* * *
It all started when Igor ran out of toothpaste. He preferred to brush his teeth not with any toothpaste, but with a special dental one that helped with bleeding gums. With the acquisition of the Lot and the filling of the Step scale by one tenth, his health improved significantly, and he noticed that his physical characteristics had strengthened somewhat. This also affected the cosmetic effect, or at least it seemed to him that he began to look less miserable. His gums also stopped bleeding from the slightest touch, but he used a proven product out of habit. The trouble was that the 24-hour store near his house did not have the necessary paste, so he had to go to the nearest rge market, stretching his legs at the same time.
The shopping itself went without incident. Igor bought all sorts of things, including freshly baked goods, so he walked home, almost jumping as he walked. And, cutting through the courtyards again, he suddenly stopped and froze. He would not have confused this feeling with anything else, not in any way and never, not after the horror he had already experienced. The stench of stagnant water soaked in the decomposition of corpses, cold and dirty, disgusting even when trying to think about this feeling. Like a light breeze, like a distant echo, it overtook him in the middle of someone else's yard and almost drove him into hysterical panic. Frozen, overcoming the desire to turn around and run wherever his eyes looked. He carefully sat on a damp and cold bench, putting down the bags with the groceries and looking around with an attentive and anxious gaze.
An ordinary courtyard. He passes here regurly. Ordinary people in it: some guy is poking around under the hood of an old Toyota, a couple of schoolchildren are pying snowballs in the wet snow, threatening each other with unprintable insults, a tired woman is dragging much rger bags of groceries home, a drunk worker is trying to enter the entrance, not noticing that his magnetic key clearly does not fit the purely mechanical combination lock. A typical, almost pastoral picture, if you do not count the feeling of trouble that overtook Igor, a feeling of disgust and alienation, which simply should not be because such shit should not exist at all. The direction was felt instinctively. Instinctively, he looked in the direction of the tightly locked basement doors, just as instinctively realizing that he did not want to open these doors at all.
The stench of chilly energy flowed from the basement windows, covering the courtyard with a thin shroud. Its long tentacles rose upwards, towards the residential apartments, as if reaching out, reaching out to the warmth of human bodies. Igor sat on a cold and uncomfortable bench for the sake of decency, burying his face in a game open on his smartphone, thinking about his own things. He thought gloomy and evil thoughts, exclusively in dark tones, the very darkest, diluted only by a bloody crimson. Igor was not exactly a callous person, but rather an indifferent one, one of those who would not refuse help, but would not be the first to offer it. One of those who would prefer to shift responsibility onto someone else, so that the problem would also become someone else's, so that competent organizations would deal with it. Competent exclusively in words, and full of poisonous sarcasm.
But here and now, he had no one to shift responsibility to, no one to compin to, and demand that something be done. Even if he risked turning to people in uniform, whom even calling people was often an insult to the human race, they would not even listen to him. Because he was talking nonsense. He understood that his “I sense evil hidden in the basement” looked like nonsense. What was even worse, they might believe him. He did not know what was happening to his colleagues there? How many of them ended up in the same city as him, and whether the creation of any special departments to combat the paranormal threat had already begun. Common sense, logic, and even the notorious intuition asserted that he did not want to get caught by the authorities who knew about the phenomenon of the Lots. It would be good if he stayed alive, and there was no point in even stuttering about health and freedom.
How long did it take the hole to turn the candy seller into what he eventually became? Well, he was literally locked in a cramped room with a breach, a physical breach, literally, which he initially, perhaps, simply stuffed with rags and decided to think about the problem tomorrow. Here, a whole five-story building became victims of the flow, and they were separated from this crap by strong walls and a floor. It is unlikely that this will save them all. This abomination will flow through any matter; there is no need to even talk about cracks and pipes, but people had some kind of protection. But it will not be enough, it will not be enough, and all, well, or some, of the inhabitants of this pce will face a very bad ending. Men, women, old people, children, and pets. And simply death will not be the worst option for what happens to people.
"I'm so sick of this..." Igor sighed tiredly, pulling a fresh ecir out of the box. "Call the fucking Auror Office and Who-Knows-Which Watch."
With these words, he stood up, dusted himself off, and dragged his purchases home.
He returned to this pce after midnight, dressed in thick and strong clothes, armed with a crowbar found in the closet, covered with two of his magical abilities, and using camoufge tactics. His entire face was covered with a bacva mask, thick ski goggles on top, more for eye protection, with several fshlights, a couple of knives, prepared torches, a lighter, and an irrepressible fighting spirit. Okay, it must be admitted that there was no fighting spirit, only a sense of duty and readiness, if something happened, to immediately retreat, run, and then call the police and let them die for the good of the citizens they swore to protect. In principle, it was possible to immediately move on to the st point, simply breaking down the door, and then telling the good people that someone's corpse was lying in the basement. This could even be entirely true. There is a fake SIM card, an old burner phone bought at the market second-hand. Introducing yourself with a different name is also not difficult. Just call, the police should come, and after it goes missing, they will perk up and start moving.
