow, crumpling it into plasticine, while simultaneously delivering a monstrously powerful concentrated blow to the mind. The combination of mental hits infecting the space with a part of unreal, and damage to the very essence of the hit losers, allowed to kill even serious opponents with high efficiency. Without training, I wouldn't be able to deal such a blow myself, even if I didn't spend any effort on disguise and concealment. But only with all the preparations stuffed into Misty and my stationary vessel, I could not worry about the creation of charms, and just activate the ready-made ones, making only minimal, almost cosmetic adjustments.

The impact was terrible. It was as if a part of space had been reflected in a crooked mirror, which then shattered into pieces, and woe to those and what would be in the place of the "break". As if the pure damage wasn't enough, from beneath the shattered and crumbling shards, blue ribbons of equal proportions of lilac threads and dully shimmering mirrors reached for the enemy's bodies, forming nauseating and maddening patterns. And, of course, absolute stupor, nausea, temporary (or permanent) schizophrenia, personality disintegration, and rapidly degenerating thinking. Three vectors and all of the different types, and you only have to miss one, and the others will break through.

I expected the cloaked creature to retaliate as the most dangerous. It was not for nothing that it could dissolve Pypysh's soul with a single touch. I didn't expect danger from the cat, though I took it into account, as it showed itself to be a great mentalist, able to hit both subtly and harshly at the same time, resulting in a lethal mixture. But they both only bounced back from under the first layer of the attack complex, not letting reality crackle where their bodies were. The first violin was played by the old archivist, who never got up from his knees and did not stop his ritual manipulations.

In a sharp, diarrhea-like motion, he slit open his wrist, throwing purple blobs into the air, activating, beyond any doubt, a prearranged trump card. A large barrier spanned the entire bloody hall and was made up of hundreds and hundreds of hexagons, interchanging and reinforcing each other. Each hexagon was no bigger than the palm of your hand, and each could only protect against one thing at a time - steel, chopping wounds, sound resonance, crushing, fire, instantaneous curses based on the power of nature, mental blows of one of several types. The cunning nature of this design made it so that each element absorbed the strengths of all the others, making the overall design almost invulnerable to everything. How many defense types are there, and how many ignored damage types?

Such a thing can even withstand a blow from a divine being, and not just one, but several, as long as it is not pushed through by bare force. Without pure force, without knowing the nature of this strange and, I should note, the non-planar nature of this magical technique, it is hardly possible to open it. And nobody is in a hurry to tell me the keys, as well as possible weaknesses. Rather, on the contrary, they are in a hurry to kill me before I wake up and find out myself.

The revitalized ribbons, aspids of bad dreams created inside the Misty, beat their sharp faces into the barrier, wasting power and phoning in huge amounts of hostile magic. But the barrier indestructible in its perfection, didn't even fade, forcing the half-intelligent constructs to squander their reserves of power trying to seep through some gap. Any ordinary or unusual barrier, no matter how strong it might be, such a thing would deceive one way or another, slip under it, and sting, injecting the poison of disturbed delirium and bad visions. Alas, they were powerless now, as powerless as a blow to the mind, for every shade of which there was its shred, sharing invulnerability with all the others. The cracks in reality collapsed the second the last of the aspids left unreality, crawling into reality without hitting anyone.

The alarm was not even raised, even though the light I gave off would have been enough to sense something wrong even without signal charms! But no, neither the sensors nor the altar, nor the thing that protects it, did not notice what had happened. If these guys were able to just cut off the entire hall from the very concept of being part of the Eternal Library, then I have a bad feeling and bad news!

Not even a fraction of a second had passed since the failed kickoff.

I didn't even have time to think about the sacramental "fuck" before I get a response.

Dozens of carved bone figurines spread on the smooth floor slightly changed the tone of emanations and images. A couple of smiley and cat girl synchronously passed through the barrier that let them through, avoiding the aspids that didn't have time to react to them, and then started kicking hard.

The smiling guy definitely had some kind of un-existence, developed no less than a master because I saw his attack only when I realized that my puppet's existence would be cut off forever after a moment. On bare reflex, I put up my hands, and an open palm strike broke both forearms, elbows, part of the ribs, and spine - hobbits are strong but light. The physical damage was just the tip of the iceberg against the familiar sensation of honey pouring over you, this time dissolving not the essence (did he believe I had defenses?) but the energy and subtle bodies. He struck from some kind of blink without even making a single movement: here, he was standing behind the barrier, and now he had already struck, inflicting on the puppet injuries guaranteed to be fatal for a living creature.

She reached the mincemeat flying away in shock (my shock, as it was a sudden snap on my pride) in a quick, but not too prominent dash, and then, just in case, she swiped her whip as well. I thought it would only hit the air, but each of the tails lengthened a couple or three meters, turning into harnesses of many colorful pyramids. Each pyramid is a closed field with its own supply of concentrated essence. The edges of each pyramid are razor sharp, and the essences themselves are terribly aggressive and poisonous. Oh yeah, and these strange barriers can't do damage just by passing through living bodies like a ghost passing through the stone. The barrier itself can't do damage, but the essence that gets into the body, straight through and through all the defenses, will kill with a guarantee.

The hobbit fell to the ground not as a hobbit but as an ichor-bleeding, roasting, freezing, and rotting piece of stinking shit. I should try to make a construction like this whip for myself because although the weapon is fabulously expensive to maintain and fill with consumables, it's the best thing for an alchemist.

Personally, I had no idea what they were going to do next. Whether to return to their interrupted ritual or to atomize the corpse of the old man they had killed twice into atoms, but I didn't wait for the first or the second. Nor did I disguise myself. If the defense didn't pay any attention to us, it meant that the blockade of unknown nature was good enough, and I didn't have to hold back.

The puppet was on the cold floor for less than a tenth of a second. The malleable flesh and energy swelled and boiled, oozing a blue mist, and the wounds began to heal rapidly. The torn pieces of energy blinked with no less rapidity, taking their original form, and all the essences that had entered the body simply evaporated like a pencil from one smiling magician. The reflection of the state of the energy a second before the blow and her actual injuries simply switched places. It's a complicated trick that is ten times harder to perform on a living person than on a puppet. But there is no nit to spare this piece of meat so I can restore it for a long time. I think the deceased would appreciate the opportunity to avenge his killers... although I'd be the first person he'd want to kill, no question about it.

The body morphed, rapidly losing its human form. Obeying an instinctive impulse, directed simultaneously by the Soul of the Mocker and the title of the Giver of Fear, the flesh melted, transforming the doll into a ghastly mixture of a human and a skinned bird, the bird clearly having tentacle monsters as relatives, because instead of wings, two flexible tentacles sprang from the shoulder blades, in which it was easy to see mesmerizingly shimmering mirrors. And the whole body is also covered with these mirrors and not only the body! A halo seems to sprout around the shape-shifting skull and face of the head when several dozens of mirrored grains make their way straight from under the frontal bone. And having broken through this way, they begin to slowly circle the head, creating a perfectly shaped circle, still shining and at the same time serving as a focusing antenna for better control of the doll and the mirror amulets enclosed in it. The same "halos" begin to circle each of the two-and-a-half arms and all four dorsal tentacles. And a little above, over the distorted body unfolded another, the largest of all, halo, in which are no longer pathetic grains but large mirrors the size of a child's fist.

