“It’s funny after all,” said Fox. “What do you not like?”

  “This is an insult to poetry,” Karina answered her. “Instead of normal poems, they are memorizing only trashy ones.”

  “In the end you got infected with snobbery from her,” Fox answered accusingly. “From your point of view - poetry itself offends speech, because it distorts the pronunciation, and sometimes the meaning for the sake of rhymes.”

  “There is a more serious problem here,” Belyana interjected.” While I have never heard the first in any of the variations, the second is pretty much modern.”

  “And where’s a problem?” asked Fox.

  “All these zones are hundreds and thousands of years old. The key generally got out, because it sensed us and really wanted to die. Otherwise, the local inhabitants couldn’t have any connection with the outside world.”

  “Are you seriously calling a piece of iron a suicidal?” Fox was surprised to hear the delirium.

  “That person was the key entirely,” Belyana shrugged. “Even if he didn't fully realize it. Well, it doesn’t matter, the town may be small, but it’s better not to waste time. Let's go look for answers. I don’t have any.”

  “Day of discoveries,” Fox quipped. “The know-it-all finally admitted that she had always been just an arrogant.”

  “Aren't you glad that for once, your exorbitant talkativeness can be useful?” Belyana giggled. “Enjoy it.”

  After spending a couple of hours interviewing the local population, they returned to the same place.

  “Nothing interesting,” Karina reported. “Except for a couple of exhibitionists who ran out of nowhere.”

  “Well, I found something,” Fox said. “They are going to temple once a week. Magical, they say. No one knows how it works, but they learning everything they’re interested in there. I hope, of course, their common fashion doesn’t take roots from there.”

  “Not a lot,” answered Belyana. “However, maybe it was necessary to start with the temple, since it’s existing at all. Where else to look for an unnatural stuff?”

  Having reached the place, they fell into a long line of people. For a long time they stood in it, until, finally, they were at the entrance. The line led to an ordinary cave in a stone wall, even though it was covered with incomprehensible symbols around the hole.

  After standing there little more, they finally went inside. An ordinary room, of which there are many. There was a large double bed against the wall, and the room even had a window, although nothing could be seen through it but the rock.

  “Okay,” Fox said loudly. “Where is my stash?”

  “Ahem,” there was a bass echo in the room. “Pay first, ask later!”

  “Where from did you say that?” Fox began to rummage around the room, looking under the bed and in the closets.

  “Okay, stop, stop, stop, I'll tell you for free!” The echo became confused and nervous.

  “Nah, it's too late,” Fox answered, with one brute force pushing back the secret door that divided the real room almost in two.

  Behind it was a sweaty little man, with piggy eyes, sitting on a small chair. He was dressed in a crimson jacket and crimson trousers. Behind him on the wall hung a human-length mirror. It itself was in a golden frame, inscribed with the same symbols that were at the entrance.

  “Well, you found me, so what?” he asked irritably. “All the same, I'm not doing anything bad, just living here, don't bother anyone.”

  “Why are you making excuses then?” asked Fox.

  Belyana all this time stood with a very thoughtful look, putting her finger to her lips. Sometimes she took it away, as if remembering something, about to say, but then returned it to its place, and again went into herself.

  “Move away from the mirror,” she said at last.

  The man began to resent, but Fox simply moved him along with the chair, and Belyana went up to the wall.

  “Looking-glass against the wall,

  Let me see the universe's core.”

  Nothing happened, and the man just laughed.

  “Another one read too much fair...” he suddenly stopped when Belyana only glanced at him.

  “The window of gods that sleeps,

  The universe's core let me see.

  As equal payment I gives -

  The one who avoided the Sea”

  Without uttering a rustle or a squeak, the man simply disappeared. His crimson suit collapsed to the floor, jingling with some trinkets that the owner once wore.

  The mirror showed no sign of life. Only Belyana's eye, for a moment, was completely covered with blackness, as if someone had stolen all the light from it.

  “This mirror,” she said at last, “Is very old. I never thought it existed. It even developed its own will. I'm taking it.”

  “And why should I care?” Fox asked reasonably.

  Two men with swords at the ready ran into the room. Surprisingly, the color palette of their armor was quite normal, even if the clothes were clearly not appropriate for the era.