It was either greed or a ck of cynicism that stopped him. After all, he had to send the first patrol to certain death, unless there was a colleague with the Lot among them. Or simply the readiness to shoot at the sound and any suspicious movement. So Igor was going to go to war, constantly cursing himself for his soft-heartedness, stupidity, and other shortcomings, like a conscience that just wouldn't die. Well, or at least make sure that he wasn't paranoid and that there really was a hotbed of nastiness in the basement of the building. Maybe he'd be lucky and that shit wouldn't have time to breed mutated cats and rats for protection, so all he could do was silently lock the passage and not have to fight for his life?
He came out to the basement from around the corner, cutting through the garages, where there was no one at all now, and where there were no cameras yet. He walked out slowly, covering his head with a hood and pretending he always walked like that, even setting the fshlight to minimum power. Just a te-night passerby, nothing special. Everything was in order, nothing to worry about, right? He got there without problems or incidents, did not meet any night passersby, and was ready to plunge into his first voluntarily chosen battle, when he was armed by a voice that came almost from behind him. A hoarse, smoke-filled, old man's voice, politely addressing him from the darkness:
"God help you." Igor doesn't know how he managed not to squeal and not jump, only twitching a little, slowly turning around. "What, it stinks too, huh?"
What he had taken for a pile of rags under the bench in the almost complete darkness turned out to be not a pile, but a living person, only wrapped in many yers of cloth that stank of the odor of a long-unwashed body. He was getting to his feet, slowly and not even trying to threaten, of average height and build, with a face thickly overgrown with a dirty, shaggy beard. So dirty that the beard at the end had simply stuck together into a solid lump and was carelessly pulled together with a gaudy pink estic band for hair. The same homeless person he had had the chance to observe before, albeit only from afar or from hearsay, was standing right in front of him and only squinting slightly from the fshlight directed at his face.
"Yeah. It stinks." Igor agreed with the description, and without sarcasm, because the scent of his interlocutor was the fragrance of the Garden of Eden, if compared with the lightest shadow of what was hidden in the basement. "I couldn’t help but want to clean it."
In the almost complete darkness, the interlocutor's toothless smile, barely visible behind his dirty hair, was already ominous. Combined with the oppressive atmosphere of the background coming from the basement, as well as the realization that this stinking man has unknown magical powers... the ominousness took on several new levels. It took Igor, clenching his hands on the crowbar shoved into his tennis case, some time to realize that this man was in a good-natured mood. And the homeless man, as if not realizing how much he had managed to scare his opponent, farted loudly, burped, and scratched his ass, not at all embarrassed by the fact that his clothes were pretty wet and should have been freezing, not warming. Well, judging by what Igor already knew about him, this guy gave a shit about weather conditions even more than about his appearance and hygiene.
"Me too, my dear fellow, want to, well, shut this crap up." He even pointed his finger towards the door, poking it several times, letting us admire the long, thick yellow nail on his finger. "But I'm too chicken to be alone. I mean, I plugged up the st pipe, and I almost shit myself. And it didn't stink as much there. It was weaker."
The guy suppressed the urge to joke about how the smell of his interlocutor indicated that he hadn't managed to avoid shitting himself after all. He switched to a more businesslike tone. They both spoke quietly, even softly, but they heard each other perfectly well, and in Igor's case, he didn't trust his opponent. Only his opponent seemed to be pretending very well, or simply wasn't afraid that Igor would decide to let him in for an EXP. The question was, was it naive stupidity, or a clear understanding that he was stronger than the young stranger? From the words of the homeless man who called himself Vas-Vas, or Vasily Vasilyevich, but better Vas-Vas, that's what all his friends called him, he had already managed to win a fight with a very big and seasoned rat, who had taken to dragging not only yard cats, but also not particurly rge dogs to her hole in another basement. And almost dragged away some toddler left without maternal care, miraculously saved by his father, who started honking the horn, frightening the creature with a loud sound. Apparently, he thought it was some kind of dog, and thought he had imagined the giant rat.
Vas-Vas, decided that it was not right for such crap to live next to a kindergarten and his beloved warm basement, win. He even bragged about a bunch of fresh, torn holes in his rags. But he did not want to repeat such an intense duel. So he sat there, sleeping, ignoring the possibility of dying of cold, waiting for the moment when he mustered the resolve to go to the basement, or until someone entered there, so as not to break down the door. The homeless man was afraid of attracting the attention of the police, about whom he spoke exclusively with obscenities, it seemed, many times more than what could be hiding behind the door. On the one hand, Igor did not give a damn about such a partner, and on the other ... on the other hand, he was even more afraid of going there alone. Well, for the sake of confronting a common and terrible enemy, the most diverse people joined the unions, so their union will not particurly stand out against the background of historical examples. Perhaps, if Igor were a typical bender mage with lightning and ice spikes in his arsenal, he would have risked his health by trying to "level up alone", but his Lot was a support css. He needed someone who could fight in his pce. And he wasn't going to worry too much about the life of the homeless person who offered to cooperate.
"What's your name, my dear fellow?" Vasily was sincerely happy that they had come to an agreement. "And what can you do? I am very strong, beat me as you want. As long as I have Shots, I can take everything on myself, that's it."
