Metyr looked at the antique wooden clock. 17:59. He began to pack his things, put on a long gray raincoat, and tied the laces of his shoes tighter. A cuckoo jumped out of a secret compartment of the clock and screamed, then hid and jumped out again, and went on like this for several more times. Metyr smiled, left the lab, took the key, and locked the door behind him. Then he began to move toward the spiral staircase and closed several more doors along the way.

As he stepped out into the street, the city was darkened by the twilight of the universe. The first stars appeared in the sky, and the three moons of the planet reflected the rays of the celestial body, smoothly disappearing behind the horizon. The walls were painted a dark red. The guards at their post had already changed and were looking towards the park opposite the entrance to the forbidden city and thinking about another sleepless night. Metyr said goodbye to everyone, shook hands and went to his home.

A light drizzle was falling outside. Metyr's feet kept stepping into puddles and small holes. He pulled on his hood, lowered his head, and walked faster. He reached the end of the district and turned into a small industrial area. The black houses, covered with soot and chimneys, emitted layers of steam into the sky. People were already returning from work. Their clothes were clean and well-groomed, the vulgar conical hats of the men, being an integral part of this place, were conspicuous, and the long black beard were matching well with the brown pupils.

There were practically no women on the street, except for one who was riding in a carriage. She stopped beside Metyr and looked at him. He caught a glimpse of pride and a hint of sadness in her eyes. It was as if this woman had stopped at that gorgeous day, from which it was so hard to get out. She looked at him like she was asking him a question without words: "Do you want to sit next to me? Take a ride around the city? Or will you pass me by and forget me in a few minutes?”

Metyr didn't stop. In the sky, just below the clouds, two green-colored zeppelins flew by. And behind the residential buildings, on the street where there were entertainment venues, including bars, restaurants, small theaters, there was also a long clock tower.

Metyr crossed the road, turned into the first workers' street, which is located along the river canal with the docks, and saw from under the hood a lot of portrait artists. Street magicians and guitar-playing bards that stood on the corners between the houses. Life was boiling and at the same time it was already painfully boring. Metyr stopped next to one bard, who noticed him and nodded in greeting, continuing to finish the last verse of his song.

...Take me into the night where the blue river flows

And the light of the stars reaches stones,

After all I'm not wild cub by my blood

Just a hollow bard in the docks…

Metyr smiled and tossed the bard a gold coin. The bard smiled and thanked him. The darkness grew deeper in the gloomy streets of the city, and only the lanterns, like unbound angels of light, opened their portals, waiting for the passing travelers.

Metyr reached the bridge, climbed it, and saw on his left the last rays of the setting sun and a small port steamer sailing away towards the endless waters. He crossed to the other side and found himself in the district of "Modern Technologies". To his right, Metyr saw a strange masked man with glassy eyes and a curved beak for a nose. He did not drive a steam engine, but a strange mechanical robot with the body of a horse and the face of an elephant shrew.

Metyr adjusted his sodden gray hood and moved deeper into the district. This place was the only one where airships with advertising posters hung among the tall six-story buildings covered with graphic drawings and pipes. While Metyr was trying to get through the district as quickly as possible, women were constantly coming up to him, touching him on the shoulders and calling out to him. One girl - very persistent – could not get off Metyr, and he pushed her away so that she fell to the ground and began to pour words of threats on him, but when the local guards identified the man in the gray cloak, they quickly closed her mouth.

Metyr walked down another street filled to the brim with bars and restaurants, then turned left. The next alley was completely different from the others: silence, a single streetlamp with a dim light, closed curtains in empty non-residential buildings (either half destroyed or half completed), and a huge number of rusty cranes and building materials. Near the house number 12, Metyr saw one inquisitor, who pinned a weak girl to the wall. She was in her waitress uniform and didn't look more than 16 years old. She tried to escape, calling for help.

Metyr looked behind him, then back at the heartbreaking scene, then behind again.

"All right," he said to himself, and walked over to number twelve.

"Hey!" Metyr shouted, "Let her go."

"Who the fuck are you?" The inquisitor answered him and hit the girl on the head so that she fell with her eyes open and no longer resisted.

