Pain did not wake him. Silence did. The absence of the roar in his ears, the crack of bones. Corvus opened his eyes and saw a low, whitewashed ceiling of the infirmary. The sharp smell of antiseptic, wormwood, and dried moss filled his nostrils.
He tried to sit up. The muscles of his back and shoulder responded with a dull, familiar ache — the aftermath of overexertion. He was used to this. But his face… his face burned.
— Oh, you're awake!
A young nun, who had been sitting on a stool by his cot, jumped up. In her eyes was not so much professional interest as frank, lively curiosity. She stared at him intently, not even trying to hide it.
— Please don't move. The stitches are still fresh, — she said, but she herself, almost involuntarily, leaned closer. Her gaze traced his face, lingering on his cheek. — You know… with the scar… you even… look. More brutal.
Corvus slowly, as if through cotton wool, registered the meaning of her words. He could not see his reflection, but the skin on his left cheek and part of his forehead felt tight, as if seized by red-hot pincers and stretched. He imagined a crimson, rough stripe crossing his cheekbone. *An excellent souvenir. Now I will be recognized not only by my eyes and hair.*
The nun was still staring, slightly flushed. She was smiling.
Corvus understood where this was leading. Usually, this did not concern him. But now it did.
With one sharp motion, he threw off the coarse woolen blanket. The nun gasped. He wore only loose trousers of grey fabric. On his torso were torn bandages, beneath which yellow-blue bruises and stitches showed. He ignored this, as he ignored everything else.
— Excuse me, I must report.
He quickly pulled on his boots and a simple shirt. Without looking at the stunned nun, he stepped over the windowsill beside his cot. His cot was on the first floor. The height was trivial.
He jumped onto the damp ground and, at a trot, without looking back, headed toward the castle. Eyes followed him from the windows. This did not concern him either. «Need to find Eldrid. Need to assess the damage. Need to figure out what to do about this scar. Later.»
***
In Eldrid's office, the air smelled of cigars and tension. Lord Vigar was on his knees not out of ceremony, but because his legs no longer seemed capable of holding him. His expensive, heraldically embroidered cloak was stained with mud and scorch marks. His face was ash-grey.
Valos sat on a simple chair placed beside his father's. He was not looking at Vigar. He was studying the document in his hands — a list of losses dictated to a scribe half an hour ago.
— …and thirty wagonloads of construction timber from your eastern forests, — Valos finished monotonously, setting down the parchment. — By the end of the lunar cycle. Plus the right to station our garrison in two of your border forts. Permanently. For… mutual protection, of course.
Eldrid remained silent, observing. His face was impenetrable. He had allowed his son to lead this negotiation.
Vigar raised his head. His eyes held a mixture of humiliation and hatred. He had seen the crater on the battlefield. He had seen what remained of his army.
— This is… ruin, my lord, — he rasped.
— This is an investment. An investment in our future good neighborliness. You do wish to be a good neighbor, Lord Vigar? After you led the necromancer to us?
Vigar swallowed, his head dropping in defeat. His defeat was total. No diplomatic cards remained. Only his signature.
— I… agree, — he forced out.
— Wonderful, — Valos gave a slight nod to the scribe. — Prepare two copies. For the seals.
The door to the hall opened quietly, and Corvus entered. In bloodied bandages barely covered by his shirt, with a wild new scar on his face. He said nothing, simply took his usual place against the wall behind Valos, crossing his arms. His appearance was more eloquent than any threat.
Vigar, seeing him, paled even further. The signing proceeded in sepulchral silence.
***
They stood before a pile that, a week ago, had been the Skeletal Dragon. The bones, stripped of magic, were still enormous, unnaturally white, and cold to the touch. A faint but persistent smell of ozone and decay emanated from them.
Eldrid, Valos, Lyra, and Balin gazed upon this legacy of battle. Balin, in his usual form, scowled, assessing the scale of the "cleanup."
— Haul it all outside the city. Far away. Pile it in one place. Neatly.
