The lone house portrayed on the last card was sickeningly scary.

As Iryna reshuffled the cards, she couldn’t stop thinking about that house. Finishing, she fiddled with the deck for a while. Before handing it back to the wizard, she asked suddenly, “May I turn it over?”

“You may.” Smiling with just his eyes, Valery passed her the cards.

Her hand stopped in the air disbelievingly. Making up her mind, she turned the upper card over and put it down on the table.

“Ouch!”

The card peered at her with its back—golden vines on a black field.

But she’d just turned it!

Pulling the card to the edge of the table, Iryna turned it back.

The other side was the same—a black field with golden vines.

She cast an inquiring glance at the wizard. “What’s this? Some trick?”

The smile in Valery’s eyes was mirrored on the corner of his lips. “I’ve told you these cards are alive, Iryna. They obey no one but their master. In another person’s hands, they are just useless pieces of paper.”

Taking the card again, Iryna examined it closely, running her thumb along the smooth edge.

No optical illusion deceiving her eyes. Both sides of the card showed the back, with raised golden patterns along the edges encircling the blackness. It looked like two cards were glued together…but with zero impact on its thickness.

“Let’s do it together.” Taking the strange blank card from Iryna, the wizard put it back into the deck. “Just don’t be afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of its realism. The image might seem too…too vivid when you touch it. Don’t worry. Just watch.”

Before Iryna could process that, Valery put her hand on the upper card, and the two of them turned it together.

Now it had a picture!

“How are you doing it?” Iryna blurted in astonishment before even seeing what the picture was. As she slid her gaze to Valery, she started to realize that…

…it was that same house.

But from inside.

Stopping short, she fixed her eyes on the card, her hand glued to it.

The kitchen swayed into motion before her eyes, spinning faster and faster like a whirlwind; its central point was the card in her hand. The picture expanded into three dimensions, filling with motion and pulling Iryna in. She had no strength to resist it.

That place was semi-dark too. For a moment, Iryna felt lost between the two worlds. Still hearing the cozy ticking of the mounted clock in her kitchen, she could also make out the creaking of an old door swaying in the wind. Breathing the comforting smell of her home, she could feel the stuffy air of an abandoned dwelling mixed with it.

***

...When will Asp wake? Before the Cerberus? Or later? What if he doesn’t wake at all?

My head was swarming with these anxious thoughts for the rest of the way.

The house was totally different from what I’d seen in the dream.

No trace left of the cozy, comfortable dwelling. It looked like a rotting corpse lying in the shrubs. Thick grass reached to the middle of its grayed walls; the clay was falling off in places, revealing slanted wooden “ribs.” The roof was covered with brown straw “hair” that had sunk in on one side like a hollow belly. The smashed windows gaped like empty eye sockets.

All around the house, the grass was flattened, but it was totally trampled at the door. Someone must have come here. More than once.

The chasteners had failed to find Kasamarchi’s body back then, searching the river, the woods, and the shore. So the little Asper could have survived in the bubbling Lizard and, roaming the woods for a few years, come back to his place. That’s why the Magister had his soldiers leave the Cerberus in the house and check on it regularly.

We didn’t look in the windows. The day was bright and sunny; we’d barely be able to make anything out from the outside, but we could quickly get our eyes hit with sharp stings.

Two years ago, Kasamarchi had run straight in. But he wasn’t looking in the windows either, and they weren’t broken.

Kasamarchi suggested hiding behind a large barrel on the left once we entered the house. That would give Asp time to activate, and we would avoid the first volley of the Cerberus’s stingers. Filled with grain, the barrel could endure the impact, protecting us. When the stingers began darting around the house, slashing at the walls and remaining furniture, it would be up to Asp to deal with the monster. To Asp and…and Kasamarchi’s whistle. The boy hoped it would help, but I wasn’t so sure about that. Goodness knows what has happened to it during those two years under the floor. It could’ve been eaten by some rat a long time ago.

The lopsided door, darkened by wind and rain, creaked, swaying on the rusty hinges.

I checked the snake in my hair. Just as Kasamarchi had checked his Angel when he’d still had it. He’s probably out of the habit now, two years later. Poor thing.

Stopping at the door, Kasamarchi looked back and whispered, “Close your eyes. Let them get used to the dark.”

I obeyed.

“Once we’re in, fall to the floor and crawl to hide behind the barrel.”

“Okay,” I replied with numb lips.

An endless pause until…

“Let’s go,” a husky voice commanded.

I opened my eyes to see him pull the rusty door handle and vanish into the hut.

As I ducked in, my eyes instantly found the round lid of the wooden barrel in the semi-dark. Kasamarchi was down by its side. I leaped there, spotting the upright Broom in the depth of the house.

