Реклама. ООО «ЛитРес», ИНН: 7719571260.
Shine and Shadow
The Unknown Adversary
And now he imagined a hem woven with gold thread stretching over a cluster of black creatures crawling in disarray on the marble floor. Rhianon was above this chaos. A jumble of ghastly burned bodies, and bones must have been beneath her feet. And so was he. If she is even better than him, he belongs beneath her feet. He had forgotten his place. And now he was paying the price.
Madael violently knocked the gold cups filled with blood off the table. They rattled across the floor, scaring the infernal creatures away. The infected blood, and the blood that had been collected on the battlefield, stained the marble. Soon his servants would begin to lick it off, but for now they howled in agony, burned and hungry. Their hunger would not be satiated by a whole hackneyed army for lunch. In the winter, all his demons roamed the forests, tearing apart packs of wolves for meat. Hungrier than wolves they had fed on animals; now, with the blossoming of spring, they would need human flesh. Well, forward to the battlefield, he was ready. How many battles were not in the recent past, and he wanted more. His hunger for battle and death was now nothing to satisfy either. He wanted blood. Not to drink it, but at least to spill it, to see its color and destroy the pain inside him. He and God had once had an argument, violent and bloody, that continued to this day. Even defeated, he felt victorious in the contest. He was sure that since he was the most beautiful creature in the world, he had the upper hand. With the appearance of Rhianon, everything changed. As soon as he saw her, he knew he had to give up his pedestal. She was created as if in mockery of him. Yes, a more perfect creature than Dennitsa could illuminate even the human world with her presence. He is no longer the first. Praise the new dawn. It pained him at the sight of his own sunset. Even the angels in the heavens did not suffer for him as much as mortals rushed to die for the beautiful Rhianon. Truly she was a new lightning bolt, brighter than the former favorite of the god in the heavens. But she was created after him and in mockery of him. The god decided to replace him with someone else. Madael stubbornly refused to acknowledge the primacy of his own copy. She was only a reflection of him. She was a female parody of him, since on earth the most beautiful should be women, not men. There was no such distribution in heaven. There, everyone was equally as sexless. And no one fought for supremacy but him. The fairest among all, he found his followers. They, with the appearance of Rhianon, got the chance to see that their head was not and would not be the best and the only one. It was quite a tangible blow. Madael never suffered it. He followed the impostor everywhere, trying to find a single flaw in her, but he was only more convinced that she was better than him. Those who had thought him great could now die of fervor. His fallen angels had chosen him as their warlord, dazzled by his unique beauty and strength. They thought there was no one equal to him, and if so, they were not afraid to die for him. There was no one to replace him and he was the best. If he were gone, there would be nothing left to exist for. Where would there be another dawn? There’s a new dawn. It is a worthy substitute for him. With a heavy heart, Madael had to admit it. His subjects began to look at her with interest, even to adore her from afar.
.....
She nodded.
“You don’t think I could burn them more, do you?”
.....