“Here he is. Finally!” Said, displeased, Prince Arel, seeing him. “Well? Have you walked enough?”
Kors silently looked up at him, and Arel opened the door to the adjacent room for him:
“Come here.”
Kors doomedly walked deep into the house, where he was shown. They went into a room that apparently had previously served as the master's bedroom. There was devastation here, and there was a large, rickety bed without legs, with broken vertical poles at the edges, which were once intended to support the canopy. Now there was nothing: no canopy, no pillows, no blanket – only a dirty mattress, from which a fat rat, the true mistress of this room, slowly jumped off.
Nikto was sitting in the corner right on the dirty floor in the same position as on the ferry, his mask was lying nearby. He slowly raised his head, and his gray face and black eyes looked creepy in the gloom.
Kors was suddenly seized by an inexplicable sticky and all-consuming fear. All this atmosphere of decay of an abandoned village, longing for the past lost life and some indescribable feeling of hopelessness in this house, rotten through and through, intensified a hundredfold. Before he could say anything, Arel rudely and forcefully pushed him onto the bed, knocking him over onto his back. Kors felt his invisible hands gripping him, pressing against the musty mattress. Kors froze. Arel just stood by, and at the same time Kors couldn’t even move. The prince slowly approached, leaning, and Kors, unable to restrain himself, screamed in pain, because he had an absolutely real feeling that Arel penetrated deep into his body through his skin and strongly squeezed something inside, and again and again. Stronger and stronger. He seemed to feel and squeeze every internal organ, twisting the insides, and it was unbearable. Kors was literally paralyzed and sprawled on the bed. He lay with his arms outstretched and couldn’t move. Arel didn’t stop, continuing to twist and press on every piece of flesh, making him feel a truly hellish pain, which was impossible to get rid of. And his victim writhed in agony under invisible, tenacious fingers. Overcoming these terrible sensations of pain, unable to utter a word and really breathe in air, Kors, by some incredible effort of will in his thoughts, confused and incorrectly began to feverishly read the divine saying, and Arel loosened his grip a little.