One might ask, why did I, so good, get time to melt the puppet down instead of destroying it as quickly and inevitably as in the beginning? My answer would be pretty obvious. It took much longer to describe the process than it did to happen. Much, much longer. Oh, this couple would have made it. But now, there was no barrier to protect them from the mental scream that would awaken their worst nightmares or at least just press down on their minds with a steel press. They overcame the scream without difficulty, but it didn't buy them any time - the puppet had time to change, get used to it, and attack.

I wasn't kidding when I asserted the collaboration of my two not-so-favorite titles. The smirkiest of my opponents seemed as unlikely to be confused as he was to be frightened. I couldn't sense his true fears, at least not right away. They were there. I knew I could reach them, gnaw them out from under the armor of self-control, indifference, and un-existence. Whatever this creature (creature, it was a creature, not a human being!) was, it had fears. But I didn't have time to dig through that shell in the middle of a battle!

But Shmielae was much livelier, and my present appearance, which the flesh that had submitted to my will had taken on in its eagerness to give her all the horror of human and nonhuman sacrifices, touched something in her, reminded her of something, awakened some long-forgotten sorrow and the bitter pain of losing something pricelessly important. Our gazes met in that brief moment when they had already disdained the nightmarish scream but had not yet struck with all their might at its source. I saw her fear. I saw the anger with which she clutched her whip. I saw how she hated and despised me, so she dared not fear, dared not disgrace the power she served.

I didn't have time for anything. No one would let me finish or even start a pathos one-liner. But the past of not the last troll on 4chan didn't allow me to miss the opportunity to tease my opponent in any way. With a birdlike tilt of my doll's head, I squeezed out of myself, letting the distant chime of the mirror mazes ring out in my voice:

"Curly?" (pigeon sounds)

For one infinitesimally brief moment, a hidden horror burst from the prison of Shmielae's eyes, streaking across her beautiful face, but only for a moment, after which the horror was replaced by such burning hatred that if I were here in a real body, I might have flinched.

The creature emerged from the blink again, again hiding under un-existence, but now the halos are acting as multiple scanners and locators. I can pick up the smallest imperfections in its concealment in time to take the blow in both hands again. The halfling's light body shakes from the power of the blow, and the energy-breaking attack is absorbed into his body. But now I don't fly away from the kick into the far distance, but only bend my knees backward, cushioning the physical impact. The energy attack is absorbed by the mirrors, causing some of them to turn black, losing their charge, falling out of the "halo" chorus, or crumbling to crumbs, but fulfilling their role - lost in the labyrinth of mirrors constantly being set up in its path, the attack is reflected several dozen times inside the puppet's body until I use all four tentacles, striking in such a way that the creature that dodged them fell under the lightest touch of my fully grown third arm.

The creature gave a very puzzled "Uhoo!" as if it too wanted to imitate a night bird and then flew backward, smashing into the surface of the barrier with a crunch of its vertebrae. I heard the crunch of those vertebrae, already bringing all my limbs in a guaranteed deadly combination of blows, wanting to tear one cute little cat into a bunch of little kittens. She can't dodge, as her mind is desperately trying to shake off the paralysis, regain control of her body, and extinguish the dozens of conflicting emotions I'm broadcasting through the halos directly into her mind and partially even her soul. By the way, I'd expected her to be a vegetable by the time I hit her physically, but there was something in her mind and essence that rejected my attacks, something indistinguishable, perfectly hidden, but honeyed sweetness and nauseating rot at the same time.

I've met something like this before...

I almost made it, but when in our world "almost" was enough? I was already one step away from my opponent, and I was suddenly bound in some kind of sugar syrup or gelatinous gel. The ritualist, distracted again, rearranged some of the bone figures and created a selective barrier right under my feet. It didn't hurt the cat and even blocked the mental pressure on her, but it squeezed and twisted me so hard that I felt like a kitten who'd accidentally gotten into the washing machine while it was spinning. The world flashed before my eyes, the top confused with the bottom, but the doll didn't care about physical states.

The mirrors flashed with captured images, the halos glowed purple and unreal, and another manifestation of Dream took a piece of reality away from the barrier that was spinning me. I lost a couple of seconds, no more than that. The creature only had time to patch up its crippled body, for some reason not showing its face, and Shmielae hadn't quite gotten rid of the effects I'd induced.

I change reality in such a way that the acceleration barrier does not exist in it, simply by replacing this reality with another reflection, after which I reflect my weight and mass, first making them zero and then returning them to their place and reflecting the gravity vector in the opposite direction.

I fell upward toward the rapidly approaching and very high ceiling, and the place where I had been bound earlier became absolutely one thousand out of a hundred times real. I don't even want to think about what would have happened to the Dream-soaked puppet. I wonder if this grandfather was not in the same college with Ferrer Rocher studied? I remember he almost killed me with something very similar. Only it wasn't conceptual neutralization of distortions, but...

I grabbed the air with my tentacles, changed my vector, and reactivated the mirrors in my body, burning out the next batch of mirrors and covering myself with a cocoon of pure Dream power. No structuring, no attempts to create an attack, just a siphon that flows through me and releases a small lake of raw power into the world around me. Still, there's no Dream here, and its only source is the puppet, and as the pilot of this Little Hobbit-like Battle Robot, I have to rely on the durability of the rapidly deteriorating Misty.

At the moment when another rearrangement of bone figures forced all planar and magical energy in a certain area to disappear. I only grimaced. The flow of raw power was too fast for the pumping to start pulling power from the halos, the mirrors embedded in the body and flesh increasingly decomposing into a lilac mist. But while I was leaving the next dead zone, my opponents had time to come to their senses again, the bastards.

This collection of statuettes is no longer a legend, but at least a myth, designed for high-class ritualists. He manages to keep up that weird defense that negates the entire room and prevents me from raising the alarm, keeps up a damn powerful barrier, and attacks me with blows that make me uncomfortable at the same time. If I don't think of something clever, the puppet will be quietly beaten until the connection is turned off, after which they'll finish their business and think about how to shit on me. So why did I even bother? To get my ass kicked? I could have gotten it at home, even before I was Summoned.

Okay, it's not over yet.

Two of the seven tails of the whip hit the puppet body, but the halos rearrange their configuration into a smooth mirror surface, which the immateriality of the pyramids doesn't work on, causing them to bounce off the improvised shield with a ringing sound. Some of the essences fell into the looking glass, and there wasn't much left in the whip after all our dances. It seems that her artifact can gradually accumulate and renew the essence if there is even a little bit left in the pyramid, but it is a matter of long days, not short moments of battle.

The disguised creature's hand crashed into the mirror that had not had time to dissolve back, and at least a third of the mirror mass, starting from the center of the shield, turned black, crumbling to the ground. The bastard quickly picked up the "frequency" of the vile molasses that flowed from his palms, which caused the maximum possible damage to my puppet.

