The Experiment. Book 3. Echo of Another Mind. Episode 4

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Gathering the survivors, Damitar erected an underground city on neutral territory—by its scale and wonders, it can compete with Stargrad, the capital of human lands. Under his command, the new detachment achieved its first major victory, but joy didn’t last: the triumph quickly turned into bitterness. The reason could be called a war on two fronts… but what if there are far more fronts?

A hundred years ago, a hyperspace pocket swallowed the fleet of a mighty civilization, and now the echo of that ancient massacre threatens the world that has sheltered Dmitry Voevodin. In the besieged capital, where hope competes with despair, they look at him sometimes as a danger, and sometimes as the last support. But even that pales in comparison to the face of a cold, inhuman ancient mind that considers any life a mistake.

Before he even has time to comprehend the consequences of victory, straight from the battlefield, near the camp of the ironfolk, Damitar is trapped in a gloomy stone trap, where the line between reality and illusion is erased. There, time itself breaks, and the only salvation seems to be oblivion. Yet it is there that he encounters the thing with which the machines of the elementians seem almost like kin—right up to the point of wanting to press them to his chest. While Damitar fights for his sanity, his people are trying by force to prove to the zealots their right to be called Prince Voevodin’s detachment.

Damitar finds himself caught in a knot where too many different forces converge—and even the obvious can be deceptive: it’s not always clear who is an ally and who is the enemy. He must find out what will be stronger— the “echo” of a чужого mind that decided to remake this world, or the “echo” of human will that simply can’t give up. And this is only the beginning.