Invasion

Artem removed the medallion from his neck.

“Show it to the guards. They’ll let you in without further questions. And we will save Maria. Yeah, and tell them to make as many arrows as possible. I think we’ll be able to handle them that way.”

“Alena, how’s the miller?”

“He’s sleeping.”

“Wake him up and tell him we’re going. There’s no time to lose.”

Alena went into the house.

“You also need to make a wooden weapon,” Babak reminded them. “Make yourself a spear or something.”

“We’ll do it right now,” the princes said.

Yaroslav looked at his brother and muttered, “I wish I had a chance to test the arrows on them.”

“You’ve killed the bats!” Artem pointed out.

“They didn’t burn. The vampires do.”

“That’s it?” Artem asked, surprised. “It’s not really a problem. I wish I could make a sharp wooden sword!”

“Nonsense,” Yaroslav said. “We’ll manage.”

That same morning, the fox began to carry out her ingenious plan.

The wolf didn’t find the requested chickens, grew furious, swore, and went in search of the wily fox that had dared to disobey him so recklessly. And soon, he found what he was looking for. A gutted chicken was lying on the ground, and a sparrow was sitting on top of it.

“Shoo, you pot-bellied thing!” the wolf growled.

In response, the sparrow made a lazy motion with his wing, showing the wolf what he could do with himself. The wolf was unable to believe his eyes. He growled so loudly that the Sparrow was simply blown away. But the Bully didn’t give up. He came back and repeated the motion with his wing. Enraged, the wolf rushed at the crazy sparrow to crush him with one blow of his paw. However, the sparrow fluttered and flew up, trying not to get ahead of a pissed-off wolf.

“Where do you think you’re going?!” the wolf growled. “Stop! “

“Run, predator, run!” the sparrow giggled. “Don’t give up!”

The wolf was shaking with rage, and only the appearance of the fox on the trail stopped him from exploding. The wolf stopped and snarled, but said nothing. Suddenly, there was an incredibly loud uproar, and a cloud of sparrows attacked the wolf.

A few minutes before the meeting between the fox and the wolf, the captain of the ship woke up because the on-board computer was vibrating with a melodic trill. The ship was almost restored. The captain opened his eyes and jumped up. He hit his head against the shelf but still got into the chair and gave the ship a command to check the state of equipment. Then he gave a short cry of pain and checked if he had cut the skin on the back of his head.

No. A second piece of good news.

On the holographic screen, the messages about the devices’ current performance appeared. Most of them had already recovered. Now, he just had to restart the program, and in a few minutes, according to the clock, the ship would be fully prepared to perform its basic functions. Most of them recovered almost completely.

“Great news!” the captain exclaimed, turning on the stopwatch and entering the command into the computer. He wanted it to broadcast the time remaining until the ship was restored.

“Fifteen minutes, ten seconds,” the low and unclear voice muttered. Before, it had belonged to a generic female, but the block of voice modulation was restored last. The captain shivered. The voice sounded unusually muffled, and the joyful news were shared with an intonation that seemed downright ominous.

The captain tried to calm his heart and turned on the second monitor to admire the marvelous local scenery. From what he saw, his heart jerked even harder. There was a suspicious level of activity of some flying life forms around the ship. The sparrows, who had seemingly flown out of nowhere, settled on the neighboring trees in such huge numbers that the branches drooped under their weight. In the next moment, the Fox came, put the gutted chicken about fifty meters from the ship, and stared at the latter in a way that made the captain break out in a cold sweat. He felt that the time, which was rapidly fleeing, suddenly slowed down, and even the automatic voice continued the countdown after a very long pause.

“Sssseevveen miiinuuttees, foooortyyy seeecccooonndds!” the computer voice drawled unbearably slowly.

The captain nervously tapped his fingers against the table and watched the developments around his ship. The fox hid behind a tree, peeking from behind it every couple minutes to glance at the bait up until the sparrow landed on it and the wolf appeared.

There were only ten seconds left before the ship was restored, and the captain was really hoping that nothing unimaginable would happen.

It did.

A sparrow flew under the vehicle, followed by the wolf. The fox left her hiding place and blocked the way, so the wolf stopped. A flock of sparrows soared into the air and went to ram the ship. The frightened captain grabbed the wheel, simultaneously trying to turn on the takeoff system. The ship tilted, the captain pulled the lever to activate the manual control mode and pushed the button of anti-gravitation system with all his might. No results. The computer said three seconds were left when the ship lost its balance and began to fall down.

The wolf was ready to grab the fox by the throat but with a distant part of his furious mind, he heard a suspicious noise above. He looked up involuntarily and stared. Something was falling directly on him, something with a huge hole in the center. At the same moment, he heard a joyous cry of the fox and realized that she had outsmarted him.

“Zero!” the computer announced. Thirty-nine inches left to the ground. The instruments were restored, anti-grav mode turned on, and the ship froze, slightly brushing against the wolf’s ears.

‘Still alive,’ the wolf thought, looking at a fox that wasn’t laughing any longer. ‘Now I’ll show you what attacking me results in!’

The captain yanked the seat belts, which had jumped out from the recesses in the chair at a supersonic speed, and gave the command for an emergency take-off.

The wolf bared his teeth and…

The ship took off, throwing out a powerful jet of plasma from its center. The sparrows and the fox rushed away from the noise, smoke, and sizzling flames.

The wolf was gone.

The Bully was flying away from the scene when a terrible roar began to chase him. The trees swayed, rustling in the awakened wind. The Bully suddenly felt like his fellow sparrows had caught up with him, so he chirped in fright and flew north, away from these places. It was better to lay low until the sparrows forgot about his skull joke.

The fox ran, or rather, flew away by a decent distance, swept away by a hot wave. Everything became clear. It was time to run as far as possible because the crow would not rest until she got revenge for the eaten cheese. She’d managed to get rid of one wolf, but how many more the angry crow would be able to persuade? The nut flew off… an odd nut, to tell the truth, and no similar ones seemed to be in the vicinity. She had nothing to beat the wolves with. And the sparrows wouldn’t agree to help again. There was no reason for it. She’d given them the skull and told them about the Bully’s hiding place. She could only run to the north. No one would look for her there.

Saying goodbye to her native forest, the fox slipped into the bushes. North it was. There was no need to put something off until tomorrow when you could have done it yesterday.

No one noticed that the ruffled crow was left sitting on the tree. Her plans for revenge had failed so suddenly… If the fox could do such tricks this easily, her retaliation would be fantastically terrible, with salvation not possible. She had to run! Or rather, to fly! To quietly disappear from this forest and settle in a distant and secluded place. Somewhere with no fox, no stupid sparrow with an even more stupid skull on his head, no elusive food.

When the ship disappeared in the clouds, the crow looked sympathetically at what was left of the wolf. A piece of scorched earth and a handful of ash covering the ground with a thin layer. The crow cawed goodbye, flapped its wings, and slowly flew north.

The crowd heading north had no idea about each other, and they were moving toward Kashchey’s castle, the safest place on the planet. No sane creature would ever look for the fugitives there. It was too life-threatening. And Kashchey was unlikely to pay attention to a lone tenant among his possessions.

If they were lucky.

The captain stopped at an altitude of three miles and stared sullenly at the control panel. He didn’t want to look at the green forest beneath him. The primitive inhabitants of this world were idiotically brave and reckless. The unintelligent species were just the same. A savage civilization. Like an epidemic of some kind…

“Of course!” It suddenly dawned on the captain. “It’s not microbiological expertise! There’s a massive occurrence of rabies!”

“So, I have to check the health of the local population, to identify the causative agent of the disease, if any, synthesize the drug, and cure the local forms of life!” And then he would emerge dressed in a white suit and declare himself their savior and master. It was a lot of work, but the result was worth it!

The ship hovered over the village and released a probe with a micro-robot. The captain decided that he shouldn’t risk it by personally roaming this location. One never knew when someone was going to attack. These beings definitely would.

The probe flew down, and the captain stared at the monitor.

“The village,” he muttered disdainfully. “Primitive economics at the dawn of civilization. No automatic devices, no gas and electricity, and in the eyes of the citizens, the road is the direction in which they move on one half-dead horse. But they are angrier than the entire Galaxy!”

Gradually, though, the captain began to realize that what was happening at the bottom did not correspond to the usual village life. Almost no peasants were outside, and those who occasionally appeared disappeared back in their houses as quickly as they left them. The modulator of a straight-through image showed that people in the houses seemed to be actively preparing themselves to something. They were building something akin to a defense system, but against whom? Neighbor versus neighbor war?

It felt like something big was coming.

“Like I said, they are mad!” the captain grumbled. In case some native ceremony was going on, he turned on the recording equipment. But the captain had to wait for the development of events for so long that he almost dislocated his jaw from boredom and yawning. He perked up only after receiving the first data from the micro-robot.

The data showed that the inhabitants of the area weren’t particularly sick and weren’t planning on becoming sick in the nearest future. Moreover, they didn’t suffer from any health problems at all. This wasn’t an accident. The natural conditions here were just perfect. Especially for an interplanetary resort.

“By the way, yes,” the captain said thoughtfully. “It’s a long way, really, but it’s worth it. The composition of the air… The composition of the soil… Other rubbish… Hmm… Nothing significant. Nothing bad, that is. Then why the heck are they so crazy?!”

The computer could translate the local language, so the captain started reading the printout. It was mostly a meaningless chatter, but there were slips indicating that the organisms whose existence was dubious could attack the village at night.

“What a joke! Getting ready for a battle with non-existent enemies! I can’t miss this! What a funny planet. There are either psychopaths or crazed folks here. Oh! I’ve figured out how to make them obey! I’ll create holograms of monsters and arrange a light show, and then I’ll drive them away and make the locals worship me as their savior!”

It wasn’t all that difficult to become the master of this primitive world. Ha! The evening couldn’t come fast enough.

How many hours did the local day have, a hundred and fifty or something>?

When the sun went over the horizon, the captain was already exhausted from the tedious waiting. The holograms he had created were projected onto the surface of the table in a reduced size, but even in this form, they were truly repulsive, if not terrifying. The captain pressed the button, and the holograms disappeared from the table, being projected all over the ground in the size of the average person now. Another button, and the figures moved to the village in a disorderly crowd.

The captain rubbed his hands in glee. Watching the phantoms approach the village, he imagined how frightened the villagers would be, unable to hold back his chuckles. Because of this, he didn’t immediately notice that a crowd of no-less strange creatures had casually joined his phantoms. An impartial computer immediately analyzed the aliens and transmitted the data to the printer. The captain looked up, surprised, and took the paper from it.

What was the matter? The text was printed automatically only in case of emergencies!

The captain quickly looked through the first lines, then returned to the beginning and started to read slowly and carefully. As he read, the fun wore off, and in the end, his face showed not just fear but actual terror. He turned his eyes to the screen and turned cold, seeing what an ignorant person would have probably found funny. The vampires were trying to pounce on the phantoms. They jumped through them, turned, and pounced again and again, not understanding what was happening. The phantoms were calmly marching toward the village as the vampires were trying to bite their neck or hit, acting crazed now. Their efforts didn’t bring any results.