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The lion's share of the mirrors have already been used up on shields or attacks. The untouched reserve was waiting for the moment to strike a decisive blow. During the entire battle, which took a minute, maybe a minute and a half, nothing was said, not a single sound was uttered. Only the rumble of our blows, the roar of the magic used by the ritualist, the hiss of the whip cutting through the air, and the heavy breathing of the catgirl. Neither I nor the creature seemed to need to breathe.

The palms of his hands slammed into the creature, causing it to twist unnaturally, letting the mirrored claws of his third hand slip past her and then, with a light touch, causing it to shatter into a purple mist. The same fate had already befallen three of the seven (though he had never had time to grow more than five) arms and all four tentacles growing from his back. The halos had already faded, causing the connection to the puppet to falter and make new mistakes.

I don't have enough mirrors to fight and attack on equal terms with my opponents. And the Mist's resource is enough for a couple more minutes of this dance, assuming I don't get any new wounds, which seems a bit unrealistic. My opponents recovered from the surprise, calmed down, gathered their strength, and now slowly and methodically pressed me at the expense of experience, superiority in equipment, and much greater stamina. If I hadn't decided to go for trumps from the beginning, I might have managed better, but my cards were beaten, and I didn't have any new ones.

At least they think so.

And they are even largely right.

My initial superiority in speed had already waned. The cat is equal to me in combat potential, and the creature fights lazily, still not showing its true face or other, more dangerous techniques. Not that the creature needs them, as its touch, blink, and un-existing make a very powerful and dangerous bundle. The body of the deceased halfling has almost ceased to exist, as the constant strain and regeneration have made most of the real mass an unreal broth of Dream mist and mirror anchors with small flecks of rapidly dissolving matter. Well, the design created for infiltration is not intended for long and hard battles. The fact that I've managed to last this long is solely due to my talents in clairvoyance, which allow me to somehow stand against this couple.

But.

The dodge, the twist of the torso, in which every single bone disappeared at once, allows you to skip another blow from the blink while taking a sliding step forward, poking almost blindly (fewer and fewer mirror sensors remain), forcing the smilingly polite one to take a soft and careful step back, and then another when the cat barely has time to redirect the blow of the whip that almost hit an ally...

But.

The sharp shriek, not even a scream, but a squeal, short and pitiful compared to the song the puppet could make at the beginning of the battle, still forced Shmielae to distract, to miss the moment when I, who had barely blocked the creature's next blow, could be crushed and smeared on the marble floor. The bones in the puppet's body are almost gone. They've all been used as material for the Misty, for patches, which I used to frantically try to bind the construction that had already passed the point of no return. The bones are replaced by pure Dream, an embodied mirage that has taken on a form mirroring that of the real bones. But this matter too easily turns into the mirage from which it was created.....

But.

Another missed blow rips too much from the tiny torso of the lump of limbs and lilac mist that had long since lost all form, and the last of the halos, already sparse and slowing, crumbles to the floor with a ringing sound inaudible at our speed and over the noise of our battle. Shmielae's whip turns into a hangman's noose, wrapping all seven tails around the puppet, and then slices it into many slices, almost immediately beginning to spread purple puddles and mist.

But.

Nothing could last forever. It wasn't in my power to win this battle with the set parameters and the opponents that got in my way. It didn't matter who they thought I was. It didn't matter what they thought of me. It didn't even matter if these guys believed that this was Pypysh Popyatchev's last desperate fight and not the puppet that had taken over the body of the hobbit who had died from the very first blow. There are sometimes moments when you just can't win. Moments in which you have to see, to look through the sprawling eyes of the destroyed puppet, how the desperate and barely had time to settle in the eyes of the man prepared for sacrifice hope, turn to ashes along with the disappeared puppet.

But.

A puppet in which, by the time it disintegrated, not a single piece of mirror remained, not the tiniest grain of sand of a materialized dream.

"He gave everything." Softly and affectionately said what he pretends to be an ordinary man so skillfully that even the Library's defense believed it, and his words sound like what a sommelier says about the rarest kind of wine. "Gave it away, sold himself to the end, and failed. Right in front of the eyes of those he wished to save from their fate. It's so, uh. Perfect."

Not a sign of fatigue on the smiling face, not a trace of anxiety in his voice, not even a hitch in his breathing. Somehow, this welcome and cheerfulness is more creepy than the hoarse threats and frantic growls of a raging beast.

"Ha... Myah... I'm glad you appreciated it, hon." The cat, not unlike her interlocutor, had clearly worked her ass off, only now beginning to realize how close their entire plan was to collapse, and their lives to something next to which a simple ending would be the greatest of blessings. "Mya!!!? Wait, what do you mean he wanted to save? I checked everything, I even scanned with the Experience Flower! Pypysh was the kind of old man who didn't give a shit about anything but his favorite books and stacks of papers!"

The male figure distracted from his pensive scrutiny of the place from which all traces of the energy-dissolved halfling had long since evaporated, giving that unreadable gaze and the same good-natured smile that had previously been bestowed upon a defeated foe gazing at his killer.

"He was looking at her, my dear." Without turning around, pointing a finger behind his back, not a man unmistakably pointing in the direction of Justine Reneal, who was almost reached by the hands of the continuing ritualist calmly and deliberately doing his thing. "And, it seemed to me, was ready to throw all his efforts into an escape attempt or perhaps an equally desperate attempt to reach through the Veil? But he threw himself into the fight, immediately offering himself to the mirrors. All of him."

As if she'd received a New Year's gift a couple of months before the new year, the beast girl looked into the captive's eyes clouded with neutralizing charms and clapped her hands together in joy. She was now genuinely, like a small child, glad those associated with the Library should stop breathing and be the last. It gave her a chance to enjoy the spectacle a little longer. Justine herself, having been questioned three times about everything of interest (and having told everything voluntarily for the right to kiss Shmiellae's bright scarlet lips once more), had no idea of the old marmot's attitude toward her, but there was a beauty in that, too. To receive such a sacrifice, to witness it, and to realize that even that sacrifice wasn't enough... It is truly marvelous, and the half-breed passionately regretted that she had no time to describe and convey to the witness of the sad story the whole gamut of the agony of dissolving into the mirrors.

By the way...

"Bane, I mean... well, Bane?" She suddenly abruptly forgot her question, asking a completely different one, instantly understood by her attentive interlocutor. "Or not?"

"Alas." Now the smile took on light apologetic tones. "That blow was a reflection of mine, and thus the damage came entirely at the base of your comrade. In a way, since we'll have to weave the details of what happened into a wreath of doubt for a few days, I'll have to play his part since I couldn't take the person who gave me such a rare sight. I hereby affirm that I am Bane."

If the cat's soul flashed any regrets about the fate of a dead comrade, and was it a comrade? It was impossible to notice this sadness with an unarmed eye, and probably not with an armed one either. She bowed briefly to another doll, but now no longer a hobbit, and asked the question that the realization of her ally's death had prevented her from asking.

"By the way, Honorable Buubga, am I distracting you?" She'd probably planned to ask Bane first, but she didn't risk it now, even if the creature was being sympathetic and kind, because she'd have to know what that sympathy was really worth.

