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

by Walt Popester

  He looked up and the dead surrounded him now that Skyrgal was no longer there to protect him.

  Fear did not last long, before the light took him.

  * * * * *

  “He lives again, my lord.”

  “Kill him. Again.”

  Not far away, Dagger heard the battle choirs of violent and barbarian beings. He opened his eyes and turned. Tankars had set foot in the Glade, and all the Guardians were running toward the wall erected around the portal.

  The ground was shaking. The battle was imminent, and he was not there with his friends.

  He was ascending.

  “The battle is already lost,” Marduk said. Then he killed him, truncating his carotids once again.

  * * * * *

  Stone. Smooth and cold under his hands.

  “Can you hear me, Konkra?”

  “Who are you?”

  The light took him.

  * * * * *

  They climbed and climbed.

  “Here we go again, he’s moving!” said the voice of Marduk. “How many times do I have to kill him before we get to our destination?”

  “It won’t take long! Why doesn’t he stay dead, this time?”

  He opened his eyes as two narrow slits. He saw the distant line of the wall erected around the portal and the Guardians deployed for battle. Screams. Screams everywhere.

  “What are you waiting for? Kill him!”

  The blade sank back into his throat.

  * * * * *

  Stone. Smooth and cold under his hands.

  “Surviving all the changes is your destiny! Ride the lightning, Konkra!”

  “Angra?”

  The light took him.

  * * * * *

  He could feel heat on his skin, while in the arms of Marduk he climbed the intestine of Skyrgal.

  Then a blade went into his throat.

  He tried to speak. He drowned in blood.

  * * * * *

  Stone. Smooth and cold under his hands.

  “I asked him to slit my throat if he had to kill me again. He’s taking my words all too literally!”

  “Surviving all the changes is your destiny, Kam Konkra,” a voice said.

  “Angra…?”

  An eye of purple and powerful light was above him and illuminated his body, which was black and covered with shining writings. Konkra had to shade his eyes with his arm.

  “Angra, you’re still alive!”

  “Angra…” the voice repeated. “Yes, once I was called so. Now I’m back to my original state, larva of light awaiting the spark that will give life to the next universe. Now I’m Kam Kres, Lord of Creation.”

  “And what would Kam Konkra mean, then? Skyrgal never—”

  “Who?”

  “Kam Karkenos!” Konkra specified. “You know I’m talking about him. He never explained what my name means.”

  “Kam Konkra,” Kres repeated. “You are the god of emptiness, in which everything is born and dies. The dark sea, full of life, into which the river of every existence flows. Yours is the face of the Spiral that binds all. You’re more important than all the special interests of those lost in the flow of time and trying to bend you to their will. You won’t let them do it. You will resist and ride the lightning. Look inside yourself, and let the river in you flow.”

  “Could you be a bit more specific? It’s about the fourth or fifth time they’ve killed me. I want to know what to do when they’ll stop.”

  “You’ll feel it. You will lose control and find your bloody way in the shining darkness, like a poor forgotten soul. You will remember my words at the right time, I know. Now look behind.”

  Konkra turned. Among the shadows of the dead there was a slim and graceful figure, whose sand-colored body was streaked with bright purple writings—letters tied together like the links of an unbreakable chain. She seemed to observe him, and did not say anything.

  “Who is she?”

  Kam Kres seemed to laugh. “The force from which will come your so-craved death.”

  “Will she kill me?”

  “She will be your Redemption. I arranged everything, you’ll see. Only I know what you want—what you don’t even know you want.”

  He was about to open his black mouth, when light, inexorably, took him away.

  * * * * *

  This is definitely an experience to repeat! Dagger thought, rising again. Apparently, if there isn’t Skyrgal to keep me bound there, my death lasts only a moment. Perfect!

  When he opened his eyes, he knew right away he was inside Skyrgal’s body, though not inside his stomach: the irregular walls, as red as fire, were marked by half-columns of petrified muscle fiber. On top, a curious structure made of cusps around a central oculus was anchored to branching tendons that crossed the space from top to bottom.

