Chapter three

The ring and the mask

Kors was sitting at the table, looking at the things lying in front of him. The mask and the ring. The mask made of a strange material a bit like suede leather, worn and scratched in many places, it could be seen that it had been used for a long time and often, and a men’s ring with a dark blue sapphire, Kors took it away from Arel. And Nikto gave it to Arel. Nikto… And this was his mask lying on the table in front of Kors, and he was looking at it with an empty gaze.

Everything turned out to be completely different from what he had expected; quite, completely different. And Kors again and again sorted through scraps of memory and tried to understand why? Why?! Why everything happened as it happened? He searched and found no answers.

Nikto deprived him of everything: Iness, the son to whom he never managed to come up with a name, and now he couldn’t, so he left him nameless, calling him just a son, not daring to name him, like the others, Nikto. To some extent, agreeing that it was so, he was not named, not accepted and has not become a full-fledged person due to the sharing of essence from the lower plan. So for himself Kors called it. Therefore, Nikto had the correct name, it reflected the essence, probably… Or maybe it was too cruel.

In any case, now the demon living in him deprived Kors of his last joy, his Karina. He took her, took her away, and Kors had no doubt Karina died. The demon will destroy her, crush her and deprive her of will, as he did before with Arel, and even with Lis, whom neither the “reds” nor the “blacks” could break. But Nikto broke him the ridge. And him, Kors, too…

Arel, the unfortunate Arel, with a black tattoo on half of his cheeck, starting from the corner of the eye and ending under the chin. Arel with one eye already redone too. Arel, also squinting from the light and turning away from the window. And there were the rings thick like little fingers inserted in his ears and nipples.

Lis was in a collar, and Kors suspected that this was only the beginning. And now Karina. What will the demon do to her? He will take her to his other slaves, and what Arel and Lis will do to her? Lis, scars made by whom have already remained on the body of his poor Karina. His beloved daughter, who is now in fucking hell. He understood this, he never had any illusions about this world, she lived in illusions, and the more painful it would be for her. He recalled their punctured hands, Nikto’s and now Prince Arel’s too. Yes, and Lis probably also had there traces of injections. But Kors knew very well that Arel had never injected himself before. Squint-Eye, but not Arel. Now his veins were festering from the infection no worse than Nikto’s. And thinking about it, at such moments, Kors wanted only one thing, no matter how terrible it might sound, so that his girl would die as soon as possible, so as not to reach the state that his son had reached, and to which Arel was approaching.

His son, a living corpse, a walking dead devoid of eyes, the ability to speak and see. And the worst thing that Kors understood now was that his son still really lived in this body, but Kors already didn’t know how to help him. He wanted to take revenge on the demon, humiliated him and tormented him, but it turned out that he humiliated and rejected his son too. What did he do wrong?! What did he need to do, what to do? At that moment when he saw Nikto, yes, he believed that it was his son, he really was very similar to Iness, very much. His bright eyes in fluffy dark eyelashes, pale skin and a little childishly puffy lips. And also… and Karina could not know this, but, Nikto looked like Kors himself, when he was twenty and when he made this fatal mistake, leaving Iness unattended. Kors seemed to see himself in his youth and… still Nikto was not more a human. Only the outer shell, the shell, which was used, but not spared. Not at all. And this killed Kors most of all, the way the demon was ungrateful and careless, but rather even intentionally sadistically used the human physical shell, mutilating and distorting it. And by the will of fate this man, this carrier of sharing essence, turned out to be his second child. Because, having killed Iness, they sold the baby to the witch, and she performed this terrible ritual.