Siberian Light Mages: CHAMELEON (CHRONICLES OF BRATSK)

PROLOGUE

The headquarters of the magicians exist not only in large cities, but also beyond the Urals in Siberia, in the very wilderness, in young cities that have preserved the appearance of the Soviet Union. They are small, and despite the high crime rate in the cities, the Light and Dark creatures have lived there for a very long time, having adapted to the conditions. They have never heard of the coordination of the Forces, and the following detail is astonishing: They gnaw at each other in the following order: Dark ones – Dark ones on the night streets, Light ones – Light ones…

The Irkutsk Region, for example, where there are the cities of Chuna, Taishet, Bratsk, Vikhorevka, and the village of Chekanovsky, is a tough place. Life on foreign soil is no picnic, so one comrade writes diaries… He writes in Bratsk, he is from Moscow, having come to observe the life of the Wild Ones. You can go crazy in these parts, or you can just watch and write down what the guy – the Inquisitor – does. Bratsk has its own headquarters, commanders, its own rules and its own laws. Everything else, not – Bratsk, is rejected and shit on. And people and magicians of both stripes push their «I». Here everything is different… Black can easily be repainted into white, and white into black. (If this text already makes you sick, you can stop reading).

Night. An empty street, where rats, homeless people, alcoholics and criminals, cats, plus the Dark Ones – vampires and werewolves – scurry around the alleys. These creatures are invisible to people – but at the same time everyone has seen them, because during the day these creatures live like everyone else, no different from others.

The boy, a non-human, walks silently along the empty avenue, looking at the bright stars. He has a cell phone in his hand. The phone is silent. So far, no one has called Maxim, a newcomer from the Light Headquarters. It’s strange. They probably don’t trust him.

Although a big story happened recently – a Great Sorceress appeared in Bratsk, destroying almost all the Dark Ones. The Chief of the Dark Mages and Headquarters, however, made a lot of efforts to hush up the situation and bring the dead back to life.

«What happened?» – asked the night.

«I can’t live here, in Bratsk! The atmosphere is bad, and the balance is inclined towards Darkness. Total blackness and aggressive people with unbearable characters. Lots of gopniks, vampires»…

«What did you expect in a city built by prisoners, huh? They did a useful thing, though – they created the world’s largest artificial reservoir. And they themselves are going crazy with fat: „Me“, „Me“… There are places here that are older, scarier, and cooler than Bratsk.»

«It’s a shame that people with unbearable characters live in these places.»

«That’s why there’s so much crap.»

«Yes. I’m walking down the road now – glass crunches under my feet. Everyone drinks here, even children and minors take a swig from the bottle. It’s bad, very bad.»

The night is silent, does not answer. It hangs over the city like a black dome and weighs on his soul. Max glanced at his watch: 01 – 01. Then a light began to blink in the invisible World. It was strange – black and white, so incomprehensible and interesting. Never seen anything like this before. Maxim went into nowhere – into the world of magicians, to figure out what was what. Time stopped. The creature must be eliminated.

But how!?

Two days later. SETTING: SIBERIA

CITY: BRATSK

TIME OF DAY: LATE EVENING

ABOUT HALF PAST. MONTH: APRIL. YEAR: 2005 – Y. TERRITORY – IRKUTSK REGION …A. M…

DAY

– Svetlykh employee, Maxim, WHEN are you finally going to change!? In general, you’ve been acting like a child lately, you don’t understand our jokes, even the sometimes vulgar ones! You already went to Moscow in January – that’s it, no more! Three years have passed since you first showed up here, you still can’t adapt… – the boss sighed.– Understand, my friend: Moscow is not Bratsk, and Bratsk is not Moscow, this is exactly what pisses me off about you, and I also don’t like the fact that you’re not like us. You’re kind of strange. You let the sorceress go, you crushed the Dark Ones, what else do you need!? But we have the only Inquisitor in the entire Irkutsk region! And therefore you must behave accordingly, even though you’re my subordinate, that’s it. Do you want to justify yourself, Max?

