The Mist and the Lightning. Part 19

Arel grabbed him by the ankles and pressed hard, leaning on them with his hands and pushing forward, towards Kors’ head, as if he wanted to break him in half. Kors’ feet were almost by the sides of his head, and he couldn’t help but let out a short cry, feeling that just a little more and his spine would give out. In addition, Arel, not on purpose, but very painfully, brushed his hand over incompletely healed tattoo on Kors’ leg — a bracelet of magical symbols. At that moment Kors felt like he was being skinned alive. A flash of pain and calmness. Kors appeared to have passed out. He saw himself from the side, not lying under Arel with shamefully upraised legs, but being in some richly furnished room, similar to an office. Were it memories from the past? But Kors didn’t recognize the place. He saw that he was standing, turned to the table, sorting through some papers. He wore luxurious, but somehow old-fashioned clothes, and on his back lied his shiny black waist-length ponytail. And now Kors didn’t understand where he was, why he was dressed like that and what was happening.

“The teacher complained about you again!” Kors growled in a strange voice and turned around.

Gods! It’s not him at all! This true black is Chester, Arel’s father! Really, all noble blacks resemble each other, like brothers!

“You look into the book and you can’t read a single line!” Chester raised his voice even more, and Kors realized that he was looking at Chester through the eyes of little Arel. He was kneeling before his father, and Kors felt that Arel was about nine or ten years old.

“I’ll whip you, damned fool!” Chester just yells at him.

Ariel lowers her head. Dark flowing hair obscures his face, and Kors, catching Arel’s inner feelings, is not afraid of punishment, but some kind of wolf longing. He literally wants to howl from his powerlessness to change at least something, get up from his knees now and just leave. But he cannot do this, and this hopelessness washes all over little Arel. And Kors doesn’t want to “catch” and endure such emotions with Arel at all.

“You haven’t learned to read! You can’t even write a simple sentence!” Chester grabs the scribbled papers off the table and throws them in his son’s face. “What is it?! Explain to me! The teacher fights with you every day, and all to no avail! I trust Ronviel, he has been teaching several generations of our family and says that this is the first time he encounters such a creature! You are my disgrace! Stupid, lazy moron!”

Chester approaches Arel and kicks him in the chest. He kicks him with all his might, not holding back his anger and not even trying to somehow control himself. And it seems to Kors that he himself is beaten, he feels every blow: in the stomach, on the head, in the face. He wants to shrink into a ball because of unbearable pain, but little Arel doesn’t do this, and Kors suddenly realizes why. Only now he feels that under the jacket Arel was closed in some kind of metal armor. Kors feels a hard iron stick pressed against his spine from the coccyx to the very neck vertebrae. She forces him to keep his back straight. Rigid straps, slightly unfolding, pull his shoulders back, and all this design doesn’t allow little Arel to slouch, lower his shoulders, even just bend his back and bend freely. “So this is the reason for your perfect posture of a born master, Arel,” Kors thought sadly, feeling how uncomfortable it was, and imagining how unbearably painful it must be to wear this steel corset for many days.

“You will sleep on the bare floor in the closet! I will deprive you not only of sweets, but of any food in general! But I will teach you to read and write!” Chester growls, continuing the execution.

And under the hail of his blows, Arel doesn’t even try to dodge, despite the pain, without making a sound.

After hitting his son a few more times with his boot, Chester finally leaves, slamming the door loudly.