Dagger 2 - Blood Brothers - A Dark Fantasy Adventure (Born to Be Free series)

by Walt Popester

  Angra grinned. “How can I forget? A god, a Warrior King…and a little brat who went back every night to Agalloch to play at dice with his old mates!”

  “And do you remember the time when—Ktisis, it seems yesterday—I took his sword and came here to train in the Glade?”

  “Crowley’s sword!”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “It was bigger than you, but you could already wield it with one hand…”

  “And that damn willow tree out here—Ktisis!—I almost completely removed its bark when I found myself lifted by an ear.”

  Angra laughed with Olem. “Half of the Fortress must have heard Crowley as he screamed, What the fuck are you doing? And then he threw you in the water!”

  “And…and you got out of here.”

  “Yes!”

  “With all that fucking purple light shining everywhere, and you said, Come on, Crow! It’s just a boy!”

  “Just a boy!” The world trembled with Angra when he laughed. “What the fuck…!”

  “It’s been a while.”

  “And it’s been a miracle! Sometimes I wonder how I came to save you from Crow all those times. Of course, there was also…” The lord of Creation didn’t continue. He became serious suddenly, as though a sad recollection had shadowed his vast memory.

  “Aniah too used to defend me.” Olem understood. “Crowley would never refuse any request to her, like: Come on, take that noose off from his neck…”

  The god smiled, with sadness. “Aniah truly loved you. After all this time, I still have to figure out what did she saw in you.” He shook one last time, before crouching down with his tail between his legs. He brought his black lips to the pipe sticking out of a large tank on the wall, and took a long sip. Then he held his breath, assuming an odd facial expression. When Dagger least expected it, the force belched, generating a shock wave that opened the door a little more. Now he could see Olem, too.

  In tears. “Aniah used to like me because we were two of a kind,” the Sword Dracon said. “She’s never been able to accept a compromise, and that’s what killed her in the end. Doing the right thing. Doing it to the end.”

  “Not accepting a compromise is the stupidest thing a human being can do,” the god stated. “Mortal existence itself is nothing but a compromise. A compromise with death. A compromise with the big blackness which expands itself in all directions, except here and now, the place and time where you live. You’re just a short, insignificant breach opened within the infinite, so what makes sense to you more than pure and simple happiness? A statue in a colonnade? Glory?” He slowly shook his head. “I wanted you to be happy. I put every good so near at hand that it would be enough to stretch an arm to pluck the fruit from the branch or between the open legs of your love. There’s beauty all around you, but no! You lock yourself inside a futile pain, and from that pain every kind of nightmare is born…including the one that’s haunting you now.”

  Olem bowed his head. “Aniah ran to meet her love, her happiness. Yet.”

  Angra closed his purple eye. The white one had lost its eyelid and was now blind, forever staring into the mysteries of the void. “What happened to Aniah goes beyond any possible definition. She was victim, not guilty of an old error of mine. I should have stopped you mortals that day, I should have tried to make you see reason. But since I created you I’ve always addressed your actions, never impeded them. This is the reason why I retired here on this island—to keep a distance and respect the freedom I gave you. Yes, I was supposed to prevent your errors, yet a god—and he alone—knows no compromise and always keeps to himself. I respected my intent to the end.”

  “You abandoned your beloved children.” Olem didn’t express it as a supposition. He was sure of what he was saying, and said it with such nonchalance that he didn’t seem afraid of the likely reaction of the god.

  A reaction that arrived on time. “You!” Angra growled. “What do you know?”

  “I was at her side until the end.” The Dracon looked up. “As she faded away day after day, night after night, I listened to Aniah speak in her never-ending madness. The long and meaningless speeches, her smiles in awe…” He sank his hands into his hair. “They were turbid and dark thoughts. At least they sounded like it, until I lowered the defenses raised by rationality, letting her madness seep through me. Then I realized she was talking about them and you. You didn’t do anything to save them, nothing to prevent what our ancestors did. They were your chosen ones, yet you abandoned them to keep faith to your principles.”

