doesn’t give me away.”
“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
