It was already night outside, and they were walking through the forest. Belyana and Zemlyana held hands, and in the other hand Belyana held a leash on which Mary trudged, whom no one bothered to dress. Karina tried to see the ground in the darkness, but still stumbled every now and then, and Fox entertained herself by counting these stumbles aloud.

  Finally, a small hut appeared in front of them. It was surrounded by a fence of human-like bones. Sticks protruded from the fence every meter or two, adorned with luminous little skulls on top.

  “No, seriously?” Fox asked when she saw this. “What the hell are we doing here?”

  “We don’t have time to catch a storm,” Belyana answered.

  “And even if we were, then why, if she has a secret path?” Zemlyana continued.

  “I've never been here,” said Karina, “But somehow this place looks familiar. What's this?”

  “You see?” Belyana asked Fox. “She is already interested, and you are outraged here.

  Hut-hut, if I have to ask you again, I will turn you into firewood.”

  There was an offended creak, very similar to a deep sigh, after which the hut turned around its axis, showing the door.

  The door opened, and the hostess was already standing in the aisle. A young black-haired woman, with a slightly hawk nose, was wearing only a long shirt, and one of her legs was wrapped with an elastic bandage from the foot to the knee.

  “Why are you, dear guests, do not coming in?” in a violin voice, with some strange hoarseness, she asked.

  “Because your house stinks like a mortuary,” Fox scolded her. “Who would?”

  The woman sniffed defiantly.

  “I feel an unwashed dog walking around nearby, oh, my eyes have become bad, I can’t see it,” she said without changing her tone.

  “Yeah, who are you fucking, hag. Last time I saw one eye of you, and now you, for sure, have fattened the second one.”

  “What a smart bitch. I can’t hide anything from you.”

  Fox still could not stand it, and in a rage jumped towards her. The woman just caught Fox by the hand and twisted it behind her back.

  “Come on, you know, ‘Lady, forgive the asshole, I won't do it again’,” she said to Fox.

  “You'd rather ... Fuck yourself ... With your crooked nose ... Into ass, than get it,” through her teeth, Fox answered.

  The laughing woman released her.

  “I just missed you,” she justified herself somehow unconvincingly. “So much time has passed, but here, you know, it’s pretty lonely.”

  In the end, they still went inside. From the outside, the wooden house may have looked small, but inside it turned out to be a real mansion, and even a two-story one. Actually, the hostess took them to the second floor, where there was a rather cozy kitchen, with a small table in the middle. On the stove, something was boiling in a pot, and on the table itself were plates full of beautifully served food.

  Fox said in Karina's ear that she should not eat anything here, even if she was hungry. Karina did not have time to ask why, as the woman turned to her.

  “It's the first time we see each other, right? I'm Yaga, and you?”

  “Karina,” she answered, and then she realized why the house outside seemed familiar to her. “Yaga? The one? Aren't you supposed to be... Old?”

  “At least someone from this company is decently brought up,” she giggled. “It's to scare the kids, and so, I can look like anything.”

  “Bullshit,” sharply refuted her assertion Fox. “What do you have in your pot, hag?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she simply opened the lid of the pot, and picked up the heavy contents with a ladle. With a shaved child's head, already gray, water flowed down. The eye sockets were empty, and a tongue dangled from a toothless mouth.

  “Who knows how much she ate them in order to throw off so many years,” Fox said to Karina. “When I saw her, she was at least twice as old as she is now.”

  “Why are you scaring the girl,” Yaga pretended to be offended. “Directly this boy pissed on my fence. Why should I just let him go?”

  “No, did you see it? She doesn’t even understand in principle what is wrong in her logical chain,” and after that, Fox turned to Yaga herself. “You do realize that this is the main reason why people even tried to erase your name from their memory, right?”

  “I'm sorry,” she answered to Fox somehow sadly. “If no jokes, then I understand everything perfectly. We are to blame for what we ended up with. I don’t expect your understanding, but just let you know that right now I simply have no other choice. We looked for it and didn’t find any.”

  Belyana and Zemlyana just nodded in unison when Fox looked at them.

  “Disgusting,” she finally said. “That's why I hate you all. I don’t give a fuck about your global problems, and you constantly drag me into them. The entire mood was ruined.”

  And she, very dissatisfied, plopped down at the dinner table.

  “Since we are done with this circus,” said Belyana, “Let’s get down to business. We need a pass to Buyan.”

  “What do I have to do with this?” Yaga asked.

  “Mirror,” Zemlyana answered.

  “They didn’t even spit on the hand, and immediately to blackmail,” Yaga giggled. “Okay, okay, I'll open the door - it's not worth it to rust further.”

  And Karina noticed a small table on which lay a gold coin, a handkerchief and a comb.

  “Is that what I think?”

  “Take it if you want,” Yaga shrugged. “They're useless anyway.”

  She did not need a second offer - having received permission, she immediately put them in her pocket.

***

  They were rafting along a small cave river on a small ship, the oars of which were rowed by four pairs of bone hands. Candles were hung along the walls, which immediately lit up on their own, as soon as ship caught up with them.

  “Yeah, it’s utterly secret,” Fox quipped, noticing the inscription “Vasya was here” scratched on the wall.

  Belyana was sitting on Zemlyana's knees, and they were kissing. Fox grimaced as she turned and saw this instead of an enthusiastic audience.

  “Why not just fuck here?” she asked displeasedly. “First of all, you look like fucking twins. It's disgusting. Secondly, she,” Fox pointed to Zemlyana, “In fact, the mother of everything. This is doubly disgusting. In all its aspects.”

  “Grump,” Belyana only said. “The face is young, but the behavior gives out age.”

