Dream

"

He closed his eyes and saw a drop of water falling from a great height. He didn't know where it was falling from, for there was nothing above him, and there was emptiness below. He himself, trapped in a void, didn't move, or so he thought. The drop gathered ever greater speed. It passed him by, and... it wasn't water, but blood. A moment later, he saw another, and another, above him. A downpour began... Crimson petals flew past him, but none even touched his skin. He felt no fear. Suddenly, he violently extended his hand. He caught the drop—he had achieved his goal. He rejoiced in holding it in his hand while thousands more fell into the darkness... He felt pain tearing through his body. The suffering grew greater with each passing moment. He knew he didn't have enough strength. Yet he refused to let go of the small rose petal he had managed to catch. So he fought with himself, unsure what to do. His heart told him to persevere. He was ready to die for her... to sacrifice everything, all those years... but could he do that? He knew she wouldn't, that she wouldn't want it to be because of her... The future was in his hands, and he had to be ready when the time came. A tear appeared in his eye. It fell onto his cheek, his chin. After a moment, it detached itself from its creator and glowed with a warm, white light. He released a drop of blood, and a crystal tear followed it.

"When the time comes, I will find you. Until then, the crystal will light your path. Wherever you are, you will not be lost in the darkness, however cold it may be, you will not freeze, for my heart will warm you."

He watched the crystal illuminate the space and the drop of red falling before him. Finally, the tear caught up with the drop, and they became one. They fell and fell, growing smaller and smaller, receding from him. After a moment, all he could see was a tiny point of bright light, and finally he couldn't even see that. He stood lost in thought, the rain of red intensifying.

He opened his eyes. It was six in the morning. He got up, dressed, washed, ate breakfast, got in his car, and drove to work. He didn't remember anything; he was too weak. There would be a lot more blood before he woke up...

History written in a drop of pure water

Aron glanced into his son's room. A few centimeters of slit were enough to see the entire dark cell. His face paled even further in the milky glow of the emergency lights. He leaned back against the wall and lowered his head. He didn't want to breathe, didn't want to make a sound. He wanted to be close, unnoticed. It seemed he was about to cry, silently, breaking through all the walls of his shame. His eyes remained dry, and only the ghosts around him heard that terrible howl. It was so quiet that the humming of the electric lights grew more vivid with each passing moment. It reminded him that there was nowhere to escape, that the world where one could run to hold back tears no longer existed. Only the scattered octopuses of hundreds of thousands of bunkers across the planet carried fragments of life. Like the nervous system of a dead body, still transmitting electrical impulses in the moment of agony.

As if at that thought, Aron shrank inward. The ghosts, startled by their mad anger, scattered along the long, white corridor. Aron pushed himself off the wall with a single surge and headed toward the room. However, the anchor of fear chained him to something far behind him. Something he sensed and perceived as fear. A catalog of thoughts titled "what's about to happen" showed him unbearable images as if on cue. The ghosts, who were almost opening the door to the room, clung to the catalog, absorbing every image. Aron slowly reached out and opened the door. The wall of the doorway folded into the wall as lightly as if it weighed nothing.

Mika sat on the ground, his back to the door. A small, black-haired boy. His sleeves and the entire bottom of his shirt were soaked. Aron approached him from behind. He wanted to call his name, but the ghosts entered his mouth as soon as he opened it, sucking in every unspoken word. Mika sat on the ground, holding a silver serving tray in front of him. A glass almost half-filled with water sat on the ground beside him. Mika held his wet hand, fingers curled, over the tray, waiting for a drop of water running down his curled fingers to break off and land in a predetermined spot. Aron walked around his son, keeping an unnatural distance. He was afraid of what he would see. He was afraid of the tray full of sprayed water drops, of his son's face. He was afraid of the unknown. The last drop fell onto the silver surface and splattered a little. Mike moved to dip his fingers into the glass of water, taking another sip of liquid. He spotted his father.

They looked into each other's eyes, so deeply. Too deeply for a seven-year-old. Aron felt that this person before him was much more mature than himself. The spirits moved away from Aron, watching him intently.

"What are you doing... Mika..." Aron asked, almost inaudibly.

Mika, though he maintained an unnaturally calm expression, seemed to hesitate. His gaze was as still as a hand frozen in a glass. The moment dragged on.

"Miko... what are you doing..." he whispered again.