At first, it might have seemed that the ritualist, who right now was arranging the floating entrails of a still-alive slave, one of the last remaining ones in the right places in the ritual pattern, had simply not heard the question. The sacrifices were very special, and their souls, bodies, magic, blood, inner essences, or even personalities had a whole list of very unusual traits. Not powerful, though the average level of sacrifice was between the twentieth and twenty-fifth, but rare and unusual.

Some had multicolored eyes, some were in love with their sister and brother at the same time and carried their feelings through their lives, some had a useless anomaly in their aura that gave them no advantages, some had birthmarks on their bodies that formed mystical patterns due to a ritual performed by their great-grandmother, some had been blessed in the cradle by priests of three gods at once, light and dark, and some could breathe river water, having accidentally received a rare title as a child. Just as alchemists could manipulate essences, accessing concepts through them, so the basis of a ritualist's work was the manipulation of concepts with the ability to trigger work through essences. A great, perhaps even legendary master was at work here and now, using a powerful artifact complex.

And his skill was enough to answer the questions asked without interrupting his work.

"No, you're not a distraction, Shmielae." That characteristic of the whole trio, dissonant with the surrounding reality, calmness, and goodwill, seemed to have taken root in them, and it probably did. "I can't let you in yet. There's a stage to complete, and I'll rearrange the pieces."

The desire to be under the barrier was understandable. The battle was hot, and even if the stone of the hall was not even scratched or distorted by the streams of dream energy, who knows what the limit of the mighty Veil's patience is in keeping something very bad from happening? Even here, at the altar itself, where danger is almost material, this creation, born from the right combination of set figures, could grant a few seconds for a last prayer. Or an escape.

The barrier took the positions of nearly a fifth of the figures, with another three-quarters left for the construction of the ritual and the maintenance of Veil, so the master could do little to help his companions except the simplest of effects (for a mythical artifact in the hands of an affinity for it). And even this barrier, the provisions for which had been calculated in advance in case of trouble, would have to be removed towards the end when the ritual drawing was complete. The full power of the carved figures will be revealed only if you give them all to one single purpose, the creation of the right landscape, the right completion for their, no joke, great mission.

"That's not what I mean. I don't mind standing here." The tailed saboteur shook her head negatively, having already completely calmed down and regained her clarity of speech. "That's not what I meant. In this place, I mean, in any of the lacunas, not just at the altar, there is no connection with most of the planes. Not even a flap, but a complete non-existence of the third type. There are labs where a certain type of planar energy has been channeled through, but they're not in the central building or the altar room!"

"Of course it is." The Master agreed, stepping up to the first of the captured Library workers. "Exactly non-existence. Exactly the third type."

All the victims die silently, but not all of them are stupefied and senseless. Some of them are only paralyzed but fully aware of what is happening, some of them even intensified their feelings, making every scratch unbearably painful, and the agony made them go beyond the limits of imagination, others were drugged with such potions that turned any agony into pure ecstasy. The latter, in orgasmic convulsions giving their essence to the ritual, were perhaps the most numerous.

"Strange indeed." The old man continued meanwhile, even taking his eyes off his work for a moment. "At first, I was sure it was some kind of artifact reservoir, then I thought it was like he was using some kind of artifact container with a mighty nightmare stuffed in it. But now... yeah, now all the background's almost gone. Truly, it's a nice mystery that I'll think about at my leisure. He couldn't have broken through the concept of non-existence for Dream, could he? And a type three, at that."

Redeeming a second's delay, the master sped up the cutting tools, finishing off another employee in a few seconds, incidentally his official archivist colleague. Then he bent over the very lady who had caused the battle. Well, or rather, the reason that this battle had proved so easy for those who had invaded the altar room. It is truly a great pity that such lovely heartache and despair cannot be stretched out over a longer time.

"That's right!" The master, whose skill had grown over long decades, managed to grasp some absurdity in the situation, habitually switching to a boring lecturing tone. "After the destruction of her entire body and soul, Dream, having no way to escape the closed cauldron of cut-off reality, had to spill over the walls and rise upwards under the ceiling due to the etheric current created by the barrier... But... Bane, I can't feel Dream!"

Highlight

Rustle.

Move.

His perception, pumped up by his efforts and powerful gifts, inexplicably missed the moment when the drops of blood that had spilled from the extracted innards and had not yet had time to swallow the lines of the drawing made an absurd puddle, impossible for a master with his pedantry and accuracy. But this perception was enough to catch the moment when this bloody puddle reflected not the infinitely distant snow-white ceiling of the altar hall or even the calm face of the master, who had hardly soiled himself, but the face of Pypysh Popyatchev of the House of Pryhodonotchev, of the clan of the Trydygorodskys, distorted by frenzied tension and the same frenzied mirth, rejuvenated and smeared by contact with the energy of Dream.

The hobbit, though it was neither a hobbit nor a living creature nor anything comprehensible at all, jumped out of the puddle frozen with red glass like a puppet goblin from a snuffbox, still in flight mirroring himself behind the back of the ritualist who was frankly confused by such a performance and yelling loudly:

"Buubga, it's not here!"

T.N. It's a reference to this.

And, as if confirming his words, he stuck his only hand, and the limb in general, consisting almost entirely of mirror shards frozen on the very edge of overload and blackening, straight into the living, warm and so vulnerable flesh of the only non-combatant of the three saboteurs. The hobbit's body had no legs, and he was not a giant even by hobbit standards. Let the hand mirror have time to distort the metrics of space and the image of reality, becoming once a little longer (or is it the surrounding matter of the world became shorter?), but even this could not change some of the constants of the universe.

The hand of the one pretending to be a hobbit unwilling to disappear for some reason pierced the heart of the one who had been pretending to be a good archivist for seventeen springs, unleashing all the power accumulated in the remnants of the mirrors.

Except that hand went straight up to the heart through the ass.

"Nyat!" Shocked, Shmielae cried out, once again breaking into the "animal" accent she hated in her normal speech and freezing from the impossibility, the unreality of the picture.

"Amazing." For the first time in a very, very long, unimaginably long time, the creature disguised as a human uttered with lost self-control.

"I'll have to wash my hands." The creature murmured without opening its mouth, trading what the previous two thought was humanity for a chance to save its love and carry its killers to the other world, and then slumped soundly against the cold stone next to the ritualist, who hadn't even had time to be surprised, gently clutching the torn heart in its only grasp.

The heart was beating in the doll's palm, literally oozing something, even through all the transponders (the number of which was rapidly shifting toward zero) beckoning to me with the promise of all the pleasures of the world, all the possible pleasures and caresses, the fulfillment of every fantasy. For the first time during our entire battle, I could do it after all! I was able to identify the bullshit I had foolishly and ass-playing idiocy messed with in this story. I should not stand up after the very first hit. If I had known where to fall, I would have taken a parachute or a protection amulet of the highest order.

I ignored the vaporous fleur of Vice coming from the soaring heart, for I could barely distinguish it through the maddening rustle of the maddening Dream, which was not even in my ears but in my head. The degree of tension I had experienced in preparing for this attack could only be compared to the memorable storming of Stone, the only difference being that this time only Dream was used in the battle.

