Lis watched Nikto. "He was very beautiful. You chose a beautiful body," he said thoughtfully. "But you treated his beauty cruelly and didn"t take care of it. You damaged it – but it doesn"t matter because its former owner isn"t there any more. He died, didn"t he?"

Nikto looked at Lis.

"No, he didn"t die," he said slowly. "He is me."

"I don"t believe you," Lis shook his head. "You"re nobody. You don"t have a body in our world. And I can"t imagine how you look in reality. But your eyes are enough for me to know that it is for the better. The eyes are yours, right? You"re looking at our world with your eyes. That"s why you can"t see well. You try to restore his vision but you cannot do it yet. Maybe that man was not only mute but also blind?"

"No," Nikto said, "he wasn"t blind and he wasn"t mute. It"s all fantasies of the Unclean. That man could see, and hear, and talk normally but he lived among dark creatures and tried to be similar to them. He rebuilt himself with their help. His eyes started seeing just like their eyes. And his voice changed unrecognizably because he was speaking only their language. He was with them for too long and started looking like them. He lost himself. But he didn"t die. You"re talking to him now," he passed his swollen hands over his disheveled hair trying to smoothen it. "I barely look like human, I know. But I am a human. And I"m tired of being anything else. You are not talking to a demon, Lis, you"re talking to me. I"m not a demon, I"m a man."

Lis was silent.

"Light me a cigarette please," Nikto asked.

Lis took out a cigarette, lit it, made a small drag and gave it to Nikto. Nikto leaned towards him and Lis put the cigarette between his lips.

"I knew it would be a difficult conversation," Lis said, "but I"ll be honest, I wanted to talk to you anyway. You attract me just like you attract others, even though I hide it. There is something in you that make me respect you. Maybe it is the way you use your power deftly and unnoticeably – because you can do a lot, right? I"m amazed with your self-control. If I had such powers as you do, I wouldn"t be sitting here and listening to some silly fantasies of a human who imagines himself too smart."

Nikto laughed nearly letting the cigarette fall out of his mouth.

"I wouldn"t make efforts and spend my time constructing one situation after another," Lis said. "You make people do what you want but in the way they think they want it themselves. You work with everybody, going all out, including me. I wouldn"t ever do that! I would control everyone without explanations! I"d use them as my puppets carelessly. I"d make them obey me and kill those who wouldn"t."

"And what would the great Lis do to himself – as he is now?"

"I"d kill him first of all," Lis said without hesitation.

Nikto laughed again.

"And then you"d stay alone, on the mountain of corpses, and you wouldn"t have a friend to exchange a word with. You would go mad and howl at the moon," he said laughing. Lis laughed, too.

"You have a better knowledge what an unlimited power could bring. But the temptation is too big to think of consequences."

"I don"t know anything about it," Nikto said. "Whatever I knew I lost. Sometimes some things come back to me, things from my former life but it"s nothing in comparison to the abilities you attribute to me."

"You"re a practiced liar," Lis smirked. "Here I"m talking to you and you almost made me believe you"re really a human – just a little bit different from others."

Nikto shrugged and stubbed his cigarette.

"You"ll see for yourself when you get to know me better, if we stay together."