The next moment, the Cerberus woke.

I collapsed into the familiar void. When my senses came back, my viewpoint was much higher, beneath the ceiling where Asp spread his wings like a giant bat.

From up here, I could see lots of sharp stingers pierce the barrel, getting stuck in the old grain and raising a cloud of dust. Kasamarchi and I were pressing into the floor next to the barrel. A handful of stingers came out right over our heads.

The specks of dust floating in the sunbeams froze suddenly, like in a three-dimensional photo. The whistling of the wind in the cracks and smashed windows died down. The sharp tentacles shooting up at me—no, at Asp—got stuck in this jelly of stopped time.

A kaleidoscope of scenarios flashed before my eyes.

Here is Asp’s tail chopping a few closest tentacles. Three more pass beneath him and into the walls as he dodges up. I suffer no harm. But one stinger enters Kasamarchi’s side—the boy has peered out too far from behind the barrel.

Asp has no interest in keeping Kasamarchi safe; his only concern is my life. The snake applies its paralyzing stare, a gift of the Ice Hawk’s core, to the Cerberus. I leave the house.

No! I command silently. Not this one. The boy must stay safe and sound.

Asp obeys, flashing more and more options. But all of them have the same end: either I or Kasamarchi, or—most frequently—both of us, stay down by the barrel forever.

Finally, there comes an option where both of us are unharmed.

…but Asp is damaged: a torn wing and a wound in the neck.

That doesn’t matter. I can fix those if I get him out of the hut. We can’t lose our only Weapon. Our only option left then will be drowning ourselves in the Lizard…

No Angel in any of the scenarios.

Okay. We will manage without it.

Letting the time begin…

I’m back down on the floor, my loose hair all over my face and eyes. A handful of sharp stingers poked out from the barrel’s side over my head. The whole house is pierced by these, stretched tightly.

So we’ve survived the volley.

…but suddenly the stingers began to vibrate, their deep, humming sound pressing on our ears. Those stuck in the barrel started to shiver, shaking the rotten planks loose to break free.

A moment passed, and the Cerberus’s long, thin tentacles were free, bustling about the house in search of the prey.

Swish! Asp’s speared tail passed over my head, clanging on the wood.

Next to my hand, a chopped tentacle was thrust into the floor. A few more fall down by its side.

Recoiling, I accidentally pushed Kasamarchi out.

The droning sound grew louder. The Cerberus was apparently angry with its losses. The air condensed, pressing on our ears.

…and rung with frost.

I breathed cold air in; it froze my nostrils.

Asp.

The snake hovered right over our heads, waving his thin wings and staring at the Cerberus with the Ice Hawk’s glassy-white eyes.

My gaze slipped to the wound in Asp’s side that I’d fixed the day before. A large tear under the snake’s wing was patched by thick gray cables; I didn’t recognize them as my stitches.

As the air grew colder, the humming died away, and the Cerberus’s flashing stingers froze, covered with hoarfrost.

I felt like I was freezing too, my toes already numb with cold.

What about the boy?

Looking back, I saw him backing up to hide behind the barrel, going around the sharp stingers frozen in the air right in front of his face.

Great job, Asp.

The snake’s white eyes started to thaw, filling with evil fire.

With a flap of wings, Asp dashed down.

The speared tail swished through the air, sending the tentacle frozen at Kasamarchi’s face rolling over the floor, cut slantwise…

…when the floor planks around the Cerberus swole, creaking. With a deafening crash, an explosion of wooden splinters filled the house.

Rising from the breach in the floor was Kasamarchi’s Angel.

But none of the scenarios included him!

He must’ve been awoken by the sting almost piercing Kasamarchi; otherwise, the Whistle would’ve remained silent.

Now Asp might get out without a scratch.

The Cerberus’s legs hummed like a wasp nest, thawing…

…when a whip cracked, shooting through the air.

All sounds vanished but for a thin, lasting squeal. Stunned, I watched the Cerberus’s body collapse to the side as it was slashed by Angel’s whip. Asp rushed up to slice the agonizing tentacles.

***

Iryna gave a start, waking.

The whirlwind between worlds now rotated counter-clockwise, vanishing into the distance. The movement inside it slowed down, the picture losing its third dimension and flattening.

The last thing Iryna saw was an old broom, cut in half and losing most of its bristles, falling into a mess of broken wood.

Utterly bewildered, she stared at the card in her hand that now portrayed Anya, her daughter, dressed in some strange clothing, holding her hair up. A dirty-faced boy by her side put an amulet—a wooden whistle in the shape of a trumpeting angel—around his neck.

“Would you make us some tea, please?”

Valery’s voice gave her a start. In the overwhelming dream, she’d totally forgotten the wizard.