I suggest to read this story from my home page (see the link in my profile) for two reasons. First, it has much better formatting there. Second, my home page uses one nifty JavaScript thingy allowing you to notify me about my spelling errors without interrupting your reading. Just select the offending piece of text with your mouse and press Ctrl + Enter.
The Fatal Dream
by Cheb
DISCLAIMER: The "Night Watch" characters don't belong to me, they are created by Sergei Lukyanenko. Sailor Moon is creation of Naoko Takeuchi, Kunihiku Ikuhara and many others of Toei Animation.
A/N #1: I have a ton of comments, mostly on the names, so you have to scroll a lot... or read this story from my home page where I implemented all these comments as hints popping up when you move your mouse over a particular word.
A/N #2: I've expanded the translated version a bit, explaining some things obvious to the locals. If something is still unclear, just tell me.
A/N #3: While I use a real locations described as precisely as my memory allows, the apartment buildings don't have an exact real-life counterparts. This is intentional, I got the idea from the scene in the movies, where you can see the ruins of my home - except the ruined building looks but vaguely similar.
A/N #4, timetable: The events (beginning with chapter 1) play in the late 2003, after the Book 3 "Twilight Watch" (summer 2003) but before the Book 4 "Last Watch" (2005). Note that any real locations are described as they were in 2003, which could be quite different from how they are now, as the city is changing rapidly. The Prologue takes place in 2000.
Prologue,
the Dreamer.
It's intolerably hot in this steel well. The heat seeps from the walls, it flows from the plastic tubes containing the antenna feeders pushed to their last limit. She could almost physically feel the mighty flow of radio frequencies destroying her body, leaking through all layers of screening, resonating in the bowels of the steel colossus. She just sets her back firmly: there is no turning back anymore, there is no need to worry about her health. The whole Night Watch is probably up and searching for her now.
The young sorceress of Light smirks slightly. Let them search for her. They won't reach her. They just won't have enough time.
She straightens her helmet light, swaying awkwardly in her mountaineer harness that holds her at the naked steel wall. Outside the elevator shaft, the elevator itself jammed hopelessly now. Outside the protective railing around the staple ladder. She is in the narrow free space with no floor nor ceiling, twenty meters separating her from the bottom platform. Let them try to aim their portal here.
Wiping the biting sweat trying to reach her eyes, she continues her work, covering the plastic insulation of the feeders with the elaborate figures of runes, connecting these with her masterpiece, the runes framing a rectangular piece of the coarse steel wall, the frame prepared for the fateful words. Outside the antenna spire, the world is bathed in rays of the hot August sun. Would she be out there, she'd see a breathtaking panorama of Moscow seen from almost half a kilometer height. But she will never see it again. She'd buried herself in the dark bowels of the spire that will soon become her grave. It's completely dark here, only her helmet light pierces the darkness: even the emergency lights are shut off. All the doors are welded shut, the welding appliance still laying on the bottom platform where she left it. Of course that won't stop them. That won't even delay them for long. But she doesn't need that long, she needs just a bit of time.
Here is the last rune. Making a deep breath, the young Light One closes her eyes, silently making her first, and last, prayer to the God who doesn't exist. Usually, when an Other dies, they continue to exist somehow on the deepest, unreachable levels of Twilight - that's a scientific fact. But after what she dares to do... For her, even that seems very unlikely. With her sorry fourth level(1), she has absolutely no chance of survival. Even Gesar himself would be unlikely to survive. No, she only hopes that the spell itself, creating a closed feedback loop, will allow her to stay alive long enough to complete her task.
Composing herself, the sorceress of Light pulls out the forbidden artifacts she stole from the storage. The artifacts of the Dark. With steady hand she pushes three small ovoids of rainbow crystal into the rune rings on the feeder insulation. The ovoids hold fast, seemingly melting into the plastic.
Done. Now she can only wait. And pray to the God who doesn't exist. That she didn't miscalculate somewhere. That the Great mages, with their centuries of experience don't have some ace in their sleeve allowing them to arrive here instantly, dooming her plan.
For she just doomed herself, no matter the outcome.
Gesar, the Great Mage out of any classification, the leader of the Moscow branch of the Night Watch, raised his head from the papers. The air, it seems, darkened a bit, and there was a light draft. Here, in the tightly closed room in the heart of the citadel of Light? He looked intently at the flows of Force. Then he swore, rushing through the Twilight, but not before he raised a full-scale alarm.
Emerging from the deeper levels to the first level of Twilight right on their roof, he looked at the city and shuddered. The Dark Ones' provocation was monstrous, unimaginable in its scope and effrontery. If that was a provocation at all. This smelled like the end of the centuries long armistice and beginning of a total war.
