Dagger 3 - God of Emptiness

by Walt Popester

  “You’re all keeping her away from me, right?”

  “There’s a reason.”

  “She and I are one. What happens to her, happens to me.”

  “Well, follow her—another unreachable light at the end of your road. I sent her east, she must learn more to help me. Do you remember what we were talking about? We’re all subject to the charm of the east.” He chuckled.

  Fool! Dag thought, trying to hide his grin. Kugar is cheating you, just like Warren.

  Evoken continued, “I know what you’re thinking about, that she’s a double-agent like the damn white blood and that she’s fooling us.”

  “Nearly there.” Dagger shook his head. “You’re not a god, not one of you is. I’ve seen some and they have horns, wings and are quite big. Of course, I’m not telling you that you’re not daddy’s big boy, but they’re on a different level of bigness.”

  “You’re very funny.”

  “And you’re even more jerk than I thought, if you think you’ll ever be like Angra, or my father.”

  “Or yourself?”

  “Or myself. You’re appropriating a power that doesn’t belong to you, but that power will react and this will be your downfall. Nothing good has ever come from a hybrid.”

  “You’re a hybrid.”

  “And I’m no good. Mumakil is just using you, that’s all.”

  “I’ve always found your innocence so touching.” As he stared at Dagger, Varg’s son put a key into the little chest. He pulled out a vial containing black blood.

  “That’s my blood!”

  “Mumakil calls it the motherblood.” Evoken walked to him and stood with all his menacing height. “Follow me outside, will you?”

  Dagger had to accept the invitation. Evoken led him up the stairs, around and around in that swirling ascent toward the light. He snapped his fingers and soon the thundering steps of the creature followed them, rising from the depths of the dark together with a silvery rattling of chains.

  Halfway between light and shadows, that boundary so dear to power and to anyone who incarnated it, was a portal consisting of two hammers joining at the lintel. It was surmounted by a bust of Skyrgal, his outstretched arm shielding his face from the light.

  The son of Varg put his hand on the door and opened it.

  Dagger too had to shield his face from the sun, after the interminable night he had spent in the belly of the dark. He caught a few blinding fragments of what awaited him. There was a staircase down to a paved square, the gallows, and the Hammer Guardians standing in a circle around it. They were surrounded by ruins—a silent funeral chant raised toward the yellow sky.

  They crossed two long wings of armor and black chain mail caked with sand, rust, and decomposing organic waste.

  “Look, we have the best seats,” Evoken said as they climbed the stage. “Sit right here on the front. I promise you’ll like this show.”

  “What’s the show, today?”

  Only an enigmatic smile answered him, and the sound of new chains, the ones keeping Warren and Ash tied, naked and covered with bruises. The first was conducted on the stage and forced to kneel, while the second hung by his wrists at a short distance, chained with his arms and legs spread apart. Ash had long hair and the beginning of an adolescent beard.

  How long did they torture me? Dagger wondered.

  “You see.” Evoken sat beside Dagger. “Pain has an educational value. The importance of the ceremonial and the details is not in the eyes of those who receive the punishment, but in the eyes of the beholder.”

  “How can one fail to agree?”

  “Ash and Warren will be processed the way they deserve. We don’t care about the young brother. We’ll make his death a show to satisfy the thirst for violence that the blind obedience of my men requires. For what concerns Warren…well, maybe he should have thought twice before taking his vows in the belly of Skyrgal. Remember how he said; In front of you I rise again and become a Disciple, the only true body to which now I belong, and from which I will never part. Maybe they were just kids playing the great conspirators, but some words do have meaning. Once a Disciple, always a Disciple.” He laughed, lost in his own private mental design. “Even Warren has no idea how definitive the hatred of a god is. Do you know how many of them are still walking this world?”

  Dagger shook his head.

  “The same,” Evoken continued. “They’re always twelve, like those who left the Fortress that fateful day. For every original Disciple exiled in the manegarm—in the thousands of dark corners of history—someone has been granted the privilege to take his place. Today, there’s only one left.” He paused with a clearly dramatic intent. “Only one of the twelve who abandoned the Fortress.”