Silence again...

The diffused, glassy stains of water reflected the still light of the lamps.

Like warning signs. Like a molt. The remnant of something terrible, something alien. The spirits brought Aron back to his earlier thoughts. "If this happened to me, if I knew Miko was affected, I would kill and I wouldn't even hesitate. I know what's good, for us, for him, and for our species."

A transmission sent by the agency, repeated thousands of times, ad nauseam. Pathetic words. Instructions for survival for our species. Humans. Hundreds of examples. Orders and irrefutable arguments to help make a decision. Gruesome images of the deaths of those who hesitated. Equally horrific images of hundreds of small children frozen in hibernation. Locked in cells, with that erratic, frozen gaze. Images that speak volumes about who is affected better than a thousand words. Entire galaxies of water drops, sometimes blood, all over everything. Thousands of ideas and speculations from scientists, theorists, and military men.

Mental Touch.

Mental Touch.

Mental Touch.

Illness? Possession? Enchantment?... Touch.

Like a motto, in every conversation, every program, in millions of thoughts worldwide. For months, an integral part of our culture, our lives, our nightmares.

Mika removed his fingers from the glass, catching some of the dripping water in his hand. He poured it over the tray and dropped it onto the dry surface, staring intently at the splashed drop.

The spirits went wild, carrying axes, knives, injections, calls to agency employees, bare hands to strangle.

Another drop.

The spirits raised a banner of fear, screaming in Aron's ears, "Time to act, before it's too late!" They clung to a single image.

"Strangling hands!" "Strangling hands!!!" "Strangle!" "By the neck!" They pushed him harder and harder, while others grabbed his stomach, silent and silent, they resisted with all their strength, love in their eyes, and in it everything...

The emptiness and fullness of the moment. Curses, curses, remorse. Fear, so overwhelming. Sadness, resignation, helplessness, sarcasm.

It boiled over, hordes of spirits grabbed each other by the throats, scratched, bit, and guzzled energy, almost bursting with drink.

Aron helplessly sat down, or rather slumped down, next to his son. Tired of the fight, the spirits settled all around. Father and son watched as another drop fell.

"Mika, what are you looking at?

" "What do you see?

" "What do you see there?"

"What are you doing?"

"Mika...

" "Can you hear me?

" "Mika..."

Several ghosts were already on their feet, already raising their fists... A few burst into tears. Aron tried with all his might not to look or listen to them... He sat resigned, silent. He tried to simply be. Something told him that this was the only thing he could do now. He sat, calming his breathing, the pressure in his head. He sat there for a long, long time... Drop after drop fell onto the tray beside him. The sound was interrupted only by the touch of skin against glass, the swish of a sleeve against the tray.

Thoughts flowed through Aron's head...

He was definitely reading... He was listening to the Mentals' tales, seeing them in every drop. They were programming him. Encoding his brain. Hypnotizing him. Changing him. Sucking out his soul. Entering his body and taking control. Writing down instructions for him to follow.

Each drop fell differently, and was truly different.

And suddenly, an insight.

So sharp, almost like enlightenment.

We were staying together.

Neither lost in thought...

Neither hypnotized...

Meditating...

There are no ghosts.

There are no ghosts of mine...

There are no ghosts of His.

- You're wrong.

The Tale of the Hermit

In a small town where everyone knew everyone, there lived an elderly man. His name was Aldamar. No one knew where his strange name came from. No one spoke to him. He didn't speak to anyone himself. He avoided people. Every morning, before the sun rose, Aldamar went to the highest mountain in the town. The oldest inhabitants couldn't remember when Aldamar first appeared in the town. One day, he arrived with a single small bundle, and there he remained. The bearded old man aroused general astonishment among the townspeople. Children ran after him, calling Aldamar a wretch. Aldamar passed them and walked calmly on. Until sunrise, he sat on the bare ground. He was unafraid of cold, snow, storms, and heat. The sun rose, and he raised his hands to it as if to bless it. He always carried his little bundle with him, containing a crumpled yellow booklet, seemingly written in Hebrew, and a small cross bearing a now-faded Latin inscription.