A thin, barely visible streamers of Force rose above the city like smoky grass, forming a gossamer cover, drawn together to the source of the disturbance: the spire of the Ostankino TV tower. A halo of black light surrounded it even now, despite the fact the process has just started.
Gesar winced, berating himself. They didn't research the details of transmitting the Force through the radio channels, having proven back in the 1930s the uselessly small efficiency of this medium. And now, it seems, the Dark Ones found a way to utilize it. Of course, the efficiency is laughably small, but when you take into account the million or so people watching TV now...
The Night Watch operatives were on their way to the tower right now, violating all imaginable traffic rules and probability laws. But would they be there in time to stop the bold Dark One? Gesar understood the bastard's plan instantly, almost admiring its ingenuity: On the top levels of the Ostankino tower you can use only the first level of Twilight. Dive deeper, and you'll find yourself in a free fall: there are no rocks thin enough nor trees high enough to simulate the man-made needle.
He started creating a portal anyway, intending to get as close as possible. The dark One wasn't a fool, whatever he planned his plan doubtlessly was based on out-pacing his opponents.
The runes pulsated with a hellish black light swelling with the borrowed Force. The plastic of the feeder insulation started to smoke, suffocating her with the acrylic smoke. But she held on: it's nothing yet compared with what's to come. Before her, a rectangular frame of dusty steel wall framed with runes was filling with Force, to become a page of the Primordial Book, the purely speculative concept, the fairy tale only the novices believed in.
She felt with her spine as the enraged Light Ones speed towards the tower, as the strongest of them rise to the top of its base... And cuss, having to surface to the first layer of Twilight to be able to go higher. She smirked. You won't reach me in time, guys. You have to go up the stairs, then break through my simple traps in the spire itself...
One of the feeders burst into flames, emanating the blistering heat and stench of burning plastic. She had to do it now. She could only hope. Hope that there is enough Force for the task. She silently said her farewell to the real world she won't see again, and slipped to the first level of Twilight. One of the traps was destroyed, the runes consisting it melting with the plastic they were written on. Now the abeyant Force, devoid of the center sucking it, roared through the narrow well with a gale force, flowing blindly into the sorceress' body, filling it to the brim. An alien, Dark Force.
She didn't even wince, achieving that detached state where there is no place for pain, nor for the world around you, where only one thing exists: your destination.
She pulled out a small, unassuming piece of chalk. The Chalk of Fate, a coveted artifact she stole from the protected repository, able to rewrite the destiny itself. It was still barely worn even after the uncounted attempts by the Light Ones in the course of millenia to use it for the betterment of humankind.
She intended to spend it all in one go.
"I'll flay the bastard alive!" Zabulon gritted hatefully, still in his demonic form after traveling the deep levels of Twilight and thus devoid of his usual impenetrable emotional shield. He and Gesar were alone, standing on a convenient horizontal beam inside the endless concrete tube, beating all their subordinates here. Still, the patrol of mages of Light wasn't far away.
As well as the patrol of the Dark Ones.
Looks like a rare moment were coming where both Watches would join their efforts towards the common goal: finding and punishing the apostate. Nobody wanted the war.
So the leaders lingered halfway to the restaurant "Seventh sky" marking the top of the concrete tower itself and the beginning of its steel antenna spire reaching over five hundred meters.
The Force pulsated above their heads, the halo of black light clearly visible through all the layers of concrete and steel.
And then a spark of blinding light flared up in the center of darkness.
"Light and Darkness!" Gesar cussed aloud, losing even his legendary composure. This was the magic of Light!
"Oh, it seems the apostate is from your flock," Zabulon noted with an acidic smirk.
The chalk flared in her hand like nova, the incinerating torrent of Force rushing through her. But she, in some incomprehensible way, continued to live. And draw.
A vertical stroke, top to bottom, turns to the right. Then a horizontal stroke across it, elevating slightly. A small hook at its end. Then the next character, a simple horizontal stroke. Se. The next character. A horizontal stroke, slightly higher than the previous one. And a second one right below it, then a curve down and to the left. And the fourth character. Again a simple horizontal stroke. Ra. The blindingly shining chalk becomes red-hot, charring the sorceress' fingers. But she continues to draw. The faith in her rightness, the faith in the triumph of her plan give her an inhuman strength.
The fifth character. A slash, then a horizontal stroke, then a small upward hook. Looks like a distorted Latin "L". The sixth character. Again a simple horizontal stroke. Mu. There is almost no space left in the frame, but she has only one character to go. In this line, that's it. Ignoring the stench of burning flesh, the girl draws a slash , then a dot to the left of it. N. Only half of the chalk is left, but she still has the second word to draw. It has only four characters, but much more complex ones.
