Dagger looked stunned, speechless. “But I…I don’t…”
Ianka mimed two membranes closing on his eyes. “Your shtupida face, young Nightfall, doesss rhemind me the face of my motherh the time ssshe killed the loverh of my fatherh, to cook herhh with a bunch of asssparagi in the asss, dancing on the tombss of the ancient godss!”
Everyone laughed.
“So happy that you’re so happy, but I think I need to change myself!” Ian got up with a mug in hand. He brought it to his lips, before realizing it was empty. “Who the fuck made a hole in it? Was it you, Erin?”
“Don’t overdo it with that guy,” she replied, face serious. “Don’t do it like that time, Ian! I don’t want to see you with a rope around your neck again, graced by Olem at the last moment.”
Schizo took leave with a less than reassuring grin.
Dag got up in turn. “I have to go, too.”
“I’ll accompany you,” said Ash.
“I’m not going to my room, bodyguard.”
“And where would you exactly like to go at this hour, if I may ask?”
“Stay out of this. It’s a personal matter,” Dagger replied, with a tone of voice meant to put an end to the questions. He left before the other two could say anything else.
In the Glade, finally free from the presence of the black Guardians, no one followed him.
At least, no one he could notice.
* * * * *
In the cold of night, Dag reached the cemetery. A dense, thick fog had risen in the Glade, populating it with white shadows. Someone was watching him, he was sure, either that damn bodyguard or those who had always sought him.
Under the touch of his hand, the mayem door opened in a shower of light reflections. He slowly marched through the Nightfall tombstones up to the bust of Crowley, who was silently observing him from the bottom.
He remembered the warning of Araya: In the name of Ktisis, don’t go down there alone.
He caressed the cold face of the deceased Warrior King and descended, entering the underground tomb.
He looked around, slowly. “I know you’re there,” he told the dark. “I heard you laugh the first time I came down here. Your unmistakable laugh.” He heard something moving a little further, like a body crawling on the ground. “I don’t expect you to answer. I remember how Angra reduced you.”
“I can still speak,” hissed a vicious, uneven voice. In the underground dome, it echoed as if it came from everywhere around. “It’s good to be a united family again, don’t you think?”
“You should be dead, Divine.”
“Oh, that name,” the darkness said while something, in the distance, crawled to approach. “You don’t give me justice, son. Why don’t you call me Crowley? Why don’t you call me…Dad?” The laughter echoed again, distorted by the curved walls. “Be human! Did you read the last message from your mother? Be forever a human, even when death despises you!”
“How can you still be alive?” the boy asked. “Angra dismembered you, that day in the world Beyond. I saw it with my own eyes!”
“Oh, how nice would it be to die, but remember? Skyrgal granted us the same gift somehow. Sure, your version of immortality is more dignified. It doesn’t force you to hide the repulsive features of your body in a dark crypt, close to the only woman you’ve ever…” He paused before adding, as an admission, “…loved.”
Dagger reached for Redemption’s handle.
The Divine said, “Relax. If I wanted to attack you, I’d have already done it. And you’d beat me, since in these conditions I could not hurt a fly. They took my armor away so now, haunted by the memories of my lost happiness, I crawl naked in the world of the living when I should do it in that of the dead.”
“Do you still remember your life?”
“Oh, I remember everything. I remember a set up table when it was cold outside and the smiling face of a friend behind a mug of draug. I remember walking alone in the deafening silence of the Glade and days of battle and war blessed by the enemy’s blood. Yes. Yes, I remember. I remember the tear that lurks in every smile and the smile behind every tear, in that slow, sweet sinking into the hug of nothingness that’s mortal life. Sit with me, son. I must say that I’m missing a little company, here in the dark.”
Dagger took a few steps in the looming shadow. “Who brought you back here?”
“You’d never guess. It was his duty, as of all of them, to bring back the last Warrior King to the Fortress, in one way or another. However, he seemed more interested in what once contained my useless body.”