  Dagger froze and put a hand into his pocket, turning in his fingers the coin he had found in the Council Hall.

  “But They are not coming back,” Olem said. “Aniah repeated that all the time when she was alone with me, every time at the beginning and at the end of her long digressions. They are not coming back. For years I’ve wondered about the meaning of those words, until I heard them pronounced from the mouth of my Muse just before I killed her. It’s like a secret that, at the point of death, they both wanted to reveal, but which one? Maybe They have given up their revenge against you? Maybe They are still walking that endless road? Maybe your Disciples—”

  Angra roared at that last word and his fury shook everything. Dagger had to cling to the jamb to remain on his feet. The god’s howl had generated a light so bright it blinded him for a moment. When Dagger could see again, he saw the divine eye full of blue and purple flames.

  “DO NOT PRONOUNCE IT IN MY PRESENCE!” the force boomed. “I ordered you all to forget that name!” The echo of the shining warning bounced between the wooden walls and even outside, between the rocky ones of the Glade, while the fire in the eye progressively extinguished itself.

  “Forgive me, Great Father.”

  “Yeah, forgiveness…” The god abandoned his head to the will of gravity. “Forgiveness.”

  There was a long moment of silence between the man and the god, broken only by the sound of a drop falling from the tank. When it broke to the floor, the pungent smell of alcohol seized Dagger’s nostrils. Angra didn’t drink plain water, as it had seemed.

  “They are not coming back, you say?” the force retorted. “These words could be far more terrible than what you think. Can’t you see? Are you really that blind?”

  Olem didn’t answer.

  “Ah, Ktisisdammit! Get out of here! Now!”

  At the divine order, the Dracon stood up and walked away.

  “Holly,” Angra called.

  The man stopped, without turning around.

  “Stay close to the boy,” the force said.

  “Doesn’t he have enough bodyguards?”

  “You know that’s not what I mean. He has no one. Aniah would have liked you to take care of him. She trusted only you, the son she never had—the unmanageable and courageous delinquent she loved above everything else. Maybe that’s why she spoke to you, and you alone.”

  Olem made an amused sound. Then he left.

  Dagger watched Angra, alone in his home. The god got up on all fours, drinking again from the tank on the wall. After that, he took a few steps and disappeared from view.

  The boy tried to lean out to keep on watching, but suddenly the giant wolfish face appeared just in front of him, dropping from above like a curtain. Dag tumbled to the ground in surprise.

  Angra pushed open the door with a thrust of his nose. “You think you’re smart, don’t you?” he thundered. “Your shadow is brighter than a thousand suns, and you stink! I hate your smell. I hated it since the first time.”

  He knew he was being listened to! Dagger realized that running away would be futile. After all, he’s not lived through the ages only to be tricked by a street thief like me. He stood up, his arm raised to shield his face.

  “Oh ho, look at that—his own father!” the god barked. “You shouldn’t go around at night like that, little asshole. You’re no longer in the world Beyond, now. Besides, hasn’t anyone told you not to spy on adults?”

  “I wouldn�
��t know anything about the two of us, if I didn’t spy on adults.”

  The Mastodon looked down on him. Then he gave an amused sound, that turned into a burst of laughter that shook the earth once again. He lowered his gigantic muzzle until he was nose to nose with Dagger. “I am Angra,” he said. “Lord of Creation, keeper of secrets that can’t be understood and questions that a human mind can’t comprehend to ask. Creator of humans and of that Sword where I banished my brother. I am this and a lot of other boring, useless crap. And you…who might you be?”

  “I am Dagger. And all those who loved me are gone.”

  Angra was frozen by that answer, he saw it. Every trace of mockery vanished from his face, at least from the expressive half, making way for a different and not easily identifiable emotion. It seemed the understanding expression of a father, and Dagger realized that no one had ever looked at him like that. No one in flesh, at least.

  “Scavenger of human sorrows,” the god whispered. “I could call you too like that, what do you think? Sotolisti forei here and stupid says what.”