Igor's eye is not visible under his gsses, but it twitches. Vasily's linguistic perception of his Status list module was quite different from Igor's. The seasoned alcoholic called the Vessels Shots, and the Tablet he called the Snack. In the sense that he drank a Shot, add the Snack on top, and the miracle has happened. There was some logic in this, but it was so alternative that Igor, used to sublimely mysterious commentary-images, had an uncontrolble slight pain in his head. Against this background, he even forgot about the worries that he didn't know a damn thing about his partner, who could very well attack the young man too. He agreed to the alliance more out of desperation, because it was less dangerous to risk getting involved with Vasily than to try to fight in proud solitude.
"Call me Hedgehog." That's all he said, suppressing the desire to take a nickname like Alucard or Dante, otherwise, he would definitely end up as some kind of chuunibyou. "Because I'm strong, but light. And I can put a protective screen... well, like a shield over your armor. I can show you, if you don't mind."
Characteristically, Vasily allowed it right away, as if he wasn't afraid of a dirty trick, which only made him more nervous. Either he was such an idiot, or he was so confident in himself, but it still made him nervous. Vasily, who had gasped from the feeling of the imposed amulet, pyed with his hand for a while, even trying to bite himself, but was extremely pleased. Their conversation, which had already sted half an hour, fortunately took pce right next to the basement door and had no witnesses. But it was simply dangerous to drag it out any longer, it was too easy to run into unwanted witnesses. And so, he took out his crowbar, Vasily armed himself with a hammer wrapped in blue tape and a chef's cleaver, found in some dump, and then they stepped closer to the door.
The renewed Vessels were full. Only one of them was blocked, but this blockage allowed Igor to silently put his fingers on the massive door lock, by the way, very fresh, literally just recently hung, and then simply squeeze it in his fist, crumpling it like a craft made of warm psticine. Vasily Vasilyevich, who chuckled respectfully, immediately squeezed forward, holding a hammer in his hand, forcing him to hold his breath and wipe away the tears that had appeared in his eyes. The click of the fshlight was followed by another click, but the spare fshlight went to his ally. Igor will not take it back until he bathes it in pure alcohol, and after that, the fshlight will stop working anyway. The darkness, dispersed by two beams of light, and the hoarse curses of Vasily, remembering the builders, the authorities, Gorbachev, modern youth, Cervantes, and again the builders.
And steps.
They both step forward, focusing more on their own sensations from the much denser filling of space with filth concentrated in the basement than on the still absent map. The creaking of small stones, the spshing of puddles flowing from leaking pipes, and a heavy and oppressive feeling of maturing danger. The feeling of dead, frozen filth does not just stink, it permeates everything and everyone, making you forget even about the stench of a homeless person's amber. Only five Vessels spin in the chest, form a spiral, suck in the filth penetrating the body and quickly remove it. By the way, from such a close distance, Igor feels not only filth, but also sparks of warmth from Vasily, exactly three of them, also located in his chest.
You can't call it a magical vision, because he doesn't see them, he just knows. And, what's characteristic, the guy was able to sense other people's Vessels only after these Vessels began actively cleaning toxic energy from the body. It's worth taking note of this moment as a very effective way to figure out a fellow magician. Vas-Vas, who looked at him thoughtfully, also probably sensing five, not three, Vessels in the guy, didn't ask anything. He only scratched his ass again. And they walked, and continued to walk, having passed the basement almost from one end to the other, if he understood the scale of distances correctly, before turning to an inconspicuous block and a lopsided door. You know, those personal basement closets, usually right under someone's apartment, where you can store canned goods, a box of Christmas tree decorations, and a thousand and one pieces of all sorts of junk you're too greedy to throw out.
Igor exchanges gnces with Vas-Vas, carefully presses on another extremely fresh lock, intending to rip it off with the help of light amplification... but it falls itself, already hopelessly broken. Having intercepted the lock in flight, the young man thoughtfully looks at the handle, which seems to have been gnawed on one side, and then points to the door and shrugs questioningly. The ally, who looks at him just as questioningly, shrugs, steps back, yanks the door open with a sharp movement, and prepares a hammer. The stench of rotten meat, previously elusive behind the ally's scent, hits him in the face with full force. Its source was two corpses gnawed to the bones, or maybe more than two. Igor counted by the number of skulls with the top cut off by something sharp and carefully eaten from the inside. There is almost no blood and meat, just a little bit of guts and scraps of sinew and muscle on gnawed bones.
Igor felt so sick that only the increased pressure of the vile energy prevented him from vomiting, switching his mind into combat mode, and also thanks to the mask on his entire face. It not only cut off the smell, but also forced him to realize that he would have to vomit right into the fabric of the bacva, risking choking. Vasily's swearing turned out to be sobering and very timely, because Igor forgot about everything, even the fact that he had been waiting for a treacherous blow from his ally until the very end, deliberately not imposing a second buff on him. The overgrown, stinking homeless man was again swearing over cannibals, janitors, oligarchs, Exupery, his ex-wife, who had squeezed him out of his apartment, and cannibals again. He swore and gradually backed away from two breaches.