I launched ten rings towards the ceiling and began:

– Last night I spotted a strange guy – a magician, I’d give him fifteen and a half years old. I determined by his aura – the guy was converted somewhere a year ago, no one knows by whom, but something strange happened: he half-decided on both sides. I started looking at his memory, managed to find out: a couple of times he fell into the hands of thugs, still too young, stupid and inexperienced. Lives in the village of Energetik.

That’s what the power seal said. He leads a healthy lifestyle – doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke. That’s the situation. I served in Moscow for eight years and saw all sorts of people, but this is the first time I’ve seen THIS! I’ve never seen magicians with a black and white aura! It turns out our boy is a real Chameleon! The first time I felt him, I almost felt sick!

– Go on.

– You see, never before in the history of our race have we seen such things roaming around the city! Never! And here, in such a wilderness – mutants, I’ll probably see something else! Was it like that with you, Enerik? Well, yesterday the invisible World was agitated, it almost turned inside out. There was a truly monstrous release of Force.And I thought about this: it seems that it is time for the Light and the Dark to think about their careers! Because if such a dangerous specimen joins or at least tries to get to us, the Light Headquarters will fall apart, and if he joins the Dark, the Dark Headquarters will fall apart. What are we going to do, boss? Of course, the enemy will find out about the boy and start hunting him down. Or he will foolishly want to get hold of him to tarnish our reputation.And very nasty, very good to soak… Do we need it? Absolutely not, you must admit… They will ruin our work! The guy can’t decide either here or there. That’s why he is dangerous for everyone.

– Maxim, what are you trying to achieve? Do you want me to find him, go and kill him? – Enerik asked, clutching his head in his hands. Then he began to write at the table. He took a sip of strong beer.

– No. I want to find out WHERE such a miracle came from. Otherwise, our headquarters in the City Executive Committee will have to be closed down.

– But… down the drain, I have a schedule, and to hell with your schedule down the drain – down the drain – down the drain… – Sang the Most Blessed Enerik and smiled like a brother. – Well done!

Personally, I don’t care how the Mages work in Siberia at Headquarters and outside, but it’s bad to miss the Chameleon. Even the Siberian ones don’t look like the standard! The Dark Ones were the first to find the Sorceress in St. Petersburg. For THREE months, the girl was in Glomen’s team, the chief of the Dark Ones, covering herself with an energy shield.The whole mess ended with the beauty turning one thug – the Dark Mage – into a Luminary, and then mysteriously disappearing. This story made a lot of noise, the enemies had to try hard to restore the Headquarters. And now this kid has appeared!

– We will not kill the boy under any circumstances – he is still a child! – The door suddenly slammed, one of the colleagues entered the room. He was probably eavesdropping.

– Do you know that eavesdropping is not good? – The boss noticed. – Didn’t they teach you to knock?

– They taught you to knock. What happened to us?

– Maxim has found another wonder of the world. Ask him.

I told him everything as it is.

– Eh – eh… Maybe we shouldn’t catch the boy? Let him go in peace, and that’s it?

– Then you’ll send us all out in the world.

– Why not? – The Light One didn’t let up.

– You’re a blockhead! – Enerik couldn’t resist. – The guy is using up both white and black Power at the same time! He’ll destroy both Bases, okay!?

I wasn’t going to say anything in response and was looking at the big fly that was circling around the ceiling. More precisely, around the old Soviet-style chandelier. And on the wall behind the boss were two coats of arms – Russia’s and Bratsk’s. I got the feeling that the room itself was absorbing our conversation.

– Wake up, Yegor! This is a magician of terrible power… A half and half, so to speak… After all, it is very rare for a person to have a child – a Magician. It turns out that our miracle is a half-breed?

– But it seems to me that non-humans appear here not so rarely, – I noticed, squinting. – Who stamps them out? The boy can easily be drawn to the side of Light, – if you erase his memory of the previous initiation. But still, he will be a very weak Light. He is the same with Darkness. Unless, of course, he is a vampire or a werewolf.

– If you say so, then catch him for me! – The boss ordered.

I did not expect this at all. I did not want to talk to anyone anymore and left.