  The few proteins that Dag’s stomach had known during the long years in Melekesh were derived from dubious animals’ offal that some extra sortie during the night had allowed him to buy for Seeth and himself.

  Ktisis take me if this is not a petrified heart! Skyrgal’s heart, judging by the size. Dagger was lying on a slightly inclined platform that cut the whole ventricle in half, with a large hole toward which a drain sloped down. A short tunnel dug through several layers of tissues and petrified muscles and lead to a tube with smooth and regular walls.

  He blinked hard to dispel the mist of humidity covering his eyes and tried to move but found himself chained to the ground and surrounded by five red lights. He was naked.

  “Why the candles?” he asked, knowing he was not alone.

  “To create atmosphere, of course,” the hiss of Aeternus replied to his right. Aeternus wore the armor of the Divine, in pure mayem, the full helmet forged onto the features of a furious Ktisis. His gritted canines glowed greenish in the vermilion candlelight, and his eyes were contracted in a grimace of unconditional hate. Observing that snarling snout from below, Dagger had to admit he was impressed. He looked for Marduk and found him guarding the entrance, armed to the teeth in the dim light, as he had always been.

  A throne dominated the unusual room enclosed between two thick half-columns of muscle tissue. Dagger let his eyes follow the ruby steps up one by one until he saw who was sitting on top.

  “Erin?!” he realized incredulously.

  She didn’t answer. She was sitting on a blood red throne, with a leg on an armrest and a glass of wine between her slender fingers.

  “Dagger. How long, my son,” the voice of Skyrgal said through the girl’s mouth. The sound echoed brutal and deep inside Dagger. “I’m rummaging in this girl’s memories, you know?” He sipped his wine. “For my sake…you kiss really badly.”

  “I do my best.”

  “There are a couple of things I could teach you. A force who has lived through all eternity has some more experience—you have to concede that to me at least!”

  “Don’t be so full of yourself. I’m a force, too.”

  “Yeah, I forgot. Basically, this is the reason why we’re all here together in my…uhm, heart. Don’t you find it bizarre to meet inside one’s own heart? In the end, what else you ever do with a son?”

  Dagger tried, without success, to break free from the chains that held him. Skyrgal smiled with Erin’s face and pulled herself together and rose from the throne. He climbed down on bare feet, slowly looking at Dagger with the eyes of the girl who had promised him understanding.

  “You want to make her a walking dead as you did with the Divine? Do you want to take her away to bend me to your will?”

  Skyrgal stood before him, grinning evilly, his sweet lips resting on the chalice. He bent down, stroking his face with the cold hand of Erin. “Now, you’re not going to say, Take me, are you?”

  “Take me!” Dag challenged him, resisting the temptation to spit in his, or her, face. He couldn’t do it. Skyrgal was a damn calculator, he thought, and was masterfully manipulating his emotions.

  “Maybe you should have asked yourself a few m
ore questions.” His father got up and paced around.

  “Questions?”

  “Yes,” the god sighed inside Dagger’s heart. “Who is Erin, really? What has she hidden all this time? You bought the story of her escape from the world Beyond all too easily from what I see, and don’t tell me you had suspicions! You didn’t. You were blinded by, let’s say…”

  “Pussy!” Aeternus’ voice sounded metallic through the jaws of Ktisis.

  “I hate bad language,” Skyrgal turned with a thin index pointed at his first servant. “But I think that is the exact word.” He focused again on Dagger. “Her escape from the world Beyond, and all the rest… so gigantic a canard that I really can’t see why you, the Spider of Melekesh with the fastest reflexes, unconsciously decided to believe it. Yes, it must have been that to blind you. The large eye that charms every man and bends him to its will.”

  “Nice metaphor.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So, Erin doesn’t come from the world Beyond?” Dag asked, testing again the strength of the chains.

  “Oh, yes somehow—leave the chains be, my boy—she was hidden there, a bit like you, but…she is about 1,200 years older, I seem to remember. Still very young to be the daughter of a god.”

  “What?” he asked. “Are you saying that I…kissed my sister?”

