“They have about one day left to get to Riverside.”
“Maybe you should go to meet them? You will wind down, do something and take your mind off your madness?”
“Yes,” Nikto agreed.
And Lis looked at Kors and said:
“Thanks,” and left.
“But I haven't had time to ask for you yet, oh devil!”
3
The trip
Black water chomped loudly over the side of the ferry raft. Nikto was sitting with his back against the side, his legs bent at the knees and his straightened arms resting on them, his head was lowered. He wasn’t moving.
Kors looked at him closely.
“Nik, are you high?”
Nikto raised his face covered with a mask:
“Yeah,” he drawled.
“And strong? Completely stoned? Yes, Nik?”
“Uh-uh… yes,” Nikto answered a little more clearly, but in unclean, “Nik, you're high,” he repeated and laughed softly.
“Gods, you’re finished! You are really finished, and you will catch an overdose again!”
Nikto answered, dropped his head between his hands again. And Kors saw now only his white top and long bangs with a black strand.
“It’s really difficult with you! Nik… I don’t understand. Do you feel so bad in a human body? In our world? Is it so unbearable?”
“Leave me alone, how tired I am of you all!”
“Nik, speak to me in black, please.”
Nikto raised his head again, and straightened his hair, slightly removing it from the mask:
“I'm fine,” he said in black, still responding to Kors’ request.
Arel, standing nearby and holding his horse by the bridle, as usual, silently listened to their conversation. Smiling slightly, he raised the flask of the unclean to his lips, taking a good sip of it.
“Nik,” Kors continued, “I think you’re doing the wrong thing. You are going crazy from your supposedly limitedness in this body. You have too much pride and no humility. Rather, you completely misunderstand him, you confuse humility with humiliation.”
“As if you understand!”
“Yes, I understand.”
“And, of course, impeccable Vitor Kors, who knows and understands everything!”
“At least I try. I am walking this path. I made peace with Lis, and I understood him. And you continue to mock and humiliate him, yes, then you allow him to hit you on the head, but this is not humility! This is a perversion! And I realized that the half-blood is no worse than me, that he is the same! He’s a man too! And we are equal. And you – no! You, Demon, don’t want to accept the fact that you are the same as us!”
“You are mice!”
“And your wings are now black! And broken. Your wings were broken, I felt it and I was very scared. What is Bustwich?”
“World of Shit, nothing special,” Nikto answered, to Kors’ disappointment, rather indifferently, “just World of Shit, like everything else.”
“What is happening to you?!”
“Nothing,” Nikto shrugged, “nothing happens to me.”
“Do you understand that you are bad at performing tasks and your Missions?”
“So what? Oh, yes, that’s what you said to Arel for ten years. He tried and did. He tried for you, but you stopped loving him!”
“Like your Father God? He disowned you, fell out of love and severely punished you, depriving you of your voice and eyes. You don't have your own voice, you wheeze. And no eyes. They say that the eyes are the mirror of the soul, instead of eyes you have empty glass!”
“What? Oh, spare me this. It's just ridiculous,” and Nikto put his finger to the mask at the level of his mouth, turning it slightly diagonally.
“Arel was unworthy of my love,” said Kors.
“However, you fell in love with him again, but only when he chucked in!”
Kors looked at Arel, who, as before, stood at a distance and was clearly not going to take part in the conversation.
“Arel, why did I stop loving you, what do you think?” Kors asked.
“Because I became dirty,” oddly enough, but Arel answered and drank from the flask again.
“Why did I love you again?”
“Because you have become as dirty as I am,” said the prince. He smiled the indulgent smile of a sir, showing Kors the slightly chipped edge of one of his front teeth.
“Everything is simple for the prince,” Kors grinned, “give me a drink.”
Arel silently handed him his flask. Kors took a sip of the strong unclean moonshine:
“Fuck, what a shit! What the hell are you always shoving in yourself!” He lit a cigarette to interrupt the unpleasant aftertaste:
“Addict and drunkard, it will all end badly. And I want to help you, fallen Angel. Help! Only you bury yourself deeper and deeper, but you have to try and start to change your life and your attitude towards it and people! That is why you feel bad, that you are moving in the wrong direction and on the wrong path! You are doing good deeds! After all, you are doing them! You have saved so many people from slavery in the Western colonies. You destroyed the Farm. In the Black City, you helped a lot of people. Now we are fighting the red invaders. You are trying to somehow remake our world, bring it to a better place. And people aren’t mice or leather shit bags, are they?”
“Vitor, you are a leather bag full of words. You are a leather bag too full of words. Why would you care about my welfare? Tell me also that you are worried about your son.”
“And for the son, and for you!”
“Why for me? Are you afraid that if I poorly perform tasks, your Mission will fail and you will not become the king of black?”
“Is this my Mission?”
“Don't you want it?”
“I don’t even know what I want and what my Mission is. Maybe it’s about getting you out? Help you?”
“To set on the path of the true dirty Demon?”
“You need support.”
“You said yourself that I’m finished.”
“I believe that the point of no return has not yet been passed.”
“Did you get Arel out? Have you raised him?”
“I did my best! And helped him a lot!”
“Taught him to suck well? I agree that this skill is very important in this life.”
Kors grimaced.
“Unfortunately, there is no merit here, this talent was innate in him.”
Nikto just shook his head.
“I know where to start,” Kors continued, “you need to cut back on your medication, that’s for sure. You inject yourself every two hours, and then, of course, you are hard hit by the withdrawal. I tried it and I know what I'm talking about.”
“Oh, what did you try there, Vitor? Like a girl who drank a glass of wine and thinks she understood everything about alcohol. It’s funny! Do you want to try ‘black water’?”
Kors’ face changed:
“No.”
“Well, then don't give a fuck.”
“Follow