Дмитрий Мансуров - Invasion

The tree woke up and began to convulse. The teeth froze. Someone was making noise in their home? It was like a strike of a lightning! But they couldn’t go down and find out who was making the noise. They were too scared of getting tangled in the branches. The teeth soared and froze, trying to determine where the source of noise was moving. Meanwhile, the tree was looking for the crow. Catching her waves of feelings, it dived underground and rushed towards her. The crowd of teeth flew after the tree.

Hearing a noise, the crow turned around. The tree was jumping in and out of the ground like a fish, the teeth were flying over it, and this cheerful company was moving right toward her!

“Caaaw!” the crow yelled, and with the last bits of strength, she flew toward the castle.

After approaching the castle for the second time, the vampire didn’t carelessly storm the gates again. He doubted he’d live through another explosion of a sound bomb. He wanted to look for some holes or cracks. He had to hurry, though, because while he’d be able to tolerate the morning light, the midday sun would kill him instantly. He had to find a way to enter the castle and attack its owner right now. Let it be his revenge for having to enter the building like a rat, not like a Lord of Vampires.

Or should he challenge the master of the castle to a duel? Well… No. Judging by the remoteness of his housing, he was not a simple person. Either a hermit or a villain.

His flow of thoughts was interrupted by the desperate caws of the crow. The vampire raised his eyebrows in amazement. Something like an incredibly thick worm was flying behind the crow, jumping like a fish over water. The crow flew up to the castle and soared up sharply. The tree rushed after her, crashing into the window. It shattered into hundreds of small pieces from the impact, and pushing off the ledge on the wall, the tree jumped on the crow. The bird made a loop and dived into the broken window.

The tree repeated her path and almost disappeared inside when a flock of teeth attacked it, grabbed it by the trunk and dragged it back. The tree twitched, destroying a part of the wall. The stones fell to the ground. The vampire ran to the side and watched these strange events from a safe distance.

The crow began to hurl herself along the corridors, still cawing, thinking of nothing but the ways to escape from the tree. She flew into some corridor and almost fell in a hungry swoon. An extremely delicious smell was coming from the nearest room.

With some eighteenth sense, the crow realized that neither the tree nor some other enemies were around, so she jumped on the table and pounced on the food, devouring it so quickly, as if her life depended on it.

The teeth pulled the tree outside and began to chew on it. The tree was tossing and writhing in response, the teeth were shattering into dozens of pieces, falling to the ground.

The vampire was shocked. The teeth tore at the tree, the tree responded with titanic blows, and it was impossible to understand who was winning. The battle in the sky reached its climax when a cunning face appeared out of thin air right next to the vampire. The vampire broke away from the battle and stared. More and more faces appeared from the void right before his eyes, smiling slyly and covering the ground with a smooth smiling carpet. The vampire moved away just in time. The carpet moved toward the fragments of teeth and pieces of wings lying here and there.

Slurp! Slurp! Slurp!

The vampire turned cold. It occurred to him that if they didn’t have enough, they would probably eat him, too.

The crow barely managed to finish the food. She plopped down on the table, exhausted, and only then did she notice that she had company. Kashchey and Maria were sitting next to her. They’d entered right in the midst of the crow’s feast. They watched the crow curiously and even had time to bet on whether she would be able to eat all the food or if she’d choke.

“To think how far the hunger can push another living being!” Kashchey said. “The appetite like that of an elephant! Where did she come from and how did she get into the castle?”

“Ask her yourself,” Maria advised. “And ask about the racket, too. Hear that?”

“I do. Let her rest and then she can fly where he wants. Such a brave bird shouldn’t be turned into a scarecrow.”

“I think that since she came here and wasn’t scared, she wants to do something to you.”

“To me? She? Are you crazy?”

“Well, there have to be some evil crows.”

“She’s as evil as I am a crow!”

“Nevertheless… You’ve found a translator for languages of all known life forms, so use it. Ask her what she wants.”

“Okay, I’ll do it, but later. First, I have to see what that noise is about. Maybe the vampire didn’t get the hint and decided to repeat the attack.”

The captain was so used to passing through the obstacles that in his excitement, he turned on top speed and left the princes far behind. Like a bullet, he passed through the windbreak and almost flew through Kashchey’s castle, stopping inches from the tall wall with an incredible number of windows. The captain lifted his head to look at the building and gasped in amazement.

A castle. So tall that if you looked at it from below, you could easily become insecure about your height. The captain moved back and tried to determine the type of architecture. But he’d never seen such ornamentation before. Calculating how old the castle was, he went cold. Judging by the cracks and its overall appearance, as well as by the thickness of the part of foundation that sank into the ground under the weight of time, the structure was so ancient that it could easily compete with the civilization of the captain himself.

An unknown advanced civilization on the edge of the galaxy? The one that sank into oblivion until the advent of the World Union? How could that be possible? This was a real discovery, one of those worthy of mention in the golden book titled “The History of the Worlds”!

“I’ve immortalized my name!” the captain exclaimed and felt like someone passed through him. “If I manage to get back home…”

For a moment, he forgot that he was an intangible formation of the mega-scanner. The captain stared at the monster that had struck him. He thought that this place had accumulated a strange amount of organisms from different planets. They were strikingly different from each other in structure and physical characteristics. Why hadn’t the developers of the mega-scanner thought to make a built-in screen so it would be possible to clarify the characteristics of the newly arrived forms of life? How come nobody had decided to provide the device with such important features?

“The castle is mine!” he heard the angry cry of a vampire, who was trying to unsuccessfully grab the captain by his clothes. The captain, in turn, tried to grab his hands, but both of them failed.

“You are the owner of this castle?”

“Not yet!” the vampire growled. “But I’ll be the owner soon! And I advise you not to get in my way!

He sent a series of crushing blows but only threshed the air in vain. The captain decided to show that he was worth something, too, so in response, he began to box enthusiastically in an emergency mode. Then he realized that the blows were hitting not the vampire but the tools of the ship surrounding him in reality. He must have punched something accurately a few times since his fist was moaning with pain. The captain took off his helmet and rushed to check what damage he had done to his own property.

As it turned out, he really knew how to fight. Because he’d knocked out the shelf that was already barely hanging in place. It fell down along with discs, pens, and books. These things touched the edge of the emergency take-off button in their fall, powering the side engines. In one swoop, the ship flew away from the planet by forty thousand miles.