The sun illuminated the entire town, and Aldamar would go to the old hut on the mountainside. He had built it himself, the very day he stepped onto this land. The lumberjacks from the nearby forest didn't protest when he took a few planks from them. No one ever dared to look into his hut. The older people had grown accustomed to Aldamar and tolerated this strange creature, calling him that themselves. Animals, out of fear, steered clear of him. And Aldamar was, after all, just like them. After sunset, the villagers saw no more Aldamar. Some said he never slept, and at night he transformed into a ghost. Aldamar would stay in his hut until the last light went out in the last window of the last house. Then he would finish his prayer, leave his hut, and return to his home. A small room in an abandoned barracks on the outskirts of town. People wondered why no one visited him. Did he have a family? He was always alone everywhere. A hermit.

One morning, Aldamar went up the mountain again, as he did every day. The sun began to rise. Suddenly, the inhabitants heard a beautiful melody. They had never heard such beautiful sounds in their lives. Everyone looked at Aldamar, who raised his hands to the sky, where they saw a bright figure in a boat. The figure in the boat drifted away with the clouds. The people couldn't believe their eyes. Was this some kind of sign? In a moment, everything vanished like a dream. The inhabitants whispered and murmured that Aldamar was performing magic. Aldamar, on the other hand, went to his hut...

The next morning, no one saw Aldamar. He didn't wander up the mountain as he usually did. People weren't surprised. He must have fallen ill or died, they said. A month later, the mayor, concerned about the old man's prolonged absence, looked into his room. Aldamar was gone, and inside, he found only dust. His wooden hut was gone, too. On the ground where he waited for the sunrise each morning, a sign in Hebrew was carved. And Aldamar vanished forever...

INTERVIEW

She stared at him with her green eyes—green eyes a strange, bright, burning green, greener than a spring meadow, than fresh, young birch leaves barely awakened from their winter slumber. There was something uncanny about those eyes. Huge, bright, piercing. There was something feline about them. He thought that eyes like those of a cat glowed in the dark.

She stared—that wasn't the right word. She couldn't stare for the simple—yet so complex—reason that she couldn't see anything. Those eyes were green only on the outside; beyond them existed only darkness, dark and empty.

He wondered how she saw a world composed solely of sounds, touch, and smells.

Sees—again, the wrong word. People are accustomed to it; it's encoded in the subconscious, so simple, clear, and ordinary. We can't do without it.

It's difficult to define, only after long reflection. To see—that is, to receive stimuli with the eyes, which then travel through the optic nerve to the brain, where they are processed into an image of what we call reality. That word isn't in her vocabulary, and never has been.

She doesn't know the meaning of many words. Blue. Ultramarine. Red.

What exactly is color? How can she explain the concept of color to someone like her?

He'd just asked her if she wasn't missing something. Colors. No, she wasn't. To feel the lack of something, she would first have to know it. She would have to lose colors to be able to miss them later. She'd never had them.

He asked her if she'd tried to imagine colors. She replied yes, many times. Sometimes she thinks that what she sees in the depths of her mind might have something to do with colors. But she doesn't know for sure. Can she explain it to him? No, she can't. Just as he can't explain to her what colors are.

…Colors are a matter of light, he explains. Light falls on something, and its surface absorbs part of the beam…

She laughs. Her bright green, cat-like eyes laugh with her. It's nothing interesting! She doesn't understand what other people get so excited about. She thinks her definitions are far more interesting.

Light is warm on her cheek on a sunny day. Black reminds her of the softness of velvet and the fresh coolness of a summer night. Gray is the touch of cat fur. Silver is cold and has the metallic tang of blood. Red is fire. Or the smoothness of a rose petal, depending on the shade. Blue is the scent of air after a storm and the cool touch of water on skin. The rustle of the forest is green, the voice of an eagle owl is purple...

So this is what colors are to her? And wouldn't she like, she asks, to know true colors?

And aren't they real?

She smooths her hair with her hand, seeming to tickle her cheek. He examines it, that hair. It's shoulder-length and a bit staticky. It's practically colorless, neither dark nor light, which further highlights the eerie nature of her eyes.

She smiles at him. "Is something wrong? Why are you silent? Is something wrong? Oh no, of course I'm fine. He's just lost in thought," she says. "Can we move on to the next question?" "Yes, please."

He thinks for a moment. What exactly is he supposed to ask her now? He flips through his notes, glancing nervously at her. Those eyes of hers irritate him. Her black pupils seem to burn a hole in his forehead and reach into his brain; her gaze creeps in green rivulets beneath his skin. He's not sure if the feeling she's feeling under her gaze is unpleasant, if he'd rather she stop staring at him, or not. He decides not to ask her to stop. It would be childish to ask her to. She might be offended.