  “And how old?” without a second thought, Karina asked.

  Fox just coughed in embarrassment, causing Belyana to burst out laughing again.

  “Whatever,” Karina muttered. “What about food, by the way?”

  “Obviously,” Fox replied. “It’s not only all rotten, but also wormy. Even one bite dispels this illusion. You would vomit further than you could see.”

  Karina only trembled.

  Ship finally approached the exit from the cave, from which a bright light beat.

  “Mary, shield,” said Belyana.

  A huge ball of transparent threads appeared around the ship, which would not even be noticeable if they did not refract light.

  As soon as they swam out of the tunnel, an ultrasonic scream was heard, and the shield burst into flames.

  “Holy fuck!” Fox jumped up in surprise, “What the hell is this?”

  “What it looks like is what it is,” Belyana answered imperturbably. “Firebird.”

  A huge animal hovered in the sky. Her golden wings and unimaginably beautiful tail, somewhat reminiscent of a peacock, blazed with flames, and the bird poured fire on their ship.

  “Why the hell is she acting like a dragon?!” Fox shouted over the bird. “She must eat apples and sing!”

  “Who cares,” Belyana said indifferently. “Mary, knock down the chicken.”

  In a second, hundreds of transparent threads wrapped around the mythical creature, and it simply burst, torn into particles. Bloody rain dripped from the shield like a glass dome.

  “She is too noisy,” answered Belyana to bewildered glances. “Besides, she is deathless anyway.”

  After a while, they sailed to the shore of a green island. In the midst of natural splendor, a huge golden palace towered, blinding the eyes with reflected sunlight.

  Fox and Karina went downstairs, but as soon as Fox turned to ask why the others were so slow, she immediately grimaced. The hands of Zemlyana and Belyana were already under each other's dresses, and they were clearly in no hurry.

  “And this is another reason why when they are together, it is generally impossible to deal with them,” Fox sighed. “Let’s go, they’ll catch up. I guess.”

  A neat tiled road led to the castle, along the edges of which stood wooden houses. The windows and doors in all were boarded up, and they themselves were rather dilapidated, clearly hinting that no one had lived here for a long time. Warriors in golden chain mail guarded both the road itself and the castle. However, as soon as Fox said that she and her friend wanted to enlist in the army, the soldiers stopped bothering them at all, and generally paying attention to them.

  The interior of the palace turned out to be somewhat more ascetic, consisting entirely of wood. After wandering back and forth, they reached the great hall. On a golden throne, with her muscular legs on the handle, reclining, a young woman was reading a weighty book. Her blond hair was braided into a very thick and long braid, hanging down to the floor, and her light-blue eyes even seemed to glow. She was wearing only a knee-length white shirt, trimmed around the edges with weaves of Asiatic dayflowers. Next to her was a tall stand on which sat a large falcon, looking at the guests with curiosity.

  “Good morning, guests,” she said in a voice like a song, without even taking her eyes off the book. “What for did you visit me?”

  “We want to sign up for the troops,” Fox replied.

  “Oh, are you, girls, oh, are you, beauties?” the melodiousness of her voice gave some special charm to the causticity. “The wind whispered in my ear that the graceful Firebird had a different opinion.”

  Morevna turned the ring on her finger. Thirty-three huge twin warriors in shining armor appeared in the middle of the hall, holding heavy clubs in their hands. Without giving even a second to think, they immediately attacked the invaders.

  Fox took a deep breath. There was a loud bang, with which she simply disappeared from her place.

  Ragged holes appeared in the armor of the men, and they themselves, with an iron clang, fell dead to the floor.

  The wave of air was strong enough, but Karina still managed to stay on her feet, and Fox was already standing next to her again.

  Morevna sighed, slammed her book loudly, and stood up. No matter how impressive Fox seemed, against the two-meter Morevna even she looked small.

  “Oh, Finist, sing a song to me

  About the scarlet rivers.

  The evil always must to be

  Obedient and shivers!”

  “Grab fast!” Fox screamed.

  The bird flowed in streams into Morevna's outstretched hand, turning into a sword almost the same size as Morevna herself. The blade had several serrations, and the hilt was adorned with silver feathers.

  Karina grabbed the back of Fox, who had already turned into an animal.

  Almost immediately, Morevna appeared right in front of them, and Fox vibrated, catching the sword in her mouth.

  With a wave of her head, she threw Morevna aside. She crashed into the wall with a whistle and a rumble.

  And Fox immediately rushed in the opposite direction, punching a passage for herself and Karina right through the walls.

  As soon as they jumped out, Morevna already appeared, with sawdust tangled in her hair.

  Karina pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and threw it on the ground.

  The ground was replaced by a huge uneven stone surface. Of course, there was no sense in this, how could Morevna be delayed?

  Then Karina threw a comb. Behind them, a whole forest of slimy tentacles appeared, immediately reaching out to Morevna, trying to grab and wrap her.

  With one swing of a huge sword, so fast, as if the weapon weighed nothing, Morevna cut down all this abomination at once, without even slowing down.

  Karina threw the coin last. A kilometer-long mountain grew out of the ground, consisting of moving, decomposing bodies, which, one after another, lingeringly begged for death.

  First, the sound of an explosion was heard, and then Morevna appeared directly above the mountain, flying over it in one jump.

  And her loud cry resounded across the sky.

  “Mother Earth, hear my call,

  Leave no signs of heads at all!”

  “Shit,” was all Fox managed to swear at.

  Morevna landed with the blade of her sword on the ground. The impact caused an earthquake, and a real forest of various kinds of steel cutting tools grew out of the ground, turning Fox and Karina into minced meat and bones instantly.