Looking around, Alexander scratched his head in bewilderment.
"Hmm, what if..."
The mind conjured up a picture of a fiery inferno — walls of fire at the bottom, fire falling from above. And all this was about twenty meters away from him, right where the cheerful babbling brook made a turn and disappeared among the trees. Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened.
Ceasing to try and strain, he once again checked his abilities, and a little spark danced merrily on the tip of his index finger. No effort needed.
"Maybe the water interferes?"
Quickly selecting another point to apply his magical powers, Alexander once again imagined a fiery inferno. The chosen surface was perfect — plenty of dry wood and no water. But no matter how hard he tried and whatever details his mind drew, embellishing this local Armageddon, nothing happened.
"Well, never mind, didn't really want to."
Approaching his clothes, folded five meters away from the water, he effortlessly made his pants jump into his hands.
"Just like a Jedi."
Following the pants, the fate of his shirt was divided, and then his jacket. He didn't play around with the rags anymore and, sitting down on the ground, calmly wound them around his legs and put on his boots.
Magic was strange, short, truncated, but it was there, and now he needed to find out — was he the only one with such abilities or did all the newly turned vampires possess similar skills?
The chance of survival in this world was beginning to differ from zero. It was urgent to discuss this with the allies, and the main thing was not to forget to take the skins. Otherwise, Olga, despite all his strength and newly discovered magic, would spank him.
The girls greeted him with friendly smiles. They were currently gutting a moose carcass and skinning it. Meat was drying on numerous bonfires, while several children watched over it under the supervision of a stern man. The tendons were being processed with particular care by Maria — the ropes that could be made from them were currently very valuable.
"Is there anything to take to the camp?"
"Oh, take the bear skin over there. They've just skinned your bear and finished it to an acceptable state. You can use it as a cover tomorrow if necessary," Olga stood up and stretched, "But it's a pity, so many good skins ruined, our pseudo-tanning is killing them."
"Well, we're not planning to make clothes out of them. It's material for covering and nothing more."
"I understand, but the peasant instinct doesn't let me calmly watch our barbarism."
Neither the soldiers nor the warriors had any knowledge of how to tan skins properly. They just saw it done. People also didn't have such skills. Therefore, the skins were removed, stretched, scraped, quickly dried by the bonfires, rubbed with ash, and then well kneaded.
The result was frankly poor, but some kind of wraps were needed right now. Taking the rolled-up skin in his hands, Alexander was about to leave, but then a new thought came to his mind and he stopped.
"What's wrong, Sasha (Alexander)?" the guy's movements didn't escape Olga's eyes.
After standing and thinking for a while, he just shook his head.
"Oh, nothing, we'll talk later. No need to distract the girls from their work with stories about new abilities."
He found Eugene and Konstantin right in the center of the makeshift camp. They were actively arguing with Alexey Gennadyevich about the need for camouflage and demanded that people cut down trees as far away from the camp as possible.
The latter categorically disagreed with wasting time on bringing necessary materials and stubbornly held his ground, insisting on continuing to use the resources readily available at hand.
The participants of the dispute were completely uninhibited in their expressions. It was clear that this wasn't their first argument today.
"Just look at yourselves. Several trees are felled right in the center of the camp to build you a hut," Eugene yelled frankly, not caring that the sensitive hearing of vampires made this quarrel the concern of all the people in the camp, "And what's the good of it? Yes, you have an excellent hut, and an open area where you can land a helicopter!"
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