Chapter: Rosar IV

No reply comes from my lips, because I am sure that as soon as I open my mouth, only a frustrated scream would come from it. So I press my teeth tightly together and wait for the pain to subside in my eyes, which somehow doesn't want to come. The healing is slow, terribly slow, and the feeling of sitting opposite Narcissus of all people in such a state is not exactly comforting.
"What did you expect, Orion? That it would be as easy as last time? We have learned a lot." The cool arrogance in his voice kindles a small, faint fire of anger in my mind, which however is almost completely drowned in the awakened, crushing fear of him. Bloody pink blood.
"This - admittedly - extremely tasteless wall paint keeps your famous messenger powers to a minimum. Amazing, isn't it, what a little color can do?" I still don't say anything, even if a bitter taste is gradually emerging on my tongue makes wide.Great.
His hand goes down on the back of my chair and his face comes close to mine until his lips almost touch my ear. "Do you know how we found that out, brother? Your little friend Can has served us as a prime study subject."
The anger inside me grows into a seething volcano and my nails dig into the balls of my hands. The mere mention of Can from his mouth seems so wrong to me that my stomach turns indignantly.
“He's still alive, don't worry,” Narcissus continues, as he gradually moves away from my face and stands up again to his imposing size, “even if he's unfortunately lost his mind. But you have to make compromises everywhere, right ? "
The anger in me literally explodes and my head soars, so that I give him a murderous look from blood-soaked eyes. To my surprise, as well as his own, he then flies through the room like an oversized doll and hits the wall with a thud, whereupon he lies dazed at first."Don't you dare," I snarled angrily and jump up, forgetting the shackles on my feet - which then jump off my ankles as if they were made of cobwebs and not this titanium-like metal, "to make fun of me!"
My voice is even booming in my ears unearthly loud and before I really realize what I am doing, I hold a ball of flame in my hand and throw it right at his face with long-practiced precision. He can no longer avoid it, there is a dull hiss - and only one red eye stares at me full of hate and pain, while the other only has a burned eye socket left - as far as I can tell by the blood veil still hanging over my eyes.

"Cow eyes", it sounds disgusted next to me, "why do we have to deal with cow eyes of all things?"
I lift an eyebrow ironically and grab the scalpel while pressing the tweezers into his hand. "Would you rather have another donor?" I ask mockingly, not paying attention to his disgusted face while I put the blade directly on the iris, "We have to learn something about it after all.And the eye is first class as a study object because it is so complex and yet so easy to understand. "
With a slight smile I remove a piece of the retina and hold it out to him. "Do you see this? That could never grow back, the reproduction of the lens cells is minimal!"
He looks at me skeptically and doesn't really look enthusiastic as he gently shakes his head. "Has anyone ever told you that you are not completely normal, Ryan?"
"All the time," I reply with a grin and grasp the handle a little tighter to slowly make a precise cut through the pupil.