When I realized that there was no chance of victory unless a good wizard riding a blued piano appeared before me right now, that is, almost immediately, I immediately began to look for workarounds. I didn't need to kill the scumbags, but at least raise the alarm, and they would be killed by the defense of the altar hall. It would be enough for me just to fall out of the focus of attention to self-destruct Misty and hide the traces of my presence, and all the bumps would be collected by the most important intruders, not poor Kostik.

The main problem was the barrier raised by the ugly figures that were blocking the alarm itself. And the barrier was so infinitely cool. Even at my full strength, I'd have trouble breaking through it. Even if I hit it not with a Dream that could do little direct damage, but with the corrosive power of Shadow, like my sense of humor!

This thing a priori won't let anything in its threat database under its aegis, and that database is so complete that I might as well say that this barrier won't let anything in at all. Do you see the irony? Nothing exists! And if there is a plane in this world more suitable for playing with the real-unreal than my "beloved" Dream, I somehow don't know it.

At the moment when the puppet's body received the fatal two blows, I had already reflected all the remaining flesh and mirrors (of which there was only a handful left) in the version of the mirror where they no longer existed, and on top of that, I covered it all with un-existence, trying to make full use of the effects of the title of the one who doesn't exist. After all, what could be more clever and ingenious than to conceal a construction whose reality is so low that it is largely subjective in the negation of any existence that has become reality?

Trust me, I'm an engineer (no).

For anyone wishing to try something like this in the future, let me try to explain... The title I received was, pardon the tautology, received in conjunction with the highest techniques of shadow magic, stealth, and immersion in the deep layers of the plane, whose nature is largely on sharpened stealth, and even such a thing worked for a few moments. So. To use such a technique when working with such a light, fragile, and malleable thing as Dream, not having a strong enough grip on the plane, being under the gaze of carefully killing you tough guys, and even not for a couple of seconds, but for a much longer time...

Bad idea, Kostik, very bad idea.

I'd be gone if I tried to do that not through a puppet, working through a powerful mirror amplifier. No way. That is, without any options at all, without any options, and even without my favorite pulling the situation on bare pathos and inadequacy. Konstantin Yurievich would have ended. Start another story, not so crazy.

Even the mere presence of my mind, my will, which had been gone for some time, was almost fatal. If I had overexerted my un-existence for a fraction, a thousandth of a heartbeat, if I had slackened my concentration, I'd turn into a zucchini. I'd have about the same amount of thinking ability. Ygra would be happy that she's finally smarter than me! And that's assuming that my body could be pulled out of Dream because, of course, I left fuses in my vessel, which should throw the whole warehouse and the vessel out into reality, but fuck knows how it would have turned out.

While I, squeezing my imaginary buns to the appearance of a gravitational singularity in my anus, was watching what was happening in the hall. It was as if I was watching from the outside, as if from the third person, not realizing myself, the very fact of my presence here. Feel yourself as a narrator in a thrashy fantasy with a lot of blood and trampling of traditional values! It's not painful, but it's very scary once you realize what's already happened. I ran into and almost died, while not appearing on the battlefield in person and doing everything possible so the fight did not happen, and if it did happen, I was able to immediately escape! That's a good plan, Kostik, a fucking great plan! Reliable, like a dwarf mechanical watch!

At that moment, when I was, forgive me common sense, punishing the ritualist anally (not in that sense, Anons), I was so full of terror and anger that I seriously feared I would burst. And the puppet probably would have burst from overexertion, and I would have lost control due to the same anger, if it hadn't been for the radiating heart in my hand.

I had already met with the inhabitants of Hells, even if our communication was only in the form of correspondence boxing. The difference is that I've managed to hit my interlocutor with enough blows to make him feel bad, sad, and dead. I even have a special title, two to be exact. In general, my relationship with this plane did not work out, and it continues to not work out further and further.

What the heck!

What the fuck are the local intelligence services doing? Fucking each other in the eyes, that's what they do! Then an elven avenger kills the Second Prince, slashing one of the Heroes and blowing a couple of neighborhoods in the process, then some murky types slaughter a Summoned of the allied-vassal state, kicking a famous media magnate in the ass, then two squads of intruders break into the holy of holies, where no outsider can penetrate, and have a fight!

The puppet is no longer on the verge of disintegration but far beyond it, so far away that it only remains to weep bitterly with bloody tears. Now my mech can be kicked by the forces of one brave enough kid who drops his pot on this miracle of magical thought. There are a couple of grains of mirrors left, because of which the signal reaches the puppet with wild interruptions, and the control is duller than I was at the math analysis exam. If it weren't for the heart in my hand, still trying to control the missing body and mind of the puppet, it would be a mess. As it was, I could use that very power of Vice as a battery just by filtering it through the rest of the mirrors.

Yes, harmful, and yes, dangerous even through all the proxies, but there were no other options. But everything passes, and so does the weakness after the Final Ass-breaking Blow of the Midnight Dragon's Inevitable Vengeance. The overloaded mirror grains partially recovered, and I was about to throw out the shit when suddenly a thought came into my head, more like a Thought. And I'm sure it wasn't a thought, but my own, from the repertoire that almost killed me against the wall just a couple of seconds ago.

Putting the heart aside, I approached the corpse of the master of sacrifice and, not listening to the couple who couldn't get in here - the catgirl was trying to use some hypnotic bullshit, too, tied to her voice - began tearing off pieces of flesh and attaching them to me. The pressure of the fleur became really (un)pleasant, so I had to stop. I was too tired mentally, I might not be able to keep my concentration under such pressure, and these guys just gave me an excuse. One lash taken from the undead, which almost brainwashed me, was enough for me to properly assess the threat of the devil's tricks. I don't need a repeat.

I didn't abuse the corpse out of anger or stupidity, though Tia would have something to say about that, mostly in elegant elven curses. I needed the connection that the master had with his creation, with all this ritual construction. My clairvoyance was failing, as if I were a vagrant fresh out of the woods, unable to control or direct my visions. The swirl of images is so murky it makes me sick, and there's plenty of Vice mixed in, voluptuous visions sent straight from Hell.

You know, I liked the Agony aspect much better than the current one. The tricks were simpler there. The impact was more direct, and, most importantly, the devils of that particular domain were much weaker. And even through the barrier, the cloaked creature increases my euphoria and excitement, hoping to crush, as he thinks, an almost fallen soul. Still, Misty's disguise was his strongest feature - until the very last moment, my enemy didn't realize he was facing a puppet and not a real Pypysh. Now, when all the time is spent on trying not to disintegrate completely, he would have understood this nature at once, but now he is hindered by a barrier.

I find the right image among the lewd pictures that are squeezing my brain harder and harder and pulling a fancy-shaped vial out of the pocket. It's not an antidote, but if you don't have bread, you can snack on pastries, right? The ultimate renewal potion, capable of bringing a fresh corpse back to its feet, as long as the soul isn't devoured and the shells aren't too damaged. I can make them myself, and no worse, but I don't have my potions with me for good reason. I clench the vial in my fist, willfully banish the image of twelve elven mothers breastfeeding one elven teenager, and then I begin to crawl zombie-style to the still-paralyzed Justine. On one fucking arm! Like a caterpillar, damn.