Next question…

Does she feel comfortable in a world of normal people? Would she like to be normal?

The world is made up of definitions. Seeing, colors, shadows, light…

Normality?

Imagine a world where normal people and so-called abnormal people live.

It's just like now!

No, not exactly. Let the proportions change in the world you imagine. Let there be six billion crazy people and a few thousand normal people.

She pauses for a moment, giving his imagination time.

Normality is relative, sir. For most people, normal is what is average, ordinary, generally accepted. She wouldn't want to be normal like that.

She admits he's phrased the question wrong. He'll ask again, okay?

Okay.

Wouldn't she like to see?

Of course she would! Life would be easier then, she'd become more independent. For example, she wouldn't have to ask people to help her cross the street.

Just because? And doesn't she think her life would be richer then?

She shifts in her chair, and for a moment her eyes sparkle even more than usual. "My life isn't poor at all!"—it's clear she's oversensitive on this point. Too many people pity her. She doesn't want pity, and that's why her cat-like eyes flash with anger.

He apologizes; he wouldn't even dare suggest such a thing. After all, he knows that blind people are able to "see" more with their senses than many healthy people.

Yes, exactly," he admits. God was just, at least in this case. He took her sight, but he also gave something in return.

Speaking of God...

Isn't she angry with him?

Why should she be? Because he's made her life a little more difficult than if she'd been born with a functioning optic nerve? No, he's not. Others have worse problems – an alcoholic husband, lung cancer, an unpaid mortgage, and a brood of children to support…

People are often angry at God for testing them so hard, for not sending a miracle, for instead of making life a little easier, he's making it increasingly difficult. God isn't here to make things easier for people. That's our job, not His.

Silence.

Dusk slowly falls, long shadows drift across the room. He realizes she can't see the dusk or the shadows. But he does register the change in the air's smell and temperature, the buzzing of a cloud of mosquitoes behind the open window curtain, and everything his untrained senses can't register.

It's getting darker, darker, and she sits and smiles at him. Her eyes are huge, bright, cat-like. He feels a little uneasy.

It's getting darker, more gloomy. Her green eyes sparkle.

foul play

A work with the motif of (the currently drizzling) rain, self-love, and birds singing, though they don't appear explicitly in the piece.

Joruald decided to break off his friendship with Bleodorf. He wanted to do so openly and in the style of established stars like Bruce Willis (not coincidentally included here, as he, too, has a hand in offending self-love), John Travolta (preferably with Quentin Tarantino), and perhaps also Clint Eastwood (a symbol of theatrical solutions, who, since he wasn't seen with any of them specifically, is included here quite haphazardly).

Aside from the mistake of expressing an opinion contrary to Joruald's, Bleodorf was innocent of any wrongdoing.

Living alone, Joruald could have enjoyed preparing for foul play—scheduling a meeting was the only activity he might have trouble with. This, too, revealed a bit of his neuroticism. A cold tone is no stranger to him, but the costs he must bear in generating it indicate a profound, though not complete, awareness of the impurity of the move and the absurdity of theatrically breaking off a friendship altogether. However, he was enjoying the preparations, aside from the tiring phone call. Bleodorf's unconcerned and unsuspecting tone on the phone was a declaration of war for Joruald. Fifteen minutes early, Joruald threw on his coat and tucked a trimmed tennis racket and two tennis balls into his breast pocket. The soft handle of the racket had been sawn off for easier concealment. Joruald was certain that the piece of shaft protruding in its place would be sufficient to deliver a powerful and accurate serve to the victim's head. Joruald lived in a pleasant, secluded place, which, now drizzled with rain, looked pleasantly extraordinary. He left. He wrapped his coat more tightly around himself and set off briskly toward the park, where Bleodorf, though the meeting time hadn't yet arrived, was already waiting on a bench. The man was clearly visible. He rose at the sight of Joruald. He didn't smile. If he had, the plan would have failed immediately, for Joruald, moved by his smile, would have seen the utter absurdity of his action. Now, however, he could grasp the radiant discouragement Bleodorf felt for him and channel it into anger, in favor of revenge. But it was too little; the plan was gone; the racket fell from under his coat with a clatter.