Biting her lip in concentration, the girl continues to write. A vertical stroke. Three horizontal strokes across it, the bottom one is level with the bottom of the vertical stroke, the top one slightly below its tip. This character takes a lot out of the apostate of Light, there are only the charred bones left of her hand up to the elbow. But she somehow still holds the chalk with this skeletal hand, and continues to draw. A small slash at the left end of the top horizontal stroke, and the character is finished. It has many names, in this word it will be read as "I". But its main meanings are: Life. Birth. Genuineness.
There's almost nothing left of the chalk, the runes on the wall burn crimson, burning through the steel and spitting with biting sparks. With her fogged, dimming mind the girl notes as the mages of Light and the Elder vampires break together into this section of the spire, tearing the steel doors and her protective wards apart like a rotten cardboard. She still finds the strength to smile at the irony: her deed is practically done, she has to write only the ending of the verb, optional since the spell would as well work without it. But she stubbornly continues to write, intending to die standing - figuratively, since she is slumped in her harness, her head rolled to the side, only her charred hand still moves.
A vampire attacks first, rushing through all the twenty meters separating her and the lower platform. He is thrown back, burned terribly as he touches the cocoon of Force. Nothing could survive inside this magical conflagration. Nothing, except the one who kindled it. A vertical stroke, then a small leftward arch, like the beginnings of a mirrored number 5. Then two horizontal strokes crossing the vertical one. Ki.
"Hold back!" Zabulon barks at his Dark Ones. "There is no breaking this spell now. Wait until she finishes, only then you could..." He peers intently. "Ah, well. At ease, men. This fool is a goner."
Seeing that the spell isn't one of those that summon the fire rain or turn everybody around into good Samaritans, Zabulon and Gesar raise closer to the suicidal sorceress: the space is barely enough to accommodate them alone.
A horizontal stroke followed by a leftward arch. It's very similar to "T" as the cover designers for the Tolkien's books like to draw it. Te.
"And what should this mean?" Zabulon says, raising his brow.
"My girl, what have you done..." Gesar's voice is full of pain.
A horizontal stroke, then a slash down and left, then an arch, it looks like number 3. The spell is close to completion, it starts to release the chains forcibly holding its invoker on this side of non-existence. The girl's hair burst into flames and disappear, her skin is burned rapidly.
Turning to Gesar, she has a moment to look into his eyes and smile before her lips unravel into chunks of coal, her eyes turn white, burst and dry up. The mountaineer harness falls down in flakes of ash and drops of burning plastic, but her charred skeleton continues to hang there while its hand finishes the final small circle on the end of the arch. Ru.
Then the last crumble of the Chalk of Fate flashes brilliantly, turning to ash, disappearing forever, as does Nastya Gavrilova, age 22, sorceress of Light, Level 4.
For a short moment, two words she wrote shine like starfire on the steel wall:
セーラームーン
生きてる
Then they start to sink, faster and faster, soon disappearing from sight in the infinity, and the tremendous wave of Force recedes to nothingness, leaving only the emptiness behind. The two Great Ones are left alone in the empty well filled with stilled flame.
"Splendid!" exclaims Zabulon, shaking with barely restrained laughter. "Truly befitting the Light Ones! Pity so few of you are such an exalted dreamers!"
Gesar stays silent, there is only the taste of ashes and bitterness for him.
"Well, I have a business to attend," Zabulon slaps his back familiarly. "Don't forget to prepare for our claim, we'll soon fill it. For an equivalent intervention... out of categories." He gestures to his minions and the vampires retreat, speeding towards the base of the tower where they could enter the lower levels of Twilight.
Gesar, his face ashen, slowly descends the staple ladder, suddenly feeling his immense age. Two mages of Light stay, trying to quench the flame, but they soon see that the disturbance from the tremendous discharge of Force makes all their spells fail. Resigned, they retreat down, to the area untouched by the interference, concentrating on reading the probability lines and neutralizing the versions of the future where the blaze could lead to the tower collapsing. (2)
But the wave of Force didn't disappear into nothingness. It rolls into the past, carrying the ghostly page with the glowing words inscribed on it. The probability lines give way to it, the chains of random events being sundered apart and woven anew. Because that page is one from the Primordial Book, the one where the first words are "Let there be light". The book that never existed, as the world wasn't created ten thousands years ago but emerged from the Big Bang thirteen billions earlier. But that doesn't make The Book any less powerful.
Passing the Crusades and the fall of Rome, leaving far behind the construction of the first Pyramids, the wave loses it moment, slowly waning to nothingness. The spell almost hadn't have enough power. But there it is, in the millennial depth, the soft glow of the Book's outline. And so the page continues sliding back in time, reaching slowly for the source it originated from. The words it carries are dulled but still discernible when it touches the golden outline of the Book, disappearing in it with a quiet splash of light.
