The Mist and the Lightning. Part 16

“What?”

“So they say.”

“Vitor, stop it!””

“Varah, I'm lost. I'm lost…”

It got completely dark, and the sky was clouded with low black clouds. The wind intensified, already clearly howling in the cracks. Kors left the empty house, listening to his feelings, so that, like a beast, like a faithful dog, he could smell where his Master was. They were further away, at the edge of the village, near the forest. Exactly where the camp of the uncleans used to be. Kors spurred his horse, trying to drive as quickly as possible through the houses where his officers and himself had once lived. He no longer wanted to remember anything, because it was unbearable and only agitated and depressed him. Silently he entered a low rickety house, where a candle barely glowed on the table and an open bottle stood. Everything as usual.

“Here he is. Finally!” Said, displeased, Prince Arel, seeing him. “Well? Have you walked enough?”

Kors silently looked up at him, and Arel opened the door to the adjacent room for him:

“Come here.”

Kors doomedly walked deep into the house, where he was shown. They went into a room that apparently had previously served as the master's bedroom. There was devastation here, and there was a large, rickety bed without legs, with broken vertical poles at the edges, which were once intended to support the canopy. Now there was nothing: no canopy, no pillows, no blanket – only a dirty mattress, from which a fat rat, the true mistress of this room, slowly jumped off.

Nikto was sitting in the corner right on the dirty floor in the same position as on the ferry, his mask was lying nearby. He slowly raised his head, and his gray face and black eyes looked creepy in the gloom.

Kors was suddenly seized by an inexplicable sticky and all-consuming fear. All this atmosphere of decay of an abandoned village, longing for the past lost life and some indescribable feeling of hopelessness in this house, rotten through and through, intensified a hundredfold. Before he could say anything, Arel rudely and forcefully pushed him onto the bed, knocking him over onto his back. Kors felt his invisible hands gripping him, pressing against the musty mattress. Kors froze. Arel just stood by, and at the same time Kors couldn’t even move. The prince slowly approached, leaning, and Kors, unable to restrain himself, screamed in pain, because he had an absolutely real feeling that Arel penetrated deep into his body through his skin and strongly squeezed something inside, and again and again. Stronger and stronger. He seemed to feel and squeeze every internal organ, twisting the insides, and it was unbearable. Kors was literally paralyzed and sprawled on the bed. He lay with his arms outstretched and couldn’t move. Arel didn’t stop, continuing to twist and press on every piece of flesh, making him feel a truly hellish pain, which was impossible to get rid of. And his victim writhed in agony under invisible, tenacious fingers. Overcoming these terrible sensations of pain, unable to utter a word and really breathe in air, Kors, by some incredible effort of will in his thoughts, confused and incorrectly began to feverishly read the divine saying, and Arel loosened his grip a little.

Kors heard and caught with a peripheral vision that Nobody got up and was approaching them.

“No! No!” Kors shouted with the last bit of strength, feeling the electrified air begin to tremble and vibrate, as if before a thunderstorm. He heard a rumble in his ears and an ever-increasing discordant cacophony of sounds.

“Iness! Iness, help me!”

There was a harsh clap.

A black figure with huge wings hung over his outstretched body. But the Demon did not lift him into the air as he expected. From the depths of this black figure, first from afar, and then closer and closer, with a low rumble at great speed, something began to approach him. Something incredibly strong, alien and ruthless, and Kors knew it was about to slam into him and kill him. He screamed loudly. The blow was so strong that it was thrown up from the mattress, and the bed shook. Something coming from the Demon burst into his chest, into his very essence, pierced him and broke. Bending convulsively, Kors wheezed, and it seemed to him that his heart had stopped and exploded into thousands of small pieces.

Kors screamed, practically losing consciousness from unbearable pain and despair. In some kind of haze, fog, in the last dying dash, he fell from the bed to the floor, clutching with stiff fingers into the broken post at the foot, gasping and wheezing. With an incredible effort, he got up and literally crawled to the door. “Quicker, quicker, get out of this room, out of this house!” He was dizzy and everything was floating in front of his eyes, he saw their black silhouettes, they pulled back a little, not holding him. Staggering like drunk, Kors rushed out, hitting the corners and stumbling over the steps of the porch, tumbled into a small square. The forces finally left him, and after walking a few steps, Kors fell to his knees in the dust, screamed hoarsely, rather howled, raising his face to the black night sky covered with heavy thunderclouds:

“Gods! Gods! Help me! Supreme God, save me, I beg you!” He shouted in despair.

Nearby, lightning suddenly struck with a bright blinding flash and a deafening rumble of thunder was heard. Kors covered his ears with his hands, bending to the ground. Streams of freezing rain fell on him from above. Kneeling, he put his face to these drops and, choking on the sobs choking him, shouted, swallowing them.

“Save me! Hear me!”

In the pouring rain, he crawled on the ground, wet and dirty, continuing to call, like a madman:

“My God! Help me! Save me, I beg you!”

Nikto came up to him from the house:

“Shout louder, he doesn’t hear you! Maybe he is sleeping?” He said, and his voice was terrible.

With a death grip, he squeezed Kors by the forearm, pulling him upward, dragging him behind him. Nikto dragged exhausted, unresisting Kors into the house and threw him on the bed, and he finally lost consciousness, falling into the darkness.

5

Progress

“Get up! Desmod has arrived.”

