Chapter 52 2:
Korr stubbornly refused to acknowledge those words which, regardless of his nightmare, he knew reflected his own thoughts.
Killing was killing, but desiring slaughter. What did that mean for him?
Then his instructor decided to float half a meter above the ground, his arms crossed, looking down at him with that impassive expression he hated so much.
His malicious gaze was still reflected on his face, everything indicated that things were about to get much worse.
"The battle will begin again," he said, as though his voice granted a verdict.
Korr had fallen even more silent, because he felt that he had lost control of his body once again.
Korr wanted to refuse, wanted to run, fly and flee at full speed.
He prayed to God and to Jesus, and to all the saints of his religion, he had never been more devout in his entire life than in these moments, he prayed for a divine intervention to wake up.
But nothing happened.
Only his instructor was in the heavens, that dark and infinite sky, devoid of hope.
But his body moved without his consent.
No, wait!
he screamed inwardly, while his legs lunged forward, his fists rose, his teeth clenched.
I don't want to!
Damn it, fuck, nooooooo!
Kaelus kept laughing in front of him, oozing blood until he transformed the entire ground into a bloody and dark pool.
Korr grabbed him by the shoulders, or rather, his hands did, and began to squeeze uncontrollably.
He felt how the flesh gave way beneath his fingers, how the bones splintered, how the hot blood poured between his knuckles, how it splashed all over his face.
He felt how his soul was stained by the slaughter.
Stop!
Korr screamed, but his mouth did not obey.
To his horror, he felt the corners of his lips rise upward, he was smiling, he was smiling at what he was doing.
Stop!
But his body never obeyed him.
"That's it, yes, with more passion!" Kaelus shouted, his teeth stained with the blackness of his blood. His eyes empty and devoid of anything, only crying and the screams of children dying in his hands.
The Venatici's face deformed beneath the blows, his skull split apart and brains spilled out until they splashed into a pool of blood that extended into the unknown, but he did not stop laughing.
He never stopped laughing.
"That's it, pup, you're improving."
I'm not like you!
Korr howled from somewhere inside his own head, while his arms kept rising and falling, soaked up to the elbows.
I'm not a murderer!
"You are like them."
The voice came from the depths. From the black fog, when everything cleared, there she was.
It was the Sirenys he always kept in his memories, twisting within this disgusting and horrifying nightmare, his friend Syra-vel.
His eyes filled with tears upon hearing the words of that twisted figure of her.
"You are just like them." He heard her say.
"You are no better than them, you never were. Human or Viltrumite, you are exactly the same."
Nooooo!
He did not want to hear that, much less from someone like her, who was so important that she formed part of the few good things he had experienced in this life.
Korr wanted to let go of Kaelus's bloody corpse, but his hands did not obey him. They kept squeezing and tearing apart the flesh and entrails of that bloodthirsty hound.
"Always like them, always like them, always, always, always," the figure whispered, her silhouette dissolving into the fog.
But the voice remained engraved in the air, repeating over and over again in an endless echo.
Kaelus, still laughing despite having no face, managed to say before everything ended.
"Welcome, murderer."
And Korr awoke.
The sudden fright was painful and abrupt.
Korr opened his eyes suddenly, drenched in cold sweat, his chest rising and falling as though he had just run for hours.
His chest hurt and his heart thundered like a hydraulic anvil.
The sheets of his bunk were twisted between his legs, and his hands, his damned hands.
"Damnation," he said to himself, staring at the sheets he had torn to pieces, trembling uncontrollably.
He blinked several times, looking toward the ceiling.
The dim night light seemed to bother him even more.
He tried to lie back down and close his eyes to meditate on that nightmare, to try to clear his mind, but he felt everyone's gaze around him.
Every one of his companions, every one of those children, stared at him as though watching a circus spectacle.
Then he felt the touch of something on his shoulder, momentarily he had tensed up.
Then he looked at it, realizing it was none other than the crying nato, Nul-lam.
"What...?" Korr tried to say, but the moment his hoarse voice tried to speak, the child interrupted him.
"Ev-everything is fine," said Nul-lam, and his trembling and nervous voice bewildered him for a moment.
What the hell was happening?
"Everything is fine, do-don't worry, I'm with you. I'm here." The child repeated.
That nato, as trembling as he was, with a damn stuffed toy shaped like a Viltrumite Warrior, which he had learned to hide thanks to Korr's help, seemed to be trying to comfort him.
He felt ridiculous... But he felt even more surprised.
The epiphany struck him suddenly and his eyes seemed to burn for a moment, but he refused to embarrass himself in front of the natos, those children, his biological age was not an excuse to show weakness before the most defenseless.
"I... Thank you, Nul-lam... You will be a great man."
He stroked the little one's head, constantly remembering the times he had to comfort this child so he would not wake the others whenever he had nightmares.
Now, thanks to the stuffed toy that had been left especially for him, the nightmares had ceased, because in a certain way, the crying nato no longer felt alone.
He dreamed all the time of being with his father all the time, having the trinket in his hands only seemed to reinforce that idea.
"Do you want me to lend it to you?" the child asked, extending the stuffed toy.
"Noo, thank you, you can keep it." Korr refused with a half smile.
"You've stopped screaming like a girl, good." Said a small child, his arms crossed with a frown.
Although Korr did not know it, his screams themselves were already frightening him.
"Shut up! Vulc-an. You cry in your dreams too!"
"Shut up, Kang. At least I don't piss myself in the uniform!"
The children began to laugh at that response. Kang, embarrassed, glared at him from the middle of the room and demanded.
"A challenge!"
At that shout, Vulc-an also glared at him, his fists clenched.
"I accept your challenge, pissboy." He nodded.
"Nobody move, it's an order, I'm class 12, I'm your superior!" Another child stood up, it was the tall one, arms crossed, completely angry. "Whoever refuses, I'll hit them in the head."
In response another short child in the back also stood up, his eyes fixed on the taller one.
"You always want to hit people in the head, right? Right?"
"Shut up or I'll hit you in the head."
"I won't shut up I won't shut up!"
And with those words the smaller one launched himself at the taller one to resume an eternal fight between those two.
And the children's circus had returned to normal once again.
Sometimes Korr wished with all his strength that he had never been reborn, or at least not to have his memories. To be a real child, completely innocent.
Probably, he would not experience that contempt toward himself that gnawed at him from within.