The first, narrow and deep, led to the same pce as the hole in the stall. Barely fifteen centimeters wide at its widest point, it looked more like a long crack running along the wall farthest from the door. Several shelves had been dumped on the ground, as well as all sorts of junk, and the pickles had not broken or spilled all over the closet, only because they had not been there to begin with. Igor was even scientifically interested in whether this crack was visible from the other side, since this wall separated two rooms. Well, it did, because now physics and other ws of the material world had been cruelly fucked up again. The second breach was located in the ceiling. Below, in the middle of the bones, it was easy to discern the bricks that had fallen. It led not to the space beyond reality, but to the apartment above. There were also a few other things that came from that apartment, the same rge tablespoon lying in one of the empty skulls. Judging by the marks, it was used to scrape the contents of someone's head. And the hair from those heads was cut. There it is, lying around - long, dyed blond, definitely women's, and short men's, already graying, lying around in separate clumps.
After exchanging gnces with Vasily again, he presses his finger to his mouth in a request for silence. Vas-Vas finally shuts up and stops swearing all around, and then shudders when Igor casts a second buff on him, taking the load on his own Vessel. Vasily farted again in surprise, which almost made Igor cry. But he quickly pulled himself together, without asking any questions, went into the closet, hung the hammer and cleaver on the waistband of his pants, and jumped up, clinging to the edge of the breach with his fingers. His shining fingers even left a stencil in the floor material. Then the homeless man pulled himself up quite athletically and immediately gave his hand to Igor, standing below. He doesn't care about hygiene, grabbed his ally, and let himself be pulled up. He was simply not tall enough to jump. They made quite a noise, but no one came to this noise, which was pleasing, but also worrying. He wanted to know what the two mages who found themselves in someone else's bathroom encountered.
The apartment in general and the bathroom in particur were not cleaned, even dirty. The dark blue tiles and the once white linoleum of the hallway floor were decorated with numerous stains of a suspicious color. A loud snore was heard from the far corner of the apartment, and the two burgrs again exchanged gnces, grabbed their weapons more comfortably, and went toward the sound. The floor creaked and squelched underfoot, but Igor sobbed even louder when he gnced into the kitchen, passing by the doorway and almost falling, frozen in pce. The gutted and partially cut-up body, from which they had managed to remove the skin, and almost finished eating the brains with a spoon, clearly could not belong to anyone except a miniature dwarf or a very small child. Vasily, who stepped back a little and looked at this spectacle, barely audibly, but very ominously snorted, gradually turning into a roar.
A growl answered him from the far room, or rather not a growl, but an irritated grumble, with which someone rolled off a bed or a sofa, and an instant ter threw open a locked room door. He was tall and fat, broad in the shoulders and completely bald, and his face, although very deformed, resembled a child, not even a teenager, a little older than the remains lying in the kitchen. Against the background of such a huge body, this face seemed ridiculous, but there was no urge to ugh. With a loud smack of swollen lips, this something stepped towards Vasily, who had gathered himself up, and then seemed to groan. The sound echoed throughout his body with strange vibrations, and the young man, feeling how his amulet was losing its invested power, realized with horror that, from this inaudible scream, at best, a massive stroke awaited him.
"Shut him, Vasya!" It was impossible to give a more comprehensive comment, but the homeless man realized that this squealing was not doing him any good, and he rushed forward and attacked with a hammer. "Shut him up!"
The hammer blow was simply intercepted, and the freak grabbed the hammer with his bare hand, like grabbing a snowball. And he regretted it very much when the striking part, which fred white, simply tore the plump and loose-looking hand to shreds. The creature's mouth opened in a silent scream. The pressure on the amulet increased, sagging it a little faster. At this rate, they both had at least a minute. The effect of the creature's spell was incomparable to the power of purely physical attacks from the candy mafia's long arm. The creature leaned back from the swing of the cleaver, stepping back. Or rather, it began to step even before Vas-Vas struck, simply from the pain in its hand, but it turned out that this step was good for the fatso. The wide-open mouth met a new attack, this time from Igor, who stepped after his ally and tried to strike with a crowbar in a spear-like lunge, like a dart.
What is doubly surprising is that he got it. A white fsh allowed him to push the tip of the crowbar, previously wiped clean of any organic traces, between his upper lip and nose. The wound looked neat from the front, but from the back, the white energy literally tore out part of the back of the head, spshing an old chest of drawers with an indescribable abomination. A little bit of it also got on the group photo standing there, depicting a happy, as happy as possible, family. In the face of the eldest son, a boy of about ten, one could hardly recognize the mug of the creature that had just fallen dead. The current year was indicated in the lower right corner of the photo. The heavy impact of the body on the floor could clearly arm the neighbors, but Igor personally hoped that the neighbors would not become the same as this fat lump.
The lump, or rather a monster, right now was becoming transparent and partly liquid, like jelly, not soaking into the floor, but falling into it. Not even into the floor, but through a reality too soft for him, returning to where the offspring of the Other Side belong. Again, he and Vasily exchanged gnces in a wordless dialogue, and then a bit of rainbow mist flowed into both of them, and even if you count both clouds, it is noticeably less than after one candy seller. Well, to be fair, this cannibal was really weaker. It felt weaker and did not put pressure on the mind. He only beat with physics and magic. But yes, to a random police squad, this fat man was like an avatar of death itself, because there would be nothing to cover from his scream with. Unless you shoot right away, but for that you need to be ready to shoot and know what exactly you will meet.