The shrieks and moans, hitting my brains even through the transmitters, of which there are about three dozen out of almost two hundred left, are really deafening, and if they came directly to me, there would be problems. Not too serious, but against the background of the general pile of shit that has a chance to become the straw that will break the camel's backbone. I cast aside another portion of images filled with tenderness and care (almost not fake!), so tempting to do something with the rescued girl. I pour the alchemical concoction into the lady's mouth with a gymnastic trick that surprised even me, and then I say:

Are you adequate?" Dream's voice might sound intimidating, but she's been in fights in the past, and I'm less intimidating to her now.

"Y-yes." And a little while later, more firmly. "Yes, quite."

"Then grab me by the scruff of the neck and lift me." I spent some of my strength to make my words normal, not as usual, and then when she started to stand up slowly on her legs, shaking from the horror and shock of the experience, I slowed down. "Wait a minute, that's not good. We have to get rid of it."

With these words, I started to reduce the flesh of the killed cultist because this flesh was not only soaked in Hell, but also the creature was doing some shit based on the principle of similarity through it, and it was doing it more and more every second. But when I was done, having thrown away everything unnecessary and reduced the inflow of Vice through the Pypysh-Brains connection, I was reminded that not everyone here has such great resistance to mental effects.

The smiling Shmielae was making some strange movements. And Justine, smiling quite happily and almost cumming with joy, trying to favor the one who, it seems, had managed to dig into her brain during her captivity, mirrored all her movements. And these movements were about to cause her to rearrange the pieces, getting something bad from the artifact and, with some probability nullifying the barrier.

With a mental, so as not to strain my throat, swear, I took control of myself, and in my one hand, I took the hand that had been torn off from the master, which just happened to come to hand, and threw it under Justine's feet so that she tripped over it and fell on her ass coming out of the trance. Then, taking advantage of the fact that she was carrying Misty, I concentrated some of the available Dream on her, weakening the effects of the bookmarks and reducing the pressure of the Vice with what was left of my programming.

Removing lust and submission with the Mist? What's next? Bees versus honey? Sex versus virginity? Or, to make my life even more fun, politicians vs. corruption?

The woman bounced away from the edge of the barrier, covered her ears with her palms, and staggered toward me, carrying the projectile I had fired for some reason. And all of this while swearing in such a high-pitched manner that I've only ever heard such language from Cassie Friendmage. She takes me by the scruff of the neck, still swearing, obviously not letting herself listen to the charming voice of an angry, tired, and desperately kicking the impenetrable wall of the barrier.

The mnemonic technique of mind defense witch based on profanity - it sounds strange, but the method is more than effective and often used. Anger and combat excitement are some of the best shields against mental influences of a hard or even subtle type, and there are never too many masters who can suppress or deceive such defenses quickly. The beast girl was certainly among that small number and not even at the bottom of the hierarchy, but his isekai dodginess had made her work almost to the bottom, and now her strength was not enough to overcome even such a shaken will, only slightly covered by my influence.

"Well, well, well, then, from right here, three steps forward and half a step to the left." In such a state of mind, it is harder to maintain the manner of speech favored by Pypysh than to fight a battle with a vice that has only slightly receded. "And, besides, don't throw your hand away, I suppose."

I did take the severed limb from the breathing and barely controlling captive, then connected it to the only working limb I had. Not only did it lengthen the hobbit's short organ (it sounded dirty again, damn it!), but it was also able, in theory, to work with the late master's artifact figurines.

It wasn't that hard to merge my signature with the remnants of the one I'd killed, and it was possible to try to move some of the figures with my hand, too, if it weren't for my shitty condition and the pressure on my brain. The creature had stopped pounding me directly through the connection with the cultist's flesh, which had become part of the puppet, and had begun to make some manipulations with the barrier. Could it have known some tricky key to level this masterpiece of fortification in case the enemy got hold of it? I'd be surprised if they didn't have such a key. Even if not all artifacts have built-in vulnerabilities, and even more so mythical ones, this particular collection of figures just begs for a bunch of secrets hidden in it.

Collection ...

Over a hundred and fifteen bone toys, in which the essence of those who were used to make the figures is cunningly sealed. Each figurine is unique in its own way, possessing a whole list of properties and effects, each worthy to be considered not the weakest epic. However, the full potential given by assembling the entire collection in skillful hands is already truly frightening.

The figure of a teenage boy of unknown gender curled up in a cradle, silently weeping for his fate. His entire family had been tortured for years by a multitude of illnesses and failures right in front of his eyes, slowly driving the boy born with the rarest of titles to insanity, the type of insanity that the mad Carver needed. Particles of the souls of not only the teenager but his entire family as well are placed inside the piece of bone, silently humming a lullaby to him and just as silently blaming him for all his torment. This figurine can give protection to the hearth from evil spirits, become an anchor for a powerful curse, transmitted by blood to the entire family of the cursed, help in healing physical wounds, bringing mental anguish, stop the action of the attacking magic based on sound vibrations and dozens of different things that are not too strong on their own. And the number of effects in different combinations and positions in these combinations could not be counted, probably not even by the wielder himself.

A mighty warrior with a naked torso and a long spear, kneeling and pressing his hand to his bloody side, created from the vertebrae of a coward who had fought to the very end, whose fear had been killed, replaced with determination and reshaped into a warrior desperate to slay his enemy. The Carver needed a coward turned brave and a scoundrel who found honor, so he brought up the right victim. The figure could cast a mental buff to take away fear or give that fear to the enemy, make old wounds open, or summon the shadow of a fallen comrade to say goodbye. Once again, the exact number of effects of even one figure by itself is lost in the chorus of images.

A kneeling priest clutches the wavy blade of a ceremonial blade behind his back. He was the purest in his faith, a righteous man who honored his god and lived by conscience, not self-interest. His faith had been tested time and again by the Carver's will until it was broken, showing him the true face of a cleric who had long ago sold out all humans. And the righteous man fell, first turning to evil for revenge, and then, horrified at what he had done, sacrificing himself to the summoned forces, saving the souls of those who had been promised under the treaty in his place. The faith and contempt for that faith still in the figure allowed a user to remove or even steal the priests' blessings, to distort and weaken the Miracles, sometimes even turning them against the clerics themselves, to cause suicidal thoughts and an unaccountable sense of guilt for what he had done.

Mages, warriors, artisans, common passersby... Those who created themselves and those who were broken by long and thoughtful labor. Those who were born with the right gifts, and those who received them by their efforts... They all remained forever in this monstrous chess, some incomprehensible game with incomprehensible rules. This thing was not created directly by the Вумшды, but they obviously put more than one century of their labor into inspiration and then took the result of inspiration into their greedy hands. These figures embodied other people's stories, whose endings were caught in a cage, forever imprisoned in it, and left in a bone prison.

They objectified everything - all the things I could only hate.