“Am I alive? Am I not dead?” Kors saw that he was lying on the bed, on some shabby skin, undressed and covered with a tattered, but warm and heavy blanket stuffed with lumps of matted wool. He looked around, dumbfounded. Painted Nikto without a mask and still with black plates in his eyes stood over him. Nikto threw his jacket and boots at him.

“You… you… undressed me and covered me?!” Kors asked in surprise.

“You were all wet and shivering. Why are you looking like that? Should I have left you to sleep in wet clothes?”

“No… no, I don’t believe… after what you did to me, to take care of my clothes?”

Nikto instantly mentally transferred him a piece of the events of yesterday evening. Kors saw himself from the side: he listlessly resisted and continued to cry, Nikto really took off his jacket, rather patiently and gently. Kors tried to push him away like an offended child, tears running down his face.

And Nikto said:

“Vitor, you are all wet, you motherfucker! Let me take your wet clothes off!”

Then he went into the next room and hung them there on chairs around the table. He brought a skin and a blanket and covered Kors.

Yes, it was true. The demon took care of him. Only Kors for some reason was not grateful to him!

“What have you done to me? What have you turned me into? You killed me!”

“Get up!”

“I don’t want.”

“How many times should I repeat? You are my retinue. Get up and follow me!”

Those unclean ones who came to the aid of Atley Alis’ army were, in Kors’ opinion, simply disgusting. This army consisted simply of some frankly bestial creatures, and their commanders, unclean Desmod and Marbas, generally had little in common with people. Zaf, Nija and Tazh, compared to these creatures, seemed just noble sirs. They traced at least some kind of human nature, while these godless creatures were just beasts. Nikto with his changed painted face matched them. And now Kors realized that there was a point in disfiguring himself and hiding his soft appearance.

In their uterine hoarse voices, they spoke very quickly in unadapted unclean, and Kors didn’t understand them well. But it seemed that these were banal greetings and expressions of joy from the meeting, although from the outside it seemed that they would now grab each other’s throats as well as Kors’ one. Kors “heard” how Nikto, at some crazy speed, almost instantly mentally conveyed to Desmod a whole block of events that had occurred, and these were not words, but simply compressed information, in which Kors didn’t have time to make out anything concrete. Desmod, in response, also gave the Demon his vision of the situation and information about what was happening, as well as about each of his warriors. And the way they communicated amazed Kors. They communicated not with thoughts, but as if with emotions that were not clothed in words, conveying not just a word, but at once a whole spectrum: an image, sound, smell, emotion, both their own, and of everyone involved in it, and what really happened, and it was much cooler than words. Such blocks took an instant, giving a complete and multifaceted understanding of the situation, and it would take a thousand words, explanations and clarifications to describe all this concise information that was transmitted instantly. Kors understood now how poor and primitive were the communication skills of people who communicated with the help of words that didn’t convey, in essence, even a hundredth of what the Demon could convey in a split second. But Kors was so proud of his talent, he was sure that he perfectly heard the Demon and the unclean. How funny he was when he told Zaf, “I will break your defenses”. He didn’t understand their real communication, and only now was he able to grasp its essence, while he did not even have time to understand anything.

The unclean ones settled down in Riverside for the night, they kindled bonfires and made a terrible holiday with sacrifices. The soldiers hung each other on chains, piercing the skin on their backs with sharp hooks. They wounded their flesh without pity, passing hooks through the skin on their arms, legs, back, and if they did not hang themselves, then they simply hooked heavy weights to the hooks so that the wounded flesh would stretch. They pierced themselves through with thick needles, inserted sharp knives into their cheeks and lips, which protruded from their mouths. All this action was accompanied by a booming rhythmic beat of drums and howling of trumpets.

“Are you going to pierce yourself and hang yourself too?” Asked Kors looking at Nikto.

“No.”

“Why? It’s quite your style.”

“They make these sacrifices for the Demons to appease them and get help in battle. And I am the Demon,” Nikto answered, and, turning away from the raging crowd of unclean soldiers, went to the house. And Kors had no choice but to follow him.

Kors lay on his side on a dirty mattress in clothes and boots, blankly staring at the opposite wall and at the rat slowly picking something in the corner. Nikto and Arel kissed and hugged behind him, undressing each other. The sound of their kisses and the clang of taken off weapons falling to the floor drowned out the screams of the unclean and equally vile sounds of instruments outside the walls of the house. He heard and felt how Nik and Arel lay down on the bed, intertwining their bodies, the mattress trembling, and now, when they were very close, Kors heard their moans better, the hoarse hiss of Nikto, the tinkle of his trinkets and chastity belt. Arel, fucking him, screamed loudly, cumming, and Kors realized that Nikto again didn’t utter the coveted phrase either aloud or mentally, and, therefore, Arel was now free from this restriction. Kors didn’t turn to them, nor did he get out of bed. He didn't care. Even if Arel now turned him around, undressed him, ordered him to get down on all fours or suck him off, he didn’t care. It was as if they weren’t around right now, but it seems he was absent for them too, because, having fed up with the submissive body of the Demon, Arel didn’t touch Kors.

Kors stood under the canopy near the stable, getting ready to leave as they were returning to Crimson Rock. Nearby, the unclean of Desmod’s detachment were also preparing their horses for the journey and were talking loudly out loud. These unclean ones were simple soldiers and didn’t know how to communicate like their demonic commanders, and Kors couldn’t help hearing their chatter inattentively.