Step: 0 [108/1000]
"It's time to get out of here, Hedgehog. "Vasily says, in a very casual tone, sniffling, as if they had just gone for some bread. "Now they'll start running, you see, those bastards in uniform, and we'll quickly become the scapegoats, my dear fellow. Do as you know, but I wouldn't take anything from here."
Igor did not immediately realize that the tramp was convincing not him, but himself, because personally the Standard-Bearer himself would not have taken even a suitcase with dolrs from this sughterhouse. Characteristically, he did. Vasily did not look for or pocket anything from this apartment, despite the fact that his gaze was literally glued to the sideboard filled with various bottles. Well, Igor understood him here. He, too, would not want to eat, drink, or anything that could be found in this pce. Who knows what the alcohol turned into in such a ir of Evil, or what the kid who mutated into a cannibal mixed in? The options were coming up with one more gloomy and disgusting than the other, so neither of them risked their health, sanity, or even their lives.
They got out of the apartment the same way they got in, closing the crack in the basement at the same time. Just like st time, he and Vasily received an image-offer to widen and stabilize the passage, turning it into their personal hunting grounds. Just like st time, both of them unanimously repeated their previous decision, not wanting to open the hole to the Other Side even further. The only difference from the hole in the stall was that only two Vessels were needed for a complete closure, and seven for stabilization. Instead of pouring in all the supplies from one Exalted One, they could sacrifice one Vessel from each. That made the closure process only slightly more complicated than casting the most ordinary and standard protection. As a reward for this deed, they received exactly one Mark of Valor, obviously a tiny one. Igor, who still had the protective film of the very first consumable used on him, silently handed the reward to the homeless man. The guy certainly didn't smell like roses, but he did the main job, protecting the young man from possible damage. The guy wasn't sure he would have survived the fight so easily.
They left the basement quickly but carefully, just as carefully going through the garages further away, trying to stick to pces with fewer cameras. Igor took the crowbar with him. And of course, he did not leave any traces at the scene of the battle and was determined to get rid of the old clothes and shoes, on which there could well be material traces of the murdered residents of that apartment. The only thing he cked was the suspicion of the authorities... true, the authorities would most likely get to Vasily, but here it helped that his ally had not seen Igor's face, did not know his name, and did not have his address. It would be better for all sorts of special services to find out about the guy's abilities than to enter the battle now and try to clean up a dangerous witness. Someone might have been tempted, someone would not even think about it, having started to carry out, but the novice Standard-Bearer still has principles.
"Hey, Hedgehog, you won't have a hundred and fifty rubles, will you?" The question brought Igor out of his reverie and stunned him a little with its expectation and suddenness. "Just a little short, yeah. You'll really help me out. I will definitely ret... I mean, I can exchange this crap! I don't need it at all!"
But he obviously needed vodka. For a while, Igor seriously considered deflecting the plea with a typical refusal. He didn’t have to lie much. He didn’t take his wallet and documents with him on this work. But he still didn’t refuse. You never know, maybe fate would bring them together again against another monster. Sighing, he reached into a small pocket on his belt, taking out a five-thousand note folded into a small square. Taken in case of meeting a very persistent night patrol and trying to buy off someone else’s attention. Unrolling his “alternative passport”, he silently hands it to Vasily, who beamed, clearly recognizing the note even in the almost complete darkness. Someone will have a night of drinking, but maybe it’s for the best. Maybe he won’t remember who exactly he went on a raid with to hunt a very fat and gluttonous screaming cannibal.
"If they ask, say that you found it." The toad was pushing, that was undeniable, but the voice of greed overshadowed the fact of a successful mission and everything that he would be able to extract from an active combat confrontation using the Tablets, even if so fleeting. "And don't bb about me too much."
"I'm a grave!" Vasily agrees to his conditions in a tone of conviction that Igor doesn't believe for a moment, hastily stuffing the banknote into the depths of his rags. "You, that is, if you need it, call me, if anything. I'm usually near the avenue during the day, or I spend the night in the basement. Well, where I told you. About that rat. God help you, my dear fellow, yeah!"
The guy couldn't find an answer and simply nodded briefly and in a businesslike manner, walking away into the darkness in the opposite direction from Vasily, hiding in the passages of small streets and alleys. Having reached the cache with spare clothes and shoes, he quickly changed, taking off his mask and gsses. Looking around furtively, he stuffed the clothes back into the hiding pce. Ideally, he would burn them, but that would attract attention and take up time. It would be better to come here separately for this purpose when the opportunity arises... he just had to think earlier about the fact that he would have to clean up traces of his presence at the crime scene. It turned out clean with the seller, there were no bodies left there, no blood, no bones. But in the cannibal's apartment there was a real massacre and it didn't disappear anywhere, damn it. However, at least he got into this massacre for a reason: here is the experience of the Tablet's work on another Exalted One, and the use of light amplification directly in the fight against the creature.