Destroying them is not in my power... not now, anyway. Bone is only material, like all enchantments and rituals. The essence of the figures lives as long as one of them is intact. If the extremely stable artifacts are broken somehow, their souls and fragments will be attracted to some immaterial egregore, which exists as long as at least one of the figurines is intact, and even after destroying all of them, this creation can be restored. Because there, in the depths of nothingness, in the domain that exists only for the prisoners of this artifact, is hidden the brightly shining soul of the Carver, who settled in his creation forever.

He settled and charged a user fee.

Each new owner, each master of rituals who can control the artifact, must create a new figure for the collection. The necessary inspiration will be provided by the Carver, who has nothing to do but invent new figures in his domain. And again, they search all over the world for the most bizarre reagents, the most different and the most unique people, or even monsters, beasts, or even creatures. And they cut, cut with a sharp knife through the bones that were separated from the flesh, if there was any at all. Even the absence of bones did not prevent them from carving the desired figure out of pure essence just to finish the job. Something tells me this set may well outgrow the Mythic Grade, reaching something higher. And the Carver himself has every chance to become a newborn deity with a very interesting specialization.

Fuck! Come on, Alurei! Why the fuck is it that every time I think I've seen enough, you give me another impossibly disgusting abomination?

The words pour out of my strained, wheezing throat, and then Justine and I are racing against a creature that rearranges the hexagons of the barrier, which now resembles some kind of puzzle master or a fan of isometric cell phone games. You know, those time killers where you have to put together three pieces of one-colored circles?

My thoughts, clairvoyant clues, and the sweet molasses of infernal promises obscure my eyes, so I can't fully distinguish between reality and my glitches. But it's being done, even if every second I'm here I risk more and more and lose more transponders.

I could just turn off all the defenses and let the altar and whatever was in it do its thing, but then we'd all be killed at the same time, and I'm not a Japanese master of artistic suicide! And no, in my current state, I'm not sure I can even survive the attack of a deceived guardian coming through my glove, let alone deceive him and escape without leaving any trace of my existence. So I'd have to be imaginative without dying in the process.

Man, it's like I've described my whole life.

An old and hunched lizardman with a shopping bag and a traveling staff in his hands changes position, standing next to a dwarf dressed only in shackles, a jester in a silly cap, shrieking funny, and a knight missing an arm and a head, almost falling off his horse. Right after that, when the barrier, under the actions of the creature, began to vibrate badly, I changed the positions of a couple more figures. At this moment, I was dropped by Justine, causing me to bump my face right into someone's spleen, and by some miracle, I didn't knock over any pieces.

Justine, with desperation in her eyes, stabs herself in the ears with a needle created from her magic (some kind of combat technique from a branch of the lurkers) but withstands a desperate attempt to take control of her. Too bad, too bad, that the one who forged her mind is standing in the same hall, making the barrier unable to stop the missing attack. And it didn't cut off words and sounds, which gave the cat that was hitting triggers and behavioral bombs time after time some room to maneuver.

I don't really care anymore, though.

I sent to my "colleague" almost all of the mirrored matter and fragments, literally a couple of percent of the initial amount of Mist to protect her brain from Shmielae, and then pushed the woman with all my strength, causing the puppet disintegration in the next minute. With barely enough time to orient herself, the captive landed on her feet at the very edge of the barrier, which, after only a moment, shifted. Now it had been covering me and the ritual figure for the last few seconds, and its hexagons went out one by one, unable to duplicate themselves twice. But the new, newly created dome covered Justine, giving her a direct path straight to the exit of the ritual hall. The kind of path that she, the last surviving prisoner (I couldn't prepare my attack any faster, and she was cut at the very end!), could easily leave the place and raise the alarm.

And even if I broke the construction made of figures and ritual lines, causing the wrath of the keeper, it wouldn't change anything. Ten seconds would be enough for the pumped-up lady. I pour more strength into the already crumbling body, without economy and thrift, growing misty legs and a second arm, and then I make a graceful bow and tip an unexisting hat.

And the puppet dies completely, exhaling the last specks of rapidly blackening mirror dust.

Through this dust, I can still distinguish how a couple of the remaining cultists silently and without even showing any irritation from failure or panic of imminent death pass through the crumbled dome, pass over the place where the puppet disintegrated with some kind of combat ability, and start... Either I'm glitching because I'm looking through such a shitty filter, or one of the two, but right before my eyes, the creature opened like a bloody flower, and right in the center of this opening formed a breach or something else incomprehensible. The dust was rapidly blackening out, but I could still see a fuzzy vision of Shmiele gathering her figures, grabbing her spatial bags, and leaping into the flower,

I'd like to believe that it was just a glitch and that they'd all be wiped out by the guards or even by someone on the altar waking up from his slumber. The latter, I'm sure, would be guaranteed to put an end to the Carver's story, but it seems that story isn't over yet.

And the connection to the puppet is now truly and forever extinguished.

* * *

I still managed to fall back into reality on my own, uninjured by the blackened glass that outnumbered the working mirrors. I was dragged out of the warehouse by Losius, covered from top to toe by Heaven, along with Tia, who was wrapped in ritual tablecloths painted with ritual signs and stinking of chthonic Stars. Taria and Hans could have entered the hall, but they were kicked, and it was Tia who kicked them.

Then some potions were poured down my throat, and I even recognized them and helped with essentialism in my nearly unconscious state. Then I used Purification, throwing up some black stuff that made a big, big hole in the floor. Then I was given potions again since all intoxication was gone, and I was choking on them like an alcoholic with vodka.

The potions helped, and the maddening headache subsided a little, letting me slip into a semi-delirious state that couldn't even be called sleep. It was more like a deep faint, dangerously close to a coma, but still a bit of a relief from the miserable state of the mission. I don't even remember feeling worse... more than five times.

All the things had long since been collected, traces erased, images and prints replaced, and Hans had not even been too lazy to throw back the dust that had been swept away earlier. I wish he'd hung the cobwebs, but that would take some special magic. As soon as I stopped agonizingly dying from the consequences of my idiocy, I was softly and gently, by my hands and feet, thrown into a cart with some goods and then slowly moved to the point of new dislocation. There was no need to talk about disguise, conspiracy, and not attracting attention, as you could not argue with the elven dictator who temporarily took command.

Judging by the fact that while we were, so to speak, on the march, and the main unit of chaos and world entropy in my person was incapacitated, no one attacked us, my precautions were sufficient to avoid instant disclosure and retribution. I'm not so sure about not instantaneous, so it's a bit early to relax.

Surprisingly, I made it.

The new base was in the same, previously rejected cabin near the harbor. Even a goblin would have been smart enough to set up the defenses before the operation, so we just went in, settled into our beds, and kept quiet, watching the evening harbor through the slits of the boarded-up windows. The place has a surprisingly good view from the window, even if the scenery is bleak to the extreme. It also smells quite noticeably of shit and fish entrails, a stench reminiscent of fish markets. The latter, however, was dealt with by a couple of simple ritual circles drawn by the elf in five minutes.

I woke up, that is, woke up in an adequate state, not in a feverish delirium, about the third day after that ill-fated night. And immediately, the kind and affectionate eyes of the whole company stared at me as if wanting to know about the results of what had happened and the reasons why I had sent first alarm signals, then signals of great alarm, then signals of fucking great alarm, and at the end of the whole thing SNAFUBAR

"We need to get out of the Eternal," I muttered quietly after finishing the invigorating herbal infusion Taria held out. "Right now."

