The Temple of Water was attacked at dawn, as were the Temples of Fire, Earth, and Air. The attack was not entirely unexpected, and the soldiers with the imperial Fiery Lion were even resisted on the flags.

Women possess his magic of water, and the sharp ice fragments covered the attackers, the legs slid on the ice, the water in the body froze, killing a very ugly death. But still the priestess of the water remained women, and they had no chance.

So thought the young commander, the youngest son of the emperor, walking along the corridors of the Temple filled with water and blood. High ceilings were lost in the twilight without magical lamps, beautiful, magical patterns on the windows melted and turned into muddy puddles on the window sills. Fountains in the halls are broken, and no longer give strength to their priestesses.

Sami priestess left a little. Many are killed, the rest are taken captive, into slavery. Girls and women of all ages and types, who were locked up, who were raped before losing consciousness and left to die. The warriors were furious when they rushed in, and the younger prince could not judge them. True, he himself did not have time for revenge and fun. He came here not just for blood.

Search teams searched the outer and inner territories of the castle in search of one woman, for whom he hunted.

The king of the magical land of Loss hid his daughter well. She began to look for when the girl was about thirteen. The emperor led the war of conquest against Loss, and was about to take the enemy's daughter hostage, passing her off as a younger son to make sure that the magicians would not take revenge and submit. And so, Ingvar received an order to find a girl, bring home, and marry.

Several years have passed since then. Cassil was hiding too well, disguising with charms, giving out one or the other girl for her, to make Ingvar catch phantoms one by one. There was already no exact information about what the grown-up witch princess looked like, and Ingvar toughened the punishment for erroneous information about her.

He went hiking as a twenty-year-old youth, but by the time the Temple was destroyed, he had become a tall and strong man, overgrown with muscles, and had refined palace fencing for use in real combat. Ingvar saw his father and brother infrequently, and they had already proposed to abandon the search, erase Loss from the face of the earth, and forget about magic. Ingvar himself knew that there was nothing good in witchcraft, but the prophecy was firmly in his memory that if the magic was destroyed, the curtain protecting the world from external monsters would collapse. And it is Kassil who is the center of this magic, the last in the clan, where the branches of the magicians of different races have successfully merged. Therefore, Ingvar continued to search.

He remembered too well the old books, in which the demons were described, just waiting for the wall of magic to crack their peace. Mages have recently become less, the misty valley of Loss has fallen into disrepair, but did not want to obey. The last young man remained in the royal family, and she is a woman who can leave only a few children.

Now King Lossa has become old, but Cassil apparently has learned to hide herself. The last report was that she was learning magic.

More than a year has passed since then, and Ingvar managed to take a siege on all four main temples of the Elements - to no avail. They tried to deceive him by betraying the other girls caught as the princess of Loss country, trying to convince him to drop everything and return. Ingvar insisted on his own, and brought his army to another Temple of Magic. And here, too, was not Kassili.

- Your Highness! - He called him, hastily squishing his boots through the puddles. Ingvar turned around.

Three warriors, one of the search groups, dragged the boy and the old woman by the collar. Well, from these what you need?

“He tried to spy,” the scout stretched out in front of his prince, throwing the kid at Ingvar's feet, “and we found it ourselves.”

“You’d be nice if you didn’t find an old woman in the forest,” Ingvar mumbled, looking at the rising lad. No more than fifteen years, and the little face is so pretty that he was lucky not to get caught before, when the heated soldiers could not make out who was in front of them.

The boy seemed not to be afraid. He straightened, looked into Ingvar's eyes, for nothing, he was barely tall. Ash hair pulled together in a short tail on the back of his head, his clothes are filthy, his eyes are green, like the sea in shallow water, let down by his eyelashes. You don't need a guy to be so cute, it ends badly. Hurry to let the beard, or something.

- Who are you?

“My granddaughter is,” the old woman climbed in, shaking off her hands, and getting closer, “brought up by the Temple. Fox is called.

Fox so Fox, Ingvar was indifferent.

- Revenge went, or what?

“Vyznat who and how attacked, and then bring his own,” the boy squinted.

“I sent him a look,” the old woman said again. Apparently, she understood much better who was in front of her and what glory about him was going on. Ingvar paid attention to her: a dried up hag with attentive, intelligent eyes, in the blue robes of the Temple, in the hand of a stick.

- Are you a priestess?

“The priestess,” the old woman nodded with a bit of flirtatiousness, “there was a time, I danced in the streams of the local fountains.”

- No more your fountains. Did the temples take the boys? Yes, and priestesses are forbidden to marry, where did you get your grandson?

- So children are not always taken from her husband, you don’t know. Many, I suppose, the girls spoiled, but left?

Ingvar winced. A few years in the campaign, almost without showing up at home - anything happened, although he tried not to commit atrocities.

- My is a boy. I asked to leave where to put it. He wore us game.

- Was there a weapon with him? - Ingvar turned to his.

“There was a bow,” he was handed a long collection bow, “I did not have time to shoot.”

- Fool me, shoot the crowd? - muttered the guy, as if fearing that he would be suspected of embarrassment or cowardice.

“Sun them to the girls,” decided Ingvar, “how many people walk around.” As slaves we will sell, and give these.

He turned away, throwing a couple out of his head.

The temple was searched for two days. For two days the hungry army devastated the cellars, devoured all the cattle, poultry, flour, even released some priestesses to work in the kitchen and serve in the feast hall. They were bent over the table right there, the smartest and the cutest were sitting on the knees of the governors themselves. It is better to serve one in a soft bed than a dozen in a stable.

Search teams rummaged through the entire Temple from basements to attics. They found a room with men's clothes, coils of spare string, and the like - at least, Fox really lived here.

One day, passing by rooms with prisoners, Ingvar heard a greater than usual noise and shouts, and looked in.

A fox with a broken lip was on his knees, one of the warriors - Sharh, a tall, sharp-minded man with a hatchet - held his hair, lifting his head, and pressed the knife to the boy's throat. Turik, Sharkh’s friend, tried to climb the wall. Turik's eyes were dull, blood gushing from a broken nose.

- What's happening? - how I felt that there would be problems due to the boy. And he looks evil, but without fear of the knife at the throat. Youth still does not believe in death.

“He broke Turik's nose,” Sharh snarled, a blood trickle leaked from a pressed knife down the neck of the Fox.

Ingvar once again appreciated the state of Turik. Well his boy put. On the right hand of the Fox, he immediately saw knuckles with skinned skin.

- What do you want little girls?

“He's like a girl too,” Sharh was furious. Disfigure and kill the guy. And it seems that Ingvar doesn’t have a special deal - so many people were killed here, one more, one less ...

“So tell me you like the boys,” Liss said hoarsely. Sharh snarled and swung the knife, ...