Chat with a Demon. Daughter of the Dawn

It seems that in Slavic mythology there was also a goddess of the morning dawn with the same name – Dennitsa. He had studied mythology, just as he had studied history. Now that knowledge of history would come in handy for him now. After all, from the fires of the Battle of Heaven, the action took him to the deserts of Egypt, and then to the palaces of the pharaohs. Athenais became a personal angel under the Egyptian kings. At all the ceremonies she was present near their thrones and whispered her advice to them.

It seems that the advice of an angel is goodness. The pharaohs were lucky. Nevertheless, Athenais’ advice awakened evil. All sorts of horrible things began to happen around them. The dead rose from their graves, monsters went to war with people, crops rotted in the fields, poisonous black rye grew on the cold fields of battle and gave birth to evil spirits. The terrible epidemics began. The Pharaohs’ power grew stronger thanks to Athénaïs, but it cost the people their blood.

Athenais, in the footage, drank the blood of the condemned, like a vampire. She didn’t need blood to survive, unlike vampires. He guessed drinking blood from precious goblets is purely symbolic and means victory over her enemies.

By the way, Athenais had an unusual name in the movies, consonant with her own acting pseudonym. For some reason she was not called Dennitsa, as she was supposed to be, but the goddess Alais.

Nikita had to rewind the film to the beginning to understand where the second name came from. It turns out that Alais had given it to herself. Under her first name, Dennitsa, she had lost the war in heaven, so the name was considered tainted.

“The name you lost by once will bring you further defeat,” whispered one of her supporters. “Change it! You can only win with a new name. The name is your banner.”

The main character heeded this advice and wrote the letters of the first names of her fallen standard-bearers in the sand. It was a new name – Alais. It had to become a magical talisman, because the power of the dead heroes lay in it.

Somehow, after the fall, Alais herself remained beautiful, but her armies became burnt monsters. Instead of tearing her apart for leading them to defeat, they continued to serve her. Indeed, Alais is a goddess, since she knew how to keep them all in subjection.

Nikita paused on the film. He thought he heard someone call his name.

“Nikita Goncharov!”

That was how his professors usually shouted at him at lectures if they noticed he was looking sleepy. But now they were not around. Who could call him? He was probably just imagining things.

Perhaps his conscience should have been awakened in him. After all, he was skipping lectures and seminars again. He should be commended this time. He is self-educating.

Nikita goes back to watching the movie. The play icon suddenly froze. The movie switched from moment to moment on its own.

The desert, where legions of monsters dwelt among the golden sands, had disappeared. Alais negotiated something with the first pharaoh of Egypt. It seems that both he and all his descendants were obliged to obey her for helping him win some battle.

“You are helping him in vain,” whispered one of the monstrous legionnaires to Alais. “Men should be exterminated. They are no longer useful on earth. It should be just us. Men will never appreciate us.”

So what are they all? They were a race of fallen angels? Nikita watched and couldn’t get into the plot. Yes, the horror special effects in the film were amazing, but what was the point?

How hard for a two-year old to grasp the wisdom of cinema! He used to just watch movies, not really thinking about the content. Well, flashing around on the screen, and let it go. The pleasure of watching is purely visual. Now he was interested in the meaning embedded in the frames. It was as if Athenais was trying to tell him something through this film. It was not for nothing that she had left a link to a free file for him to watch. Surely you can’t watch such a gorgeous movie on pay sites in a standard subscription. A gorgeous spectacle always comes at a price.

Or did Athénaïs just want to show off? Like, she’s a star and he’s just a guy and should respect her.

Nikita’s father had lost all respect for his mother when he accepted the fact that his wife would never cook or do housework. Instead of cooking lunches and dinners, his mother bought tickets to the theaters and spent all her free time attending operas, operettas, and ballets. Eventually the marriage broke down. Many men are only able to respect women who are good cooks. Only a few are able to get along with female bohemians.

Perhaps Nikita did not go to his father, because he admired Athenais career. She played the angel beautifully. Who would have thought of the soulless winged creatures from the frescoes that they can behave with such regal dignity and they give advice to rulers. Athenais made the fallen angel look like a hero. The image of Dennitsa, deeply worried about his defeated army, captured the heart.

