Nayden's lungs choked on the air. His chest bent in a violent, unnatural spasm, throwing him from nothingness straight into pain. He collapsed to his knees, and his fingers unwittingly tightened on the ground, searching for support, but they found only loose, still hot ash.

  His stomach turned inside out. Dark, thick bile splashed onto the gray earth, steaming in the cold, winter air. The world was returning to him in broken fragments: first an unbearable ringing in his ears, drowning out his own thoughts, then the smell of burning, and finally that monstrous, pulsing pain behind his eyeballs, as if someone were driving red-hot needles in there.

  Something hard hit him in the side. Nayden groaned, trying to catch his focus.

  "Stop dying so spectacularly," a voice reached him as if from behind a wall of water, distorted, but irritatingly clear in its diction. "It is unaesthetic. And it wastes oxygen."

  The Whisperer stood over him, perfectly straight, as if gravity applied to everyone but him. He clasped his hands behind his back, but Nayden, squinting his tearing eyes, noticed one, tiny detail. The left hand tightened on the right wrist with such force, as if trying to crush the bone, only to stop the violent, rhythmic trembling of the fingers.

  "You are hiding them," croaked Nayden, smiling maliciously. "You burned yourself, huh?"

  The Whisperer clenched his hands tighter, until the leather of his gloves groaned in protest. "Your conclusions are as flawed as your power," he hissed, not looking at him.

  Nayden broke into a dry cough, spitting the remnants of bitter bile onto the ash. He braced his trembling hands against the ground and with a hollow grunt hoisted himself to his knees.

  "Disgusting," commented the Whisperer, wrinkling his nose.

  Nayden saw clearly how the man's face paled, and then stiffened. The Whisperer sniffed, but he was too late. A dark, almost black drop of blood flowed from his nose, cutting across the paleness of the skin above his lips. The man hissed quietly. He wiped the blood with the back of his glove in a swift, angry motion, before it managed to touch his lips, and looked at the gleaming trail on his hand with hatred.

  "I warned you," he growled, pressing a knuckle to his nose to stem the bleeding. "You should have spoken immediately, instead of forcing me to wallow in this... mental gutter. Although looking at that glassy stare and how you choke on your own saliva, I doubt you will ever formulate a more complex thought again. I made a battlefield in your head. I am afraid that what is left in there will not even suffice to tie your shoes. But you rarely used it anyway."

  "What do you... have in there?" Nayden croaked out. He wiped his mouth with a dirty sleeve. His eyes were bloodshot, but something desperate smoldered in them. "Did you see everything? You know that it wasn't me who summoned you?"

  The Whisperer opened his mouth to throw a quick, venomous counter, but the words stuck in his throat. The wind hit the ruins of the hut, sending a cloud of biting soot straight into their faces. The dust settled on the man's shoulders, dirtying the coat, but the Whisperer did not even brush it off. He stood motionless, driving his gaze into the horizon, while a muscle on his cheek pulsed rhythmically, betraying jaws clenched to the point of pain.

  "In your skull reigns a clamor worthy of a fairground mob," he finally hissed. He closed his eyes for a moment. "I looked for specifics there. And I got only a migraine and the smell of burnt straw."

  Nayden snorted shortly, though the sound immediately turned into a tearing cough. "Bullshit," he coughed out, staring at him with a mixture of exhaustion and grim satisfaction. "You didn't look at all. You bounced off. Too much sun, huh? You ran away before it burned your empty eyes."

  The Whisperer's eyelids dropped halfway, giving him an expression of sleepy disregard, but the hand by his belt twitched noticeably.

  "Don't flatter yourself." His voice dropped to a whisper that vibrated in the bones. "One doesn't enter a burning latrine not because it is an impregnable fortress. One doesn't enter it because the stench stays on the clothes. And I value my attire significantly more than your mental health."

  He leaned in with cold, inhuman precision, violating the boy's space dispassionately.

  Nayden held his breath, but when he finally had to draw air, he felt a metallic aftertaste on his tongue. The air around the Whisperer vibrated with cold. It smelled of wet earth after a downpour and something bitter, citrusy, that irritated the nostrils. The hairs on Nayden's neck stood on end, as if the center of a storm trapped in human skin had just passed by him.

  "I heard only noise there," the man muttered, not backing away even an inch. "You waste my time, little soldier. Your thoughts are derivative. Even your trauma is... textbook."

  The Whisperer began to straighten up, considering the conversation finished. And then Nayden reacted.