  “Aeternus…”

  “He himself. The others were gradually replaced through the Blood Covenant, because unlike the gods, their exile and imprisonment are eternal. Now guess what…it seems that your dear Araya has done a bit of cleaning at the Fortress, and that one of the lost souls hidden in there has been exiled with the manegarm. A little bird told me there’s a vacancy!”

  “You will make Warren a Disciple?!”

  Evoken pretended to reason about it with his forefinger resting gently on his cheek, while the enormous, putrescent mole of Varg Belhaven ascended the stage. “Will you be so kind as to excuse me.” He got up to join his father.

  Dagger turned around, sensing the presence of the two Guardians Hamon and Hamarth behind him.

  “It’s nice to see you wiggle, tightened by the claws of your predator,” the latter said. “It was fun in the beginning and it will be always more fun, knowing how useless all your efforts are.”

  Evoken knelt, holding out the vial of mother blood. His father lifted it in the air and show it to his men. “Behold the power that made us free from pain!”

  As Varg spoke, his Faithful Twelve walked among the Guardians administering Remission and reciting, “The power of Skyrgal compels you. The power of Skyrgal compels you. The power of Skyrgal compels you.”

  Varg approached the table to his right, covered with sharp tools of different shapes and lengths. He picked four spiked probes and returned to Warren, keeping him still to the ground with a metal boot on his bare chest. “Now it’s time to obey, and respect the promise you made in the belly of Skyrgal.”

  The white blood watched the blade. “Your lies do not impress me. Do what you must. Everything is meaningless in a mortal life for those who’ve seen the great beyond.”

  Evoken turned to his father, who shrugged, then he locked Warren’s head in position.

  Dagger realized he wasn’t going to like what he was about to see, when four Guardians pulled the ropes tied to the white blood’s wrists and ankles.

  Varg smiled also with the intact half of his face when he dipped his blade into the mother blood. With exasperating slowness he drove the first probe into War’s flesh below his right collarbone. The white blood screamed, and he screamed with more strength when the operation was repeated on the opposite side. The other two probes penetrated between his groin and legs.

  Where the arteries run, Dag understood. Varg is contaminating his blood!

  The Anti-Pendracon stood up and admired his work. He nodded to his son, who clenched Warren’s nostrils. The white blood resisted for a long time before gasping. Varg emptied the vial into the boy’s mouth and Evoken closed it, forcing him to swallow.

  The ropes were released. Everyone kept still and watched the white blood lying on his side. The cry of War soon faded into resigned tears, as he coughed out part of the blood.

  Dag remembered Marduk’s words, A Disciple acquires his power only once he experiences his human death. Then he wears his mortal remains as a stage costume to wander in the world of those who think themselves alive.

  “Twelfth Disciple,” the Anti-Pendracon said. “Live in abandonment what’s left of your life. The day of your death you’ll become a Faithful of Skyrgal, cursed at every step you take.”

 
Dagger bowed his head, overwhelmed by opposing feelings and thoughts. Oh, War…

  “And now, the little brother.” Varg reached his tools and caressed them all until a curved, sharp blade shone in his right hand.

  Ash watched Varg drawing closer. “NO!”

  The Anti-Pendracon stood before him, “I’ve split my bread with you.” He was still talking to Warren. “I’ve treated you like a son and you repaid me with treason. Today, I won’t do anything that you haven’t already witnessed when you were here as a novice. How many times did we strip our sworn enemies of their last refuge? How many times did the Tankars’ barking echo at the foot of this tower, as I donated their agony to the civilized world? Nothing different will happen today. I’ll administer a just pain to an enemy, even if he wears a fraternal mask.”

  Varg drew the blade near Ash’s left wrist. Warren tried to stand up but was immobilized and invited to patiently watch what was going to happen.

  This is the point where a savior should jump on the stage, Dagger thought looking around. Like Warren. He raised an eyebrow.

