THE OUTLAND

141

Askolta, or as my new people called it, Askorta, has not changed since my last visit. This is always the case with medieval cities, they can stand for millennia, only growing a little by the periphery - and that’s not a fact if it suddenly turns out that the enemy is strong and able to quickly get close to the walls. In this case, the city, once rebuilt, freezes in eternal stone for many millennia. And I don’t know if there are any enemies near the port city, climbing to the sea along a slope that abruptly breaks off at the very water, but here everything was as I remembered - they removed a few dented guards, took away the corpses, replaced the gate that the avatar knocked out Warcraft and continued to live on.

There was something new in the air, though. A sort of anxious expectation of some kind of change. Perhaps the city will be wiped off the face of the earth and rebuilt like Moscow, perhaps the world will see the second coming of the old bloody gods. But the guardsmen at the gat