  It was pure instinct. His hand tightened on the Whisperer's stiff coat, jerking him down. Their faces found themselves dangerously close.

  "And yet. You're still standing here. You are afraid, huh? You're afraid to admit that Perun blinded you? That his radiance repelled you?"

  The Whisperer didn't try to pull away. Instead, he looked at Nayden's hand, clenched on his coat, with an expression of deep, physical disgust.

  Without a shadow of a warning, the black glove closed on Nayden's hand like a steel vise. He gripped the boy's fingers with icy precision and twisted them backward in one, inhumanly fast motion.

  Nayden howled, and his fingers instinctively let go of the fabric. He fell heavily back to the ground, pressing his hand to his chest. The pain tore the muscles all the way to his elbow. He looked down – his dislocated fingers jutted out at an unnatural angle.

  Despite the cold ruthlessness of this movement, the Whisperer immediately withdrew his hand. With fury, he wiped the leather glove against his coat, as if the very contact with the soldier's warm skin had left a contagion on it. In the corner of his white eye a muscle twitched, and on his pale temple shone a single drop of sweat.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "Fuck... holy fuck..." Nayden hissed through clenched teeth, curling up on the ground.

  He grabbed the twisted index finger with his healthy hand. He squeezed his eyelids shut tight, braced himself and yanked. The joint popped into place with a hollow click, tearing a muffled groan from the soldier's throat. Sweat mixed with the soot on his forehead.

  Breathing heavily, he drove his gaze from below into the mage's white eyes. "You can't kill me." In his hoarse voice sounded a desperate, almost inhuman certainty. "I see it. Your hands are shaking. You want to crush me, but something won't let you. You are a dog on a chain, Whisperer. And this chain has just stretched to the limits."

  For a fraction of a second, a silence so thick fell between them that one could hear only the boy's uneven, wheezing breath and the crackle of the burning beams of the nearby hut. This was the moment – the rotten, stinking compromise of reality.

  "But I was in your head," Nayden continued. He grabbed another twisted finger and pulled with all his strength. He drew in air with a hiss, sliding lower, but he did not tear his gaze away from the Whisperer's face. "For a fraction of a second, but I was."

  His hand tore with living fire, but it was pure fury that didn't let him pass out. He wrapped his trembling fingers around the last of the protruding joints. "It's a terrifying shitshow in there," he growled and yanked for the third time.

  He bent in half, resting his forehead against his own knees, to control a wave of powerful nausea. After a moment, however, he lifted his heavy head again, focusing his cloudy gaze on the black silhouette. "This is not the mind of a genius. It's a dump. No wonder you so desperately dig in other people's thoughts. You look for anything alive in us, just to not be left all alone with yourself."

  The Whisperer tugged the flaps of his coat, smoothing the fabric with a nervous, mechanical precision. His fingers slipped from the edge — a tiny, chaotic movement, which in his execution shocked more than a scream. He drove his gaze into the dying ruins, where the red of the embers was already losing the fight with the night.

  "It is what it is. What you call 'a shitshow' is simply an excess... of everything," he growled to the fire burning out the nearby hut, not to the boy. "Emptiness is a luxury for corpses. I do not have the privilege of ignorance. I see things under whose weight your tiny brain would snap like a dry branch."

  His shadow, unnaturally elongated by the embers crawling on the ground, fell on Nayden, swallowing him whole. "But apparently the same malicious twist of fate decided to chain me to this miserable material for a corpse. You are a riddle, little soldier." The man's voice dropped, becoming quiet and sharp. "And I hate riddles. So I will tread on your heels, tear at every unhealed wound of yours, and press on every crack in this fragile psyche of yours, until you finally break and sing it to me."

  "What the hell are you?!" Nayden scrubbed his elbows against the ground, backing away in panic. "I have never felt anything like this in my life. There is no human there. There is... a graveyard."

  The corners of the Whisperer's mouth rose slowly. In his smile there was no amusement, only the lazy satisfaction of a predator whose prey had just appreciated the sharpness of his fangs. "A diagnosis on a novice's level, but accurate," he threw out, looking at the slaughter around him with the same interest with which one looks at improperly laid cobblestone. "That clamor you heard is simply a furnace. My mind must burn so that the rest of the world can admire how gracefully I send charming holes like this up in smoke."

  Nayden bulged his eyes at him. "You sick son of a bitch," he growled. "People are dying! The world is collapsing! Lovro... he's lying there, and you..."

