The Grey Lands, The Estate, June 1, 2021Vopros and I were sitting in the Master's workshop.I was busy building a device that might—if everything went according to plan—be capable of condensing necro-energy with impressive efficiency.Vopros, meanwhile, was doing what Vopros did best.Complaining.“...I still don't understand it,” he grumbled. “We're wasting our time building useless contraptions that nobody needs when we could've simply broken into the Master's vault and made a fortune.”“Please be quiet,” I said without looking up. “You're distracting me.”The cat immediately fell silent. That was one of the advantages of having a written agreement with him. We had officially entered into what the system called the Dushny-Vopros Pact.Yes, that was its actual name in our list of active agreements. While taking a break from the painstaking work, I opened the pact and read through it again.The Dushny-Vopros PactArticle 1. The High Contracting Parties undertake to inform each other

Holy shit.I swallowed hard.Bettis climbed out of the sarcophagus and walked toward the far-left corner of the room, leaving dusty footprints behind her. She pressed a hidden panel.A moment later, a secret cabinet opened in the wall. Inside were various items buried beneath decades of dust.Bettis pulled out a pair of briefs and put them on. Then she wrapped a long strip of gray fabric around the area where her breasts should have been. After that came leather trousers and a jacket. The outfit might have passed for biker gear if not for the distinctly medieval design.Too many straps. Too much elaborate stitching. Patterns that had absolutely nothing to do with motorcycles. And, naturally, no zippers.She finished the outfit by tying a leather bandana around her bald head and fastening it with a strap behind her neck. Until then, the only people I'd encountered in the Grey Lands were the dead—either naked or dressed in medieval cloth

“Pal Petrovich!” I shouted. “We've got a situation!”I knew perfectly well that the last thing anyone lying on a morgue gurney wanted to hear was:We've got a situation!But this really was a situation.“Pal Petrovich!”I called again, sweeping the flashlight beam across the other gurneys. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a sudden movement.A rasping growl.And then—Blinding pain exploded through my neck.“AAAAAH, FUCK!”I threw off the wool blanket and sat bolt upright.“Fuuuuuck!”I gasped for air.“A dream!”I pressed a hand against my chest.“Jesus Christ, it was a dream!”“What the hell are you screaming about?”Vopros sounded thoroughly annoyed.“I had a nightmare,” I admitted. “A fucking realistic one.”

“What do I do with the corpse?” I asked.“Cast the spells the way the book says.” Vopros barely glanced up. “The important thing is to preserve the head.”He remained completely focused, using the claw of his right paw to make tiny adjustments to one of the concentrators inside the ritual circle.I’d accumulated quite a collection of spell diagrams while studying the specialized literature, and I’d painstakingly memorized them.So the first thing I did was cast Dead Stasis on the corpse’s head.The spell temporarily halted the decomposition of the brain.Technically, it was already too late to save him. The kid was well and truly dead, and irreversible processes had already begun in his brain.But I still needed to preserve whatever was left.I pressed my index fingers against the dead boy’s temples, moving the other fingers through a complicated seque