  “What?!”

  “Ah-ha! I knew you’d be taken in. Come on, scavenger, come with me. It’s hard to believe, but I should be your uncle or something like that.” He crouched on the ground. “Get on my back and hold on tight. Very tight. I promise that you’ll like this ride, this time.”

  The boy looked at him uncertainly before climbing up the thick fur.

  Angra got up on his feet and stood above the forest. He moved his head to drink from the waterfall falling against the roof of his kennel, then he took a few steps into the lake which was no deeper than a puddle to him. “A legend says these falls are made up of my tears, shed for remorse after what I did to Skyrgal,” he said. “Bullshit! Stinky, rotten bullshit, for at least two reasons: one, this water is sweet, while tears are salty; and, two, I don’t remember ever feeling sorry for what I did to your father. He deserved it. If it wasn’t for him, this world would be a paradise like my Glade: the place of pure poetry I managed to carve out of the misery of Creation. Instead, look at it. Look at what the world has become because of those who don’t believe in the power of beauty.”

  He’s drunk. I’m on the back of a drunken god. Dagger barely had time for the thought to cross his mind before he felt his heart kicked down into his stomach. With a single leap Angra had jumped in the air, unfolding his wings to the warm currents of the Glade. He went around the waterfalls on his way, rinsing his feathers for fun before he brushed the Poison tower top with his claws and flew outside the rocky arc.

  When Dagger managed to open his eyes and stop swearing to Ktisis, he saw they were already high enough to appreciate the perfectly pentagonal shape of the Fortress, with the oculus at the center of its dome. Above it stood the highest tower, decentralized and connected to the others by five covered passageways, supported by imposing arches and sturdy pillars.

  He looked behind. Only then did he see him for the first time: the goat face and the huge gaping jaws; the mighty horns and the red glow all around him. The titan of Skyrgal had to be visible to the horizon as a lighthouse for all those born at his feet. Dagger saw his shoulders dotted with quills of petrified flames and the deep slash on his chest. His legs were comprised of muscle fibers as thick and smooth as lava flows, and his toenails were planted in the ground as the heels were lifted in the beginning of an eternal escape. The boy curled up on the god’s neck, holding tight so as not to be swept away by the icy current that suddenly blew against them.

  “This wind is called the Cry of Skyrgal,” Angra shouted. “It’s cold and unpredictable. It rushes against the Fortress, and then it disappears just as fast. I’m afraid it will be a loyal companion while you’re here!”

  His father was calling him. It could not be, it made no sense, but Dag knew it was so. He felt his toes tingle as if bitten by a thousand needles when the force took him higher and higher, straight to the sky, until the walls of Agalloch appeared in their entirety: a perfect circle with Golconda and the Lord of Destruction placed at the exact center.

  Noticing his stricken look, the god cried out, “Hold on tight!”

  Dagger realized he was not yet holding tight enough when he found himself upside down. Angra screamed as he dived nose-down, “We’re the aces high! Hahaha! Uiiiiiiiii! Do you like the ride on the ace of the skies? Watch now! Uiiiiiiiiiiii!!!”

  “STOP IT!!!”

  “Only if you scream it!”

  “WHAT?!”

  “Aces high! Tell me! Who is the ace of the sky?”

  “YOU ARE COMPLETELY DRU–”

  “Uiiiiiiii!”

  “STOP IT!”

  “Shout it out!”

  “ACE OF THE SKIES! FUCK YOU! ACE OF THE FUCKING SKIES!!!”

  “Ah-ha! Excuse me while I kiss the sky!”

  Only when he managed to get a laugh out of him, mixed with the umpteenth blasphemy against Ktisis, did the god spread his wings and stabilized in the air to glide on Agalloch. They flew above the stone faces and the small shadows that wandered like busy ants in the streets.