The captain tried to read the text again but failed. His hands started trembling more and more, the letters jumping in front of his eyes.

“It just can’t be!” he exclaimed. “They were destroyed thousands of years ago!”

Space plague, the inhabitants of dark worlds, alien parasites from an ancient star, the cruel vampires… and they were quietly living on this god-forsaken planet!

“No! No! No!” the captain kept repeating frantically.

In the great deadly war that had once involved hundreds of star systems and required a truly cosmic effort, an innumerable amount of parasites was destroyed. Everyone believed that the vampires went on living only in the memory of the winners.

But the computer data showed it clearly. The vampires had managed to survive, had somehow flown to this insignificant planet in a remote part of the Galaxy, and quietly existed here until today!

“How did they escape?! The planet must be destroyed! Blown up! But with what?! I have to hurry back home! I need proof! To provide some documented evidence!”

The captain threw the paper on the floor, bent over the computer, gave it the order to destroy the phantoms and turned on the recording. He’d have to sacrifice a few natives to shoot a scene with hunting vampires.

“I’d love to save you from the enemy,” he muttered, “but I don’t have the weapons to do it!”

The vampires didn’t die from conventional weapons. For many years, civilizations had been creating special stunners to immobilize them and transport them in special bins, at the risk of being bitten or getting into a vampire trap. In the bunkers, the vampires were sent to annihilators and processed into energy that was then pumped into the batteries for the paralyzers and sent back to the front line.

The war went on with varying success. Some of the planetary systems were freed from the parasites in a few years while in other worlds, the fight went on for decades. The problem was that the vampires had intelligence and were able to turn the enemies’ weapons against them.

Interestingly, the story of the vampire invasion started off in a remarkably peaceful way. A research ship had arrived at a new planetary system. The system was ancient, located in the zone of Dark worlds with aging stars. This rather normal astronomical name of the Galaxy had acquired a sinister meaning after the beginning of war with the vampires.

First, the scientists began to study the planets for the development of minerals. On the seventh planet, a red giant was discovered to have life inside it. The life wasn’t particularly impressive, but it was still developed. Not by human standards, sure, but still, highly organized forms of animal and plant life were scattered all across the planet. Astronauts enthusiastically commenced studying. First of all, they found out how life had originated in these parts, considering that the light of the star almost didn’t reach them. It turned out that everything started from the overabundance of carbon dioxide, which created a greenhouse effect.

Animals and birds didn’t seem to know that there were enemies, so they nonchalantly wandered around the camp among people. Researchers have accumulated a lot of material when their attention was drawn to the insects that fed on the blood of both animals and birds. In the saliva of these insects, there was a microorganism that destroyed pathogenic microbes. The animals that were ill with something recovered quickly after the bite. The researchers caught twenty insect families and placed them in containers for further research in stationary laboratories on their home planet.

That was how the problems started.

The “Healer” microorganism was identified and thoroughly studied. Its impact on the strains of viruses and bacteria exceeded even the wildest expectations of the scientists. All harmful microorganisms died! Even rats infected with an incurable disease fully recovered in about a day! Cuts healed like in a fairy tale!

Soon, based on the “Healer”, an elixir was created, becoming the medicine for all diseases except toothache. And that’s where the problems started. People taking the medicine began to slowly grow bestial. They stopped seeing others as people and slowly, they turned into vessels with blood. Their body persistently demanded that they drink more and more blood. This idea evoked a feeling of disgust at first, but then it disappeared completely, giving way to the overwhelming feeling of hunger.

Once, someone was surprised to find that his canines had lengthened and sharpened. He went people-hunting but his fear didn’t let him finish drinking the victim’s blood, so he escaped. The victim survived, and a part of the vampire’s blood was transferred to him. That was how the second vampire emerged. And then there were tens, hundreds, and thousands of bites. The chain reaction was gaining momentum with every bite. The case was taking a catastrophic turn.

A wave of vampirism swept through the country and spread to the neighboring states so rapidly that no one had time to do anything about it. The vampires won the battle for the planet. The population abandoned everything, and in a panic, they rushed to the spaceports. Sadly, only the most impudent and cunning managed to fly away in time. But the happiness of those who had departed was short-lived. They didn’t manage to escape from the problem since vampires turned out to be among them. The vampires that remained victors had preserved the knowledge and skills people used to have, so eventually, they also rushed into space to conquer the Universe.

The time of the Great Expansion had come.

Hundreds of spaceships didn’t reach their destination and remained wandering in the depths of the space, turning into ghosts. Because of the lack of high-tech communications, most of the Galactic Alliance was unaware of the impending disaster and was not prepared to defend their planets.

In one year, the vampires realized their power and destroyed humanity on twenty-seven planets. The ghost ships with vampires occasionally collided with incoming ships. The crews took the abandoned ships in tow and were very happy upon finding sleeping people inside. But not for long.

Undeterred by anything or anyone, the vampires traveled from planet to planet like locusts. They destroyed all other forms of life, and no one in the Galaxy could stop them. But gradually, a strange story about space bloodsuckers reached some highly developed planets, and the military began preparing for the inevitable clash.

This was how the Great War started, and its consequences were still echoing through the Galactic Union. Tens of thousands of abandoned ships of all stripes and shapes still floated out of the dark space depths and sowed panic among the inhabitants of the planets. No one nowhere ever tried to explore ghost ships again. They were simply destroyed.

And in those distant times when annihilators hadn’t existed even in theory, people were trying to destroy vampires with simple weapons. The explosive 24-caliber solved the problem only partly. The vampire would die if they were torn to pieces. But the blood from it seeped into the ground, got on the plants, on people, on insects, and crawled inside various organisms, causing catastrophic consequences. It ended with the insects being infected through the pollen of flowers, the birds being infected because of insects, and the animals being infected because of birds. Everything and everyone was infected, so even the peaceful butterflies became vampires, not to mention bees, wasps, and ants. The number of vampires was growing exponentially, and they didn’t spare anyone in their path.

Scientists from many planets tried to create an effective weapon but failed to come up with anything except a stun gun. So, desperate to save at least someone, they decided to fight with ruthless force. On planets where the infection was in full swing, they used the most powerful weapon in existence. Thermonuclear and neutron bombs, tectonic system units, artificially-induced collisions with asteroids, shifting the planet’s orbit — the spectrum of technologies those scientists applied was wide. The paralyzed vampires were annihilated or burned in crematoria, but the supplies of annihilators, crematoria, and fuel were sorely lacking. That’s why they had to keep the vampires in special bunkers on lifeless planets. Another popular choice entailed throwing the vampires into uninhabited planets with an atmosphere. They fell from a great height and burned in its dense layers. But because of the fear that not all the agents of vampirism would burn, this method was not widespread since such planets became closed for landing forever. Other methods were also used, but they all were ineffective. The creation of powerful manual annihilators that happened four hundred and fifty years after the beginning of the war was a big breakthrough. Millions and millions of vampires were destroyed, and a huge amount of energy was obtained for fighting them. A giant stun gun capable of influencing an entire medium-sized planet was built, with the duration of exposure reaching half of an average galactic month. The paralyzed residents were checked for the presence of vampire mutations, and those who had them were destroyed. The method was effective but complex. And only the appearance of the legendary DNA-atrafficator put an end to the advance of the vampires. It wasn’t even an escape but a swift disappearance. The atrafficator ensured that the vampires’ DNA mutated and destroyed their own body in two or three days. Having a size of a combat battleship, the atrafficator irradiated the planet from space to destroy the vampires without hurting anyone else. The battleships with stunners joined in, and in this tandem, the total destruction of the vampires was achieved. It took almost five hundred years. Each planet was thoroughly treated and cleaned. Every inhabited world was subjected to periodic reprocessing done by atrafficators. Small planets, asteroids, comets, and space debris simply disappeared. Special military teams were created, and they were respectfully called “immortals.” These people were exploring space for decades, until their very deaths, seeking out and destroying ghost ships, asteroids, comets, and other debris where the virus could have survived. For fifteen hundred years, no one had learned how to treat this disease, and the only positive news was that over time, the merciless virus had weakened. The radiation coming from young stars was destructive to them. According to the scientists, after seven thousand years, the virus had reached the final weak point and quietly faded into the past.

And now it turned out that some of the vampires survived. The strange thing was, five thousand years had passed after the end of the war, and the vampires still hadn’t conquered this planet.

‘Maybe two or three vampires from the last months of the war survived,’ the captain guessed when he finally regained the ability to think logically. Now they roamed at night, behaving differently, not like they used to. Did they not want to attract attention to themselves or did something prevent them from attacking properly? A young star, for example.

Yaroslav and Artem saw Babak, Alena, and Ivan off to the edge of the village and went back. They really wanted to leave, to let the stupid peasants deal with the vampires by themselves, but the princes suppressed this impulse. After burying the miller, who had died from his injuries, they stood over his grave for a while. They were about to make an observation point on a high tree when a tired mongrel with glowing green eyes ran up to them. Yaga’s mind control had lost its power a long time ago, but the mongrel liked this new look so much that it stayed with him forever.

Hunter ran to the grave, sat down, and howled wistfully.

“Isn’t he Alena’s dog?” Artem asked. “She talked about her mongrel missing.”

“Let’s check!” Yaroslav knelt down and called, “Hunter…”

Hunter ceased howling, turned to face them, and waved his tail uncertainly. The space around them was filled with another heartbreaking howl.

“Yeah, it’s him.”

“I want to howl, too,” Yaroslav said.

“Then do so,” Artem suggested. “What’s the problem?”

“I can’t. It won’t be as effective as when Hunter does it.”

The princes paused, then put on their helmets and left. Hunter joined them.

The second group of scouts got close to the village about midnight, stimulated by the complaints of the vampires who had escaped yesterday. They were dying to sink their teeth into the impudent little people. Humans had won before, but those victories were so rare and insignificant that the vampires only laughed ironically. Every night, they went out to battle, and if people won over a small group, they returned there with a detachment of several dozens of vampires. No warrior could resist such an army. They were simply crushed and turned into similar creatures. Good warriors were valued anywhere.

The vampires decided to refrain from a fight with the mysterious old woman in the middle of the woods. There was no use in it. In the villages, people were simpler, and unlike the old women, they were an easy prey. Some got turned into vampires, others died or were burned in the morning. And no huts with legs that kicked painfully.

The vampires ran to the village and stopped, perplexed. It looked as if it’d been abandoned a hundred years ago. All the windows and doors were boarded up and there wasn’t a soul around. The vampires stood, thinking, and then spread across the streets.

Quiet noises, barely audible sneezing, muffled coughing, inarticulate swearing… nothing escaped the vampires with their sharp hearing. They all rushed to the first house, tore off the defenses, and broke inside. The frightened owners bombarded them with household utensils, but the forces were unequal and the supply of utensils soon ended.

The smell of blood teased the hungry vampires. They cracked open the houses like nuts, attacked people hiding there and feasted on them, unable to get enough of fresh blood.

The village was filled with screams and cries.

