Ви Корс - The Mist and the Lightning. Part 11

“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,” Lis couldn’t resist, “let him wait for you there! He distracts you.”

“No,” Nikto said.

“Nik, pull yourself together! Are you a Demon or who?!”

“I am nobody,” Nikto said slowly in syllables, “I don't want anything, Lis. Hush, hush,” he winced, “just don’t start yelling, I will do everything.”

“You can do it already now, you can do more and better! You do the minimum, in a slipshod manner. Without soul. Get out of the body then, I’ll do it faster with Karina’s brother than with you. It seems to me that he will really be more useful now!” Lis gripped his stomach, wincing. “Fuck, my stomach will die from endless nerves now.”

“You have holes in your stomach,” Nikto said.

Pale Lis was holding his stomach with both hands, waiting for the attack to pass.

“Go away for the sake of your gods,” he whispered, “leave the human, we will do everything ourselves.”

“He's blind,” Nikto retorted.

“You're no more sighted,” Lis looked skeptically at the swollen eye of Nikto on the side of the inflamed scar.

“For the sake of your gods,” Nikto mimicked him. “I am your God!” He tried to laugh, but coughed hoarsely: “Unclean warriors will not listen to you yet, Fox, only to me. You are not yet an authority for them.”

“Well, what for do I have it?!” Lis groaned, he let go of his stomach and grabbed his head. “Why am I always unlucky?!”

“I'll do everything, Lis,” Nikto drawled, “just fuck off now, okay?” He with some unhealthy expression on his face pulled Arel by the chain.

“No!” Lis shouted. “Enough! I'll take him from you, this damn prince has made you crazy. You don't want to think of anything but him.”

Nikto buried Arel's face in his crotch.

“Fuck, unhook from him!” Fox couldn’t resist.

“Ver! Ver!” He shouted, and Verniy, oddly enough, appeared on the threshold.

“Ver, I ask you, if you truly love your master, help him get out of this state,” Lis pleaded.

Ver gazed dispassionately at the stoned Nikto, as if he had not seen his sunken dull eyes, festering scar and tangled hair.

“He, along the way, can't wait for you to die,” said Lis disappointedly, “only I don't like it. Only I am worried about you.”

“Ver,” said Nikto aloud, “stir up something from the stomach for Lis. He's bleeding inside there.”

“Fuck,” drawled Lis. Nikto knocked Arel over on his back, lay down on top of him with his whole body, kissing with cracked lips, Arel was moaning, arching towards him.

“Animals, you are animals!” Lis stood up. “I'm leaving. I'll be back tomorrow morning.”

“Ver will bring you the medicine,” Nikto said without turning around.

“Nik, I ask you…” began Lis.

Nikto put his fingers into Arel's tight mouth, making him moan in pain.

Lis went out.

When he returned to the room the next morning, he saw that nothing had changed. The shutters were still tightly closed, a candle barely glowed in the twilight, the sharp chemical smell of drugs tickled his nose so that his eyes began to water. Nikto was lying prone on the bed, his blond hair sweeping away. Arel sat tied by his wrists to the headboard, the rope still gripping his mouth. He opened his eyelids hard, looking at Lis with a dull look.

“You motherfuckers!” Lis opened the shutters and the window with a crash, bright light and fresh wind burst into the room. Lis, confidently walking up to the bed, untied Arel and cut the rope that tightened his mouth from behind. He didn’t even try to untie the knots which Nikto made. On the prince's face, where the rope cut into the skin, a dark purple stripe from ear to ear remained.

Nikto got up:

“What?” He barely uttered.

“Come to your senses, Kors is coming!”

“No,” Nikto murmured, “I know when. Not today.”

“Get up, let's go to the river. You need to refresh yourself. You need a brainwash!”

“Did the medicine help you?”

“Yes, thanks, get up, Arel!”

“Not on a horse,” he murmured in horror, “no, no,” he whined.

“Get it out, get it out of him!” Lis said in an orderly tone and turned to Nikto.

“No, “ he threw sharply, still rising from the bed.

“Pull it out, you will play with him at the waterfalls, drown him there to hell!”

This idea seemed to interest Nikto.

“Ver,” he called, “bring the mask, Arel's clothes, dress him.”

“Dress him up and get the bump out of his ass, I don’t want him to whine on the way,” said Lis.

“He will ride with me on the same horse.”

“Damn, you don’t unstuck even for a second!”

Ver returned to the room with a bunch of some kind of leather harness, treating Arel like a big doll, and began to busily tighten his body, black with bruises, with belts. Nikto nevertheless pulled out a large ribbed dildo from Arel.

“I’ll put on him a mask myself,” he said to Ver with unhealthy passion and love in his eyes, covering Arel’s face with a crust of hard black skin.

“And don’t forget to put on a mask onto yourself,” said Lis gloomily. “How I hate you, you are burnt out, Nikto!”