A single drop of light emerges from the splash, falling up and into the future. After centuries of its unhurried fall, the drop reaches the Moon, splashing down in a ring of broken columns, quietly like a butterfly flapping its wing. And something long and utterly dead begins its slow, glacially slow awakening back to life.
The spell doesn't have enough power to affect the fate of any of the ancient empires, even less to change the outcome of the October Revolution or the Second World War. But all this time, while the Light and the Dark wage their war and then keep their armistice, while the Conquistadors fight for America and the Industrial Revolution changes the world, while the Cold War rages and the Americans reach for the Moon — all this time a ring of broken columns stays in silence among the moon dust and rubble, the ancient enchantment awaiting in a deep slumber for the destined hour.
And the time comes when the vampire Kostya opens Fuaran, creating new Others in his selfless, deadly attempt to make things better for the entire humankind. When the forbidden book burns in the orbital reentry, its released power wakes a deep reaching echo in the Twilight, resonating in the strings untouched since the dawn of civilization. Waking the last relic of an ancient, forgotten age of gods and demons. A force that has no place in our contemporary world.
The ring of columns among the moon dust, a ruin of an ancient, forgotten temple lits with a soft, silvery glow. The faded enchantments wake to action. The ruined magic circle on the rubble covered floor flashes with fiery runes, washing the Earth with a wave of unspent Force.
And the fatal dream becomes reality.
Chapter 1,
the Incarnation.
"Will you put your hat on? Or at least wrap your head in your scarf? You'll burn your ears! What did you make this thing for?"
Two eighth-grade schoolgirls cross a wide street at a traffic light regulated crossing. One is equipped properly: with a woolen hat on her head and gloves on her hands. The other one carries her pink hat in her hands: she couldn't put it on without ruining her strange hairdo, the twin balls of hair at the sides of her head, with her blonde ponytails falling from there almost to the girl's shoulders.
"Look, Zaitseva(2)," her friend still won't let it go. "You're crazy. And I mean it. Why did you have to show off like that? Your old braid was fine, I tell you."
"Dunno," she replies with a shrug, rubbing her reddened ears: the frost isn't strong but it's still biting. "I just felt like it. And I got bored with that braid.".
The fresh snow crunching under their boots, the girls follow from the crossroad into a narrow drive squeezed between the concrete fences of multiple parking lots, garage fields and car workshops. The daylight is waning and they don't feel like walking here. Alas, the railroad sticks in the city like a fish bone in a throat. All the normal streets, with their bus routes, cleaned sidewalks and street lamps, shoo away from it. The bridges crossing the railroad are far, far away from here. So, despite the fact that the girls live in less than a kilometer from each other, there is no safe route between their homes. From the Fonvisina street where Oksana lives, the girls cross the Milashenkova street, then follow this nameless drive. Luckily it's only about four hundred meters long, then they have to cross the railroad at the ground level, then they're practically at Lyuba's(4) home.
Of course, someday in the future the monorail line, the mayor's favorite pet project, will cut through this dead zone. But that's for the really far future: now only the massive concrete pillars rise along the girl's way like the Stonehenge monoliths. The builders messed up the strip of flat earth into a rough mess the girls now stubble along. Slightly to the right of their direction, the brightly lit, needle-thin spire of the Ostankino tower pierces the sky. It still isn't completely repaired since that fateful fire three years ago, but the glass hub of the restaurant is shining with all its windows. The tower is so close that you need to lift your head slightly to look at its apex.
At last both the fences run aside. The drive turns to the right, the support pillars for the future monorail follow it. The girls follow the turn of the left concrete fence, that of a parking lot, crowned with a razor wire. Before them lays the worst part of the route, the completely unguarded crossing over the three-way railroad. Its dispossessing zone on the both sides is overgrown with narrow but dense strips of forest. In the summer it's truly scary here: the dense foliage completely cuts the visibility, the overgrowth infested with hobos. But now, in the winter, the forest strips are transparent, shone through by the lights of the Koroleva(5) street. Not the one wide and proud that ends at the TV center, but its quiet, narrow end, going up to the very railroad, then running for a short while along it, and finally turning back into the depths of the block.
Lyuba involuntarily quickens her pace: the overgrowth may be see-through now, the snow helping in this regard a lot, but it becomes dark to the point that you can feel the full Moon contributing to the overall light level, the light pollution unusually low due to the clear sky.
They walk holding each other's hands. When Oksana suddenly stops, it comes as a complete surprise for Lyuba. Startled, she turns around but relaxes seeing that nothing happened. Her friend, though, for some reason peers intently into the thickening gloom along the forest strip stretching to the lengths unknown between the ditch along the tracks and the fence. A definitely, absolutely wrong place to linger.