The bearded man was sitting quietly on a stool. The splinters lit up the empty room. His family didn’t dare to stay. He let them go. His wife, his daughter, and his two sons. And now he was glad he had done it. The screams grew louder and closer. The vampires approached, sowing death left and right, catching up with those who tried to run, killing them.

The jugs with fuel mixture from the forest swamps formed an arch over the front door. Eight more stood on the table, waiting for their fate. Another ten were placed around the house. A candle was burning in man’s hands. When the first blows came, he didn’t move. But when the wood crackled, he lit the wick of the first jug and began to wait. As soon as the door was thrown open, he threw it at the enemy. The uninvited guests turned into living torches. The liquid spilled on the floor and a burning stream flowed to the broken jugs.

The window cracked, and the wind that broke through it made the fire blaze brighter. Someone’s blood-covered mug pushed itself into the house, and the bearded man threw another jug at it. The inflamed mug retreated with loud yelling. The liquid spilled in front of the window. The house was engulfed by black smoke. The third and the fourth jugs followed. The shouts increased significantly, and the jugs at the entrance exploded. A powerful wave of flames swallowed the house. The bearded man coughed. It became difficult to breathe as the temperature was rising rapidly. The fire engulfed almost everything at this point.

“Screw it!” the bearded man cried out, throwing the last jug. The howling of the vampires overcame the screams of their victims. The fire spread to the bearded man, but he didn’t pay any attention to it. Instead, he rushed through the flames toward the doorway. He jumped, somersaulted, threw away the burning blanket that he used to cover his body, and jumped outside. The vampires were running around like flaming torches, and no one cared about him.

The powerful blows were knocking the vampires off their feet, the club crushing their skulls like nuts. From his very childhood, from the time of fairy tales, the bearded man dreamed of becoming a hero. In these last hours, the memories of his childhood came flooding back, and he forgot about the everyday life with all its hardships. He could hear the voices from the past echoing in his head, reminding him of the old, almost forgotten stories. He felt like a hurricane capable of crushing all obstacles on his path.

Seeing that he wasn’t fighting alone as some of his neighbors joined him, the bearded man smiled.

‘Maybe we were stupid and ignorant,’ he thought, ‘but no one will say that we gave up without a fight…’

The neighbors bludgeoned at the vampires with whatever they could find, but their ranks were steadily getting thinner, and soon, the bearded man was one of the last remaining few. From his house, the fire spread to the neighboring ones, making the night as bright as the day. The cries of the wounded were no longer heard. The vampires were randomly rushing from the dead to the dying, drinking the remnants of their blood, while the bearded man kept beating at them with all his strength. The voices of his family sounded louder and clearer…

And when he was surrounded by a large crowd of vampires, when he was knocked down and they began to drink his blood, he didn’t feel pain any longer. With his last efforts, he threw a club forward and smashed the vampire’s face. Then he fell back, exhausted, muttering, “Finally…”

The familiar voices became even louder. The vampires around him melted away in a blinding glow, and his dead parents and friends stood in front of him instead. They smiled happily and greeted him.

“Come on,” the miller said. “You did a good job. It’s time to have a rest.”

“Did I kill a lot of vampires?” the bearded man asked hoarsely.

“Most of them,” the miller said. The others nodded.

“I wish you’d gone with your family,” his father said. “But don’t be sad.”

As if through cotton wool, he heard these last words and grew confused, not knowing whether to rejoice or to grieve.

“You will meet them soon,” his father said. “Come on, we’ll show you your new home.”

Yaroslav and Artem were shooting from their hiding place. The vampires were in flames, burning, but there were so many of them and the supply of the arrows came to an end disappointingly quickly.

The village flared up. The wind was blowing the flames away from the burning house of the bearded man, fanning the sparks. The neighboring and more remote houses were all going ablaze. The surviving vampires were finishing off the rest of people, and the princes rushed into the attack with mini-spears.

Hunter was running like mad, brutally biting the vampires. The enraged vampires gathered into a decent crowd and were chasing him, but as they couldn’t catch him, they grew more and more crazed.

The princes flew at the vampires who had killed the bearded man from both sides and began to furiously stab them, adding more fire to the raging flames around them. Hunter-the-fierce-biter followed. The vampires howled. One way or another, they were more afraid of dogs than of people because the latter didn’t bite as painfully.

The crowd of Hunter’s bitten victims returned a second later, forming a bunch of swearing vampires. The princes barely managed to fight back and destroy the enemies. The remaining crumbs of the vampire squad broke and retreated. They turned into poorly flying bats and disappeared in the low clouds.

There was silence.

“Victory!” the brothers shouted happily. The voices of the surviving peasants echoed the call, and Hunter barked happily at the moon.

Kashchey was sitting on a chair of from a later Paleolithic period. Storing things for an unthinkable number of years was foolish at best. But it was a pity to throw them away. After all, they were rare. On the floor next to him, an age indicator was lying nearby.

“How do we find the Central console if all the doors are open now?” he asked, puzzled.

“How was I supposed to know this would happen?” Maria tried to defend herself. “I’m here for the first time.”

“And for the last one!” Kashchey added. “Don’t expect me to kidnap you every summer. What else have you found?”

“Different boxes,” Maria said. “I don’t know what they’re for.”

“Give them to me!” Kashchey demanded, holding out his hand. Maria passed him the matte black rectangle. He examined it and pressed some red button. The box dimly lit and flashed. Kashchey put the box on a chair and moved away. “Let’s see what it’ll do.”

There was a click. The box stuck to the chair and then flew up with it to the ceiling. The chair hit it and shattered into pieces while the box broke through the ceiling and flew to the next floor. Then it rammed into the remaining ceilings in the castle and flew into the vast depths of space. Kashchey waited until the dust settled and looked at the holes the box had left.

“What do you know,” he said calmly. “It’s raining!”

“Really? How do you know?” the princess asked in surprise. She went to the hole, looked up, and barely had time to jump back when a drop of water slipped out from there. “Oh! You could have told me about it from the start!”

“I didn’t ask you to repeat after me,” Kashchey shrugged. “I’m immortal, after all.”

“Don’t brag!” Maria advised.

A flashing hemisphere entered the room, drove over the ceiling, rolled up to the hole and covered it. When it retreated, the ceiling was intact. Not even a hint of the hole was left. Staring after the hemisphere, Kashchey shook his head.

“The kind of things my castle has!”

“What a pity it doesn’t have any order,” the princess replied. She took a hat off the shelf and put it on her head. “A cap. A warm one.”

“We don’t need hats yet,” Kashchey said, turning to face her. Then he blinked. “What.”

The princess wasn’t here.

“Maria!” he exclaimed. “Where are you?!”

“What are you doing?!” the box on the fourth shelf from the top asked in a frightened voice. “Want to make me into a stutterer? Why are you looking at me like this?”

“I can’t see you!” Kashchey said hoarsely.

“Stop joking around!”

“I honestly can’t see you! Come on, appear like you disappeared!” he ordered.

He had a reason to panic. If the savior prince came, how would he explain to him that the talking air was his beloved who he had been searching for?

Maria appeared on the chair in a rapidly thickening mist. She had the hat in her hand. The box was standing at the level of her head, which caused Kashchey to think God knew something. When he came up with different tricks, it was acceptable. But when his followers did the same? It was too much.

“What’s wrong?” Maria was confused. “Are you sick?”

“When I feel sick,” Kashchey said smugly, “I will express it in other words.” He went to a short cupboard and leaned against it. “You’ve just found an invisibility hat. And I’ve already started considering transmutations and transformations of black matter…”

“What are you even… er… discussing with yourself?” Maria was confused. “Are you feeling sick, after all? Are you cursing or are these spells of some kind?”

“These are… scientific terms,” Kashchey muttered, turning off a scientific dictionary and hiding it away. When he’d leaned against the cupboard, he inadvertently activated this miraculous book. “You know what, I’m going to take a break.”

“Why?”

“This evil box has filled me with profoundly clever words.”

“Say them!” Maria asked. “It sounds interesting.”

“You’ll just think that I’m swearing again,” Kashchey refused. “If you need anything, I’m going to be in the room with the TV. The one in the form of the plate… Until I feel fine again.”

…an empty office. A table. Ten plates with a bunch of buttons. A feeling of great delight and danger…

Kashchey shook his head and a strange image faded, disappearing in the abyss of his subconscious. Staring at the plate, he shrugged. Whatever he’d just seen, it didn’t explain anything and didn’t need to be remembered.

The wonderful city of Slavnograd wasn’t anything special. The same quiet panic as before except that now, there was also some impatience among people. They were waiting for the princes’ arrival. Kashchey didn’t tell Maria that he could watch what others were doing. He didn’t want her to stare at them for days on end. What if her nerves failed or something else happened? Why sit through extra tantrums?

Kashchey tuned in to see the adventures of the princes, and with great surprise, he realized that they were still stuck in a rundown village, in no hurry to fulfill their obligations. Spending one day there was acceptable, considering the peasants who were eager to hear what happened where and when. But being there on the second day? That was too much. A good storyteller could tell a story quickly and vividly. Especially when in a hurry.

The princes didn’t intend to sleep either. They were settled on a tree comfortably, and apparently, they were preparing for a battle.

“What the hell is this?” Kashchey protested angrily. “Testing new weapons before fighting me? At night? On village lunatics? Personally, I prefer to fight during the daytime. It’s easier to dodge the arrows of the enemy then. Night snipers consider themselves unsurpassed professionals and are ready to turn any target into their personal hedgehog. Ripping out the arrows with their metal tips is extremely exhausting.” The latter was particularly tiresome due to the specifics of their extraction.

Some strange chimeras were marching on the village. After taking one look at them, Kashchey reached for his legendary sword involuntarily. The carnage that followed plunged him into deep thoughts. Whoever the new monsters were, it wouldn’t end well.

“I’m lagging behind the times,” he murmured thoughtfully. “There are new parasites in my land.”

Kashchey focused on the wonderful city of Slavnograd to make sure that nothing this bad was happening there. Technically, everything looked fine, but there were some carriages with people before the gates. One man was waving his hands, shouting something to the guards on the walls loudly. The bridge over the moat was lifted off the ground, and the gates were closed. People were holding sharpened poles and clubs, as if waiting for an attack. The guards were staring at the shouting man but did nothing. The visitors didn’t look as mighty soldiers, but considering that at any moment, an ambush could come, they weren’t willing to risk it. The most logical decision on the part of the guards was not to pay attention to the appeals and demands of others until morning. And after the princess was kidnapped, the guards didn’t want to risk by letting some farmers distract them.

The weary man cursed all imaginable and unimaginable people of all existing and fictional worlds, spat, and returned to his cart. Kashchey kept waiting, intrigued. In normal times, shouting like this in front of the gates was a guaranteed way to get killed. Attracted by the cries, the guards would shoot first and come out to clarify what happened later. Naturally, they learned nothing in such cases because the only skill of the dead was to remain silent. But these were the peculiarities of their work.

With the first sunbeams, a thick chain shifted. The bridge slowly rolled down, and the gates opened quietly. The carpenters had already replaced the crossbars Kashchey had broken but kept the old ones as a memory of his visit. After all, such guests appeared rarely.

“Go!” Babak commanded. The horse moved.