  The Whisperer sighed coldly and rolled his eyes. "The same boring paradigm again," he muttered, crouching a meter in front of Nayden, so that their faces found themselves on the same level. He did not touch him. He didn't have to. The very hit of the cold radiating from his coat was enough to make the soldier flinch. "'People die' every day. There are many variables, the result is always the same: dead meat."

  "Does this amuse you?" Nayden whispered.

  "Immensely. But your moral outrage has no meaning right now. You hold a key that my methods cannot force. And that means we are stuck with each other in this cesspool. I will wring this secret out of you, even if you have to go mad in the process. I like watching things break. Then you can see what they have inside. Usually, it's just blood and disappointment."

  Nayden lowered his head, breathing heavily. "You already know everything... Leave me alone."

  The Whisperer smiled – it was an empty, calculated smile, devoid of the slightest trace of empathy. "I know you are lying," he whispered. "And that makes our forced cooperation so fascinating."

  "I will not cooperate with Veles' spawn," Nayden growled, backing away. "You are not even human. You rid yourselves of that a long time ago. You are simply a walking disease stretched over human skin."

  "Semantics. 'Human' is a highly overrated species anyway, burdened with a mass of unnecessary, primitive defects." The Whisperer waved his hand dismissively toward the bloody battlefield. "Veles, Perun... they all have the same demand for corpses. Look at it analytically. You lost one useful idiot, right? The big one... what was his name?" The Whisperer snapped his fingers. "Lovro? So, you lost one, you get a new, much more effective one. You exchanged defective human material for the ultimate version. You should be thanking me."

  Nayden's heart stopped. Time slowed down.

  Before the boy's eyes, the image swirled. He no longer saw the black silhouette of the mage. He saw the massacred body of Lovro, lying a dozen meters away. He saw his friend's blood soaking into the mud. Nayden swayed. Anger mixed with despair so thick that it choked him in the throat.

  The Whisperer tilted his head, genuinely surprised by the boy's sudden breakdown. "What now? He died. Standard human weakness." In his voice sounded a cold pity. "You drove a knife straight into my heart barely a quarter of an hour ago, and I am still standing here and have to endure your company. For him, one strike from an overgrown reptile was enough to turn him into cooling meat. Do not cry over spilled blood, especially if it was of such pathetic, peasant quality."

  In Nayden's head, something snapped with a sound louder than a lightning strike. All brakes let go. The pain, the fear, the broken fingers — it all disappeared. Only a white, blinding fury remained.

  "Shut your fucking mouth!"

  He threw himself at the Whisperer. Without a plan, without technique. He wanted only one thing: to wipe off that cynical smile along with the skin.

  The Whisperer didn't even flinch. When the soldier's fist was about to reach his face, he simply stepped off the line of attack with irritating, effortless fluidity. He used the boy's momentum, grabbed him by the forearm and pushed him straight onto the ruins.

  Nayden collided face-first with the scorched wall of the hut. It hissed. The heat, still pulsing deep within the structure of the beam, licked his skin. The soldier screamed as the heat singed his cheek, and he tried to scramble up.

  He didn't make it. The Whisperer's heavy boot dropped onto his back, driving him back into the smoking wood. The man shifted part of his weight onto him, immobilizing him completely.

  "I will kill you!" he screamed, choking on the ash that fell into his mouth. "I will kill you! You have no right to say his name!"

  The Whisperer sighed coldly, looking at the thrashing soldier from above. "Do you know why you kick like that? Why you want to tear me to shreds?" he asked dispassionately. "Because I am right. That always hurts the most."

  He felt Nayden's body stiffen in helpless shock. The Whisperer moved the pressure of the boot higher, right at the base of the boy's neck. "Gods, you don't even have a clue how much I am tempted to just let this neck snap under my leg," he muttered, closing his eyes. "To silence this babble once and for all. Silence... would be very practical."

  He removed the boot abruptly, with obvious disgust.

  Nayden rolled onto his back, breathing heavily. He still had his hands clenched into fists that trembled with bloodlust, but his bruised body refused to obey for a moment. "One more time..." he hissed through clenched teeth. "You say a word about him one more time, and I swear on Perun, I will gut you in your sleep."

  The Whisperer adjusted the flaps of his coat. "Oh, please. Try. Just don't start foreplay if you don't have what it takes to finish it. I do not like empty promises. My expectations toward you have drastically increased now. Do not disappoint me."