Here’s the rubbish. It’s night outside now, I’m sitting in a small kitchenette where there’s not even wallpaper, smoking and drinking vodka, racking my brains over a problem. They exploit people here in a cool way: since you’re a real Inquisitor, then deal with the unknown bird as best you can! Horror… Today I’ll sit at home, I won’t stick my nose out, I won’t climb into the invisible World, I’ll leave you all and go drunk. Here in Bratsk, troubles always happen: someone recently threw a grenade in court. The story has reached my homeland! It has added glory to the city, a bad one. The village of Chekanovsky alone is worth something!

This is a settlement that grew up in the sanitary protection zone of the plant during the construction of BRAZ (Bratsk Aluminum Plant). The settlement was inhabited mainly by workers. However, when the builders completed their task and built everything, it became clear: living in the settlement is dangerous for health. The maximum permissible concentrations of harmful substances in emissions for all parameters, – which are regulated by the law on environmental protection – were exceeded several times. Today, people still live there. There are not many of them left. Only four hundred and eighty families. Mostly pensioners and DEGRADING citizens, but there are workers among them. There is a very small school left – for one hundred and eighty people and a small kindergarten. So why do the residents of the village, – understanding the dangers posed by the ecology in the vicinity of Chekanovsky – were they so reluctant to leave it?

Firstly, not only because it was easy for them to get to work. People were used to growing potatoes, vegetables, berry gardens, keeping cows and poultry on their garden plots. It was convenient for them to live and work. (Yeah, I immediately remember a cartoon from fifteen years ago, where it says: a man had a cow in the village, and the village was near a factory.The animal constantly went not to the meadow, but to the factory, nibbled the dusty grass there, and the owner pulled it away by the tail. And even then with difficulty. The cow sniffed the smoke, then the guy started milking her – instead of milk, gasoline poured out. Grandfather filled the car with it and drove off, the cattle honked in response, like a machine. Isn’t that degradation? The same thing here. They plant gardens with berries, vegetables – all with poisons, heavy metals, nitrates.They got used to it, apparently… They got used to eating everything poisoned – their cows and geese were probably mutants at the gene level! Living and working comfortably – sounds delicious! Comfortable! But no one wants to hear about the slow suicide that is going on. What a beautiful prospect! I would never agree to kill myself like that for any amount of money! After all, all the nastiness is built into the genes, and that’s it. It’s a life sentence.)

And there’s more. Secondly, relocation, for example, to Gidrostroitel (settlement) threatened them with the loss of a well-paid job at BRAZ (oh, how we love money here, I’m going to shed a tear right now! After all, these Toksy will start breathing over the plant’s chimney for the sake of money, because otherwise withdrawal and depression will begin, they will start missing Bratsk! How romantic, though! They love to engage in self-masochism at the genetic level and suicide here… Damn fools).

Getting to the plant by public transport was becoming not just unrealistic, but impossible (and thank God!) – it took more than an hour to get there with transfers. And, of course, it required extra, significant expenses (If you want to live, walk there – at least all the crap will leave your body).

What’s in the village now? They say: Ghosts, and nothing else. BUT not with the Ghosts you’re thinking about now. It seems to me that with ghosts the place would be cool. If you drive along and across, the picture will appear something like this. Here and there, boarded-up houses stand empty. On the outskirts, a three-story school stands black. It opened its doors to children in 1964. On the opening day, its walls were painted in soft, multi-colored colors, revolutionary at the time. There was no such school in the entire area, it seemed very beautiful – a school from the future.

At that time, no one even thought about it: some thirty years later, a farewell bell would ring within its walls. In May 1996, it became symbolic for all residents. They understood well that they would never again gather on the same street with their neighbors to drink tea. They would not walk through the village in a jubilant May Day column.They say that the first of May was always celebrated there especially solemnly. Such a festive mood on the streets during these days was not observed in Bratsk itself.

Forty years later, the three-story beauty of School No. 23 no longer resembles anything else. Its tragedy lies in the following: it was too young when the last bell rang within its walls. It was preparing to welcome more than one generation of first-graders.Now she looks from afar with empty eye sockets of window openings. And her former students, accidentally passing by, do not hold back their tears.

It’s good to be a Light mage, but not here! I was fired from work in the summer, and then I ran into my… Dark Ones. I saw a striking, inexplicable paradox: THEY CALL THEMSELVES LIGHT! They take anyone they can into their Headquarters, then get offended – why do people run away? How angry Glomen was then, his vampire – a shapeshifter nicknamed She-Wolf – too.She was always screaming and demanding that a guy like me pay attention to her. I once had a wife, but we divorced – she couldn’t stand my essence of a Mage.