Strict guards at the gate blocked the passage.

“What is your business here?” they asked menacingly. Babak showed them the medallion.

“News from Prince Yaroslav,” he answered shortly.

“And who are they?” the guard nodded at the sleeping Alena and Ivan. “Are they news, too?”

“Yep. They’re news for Prince Artem’s relatives,” Babak answered. “Is something wrong?”

“Go on,” the guard declared indifferently, ignoring his question.

The chief jumped out of the guards’ booth and blocked the way. Babak stopped, surprised. The man was looking at him closely.

“I thought I heard a familiar voice,” he said. “Sarek! Is that you? What brings you here? Did you decide to return to the service?”

“And be stuck in your behind-the-scenes intrigues?” Babak grinned. “No way.”

“Well, you’ve been fired, so I see where you’re coming from.”

“Thanks a bunch for reminding me of those less-than-stellar days! I should have seen it coming. But in the meantime, I have an urgent matter to attend to. Could you let me in? I need to see your King.”

“How urgent is your urgent matter?”

“If I’m late, we’re all dead. And by dead, I mean, dead.”

The chief turned pale.

“Go on! Should I show you the way?”

“Show *me* the way?”

The man waved his hand. He knew Babak could easily offer tours across the city himself.

“That’s why I love the military. They’re so intelligent,” Babak explained to Alena, who’d finally woken up. “We’re in the capital.”

The image of the city was replaced by a galactic advertisement. Kashchey cursed the person who’d eaten the apple and walked out of the room. The device reached its limits and ceased working. Good thing that he had held on to it for seven seconds only.

“Well, Maria, what’s new?” was the first thing he asked, making it clear that everything was back to normal.

“The mirror,” Maria replied. “I’ll never get one of these.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“The reflection it shows is scarier than meeting a ghost at night.”

Kashchey peeked into the mirror immediately. Maria hadn’t lied. The mirror distorted the image in the most unthinkable way.

“I’ll put it near the entrance,” Kashchey decided. “My guests will be delighted.”

“You have no guests,” Maria reminded.

“What about you?”

“I’m a prisoner! An honorary one.”

“You’re an honorary prize, not a prisoner,” Kashchey replied.

“Huh?”

“Well, you’ll be awarded to a winner,” he noted vaguely. “Anyway, forget it. What else have you found?”

Maria handed him a bound folder. Kashchey spent about three minutes on trying to unsuccessfully untie it before he realized that the knot was decorative and that the folder could be opened by pressing a bulge in the form of an arrow. Kashchey pushed it down, and a blue flame flew from the folder.

“Wow!” Kashchey jumped away and closed the folder. Then he read the microscopic writing on the back. “Road tiles. Open carefully!”

Putting it in its rightful place, Kashchey picked up the box that refused to be closed as long as it remained empty. As soon as he crumpled a sheet of paper with the words ‘Perfectly smooth surface’ and put it inside, the box closed. Opening it now would be impossible.

“I wish I could see how it tries to straighten up,” Kashchey remarked slyly and winced immediately after that at the sound of the crackling wood. The leaf broke through the walls and straightened, cutting the box in half. “Now that’s horrible!”

Kashchey put half of the box on the top shelf and grabbed the small bag. It giggled hysterically. Puzzled, Kashchey looked at it and tried to open it.

Who was making this infectious laugh?

The bag refused to open. It refused to be broken or cut either. The only thing that changed was the hysterical laughter. It had begun to laugh mockingly.

“People come up with all sorts of rubbish! Did the inventor of this thing have nothing better to do?” Kashchey exclaimed in astonishment.

“Maybe it was created to cheer up a sad crowd,” Maria suggested. “There are often such days when you don’t want to smile at all. Or when the weather is bad, or some troubles loom on the horizon. A bag would be great in these circumstances.”

“I’ll give it to you for your wedding,” Kashchey promised. “In the meantime, I think you’ll approve of my decision.”

He threw the bag on the top shelf where the box and the scientific dictionary were already lying.

Flying into the Quirky forest, the fox became so confused that the first thing she did was bark at the bush that reminded her of a crow. Only then did she begin to think.

Why was she barking?

Nothing particularly terrible had happened in the Quirky forest for a long time, but unseen animals lived here. They followed unusual physical laws that were incomprehensible to common birds, animals, and people. Lots of weird and mysterious things were happening in this place, which explained its name.

Who would have thought that a piece of cheese would be so expensive? That crow. It couldn’t even lend her a piece! Although perhaps she knew what hunger was? But how? She was probably eating like crazy while the fox nearly fainted from hunger.

“So greedy!” the fox yelled. She desperately needed to vent. For a moment, there was a dead silence, and then the some of the local birds went wild with indignation. The astonished fox discovered that none of them paid attention to her. It’s just that she expressed the opinion of each inhabitant of these places as it related to their neighbors. The neighbors, in turn, didn’t care who started the name-calling. They just took the chance to yell at someone they’d been dying to yell at but failed to find a reason for it. Those who were yelled at screamed at the first and the third neighbors, and the latter went on the warpath.

All the fox had to do was sit back and watch the impromptu talk show.

“People won’t think of doing something like this for a thousand more years!” the fox muttered proudly. She had an idea to add some more dirty details to keep the show going, but the remnants of conscience didn’t allow her to taunt the locals like this.

The birds were sorting things out quite violently. They broke branches, tore out each other’s feathers and leaves, shouted, and swore. The fox nodded along, slowly eating the birds that’d been knocked out. There had to be some benefit from such scandals!

The Bully flew into the Quirky forest by accident. He sat down on a twig to rest when suddenly someone shouted, “So greedy!!!”, and everyone around him exploded into violent arguments. All kinds of things flew in the sparrow’s direction and a great slaughter began, threatening to grow into a huge forest war of a “everyone fends for themselves” type. Bully looked at the local fun in horror and hurried to fly out of the combat zone.

‘It’s a bit noisy here,’ he thought. ‘They might kill me by accident… I have to fly to the north. Nobody lives near Kashchey’s castle, and no one is going to fight there!.. Though flying to Kashchey… that’s scary. I’m already worried!’

The crow that had flown farther than anyone else decided to eat. She settled in an empty nest and pulled out some fruit she’d plucked from the yellow-leaved trees. It smelled of bread and resembled an apple. She inhaled the fragrant smell, pecked the fruit, and grimaced. It tasked like a lemon, only much sourer. Unclenching her cramped beak with difficulty, the crow spat out the decoy, swept the treacherous fruit away with her wings, and shook her head, trying to get rid of the lemon smell and taste.

The fruit broke into pieces, and a nickel-covered fish swooped down on it. Cunning faces peered from behind the branches. They looked at the fish and waited to see if there would be some severed tails. Nothing happened, so they disappeared into thin air.

The crow cawed resentfully and took off. She didn’t know that the unripe fruit she had so thoughtlessly tasted had the smell of fresh bread and the taste of lemon, nor that when it matured, it began to smell like a lemon and taste like bread. But the most terrible thing was that it created very bizarre glitches in the mind of those who tasted it.

The crow’s mood improved quickly, and if not for the lemon taste in her mouth, she would have felt quite good.

‘It’s so wonderful to live in this world!’ the crow thought. ‘Especially if you are a creature with the teeth and wings that it is flying right at me. What does it want? To eat or just bite me?’

Her mood was extremely uncaring. Let it bite.

The creature with the teeth and the wings was approaching, and the crow was staring indifferently, not trying to do anything aside from just wait for the development of events. Finally, the moment came. The choir of teeth began to sing a charming song, and the thinking part of population of the woods hid at the first sound, crawling into the deeper corners. The teeth flew over the head of the crow and returned for a second run. She yawned, wondering how she was still hanging in the air. She wanted to sleep, and then the teeth shouted something. What did they want? Were they looking for a free jaw? They should try it with someone else. Birds had no teeth, after all. Though why would they need teeth? It’d be difficult to shut the jaws, the food would get stuck, and something like a toothache would happen. Who needed such torment? So no, no teeth!

“Down with teeth!” the crow cried out drunkenly. Someone yanked her by the tail. Hard. The creature that did this whisked the crow under a branch, so the teeth flew by, the six-foot jaws snapping dangerously close.

The crow was indignant.

“Hey! Where are your manners? I’ll peck you!”

“Shut up!” the stranger grumbled. “Unless you want to be chewed by those teeth!”

“Chewed?” the crow asked. “Chewed what? I also want to chew something! Hey, teeth, share the gum!”

“Did you eat the brain-freezing berries, you black-winged fool?”

“Look at yourself…” the crow tried to focus her vision and see her impolite interlocutor. It didn’t work well. “What brain-freezing berries?”

“Berries like lemon bread.”

“Delicious berries. Horribly sour. I wanted to spit them out.”

“Never again, do you hear me? Never eat them again!”

“Why is that?”

“Because your brain will glitch!.. Though what am I talking about? It already has! Do you understand?”

“No.

“I knew it.”

The crow shook her head, still fruitlessly trying to focus her vision.

“I want to fly far north!” she shared her plans for the nearest future.

“Sit tight until the teeth fly away. Then go wherever you want. Understand?”

“Nope.”

“I knew it.”

“Who are you, anyway?”

“Brontoquack.”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s me.”

The crow shook her head again. The teeth kept flying in the sky, looking for a victim and letting out some unearthly sounds.

“Why did you yank me by my tail?” the crow asked indignantly.

“To save you from the teeth. They’d chew you up.”

“They’re that hungry?”

“No, they just love to chew. They chew and chew until there’s nothing left.”

The bright lights flashed in the crow’s head. Something pounded against her temples wildly, and then she came to her senses. The berries had lost their effect. Everything she’d been saying while under their influence instantly slipped from her memory.

“What am I doing here?” the crow asked in bewilderment.

“I knew it!” Brontoquack said. “Do you remember what I’ve just told you?”

“No. Did you say something?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Then repeat it,” the crow asked. “I remember I was flying, and I saw some bird… no, I saw the teeth! The flying teeth! You must look at this miracle at once! I’ve never seen the teeth flying by themselves before! Who gave them the wings?”

Brontoquack patiently repeated his story, starting with the berries. The crow was gasping as she stared at him, trying to understand what her savior looked like. Like a duck? No. More like a swan with a shortened neck and arms instead of wings. The wings were located a little further down his back. Two palms and fingers with retractable claws.

“Why are you known as Brontoquack?” the crow asked.

“Because when I was a kid, I told everyone that I would grow into a huge and great Brontoquack.”

“What’s your real name?”

“I don’t remember. Not anymore,” Brontoquack shrugged.

The teeth continued to rush through the forest, calling the forest dwellers sweetly, offering them the role of the food.

“How long do they usually fly?”

“Until one of us is caught and chewed.”

“How often does it happen?”

“Every day,” Brontoquack said.

The crow didn’t like such news. How could she get to the castle if the teeth would constantly fly and bother her?

“They are not from Kashchey’s castle, are they?”

“No, not at all! They live much closer. Kashchey has exiled them from his territory.”

“How?”

“He went out to meet them a few times.”

“So what?”

“They broke all their teeth by trying to bite him. Over and over again. They can’t help but chew someone who gets into their teeth, so they moved here for better options.”