And before they decided to tie me up tighter, as if I were delirious, I began to tell about my adventures. There were many exciting moments in the story. Starting with the moment when Pypysh was killed, but at the description of how I decided to "fighto" with every opportunity to get away unnoticed, Tia politely asked me to stop. Then she left the room quietly, and from the next room, there came the sound of a fist smashing through the wood paneling on the walls.

When she returned, as if nothing had happened, she asked to continue.

At the moment when I almost killed myself with a combination of extreme unexistence and a mind vulnerable while controlling the puppet, both Tia and Hestia came out at once, and the rumbling was a little longer and more audible. By the end of the story, the only one who never made a facepalm was Tia, who after the first two breakdowns acted like Zen incarnate. She was also the first one to smash my proposal to smithereens.

"You need to get back on your feet and recover from the battle." She reasoned, clearly in her thoughts. "Having servants of the Vicious Principalities and not lacking in power or equipment is no doubt an excellent reason to leave this city behind. And if we happen to linger within its walls, I will be the first to ask for a retreat. But you are weak now, and an attack on the march could prove fatal. I am not strong enough to cover our entire force as securely from the gaze of the Seers as you do. And there are enough bases already set up in the city to feel free to act."

He seemed to be saying all the right things, but somehow I felt uncomfortable, not because of temporary powerlessness, but because of the same premonition of trouble. It doesn't get stronger. It doesn't feel like some shit demon is standing right behind me. But it's there. It doesn't go away, and three days ago, I had a great theory about where this premonition came from.

Tia named the main problem at once: searching. In my normal state, with any mirror or even a reflective surface smelted by essentialism from the nearest stone, I could divert any search impulses to the side at a level that suited me. I mean, it would be possible to upgrade, but even without it, I am objectively not bad.

Tia is also good, very good, and her ritual figures are a good substitute for my mirrors, her experience is such that it's hard to surprise her. And she can even cover all of us, if necessary. But it's simple logic - if they haven't found her yet, then trying to escape right now with me in bad condition is really too dangerous. We all realize that we have to run, but the elf wants to go as she is used to, in a smart way and with minimal risk. I'll have to be carried through the gate, through all the scanners, because I won't be able to step through the Shadow in this condition!

How am I supposed to get through? Hide me in ritual figures or, for that matter, in the Mist of Hestia? It would be easier and safer to wait at least a week to get over the city walls. But if I don't want to get sick again right after crossing them, it's more practical to just listen to Tia and wait for a full recovery. With my parameters and class bonuses, it would take surprisingly little time.

Bu-u-u-t...

"Somehow, I'm feeling kind of mopey..." That's all I could say, not knowing what else to say. "And knowing my luck, you can expect, uh. for all sorts of things."

"I'm not going to insult you and myself by underestimating your intuition, truth be told!" The druidess remarks conciliatingly. "But even when you feel the shadow of danger, you should not give in to your instincts and run headlong. Often, such actions of the victim are the goal of the hunter, in a hurry to lure the prey out of the den, or to wear it down without giving it time to rest."

Instead of me, Losius answers, saying exactly what I wanted to say, but I haven't yet managed to wrap my thoughts into a verbal form straight enough.

"I'm sure Tin wasn't so much talking about premonitions here as his luck." He stretched, his thoughts returning to our past adventures, especially the very first days of our acquaintance.

In response, Tia allowed herself a polite and correct chuckle, but in a way that made it immediately clear that on two of us were laughing, and very loudly and with sobs.

"By the stars, this is ridiculous!" She had that look on her face you get when you're talking to Taria, as if you're trying to prove that the planet is flat and you're trying to prove the opposite, somehow feeling like an idiot to yourself, not to the person you're talking to. "We are, may I remind you, in the capital of one of the most powerful nations in the world! If even the agents of Hell were not sent to steal something important or create dangerous sabotage by a single group. If even the existing cult in the city is capable of conducting a ritual breakthrough. If even after the alarm raised by an irresponsible act, your act, Tin, is not enough to either cut the cult out or make it discard all unnecessary things, like snakeskin, and merge with the muddy bottom of the deepest pool. Still, the main problem of the cult will not be us but the authorities of the Empire. They are hardly a problem for us. What we should be wary of is the Eyes because even if they don't find a hot target, they can still come at us in some unknown way. An artifact, a unique ritual dependent on timing or special conditions, just the blind smile of fickle Fortune - that's the danger."

My head ached again, the strength spent on the story needed a quick rest, and the elf spoke, in general, strictly to the point, while my desire to run away quickly looked really simple whim. Dangerous whim. Well, what could happen in the dozen days I'd have to regain my form? I'd already done enough damage and idiocy by embarking on unnecessary adventures.

"I accept, I understand, I acknowledge." I agree, but I'm already shutting down, deciding to have the last word. "But, if anything, I warned you! And anyway, my kind supposed to find all sorts of things in the middle of nowhere."

"Except you shouldn't exaggerate." Tia smiled softly to the chuckles of the rest of the team, who had already dispersed to their corners. "I have, no doubt about it, made a habit of underestimating the possibility of the unlikely around you, but not to this extent. When I spoke of the Eternal Falling to the Devils, I was overplaying it a bit to create a dramatic moment. And even if this hail should fall swiftly and inexorably, it will not fall in the two weeks you need to recover."

I chuckled, remembering that not-so-old but seemingly long-forgotten ancient conversation. Then we talked, told stories, ate sweets bought in a good shop, discussed some stupid questions, and in general, almost relaxed. Yes, I still felt bad. Yes, we were all still on guard because of the possible attack on the insolent bastards-terrorists in our faces, but the main task had already been accomplished.

In a far corner of yet another temporary home lie several beautiful pocket mirrors, my replacement for the image-collecting crystals. There, tightly and securely packed and quite paranoid-securely isolated from any scanning, are stored the images stolen through the altar. So far, I hadn't deciphered it or even looked through it, but even the little things I'd managed to realize were enough to understand I hadn't gone for anything. Even though the danger hadn't gone away, and I was still feeling only slightly above freezing, I was in a relatively positive mood.

There would be days of recovery, of lying in bed, perhaps in the arms of Taria, who wouldn't get off me and would bring Hestia along with her. In the future, I'll be trying to make sense of the knowledge I've gained and figure out how to use it to my advantage. In the same place, in the future, awaited careful attempts to find out how many traces I had left, as well as who and by what means looking for me. But all that was not now, for now there was only the pleasant taste of the herbal drink, and the softness of a surprisingly good pillow. The clairvoyance said that Hans had gotten very expensive, comfortable and soft bedclothes, but he didn't want to show how and where. But I didn't care much about all that when I fell asleep.

As they say in the clichéd phrase, which they stick wherever they can, tacked on to any situation, as if they could not come up with anything of their own: nothing foreshadowed trouble.

So.

I didn't say that phrase or even think it.

Because it was foreshadowing.

Only I didn't listen.

* * *