CLA.S.S NEUTRAL: Stranger Is Coming

Capital of the Mernor Kingdom. Kavarnak's necklace. Plans.

The rest of the road we kept silent. We neared Kavarnak at around midnight. It was very dark around the outskirts of the city, but all the large buildings as well as the perimeter of the tall wall were illuminated by the glow of crystals. A huge palace was in the center of the city. Even despite the veil of darkness that the crystals could only vainly try to disperse, I saw how magnificent this architectural masterpiece was.

The towers were crowned with a strange glow: crimson or dark blue, but their light was too dim to make out what it was.

The wall could easily be called a work of art, because bas-reliefs, depicting numerous battles, peeped out through the darkness.

We were still a distance from the actual city, but even from here it seemed that the Mernor warriors were fighting an enemy army. My consciousness finished the image, adding the sounds of crossed swords.

We reached the city walls an hour later. The gates weren't opened immediately: at first, the guards checked the royal gatekeeper's identity, then they activated the opening mechanism, and as we waited for the gates to open, another half-hour passed.

However, I continued to admire the amazing bas-reliefs, which simply frightened with their plausibility. Every wrinkle was visible on the soldiers' faces, which expressed the whole range of emotions: fear, the thrill of battle, indifference, and so on. Many scenes were depicted here.

Looking at the set of stone armor that were impossible to distinguish from metal ones, my inner voice began to worry and begged me to take at least a couple of full sets, but I didn't have time to think about its request as we drove on.

Who built all this? The wall's thickness is about sixty-five feet. Damn, it's impossible! Such walls can withstand the shock wave of a hundred-megaton hydrogen bomb, although I might be exaggerating a little.

The clean cobbled streets impressed me no less than the wall. I'd thought that they would be the same as during the Middle Ages. However, the developers were attaboys and hadn't done that. As people would have avoided such cities since no one like walking along streets strewn with mud and dirt, smelling the stench of the unwashed inhabitants, and seeing the plague.

There were cozy houses along the wide streets, and I saw no beggars. The citizens didn't look oppressed: they laughed, smiled, and had fun. Everything was so idyll that I couldn't believe it was possible. I felt something fishy.

We headed toward the royal palace, which I could also describe for an incredibly long time. I saw where the dull crimson and blue glow came from: there were hefty crystals mounted atop the tall thin towers.

"Do you like the famous Kavarnak's necklace?" Kurbakht grinned. "Honestly, we don't know what they are for. The whole city was built a long time ago by some ancient race, which then abandoned this place for unknown reasons.

"Nobody remembers its old name. After several millennia the city became so littered that the people called it 'kavardak", which meant mess. Later the name was slightly modified—as it was no longer suitable for the city. However, the memory of the mess that prevailed here once is still alive.

"A powerful magical defense of several domes covers the city and the entire territory for several miles around, so it isn't so easy to lay siege to us. The crystals that you see, according to Wilgerd Gorgor's assumptions—the mage who told me about the Gardens of Death—are responsible for the defense. At least some of them; he couldn't explain the use of the other crystals. However, nobody took his theory seriously, even despite the convincing evidence.

"Now we'll go to the residence of the Secret Investigation office, where you'll relax. Tomorrow at noon we'll go to the king."

"Good, because I'm a bit tired," I lied. In reality, I was exhausted, especially morally, because it was hard to realize that I would never return to my world.

It was even strange, as I had never loved that world, but now I felt sad. Perhaps, because I hadn't made the conscious choice to stay in this world—somebody else had done it for me.

On the other hand… I liked it much more here. Here I was much stronger, I had more opportunities, and so on. Nobody was waiting for me back there, only loneliness, so I had to be happy with this outcome. After such thoughts, my mood improved significantly.