These short seconds actually gave a lot, allowing him to realize, if not completely, then at least to realize, the true price of his gift. From those crumbs of realization, which would have given someone else hardly a unit of understanding on the scale, he personally received so much that it was even uncomfortable. Or rather, he did not even immediately receive, but realized and gradually digested the realization, long after he had already returned home, vomited from memories of someone else's diet, and then slept for almost half a day. And for the first time, he began to read all sorts of crime news more carefully, looking not for stories about all sorts of supermen, but more mundane things. Missing people, murders, especially brutal crimes. And if the picture in the rest of the world did not change much, then in this very city, the situation clearly stood out from any norms.
Frequent disappearances of people, a pack of dogs on the outskirts of the city, which seriously mauled a whole team of young athletes who were returning from training, including three cripples without fingers and one in intensive care, the same pack, which almost ate the dog hunters or government specialists who tried to shoot them. A daring robbery of a bank collection point, when an armored car was hit with something heavy and rge-caliber, only the marks on the armor look like it was cut open with either bare hands or a psma cutter. A major businessman and one of the mayor's deputies who hanged himself in his own office, and he hanged himself very mysteriously, because, well, nothing foreshadowed it. Some guy who ran into the hospital screaming that worms were crawling under his skin - typical delirium for a schizophrenic, but he, pced in a mental hospital after (or before, who knows) an examination, was found dead in the morning. With numerous holes, like Swiss cheese, and barely even bleeding. Oh yeah, these same holes were in the corner of the room, leading through the floor straight to the basement. And these are only the most public cases, the most memorable, damn!
In short, Igor wanted to find Vasily that same day in order to hire him as a personal security guard... the only thing that stopped him was that a homeless tramp who clearly enjoyed alcoholism would not make a very good guard. It is difficult to protect a client if you are in a permanent alcoholic stupor or delirium tremens. Well, if Vasily's ability does not provide passive resistance to alcohol... but it hardly does, otherwise why would he need vodka if it does not work?
* * *
Sitting in a soft chair and clutching a well-earned coffee in his hands, Igor assessed his test successes and admitted that it was time to start looking for a way to speed up the development with the conflict again. Because at the current stage of understanding, he almost physically felt that simple training would move him forward, but much more slowly than desired. For others, he was sure that at this stage, simple regur use of the Tablet outside of combat, even in different ways and applications, would not have any effect, but this was of little consotion. Understanding had shifted upwards, and the day was not far off when he would receive the second effect of the familiar Tablets. At least, this concerned the Protective Charm, but the increase in damage by light was also not too far behind.
Minor Protective Charm: 66/100
Minor Combat Shine: 53/100
Step: 0 [117/1000]
Just yesterday, the progress of the Step was at the mark of one hundred and eighteen units of the scale, but yesterday, the first of the protective films of the Mark disappeared, which is why he lost one unit in less than a day. Moreover, he felt that this was only the beginning, that the regression was slowly starting, but if it was not stopped, it would become like a snowball. Another tool for spurring enthusiasm for each of the Exalted so they would not sit in a rexed position but constantly run and look for someone else to kill and thus roll back the regression. The scale of the current Step, to be honest, did not worry Igor very much. He pays much more attention to the Tablets, because his strength and his Gift are in them. And he liked what he realized, less and less perceiving skills as just a function, beginning to understand what was hidden behind them, behind that screen that covers the breach into the infinity of Knowledge and Mystery, the door and lock of which were his Patches.
A Charm that was, in its essence, not just protection, but a kind of denial, the embodiment of the unwillingness to receive harm from anything, just in an extremely simplified form, narrowed and diluted to the point of becoming the initial skill of the first Tablet. The Shine was the idea of ????help, not a weapon as such, but the help the user asks for and receives. It does not matter in battle or not; it's also protection, strengthening, and not an attack. In a way, this is why it turned out to be so easy to get this Tablet. It perfectly suited the Lot of the Standard Bearer because it helped, protected, covered, and did not destroy or strike. Such revetions did not strengthen the Tablet itself, but greatly helped in its cognition. Roughly speaking, the Tablet was not strengthened by the awareness of these truths. Rather, the truths were realized because the degree of understanding of the Tablet reached the desired limit.
The st surviving hamster was generously given away for free on the trading floor. All because training with them was practically useless. Borisv Gennadievich no longer even twitched when both blessings were hung on him at once, and the random pigeon Igor was training on managed to gnaw out a piece of brick, which miraculously did not smash the head of a woman passing by. For some reason, attempts to sit te on the windowsill and cast skills on the city fauna often ended with him falling asleep. Either some unlearned feature of the gift or simply the environment pyed a role, but a couple of walks in the park convinced Igor that it was better to train outside the apartment. There, at least he did not pass out after ten.
Despite new walks, as well as a constant search for the most remote corners of the park area, he still did not encounter new vibes of the sinister Other Side. Until a certain time, of course. He consciously tried to find danger and tracked the ever-growing hysteria on the forums. The missing without a trace were multiplying. Several disfigured corpses were found in different pces in the city. They suspected a serial killer or two at once. They talked about an investigative team that had arrived from the capital, and not just one. They gossiped about how they would soon turn on the curfew. They talked about people with multi-colored IDs, who increasingly ask strange questions. Igor instinctively feels that the period of complete freedom is expiring. The authorities were confused by the fact that the abnormality seemed to be happening only in the same cities and districts where the shining balls were sown. But soon they, too, will begin to react. Sooner or ter, the first or not the first colleague will disappear, and after that, absolutely everyone will perk up.