"Let's go!" She, with great resolution, pulls her friend along, towards the mismatching collection of concrete slabs trying to feign, unconvincingly, being a bridge over the ditch.
"Huh?" Oksana replies incoherently, as if Lyuba broke her trance. "What's wrong with you?"
"Don't be a slowpoke, okay?" replies Lyuba while looking to the left, then to the right, checking for a train. Then she, with the same resolution, moves to cross the tracks, leaving Oksana no choice except to stumble along trying to keep up with her. "My ears are falling off."
"Well? What have I told you?"
Soon they leave all three tracks behind, as well as the narrow strip of trees. The girls with a great relief come out to the lit sidewalk, quickly crossing the narrow and deserted street. It's always deserted, even when the rest of the city chokes with traffic jams. A bear corner is a bear corner: this street leading nowhere is no good for either shortcuts or roundabout routes. It's hard to believe it's only a couple hundred meters from the TV center with its sprawling parking lots bursting at the seams, where the rare lawns survive only thanks to the special anti-car barriers made of low-placed metallic pipes.
It's quiet here, the whole block of the five-storied khrushchovslums(6) is shrouded in dense forest. Once saplings planted along the brand new apartment buildings, the trees long overgrew the roofs, spawning the numerous offspring. The emasculated budget of the plant control services coupled with the mayor's protectiveness equating illegal cutting to killing a sacred cow lead to most of the old courtyards turning into a dense forest. A real forest, with grass refusing to grow under its shade, with mushrooms growing among the roots in the Fall.
But Lyuba likes it here, even if the potted plants at her window wouldn't agree with her. She would never exchange her home for an elite apartment in any of these new high-rises. She saw enough, these concrete obelisks of thirty or forty stories in height rise amidst the dull barren lots covered in the shiny rainbow scale of the car roofs. Not to say they stay at the edge of some noisy main street, or even two - like that new high-rise they build on the corner of Fonvisina and Milashenkova streets, right next to the building where Oksana lives.
Not that her parents would ever have enough money for a new apartment.
Delving a bit into the block, the girls approach one of the low, prolonged apartment buildings indistinguishable from its twins. Lyuba hastily enters the code, and the iron door, a inherent feature of the late 1990s, opens with a beep, allowing them into the relatively clean staircase with ubiquitous graffiti on the walls and a slight smell of cats. There's no elevator here, the very design was born from the lacking elevator industry in the 1960s and the building norms obligating all the buildings higher than five stories to have an elevator. The girls go up the stairs to the third floor, each landing is tiny, densely packed with four apartment doors, and enter Lyuba's apartment.
"Mom, we're home!" Lyuba proclaims merrily, leaning into the tiny kitchen. "Oksana would stay for a couple o'hours, okay?"
"No couples o'hours for you," her mom replies from the stove, a lean, young looking woman with curlers in her shiny jet-black hair. "She will stay here for the night, and no arguing. Your couple o'hours would stretch to eleven, then she'll have to walk home alone at that time? No way."
"Okay," Lyuba calls back, hanging her jacket onto the hook and pulling off her boots. "Oxana, could you stay for the night...? Don't just stay there like a pole, undress, come on," she says, addressing her somehow somnolent friend.
"What's a music is this?" Oksana asks her, looking out of it.
"A music?" Lyuba strains her hearing but couldn't hear a thing. "Probably from the neighbors," she replies, confused. "Okay, I'll go search for the disk while you undress." She goes ahead, into her tiny, narrow room.
A minute passes, then another one, but Oksana still doesn't come in.
"Oksana?" She comes out to ask what's with the delay. Her question falls into the empty hall-let, the absence of Oksana's hat and jacket on the hook aching like a hole in the place of a tooth pulled out.
"She just left," mom says from the kitchen, worry clear in her voice. "She said she remembered one urgent business..."
Just left.
The pang of anxiety was so sharp that Lyuba felt it like a physical pain. Oksana just couldn't have had any urgent business. It was unlike her to suddenly rush home alone, after the dark...
The wave of anxiety was rising rapidly, and Lyuba, unthinkingly, rushed to pull her boots on. Her shaking fingers failed time and again to close the zipper. The anxiety meanwhile turned into the foreboding, something terrible was coming, terrible and irrecoverable, the foreboding ringing in her heart like a great bell. Forgetting her unzipped boot, Lyuba rushed out, having grabbed her jacket on the run, pulling it on while scrambling down the steps, missing the sleeves.
Rushing out of the building she tore right through the snow heap, scooping the snow with her unzipped boot, not thinking why she knows where to run.