  “Freeze! Remove your hands, and all of you slowly leave the temple,” they said to Belyana, who had already removed the mirror from the wall, and to Karina and Fox, who were just standing at a distance.

  “This why,” Belyana giggled. “Sorry, guys, but I'm taking the toy from you. You played enough with it.”

  With a vile gurgling, the skin of the guards began peeling off in patches, exposing rotting, wormy meat.

  Immediately they took off from their seats to punish the troublemakers.

  As soon as they got close, Fox reflexively waved her hand, slamming them into the bed, causing it to fall apart with a crash.

  “I don't see a problem.” She turned to Belyana standing behind.

  “You actually should,” she answered, looking at how the guards behind Fox rise.

  One of them overcame five meters in a jump, sinking his teeth into Fox's hand.

  The face of the second from the blow just crumpled. His mouth began to stretch until it reached the size of the guard himself. Something came out from inside, repeating a human silhouette, only unpleasantly shimmering with some kind of glare.

  The snarling Fox waved her hand, on which the decaying monster dangled, with all her might.

  He flew into the silhouette, chopping off a piece of meat from her hand with his teeth. The exposed bone could be seen through the bleeding wound.

  The silhouette, under the body flying through it, fell apart into separate swarming parts. It turned out that this is a colony of thick toothy worms that quickly crawled towards Fox.

  The thrown corpse pierced several meters of rock. With a deafening roar, everything around trembled, and the ceiling began to crumble.

  Fox, clenching her teeth and squeezing a cry, rushed to the exit as fast as she can, and with her Belyana and Karina, trying not to get caught by the worms.

  As soon as they ran outside, the room collapsed completely.

  Karina squealed, coloring the whole space with a violin echo. Her left leg, calf-deep, was under a fallen boulder.

  Decaying crowds have already gathered around, glaring at the intruders. But they did not try to attack, they just stood there.

  “It seems that they want you to return the mirror back,” Fox shouted over Karina’s screech, lifting the stone with an exorbitant weight with her healthy hand.

  Only Karina had the opportunity - she pulled out the crushed part of her leg. Giggling, Fox congratulated Karina on her baptism of fire.

  “Not an option,” answered Belyana. “As you can see, it's just dangerous to leave it here.”

  “Maybe then you can deal with this undead army yourself? I actually should have grabbed the ax ...”

  “And that's why we have you here!”

  Fox only sighed, looking around at a couple of hundred corpses.

  “Keep up,” she said to Belyana, grabbing the still groaning Karina, who was clearly unable to walk on her own.

  And they ran.

  The undead immediately rushed towards them, trying to tear them apart with their teeth and peeling hands.

  Each kick that Fox did shook the ground, and the monsters that fell under the distribution demolished a dozen others.

  Those who stood with difficulty kept their balance under the trembling of the earth, but growling, they attacked with all the malice that was in them. Those who were thrown back also attacked, quickly recovering, and disintegrating into worms if the damage turned out to be too serious.

  They seemed to be simply ignoring Belyana, although it was she who dragged the huge mirror.

  No matter how well Fox fought back on the run, every now and then they managed to reach her. The sarafan and shirt were already fairly torn off, and all the exposed parts of the body were slashed with lacerated bleeding wounds.

  There was a door through which the forest could be seen. With the second hand, tolerating a pain, Fox simply grabbed Belyana, and with two bodies at the ready, jumped a few meters forward into the passage.

  One of the monsters managed to jump after them, but he was only stretched into a long tape, gradually disintegrating into invisible particles, until he completely disappeared.

  The door fell off along with the frame. The forest landscape has changed - now they were in the middle of ruins, albeit surrounded by the forest. Brick remains of the buildings are so dilapidated that with great difficulty anyone could say that they once were houses at all.

  “It’s still a pity for the sarafan,” tired Fox exhaled, looking around her tattered body after she lowered Karina to the ground.

  Karina carefully touched the dangling semi-liquid ankle, wanting to examine it, but when her face crumpled from pain, she decided to wait with it.

  “After all, someone’s ass will be kicked,” Belyana said to nowhere, patting the glass with her hand. “She didn’t leave any toys here, riiight, yeeah.”