Metyr lowered his head, looked at her, and realized that the girl was just in shock. Then he turned his gaze in the direction of the inquisitor, who lost no time in pulling a long knife from his sleeve and attacking with the intent to kill. Metyr dodged the cutting attacks several times, but the last one still got him and scratched his palm. The inquisitor did not let up and tried to stab the intruder. Metyr went on the offensive, he tried to knock the knife out of his hands, but the attack was unsuccessful. The Inquisitor twisted like a snake, sat up, and ran the blade straight across his right eye. Metyr pressed his hand sharply to the wound, and felt warm blood trickle down his forearm. His left eye never left his opponent. The inquisitor, bursting into laughter, shouted something, and two more inquisitors, who were hiding in the shadow of the cranes, jumped out at Metyr from behind and grabbed him by the arms and legs.

"Prepare to die, you bastard!" one of them said. "You'll know how to go against the Holy Inquisition!"

Metyr closed his eyes and said:

"Modified flame vortex." (rank 3)

Metyr's hands were on fire. The inquisitors, scalded, let go of him and jumped in different directions.

"He's a Metentis!" they shouted.

Metyr, who was bleeding from the eye, folded his hands as if holding an invisible sphere and three powerful fire tornadoes flew out, spewing black flames. A second later, all three Inquisitors lay dead. Metyr went to one of them and checked his pulse. He tore off his cloak and looked at his shoulder – no tattoos. He examined the other two - nothing either.

“They are not inquisitors,” said Metyr. “Damn it.”

He approached the girl, lightly slapped her on the cheek to bring her to her senses, and when she turned in his direction, he asked:

"What happened? Do you have someone to take you home?"

The girl shivered and turned her head in the direction of the thirteenth house and mumbled something. Metyr turned and saw a boy, about eleven years old. He quickly ran up to them and said that he was the girl's brother.

"I'll take her home, thank you for saving her, Sir."

Metyr rose above them like a fearsome king before a condemned man, and said:

"You haven't seen anything, have you?"

They turned their heads from left to right and walked away towards the street with bars and restaurants. Metyr dusted off his cloak, rubbed his ash-covered hands, and put the sleeve of his cloak to his eye, sighed heavily, and walked back at a brisk pace, deciding to change his route. Before he reached the end of the alley, he saw this boy talking to a policeman and pointing in his direction. The girl was no longer with him.

Metyr turned and looked once more at the three fake inquisitors, then looked in the direction of the boy and the policeman.

"It was all a fake scene to rob me."

Metyr wrapped his arms around himself, closed his eyes, and said:

"Merge with the darkness." (rank 5)

His body evaporated. When the police officer, along with backup, ran to the scene, they saw only three burned corpses.

"Do you smell pork?" one of the policemen asked.

"I smell beef," said the other.

They stood for about a minute trying to determine what kind of smell it was, until a third policeman broke the silence.

"I didn't know you could smell food from the food court so far away."

"They want to attract visitors with the smell."

"They're definitely adding something chemical to it."

"Yeah."

"Thanks for the tip, kid, go down to the nearest temple and get your reward, we'll deal with what happened here."

The boy nodded and ran away.

Metyr, hiding in the shadows, went behind a dilapidated house and saw about seven rotting corpses. He passed by, went out to the street of bars, and removed the spell effect. No one in the surrounding area even paid attention to the fact that a man appeared on the street from the thin air.

He reached the district where his house was located. But before that, he turned onto Soaring Fish Street, came to warehouse number 3, which looked more like an empty house. The interior was cleaned, there were small tables and chairs, but there were no signs of people living in this place on a permanent basis. Metyr went into a room that looked somewhat like a kitchen - although there was no obvious reason to think so - went to a very ancient cabinet with silver glass, set up a wooden chair, and climbed on it. Then he opened the secret cabinet lid, under which was a small chest with VV crystals. He took 4 pieces, put them in the inside pocket of his cloak, put everything in its place back and went outside.

After walking a few hundred meters towards the place where his own house is located, Metyr saw a majestic temple with red domes and black marble walls, surrounded by a high fence. Next to it was a campaign poster with the inscription: "If you see a person using metovis or a person who sells VV crystals, inform any inquisitor and get a reward! Together we will make our country safer!”

Ten minutes later, Metyr was at home. His wife was waiting for him at the door.

"For God's sake, Metyr, what happened to your eye?"

"It's all right, Esme," he said, "the bandits wanted to rob me, but when they realized I had nothing, they let me go."