The disaster felt incoming from the railroad they crossed a short while ago. Incoming rapidly, inevitably. She ran with all her strength, feeling that she would be too late. Just a bit, just a tiny bit faster!
The strip of moonlight glistened on the trampled snow ahead of her, glistened and tore apart in her wake, and the world around her suddenly faded, losing most of its color and contrast, enveloping her in a chilling cold. But she didn't notice that, feeling only that the disaster lingered, slowing its inevitable approach to a crawl.
Not noticing what she were doing, she tore through this cold, faded world with great leaps, flowing slowly like in the slow motion. The first leap carried her from the yards to the center of the street. The second one carried her through the trees to the middle of railroad. Landing with the toes of her left foot right on the rail, she, for one frozen moment, peered into the gray mass of branches, lingering amidst the motion. Then she jumped again, pushing off the rail, aiming to the right. Right at the Evil that felt like a pulsating, red-hot spot.
And still she felt she would be too late.
Just a bit, a tiny bit faster!
And the world changed for the second time, painted in shades of black, covered in the rolling dark fog. The trees became gnarled. The fence, in which bend the Evil made its nest, turned into an unkempt thorny hedge. She swam in her jump slowly, the air was like a viscous liquid, chilling, draining. But the Moon shone at her back, huge and brilliant, clearly visible through the low, rolling dark clouds. Its rays were hot like that of midsummer sun, banishing the chilling cold, chasing it away.
And now she would get there in time. The inevitable approach of disaster slowed to a standstill, while she swam forward slowly but surely.
When she was floating in her next jump, after pushing off the naked, sodden ground, she closed on the Evil presence enough to see it with her eyes: two dark, slightly blurred shadows. A tall, muscular man holding the slumped Oksana, his fangs like glowing crimson needles closing at her neck.
He didn't have time to plunge them in. Surfacing back to the gray world with normal-looking trees and fence, she slammed the heel of her outstretched right leg into the man's shoulders right as he gained his definition back. Then the time returned to its normal pace.
The man was tossed away like a bowling pin, slamming into the iron sheet fence with a strangely muffled metallic clang. Oksana, gaining a fraction of his moment, tumbled through the air, but Lyuba was somehow able to catch her, feeling surprised at how light her friend was.
"Oksan(7)! Are you all right?" She shook her friend hanging in her hands limply. At first, there was no response. Then the light from the full Moon fell onto her face, and Oksana jerked awake. She stared at Lyuba, her eyes wide in amazement bordering on awe.
The man stirred, rising to his feet. He cracked his thick neck, then jerked his dislocated shoulder back into its place, flexing it a bit.
"Hey! What's the matter, Light One?" His voice was that of a thug who had long forgot the sounding of the word 'no'. "I'm a registered vampire, I have my license." He puffed his chest, and Lyuba saw a rectangle of blue light glowing there. "She's my rightful prey. Or have you finally lost it in your Night Watch, thinking you can boss us around?"
Lyuba felt a sacred fury taking over her. The very thought that a vampire could have a 'rightful' prey was so nauseating it made her fists clench against her will.
"I'm not of this watch of yours," she said angrily. "I'm of Selaa Mun..." she choked with the unfamiliar words she just remembered unattainably. Ah, that's it. "I'm a huntress of Selena," she continued, now in her native tongue. "And the abominations like you are my prey. In the name of the saint Selena, I sentence you to nothingness. Prepare yourself, thing! Would the Most High show mercy to your soul."
"Ah, a rogue then!" The vampire gave out a rude laugh. "Well, then, I'll take you alive, to give you to the Night Watch. It's always amusing when you, the Light Ones, wipe out your own kin." He tensed, crouching with an ugly grin.
"Oksan," she put her friend to her feet. "Please, keep behind me. But not too close, okay?"
Oksana nodded, backing away slowly, still in awe to the point of being speechless. The moonlight still shone on her, making her stay out of the faded world like a badly made collage.
Then the vampire fell onto Lyuba with a hail of blows, trying to subdue her in a pain hold. And first she thought she's a goner: the man was tall, two heads higher than her, with muscles rivaling that of Schwarzenegger. But his blows, although she felt them being thrown back bit by bit, were blunted like he hit her through a thick layer of cotton. She answered his attempt to a hold with a counter move she remembered somehow, throwing his bulk over her shoulder with ease. Oksana ducked with a shriek when the vampire sailed over her head, crashing through the bushes and landing somewhere on the rails with a very unpleasant sound.
"Wow," Oksana could find only one word to say.
"Move aside, quickly!" Lyuba urged her. "He'll return any time now, and you're on his way!"
Oksana scrambled to the side. The vampire tore through the bushes with a vile cussing. Looks like he got angry, at last. His face grew bony, gaining a beast-like appearance, with fangs growing longer and eyes glowing baleful red like hot coals.