  “Yeah. Kissed. Right!” Skyrgal shook his head, smiling.

  “We didn’t—”

  “Hey, I’ve got her memories, remember?”

  “Fuck…”

  “Yes, that’s the right answer.” He sipped his wine. “Well, she’s not your sister anyway. That would be too much even for me. I’m not really fond of incest. Erin is the secret daughter of Angra.”

  Dag resisted the temptation to stare. You must never give the impression of being caught off guard! Sannah’s teachings turned out to be useful in the most improbable time. Never, my boy! One day, this may save your life. “The audience should say ooohhh!” he replied.

  “Ooohhh!” Aeternus chuckled.

  “You could say this sweet girl is just an older version of the same problem you represent for the Guardians,” Skyrgal kept on. “That is, having to hide someone forever. Arleb was just another Guardian appointed to watch over her in Melekesh.” Erin slowly walked around Dagger along the circumference in which the pentagon was inscribed. “The colonnade that leads into the Glade—you must have noticed that it shows brave and indomitable Warrior Queens who often led the order through terrible wars, famines, and riots.”

  “Yet, but at some point, it seemed they were prevented from reaching that position,” Dagger remembered.

  Erin stopped. “Because a woman had hurt Angra as only a woman could,” he continued. “It’s been about 1,200 years since the Warrior Queen Adonna Nightfall—a mythological figure of your family—used Angra’s blood to get pregnant. She was moved by the visionary and mad ambition to give birth to the son of a god. She was sterile, just like Aniah. You’ll understand…Erin’s the fruit of that first incest between eternal and mortal.” Skyrgal sipped his wine. “Hell, how I love your vices. Wine and sex alone are worth the cost to endure the miseries of a not-eternal life, you know?”

  “Don’t change the subject, it was getting interesting.”

  “The one in front of you is just an experiment. The Disciples had their fun experimenting with the darkest side of their precious black book’s Immortal Rites, in the belly of the Warrior Queen. But the information was incomplete. We had to wait until the temple came back to light to arrive at your birth. The woman and the fruit of her uterine folly were exiled to the world of rabid dogs that lies beyond the portal. No woman could become Dracon anymore, and the Disciples, too, were punished but forgiven. I will not damage Erin, at least this should be a consolation. She would be almost like you, were it not that Angra’s blood can’t restart this perfect machine that’s my body. She’s marvelous, beautiful, and useless as only a woman can be.”

  “I didn’t know this misogynous side of you.”

  “Let me tell you how I met your mother…” Skyrgal let the empty chalice fall and looked at him with coldness. “She could be a good companion for you if it wasn’t that you’re finally going to die atrociously in the name of Megatherion.”

  Dagger looked down. Needless to say, Redemption was not there at his side. Shit! he thought when he saw Erin pull the shining dagger from behind her back.

  “Are you, by chance, looking for this, Dag?” Skyrgal said. “Or should I call you Ktisis? Kam Konkra. The god of emptiness!” The girl’s gaze lingered on the shiny blade in front of her. “My father, I had to split your soul into three equal parts, make you triune to allow your return. No mortal could ever accommodate you intact, even if my divine blood flowed in it. Now that we are all gathered here, I can finally bring you back to life to finish what you just began on that distant day. Now stand still. I’ll do everything!”

  Erin leaned over him, stroking his cheek one last time and kissing his forehead. Then she raised Redemption above her head to violently drive it into Dagger’s right wrist.

  “ARGH!”

  When mayem tasted his divine blood, the light it emitted became red and blinding. Skyrgal cut through the boy’s body and reached the left wrist, exposing a silvery and dazzling channel like liquid mercury under the skin. Black blood flowed copiously out of it and gathered in the depression at their feet. Now he understood why he was on a slightly inclined platform: in that way, Skyrgal would extract and collect the fluid required to get back inside his body. His love continued to tear his chest, belly, and legs until she reached and connected with the ankles too, penetrating them with the cursed metal and the soul it hosted.

  Dying and unable to breathe, Dag saw the lines of red light that connected his ankles and wrists, first three and then six, pumping pure agony through his limbs.

