“... “Quiet,” Tomas noted while they looked around. From this place begins the domain of the goiters - creatures that are stupid, slow, evil, but extremely dangerous, especially if you allow at least one to get close, much less grab you... You could hear drops splashing on bent pieces of iron that had once been something useful and, perhaps, beautiful. A crow was cawing nearby, and ahead, in the west, the outlines of dilapidated buildings emerged from the rain, much taller than even a church, not to mention an ordinary hut. Alex sometimes tried to imagine what everything looked like here in the distant past and what it was like to live here, but every time he gave up - he didn’t have enough imagination...”