“Good news. Finally.”

“Do you like Kashchey then?”

“No, but there are no jokers near his castle, and you can rest there for a while.”

“Interesting approach,” Brontoquack noted but didn’t ask the crow to clarify. He noticed a bug, so he licked it down with his foot-long tongue and began to chew juicily. The crow froze.

“What’s with you?” Brontoquack sounded surprised.

“How did you do that?”

“Did what?”

“I didn’t expect you to have such a long tongue.”

“A long tongue? It’s short! They… well… Well, *they* — you know who I mean. They have a truly long tongue! They can catch someone running on the ground from the top of the tree!”

“Not sure who you mean,” the crow complained, but Brontoquack pretended he didn’t hear her. The teeth were flying around, the singing was getting louder and louder, and everyone wanted to leave their shelter against their will to hear the delightful sounds better. The crow began to lose her patience.

“I wish they’d fly away already!” she expressed the general wish of the inhabitants of the forest.

“Want to go up?” Brontoquack asked.

“A bit,” the crow agreed.

“We used to get rid of our enemies like this.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, for example, some animal constantly bothers everyone and we’re tired of it to death. It’s grabbed and thrown up the air, and then it flies to the teeth willingly, unable to resist the singing.”

“Good solution!” the crow praised, imagining how she pulled the screaming fox from the tree, how the fox would beg to spare her, how she’d scream… And how the crow would laugh and repeat, ‘You shouldn’t steal someone else’s cheese. Never ever do it again.’

“But there’s a problem.”

“Which one?”

“Those who tried to do away with the enemy sometimes broke down and flew up themselves. Both died. So now no one else attempts to kill their enemies this way.”

The dreams faded.

“Besides, the fox can’t fly…” the crow muttered. The teeth resumed singing with increased zeal. The enchanting song turned into the polyphonic choir, with many voices overflowing and changing into one another.

The crow felt dizzy from happiness. She understood that succumbing to the singing meant death, so she dug her beak into the branch and pretended that it was the fox’s tail. Above her, the teeth were making the most attractive sounds in the universe. At this point, the crow’s beak was holding the branch by itself. The rest of her was focused on the teeth, singing along with them or soloing. The song clouded her consciousness and it seemed like the happiest moment of her life came. The one worth dying for. Squeezing the branch tighter and tighter, the crow pierced the bark accidentally and some juice dripped down her beak. She swallowed and cursed. Her head cleared a bit. The desire to sing in the choir faded and gave way to the attempts to get rid of the nasty juice that kept coming and coming.

The crow began to spit without unclenching her beak.

“What are you doing?” she heard Brontoquack’s voice.

“S’itting ’uice!” the crow struggled to reply.

“Huh?” Brontoquack didn’t believe her. “Where did you get it? Wait, I get it! You bit through the branch!”

“Yeah,” the crowd confirmed.

“Pumping your jaw?” Brontoquack was impressed.

“Wah?”

“Well, carrying various heavy things in your beak several times a day.”

“What’s pumping got to do with it?” the crow spat out the branch. With dismay, she realized that the teeth were no longer singing. Instead, they were slurping, loudly and rudely. “They caught someone! I will live!!!”

“We all will,” Brontoquack said dispassionately. “Until we’re eaten. I wonder who’s the unlucky one?”

Carefully, they poked their heads out of their shelter. The teeth were being arranged in a row. The first row was chewing food, then passing it to the next one and flying away. What had once been a living thing now resembled a ball of feathers painted with red. The teeth were clicking in satisfaction, and it seemed like this would never end. The rows of teeth were moving beyond the horizon, merging with the tops of the trees.

“What a nightmare!” the crow whispered. “How many of them are there?”

“A lot!” Brontoquack answered. “Enough to eat everyone!”

“What a tiresome day today was,” the crow muttered. “Let’s take a break for a few… weeks… grrrrrr…”

“Wow!” Brontoquack was deeply amazed. “I wish I could fall asleep like that!”

The teeth fell silent, and the inhabitants of the forest gradually recovered.

The peasants were no longer arguing. After learning the vampires were not to be trifled with, they gathered their things early in the morning, packed up, and moved towards the capital. Even fewer survivors were left among the yesterday’s winners. The vampires had managed to bite most of the villagers, and the bitten ones burned in their beds with the first rays of sun. There were only eight people left.

They looked sadly at the village, which had half-turned to ashes and was still emanating smoke in some places. Artem and Yaroslav wished them good luck and set off in the opposite direction to save the princess. No matter what troubles occurred, they couldn’t forget about the main purpose of their trip.

A few hours later, the princes crossed the border of the Quirky forest and slowed down. Everything here looked impossibly mysterious.

“What a strange forest,” Yaroslav said, surprised, looking around.

“The ordinary Quirky forest,” Artem noted. “Alena told me about it.”

“When did she manage to find a moment?” Yaroslav marveled.

“As you and Babak were arguing about military strategy,” Artem explained.

“We discussed a lot of things,” Yaroslav agreed. “I can’t remember everything.”

“That’s right.”

Artem had managed to give Alena his medallion. He promised to return immediately after the rescue of the princess to ask if Alena would agree to marry him. Ivan, as his future in-law, didn’t mind. In fact, he was secretly planning to follow them and rescue the princess personally. His plans failed because of Babak, who re-focused his attention and got him interested in archery. Alena flushed in response to Artem’s hints, said something vague, undefined, but not negative. That raised his spirits to the skies.

The place where the princes wandered did not make them want to stay there for a long time, but hunger was getting vicious. That’s why they had to stop in a tiny round clearing.

The closer they got to Kashchey’s castle, the quieter the forest became. It both pleased and disturbed them. On the one hand, the animal world of the Quirky forest was extremely unusual and tried to put its curious nose into the princes’ bags. Or even grab something edible from there. The princes hadn’t wanted to take Hunter with them. He could get lost here forever, but the dog had an opinion of his own, so he walked behind them step by step.

The princes lit the fire and made some stew.

“We’re really away from home,” Yaroslav began. Artem lay down on the grass and shrugged.

“You know, the vampires worry me much more than Kashchey does. What if the capital is attacked?”

“Slavnograd has a reliable system of security, and Babak must have told everyone the truth by now.”

“Yeah, but Yaga was trying to make her magic water for a reason. Those vampires are sheer monsters.”

“We have a creative ally, though,” Yaroslav noted.

“People just don’t know how to be friends with her. Yaga is thousands of years old, so to her, all people are kids. You know, everyone would be moody if they were constantly surrounded by a kindergarten, with kids teasing and asking about all sorts of nonsense.”

A delicious smell from the pot gathered a lot of cunning faces around the clearing. They had all overcome their fear of the unknown and were peeking out from behind the leaves. The princes heard the noise and looked around in amazement. Everywhere they looked, those cunning faces peered out. Bushes and tree branches were almost breaking under their weight. And all the faces stared exactly at the pot with boiling soup.

The small clearing was completely surrounded and looked like a wide well. It was like the most cunning of cunning cunningness was sitting around them. The faces were all identical. And everyone was smiling from ear to ear, or whatever they might have had in place of ears! The faces were simultaneously licking their lips, sniffing, and licking their lips again.

Hunter bristled in response.

“What do they want?”

“I think they want to join us.”

“Or for us to join them,” Yaroslav muttered. “As dinner.”

He put down his sword and removed the pot from the fire. The faces shifted.

“Are you sure they’ll let us eat in peace?”

“Not at all. Get the spoons.”

Yaroslav lowered the spoon into the pot, ignoring the noisy exhalation of the licking faces, stirred the soup and began to eat. Artem sat nearby.

“I can’t eat like this,” he said with his mouth full. “They stare in such a way…”

Hunter calmly began to consume his meal, without waiting for it to get cooler.

“The dog is wary of the competitors,” Yaroslav noted. “Let’s not waste our time either.”

The faces became agitated, seeing how quickly the soup was decreasing. Artem ate another spoonful when suddenly…

The flight, oddly enough, was rather calm. No one tried to catch up with him, grab him, or eat him. The sparrow guessed that Kashchey’s castle wasn’t far, which meant his journey would be over soon.

“What’s that?” The sparrow saw a noisy bunch of cunning faces that surrounded some clearing and closely watched something happening there. It was obvious that they couldn’t wait to rush forward, but they didn’t dare and were only shifting their feet. The sparrow giggled, flew up to one of the faces, and pecked its tail with all his strength. The face jumped, mostly from surprise than from pain, but the deed was done. All the other faces followed the first one and in an instant, they attacked the princes. A big bunch of fighting faces surrounded them. But oddly enough, their expressions remained just as cunning.

Yaroslav cried out loudly, trying to scare off the attackers, but the faces only smiled slyly and licked their lips carnivorously. A bad premonition rose inside him. The roar was incredibly loud. Those standing at the back were pushing those who managed to reach the pot. The loud slurping drowned out all other sounds. But when the suspicious sounds of metal scratching came, the crowd disappeared and fled in different directions. The silence seemed grave.

Artem opened his eyes, exhaled and muttered, “What a blue sky! But the clouds are so heavy… It’s going to rain.”

He found the crumpled cauldron that was gnawed into pieces, and without looking, he ran his finger over the teeth marks. Then his eyes widened. He stood up and brought the cauldron closer to his face.

Through the holes, he looked at Yaroslav and expressed the general opinion, “Let’s get out of here! It’s dinner time soon.”

The princes mounted their horses. The leaky cauldron remained hanging on a tree branch. The sparrow flew up to it, intending to profit from the leftovers only to realize the faces had consumed everything.

“Gluttons!” the sparrow muttered and flew after the princes. They must have some food. And if they rushed to the castle, it would be excellent. Maybe they’d kill Kashchey and then the Bully would live there forever, without having to fear the jokes of that Villain. But here was the question, what would he eat there? The sparrow suddenly felt a sharp longing for home.

‘Why did I listen to the fox?’ he thought. ‘No one saw my face, nobody knows I scared other sparrows, so why have I left? Home! I want to go home!.. Oh, fox! Your jokes are completely idiotic! That’s it.’

He turned around abruptly and flew back to his native forest.

About midnight, there was a knock on the castle gates.

“Are you expecting guests?” Kashchey asked.

“I am,” Maria said confidently and looked at him suspiciously. “Aren’t you?”

“I am,” Kashchey agreed. “But it’s not them. It’s someone else. You stay here. I’ll check what kind of reckless fool decided to show up. Interesting that he didn’t get scared of his mirror reflection.”

“And you said all the travelers would have a heart attack!”

“Exceptions confirm the rules.”

“Hah, and what if the exceptions prevail?”

“Then this is the real rule that everyone likes to break!”

The knocking resumed, getting harder. The thunder broke the sky apart. The lightning flashed through the window, and another rumble shook everything.

“Don’t like to get wet, do we?” Kashchey grinned. “You won’t melt, whoever you are.”

Kashchey met the traveler with flowers in his hands. As soon as the gates opened, the flowers flew back at the guest along with the pot. The person made an uncertain sound and sneezed from the pollen. Kashchey studied him curiously and realized that now he may die in peace. There was nothing more amazing he’d ever witnessed in his life.

