“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.