Judging by the tracks, the Englishman, possessed by the jondor, after crossing the ridge, didn't descend but turned west. The altitude here, by the way, was considerable. A snow-covered section ran along the ridge's edge. After passing it, he turned. His path ran below the snow line but was still high up. Given how fast he was moving, one could only marvel at the Englishman's physical conditioning, whose name, incidentally, I still hadn't bothered to learn. If he continued like this without changing direction, he would eventually come out to a section of the highway between Ishkashim and Khorog. That road also ran along the border. Surely he wasn't going back to Afghanistan? That would be too much!
But here, I thought, whatever his intentions were, I needed to catch him and put an end to his wanderings. Hmm, interesting—whose wanderings? The Englishman's or the jondor's? Although I didn't really need this Englishman. It would be good if he survived—who knows what the jondor might push him to do to save itself. But there was nothing to be done about that now—you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. And letting him go wasn't an option. Now it was either me or the jondor. It only remained to determine which one. For the Englishman, in any case, few chances remained.
He and the jondor had a considerable head start, but I hoped to catch up quickly—I was running as a wolf, after all. Nevertheless, they weren't slowing down either. I ran until evening and still hadn't caught up. I decided to stop and try to figure out where they were heading to intercept them. Opening the maps on my smartphone, no matter how much I looked, I couldn't discern a clear route. They were simply running west along the most direct path, possibly without any specific goal.
Oh well, a race is a race. I shifted back into the wolf and ran along the trail. After a couple of hours, already in complete darkness, I realized the trail was getting warmer. They were close. Sure enough—the tracks made it clear the Englishman was barely walking. The jondor had completely worn him out. The smell intensified. I became more cautious, moved slower, and soon stopped altogether.
Ahead, the entrance to some cavity or cave was visible. The trail led inside, but there was pitch darkness within. The jondor might not need light, but a human did. And why would the Englishman be sitting in total darkness? More likely, he hadn't sat down but had collapsed from exhaustion. I ran up to the entrance from the side and listened—there was absolute silence inside the cave.
One could assume the Englishman was simply asleep. But he was sleeping unnaturally quietly—no sniffling, no groaning, no moaning. Even though he'd been running for almost twenty-four hours. I couldn't feel his breathing at all. He couldn't have gone far from the entrance—the cavity was small in volume, at least that's how it felt.
I ran back a bit, sniffed out a place with a small hollow that nobody had disturbed. I shifted to human, undressed, and stacked my things in the hollow, covering them with a flat stone. I shifted into the bear and went back to the cave. I lingered at the entrance for a moment—still couldn't see anything. I began to slowly enter the cave.
The darkness seemed physically palpable. I fully entered this darkness, and then... It felt as if the darkness enveloping me first turned to stone, then shattered into pieces from a mountain falling on me. Everything happened in silence. Or maybe I just couldn't hear anything—the bear was deaf, after all. But my whole carcass felt... I don't know, a crash, probably. The sensation was of a crash so powerful that I would have gone deaf again if I weren't already deaf. My whole bear's body was shaken by some terrible, ragged vibration.
Something flickered ahead. I tried to lunge towards it but couldn't. And nothing was holding me back—I simply had no strength. I couldn't move a single muscle. From the weakness that overwhelmed me, my consciousness began to fade. The last shadow of a thought flickered in it: it seemed I had underestimated the jondor and had been caught very stupidly.
I spent what felt like an eternity in the darkness, maybe even more than one. Thinking all the while—so this is the end. Well, 'thinking'—it was hard to try to think about anything without even feeling oneself. But after some time, the darkness flickered, a vague light dawned. I felt someone pat me on the shoulder. I couldn't hear anything. I realized I was still in bear form. I partially transformed to human to be able to hear, but not completely—lying naked on a stone floor would have been rather uncomfortable anyway. I immediately dismissed thoughts of a possible threat—if someone wanted to harm me, they would have done so long ago.
"You're quite a sleeper, brother," I heard a familiar voice.
Sitting next to me, closer to the cave entrance, was Luka.
"Luka?! What are you doing here?" I rasped out.
"Well, someone had to pull you out, you hopeless case. How could you fall into such an obvious trap? How many times have I told you."
"Can't recall."
"Oh, try to remember again. Never enter a Circle of Darkness."
"Well, so that's..."—and then it hit me. The Circle of Darkness—a curse that completely absorbs light and all sound. That's why I couldn't see or hear anything in the cave.
"Oh, hell."
"Yes, yes, that's the one. Teach and teach you—and it's all useless. And yet, you survived again. You're probably too stupid to die."
He spoke with a laugh; it was clear he wasn't angry, more amused. Luka patted me on the shoulder again. I realized he wasn't doing it for no reason, because things in my head started to clear up more and more. Apparently, he was slowly feeding energy into me this way, gradually restoring me. I tried to get up.
"Don't rush," he stopped me. "You have severe energy depletion. Right now, you need to move and do everything else slowly, even take in energy. Otherwise, it could get worse. I still can't understand the reasoning behind making the bear deaf? Seems stupid, but it's precisely what saved you. This Curse of the Circle of Darkness drains the energy body in all its ranges in an instant. But your deaf bear simply didn't perceive part of this curse, being deaf. You received a powerful, but no longer fatal, blow. It just stunned you. That scoundrel wanted to finish you off, but then I showed up."