“Your armor?”
“Uh, uh,” the shadow in the dark confirmed. “He was afraid I’d get it back, that’s why he’s locked me down here with that gimmick. Still, he knew he still had a purpose for me. He must have read it in the stars or heard it as the mushroom danced. He wanted us to meet again, don’t you think? He wanted you and me to talk again.”
Dagger tried to prick up his ears and hear every single noise around him. Drops of water. The faint hiss of a current. Nothing else. “To tell me what?”
“News that, if he died, had to survive him at all cost: the Hermit is still alive and They don’t know it. Look for him, if you really want to fight against yourself.”
Dag shivered. “Is that all?”
“Araya said no more. These exact words. It was my duty to tell you.”
“Why didn’t he tell me the last time we met?”
The Divine laughed. “No, you don’t understand yet. Come here, to your right. There’s something you need to see.”
Dagger entrusted himself to the dark, guided by his own hands as he had done before in a time and world far from this one in the hold of a ship. He met hard stone—an open sarcophagus. From darkness emerged the fragments of light of a manegarm plaque, shining even in complete darkness. Overwhelmed by curiosity and terror mixed together, he threw himself on his knees looking for the epitaph.
He found it buried under a thick layer of moss:
Crowley Nightfall
223rd Pendracon and Warrior King
3651–3612
Returned to the affection of his Blood Brothers
By Prince Araya of Obzen in 3599.
“Thirty-six twelve. You too died in that year?”
“We all died in that cursed year,” the voice to his right whispered, one step away from him. “But I didn’t want you to see this. You know almost everything about me. Look a little more on the right. There’s a tombstone with an epitaph you’ll find, let’s say…interesting.”
Dagger did as he was told. He took a few steps to the side and found a tombstone covering a burial recess, recently sealed judging by the fresh mortar under his fingers. The letters shone in a silvery light and, when he read the name they shouted in the dark, the world collapsed on him:
Dracon Araya
4001–3599
Dance eternally in the arms of nothingness, asshole.
The boy jumped up.
“Shape-shifters, they call them,” the voice whispered to his left. “Three Disciples are able to take on the appearance of those They kill. When They realized They could not penetrate the mind of the Poison Dracon, They decided to erase him from this world and hide his body down here, using the key They found on him. The lizard knew that I’d come in handy and wanted us to meet, using me to store a secret that only he knew: the Hermit is still alive and you have to look for him.”
“And who the fuck is the Hermit, now?”
“Oh, you’ll have to find it out by yourself. The lizard prince was the shield that protected you all this time, but now you are alone, Dag, alone against all those who would use you to reach Megatherion or enslave the entire world.” The shadow laughed just a palm’s width from his nose.
Dagger reached out in the dark and found himself touching the flabby tissue suspended between two ribs. He went up with his fingers on the rough and cold sternum, toward the skeletal face. When he put his thumb inside an empty and wet eye socket, Crowley
retired, swallowed by a prudish darkness.
“Let me give you some advice, my son: leave the Fortress today. Alone. Collect what little you have, forget friendships and illusory loves. Go, get out of here and look for that damn Hermit. Even at the cost of staying here and rotting for eternity, I am still Crowley Nightfall, Pendracon of the Fortress, and I can’t abide that They reach Megatherion! And then…I just have to put my hands back on that armor, my armor, to reign again over my beloved children. The same people who are crossing the worlds for me, judging from what I heard when they brought the lizard here.”
“Where’s your armor now?”
“I can’t know, but we’re not the only ones looking for it. Don’t you ever wear it, you hear me? That armor was created for you, along with that bloody dagger. If used at the same time, they will be your grave goods!”
Crowley reached out his one hand to the boy’s face, to delicately brush his cheek. “Young skin. Forever fresh. Oh, just hope you’ll never learn what it’s like, after death, to live again!”