No one paid much attention to the lonely student with a tablet sitting on one bench or another. The most dangerous adventure of the week was a conversation with a squirrel that did not appreciate the sudden buff and tried to pounce on him. Fortunately, he managed to dispel the strengthening glow in time, and simple attempts to bite practically did not weaken the barrier of the protection. He was now almost sure that this amulet could easily hold a full magazine from a machine gun, since the further, the less energy it spent on repelling purely physical blows. Especially if they were inflicted by small objects in volume and weight. A blow from a hammer removed almost two or three times more strength from the barrier than five jabs with a knife, with all his might. But even beating his defense with a hammer now required at least a couple of minutes of continuous activity. The further, the closer the retionship between Igor and the cutie-physic. In the sense that they are close, that his abilities fuck that physics in increasingly sophisticated positions and, it seems, with complete mutual consent.
During his next walk along the half-abandoned paths, he caught the lightest breath of sinister power coming from the forest. It was nowhere near as nightmarish as in a kiosk or the basement of a residential building, but he caught it from afar. Very far away, simply because nothing prevented this energy from spreading, due to the absence of walls or artificial barriers in the middle of the almost wild forest. For some time, he simply sat, breathing evenly and calmly, almost meditating in an attempt to understand more, to find new information in his feelings. As, but another attempt with the intention of discovering a form of magical vision in himself failed. Igor perfectly caught a note of the Other Side, it seemed that the very essence of him, as a person who had received the Lot, was intended for this. But nothing more. Only strength or weakness, the intensity of the flow, and the approximate direction. For some time, the young man seriously considers the desire to go there alone, but quickly discards this option.
This pce was located closer to the outskirts of the city, an abandoned park, a pce for picnics, love affairs, and recent disappearances. But if you go beyond the paths, you can easily get into an almost wild forest, which gives way to thickets of bushes and the skeletons of abandoned or completely unfinished buildings. Once upon a time, back in the Soviet Union, they were going to build either a sanatorium or dachas for mid-level party officials here. It turned out to be almost nothing. Unless, of course, the goal was to steal more materials and the allocated budget, but the skeletons remained. Many teenagers liked to hang out here, looking for an adrenaline rush or a secluded pce where they could smoke a cigarette and drink vodka without parental supervision. At best - a cigarette and vodka, at worst - a joint and a pill, or even some kind of injection. Igor seriously suggests that there may be significantly more missing people than those reported, but no one is counting drug addicts and drug dealers, who are plentiful in those areas.
Well, except for the curators, who gave them the dope to pnt.
So yes, he did seriously consider the option of trying to wander around here alone, but he considered it just for the sake of interest and a thought experiment, nothing more. And then he gave himself a mental sp on the back of the head and slowly, without attracting attention, left this sad pce, heading home. He needed to change his clothes again, and it wouldn't hurt to turn to some of the skills he had learned since childhood. After all, if you decide to do something, then do it well, otherwise, you'll have to redo it, and no one likes that anywhere. No redoing, no, damn, redoers.
Having lived a considerable part of his childhood and youth in the company of two people connected with art, it is difficult not to fall into the orbit of their hobbies and opinions. Thus, Igor had to spend a lot of time in a theater group, involuntarily learning not only a lot of unnecessary information, but also several useful skills. You wouldn’t say it by looking at him, but he, for example, knew how to put on makeup quite well, and he simply used cosmetics no worse than any female. Not that it was a reason for pride, but he was interested then, and a bunch of uncles and aunts, who were friends of the family, were not at all against introducing the child to the secrets of the craft. Yes, he certainly wouldn’t be able to make an analogue of the old Joker’s makeup from Non’s trilogy, certainly not with the materials lying around in the apartment. But he could actually put on quite decent make-up, complementing it with the right clothes, a changed gait, and carefully selected thick gsses with huge lenses.
He saw almost nothing in them, but you could recognize him only if you looked very closely and knew exactly who you were looking for. And no masks on his face, funny false moustaches or sharp sungsses in the style of the unforgettable TV series "Blind and Dumb vs. Deaf". A worn-out jacket that was long overdue for throwing out, which he deliberately ripped open and sewed up with neat but noticeable stitches, heavy boots that were a little too big, a thick, gaudy scarf that covered his lips and part of his nose, and a completely asshole hat with two pom-poms. General batteredness, a different gait, and the ability to keep himself within the limits of a role. And Igor, the promising student, was no more, but there was another homeless person or just a fallen beggar alcoholic, of which there were always plenty on the streets even in winter.
"It would be so ironic if they hauled me to the police station." Sighing and adjusting his gsses, Igor began... to undress and put on normal clothes, because changing into a "suit" was definitely not the right pce where he could be recognized or seen. "I will not escape shame, even if I fend off suspicions of any bad things."
He didn't find his acquaintance right away, because Vasily, being a real homeless person, was very good at blending into the background and not showing himself to the public, who might not give alms, but give kicks. Although, to be fair, this individual could give kicks to anyone himself... or, at least, survive other people's. The guy didn't fully understand the Lot of his ambiguous ally, but he was sure his skill or skills were aimed at increasing endurance and survivability. In any case, he found Vasily, although he had to wander around the city, hanging around the most remote alleys, further from the central streets. In the end, the location "near the avenue" is quite estic, even if you take only the one closest to Igor's area of ??residence.