"What's that? You wanted to play tennis in this weather?" Bleodorf asked, a kindness incomparable to any other in his voice.

Hans

Fritz sat in the electric lounge chair, wondering if this was the sixteenth or seventeenth lap.

"I won't mock the colonel. I won't mock the colonel. I won't..." A wave of panting interrupted the confession, which was passing in front of Fritz's station for the sixteenth or, who knows, seventeenth time.

"Forty-four more," Fritz grumbled from behind his newspaper

. "What do you mean? This is the seventeenth," the runner fretted

. "I'm telling you, forty-three

—I won't mock the colonel. No...

" "No, you won't," Fritz sighed .

Dressed in a T-shirt with the CPN logo, the man ran further down the corridor, assuring the microphone strapped to his chest that he wouldn't mock the colonel. Fritz turned a portion of his remarkably divided attention to the librarian standing in front of the freight elevator.

"Excuse me, do you need anything?"

"The director has increased the limit on additional paid leave. I'm going to eavesdrop on a secret meeting.

" "The freight elevator is only going to the cold store today; the foreman has rented part of the shaft to the director of a 20th-century sensation." If you wish to get to the top-secret meeting, please use the kitchen elevator. Second floor, to the left of the golf clubhouse.

" "No, thank you, I'll go to the cold store," the librarian replied coldly

. "You were planning to get to the meeting a moment ago." Fritz squinted.

"But I complied," the librarian squinted

. Faced with this biting retort, Fritz looked away, immersed himself in an article about the Mediterranean, and switched his chair to "relaxation-50 Volts." The librarian, struggling to squeeze into the kitchen elevator, was informed twice that the man we'll call Klaus for short, who was mocking the colonel, would not be mocking the colonel.

After the thirty-seventh lap, the freight elevator door opened in front of Fritz, and a group of frozen clowns burst out. Frozen Clown Two was actually a secret agent disguised as a frozen clown.

"How's it going in the cold room?" Fritz asked

. "Cold.

" "If you're going," Fritz leaned over the alpha angle, "to the secret meeting, ask Hans if he's changed his mind about the Soviet Union.

" "What union?

" "The Soviet Union. I bet him it wouldn't fall apart by tomorrow."

Hans had no intention of falling apart. He blamed the entire operation on the Soviet Union. There was a minute of silence, during which someone in Australia won a million grains of wheat in a competition for the most elegant nose.

"Excellent," broke the silence. Frozen Clown One.

"What, excellent?" Fritz, aka Fritzka, parried.

"Nothing, I said to myself. It reminded me of how in a movie someone broke the silence by saying "excellent." I wanted to see how it worked.

"I won't mock the colonel.

" "What?

" "I won't mock the colonel.

" "Aha.

" "That's enough for today, catch up on the rest tomorrow, I almost believed you wouldn't mock the colonel." Fritz stopped the tape on Klaus's shirt and helped him under the table, where Klaus had his bed on two folded banners. By this time, Frozen Clown Two was already far away in the kitchen, preparing a top-secret honey-filled pretzel. He casually turned around, and when, unable to stop the pretzel, he took out the rat-eaten batteries, he noticed the librarian through a hole in the pretzel, scrambling toward the kitchen elevator.

"You have a fascinating look

." "You're a charming secret agent

." "Hmm," the agent muttered, unintentionally demystifying himself and closing the oven door behind him.

"Ask Hans if he's changed his mind about the Soviet Union."

The librarian finally locked herself in the elevator and headed, along with the gastronomic highlight of the morning, to the third floor from the top, the second.

"A dog was found on the premises." Fritz boomed through the loudspeaker—

"a black one." He boomed after a moment with a clearing of the throat

. "The owner is requested to extinguish his cigarette and go to the duty room to clarify the dog's color. Please do not use the freight elevator."

Fritz aimed the loudspeaker at the loudspeaker in the hallway, retracted the clutch, and postponed the conversation. The secret meeting on the second floor was reaching its climax.

"Hmm," Hans muttered.

"Hmm," Jurgen muttered back. He drank the top-secret tea sitting on the stove, choked conspiratorially, then nodded to indicate he understood the conspiratorial murmur, which he understood nothing of. When the telephone rang with a spoon on the floor, a librarian entered the room to ask if Hans had changed his mind about the Soviet Union. Her unsecret presence caused the top-secret atmosphere of the meeting to begin to slip through the crack under the door. Jurgen then remembered that the knot on his finger was meant to serve as a reminder that walls have ears, so he excused himself and collapsed to the floor. The librarian stated that the situation indicated the highly secretive nature of the meeting taking place here, then turned and went to resurrect the kindergarten director.