That’s what’s wrong with this movie! All sympathy is on the side of the devil. It is he who is the hero.

“And who told you what was really wrong?”

Nikita turned around in a whisper. There’s no one in the room. Why would anyone be here? Even if his mother returned unexpectedly from a business trip early, he locked the door with a bolt. No one would come in without calling. No uninvited guests to worry about. But for some reason it feels like uninvited guests are already here. He probably couldn’t even call them uninvited, because it was as if he himself was calling them, surfing the Internet.

Nikita has a strong feeling that he is looking for something or someone on the Internet. He just doesn’t know who yet…

Or does he know? He quickly ran the name of the goddess Alais through a Google search engine. The Internet didn’t respond immediately. He had to sweat, twisting the query and searching the sites. The inscriptions remained in some places, but the descriptions were removed. There were no pictures of the statues or images of the goddesses, either. Instead, as if they were icons, beautiful, ominous photos of Athenais as an angel peeked through the sites. The actress was very closely associated with the goddess. As if the goddess existed only on the screen. But was she in history?

After an hour of scrolling through websites, Nikita drew a disappointing conclusion.

Alais is the goddess of Ancient Egypt, who did not exist or who, for whatever reason, they chose to forget about. The second is more likely. If the deity is too evil, it is best forgotten. But how beautiful it is!

Nikita could hardly tear his gaze away from another photo of Athenais, which looked like a golden engraving.

If all angels were as beautiful as she was, he wouldn’t leave theirs temples. It was a pleasure to look at the picture of Athenais.

Suddenly a key clicked under his finger. Nikita did not realize what he had pressed. The Internet reacted instantly, opening an unsolicited window, in which all kinds of horror flashed: torture studios, mutation of people and destruction of temples. Nikita’s eyes began to glaze over. What did all this have to do with Athenais? He was only looking for information about a goddess or a movie star. The creepy information was somehow connected specifically to the star.

Sects, madness, terrorist attacks, mass psychosis, suicides, psychiatric syndrome in movies. Is this really all about her? He must have the wrong website. Those newspapers and magazines he’d recently browsed online didn’t have it all. So where did it come from now? Maybe he was seeing double?

Or maybe it’s all just a clever promotion for the movies? Like: don’t go to a horror movie, it’s so scary it will drive you crazy. After reading such a warning, the audience will come running like a house on fire. It’s all cleverly planned. All you have to do is applaud.

It was getting dark outside the windows. A track of lanterns lit up on the highway, reminiscent of the Milky Way. The car headlights glittered like stars below.

The panorama from Nikita’s window was miserable. There had once been a square below the windows, but it had been gutted to create a playground and parking lot. The rosebushes had been ripped out to make room for the basketball court, which was always empty. Only the highway behind it was lit with electric lights in the evenings.

Evening Moscow glittered with neon signs and lanterns as if they were stars. At night, they made the simplest of neighborhoods seem appealing. Athenais, too, appeared only as darkness fell. Chat came alive as if a night star had flashed.

“Hello!”

She started again with a familiar word. Nikita clicked the keys irritably, issuing an accusatory tirade:

“You’re like a vampire, you sleep in a coffin during the day, and you wake up only at night? Only you feed on energy, not blood. You’re an energy vampire who catches gullible guys in a chat room and drives them crazy.”

The wound on his leg suddenly ached. It was absurd to claim that the creature in the chat room was feeding off his energy and not his blood. The razor was missing somewhere, after all, and a lot of blood had gushed out of the wound. Instead of being absorbed into the carpet, the blood disappeared, too. Or was he just imagining it all?

“Are you so angry that I don’t talk to you during the day?” Athenais had accurately noted the reason for his anger. Apparently, she’d already fooled a lot of guys.

“I’m angry that I can’t meet you,” Nikita admitted honestly.

“Maybe it’s for the best.”

“Why it is not? Are you really a vampire?”

“Not a vampire. And even in the movies I did not play vampires.”

“Then what are you? Are you an actress?

“I wouldn’t call myself an actress.”

“But you are a movie star, aren’t you? Or are you not?”

“A movie star, yes! But I am not an actress.”

“It’s a strange combination. How could it be?”

“I wasn’t acting,” Athenais explained.