Eternity is eternal, and they drag on as long as they can before they get in touch with the master and return to their immutable jail. Only unlike Daren Noel, who broke his shackles, is their prison more difficult to destroy. The tree sings, and in his song, one can clearly hear the jubilant notes - the last Distorting Eleven people who hid and closed all the roads to their impassable forests is finally free.
The tree looks like the magician who raised it, and only the oblique apple trees in the mayor"s garden smell evil - the stocky tops bend even lower. The second Ruler of Klint Severny leans back in his chair and rubs his neck slightly, which, as if he were hanging a heavy load from it, is more drawn to the ground than usual. The scarlet ruby now seems to live its life, hollow as never before brightly. Seven sparks, as if soldered into the heart of the facets shimmering in the light, then go out, then flare up again - seven different souls, like flies once caught in a web of rubies.
A smile is born on a wrinkled face, and a yellowish dish, pigmented hand shrinks a little harder on the pulsating rock - a second, the other, and the latter fade out completely. The flame of a candle in a closed, oxygen-free space. To some extent, it is. The abbot approaches the window: not to look at his possessions, he does not need to be reminded of how great his responsibility for the lives and souls of the inhabitants of this city is. He thinks. He realizes. He calculates how great the risk was. Lord Dayren Nick has left his centuries-old prison, just before Chief Guardian Kinth of the West took office. He hasn't been in the world for three hundred years, three hundred years have passed since he was imprisoned, so where can anyone who seeks peace and revenge go?
There are no roads to the eleven forests, so only the city that has lost hope is its last and only possible refuge. The city, which has never been on the maps and from which nowadays there are no walls: only in a few houses is the foundation much older and stronger than others since it could be destroyed neither by dusty centuries nor by people who came after the won war. And now, as if to mock the former inhabitants who had "lost hope" But all of it, which laid on its last island of rest, is replaced by much wider cobbled streets and squares of the new capital. Klint Western laughs at the sounding voices of people who have long since decayed their skeletons. The fires at the border posts this night blaze particularly brightly, illuminating the faces of the men who voluntarily took up arms and joined the guardhouse in a tense wait, and at the same time casting shadows on the ground, giving rise to monsters no less terrible than those that appear in the weak mind of a coward.
The hands, used to the plow and ax, clench tightly the seemingly uncomfortable hooks of the old, fatherly swords - no one trembled, did not refuse, because behind their backs, in the village, where now there was not a single light, there are those for whose lives everyone was ready to give everything they had. They were not saved. Now it is known - there is no one who did not know about the incident in this village, but then, more than three hundred years ago, despite the fear for the dear to the heart people, none of those who are waiting at the border of the village and the forest have no doubt.
They just believe. It is stupid and blind, not knowing yet that the Gods, whose generous offerings have not yet disappeared from their altars, do not hear their words or their thoughts. From the forest thicket, there is a howl of animals and a blacksmith - it can be easily recognized by the mighty shoulders with swollen veins - so he holds his hammer so tightly, with which he has not parted even before the present threat - silently throws a couple of branches into the restless fire.
They fall into the fire with a crackle, swinging up the ashes from the already burned firewood and a cloud of sparks. A few falls into the dry grass very close by and a younger man, but the features of a face similar to a blacksmith, as well as remaining silent, quickly trample them with his boot. Here, in this place, at this time, and so dangerous, and would not want to survive in a battle with the beast, whose howl sounds closer and closer, to die in a fire.
