The world is in the grips of a terrible war. It is known by various names, sometimes it’s called the Apocalypse. This terrible war is not being fought by two parties, but by everyone against everyone, by all against all. It is a mix of imperial and civil wars. It all happens not only among people, but among letters. It is happening within language itself. Words are trapped in a civil war.

Everyone has massacred everyone. And now a rotting battlefield extends out in place of a living world. Manya and Vanya – two guardian angels, two children – seek a way to save the world. They find the wisest dragon whose task it is to repair the hopeless state of affairs. The angels ask the dragon to give them a remedy for healing the world. The wise dragon gives Vanya a bottle of living water, and gives Manya a bottle with dead water.

Vanya, as soon as he receives the living water, races quickly onto the terrible battlefield strewn with the rotting remains of humanity. As soon as he reaches it, he immediately sprinkles everything around him with living water, and the remains rise up! Noses are separate from eyes, ears are pushed to one side, thighs to another, a section of buttocks to a third side, shoulders to a fourth – all of this rises up, a huge, vivified mass of dismemberments! In the paroxysms of life renewed, it dances on the battlefield.

Vanya looks in horror at what has happened. At that moment Manya comes running.

“What have you done!? You must first apply the dead water, and only then the living,” she shouts.

They embark on a journey of long, arduous labor, replacing each shoulder to a shoulder, each nose to a face, each face to a body, restoring the unity of each item from all the countless fallen body parts. Finally, Manya pours dead water over them, making it possible for all the organs to heal. And Vanya sprays the battlefield with living water. Now all of the dead, having become whole again, rise up.

But horrors! The warriors begin killing each other again. They throw themselves at each other with unrestrained rage and force! People once again are at war with each other, language clashing against itself, words against words, letters against letters. This civil war is intermingled with an imperial war. It all begins anew.

A pensive dragon hovers over the battlefield, paralyzed internally by confusion. Everything in him has stopped, halted, and stagnated. He looks down upon this war that redoubles itself endlessly. Finally the dragon exhales a blast of deadly fire, and all the warriors fall motionless on the battlefield.

“What shall we do now?” Vanya and Manya ask the dragon.

“Bury them.”