The Experiment. Book 3. Echo of an Alien Mind. Series 5

The book is published in sets of two chapters, and each set is paid for separately. The full version will be available after February 26.

Having gathered the survivors, Damitar built an underground city on the neutral strip—by its scale and wonders it can rival Stargrad, the capital of the human lands. Under his command, the new detachment won its first major victory, but joy didn’t last long: after the triumph came bitter news, because a war on two fronts had begun. And what if there are more fronts?

A hundred years ago, a hyperspace pocket swallowed the fleet of a mighty civilization—and now echoes of that ancient catastrophe threaten the world that has sheltered Dmitry Voyevodin. In a besieged capital, where despair battles faith, they look at him either as a danger or as the last hope. And still, even this pales before a cold, inhuman ancient mind for which every life is nothing but a mistake.

Without even having time to comprehend the cost of victory, right from the battlefield near the camp of the ironworkers, Damitar ends up in a grim stone trap where reality starts to crawl apart, giving way to illusions. Here, even time itself fails, and the only respite is oblivion. But in this darkness, he also has to face directly what elvish machines seem almost like kin to—up to the point of wanting to embrace them. While Damitar holds onto reason with his last strength, his people try by force to defend their right to be called Prince Voyevodin’s detachment before the zealots of faith.

Damitar finds himself in a knot where too many different forces intersect, and even the obvious doesn’t guarantee you correctly distinguished an ally from an enemy. He must find out what will be stronger: the “echo” of a чужого mind that decided to reshape this world, or the “echo” of human will that refuses to capitulate. And this is only the beginning.