"Do you think he'll write a transcript?" Hans muttered.

"Hmm," Jurgen muttered back, pleased that he had finally understood something. "I don't know." I suspect Thursday.

Jurgen's hand lifted the spoon and him from the floor and sat them both on a chair. The secret meeting required support, so Hans dropped a crushed ping-pong ball into his tea and settled back.

"Another game."

Meanwhile, at the main entrance, a discussion was underway between the kindergarten teacher, an unknown child, and the doorman, the child having no say in the matter.

"You have no say here, son," the doorman rang with his chainmail

. "Madam, is he one of them?

" "Not now, Tomaszek, can't you see I'm talking to you?

" "I already know he's one of them.

" "The boy talks well, you won't get in anywhere. At least not until the director is dead. And this could drag on.

" "You're being rude," Tomaszek stamped.

"Hmm," the doorman muttered. "That would be consistent with what they told me yesterday in the cafeteria," he thought

. "The boy talks well, we'll compromise." Let the principal lie down, and you come in. Watch out for the ceiling. Let this be the last time.

The preschool teacher, along with Henio and Tomaszek, went onto the porch and, as warned, avoided a piece of ceiling lying in the middle of the floor. A moviegoer was bored at the ticket office, closed on Thursdays and public holidays.

"Madam, is he one of them?

" "No, not yet, this gentleman just wants to buy a ticket, Tomaszek."

"Excuse me, you have an unusual child." The moviegoer shuddered

. "It's not mine, it's the system's child."

- kh - choked the moviegoer.

When Tomaszek and Heniu went to play pick-up sticks with Klaus, who was folded in his banners, and the kindergarten teacher was busy watching Tomaszek's progress, Michael Caine emerged from the corridor opposite the ticket office as an officer

- oh - the moviegoer shuddered again

- no need - Michael Caine greeted him with a slight smile.

To the even greater, then literal, incredible, unimaginable and finally inhuman surprise of the moviegoer, from the side corridors appeared Dolph Lundgren as an officer, Gene Hackman as an officer, Stefan Friedmann in a brown shirt and the terrifying, with a terrifying number of umlauts in his name, the original black and white officer himself.

"Oh," the movie buff remarked in a remarkable way.

Birds were chirping outside the window, and the sun, obscured by a shy tree, gleamed on the bald head of the kindergarten director, snoring in a crumpled suit, writing a letter to the higher authorities.

"Mr. Director, it's time.

" "Which way?" the director clicked in his sleep.

The librarian, realizing that all her efforts to revive the director had failed, helped herself to some chocolate, stroked the sleeping man's mirrored crown, curled up on the carpet, and fell asleep. From behind the door came the whispers of Hans and Jurgen, encouraging each other to invade the office.

"I knew it," Hans ventured, "there's protocol

," and the librarian, Jurgen astutely observed, wanting to add a fitting culmination to Hans's astute observation

, "will kill us," Hans stated coolly

, "for what?

" "We failed," Hans replied to the camera, ending the scene in the kindergarten director's office.

War on the Deadly Hills: Chapter 1

Dusk was slowly falling. Two hooded figures moved like ghosts through the dark, gloomy rustling forest. The second one turned her head every now and then and looked in the direction they were coming from.

"Calm down, they're not following us," the first figure spoke and stopped.

"How do you know?" the second one asked.

"Tell me: do you sense any magic?

" "No... Unless you mean ours..." She hesitated a bit, as if unsure.

"Exactly... They need shamans to pass through here. This is your territory. Sacred Territory. The Sacred Aura protects this area. And those shamans would have to be powerful, what would you sense? I doubt they'd send such shamans after you. Don't forget, they still think you're running away on your own. Besides, if any filth tried to enter, the Guardians would stop them." And if these Guardians failed in their task, all the Waystones would begin to glow blue.

"And how do you know so much about us and our magic?" she asked, standing before him. Silence answered her. The first figure pulled back his hood and smiled. He was a tall, young man with long, black hair and a deathly pale complexion. His eyes seemed to have no pupils, only the whites. His gaze was full of death, sadness, and hatred, and his face was accustomed to a deathly grim countenance. But this time he was serene and smiling.

