For the third time, they had been sent to this forsaken land. It was neither east nor west, neither north nor south. They said it had once been a kingdom, somewhere in the heart of the old continent, something they had pieced together from the ruins scattered across jagged hills sprouting here and there from the ground. Everyone else went islands, dived to the seabed, drilled at the poles, and explored waste in the east, but these two were sent here again, as if someone were trying to get rid of them, just to keep them out of the way.
What were they really supposed to find here? They wandered the land, aimless and bored, like the last bird watching from the sky. Sometimes they landed, took samples for the lab, and then caught a nap by the river bend. They avoided the hot fumes of active volcanoes. Compared to those on other planets, these were more like small, whispered fumaroles, but even so, they had to be careful.
They felt as if they had stepped into a scene from a movie they had once glimpsed. A mad and exhausted conqueror screamed and wildly flailed his arms on a ridiculous wooden raft in the middle of a raging river. It was somewhere in the south of this planet, deep in the jungle. There were many movies made on this planet, but only fragments of the reels survived, and this one quickly became iconic.
When a trumpet sounded in the distance and flooded the land with a booming murmur, when all the fumaroles hissed together, and when wind rolled in, covering the land in heavy fog, both of them knew the third expedition would not be like the previous ones.
At that moment, Kult Masek and Petr Vrba were flying over the land that was once called České středohoří.