Dagger smelled a stench of decay so penetrating that he jumped to his feet and darted toward the staircase. The little light coming down from it seemed to get farther and farther, so he closed his eyes and kept running until he hit the wall with his right shoulder and fell, hands first, on the slimy stone staircase. He hurried up three steps at a time and got back into the crypt, yet he still thought he could hear Crowley calling him back. Darkness soon became a disturbing presence, a being that lived, breathed, and hounded him as he ran to the exit in panic, losing control among the silent dead of the year 3612.
Born again to the thick fog of the Glade, darkness finally became substance. Two dark shapes were patiently waiting beyond the threshold.
The timid light of the ensiferum ball, held by the stone Guardian at the entrance, cast sinister shadows on the horrifying dead skin masks They wore on their faces. Sharp and shiny blades waited impatiently between their fingers.
Mayem! he thought. And mayem gleamed in their hands. “Who are you?” he asked, stupidly. Disciples! The Skinless!
The two figures in black did not respond, not with words. They were there for him and moved a step forward. Before it was too late, Dagger used Redemption to trace two electric trails ahead of him. “Not one step further, if you don’t want…” to die?
The two shadows stood still and watched him, dark in the misty whiteness. They laughed at him, and the boy was seized by an atavistic terror when he realized their laughter was not human. He forced himself not to be afraid and tried to jump out of the stranglehold, but one of the two sliced through the air wounding him on the arm.
“AH!” Dag turned, blade in hand, but the Skinless who had hurt him nimbly dodged the blow.
Armed with two trident daggers, he closed in with a hail of blows so fast that Dagger could not keep up with him. He could only withdraw, blindly cutting the air while the black shape eluded him, wounded him superficially, several times, slowly skinning him alive as he laughed and laughed. He was just teasing him, the boy realized. If he had really wanted to, the Disciple could have easily pierced his heart. He tried to hit him in turn, but the masked figure jumped aside and beat him down with a kick on the left flank. Dag turned on his back to get up, but it was already too late. Fast as panic, the dark ones had already closed on him, silhouetted against the black sky. Dagger shut his eyes, bringing his arms up defensively in front of his face and waiting for his umpteenth, inevitable death.
Then something happened. Or better, fell. His unexpected savior swooped down from the sky and clung his wrinkled legs around the neck of one of the shadows, knocking him down. In the light of Redemption, Dagger saw the golden, wild gleam of a Messhuggah’s eyes, reflected in the two katar of manegarm he clutched in his hands. The lizard attacked the two Disciples with lightning movements, jumping, dodging, and hitting relentlessly, again and again. Dag was back on his feet just in time to see another figure running toward them. It was Ash with a sword tight in both hands. He sided with them immediately.
“You haven’t been on the sidelines watching everything again, right?” Dag said, panting.
“No, dammit! This time it was your bodyguard who slowed me down. He wanted to save the world on his own, as Messhuggahs always think they do!”
“Ash! I hope my tricks didn’t slow you down, oh yes!”
The two Skinless stopped to watch them, lowering their guard.
“Leave him to us,” one of them said. “And we’ll let you live.”
“Let us get what we came for,” his dark mate hissed.
Dagger looked at him carefully. “Araya?!”
“That’s not my father!” said the Messhuggah who had saved him. “He’s dead! Don’t waste my efforts. Just lie on the ground, pal. There’s only me, here, who knows how to treat them.”
“I know too how to treat them!” Ash opposed.
“Oh no, you don’t, milky boy!”
The two Disciples moved a step, but the Messhuggah jumped on Dagger’s back—falling from above, he kicked one of them in the teeth and pierced his heart in a storm of sparks. The blade absorbed the soul in a stream of dazzling energy while the other Skinless, withdrawn just in time, managed to escape. Ash left to chase him.
“His heart!” the young Messhuggah shouted behind. “Do as I told you, milk blood! AIM AT HIS HEART!”
Dag, petrified by the rapid epilogue of the situation, watched the lizard pull out the knife from the shadow’s chest. When the corpse became stone before their eyes, he jumped up and backed away. “Who the Ktisis are you?”