— Why? — Valos asked. — It's excellent material. For pigment, fertilizer, could be used for repairs…
— Because dragons, son, — Eldrid interrupted him. — The necromancer used dragon bones. Old ones, full of residual mana. It left a… trace in the ether. Stirred up the sediment at the bottom of their dreams. They are already searching. And if they fly here and see the bones of their kin piled like refuse in a human city… They will take them. Without asking. And they won't care what remains of the city. They have their own burial rituals. Their own concepts of sanctity.
Valos fell silent, cursing everything under his breath. *And now dragons. Of course. Why not?*
Balin said nothing. He simply stepped forward, and the earth around him trembled. Pieces of obsidian, rubble, dust — all of it rose and was drawn to him, coating his body. But this time, black, glassy shards — remnants of obsidian created by the dragon's flame — wove into the mixture. In an instant, before them stood a giant, not of grey stone, but of black, gleaming glass-like material, veined with cracks like a spider's web.
The giant bent down, his enormous hands scooping up the pile of bones. Obsidian flowed like resin, enveloping the remains, binding them into a single sarcophagus. Then he straightened and, bearing his burden, strode heavily away from the gates toward the wasteland where the crater yawned and the remains of Nazrik's mech lay.
They followed, at a respectful distance. The crater, the size of a small lake, still smoked. At its edge, among molten stones, lay what remained of Nazrik's mech — a heap of twisted, blackened metal, charred bones, and decay.
Balin carefully lowered the obsidian cocoon containing the dragon bones onto the crater's rim, turned, and, dissolving his form, returned to his normal appearance.
Eldrid, Valos, and Lyra carefully descended the crumbling slope toward the mech's remains. Lyra went first, her cat ears taut.
Valos leaned over the charred framework. Among the debris, he glimpsed shreds of dark, blackened fabric — remnants of Nazrik's robe. Carefully, with his fingertips, he pulled a burnt book from the folds. A grimoire. The cover was rough, made of leather untouched by fire. On it was the rune in the shape of an eye.
— Don't touch… — Lyra began, but Valos had already opened the book.
The pages were filled with dense, angular symbols that hurt the eyes. The mana trapped in the ink pulsed faintly against his fingers like a weak electric shock. He flipped through quickly, searching for… he did not know what. A clue. A weakness. An answer to the question of the bone mech.
On the final, blank page, in a trembling hand, was scrawled: «Bq atphy corqnrz webgu qnutmmh, dexy dgqo im nitzeq ccp beskog fb vgpu.»
Valos froze, trying to parse it. A cipher? An encrypted message? A curse?
He did not notice the eye-rune on the cover beginning to glow faintly from within, filling with a dull purple light.
The book was ripped from his hands. Sharply, without warning. Lyra, moving with feline speed, hurled the grimoire across the crater toward the far slope.
The book arced through the air.
Then it vanished in a flash of silent, sucking white flame. There was no shockwave. Only a sharp crack, and where it landed, there remained a perfectly smooth, molten hemisphere in the earth.
Valos recoiled, his heart hammering. He had just held a delayed-action bomb in his hands.
He turned to Lyra. She stood, drawn up to her full unimpressive height, her tail lashing against her legs, her eyes burning with cold, absolute fury.
— You — she hissed — are a complete idiot! A brainless dragon! Couldn't you see the activation rune on the cover?! It was glowing! You nearly blew us all to dust and astral particles!
Valos opened his mouth to retort, to defend himself. But the words stuck. Because she was right. Absolutely, outrageously right. He had been so absorbed in searching for answers that he had missed the most obvious danger. *Stupidity. Unforgivable.*
He had no time to respond.
The air around them thickened and trembled. From the earth, without a sound, like black mushrooms after rain, three hexagonal columns rose. Made of black granite so dark it seemed to sink into itself. Their surfaces were covered with a network of glowing yellow hexagons, pulsing with a steady, unearthly light. From them emanated cold, silence, and all-consuming dread.
Atop each column stood a figure in flowing black robes embroidered with golden threads in runic patterns. Their faces were not visible. Only vague outlines within the depths of their hoods. The Witches of Order.
— Explain the incident involving the unauthorized use of a fifth-category magic bomb, — a voice sounded. It did not come from beneath the hoods but seemed to arise directly inside their heads.
Everyone froze. Even Lyra went quiet, her tail lowered, the fur on the back of her neck bristling.
