Dagger 2 - Blood Brothers - A Dark Fantasy Adventure (Born to Be Free series)
Page 29
“I was afraid you were dead.”
“I can’t die, just like you,” Ian answered. “At least before I get to six thousand.”
“Six thousand what?”
“Six thousand Tankars, one thousand for every brother and sister they killed in my face. If you must say you don’t need our help, Mister big-two-thirds-of-a-shadow-man, be sure that I need yours. To get to six thousand, I need the help of someone who has killed an army of them with a flick of the wrist. If only you could see yourself…Ktisis! You’re almost as good as me, who would have thought?”
Dag smiled and, when the other approached, stood up to hug him.
“Hotankars always stick together,” Schizo said. “Whatever Hotankars do and whatever they are! Half-wolves, half-gods, half-dickheads, and even those Messhuggahs who took our jobs, it makes no difference!”
“Racist!” Kerry hissed, hugging them in turn.
Ash joined them. “Yes, Hotankars forever!”
“You look like a bunch of hysterical queers, you know?” Everyone turned to Erin, buried under five filled backpacks. She dropped everything to the ground.
“Ian! You had her bring everything?”
“Of course, lizard! She needs to put on some muscle, don’t you think?”
“Why all that stuff?” Dag asked.
Erin came forward. “Only in the epic tales the mighty heroes leave the city behind for a long adventure and they bring nothing with them. No water, no supplies, no heavy blankets and not even a tent—Ktisis, a tent!—to shelter for the night in the desert.”
Ash glanced at Kerry. “Hey, we have to…do that thing, remember?”
At first, the young Messhuggah seemed not to understand. Then he smiled. “Oh…oh yes, that thing!”
They collected two backpacks, and went out the door. Dag and Erin turned to Ian, who was still smiling.
“You won’t figure it out on your own, right?” his sister said. “They wanted to leave us two alone.”
Ianka smiled brightly. “Oh! Oh, I get it. So…I also have to do something to…do something, you know?” And he left the room with his backpack.
Silence fell between them, remained there, under the watchful eyes of stone and light.
“Erin—”
“Shhh…” She put a finger on his lips. Then she hugged him, resting her head on his chest. “Don’t say anything.”
Dag stroked her blonde hair and they stayed like that, without kissing or talking, just letting the warmth of their bodies merge. “They know who you really are?” he asked then, before feeling her shake her head.
“There’s time to tell,” the girl said. “One thousand and two hundred years spent watching the world go to hell taught me it’s a good thing to manage silence.”
“And to say that you look so young…” Dag said, stopping to reflect. “Hey, wait a minute!”
“Every time we die and rise, we go back to the age we had when we died for the first time,” she explained, understanding his doubt. “Otherwise, we grow old like everybody else.”
He brought a hand to his face. “My beard. It’s gone!”
“What, those four hairs you had?”
“Ha, ha.”
“Yes, Dag. You will constantly go back to being an unbearable teenager, even though with time you’ll get more mature and begin to talk about metaphysics.”
“Meta-what?”
“Oh. A bunch of interesting crap. I assure you that reading and writing some good books is a good way to spend part of the eternity.” She hugged him again. “I’m so happy that you’re here.”
“And if we die of old age?”
“Guess what. We die like everyone else and then we are born again, like gods.”
“Forever young?”
She looked into his eyes and smiled. “Forever young.”
He brought his lips nearer.
She laughed and pinched his nose. “I’m sorry, but there’s too much age difference between us. We have to go. I know Ianka. If I make him wait too long, he begins to kill people.”
They went down the stairs and stepped into the street beyond the barricades, which were everywhere. They clutched the Fortress in a fatal vise, blocking any re-supply. Everything was decay and abandonment as they crossed the main street of the city. The few open windows closed as they passed. Behind heaps of rancid trash, some street kids were watching them, intrigued and intimidated at the same time. Dag stopped to observe the only guy who had the courage to stand up, dressed in rags and with a small girl hiding behind him. Their eyes met and he gave him a nod. The little one did not answer.
At the end of the street they crossed the city gate, walking under the colossal fingers crossed in the ocher keystone.
Dagger looked at the long road stretched straight in front of them, through the huge nothingness, to the ruins of Adramelech and the black tower of Sabbath.
He had to follow it wherever it would bring. Only at the end of the road was there salvation.
He turned to watch the windowless hovels cling to the mountain like barnacles to a ship’s hull. Even after the battle, the Fortress seemed impressive and tremendous—an impregnable illusion. Dagger raised his eyes and saw him again, high above them all, his jaws wide open and his arm outstretched to shield his face from the burning rays of destiny.
You won’t break me! he thought. You won’t take me. I’ll fight you under blood-red skies!
“Warren fled with Skyrgal,” Ash revealed. “They saw him abandon the walls directed east, with the Sword on his back. He was in the company of a shadowy figure, wearing a dark green armor forged in the guise of Ktisis. Funny, isn’t it?”
Crowley or Aeternus? Dag wondered. “Warren wants us to follow him,” he deduced. “If anyone has seen him, it’s only because he wanted to be seen.”
“Is it a trap or a sincere invitation?” the white blood asked.
The son of Skyrgal turned toward the horizon. The sunset had painted the sky in vermilion shades, while a few yellow clouds ran above their heads.