The other seemed to ignore him. He leaned over the body and began to examine it closely.
“Why did you kill him? He could have revealed who he was!”
“He was already dead. The dead don’t speak!” the lizard hissed with a cutting tone. “Especially those who keep on living. What do you think? That They talk if you ask them? Ah! Stupid, stupid Kam Konkra!”
Dagger aimed the glow of Redemption at him and, as the Messhuggah analyzed the corpse, Dag examined him in turn. He wore a close-fitting black coat, while his long legs were bare. He had a small hump on his back and a ridge of yellow and red hair ending in a long braided tail. He was a graceful and agile creature, though monstrous in his own way—in the eyes, the shining gold of Messhuggahs around the narrow slits of the black pupils.
He shifted his attention to the body lying on the ground, when his wrinkled savior tore the dead skin mask away: below, the Disciple’s gray face was left midway between the appearance of lizard and monster. The right half was marred by putrefaction, riddled with holes as if worms were feasting on the tissues soaked with petrified pus. The other half was a perfect imitation of Araya.
“What am I looking at, exactly?”
In answer, the lizard tore the corpse’s black clothes at chest height. It was partly covered by the wrinkled skin of a reptile, partly made up of skinned muscles. The shadow had a familiar Spiral at the center of the sternum, cut in two by the deadly blow:
∞
“As I thought,” the Messhuggah said. “The shape-shifter who has taken the form of my father after killing him.”
“Is he…dead?”
The lizard turned abruptly. “They can’t die! His soul has been exiled by my blade. Had it not been of virgin manegarm, we would already be dead. But I figured everything out, oh yes. I operated efficiently, as a Messhuggah should always do. My father would be proud of me. Perfect timing, my son! he’d say. Oh, yes!”
“How did They get this far? How could They—?”
“Someone opened the doors to them. Oh yes! And the more the war approaches, the more the doors open.” He stood up. “My name is Kerry, son of Araya,” he introduced himself, casually holding out his hand, without looking at him. “At your useless service, Kam Konkra.”
“Don’t call me that!”
“And what should I call you, Dagger? What kind of a name is Dagger?”
The boy looked at him, before s
haking his cool and dry hand. “It was you who was spying on me through the window of my room, that night.”
“That night and many more, oh yes. It’s the task I was given.”
“Do They want to kill me?”
Kerry chuckled. “I know who you are. I know you’re the son of…” He looked around, making an eloquent gesture with his hand pointing upward. “Well, otherwise why would I call you Kam Konkra at least now that, I’m sure, nobody’s listening to us? When I was hired to guard you, I demanded to know with whom or what I had to deal. In that way, they made me a lot more than a bodyguard. In front of you there’s probably the whole counterintelligence of Golconda made flesh.”
“Warren apart?”
“Warren apart.”
“Counterintelligence against whom?”
“Shit, jerk. Against the Disciples!”
“Your father hated coarse language.”
“My father hated a lot of things, especially the incautious forces lived through eternity who get themselves in one trouble after the other, forcing their bodyguards to resort to the best of their ability to—”
“Hey, don’t give yourself all these airs,” Dag snapped. “You’re not even a person, after all.”
“You’re inappropriate. Oh yes! What is it? A way to thank me for saving your life?”
“Fuck you.”
Kerry opened his wrinkled lips to answer in a hiss, but he stopped, turning back. Shortly after, Dagger too felt that someone was running through the trees. He got ready for a new fight, then he realized it was just Ash and let down his guard.
“Did you get him?” the Messhuggah asked.
“No,” the newcomer replied, panting. “He was too fast for me. Maybe too fast even for you.”
“I doubt it.”
“Oh yes!”
“Don’t mock me, milky!”
“They were no slouches with those blades,” the son of Hammoth continued. “When I saw you, I feared the worst.”
Dagger 2 - Blood Brothers - A Dark Fantasy Adventure (Born to Be Free series) Page 23
