Chapter 51 1:
Korr did not remember having closed his eyes from the sleep that tried so hard to claim him.
He had done everything possible, had tried with all his strength, to feel awake for as long as possible, but his body had betrayed him.
After feeling that he was conscious, he discovered once again that he had fallen back into a nightmare from which he could not simply wake up.
There in that horrifying empty and inexorable space, where there was no north, nor south, nor east nor west, and its sky was nothing more than an extensive and infinite cold and deadly darkness.
It was like being sent to a completely new space, abandoned by the creator himself, probably a damned purgatory for his consciousness.
He did not want to be here, but his mind kept dragging him back to the same place over and over again.
For fuck's sake, this felt like hell to him.
The ground beneath his feet was a gray slab, cold, infinitely flat, stretching until it was lost within a dense black fog that spread several meters ahead, as far as his vision allowed him to see.
He could curse the heavens, with force, but no voice came out, only causing desolation within that heartbreaking silence.
His breathing began to quicken, the pressure in his chest felt so real, he looked at his palms and detected the sweat beginning to trickle through the lines of his skin.
But he felt nothing, he only felt cold, a cold that pierced his bones.
His breath began to wrap itself in a whitish mist that stole away the warmth of his life.
"Damned nightmare," he complained to himself.
He was already old enough to suffer from this kind of irrational dreams.
But his currently unbalanced mentality was working against him.
Damn it, recent events were taking their toll on him. Even being tortured in a vacuum chamber had not caused him so much psychological damage.
But things had gotten out of hand.
"I have to get out, I have to get out, wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up."
He closed his eyes tightly, trying to force himself awake.
But it was the complete opposite, he felt as if he clung even harder to the nightmare.
Then a voice terrified him to the core.
"Look at yourself, pup."
That voice that resonated through every direction felt so distant and at the same time so close, as if it were a whisper at his ears.
He wanted to shudder and run, jump and fly away, but his body became paralyzed. He could do absolutely nothing.
He remained there, in a military attention stance from which he simply could not exert control over even a finger on his hand.
He wanted to close his eyes once more, Korr could swear before God that he tried.
But his retinas remained completely unmoved before the desires of their own bearer.
Betrayal, he felt betrayed by his own body.
He did not want to look forward, he wanted to avert his eyes, but it was impossible.
And there, amidst the dense and sinister fog, the apparition of his deepest nightmares materialized as if it were a frame of film.
In one instant there was nothing, but in the next, a malicious hound appeared.
It was Kaelus, or what remained of him, and he was extremely horrifying.
The Venatici walked toward him with firm steps, despite the fact that his body should have been impossible to reconstruct.
His cephalic appendages undulated slowly, and on his ironically intact face, he displayed a mocking and sadistic expression, where a smile stretched so wide that it seemed to split his face into a long horizontal line.
"It's been a while, little pup," said Kaelus, stopping a few meters away.
His voice, unlike the last memory he had of the bastard in which it dripped hatred, actually reflected a malicious mockery through his eyes.
There he could glimpse an incomprehensible madness.
"You know what you did, you did it."
I didn't want to do it, you forced me to do it.
Korr wanted to say, trying to excuse himself, but he could not say a single word.
Nevertheless, the hound seemed to understand his attempts to communicate since his smile became even more malicious.
"Oh but what a liar, you know you did it because you decided to. To kill, to kill me and anyone else. You were just as willing to do it as any other murderer would be, because that is what you are, a murderer."
I'm not, I'm not a murderer. I did it because they forced me to do it.
That and many more excuses wanted to come out of Korr's mouth, but he simply could not do it.
"You tore me apart, pup. Do you know how many of my kind have managed that? None. You are special, you are a special murderer, worthy of your genocidal race."
Nooooooooooo! I'm not a genocidal maniac! I'm not a...!
"You are a Viltrumite! Born, classified, elite, and currently trained for the interests and wellbeing of the glory of Viltrum."
"Noooooo! I'm human, I'm human!"
He wanted to identify himself as what he had previously been in his past life, as what he had lived as for so long, the experiences he had accumulated, the mistakes, the regrets and the joys that had completed him as a person.
He wanted to say that he was completely different from what this race was, even if he formed part of it in something as intrinsic as biology itself.
But the hound's mockery toward him only made him feel like a hypocrite.
He refused to acknowledge the dark thought that had been creeping into him for some time, because doing so would blur the line separating them from him.
And if that were the case, then... what was the real difference?
"It was you," the hound accused.
No, it wasn't me... That wasn't me. I didn't know what was happening.
"But you longed for it to happen, not seeing me with your own eyes does not make you any less responsible. You killed me, murderer."
Shut uuuuuup!
Korr screamed inwardly, he tried with all his strength to clench his fists. But his hands did not respond to him.
Kaelus laughed in a macabre cackle that sounded like an insidious gurgling.
Black blood began to trickle from his eyes and mouth, making him gargle.
"Well let me tell you that everything that happened was very beautiful, congratulations. You could teach my people one or two methods," he said, taking another step forward. "Seriously. You have become a first-rate murderer. The empire will be proud."
"I am not a murderer!" Korr's voice finally came out of his throat.
The scream tore through the fog momentarily, and he felt how his throat burned, how the tears wanted to force themselves out of his eyes.
"I am not, I will not be like you! I didn't want to do it!"
"But you did."
Another voice emerged in his nightmare, another voice which he hated and feared in equal measure.
"Please nato, do not hide behind your pathetic moralistic rhetoric, you are not better than us, much less are you above the empire."
He witnessed his instructor Nouwlan materializing at his side.
"It was not my intention sir, you know it, I'm not like you, I'm not a..."
"A murderer? By Algall, nato, save that drivel for another occasion, I'm tired of so much mantra." Having said this, his hands rested behind his back, his body firm, showing disdain from his stance. "Killing as a physical act is a completely neutral situation, natural even. One cell kills another to survive, a predator kills its prey to feed. A soldier kills an enemy in combat by orders, for defense, for territory. Nature is built upon corpses, it is the other side of the coin of civilization's advance. Life feeds on death, that does not make it less moral, it is simply another inherent facet of life."
Having said that, his gaze became more sinister and his smile stretched as though trying to reach both ends of his ears.
"Your actions were completely different and you know it. Even though you were not conscious, you desired it! Where does that leave you, Mr. Moralist?!"
Korr shuddered, paling before the words of the instructor from his nightmares.
"Your desire to kill transcends any justification or morality. But you are worse than us, because you are a hypocrite. While killing can be a neutral or necessary act, regardless of context, desiring to inflict death severs every internal excuse you have. Whoever feels that desire, even in an unconscious frenzy like yours, in essence, is a murderer."
Noooooooooooo!