I looked around.
"And where's the redhead?"
"What will become of him? He ran off. Only, I'm afraid he's a bit touched in the head now. You should have seen his face when the spirit left him—priceless! He just ran off with a crazed look," he said, laughing.
"You still haven't said how you got here? That you showed up in time is great. But how did you even know when to appear?"
"Did you think I'd leave you unsupervised? I was watching through the bear. And I really didn't like that I couldn't hear anything."
"So that's why he sometimes looked at me so angrily!"
"Well, yes, maybe that was me looking. But you should be glad of it—otherwise, you'd be done for right now. The spirit, when it realized you were still alive, was even happy. That's why it left the redhead so quickly—it wanted to take over your body. And then I showed up. And that was the end of its story."
"Alright," I sighed, remembering how I'd chased him all this time. "Still, it's not clear why he led me on such a chase across the borders?"
"Most likely, he was buying time to perform the ritual for such a curse. It requires a lot. Or he assumed you'd get shot somewhere.
The poor fool just didn't know that you, while stupid, are stubborn. Sometimes, however, it's the same thing. And you are living proof."
"Nevertheless, that doesn't explain everything. Why so far? Couldn't he create this circle right there?"
"He was leading you away from those places, foreseeing that he might not succeed. But at least you would be farther away from there."
"But why?"
"And you remember, why did you go on that hike in the first place? Who were you looking for initially?"
"Mm... well, no one in particular. Just wanted to check what was written in that old newspaper clipping."
"And who was it about?"
"Well, all sorts of things. About the Yeti, for example."
"Aha. Well, maybe he was leading you away from them."
"The Yeti? Does it exist?"
"Not 'it,' but 'they.' And actually, they aren't human."
"Then what are they?"
"Well, you'll find out when you recover and return. You'll search for the answers yourself. Teaching you would only spoil you. I told you about the circle, and what good did it do?"
"And how, and where would I even find them? So many people have tried."
"Circumstances have changed. You won't find them—they will find you. Something happened to them, and they need help. I used to think—you'd definitely manage. But now I'm having my doubts. And you look just like that poor redheaded fellow," Luka started laughing again.
"It doesn't seem funny. A person suffered, after all."
"Well, serves him right. The level of fusion they had with the spirit indicates that redhead went into it voluntarily. That means they made a deal. And what good could such a spirit offer? But redhead accepted it—so, serves him right."
"If you look at it that way," I shrugged.
"By the way, about how I appeared here. If you can help these, as you call them, Yeti, they can teach you a lot. For example, how to enter your dream world in your physical body. And from there, you could project your energy double anywhere, if you know the place or the person you want to reach well."
"So, that means..."
"Yes, only my energy body is here. But it was enough for your spirit, though the bastard was strong. That's what they can teach you, if everything works out. Why do you think nobody can find them? Because they aren't on earth. They are in their own world, which is similar to the world in your dream. And they can move back and forth."
"Amazing."
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy..."
"*Our* philosophy," I corrected him automatically.
"That's what I said—*your*. Who do you think I am? Human? And you should reconsider your beliefs. You aren't human either—you are a Gural. The faster you realize this, the easier it will be for you, the fewer mistakes you'll make. And very human mistakes at that. For a Gural, the beast is not a mask, but his essence. And a beast wouldn't even stick its nose into such a stupid trap but would start to wait it out."
"But you yourself spoke of the danger of losing humanity."
"I spoke of losing the human form, which would turn a Gural into a beast irreversibly. The mind, however, remains human. Here I'm talking about something else—about priorities, about self-awareness. Who do you truly consider yourself to be?"
Maybe he was right. Probably right. But I was still internally convinced that I had to remain human. Take the way he laughed at the Englishman. It seemed correct, but it somehow grated on me. And that word was so strange—'Gural'. Like something out of the 'Arabian Nights'. Scheherazade, for God's sake.
"Oof..." Leaning against the cave wall, I slowly stood up. Luka, with his pats on my shoulder, had restored a bit of my energy.
"Well now, seems you've come around. Come on, pull yourself together and head for home. Rest, recover—and continue your hike. As I said, they will be looking for you themselves. Many among the..." he hesitated. "...well, among all sorts of such beings, already know about you. That's why they'll be looking. And that's also why that spirit was leading you away from there."
"So I wouldn't be found?"
"Well now, you're starting to think," he said, taking on a joking tone again. "And now it's time for me to go. Was glad to see you, but you've disappointed me a bit. Try to be more careful, will you?"
"Yeah, got it. Ugh, so much effort—all for nothing. I mean this running around the borders."
"Why for nothing? It amused me, an old man. And an extra lesson won't hurt you—you won't stick your nose where it doesn't belong. Well, alright, take care, wanderer..." he said, still chuckling, and dissolved into the air.
I trudged to the hollow where I had left my things. Shifted completely, started getting dressed. Yeah, the jondor had really roughed me up. I barely managed to get dressed, shifted into the wolf, and trotted down the slope—I needed to descend; it would be easier lower down for sure.