Esme's eyes filled with tears.

"I'll go get some bandages and tie your eye."

"Okay, thanks."

Metyr went inside the house, took off his wet gray cloak, soaked in blood, and hung it in the closet. He was walking down the hall toward the bedroom when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw his daughter eating her dinner with great gusto. His wife was in the living room looking for bandages. He went into his bedroom, took out the VV crystals, and put them in the bedside table. Esme came in and began bandaging his eye, while reciting a prayer for health and healing.

"We need to get a doctor to look at your eye."

"All right."

Esme finished bandaging the wound and immediately ran outside. She ran up to the police officer two doors down and asked him to call a doctor, then went back home. Metyr was already sitting in the kitchen, fooling around with his daughter, saying that now he was like a real pirate.

"The doctor will be here soon," Esme said.

"All right," Metyr answered, and continued to play with his little daughter.

Esme put the food on a plate and set it on the table.

"Eat up."

Metyr had just begun to eat when Esme suddenly said:

"Your daughter is already 7 years old, it's time to send her to school at the Temple, I know, you still have connections there."

"We've already discussed this. She'll go to a normal school."

"Enkelin, my dear, what school do you want to go to?"

"I don't know," she said.

"I'm paraphrasing, do you want to study with poor inadequate working-class children who will tease you and mock you, or in an elite school with an individual approach and the prospect of working in the best organization in the country?"

Enkelin looked at her mother with wide eyes, then looked at her father, as if without words asking him to answer for her. Metyr turned to his wife and said:

"First, a seven-year-old child cannot constructively decide his fate because of his inexperience in life. Secondly, the children of the workers are not such devils as you imagine."

"I don't need to imagine; I went to such a school and my conscience won't allow me to put my daughter through the same hell."

"Esme, times are changing, now people are different and children are different too."

"Nothing ever changes, Metyr."

"If you haven't done any research, you probably don't know what you're talking about. It's just your reasoning."

"I don't need to. My friends tell me everything, their children have already been through all this." Esme was starting to get agitated.

Metyr put his fork down on the table, half turned to his wife, and said:

"Can we reschedule this conversation for tomorrow? I bled out here five minutes ago, and I probably lost my right eye, so I'd like to come to my senses now and wait for the doctor."

"What will change tomorrow? Does the absence of an eye prevent you from discussing the fate of your own child? You talk about Egon all the time; you don't even need to be forced."

"You're crossing the line, Esme."

"I wish you'd made that bum escort you home. At least he would have been of some use. You run around with this burden, feed him, buy him an apartment, get him a job, and he just wants to do his own shady business, he doesn't care about you. And now you've been wounded by some bandits, as Egon will soon be, if he's not already."

Metyr got up from the table and told Enkelin to go to bed, and he would read her a fairy tale for the night. They went into the children's room, and Esme said to Metyr after them: "I'll pray for your discretion," and began to wash the dishes.

"Dad, tell me something new, okay?"

"Okay, I'll tell you a story about the 'Girl Who Sees the Light'."

Metyr sighed like a musician, a few seconds before his first solo performance, and began:

She moved along a small forest road, skirting and jumping over hummocks on the ground. She imagined that she was a huge giant, and the hummocks were medieval castles. On all sides it was surrounded by tall coniferous trees: spruces, firs, pines, beeches and oaks. She couldn't remember how long she'd been walking through the woods, but she knew it was midday, which meant the sun was at its zenith, though the warm summer rays still couldn't break through the thick canopy of the forest.

She stopped at a small fork, sat down on a hummock of a huge and majestic oak and began to eat, when suddenly she heard a cry for help. She looked around, but saw nothing.

Esme finished washing the dishes, went into Metyr's bedroom, and sighed angrily, hands on her hips.

"And where did you put the icon of St. Alba again?" she said, and began rummaging through his things, grumbling, "It's because of your mutton-like stubbornness this is all happening. Why does he dislike Saint Alba so much that he constantly removes it all the time? A great man, the savior of this country."

She went to the bedside table, pulled the handle of the drawer, and saw the VV crystals. She gasped, her hands shaking. She stood frozen for a few more minutes until she heard a knock on the door. She closed the drawer and went to the front door, already greeting the doctor, but there were two tall inquisitors standing in front of her. Outside, it was raining heavily again. Lightning struck.