When Alason returned to the excavation site, he saw how the gnomes had already dug a deep tunnel, put up beams and support poles, for some reason carried out ventilation, all dirty in soot, but happy. Alason went up to Jacob and said:

"They're fast."

"Such creatures can dig through the planet in a week."

"I won't argue."

"What happened there?"

"Nothing good."

"What does it mean?"

"Those who really need help will never ask for it, and those who are just lazy will ask you in the first rows."

"Very depressing, sir."

"It is. What did you promise the gnomes?"

"I promised to arrange with the inquisitors to send them to the coal basin."

"Is this where the crystals are mined?"

"Yeah."

"There are a lot of people who want to go there."

"I think these guys have every chance."

"No shit."

A gnome came up the stairs from the pit and said:

"There is a tunnel there. More precisely, it was. Somebody blew it up. The earth began to crumble. And this is what we have in the end."

"Thank you," Alason said. "And where does this tunnel lead to and from where?"

"How should I know? Apparently, the tunnel is damn huge. It passes under the entire city, most likely leads to the forbidden city or somewhere out of it."

"Thank you very much."

"I can’t deposit your thanks into the bank, Jacob, you promised me," the gnome said threateningly, pointing his index finger.

Jacob scratched his head and replied that he would try to do everything in his power.

"Try your best!" The gnome added. "Or I'll tell everyone what your friends from the Inquisition are doing.”

"They're not our friends, and we don't know for sure whose tunnel is it" Alason replied, and waved his head aside to Jacob.

They stood aside in the shade and watched the gnomes climb out of the pit one by one.

"This is the work of the Inquisition."

"Them again."

"Yeah."

"We'll have to go to them and find out if this is really their tunnel."

"Pretty sure they won’t tell you."

From the direction of the Forbidden City, three kilometers away from them, a huge amount of steam flew up with a furious force. It was like something had exploded.

"If they won't tell us, then we'll think about what to do next."

"Do you have a more cooperative inquisitor?"

"Yes. Have one."

"Then I won't hold you up and I'll go home to sleep. The night was long and hard."

"The morning is no better."

"You're right, sir."

"Go already."

Alason got back into the police stagecoach and told the driver to go to the technological district to see an inquisitor named Morson. There was a creaking sound of levers, a release of steam and a new heart-rending siren.

"Oh, my God!" Alason shouted. "We're not having a chase here. Turn off this screaming shit, to hell with it!"

"Well, the traffic jam, sir."

"I'm not in a hurry."

The driver turned off the siren and drove to his destination. Alason lay down on the seat made of genuine leather and tried to take a nap. However, the constant bumps, the screams of people outside not only prevented him from forgetting himself in the inner world, consisting of imagination, reality and memories, but also caused irritation. It is as if a vile mythical creature is sitting over your head and does not let you sleep. Terrible feeling.

The stagecoach slowed down, drove on the bridge over the canal and found itself in the technological district. Immediately, a girl dressed in a steel-colored gas mask and hair-shaped tubes galloped past them on a mechanical steel horse. Instead of a heart, there was a device, which activated fire crystals, and in the head, there was a boiler that released clouds of steam through the horse's nose. A little further on the sidewalk, the children started small birds made on the same principle, only the steam came from a different place. An unknown world of inventors and technologies, who would have thought that they were all inspired by Metyr’s inventions.

Alason looked out of the other window and saw a man with missing legs overtake his stagecoach. Instead, a rigid iron seat and two huge wheels of at least twenty-six inches were installed on the lower part of the body. He moved the levers and then accelerated, then slowed down. A minute later, he turned right, and they went straight. Wind up sparrows flew past the stagecoach every now and then, chaotically and thoughtlessly, and a mouse-like wind up mechanism fell under the wheels of the stagecoach.

Women in this place dressed in long luxurious dresses of different colors, cones on their heads, and goggles on their eyes. Some, it seemed to Alason, dressed too vulgarly for such a religious country: narrow corsets that propped up their breasts, small skirts and long leather boots. Representatives of the Victorian era. And it is impossible to make out who a person is: an earl, a whore, a lord, an explorer, a soldier or a beautiful poet. Only inquisitors and priests dressed in their classic outfits, standing out from the general mass of local residents.

By four o'clock, Alason found himself in front of the gates of a sizable mansion made of white brick. The facade of the house was slightly blackened, putty fell off in some places, two residential complexes with sharp triangular roofs overlooked this world with an intimidating look on the sides, and in the center, they were separated by a tower in the form of a column.

A mechanical robot was standing on the lawn in front of the house and mowing the grass, monotonous and mindless, instead of which though there were already snowdrifts. Then Morson ran out of the door – a thin inquisitor of short stature, with a punk hairstyle, a monocle instead of his right eye, a black-colored studded leather mask and a gray worn top hat made of thin gray fabric. He waved his hands, shouted something and turned off the robot, then took it by the scruff of the neck and dragged it into the garage. When Morson was returning back, he saw Alason, waved his hand to him and the doors automatically opened. The police officer entered the territory.