"Now I be tearing you apart with my own hands!" he growled in his changed, guttural voice. His muscles bulged suddenly, his showy jacked bursting at the seams.
She faltered momentarily under the pressure of his concentrated hatred, and the vampire rushed her with incredible speed, slamming into her with all his bulk and throwing her off her feet. He slid on top on her through the snow warm like a stir foam, pressing her face to the ground and pulling her arm behind her back in a pain hold.
"Got you, sissy," he breathed with satisfaction.
Not seeing a way to break the hold, she just dove deeper, to the world with no snow and the huge Moon hot like a midsummer sun. The sodden ground chilled her instantly. The vampire got all the heat of the moonlight, and he didn't like it a bit.
"What the...?" he roared, the painful hold on her hand weakening a bit. She heard a faint crackling, the smell of burning hair reaching her nostrils.
Then she dove even deeper.
The hard, dry ground burned her with intense cold, inflicting a sharp pain. Squirming like an eel on the frying pan, she threw the smoking, cussing vampire off. Jumping onto her feet, she cast a brief glance around. The trees were mostly gone, replaced with some bizarre twisted logs. The rails turned into gnarled roots. The buildings over the street looked like angular crags with roughly cut holes. A shiny, metallic clouds rolled overhead, the incomprehensibly huge Moon still shining through them with ease. But here its light was positively scalding. The newly christened huntress found herself turning and twisting involuntarily, to avoid being charred on one side like a chunk of meat forgotten on the grill. Her breath fell in silvery puffs in the freezing air, the ground chilling her feet right through the soles of her boots.
"What sort a monster are you?" the vampire screamed in fear and anger, squirming under the scorching rays. And then he suddenly faded, vanishing into the thin air. 'He just surfaced', she figured out, and followed him, all the way back to the real word.
The vampire was on all fours, looking around, his eyes wild. Skin fell off his burned face in flakes. He saw her and backed away involuntarily.
"What a nonsense is that?" He almost broke to shriek. "There is no silver moon in the Twilight, there could never be!"
She raised her hands to the sky.
"I'll fill a complaint to the Night watch!" The vampire backed away, still on all fours, faster and faster. "You won't get off that easily!" His eyes opened widely when he saw the Moon between her upraised hands, the celestial body having no right to be in that part of the sky.
"Light!" she shouted out one single, short word. Ripping the Moon off the sky, she threw it at him with both her hands, exerting a mighty effort.
The blinding light fell onto the vampire like a hammer of gods, then he was ash.
Lyuba slumped, heaving, leaning with her hands on her suddenly shaking knees, feeling utterly spent. Looks like she forgot something...? "Oksana!" she hastily dove back into the washed gray silence.
Her friend stood there, shining with blue moonlight amidst the gray colorless world. She lost her hat, the icy wind tugging at her wavy brown hair. She was jumping in place, slapping her palms together and rubbing her face - all the things one does when the frost bites seriously.
"Drats, time just stretches forever in this fourth dimension!" she replied to all her friend's concerned questions. "I thought I'd freeze to the bone here until you pull me out."
Lyuba hastily grabbed her hand, resurfacing back in the real world. Oksana was trembling, hugging herself. "Lyub(7), it's really you?"
"What do you mean?" she asked, confused.
"Wow...! I mean... God... Just look at yourself!
Lyuba found the time to think, at last, why she doesn't feel cold. She ran out of home without her hat, right? And then she scooped a bootfull of snow.
The first thing she noticed, the boots were wrong. Deep red leather, pointy ends curving slightly upwards, in the very traditional old Russian style, richly embroidered with silver beads.
Second, her legs were bare, a deep blue skirt of ropes replaced her jeans, reaching her mid-thigh. The skirt was literally made of thin ropes, a lot of them dangling in a thick fringe from the thick rope encircling her waist, going higher on the sides and forming a shallow "V" in the front. She'd never wear such a scandalous thing voluntarily, it was just like these tribal grass skirts. But what was most strange, she felt rather warm in the damn thing.
After that, a silvery-white cross between a silken leotard and a synthetic swimsuit looked rather trivial. As well as the elbow-long gloves of the same material with silver inlay on the fingers - both a protection and a built-in knuckles.
Oksana laughed in a shuddering laughter bordering on hysteria. "Just look at this! Sailor Moon in a kokoshnik!" She hiccuped hysterically. "I never thought I'd see Sailor Moon in a kokoshnik!"
"Not 'sailor', 'Selaa'," Lyuba corrected her absent-mindedly, reaching for her head. She wasn't surprised to find a headdress there. Pulling it off, she found it really resembling a small kokoshnik(8) of silver filigree, curving to a pointy top in the profile o an ancient Russian helmet or an onion-shaped church dome.