The stranger had a huge head. His wings were folded behind his back, canines were protruding from his mouth, and his fingers had giant claws.

The guest stopped sneezing. He looked at Kashchey and growled, “This castle is mine!”

“You wish, scarecrow!” Kashchey answered. “You belong in the garden, scaring the crows.”

“Do you have any idea who I am?”

“I already told you who you are,” Kashchey shrugged. “And if you disagree, then give me your version.”

“I’m the Lord of Vampires!”

“Cool,” Kashchey agreed. “But what does it mean?”

“I…”

“Yes, you! Calm down already and say something actually relevant.”

The vampire swung and struck him in the solar plexus with his mighty fist. The rumble caught the sound of the blow, carrying it across the surroundings. Kashchey didn’t even shift. The vampire’s face contorted.

“Ahhh!” he yelled. His mouth fell wide open, exposing his terrible fangs. The vampire pressed his fist to his stomach and temporarily disconnected from reality.

“What ill-mannered nervous wrecks of guests!” Kashchey was indignant. “The Lord of Vampires… What kind of vampires? Vampires… vampires… Ah! Vampires! The family of blood-sucking bats! Wow, that bat has certainly gotten huge! Hey, bat, what were you feeding on? I want that, too!”

“Ahhh!” the vampire yelled again, feeling that the hand he’d used to punch Kashchey was about to lose all sensations in it. If not forever, then for ten years for sure. Kashchey shook his head. From the darkness, an approaching crowd emerged. Kashchey narrowed his eyes. At first glance, these were ordinary people… but not really. At second glance, it became clear that they were like their leader, who was still screaming his boring “ahhh”. The crowd began to move faster, and Kashchey realized that if he didn’t close the gates now, he wouldn’t close them ever again.

“Wow!” he muttered. “They don’t know who I am! This is better than putting all the palace guests to sleep! What backwoods did they even come from?”

The gates slammed shut in front of their noses, so the vampires pounded against the doors, roaring and hissing.

“Stop it! Or you’ll regret it!” Kashchey shouted, pressing his back to the shaking gates. Nothing changed. Kashchey shrugged. “I did warn you…”

He opened the electrical panel and switched one of the levers to the “on” position. There was a deafening explosion on the street. White lights sparkled dazzlingly, illuminating a third of the planet. The walls shook, the windows cracked in some places, the lamps flickered, and pieces of ceiling began to crumble. A strong ozone smell filled the air. The electroshock he’d preserved for uninvited guests had just been discharged by letting out the energy it kept accumulating for over four thousand years.

The knocking and growling stopped.

Kashchey waited a bit and then peered out from behind the gates, curious to see what happened to his guests. The clearing had turned into a flat field covered with gray ash. The first vampire, who was decently blackened, remained in the same crooked position, though he wasn’t uttering anything any longer. The other vampires had been simply erased from the face of the earth, leaving only tiny particles of ash behind. The trees disappeared for several miles around, as if they’d never been here. The foliage of the surrounding woods was torn.

“You okay?” Kashchey asked sympathetically. The figure muttered something and fell to the ground. “Wow! What a tough guy! Almost like me!”

The gates slammed shut.

Half an hour later, Kashchey restored the situation in the main hall, mainly by calming the frightened princess.

“What happened? Did the sky fall?”

“No, just some ugly mug.”

“And it was that loud?”

“Ugly mugs are always loud!”

“You didn’t let them in, of course.”

“Naturally. He wants to take over my castle…”

“He?”

“Yes, he! The ugly mug!.. Wow! Look, he’s climbing the windows! He’s recovered quickly.”

The vampire climbed on the windowsill and angrily kicked the unbreakable glass. He didn’t expect the recoil, so he fell right down, waving his wings but unable to remain in the air because of the increased gravity.

“Ahhh!” they heard.

“We’ve heard that one before!” Kashchey shouted indignantly.

“Did he crash?” Maria gasped.

“Why would he? Those like him don’t crash! He’s tenacious like every other parasite. Like me,” Kashchey explained and opened the window. Glancing at the vampire and making sure he’s still alive, Kashchey shouted, “Wait, I’ll bring you a nice little souvenir!”

He ran away and soon came back with a black balloon about half a meter long.

“Get ready for a small explosion,” Kashchey announced, pressed the only button on the ball and threw it into the street. It fell to the ground next to the vampire. “Now run!” Kashchey shouted, shutting the window with a loud bang. “It’s a humming bomb! It’s going to howl in a way that’ll raise the dead! It’ll last for three hours!”

“What?!”

“Uuuuuuuggggg!” the bomb hit their ears with its almost unearthly decibels. Maria tried to imagine what the vampire felt like, but it was difficult to think. The howling was unbearable. After making a few steps toward the door, she swayed and fell unconscious.

When she came to her senses six hours later, she discovered herself in the same room with the strange name of “Central control”. Kashchey was sitting in the chair, clicking on something enthusiastically. Noticing that the princess woke up, he gave her some water and happily said that after running through the corridors back and forth, he’d gotten lost. After another turn, he came across what he’d been looking for by accident.

“That’s one powerful bomb!” he said, either stating the fact or showing off, or maybe empathizing with the vampire. “I hope our guest doesn’t come to us again. Of course, if after that sound attack his brains are intact. You know what? I learned a lot of interesting things. You rest for a while.”

He flicked the switches and pressed various buttons, checking what would happen, memorizing the result while leveling everything that stood a little above the ground in the vicinity of the castle. He finished only when the tops of the towers let out bright rays into the sky and the planet Phaeton appeared between Mars and Jupiter, along with its asteroid belt.

“I’m powerful!” Kashchey summed up. “I’m so powerful it’s scary to think about it!”

The vampire woke up and immediately regretted it, but falling back unconscious was already impossible. He rose to his feet, trying to move as smoothly as possible, and walked away, deciding to return when he felt better. Gas molecules, also known as air, were colliding with each other deafeningly, and the wind whistled, watching their dance. After having lost his elite vampire troops in one moment, he realized he’d made a big mistake. He should have taken the castle immediately upon his arrival five thousand years ago. And when he decided to rectify the situation and make it his impregnable lair, he’d chosen the wrong approach once again. He shouldn’t have thrown himself into this wilderness without really knowing who lived here. And here was the result, a staggering defeat and a blow to his plans to seize the planet.

His head buzzed, the wind howled and whistled unbearably. Somehow getting to the forest, the vampire found a dark place and collapsed there, unconscious.

The captain watched the actions of princes enthusiastically. Yeah, they were brave soldiers. He remembered them from how they’d reacted to his ship. Such people were able to defeat the vampires, and the captain was glad he hadn’t burned them during an emergency take off.

The robot-interceptor was recording their conversations, and it became clear that the princes were heading to the mysterious Kashchey, whom everyone called the Immortal. Only it wasn’t clear whether this was really so or if it was just an exaggeration. The peasants, for example, when talking about their battle with the vampires, had increased the number of killed enemies by exactly three… thirty-three times. And the soldiers in the capital hadn’t even blinked after hearing about a new problem. This world, it seemed, firmly stood on its feet, and people were ready to fight back at any moment. Their military skills were of top class.

Now, if he could learn who Kashchey was…

Why not? He didn’t have to worry about the vampires, the people themselves would destroy them. Now he understood why the vampires had failed to conquer this planet. The people didn’t allow it! (The captain didn’t know how deeply wrong he was by jumping from pessimism to excessive optimism so quickly.) So, he just had to follow the princes, and soon it would be clear who Kashchey was and what he represented.

The captain gave the command to the robot-scout and it began to move after the princes, keeping a careful distance behind them. The captain focused on installing the night vision system. After he returned home, the film would become such a sensation that he would be able to buy a whole planetary system!

The captain dedicated himself entirely to his task, but toward the night, he was distracted by a strange event. Something flashed from the north side so brightly that he’d lost his sight for a moment, and the night vision devices went permanently out of order. The computer showed the calculated power of that flash, and it turned out that it was equal to the explosion of a nuclear bomb with a capacity of three thousand eight hundred megatons.

The tornado beams came from the same direction.

Funnily, the computer showed that princes were moving to that exact region. Conclusion? Only the devil knew what was happening here. He had to leave the ship and look around. Not directly, of course. With the help of mega-scanner.

The captain took off his helmet and put it on his head with trepidation. This device was worth an unimaginable amount of money, so he avoided using it until now. But that moment finally came. He flicked the switch, and the helmet became poorly lit with pink lights. The glasses showed the world so vividly, as if the captain was really standing right on the ground. On the planet itself, a ghostly phantom appeared, moving according to the commands and transmitting the video signal to the ship via the mega-scanner. From there, it streamed into the helmet and goggles, all in real-time. The captain synchronized his movements with the princes’, stood on the “treadmill”, a so-called flight simulator, and set off. The phantom flew north at the same speed.

At first, the captain dodged the trees, but after failing to do that in one instance, he realized that mega-scanner could slip through any obstacles and surfaces. Rushing straight ahead was unusual, so the captain closed his eyes now and then. Soon, though, he got used to it and increased his speed.

“I hope I won’t forget myself and do the same thing in reality,” the captain muttered from time to time. Getting un-used to the virtual advantages would be tough.

The crow was flying carefully, rising above the trees occasionally to check if the teeth were around. Brontoquack had told her that they came suddenly yet that it was easy to catch their approach by the enchanting singing. Gathering her courage, the crow boldly flew higher, and to her joy, she realized that the teeth were clearly not around. The flight zone was completely clean, so she could fly wherever she wanted! But there was something strange, too. Where were the birds and the insects?

And the ubiquitous sly faces disappeared, as if they’d been licked away.

Deciding to take a break on a high tree, the crow looked for bugs or worms, but they weren’t visible.

“Anyone here?” she shouted. She needed to eat someone!

’Anyone here?’ a resounding echo responded. ‘Anyone here… here… ere… e…’ A nearby tree stirred.

“What’s wrong? Why are you making all this noise?” it asked in a dissatisfied, low voice.

“Aah!” the crow screamed, darting away. Tangled in the branches, she fell to the ground and started to crawl away.

“Where are you?” the tree asked. “What kind of joke is this? You wake me up and hide right away? I’m not playing hide and seek! Come back and tell me why you’re making all this noise.”

The crow ignored the order.

“Okay, let’s play hide and seek!” the tree agreed grimly. “Ready or not, here I come.”

There was a noise like thunder, and then the tree swayed and stirred. The top thinnest branches twitched and quickly got absorbed by larger branches. In turn, they joined the rapidly diminishing trunk. Turning into a tiny sprout, the tree swung, as if looking for a crow, and disappeared completely. The crow flew up, and to her horror, she saw a rapidly growing network of branches right in front of her. Making a steep dive, she turned and flew in the opposite direction.

“Where are you going?” the tree protested. “You can’t fly away from me.”

“We’ll see!”

“I had to catch different birds before.”

“And what do I have to do with that?”

“You woke me up and I’ll eat you for it. You look too sporty, but I have no choice.”

The crow chuckled and sat on top of the birch. The tree immediately surrounded her with its branches.