Eldrid stepped forward, his posture straightening to steel-like rigidity.
— This was the activation of a dangerous artifact left by the fallen necromancer.
One of the witches slid down her column without touching it. Her movement was unnaturally smooth. From the folds of her robe, she produced an object resembling a snow-white lens in an ebony frame. She raised it to her eyes and slowly surveyed the crater, the mech's remains, and them. The lens glowed faintly.
— Mana traces correspond to the remains, — the witch stated. Her gaze stopped on Nazrik's charred frame. — Threat source neutralized. Phylactery not found. Isolation of remains required to prevent reanimation.
A second witch gestured toward the pile of metal and bone.
— Package it. All of it. Without residue.
The first witch produced a simple canvas sack from the depths of her robe. When she opened it, the interior revealed not a bottom, but a black, shimmering void.
Valos exchanged a glance with his father. Arguing was pointless. He nodded to Balin. The dwarf, sighing silently, began carefully loading Nazrik's remains into the sack's maw like refuse. Lyra helped, dragging smaller fragments away.
When the last piece disappeared into the sack's void, the witch drew the drawstring. The black void vanished; the sack became ordinary.
— You have saved us several days' work, — the first witch said, addressing Eldrid. — Otherwise, we would have had to cleanse this… biomagical contamination. Your efficiency will be noted in the report to the Concordat. This may be considered a mitigating circumstance during the next audit of your region.
Without waiting for a response, all three witches rose in an instant to the tops of their black columns. The columns began to dissolve, melting into the air, carrying them away. Three seconds later, nothing on the wasteland recalled their visit except three smooth, hexagonal impressions in the earth.
Valos exhaled. His palms were damp. «Each of them. Each alone could have erased this city from the face of the earth. And with a squad of six… The Kingdom. The World Government. These are the ones who keep this world in an iron grip. And they just… file reports.»
He looked at Lyra. She had turned away, wiping soot from her cheek with her palm. At Eldrid. He was staring at the sky, his face weary. At Balin. He simply sat on a rock, staring at the ground.
Silently, they began climbing out of the crater. Valos's thoughts raced. «The cipher in the book. A key? A threat? A message to someone? To whom?»
They were halfway to the city gates when the sun dimmed.
An enormous shadow stretching across the ground covered them. Not birds. Not a cloud. Something massive, with a long tail and broad wings.
They all looked up.
A dragon. Larger than the castle keep. Its body was covered in rugged, crimson-orange scales studded with hundreds of sharp, spiny protrusions like a monstrous lizard. Its wings, resembling leathery membranes stretched between bony spines, emitted a low, humming sound as they cut the air.
The behemoth landed with a crash that shook the earth, coming to rest at the crater's edge near the obsidian cocoon. It paid no attention to the humans. Its enormous, spined head on a long neck lowered. Its mouth, lined with dagger-like teeth, scooped up the cocoon with the bones and mech remains carefully, with unexpected gentleness, like an excavator scooping soil.
Then the dragon slowly turned its head. Its eyes, like pieces of dark amber, fixed on the small group of people by the city walls. The gaze was not hostile. Not even appraising. Like a person looking at ants that happen to be in their path.
The dragon slowly closed its eyes. Then opened them. It was like a nod. A formal, ancient "thank you."
Then it pushed off with its massive hind legs, raising clouds of dust, and, with heavy wingbeats, rose into the sky, bearing away its sad inheritance.
The four stood long at the gates, gazing at the empty sky where a living catastrophe had just hung.
Valos was the first to break the silence.
— So — he said hoarsely — "cleansing biomagical contamination" that was the small stuff. Am I understanding this correctly?
Eldrid said nothing. He simply turned and walked toward the castle. His shoulders were stooped, as if under an invisible weight.
Lyra cast one final, silent reproachful look at Valos and followed the Count.
Valos and Balin remained. The dwarf looked at him with his stone eyes.
— The roof on the west barn needs to be completely replaced, — he said. — Do we search for timber or order it?
Valos laughed. A short, dry, almost hysterical sound.
— Order it, — he said. — From Lord Vigar. He seems to have a few extra forests. And we'll haggle for a discount. In honor of our… good neighborliness.