"Oh God..." Oksana was shaking now, the receding adrenaline wave leaving her with a dire withdrawal. "Oksana Naryshkina... Naru Osaka..." Now, when it was over, the enormity of the events hit her and she finally felt fear. The incomprehensible mountain of coincidences told of the real, no-nonsense magic, harsh and threatening. The vampire? The vampire was just that. A thug with fangs. "I hope they won't attack me r..regularly. I w..wonder, does Queen Beryl have only vampires at her disposal, or does s..she have werewolves too? Or t..trolls? How do you think?"
"What are you talking about?" Lyuba cast an alarmed glance at her friend who was seemingly going crazy.
"D..didn't you watch the 'Sailor Moon' on TV?" the stuttering, shaking Oksana asked her in return. "And here I thought... It's a f..famous series. And I'm a p..proud fan of it!" She straightened proudly, but her eyes were swelling with tears.
"A series?" Lyuba didn't understand her. "What a series have to do with this?"
"Everything!" Oksana pronounced. "Two Japanese schoolgirls, Naru Osaka - that would be me - and Bunny... I mean, Usagi Tsukino who turns into a sailor-suited warrior to fight evil..." Lyuba wasn't inclined to believe that, but she decided to let her friend vent it out. "And you are now dressed just like she, when she turns into that s..sailor-suited warrior. I mean, she has a normal pleated skirt, and no kokoshnik... But these are mere details! And..." She suddenly grabbed Lyuba, holding onto her like a life-line. "Lyub, I'm scared." She sobbed. "That Sailor Moon, from the cartoon, she became a magical girl when Naru was attacked by a monster. And then she was attacked many times over..."
"Don't worry," Lyuba patted her back. "I'll always be there to protect you. Just you call, I'll always come in time."
"Really?" Oksana sobbed, relaxing.
"Really. This fourth dimension, it has many layers. The deeper you dive, the slower the time goes. I can dive so deep that it will stay still even if I have to cross the whole Moscow."
She didn't tell her about the dire frost and the scorching moonlight reigning there, in the depth.
Lyuba suddenly felt compelled to get away, now! Without a word, she scooped Oksana up, diving straight to the second level. She rushed away through the chilly, viscous air, with much more ease than her first time. Sharing her warmth with her friend, shielding her from the draining cold.
Behind her, the moonlight sparkled, erasing all the magical traces of her, until only the vampire dust was left to hang in a heavy cloud. Then the light died out: there was never a silver moon on the first, nor on the second or the third levels of Twilight.
Thanks for C&C to:
— all the people who contributed using the Orphus system (20 bugs so far).
Last correction: April 26, 2009
Notes:
1. The Night Watch books Canon: the 7th level is the weakest, the 1st is the strongest. On top on that, there are the Great mages out of classification, and the even rarer Zero level Others born once in a thousand years. Most of the operatives are of levels 5 to 3. There are about a dozen 3rd level mages of light in the Watch, even less of levels 2 and 1. Of course, being a part of real life, this system is somewhat blurry.
2. The TV tower burned down in August 2000, yours truly being right in the crowd of onlookers witnessing it from the unsafe distance of merely 200 meters.
3. Zaitseva is her surname, means 'Rabbits' or 'Hares', as you like.
4. 'Lyuba' is short of 'Lyubov', which means Love. Yes, that's a normal woman's name, if a bit rare. There's also Hope (Nadya/Nadezhda) and Faith (Vera)
5. The Academy Member Korolev was the driving mind behind the Soviet space program. The 'a' in the end is due to his surname being used in the accusative case (of Korolev, literally). Most of the major streets in this area of city have names associated with space. The Star boulevard, the Street of kosmonauts, and so on. Not to say about the Tsiolkovsky monument coupled with the Space researches monument, the museum in its basement housing the authentic Gagarin's reentry capsule (should re-open in 2010 or 2011, after a long reconstruction).
6. 'Khrushchov' plus 'trushchoba'(slum) makes 'khrushchoba' (i translate it as 'khrushchovslum'). A nickname for the apartment buildings mass-produced in 1960s. But I disagree. Yes, the apartments have the spaciousness of a cardboard box (my friend lives in one), but otherwise they are Ok. In their time, these buildings were a quantum leap forward. Khrushchov was that bald guy in between Stalin and Brezhnev, good and progressive in overall, if a petty tyrant.
7. Oksan', Lyub' - a very familiar forms used only in direct addressing. Omitting the ending vowel makes the name sound shorter, accentuating it sharply.
8. Kokoshnik is a traditional headdress akin to a flat, sharp-pointed tiara that sits on top of the head, stretching from ear to ear.