“I fear there’s only one way to find out,” Dagger said, moving the first step on the road.
* * * * *
Tum
Tum-TU-TU-Tum
Crack!
The stone came down, crashing on the ground. A shadow put one foot on the rough floor, then the other. He went out of the niche and dusted his humble red robes with his wrinkled, green hands. “Ktisis! I didn’t think it could be so easy to cheat you!” Araya hissed, stretching in the darkness. Oh, my poor, tired, bones! I can’t stand the elixir of apparent death anymore. I should stop with that stuff. I’m four hundred years old, now…
He put a hand in a pocket and pulled out a cigarette paper and a bag of strange green leaves. But now a little jointee will make all my fears be gone. Fortunately Kerry did exactly as I said, for once. ‘They will try to kill me,’ I revealed, ‘Sure as the night that follows the day. I can pretend to die when they come, but you will have to follow my scent.’ Finding the key to this place must have been a breeze even for him.
He looked in the pocket again, before the blackest terror seized him. The matches…where are the matches!? He watched the jointee in his hands. The little son of a Messhuggah…it must have been your last prank before leaving with Dagger, right son? No time to enjoy a moment of peace before getting out of here to bring order to this damn world!
He looked around. His lizard eyes quickly grew accustomed to the dark—the crypt was strewn with corpses, Tankars and Gorgors. Not one human. There had been a small battle between shadows and beasts down there, and it was hard to tell who had prevailed in the end.
“Crow?” he tried to call. “Crowley?”
Only silence answered him.
Araya grinned. “Hell, this is going to be fun!” he said, as he walked to the exit.
* * * * *
Boring acknowledgments, part two.
I hate labels, genres and categories. I hate to be put in a jar together with others, so when people ask
me: ‘What kind of book did you write?’ and put their hands on a dictionary to find adjectives that will make them sound witty, I reply: ‘I wrote Dagger!’
No matter what label they stamp on your forehead: fantasy, horror, western, science fiction and sub-genres as if it were raining. It’s just a matter of epic, that is the noblest part of literature. Then there’s always something else in that twilight zone between the black of words and the white of the pages of a good book, the middle-earth where the unconscious of the reader and the writer can meet. There’s always something else beyond the narrated facts. I’ve never written Dagger just for it to be a beautiful fantasy story (or dark-post-modern-apocalyptic-dope-western-mystic-fantasy story). I put all in it, because this is the only thing to do if you want to write something that remains: put all yourself into it.
Books are the natural continuation of our existence, they help us understand and metabolize it. A novel of any kind, that’s not contaminated by the author’s life, has no reason to be read. Life and art are two aspects of the same thing, inextricably linked rings, yet we must read and write to live, never the other way around. Many say: ‘Books are my life’. Well, it is sick. Don’t lock yourselves in a paper prison because books are not life; they reflect it, imitate it, but no story will ever be like the one that you can write every day. Get out, dammit, go down in the street, this is the real message of ‘Dagger’: live your life because it will not last forever. Never give up your right to amaze yourself, anchored as we are to the banality of the mediocre modern times. Hope. Wonder. Love. We are all part of that one show that goes on stage since always and forever.
Yes, I think that of ‘Dagger’ is a positive message, despite the monsters, the massacres and the shadows, that perhaps just represent our shadows, those that get in the middle between us and our desperate, StephenKing-ian need to live and be happy. Including the shadows we will never defeat.
So my first thanks go to you, readers, in the sense that I give to the term, that is: ‘those who always wonder there could be more beyond what they read’. I will never be grateful enough for the magic I witnessed: to write and spend time to modify and edit a story, adding details and developing characters, and then finding myself talking about it with complete strangers who had appreciated the work done.
Thanks for being there. A writer is nothing without his readers, and I’m aware of the fortune that I could be both in the time I was given on this world.
I thank my editors Amanda Hough Triplett, Susan Mikhaiel and Mr Salvatore Di Luccio for the indispensable help provided and for tolerating the various first, second and fortieth drafts where everything incessantly changed direction. My friends and colleagues Vera Q, NM Mercury, Wirton Arvel, and Wally G. Fin for the constant and mutual support, assistance on several occasions, beta reading or just for the pleasant chats about the state of the art.
Reviews are important; you can help me by writing even a short one at the following link: http://tinyurl.com/dagger2review
I believe in the digital as a mean of emancipation of literature and, along with others, I fight for the quality of self-published books. As always, you can add me on Facebook or send proposals of marriage and death threats to waltpopester@yahoo.com
‘Dagger III–God of Emptiness’ coming soon.
That’s all folks! Good night.
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Prologue
1. Balance
2. Sleepless nights
The Council of the Five
4. The conspiracy
5. Draug drinkers
6. In the lap of the gods
7. Training day
8. The night he died
9. The breaking point
10. One vision
11. In the heart of darkness
12. The final thunder roaring
Epilogue
Boring acknowledgments, part two.
Table of Contents
Prologue
1. Balance
2. Sleepless nights
The Council of the Five
4. The conspiracy
5. Draug drinkers
6. In the lap of the gods
7. Training day
8. The night he died
9. The breaking point
10. One vision
11. In the heart of darkness
12. The final thunder roaring
Epilogue
Boring acknowledgments, part two.