  Dagger saw many Guardians on the massive ocher walls, next to the war machines all pointed toward the east and ready for use. In the darkness pregnant with sand in the distance, he observed the twisted shapes of buildings destroyed, abandoned, or burned in the old days. Their eroded skeletons looked like silent witnesses to the wars that had poisoned that holy and raped land throughout history. The arid plain was penetrated by a long and straight road, heading for the desert and the imposing black tower that stood out above the ruins of Adramelech.

  “That’s the Main Road of the East!” Angra shouted over the scream of the wind. “It leads to Sabbath, our last watchtower over what remains of the ancient city. Beyond, the Main Road goes on. Few mortals still know where it leads!”

  The tower looked like a whole, black monolith, except for few asymmetrical lights.

  “And you?! Do you know where it leads?!”

  The god did not answer. He tilted to the side and turned back. “It’s not safe for a mortal to venture further!” he roared, flying again toward the top of Golconda. “For me, it’s impossible!”

  “Why can’t you?!”

  “I am bound to your father, to what I did to him! If I left this place, I’d die! At least in this universe!” He flapped his wings. “I’d become the holy diver, waiting to be reincarnated on the day the universe will compact itself into an infinitesimal fragment of matter, ready to explode again! Beyond the boundaries imposed by fate, there’s always wonder and death! Remember—wonder and death! If the fear of the light were stronger than the fear of the dark, many troubles would never come to be! Still, when you’re high, you never ever want to fall down! It sucks, down! And you always walk or fly toward the light, because that’s the meaning of life!”

  They flew above the Fortress, away from the desert and its nightmares, finally landing on top of the sacred mountain. The flapping of Angra’s powerful wings raised a dust cloud all around, so thick that when he slid to the ground, Dagger couldn’t see anything. With legs still quivering, he took a few steps in the dark and found himself on the edge of a precipice, above Agalloch.

  He turned. The bright eye of Angra emerged from the sand cloud, followed by the rest of his body and the huge wings. Finally, the colossus of Skyrgal appeared—the eternally spread jaws, the remaining arm trying to repair his face. Everything was still suspended at that moment.

  Dagger couldn’t understand why he felt pity for the god of Destruction.

  Angra stood at his divine brother’s feet, serious and austere among the ruins of ancient, abandoned buildings and the monstrous statues guarding their entrances. “God is alone,” he said. “First lesson—to be a god is synonymous with endless solitude.”

  Dagger slowly walked toward his father’s body, feeling the unnatural heat it emanated increase as he drew nearer. Soon a great void opened before him. He couldn’t see anymore, and he thought he had gotten back to the black land beyon
d the edge of the All, ready to follow the light at the end of the world wherever it would lead him. It didn’t last long: teeth as big as tree trunks grabbed him by the collar, then he landed on soft fur.

  Lying down on Angra’s paw, Dagger looked at the endless road that penetrated the naked desert, then he looked up at the red moon. “His blood. His blood flows in my veins.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I will never die.”

  “Olem,” Angra said, before correcting himself, “Dag, never is a word that doesn’t belong to the vocabulary of a force lived through all eternity.” The wise white eye caught the starlight, while his purple one observed the darkness rising from the desert. “Even the one you saw in the temple of Ktisis was not a statue. Under the motionless stone surface, lies a body waiting to be revived. You feel it, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I feel it. Yet in the presence of Ktisis, I didn’t. Do you think it makes sense?”

  “I’m afraid it does.”

  “When I was there, I only heard the cries of your brothers, like ghosts wandering among their own bones and blood. Why did your father do this to you?”

  The god bowed his head, resting his chin on the ground next to him. “Because only a god’s suffering produces permanent alterations in the flow of the great Spiral and may break it, leading to Megatherion—the end of everything that exists. I will use human concepts to talk about it, so that everything will be clear to you. But the true nature of the horror that could come to be is unattainable for a mortal, which you still are. This is Candehel-mas, the world at the center of the All. Only here is it possible to remove the keystone of the arch to make it collapse forever. This was the objective of Ktisis—you may call it the suicide of a god. Looking at the immense darkness in front of him, beyond the limits of his own Creation, he saw the spark of death and wished to die. Can you understand me?”