"Jak Koke - Shadowrun 28 - Dragon Heart Saga 02 - Clockwork Asylum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Koke Jak)

Still he did not drop the Dragon Heart. Lethe felt its power close. Saw it through the cyborg's artificial eyes.
Somehow that visual information made its way into the organic brain and Lethe could tap into it.
Burnout hit the black water and should have died. Water like duracrete. His hot metal casing warped under
the impact, and Lethe knew that much of his cybernetics were destroyed. But whether it was Lethe's presence or the
Dragon Heart, the man's spirit decided to stay with his remaining flesh.
As Burnout's body sank into the depths of the Snake River, Lethe panicked once again, not in fear for his own
existence, but because he couldn't imagine anyone
finding Burnout's body in time to get the Heart to Thayla at the magical spike.
The memory of Thayla came to him as he sank. He remembered when he had first awakened and been named by her,
the goddess of the light and the song. Thayla had stopped her singing to speak to him. A song so perfect, so
painfully wonderful that he could not move.
She had stood on the hard, cracked ground of a stone outcropping, framed by a colorless sky. A deep chasm
surrounded her on three sides, the chasm dropping away in front of her precipitously. Lethe had no concept of the
depth of this chasm; he could not see the bottom. The out-cropping thickened into a broad arc as it stretched away
behind them, widening ever so slightly as it extended. Until finally it connected with solid land in the distance.
"This outcropping is the result of unnaturally high magic," Thayla had said. "The Chasm, here, is the gap between
our worlds and those of the . . . the ..." She fal-tered, pain evident in her speech.
Lethe remembered looking out across the abyss. In the absence of Thayla's song, wind roared around them,
throwing her hair across her face. The far side of the chasm was barely visible in the blowing distance, but Lethe could
make out a similar cliff at the reaches of his perception. He could see a similar outcropping protruding toward them
from the land on that side. Darkness clung to the distant cliff, and as Lethe looked across that space, revulsion rose
inside him. A desperate nausea as he glimpsed the creatures writhing on the other side.
"I am here to prevent them from completing their bridge," Thayla continued. "They are evil and horrifying and more
powerful than we can imagine. If they can finish the bridge, they will come in droves. And when they come,
they will destroy everything they can touch. They will torture us. They will make us all do things ..." Again her voice
wavered.
Lethe shivered at her distress. Her voice was powerful even in shock.
Thayla took a breath and composed herself. "As the natural cycle of mana increases, the Chasm will grow nar-rower.
But these outcroppings are unnatural тАФspikes
above the normal mana level. The result of blood magic. Our worlds are not ready."
"But your singing .. ."
She smiled at him, the light beaming from her and warming him. "My song stops them. You see, they cannot stand
to hear it, and my voice carries even across the Chasm."
Lethe knew it to be true: her song was the light.
"There are those on our side who are working to accel-erate the completion of the bridge, those who are puppets of
the Enemy and who are trying to hasten their coming. Look." She pointed back down the outcropping.
At first Lethe didn't see it because it was so small, a shadow among shadows. But when Thayla began to sing
again, filling the world with light and beauty, a tiny blemish of darkness remained. It was almost insignificant, and it
lasted only briefly, but Lethe had seen it тАФa flaw in her song.
"They have found one who can withstand the song," she said. "She is not strong enough to stay long, but I fear
her strength will grow. And when it does, others will come. They will kill me."
Lethe's spirit sank as Thayla's song died away.
"Unless you stop them," she said.
"How?"
"You must find the great dragon called Dunkelzahn. He came to me not long ago and told me that I would not be
able to hold off the Enemy's forces for longer than a few hundred years. He said they would find a weakness in my
song. He said he needed more time.
"Dunkelzahn promised to create an item that would keep the Enemy from crossing over prematurely. The Dragon
Heart."
Thayla bowed her head. "But that was some time ago, and the dark spot is growing. I fear something has