“Got you!” it screamed. “You gave up! Wow, that was fast. All right, I’ll eat you now. I will!” I will!”

“You talk too much!” the crow said, carefully backing away through the single accessible hole. “What a lousy hunter.”

Then she raced toward north. The tree screamed, “Liar! I’ll catch you anyway!”

“I fly fast.”

“I’m not a turtle either!”

“Goodbye!” the crow cooed. The tree plunged into the ground and followed her with rapid speed. The dirt was getting pushed out to the surface because of its volume, which clearly showed where the tree was rushing.

“What an overgrown sprout,” the crow grunted sourly.

The roots of large trees were torn by an underground runner, and small trees jumped along with their roots. The crow saw a rapidly lengthening black line on a green background. The tree was already ahead of her and it was easily repeating her pirouettes and changes of direction. Turning north again, the crow gained altitude and soared. She had a big distance to cover in her fall, so she could relax a bit and take a break. The earth was gradually approaching but the thin black line only became wider. The tree didn’t lag behind.

Once upon a time, when the crow was very young, the old raven told her about the mysterious trees that suddenly came to life and caught little birds who decided to fly at night for dinner. The little crows didn’t believe these stories, so they flew at night and never met anything like that. But as it turned out, the old raven wasn’t out of his mind due to his age. He spoke the truth and made only one mistake. These predatory trees hunted not only at night but also during the day! Perhaps this was what had eaten all the locals and why the forest was dead silent.

The sky was extremely clear. Not a single cloud to change direction and remain unnoticed by the tree. The line of its movements disappeared behind the crowns of the trees, occasionally peeking through the thick foliage. The tree was a stubborn opponent. Or it was very hungry.

“A crawling hunter!” the crow muttered. And suddenly it dawned on her that for the last half an hour, she could hear the soft singing of the flying teeth. The crow was seized by a wild fear, her heart almost jumping out of her beak. She frantically spun on the spot, trying to see a dangerous enemy. And soon she noticed several dots on the horizon.

The tree slowed down. It sensed the powerful waves of fear coming from the crow and was trying to determine what it was about.

The crow swept up, not knowing what to do. If she stayed in the sky, she’d get mercilessly chewed. If she went down, she’d be chewed, too, just as mercilessly. The choice was small and entailed deciding who to give herself for chewing. The crow disliked both options.

The tree became even more interested in seeing what had frightened the bird so much. It stretched out over the forest and turned toward the flying teeth. It wanted to know what feelings were coming from the teeth, but the hatred they radiated hit it so hard that the stunned tree slowly collapsed.

The crow reacted instantly. She dived at top speed and disappeared in the foliage right under the nose of the teeth. There, she grabbed the branch with her beak and froze in anticipation of the enchanting singing. But the teeth took their places in the crowns of the trees, settled back and fell silent. The crow opened her beak and looked at the ground. Maybe the mean tree-hunter was plotting something against her? What she saw plunged her into a deep state of shock. The ground was dotted with crumpled and chewed feathers as well as crushed and simply gnawed bones of birds and animals. The tree was lying in the middle, resembling a dead snake that had choked on hedgehogs and porcupines.

The crow slid to the ground and flew over the layers of bones. She finally realized what it was. A cesspool for the teeth, with the crowns of trees being their home. This was from where they went hunting and where they returned to rest. It was the lair of the predators that made the forest dwellers tremble. The bitten skull of some large animal stared at the crow with empty eye sockets, but it didn’t frighten her. After the nightmare she’d lived through, the crow lost the ability to be afraid, so she felt as if nothing terrible was happening. The fear was gone, leaving a feeling of unreality behind.

The tree woke up and began to convulse. The teeth froze. Someone was making noise in their home? It was like a strike of a lightning! But they couldn’t go down and find out who was making the noise. They were too scared of getting tangled in the branches. The teeth soared and froze, trying to determine where the source of noise was moving. Meanwhile, the tree was looking for the crow. Catching her waves of feelings, it dived underground and rushed towards her. The crowd of teeth flew after the tree.

Hearing a noise, the crow turned around. The tree was jumping in and out of the ground like a fish, the teeth were flying over it, and this cheerful company was moving right toward her!

“Caaaw!” the crow yelled, and with the last bits of strength, she flew toward the castle.

After approaching the castle for the second time, the vampire didn’t carelessly storm the gates again. He doubted he’d live through another explosion of a sound bomb. He wanted to look for some holes or cracks. He had to hurry, though, because while he’d be able to tolerate the morning light, the midday sun would kill him instantly. He had to find a way to enter the castle and attack its owner right now. Let it be his revenge for having to enter the building like a rat, not like a Lord of Vampires.

Or should he challenge the master of the castle to a duel? Well… No. Judging by the remoteness of his housing, he was not a simple person. Either a hermit or a villain.

His flow of thoughts was interrupted by the desperate caws of the crow. The vampire raised his eyebrows in amazement. Something like an incredibly thick worm was flying behind the crow, jumping like a fish over water. The crow flew up to the castle and soared up sharply. The tree rushed after her, crashing into the window. It shattered into hundreds of small pieces from the impact, and pushing off the ledge on the wall, the tree jumped on the crow. The bird made a loop and dived into the broken window.

The tree repeated her path and almost disappeared inside when a flock of teeth attacked it, grabbed it by the trunk and dragged it back. The tree twitched, destroying a part of the wall. The stones fell to the ground. The vampire ran to the side and watched these strange events from a safe distance.

The crow began to hurl herself along the corridors, still cawing, thinking of nothing but the ways to escape from the tree. She flew into some corridor and almost fell in a hungry swoon. An extremely delicious smell was coming from the nearest room.

With some eighteenth sense, the crow realized that neither the tree nor some other enemies were around, so she jumped on the table and pounced on the food, devouring it so quickly, as if her life depended on it.

The teeth pulled the tree outside and began to chew on it. The tree was tossing and writhing in response, the teeth were shattering into dozens of pieces, falling to the ground.

The vampire was shocked. The teeth tore at the tree, the tree responded with titanic blows, and it was impossible to understand who was winning. The battle in the sky reached its climax when a cunning face appeared out of thin air right next to the vampire. The vampire broke away from the battle and stared. More and more faces appeared from the void right before his eyes, smiling slyly and covering the ground with a smooth smiling carpet. The vampire moved away just in time. The carpet moved toward the fragments of teeth and pieces of wings lying here and there.

Slurp! Slurp! Slurp!

The vampire turned cold. It occurred to him that if they didn’t have enough, they would probably eat him, too.

The crow barely managed to finish the food. She plopped down on the table, exhausted, and only then did she notice that she had company. Kashchey and Maria were sitting next to her. They’d entered right in the midst of the crow’s feast. They watched the crow curiously and even had time to bet on whether she would be able to eat all the food or if she’d choke.

“To think how far the hunger can push another living being!” Kashchey said. “The appetite like that of an elephant! Where did she come from and how did she get into the castle?”

“Ask her yourself,” Maria advised. “And ask about the racket, too. Hear that?”

“I do. Let her rest and then she can fly where he wants. Such a brave bird shouldn’t be turned into a scarecrow.”

“I think that since she came here and wasn’t scared, she wants to do something to you.”

“To me? She? Are you crazy?”

“Well, there have to be some evil crows.”

“She’s as evil as I am a crow!”

“Nevertheless… You’ve found a translator for languages of all known life forms, so use it. Ask her what she wants.”

“Okay, I’ll do it, but later. First, I have to see what that noise is about. Maybe the vampire didn’t get the hint and decided to repeat the attack.”

The captain was so used to passing through the obstacles that in his excitement, he turned on top speed and left the princes far behind. Like a bullet, he passed through the windbreak and almost flew through Kashchey’s castle, stopping inches from the tall wall with an incredible number of windows. The captain lifted his head to look at the building and gasped in amazement.

A castle. So tall that if you looked at it from below, you could easily become insecure about your height. The captain moved back and tried to determine the type of architecture. But he’d never seen such ornamentation before. Calculating how old the castle was, he went cold. Judging by the cracks and its overall appearance, as well as by the thickness of the part of foundation that sank into the ground under the weight of time, the structure was so ancient that it could easily compete with the civilization of the captain himself.

An unknown advanced civilization on the edge of the galaxy? The one that sank into oblivion until the advent of the World Union? How could that be possible? This was a real discovery, one of those worthy of mention in the golden book titled “The History of the Worlds”!

“I’ve immortalized my name!” the captain exclaimed and felt like someone passed through him. “If I manage to get back home…”

For a moment, he forgot that he was an intangible formation of the mega-scanner. The captain stared at the monster that had struck him. He thought that this place had accumulated a strange amount of organisms from different planets. They were strikingly different from each other in structure and physical characteristics. Why hadn’t the developers of the mega-scanner thought to make a built-in screen so it would be possible to clarify the characteristics of the newly arrived forms of life? How come nobody had decided to provide the device with such important features?

“The castle is mine!” he heard the angry cry of a vampire, who was trying to unsuccessfully grab the captain by his clothes. The captain, in turn, tried to grab his hands, but both of them failed.

“You are the owner of this castle?”

“Not yet!” the vampire growled. “But I’ll be the owner soon! And I advise you not to get in my way!

He sent a series of crushing blows but only threshed the air in vain. The captain decided to show that he was worth something, too, so in response, he began to box enthusiastically in an emergency mode. Then he realized that the blows were hitting not the vampire but the tools of the ship surrounding him in reality. He must have punched something accurately a few times since his fist was moaning with pain. The captain took off his helmet and rushed to check what damage he had done to his own property.

As it turned out, he really knew how to fight. Because he’d knocked out the shelf that was already barely hanging in place. It fell down along with discs, pens, and books. These things touched the edge of the emergency take-off button in their fall, powering the side engines. In one swoop, the ship flew away from the planet by forty thousand miles.

The captain, already wearing a helmet, angrily snapped at the vampire, “You freak!”

Then he turned off the mega-scanner and rushed to rectify the situation. The Moon was right ahead, and if he failed to straighten the ship, it would drive into the Moon in a way that no repair would help to recover from.

The vampire saw how the ghost faded and then vanished entirely.

“Got scared!” he grinned maliciously before running to the broken window. It was a great chance to get into the castle and remain unnoticed by the owner.

The teeth, whose rows had thinned considerably, became the winners, so they chewed the twitching remains of sawdust happily and flew home.

The vampire grabbed the ledges in the wall and began to climb to the broken window. Looking at the flying teeth, he thought with pleasure that something had clearly changed in these places over the last thousands of years. No teeth had existed here before. No, there had only been some persons who had managed to defeat him. And here he was, and here they were not! Ha! This was what living forever meant. His enemies were long in a coffin, and he lived and rejoiced! And not alone but with his great army.

Where were they raging now?

The vampire reached the window and looked down. Forty meters. The height was not for the faint of heart! The window led to a corridor with many doors. Hiding here was ridiculously easy. And then he would wait for the right moment and grab the owner by the throat. And he’d be sure to drink all of his blood, till the last drop, so he wouldn’t become a vampire, too. He didn’t need any competition. This bastard would turn the entire planet upside down in an instance with his stupid tricks.