  Ash screamed.

  Varg cut deep into the boy’s skin. His cry of pain accompanied the movement of the blade, as long flaps opened on the yellow subcutaneous fat of his arms. Blood ran down Ash’s bony ribs when the red lines met on his sternum, then the ruby groove descended along his belly, slipping elegantly on the muscles contracted in a spasmodic scream. Varg tore open the boy’s legs and blood slipped on his feet and long, white toes. He circled the bony ankles in two vermilion circumferences—end and beginning of the torment.

  Finally, the Anti-Pendracon positioned himself behind the young white blood. He embraced the boy from behind and kissed him on his cheek wet with blood and tears, before driving his nails under the skin flaps on Ash’s chest and pull, pull and pull. Ash shouted. His skin began to peel off exposing his bare thorax and abdomen muscles. His legs broke into a gory mess of tendons, blood and shiny strands, purple veins and throbbing arteries which branched out to nourish the tissues. When Varg placed his boot on the boy’s back to push him forward, it was like seeing a red body coming out naked from the mask that had always hidden it.

  Dagger threw up what little he could. Warren opened wide his eyes and screamed with them, since terror and remorse had cut off the breath in his throat. Ash shouted until a few blade cuts freed him from the chains and what was left of his skin. He slid to the ground, leaving forever behind his first and last refuge. He raised his arm and brought it under his eyes. He moved his red and raw fingers, before averting his eyes and fainting.

  Varg stood up and watched his work with evident pleasure.

  His son laughed heartily. “A nice job. Boys skin is more difficult to pull off, they say.”

  Ash awoke with a scream when his muscles were sprinkled with salt. He had to watch the rest of the process. There was no easy way out from suffering.

  “His face!” Shouted a Guardian possessed by Remission. “Skin his face!”

  Only then did Dagger hear the rumble and saw the shadow getting bigger and bigger. The black rubble of the summit of Sabbath rained down to the ground, burying part of the audience and the stage in a grotesque noise. It was the beginning of a collective scream of surprise, then bones, heads, and metal and stone that shattered into an orgy of horror.

  After that, only a voice, “I want Olem!”

  Dagger was suspended in mid-air holding onto the edge of the broken, tilted platform. He raised his face to watch Missy coming down on them, unstoppable. Who brought you here?

  The survivors tried to offer some resistance, their eyes injected with toxic madness. They were cut down, divided in half and dismembered by the shadowy tentacles born from the womb of the woman.

  “I want Olem!”

  Dagger let himself fall down and crawled in the sand, dust, flesh and brains trying to reach Ash lying in the arms of his helpless brother. Both were dripping blood. War moved his eyes upward. Dagger rolled on his side before a shadow tentacle drove into the ground right where he had been.

  “I want Olem!”

  While the surviving black Guardians fled, Dagger stood up and unsheathed Solitude, pointing it at her. “Then come and get him, bitch!”

  Missy seemed to accept his invitation. Once again her belly opened, and again the horrid appendage advanced with the blue infant at its end. When the child’s diaphragm opened showing multiple rows of sharp fangs, Dagger thought the end had come to meet him for the umpteenth time, then silver chains wrapped the body of the woman—or what had once been a woman—to slam her down and pin her to the ground.

  The black creature rose from the depths of Sabbath and advanced with an endless following of rings dancing with arcs, curves and spirals in the still air. The beast lay on Missy and brutally penetrated her until her body, mangled by eternal death, was reduced to a heap of bleeding limbs.

  Nice sort of bodyguard you created, Evoken. Dagger reached Warren. “We’d better go.”

  “Really?” the white blood found the strength to answer, before kneeling over the body of his brother. “Oh, Ash…”

  “AAAHHH!” A hand appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Dagger’s shabby clothes. The boy turned around and blindly struck a single blow. In a flash of light Varg’s hand fell still contracted in a spasm.