"Because that's just how I am," he replied in a disarming tone, and smiled again. "

Okay, time to rest," he said to the second figure, then walked a little deeper into the forest, where he settled in a clearing surrounded by very thick and sturdy bushes. The second figure did the same. The young man pointed his hand at the grass in the middle of the clearing and began muttering. Suddenly, a circle of grass, about two meters in diameter, rose into the air and flew a few meters to the side. Then, in that spot, perfectly arranged stones with smooth surfaces appeared, and in the center of the circle a very low wall of boulders rose.

"That's so you don't destroy your grass," he explained, smiled, and began mumbling again. In the middle of it all, a pile of wood appeared. The man tucked his outstretched hand into his cloak, then held out a small ball of fire that shimmered with colors. He threw it at the wood, which, after a moment, began to burn.

"But..."

"Don't worry, this fire is only seen by those who are positive towards us. You don't think I haven't recognized that specially cultivated wall of bushes, whose hardness pierces most fortress walls?" he asked, but rather rhetorically, then winked at the other figure and began unpacking. He removed his cloak, revealing black and gold armor, with occasional emanations of energy flashing across it. Slung on his back was a large two-handed sword, slightly shorter than his owner, a long recurve bow, and a quiver. Two bastard swords, a dwarven axe, and a knife were strapped to his belt. All the weapons looked magical and even heavier. The young man stripped off his entire gear and placed it on the ground. From the weight of this equipment and the build of this individual, one could easily guess he could spar with mountain trolls.

"Don't just stand there, sit down," he said gently to the other figure. It sounded rather strange, as his voice was very low and somewhat demonic.

"Okay," she replied. She took off her cloak. She was a tall, blond, and exceptionally beautiful elf. She looked at everything with a slight disbelief, but smiled back. Unlike her companion, she wore no armor, nor was she so heavily laden with iron. She wore a leather jerkin, an elven bow and quiver strapped to her back, and a one-and-a-half sword strapped to her belt.

"Almost night," she stated, then, setting her equipment next to her companion's, she sat down by the fire opposite the young man. He grabbed some biscuits and meat from somewhere and threw them over the fire. They ate in silence. As dusk fell, it became very cold, which she immediately commented on. He smiled and stood up, then removed his jacket and bent down. Her eyes were met with snow-white, one might say angel wings, which he slowly unfurled and stood up. Stunned, she stared at them for a long moment. She came to and, fear in her eyes, began to back away.

"Who the hell are you?" she stammered. "

My friends think I'm an angel, my enemies a demon. And the truth is, I am myself." He replied in a conciliatory yet disarming tone. He put on his sweatshirt and sat by the fire. She nodded, signifying her understanding. She sat down and snuggled up against him, then stared blankly into the fire. He covered her with his wing. She began to think about recent events.

Just two months ago, she was bored as the daughter of the rulers of the Western Forest, the richest elven land. Of course, out of boredom, she took lessons in fencing, shooting, and horseback riding. She had begun learning all of these skills over four months ago, and within a few weeks, she had already surpassed her masters. But a month ago, her parents had sent her east of her Forest to gather information about the abomination that had begun to spread. She set out with a handful of armed men, no one knowing what would happen. Beyond the first river, they were ambushed by a large band of goblins. They defeated many, but were defeated. Only she survived. They took her, they didn't know why. Perhaps because of her beauty, or her lineage. After a few days, the band reunited with another, and they began heading towards the Bloody Mountains. She knew she had no chance. But in the wilderness, they came across a man traveling alone in the same direction. The goblins immediately attacked him. And that was their biggest, but also their last, mistake in their sordid lives. He dealt with them without using his hands or weapons. She recognized it immediately as Ersh' Ver'kt, described in the songs of her people as Mad Ersh. Legends circulated of his power, might, and strength. The song that came to mind was the one in which he grabbed an orc by the ankle and used it as a warhammer, defeating a five-thousand-strong force of orcs and several Dark Beasts. When Ersh rescued her, events unfolded rapidly. They fled to the Central Forest, firstly, because an elite orc force had been sent against them, and secondly, because, Ersh claimed, they needed to convey the information they had gathered to the Queen. The elf didn't realize when she had fallen asleep