The Mist and the Lightning. Part 11. Ви Корс
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Nikto made a jester out of me. Arel now wears a nose ring, think about it! I wore bells, I wear the same shit! Nikto humiliates and torments me the same way. Is not it so? I suck and I get fucked whenever they want. How am I better than Arel? Why does it seem to everyone that Arel is being bullied, but not me? Wasn't I even more bullied? Isn't my life the same series of bullying? But you can't see it from me, right? I don’t look humiliated and pathetic, even when painted like a jester. Everyone feels sorry for Arel, but not for me. What difference does it make to me what else they make me wear, take in my mouth. Anything! You are welcome! The prince is a true descendant of the black ancestors – this is victory, success! Half-blood red is a shame, a failure.”
“Please, please stop! Arel for this title, by order of the king, was made sterile,” Karina tried to object somehow, so that it would not seem to Lis that all the bad things happened only to him. “He paid dearly for his nobility.”
“Well, yes,” Lis threw down a cigarette, out of habit, immediately lighting up the next one from her. “But I have a lot of children, according to Nikto, and all from whores and slaves!”
“But you yourself are to blame, you play very hard, you yourself understand it. You yell at Nikto, you call him names. You are very cocky. So you get it,” Karina decided not to develop the topic about his children.
“My wonderful good life made me so, and I will remain so!”
“Stop smoking.”
Karina hugged him, and he didn’t pull away.
“I love you for that! You will become king!”
“And Arel will become a Demon!”
“Well, Lis, well enough. Stop being jealous of him.”
Lis covered his face with his palms:
“That’s all. Sorry. I won't anymore.”
After a while, Nikto brought everyone back. They again stood in the center of the room in the old witch’s cave. And Nikto clumsily sank to the floor and groaned:
“Oh, damn…”
The difference between the way he was in his limit, and what he was again was too obvious. They got used to him fast, strong, without a scar, with a clean beautiful face. And now his face was disfigured again because of Karina's brother. Nikto covered it with his hands. He sat hunched over, not moving, as if coming to his senses, getting used to the limitations of a crippled human body.”
“I can’t, I don’t want…”
“Nik,” Lis asked cautiously, “are you now a human or a Demon?”
Nikto removed his hands from his face and looked at Lis:
“I'm now a Demon in a fucking human body and a human face with this fucking scar!”
He ran his fingers over his scarred cheek.
“How I got sick!”
“You just whine and talk like Karina’s brother usually talks.”
“He used to talks so even when he was a Demon,” Arel inserted carefully, the prince’s cheek was sealed in several layers with a black plaster, “he often said so.”
Nikto looked up:
“Don't look at me like that! Don’t!”
He stood up heavily, continuing to quietly pronounce curses in unclean language.
“But you yourself created humans so imperfect,” said Lis.
“I didn’t create people, they were created by the Supreme Demons and the God of the upper ones.”
“The one who was then crucified, as Lila says?”
“Of course not!”
“They crucified, it seems, the son of the god of the upper ones,” Arel said, “and Nikto is the son of the Devil.”
“And he was badly dented too,” said Lis. “Did this son of God also carry out missions among people in a human body?”
“You don’t understand anything in this, don’t meddle! You have your Black Gods, they are given to you, don’t meddle in the world of dark and light.”
“Well, yes, we are mice. We don’t understand the life of higher beings,” said Lis. “Did you create us just to fuck? Well, then you could have made more holes! Or is it just your personal orientation to fuck people, while others, over there, create artificial demons?”
“Yes,” Nikto snapped, “sing, mice, dance, amuse me! Do you see, Lis, that I have not done anything to you, as I promised, neither to you, nor to Karina, you will no longer be afraid to enter my limit?”
“Maybe you erased our memory,” objected Lis, “you always do that. We don’t know how much time has passed, and where we really were and what we were doing. We are not supposed to know this!”
“You are alive, well, say thank you for that too.”
“Thank you.”
“Let's go to the Estate. Only one day has passed here.”
Pulling his lame leg, Nikto walked slowly towards the exit, and his “mice” followed him…
Chapter two
After the Limit
Lis entered the room saturated with the acrid smell of all kinds of “restoratives” and saw Nikto sitting by the mirror. In the twilight and in some kind of stupor, he, looking at his reflection, was concentratingly pricking a strange sign on his forehead.
“What are you doing! What the fuck!” Lis literally threw Nikto away from the mirror, black paint flowed down the bridge of Nikto’s nose. On his forehead was a symbol that Lis couldn’t understand.
“This is the edge,” Lis groaned, “my strength is gone!” He looked at dumb Nikto, whose eyes were completely blank.
“What are you doing, who have you become, you are insane! Call your khabir, let him put you in order!”
“What for?” Nikto drawled.
“What for?!”
“My only desire, Lis, is to get stoned with all sorts of trash, then pass out, and when I wake up, get stoned again.”
“That scares me,” said Lis. “You look like Squint-Eye now, in your self-destruction. Fuck, you have such great abilities!”
“Abilities? What do you know about my abilities?! They took everything from me, I have nothing!”
“Nik, please,” asked Arel plaintively, who was sitting on the floor, “let me console you, let me touch you.”
“O-oh!” Lis drawled. “Another madman. You're scaring me, this has gone too far. You will die before we make any attempt to go east! You, Nikto, don’t want, and this one,” he looked contemptuously at Arel, “this one I even don’t mention!”
“I will do everything Lis, I don’t want, but I will do everything,” Nikto said wearily.
“Damn, at least put yourself in order to begin with,” Lis snapped displeased. “You're already swollen from the endless drugs. Take care of your body a little!”
Instead of answering, Nikto pulled the chain, allowing Arel to climb onto the bed.
“I didn’t allow you to talk,” he said, and several times, briefly, but tangibly, hit Arel on the face, head and ribs with his fist. Arel wheezed, barely holding back.
“He's already blue, stop it!” Lis shouted.
Nikto didn’t react, but instead took the rope, thrust it into Arel's mouth, passing it between the remaining teeth, tightened it with all his might, tying it at the back so that the rope dug into his face and didn’t allow him to close his mouth. Arel groaned, trying to crawl away, the wide steel collar didn’t let him to bend his head properly, digging into the skin under his chin.
“Send him back to your limit,”