I look at the street through an invisible reality. There are ours on the streets, but only Dark Ones. Werewolves or vampires.

– Hackwork! – I shouted to myself.

– Ha – tura… – The echo responded.

The mobile phone on the table suddenly beeped. I reluctantly reached my hand to it and accepted the call. The boss is calling.

– I’m listening, Maxim.

– I’m listening to you too, Most Bright Archmage… – I muttered reluctantly.

– Are you drinking?

– I’m drinking. And having a snack. What happened there?

– Glomen called, the Dark Ones also saw the Chameleon, they started hunting him. Just like you. Tomorrow morning, go to the enemy headquarters, talk to them. Try to talk them out of it. If they’re not idiots, they’ll understand and won’t laugh. If they know who the Inquisitors are. Try to get it into their heads: Since we are Light, we will detect and eliminate them ourselves. If you run into werewolves on the way, hit them with a fireball, don’t spare them… No more and no less. A cross and an aspen won’t help – it’s all bullshit! – He laughs. – Before you leave, have some pig blood – no more than a liter.This is Bratsk, not Moscow. If your fangs start to cut through, don’t cry. If you feel sick, drink some vodka and have some bread. There’s a bowl on your table. Now open the fridge and take out the meat. Let it melt overnight. Well… you know what kind of people there are here. And put your amulet on. Don’t talk too much to Glomen. – The receiver beeped and went dead.

The required amulet was not found in the table.

April 25, 2004

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CITY OF BRATSK

There are so many rumors about the construction site… Both good and bad. People were killed there for a food ration, for an inadvertently dropped word, for going the wrong way, bringing the wrong thing, and so on. There were so many people in 1955, of course! Prisoners and young people from all over Russia came to build the city. They flooded the old village of Bratsk.Before that, the Angara was blocked for nineteen hours, as a result of which villages, settlements and a gigantic area of forest were destroyed. Everything is still rotting at the bottom of the largest artificial sea.

The builders initially had nowhere to live, so a tent city was set up near the forest. The prisoners were resettled in the village of Chekanovsky, which soon became a real prison. Taishet, a nearby town, also became a prison. Because of this fragmentation, Bratsk was often called not a city at all, and a village connected to neighboring settlements by roads and forests. People suffered, builders dug trenches, started fights at night. There were even cases when a person would be killed at a hydroelectric power station or in the streets – they would throw him into a hole, fill him with concrete – and forget about him!

When the first street of the World appeared in the forest, then the Mages began to appear among the people – Light and Dark. At first, there were only a few dozen of them – both. The former were mostly optimists. The latter were pessimists, rapists, bandits, thieves. And very often, – due to inexperience, – the Light entered into marriages with the enemy. As a result, the City of Youth began to occupy first place in the region in the number of divorces. Soon it reached a critical point. Then the Dark Ones began to unite into their communities in the forests. Werewolves in the form of wolves and bears hunted chickens, exterminated cattle in private plots, sometimes attacked people. The level of blackness in the city began to grow with terrible force.

Seriously scared, people started killing predators. The ranks of Darkness thinned out. And you think why predators are not visible in the forest. Then they started cutting down forests, starting to build BraZ, LPK (Forest Industry Complex), where they produced cardboard, aluminum and cellulose in immoderate quantities, all of which led to devastating consequences.At the same time, summer cottages began to appear, the creatures settled further and further from the buildings – these were most often called forest people. There is also a story about a married couple who lived in the forest near Ust-Kut in the Irkutsk region for twenty-six years. Only occasionally did they come out to people.

That’s how they lived – hiding, afraid to reveal their true nature, afraid to end up in a mental hospital.

Years and decades passed. Our number was becoming few – some left these parts, some disappeared without a trace or took another name. The City of Youth began to wither, the culture was forgotten. The youth drank, shot up, complete darkness and vandalism reigned all around. The headquarters of the Light was exhausted from punishing the Dark, of whom there were even more. Although if you say so – means to say nothing. Bratsk was SWARMED with them!