"Do you think that's wise, Orion?" asks Narcissus with a threatening undertone and, his face contorted with pain, puts a protective hand over the terrible wound in his face, "To hurt me, where you and everything that is important to you is so at my mercy?"
"I don't know," I snarle angrily, "but I guess nobody cares if I kill you!"He laughs out loud and takes a step towards me, whereupon I have to control myself not to retreat the same distance. "I can't die," he says with a creepy smile and a look in his eyes that I can only associate with the term "madness", "and you should know that best, right?"
With a jerk he tears open his shirt and exposes his upper body in front of me, and my gaze is automatically drawn to the place that should be over his heart - if he has one thing I seriously doubt. There is a ring-shaped scar, the edges of which are somewhat frayed towards the top and somehow resemble three points - like a crowned O.
A slight shiver overflows me as the blood flow in my eyes gradually dries up and my vision finally clears.
"As you can see," he continues quietly in his hypnotizing singsong, "this is the only flaw in my other perfection.Or in other words: all that separates me from ultimate perfection is you. "
The statement may sound completely logical and understandable in his head, but in this puke-green room and his facial features disfigured with hate it seems laughable and as untrue as the claim that the sun revolves around the earth. "I?" I therefore repeat with bitter mockery and raise an eyebrow, grateful that my pink powers have apparently finally got going and that despite the damned color my eyes and other smaller wounds have finally regenerated, "Believe me, you are not nearly perfect, even if I didn't exist! "
Bitterness runs through the red of his still visible eye and for a moment he appears almost human, almost like the brother I once knew - and admired.
"But I don't know that it's not me," he whispers back, and inadvertently something like pity wells up in me.How does he do that? How does he get me to have any positive feelings towards him - him who would probably watch me with the greatest joy at the worst kinds of deaths ?!
"Yes," I say a bit harder than I would have otherwise, just so as not to lapse into consolation, "because everyone else is kissing your feet and declaring you are the hero of the world."
"No," he replies, and meets my gaze with a strange kind of low mockery, in which there is almost something like amusement, "because I would never have seen the perfection in your eyes."
Gradually the talk about the supposed perfection of my eyes gets really on my mind and I sigh in exasperation. "Perfection is an impossible concept," I hiss back angrily and at the same moment absurdly wondering what color my eyes are, "and it certainly has nothing to do with me or my eyes."
Narcissus' expression continues to change, soften a bit, which I find very irritating.I can deal with hatred and hostility on his part - but not with this relaxed facial play that leads me to believe that he isnotthe enemy and willing and ready to kill me at any time. "It's the color," he adds, whereupon I am almost willing to tell him comfortingly that red is also a very unusual color, but I can suppress this impulse.
"And what's so special about it?"
His eyelids flicker and for a split second I imagine I can see the warm brown of earlier days in his eyes. But then they are red again, blood red and full of hate.
"She is pure."

"Purity is a misleading and irrelevant term that poets like to use to describe the beings they have created. They use this word when they cannot think of anything else that is more meaningful. 'Pure' describes a state that at most laundry can achieve. "
You can hear soft laughter while my teacher looks at me with a strangely expressionless face and tilts her head slightly."And that's why, in your opinion, there are no angels?"
My gaze doesn't wander in Leia's direction for a second, but I'm more than sure of her eyes on my face. "Perhaps there are angels. They are just not pure." The feeling of her gaze on me - a gentle pressure on my heart that I know only too well - gradually fades and with an almost perverse satisfaction a satisfied smile creeps onto my face.

My eyebrows rise slightly and a dull growl escapes my throat as my fingers automatically clench into fists. "I knew you were completely insane," I hiss softly, "but how far this madness extends is beyond my imagination."
"Pure", he repeats stoically and with a burning anger in his eyes that even for his standards seems excessive to me in the face of this small, insignificant word, "pure and simple."
"Simple," I echoed mockingly, whereupon I also raise my other eyebrow, "that's right, of course that's really great."He shakes his head in an exasperated gesture that seems totally inappropriate to me. Pure and simple - what is he talking about here? Apparently the last few years have not necessarily done him good and the fact that he happily nourished his hatred of me does not seem to really help because of the pathological fixation on my eyes. "Everyone but you can see it," he adds in a tone that sounds slightly exhausted, "that's why you have to stay here too."
"What?!" I ask, irritated, and can't prevent my voice from sliding up a few octaves and sounding a bit like a rubber hedgehog that you accidentally stepped on, "stay ?! No, Narcissus. I'll go. With Molin and Can. "
The corner of his mouth lifts into an abysmal evil, hideously crooked smile that doesn't seem to fit that terrifyingly beautiful face, and he finally lowers his hand from the wound I inflicted on him, exposing his restored one , perfect eye."But they don't want to go with you. And even if they did - you can't get out of here. Not while I'm here."
Anger and despair flood me and find their target in the deadly red that plays around Narcissus' pupils. "Why are you doing this?" I ask as the blood thunders loudly through my ears and I can feel the hungry flames snake through my veins and scorch the skin under my fingertips, "What have I done to you ?!"
"You are alive," he replies with a dry matter of course that leaves me speechless. With a scream of anger, I kindle two balls of flames in my hands and throw them angrily at him, which he acknowledges with a brief wave of the hand, whereupon the balls of fire fizzle out in the air like soap bubbles. This only incites me even more in my all-destructive anger, so that I mean - God given? cursed? - Forget my