  Skyrgal amusedly looked at Dagger’s futile attempts to break free from a force stronger than the chains that held him nailed to the platform. He smiled, positioning the body of Erin astride Dagger’s bare belly. He rubbed her genitals on his skin, smiling and holding Redemption with both hands to finally stick it deep in the boy’s throat.

  Blood flooded Dagger’s lungs while the mayem blade burned sovereign. Ten channels of scarlet agony joined the wounds in the five-pointed star, which streamed with the mercury flows hidden under the skin.

  When the god in the girl let go of Redemption and left it stuck in his neck, Kam Konkra felt the wind loaded with sand rising in the heart of Karkenos. On the muscular walls appeared the bodies of his crucified divine sons, watching him with empty and lifeless eyes.

  “Now, Aeternus!” Skyrgal yelled. “Resurrect my father!”

  Aeternus began to strip off the armor, piece by piece, exposing his horrible body that had been deformed by a stubborn death: first the chest and ribs covered by a rancid green and striated tissue; then the belly with the intestines dug up to the necrotic vertebrae; then his shoulders and arms with exposed bones under shreds of flesh and whitish, condensed sludge. He bared his legs, the femurs completely naked and between them a severed penis. At last, yellow hands with no fingers.

  When he removed his helmet, the furious metallic scream of Ktisis was replaced by a horrid dissolved face, the features mixed and liquefied as if caught by an acid bath.

  Skyrgal picked up the pieces of armor, one at a time, to dress Konkra.

  “Rise, my father!” he yelled. “Rise!”

  The wounds opened by Redemption bound themselves to the living metal through the energy flows. Konkra felt Ktisis take control: human consciousness and memories disappeared. In their place, sand and infinite void. When the smile of Erin dismissed him from the world of the living, and the inside part of the helmet fell like a black curtain over his eyes, he realized that everything was…

  Lost in the sea of cosmic void while from the depths of the sidereal Creation rose silent winds whose face was time and space like brothers of the absolute and terrible nothing to be fi
lled at any cost but what was beyond it and what awaited him through the eons of divine solitude that he decided to populate with the fear that first forced him to create the gods his children and in absolute darkness make the purple sun and the red moon rise and look as they began to spin around again and again in the great circle while the wolf was loose and rode the cosmic infinite despite what lay beyond the threshold of his mind when the portals had fallen and the other side had burst into horror horror horror and in that horror the knowledge to put an end to it and dig into the abyss of torment to extinguish the flame which feeds that infamy as purple as the blood of those he was creating and loving and burning and quartering and eviscerating in the hostile and maternal womb of the desert where the infinite rests since always and forever linked from end to end until at the bottom of the circular corridor the end and the beginning will reveal again and again in that perfect Spiral that knows no end if not the great Beyond but what lies in the inner point of a god’s mind and was he crazy or genius if he let the other side break in and allowed the portals to fall only because in that way no more rebirth and pain but to die to sleep and nothing more without having to survive all changes and observe them protracted and ruthless in the eternal Spiral as everything compressed and exploded and compressed and exploded again as the beating of a giant heart until you have come my beloved children to show me the light because your pain was eternal like mine and inside you was hidden my Redemption that is Megatherion and if one of you had gone up those stairs with me in the belly of the great mother death then everything would be done but you red moon that rise up in this world again and again did not want this and now you come here on your knees to climb with me those steps…

  “…damn!” The angry howl of Warren brought him back to the world. The white blood was holding the Sword of Angra, shining with the divine soul that it hosted again. With this, he was prying open a crack in the mayem armor until, in a whirl of sparks, it opened. The wind went down and horror disappeared like the thoughts of destruction and continue rebirth. The son of Hammoth quickly freed him from the armored leggings and sleeves, using again the sword to pry the hot surface. Dagger got out of the armor, naked and covered in blood, given to mortal life again. He put a hand to his throat, finding a scar in place of the hole Redemption had opened in his trachea. The scars still burned, but he was breathing again, and his heart was beating. He was alive. He brought his wrists under his eyes to see the purple and still-shiny wounds.