“I’m the victor!” the vampire shouted and began to tear pieces from the window. “Hold on tight, you big worthless enemy! Your last hour in this world has begun!”

He had to hurry, though. The sun was high, and if the clouds dissipated…

The wings rustled softly. Huge teeth dangled right behind him. The vampire froze and turned.

Slurp.

And silence came…

The captain managed to slow down at a decent distance from the Moon, but there, he hesitated, not knowing where to go. To return to his home planet? Or to continue monitoring people? With their belligerence, they would be able to hold on. But for how long?

They were clearly in need of the interplanetary star army.

The cunning face dived into the foliage and disappeared. The fox, who was running after her, attacked the bush but found no one. Her mood was terrible. The faces had been continuously following her for the last several hours, and with a sly look, they fled whenever the fox tried to catch them.

“Stop making fun of me!” she yelled. “Why don’t you go to hell? I don’t know where it’s located but all the same. The farther into the wilds, the stranger everything becomes! I’m going home, and you do whatever you want! I’m not going to be scared of any crows. Ha! Let her fear instead!”

Someone knocked on the gates demandingly.

Kashchey and Maria were sitting at the table, having dinner. Kashchey had kept his promise and repaired the cooking machine. The quality of food had improved significantly, surprising even the princess who was accustomed to luxurious delights.

Now they were resting. The number of the studied rooms exceeded twenty, and there was still a ton of work ahead. Tens of floors and hundreds (“Hundreds!” Kashchey thought with horror. “Good thing I’m immortal!”) of rooms.

The crow was sitting next to them, leisurely absorbing her favorite meat cutlets. At Maria’s request, Kashchey left the bird in the castle. The first days, the crow was overcome by a cheerful, sometimes hysterical laughter at the memories of the fox and the cheese. Gradually, her laughter ended, and she calmed down. Occasionally, the crow looked at Kashchey, still unable to believe that he wasn’t some nightmarish fiend from the abyss of madness. He was actually quite a normal person. Kashchey decided to use the crow as a scout. He understood bird language now perfectly thanks to his translator. But he didn’t give her any jobs for now, choosing to give her full freedom of actions. He was awfully curious to watch her.

“The vampire again?” Kashchey was stunned. “What a pushy personality!”

Someone screamed outside the gates,

“Kashchey! Come out and fight to death!”

Kashchey looked at Maria in amusement.

“These ones came for you! What shall we do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want to stay in the castle and explore it or do you want to go home and forget about the kidnapping like it was some nightmare?”

“Of course I want to go back! But I want to explore the castle, too.”

Kashchey grinned.

“And how do you imagine that can happen?”

Maria thought about it.

“Kidnap me every day from eight in the morning to four in the evening,” she suggested. “Not counting the weekend.”

“And what will your current and future relatives say to that?” Kashchey asked. “I don’t think they’ll believe you’re coming here purely for research.”

Kashchey raised his hands and formed the horns with them.

“M-m-mu-u-u-u!” he drawled.

Maria wavered. Kashchey was right. But this place was so interesting, so mysterious… How could she just leave that?

“You’re such a villain, Kashchey!” she said grimly.

“That I am,” Kashchey assented. “And as a true villain, I can’t grant all your wishes. Only one. To let you go home. Take this!”

Kashchey pulled the plate with the buttons out of his pocket and handed it to Maria. The buttons were five centimeters long and six millimeters wide. Maria treated the gift in a businesslike way. She didn’t admire it, demanding technical information at first.

“What does it do?”

“With this summoner, you can call me any time. For tea and cake, for example, or for the splitting of taxes. Who knows what will happen?”

“And what else?”

“You can use it if something happens and you can’t handle it on your own. The first button turns the automatic distress signal on and off. The second one switches communication devices on and off, and the third one turns my hologram on. That’s for your enemies.”

“And what exactly happens if I turn it on?”

“It’s like a painting, but it shows me for who I really am.”

Maria shook her head in surprise.

“I don’t remember such a device.”

“I can do something by myself as well, you know! Not to mention that my poor head is filled with so much knowledge that I simply don’t understand where I am going to apply it all. But that’s just lyrics. The action plan is as follows. I tie you up and leave you at the front door, go out to participate in this unequal battle and lose. The princes enter the castle, free you, and you all come home together!”

“Wait, there are four buttons here!” the princess interrupted him.

“Yeah?” Kashchey asked, surprised. “That’s right. Well, I think we’ll use the fourth button for… M-m-m… for example, to say hello to me! Press the button and my sensor will reflect, ‘Hi, Kashchey!’”

“But you’re immortal!” Maria interrupted him again. “How can you lose?”

“I’m not exactly immortal. I mean, I’m immortal, but you can kill me. And then I will be resurrected again, after the unwanted witnesses of my resurrection have left this place. But no word about it to anyone. Let people think that I’m an ordinary long-liver with delusions of grandeur.”

“People have never even heard such words!”

“It’s their problems… We have to hurry! Do you hear the princes raging and calling me bad words?”

Maria nodded and sighed sadly.

“Should I tell them to come back in a month?” Kashchey wondered.

“No. Don’t.”

“Tell me, do you still wish to marry one of these brutes? Okay. After all, it’s not me who has to spend their whole life with them. Don’t forget, I’m dead to everyone! Or will be soon.”

Maria nodded.

“All righty! I wish you all the best and a long happy life! If you’re lucky, you won’t see me again. But…” Kashchey lowered his voice and added in a whisper, “If you or your future family suddenly have a problem, don’t forget about my secret assistance. Because in this case, I’m always alive. And now let’s go to the exit quickly. I don’t want the princes to break my door.”

At the gates, Kashchey stopped. Then he started beating at them with his hands, yelling at the princes to let him out to come out to fight to death. Stunned princes froze for a while. Kashchey’s unexpected requirement strained their brains hard.

Kashchey turned to Maria, who was tied to the chair.

“Goodbye,” he said. Maria would have answered but the gag in her mouth prevented her from doing so. So she just looked angrily at her kidnapper. Kashchey sighed. “Sorry, I can’t stand hearing the heavy words of goodbye. So let’s part in silence. Yeah?”

And without waiting for another glare, he opened the gates and went out into the street. The gates opened with a heart-rending screech, closed, opened and closed again, then again and again. Kashchey watched mischievously as princes cringed with disgust. He copied the system of creakiness from Yaga, having visited her house once.

“Here comes your mortal enemy!” he announced, making the gates creak one last time. “On behalf of Princess Maria, let me thank you for not being afraid of me and for going to a war against the greatest villain of our time, that is, me again. This solemn speech dedicated to your arrival is over now. Let’s proceed to the second part. Which one of you will fight me first?”

The princes looked at each other.

“The gates will open after my death!” Kashchey explained. “Or rather, after yours. In any case, it is not necessary to beat at them with your feet and batons. I know your habits. You just want to kick some doors out with a wild roar. So I’ll repeat once more. The gates will open on their own! Are you ready, princes? I understand that seeing the world’s biggest villain two steps away is a truly impressive sight, but the princess may take offense at you for the delay.”

“And you dare to scold us?” Yaroslav was indignant. “Which of us has kidnapped her?”

“I kidnapped her for a couple of months while one of you will take her forever! So which of us is the bigger kidnapper?”

“I’m not going to kidnap her. I’m going to marry her!” Yaroslav shouted angrily.

“You will take her away from the palace and from the kingdom,” Kashchey remarked. “So it’s the same thing. I demand a ransom for her, which none of you have thought to bring, while you plan on taking a huge dowry. By the way, why didn’t you bring the ransom?”

“You talk too much,” Artem said with displeasure. “It won’t work, stop it!”

“As you wish!” Kashchey hit the prince with his fist. The fist whizzed over Yaroslav’s head and Yaroslav ducked quickly, so in the end, the blow knocked the helmet off Artem’s head. Yaroslav raised his sword, the one with eight sharp arrowheads. The first blow of Kashchey’s weapon cut Yaroslav’s sword into small strips. The Prince stared at the stump of his sword, which had served him faithfully for many years, and then threw it at Kashchey. Kashchey sent the stump flying away with the answering blow of his sword-whip.

Yaroslav retreated.

“You won’t defeat me just as easily!” he said. “I also have some tricks up my sleeve.”

He turned his left hand by forty-five degrees, stretched it out, and two swords came out of the chain mail, one falling into his right hand, the other into his left one.

“Bravo!” Kashchey praised and waved his sword-whip. Yaroslav crossed his swords, stopped the whip and tensed. Then he forcefully pushed them forward, slicing the sword-whip like scissors would. Kashchey pulled the sword-whip back and pushed the prince away. Yaroslav fell to the ground, and Artem rushed to attack Kashchey with a sword in his hand.

“Can’t fight me alone?” Kashchey scowled. “You’re not playing rounders here!”

“Well, I want to kill you, too!” Artem said. Kashchey attacked and Artem pushed his sword sideways. The sword-whip got stuck in it. The prince threw his weapon to the side, pulled out a knife and stabbed Kashchey. Flinching, Kashchey struck the prince with such force that Artem flew a dozen of meters away. Kashchey pulled the knife out and looked at the rising Yaroslav.

“Farewell, prince! I’ll be seeing you in your nightmares,” Kashchey said and collapsed. “Every night,” he added. “Oh!”

He twitched to make it believable, foamed from the mouth and quietened. The princes looked at each other.

“That’s it?” Artem asked in surprise. Kashchey nearly blurted out, ‘What else do you want? A victory concert?’ But he restrained himself in time. To be on the safe side, he let out a little more foam. The soap he kept hidden in his mouth had a pleasant strawberry smell but a truly disgusting taste. Sadly, spitting it out ahead of time had been almost impossible.

Now only the finishing touch was needed. Kashchey’s heart stopped beating. A remote detonator tuned to the frequency of his heartbeat worked, and the dynamite and fireworks he had prepared beforehand exploded, creating a true lighting show. A cloud of dust, sand, and multi-colored sparks shot up in the air. Yaroslav and Artem barely had time to cover themselves with cloaks as sand and leaves fell right on their heads.

When everything went quiet, Yaroslav crawled out from under the coat and helped his brother get up. Looking around in amazement, they went to the gates. This time, they opened easily and silently. The princes entered the castle.

When the happy company departed from the castle and moved away by a sufficient distance, a small bump emerged from the ground covered with an even layer of dust. Kashchey’s head appeared on the surface. He pushed his hand out and dragged Artem’s helmet into the light. Kashchey eyed it in a puzzled way and threw the discovery far behind. Then he got up, dusted himself off, and took the sticky leaf off his clean coat. Holding it closer to his eyes, he let it go. The leaf fell gently, and Kashchey reached into his pocket again. Pulling out the musical keyboard, he began to play a funeral march.

The crow sat on his shoulder.

“You were a great villain, Kashchey. Peace to your ashes and peace to your soul,” she said in a tragic voice. “And now, time to start the funeral dinner!”

“Cawww!” the crow added.

“Don’t get carried away,” Kashchey warned. “You might overeat in your joy, and we have a lot of things to…”

The crow croaked reproachfully.

“Okay, I was joking,” Kashchey said. And then they entered the castle.