  “AAAHHH!” The terrifying cry of the Anti-Pendracon was interrupted by Solitude, which split his face in two. The manegarm brightened more and more—it was Olem’s metallic laugh—when Dagger stroke, stroke and stroke. The blade danced in its reflections of light, blood, and gray matter as it amputated, dismembered and devastated the fallen Pendracon’s decayed body.

  “Dag! We must go! DAG!”

  Skyrgal’s son watched the beast one last time as the spiked chains penetrated what was left of Missy. He found Evoken, too. He lay face to the ground under a heavy crossbeam.

  I have little time. He crawled to Ash and lifted him on his shoulders.

  War, his hands still shackled, remained behind. Dag turned around to see him swaying in a brutal gore of metal, meat, and wood. That nothingness to which he now belonged too.

  *

  Some Hammer Guardians had escaped in the same direction as Dagger. They turned around when they heard him coming. Seeing the sinister grin of Solitude they ran away, driven by toxic panic.

  Exhausted by his long imprisonment, Dag fell on his knees.

  “Don’t…give up,” Ash whispered beyond the wall of unconsciousness. “Oh, my friend. Don’t give up.”

  “Ash?”

  “Ktisis. What did they do to me?”

  “Hold on!”

  Dag climbed a dune, his vision blurred by sweat and sand. He ran to avoid the sharp teeth of the ruins ready to bite him. He ran away from the voices rising from the bowels of the desert. He ran, fell and rolled in the dust, but stood up and ascended once again toward the sky, yellow like the gutted stone around him. He ran, turned around and saw the shadow of a Gorgor staring with his red eyes.

  “No!” He shouted. He ran and dodged the hammer of a black Guardian.

  Dagger! The old Mama’s voice called him from the depths of a black hole leading straight into hell’s gorge. Bring your ass here if you’re back!

  “Go away!” he shouted.

  Do as he says!

  He ran.

  “Seeth?”

  I don’t keep secrets from him, not in here.

  “Erin!”

  He ran. He stumbled and Marduk’s hand reached for him, emerging from the sand. There you are, little thug!

  “No!” He resumed his ascent. “No!” He ran. A stone hit his face, another his forehead. He ran. He ran toward the top of a dune lying on the ruins of a world that was no more. “No! Leave me alone! I just want to…”

  Creation or Destruction? Which side are you on, my son?

  There was a man in the mayem armor waiting at the top—Crowley, or Aeternus, or Skyrgal, or Mumakil, or he himself at the foot of a throne made of smooth black stone. The ma
n in green laughed.

  Dagger ran.

  “No!”

  Konkra!

  He ran. Red, skinned hands sprang up like sick plants out of that perverse and depraved Desert that wanted him, and only him.

  He ran toward the light and then beyond, when two lapis lazuli opened in the face of nothingness. Kugar’s gaze was calling him home—nowhere.

  You and I are one.

  He ran.

  What happens to you…

  He fell and stood up again.

  …happens to me.

  He slowed his pace in front of a white and immaculate mansion surrounded by a circle of high ruins. He crossed the abandoned garden, walking barefoot on the sharp gravel, and stopped before the door. It was marked by the Hammer, which was painted red on a white background.

  The candid heart of hell, he thought, entering.

  A dinner room lay abandoned in the light that penetrated through the high, narrow, arched windows. The remains of a royal meal were scattered on the long table at its center, where mice feasted, running among the plates. The thrones all around had fallen to the ground and the fireplace opposite the door was filled with sand, which had been pushed inside by the wind blowing through the broken windows.

  A staircase half falling apart led upstairs. When he reached its top, he had to shield his eyes because of the light coming through the round, yellow window at the end of the corridor. Leaving behind the darkness, he advanced with his flayed friend on his shoulders.

  Beyond the only open door, old wooden toys, disorderly piled clothes, and boots that smelled of feet lay abandoned on the floor.

  Dagger stepped forward and lay Ash on the feather bed.

  There was a life-size portrait above the dresser, that of Heathen with the big hand of his father on his shoulder. Varg was serious and solemn. He still had his human features and the armor of the Hammer Dracon.