By the time the fateful meeting took pce, evening was already approaching. Igor had almost decided to give up and go to the park alone. But no, he didn’t give up and didn’t go, but he found it – a cozy homeless ir was hidden in the building of a former boiler room, now abandoned by everyone except its only inhabitant at the moment. The stench was terrible, a suffocating stench of poor quality and poorly cooked products on a portable burner, unwashed bodies, urine, vomit, shit and only the devil knows what else could become a weapon in themselves. Vasily was lying on an old mattress, whose original color no oracle could determine, wrapped in several bnkets, sweetly snoring and clutching an almost empty bottle of vodka. A few more of these, and not the cheapest ones, were lying on the floor just like that, already empty, and the half-eaten processed cheese, carefully cut into strips, y forlornly in the arms of already windswept tomato slices.
He almost left, ready to spit on everything and start looking for another company or really try to develop alone, but there was no need to wake up the drunken drunk. Vas-Vas suddenly stopped snoring, opening absolutely sober and very dissatisfied eyes, staring with them clearly at the involuntary intruder into his smelly kingdom. That look was neither aggressive nor too angry, rather dissatisfied, like that of a seasoned leader of the pack, who was again challenged by a young and naive shpak. Sighing tiredly and fouling the air again, he raised himself on his elbows and unexpectedly nimbly jumped to his feet.
"You, my man, should get out of here. I live here." Igor took this address as a compliment to his skills. "Alone, so to speak, and I swear to God, I don't want any neighbours. Who are you anyway? I've never seen you before. Are you from the keside?"
"No, Vasily, not from keside," Igor answered, seeing the tense look in his eyes, followed by a vague recognition, which gradually ceased to be vague. "You already know me. I'm strong, but light."
"Ooh! That's right, my dear fellow, you'll be rich, I didn't recognise you." Vasily said, genuinely happy, seeming to want to hug him, but stopping as soon as Igor reflexively took a step back. "I won't give you the money. I've already spent it all. That's it."
By "that's it," he pointed to a mountain of bottles and untouched "snacks", and something in his voice trembled, as if he was genuinely offended, not at Igor, but at the circumstances in general. The guy honestly could not understand whether this individual was joking or simply thought so alternatively. To step into a cannibal's apartment without much fear, where he dashingly and deftly kills a deadly creature with a blow of a hammer, but at the same time be panicky afraid of a police patrol, because they do not like homeless people. To possess a full-fledged Lot, to use some magical skill, but at the same time be ready to exchange the priceless loot for two hundred rubles, so it would be enough for a hawthorn shot++. It was such a strange contrast that Igor could not shake the feeling that Vasily was in fact, just making fun of him in this way, intentionally behaving in such a textbook way.
"I don’t need it. Rather, I’m ready to offer another little deal. About as calm, sweet, and safe as the st one." Well, he’s not a fool; he recognized the py on words from the first tone and smiled crookedly into his beard, clearly remembering how sweet their st meeting had been. "Just enough for another drink. Or whatever you want to buy. The loot this time in half, or, if there’s only one mark again, I’ll take it, like I gave it to you st time."
"Heh-heh-heh. What drink, my man, whatever I want?" Vasily said with a slight and not at all imaginary despair, waving his hand tiredly and doomedly. "It doesn't work. It doesn't work at all! Three litres! In one gulp! Without a snack! I just got a little drowsy. I sat down for a snack, ate a tomato, and as soon as I finished it... and as soon as I finished it, I was sober, God forgive me. Believe me, Hedgehog, I cried, I cried, my dear man. Eh... What did you say, some scary bastard is eating people again, or what?"
Perhaps, in a different situation, Igor would have been imbued with Vasily's bitterness and resentment towards the whole world, but not in this room, where it was so difficult to even breathe. So he tried to recount his observations to Vasily as quickly and calmly as possible and offered to go into battle again against the creatures of the Other Side and those who had become these creatures. To Vas-Vas's credit, he did not deny it and, it seems, considered the destruction of those scum who devour people and children a completely normal and obvious practice. In the sense of the obvious, he did not even see a reason to demand some kind of reward for himself. Although Igor took some cash with him, he had to literally hire an ally to participate in the brawl.
And the guy also diligently kept his mouth shut, not telling Vasily that his sharply increased level of understanding of the Tablet or Tablets was provoked by participation in one group. How was it described in his second gift? The effect partially extends to other Exalted, right? He did not bind himself to Vasily with any Bonds, but who knows, is not the very fact of joint actions a kind of quasi-group effect in the systemic style? So the level of filling the scale increased sharply and rapidly, and vodka stopped affecting Vasily, even if he gulps it down from the bottle, and does not eat. No, Igor will not tell him such a thing. If he finds out, he may even try to attack out of anger and sadness, and what should Igor do then?
As it is, he will be killed in the next few hours with some probability.
The main thing is to manage to start killing first, then successfully complete this task.
Till they were done with him.
* * *
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