Dagger - The Light at the End of the World

by Walt Popester

  “Brother Moak is right,” Araya agreed. “They’ll no longer attack the impenetrable walls of the Fortress as they’ve always done. Not now that, thanks to the two portals, they can… come through the back door.”

  “They’ll annihilate us,” Olem added. “Eating us from the inside like a cancer. Return him to the Fortress will be like saying, ‘Come on in, we were expecting you!’”

  Everyone turned to Dagger. It did not take long for him to figure out whom the Dracon was talking about.

  “You say they are looking for me?” he replied. “Yes, I guessed so.”

  “Irony,” said Araya. “The word of the gods or of the forces that have lived through all eternity, as they like to be called when time does not force us to shorten.”

  “So, if I went back to the Fortress, everything will be in one place,” Dagger reasoned. “The soul of my father, his body… and me. If someone wanted to get their hands on all three, they could simply attack and storm the Fortress, right?”

  Araya hissed in agreement. “What you say is true,” he allowed. “And I understand where your words are leading. Yet, at the Fortress we’ll know how to protect you, as for centuries we have protected the body of daddy and his damned soul.”

  “We are still ahead,” Moak stepped in. “We will return to the Fortress, we’ll build a new system of defenses in the Glade to counter their attack. Even if it were the last thing we do, we’ll kick their ass as Crowley did!”

  Hearing that name, a shadow fell on all of them.

  “By the way,” Olem said as if to change subject. “That message you found on the Tankar’s commander down in the temple. Do you still have it?”

  Moak put his hand in his pocket, as if he had remembered only then. He pulled out the parchment and unrolled it, reading it carefully. “It does not make much sense,” he said.

  Olem held out a hand, never looking away from the window. Moak handed him the parchment and Dagger stretched out his head to peep. He did not understand what he was reading, if those were words after all, but his heart skipped a beat when he saw the symbol on top of the message:

  ∞

  Kudr ò Sktena amis.

  Temko o ‘kvana Ramidt.

  Io’ten Cruachan koro. Satanke.

  “What language is this, for Ktisis sake?” Olem said.

  “Judging from the abuse of consonants, it seems the Gorgors’ language,” Moak answered. “But it’s transcribed in our alphabet. Must be the way in which Gorgor and Tankar communicate between themselves. Sktena reminds their equivalent for ‘damned’ and Temko means ‘wait’. For the rest—”

  “Io’ten Cruachan koro sounds like, ‘Only a few Cruachan, for now.’” Kugar intervened, approaching to read. “Satanke reminds one of their names, it’s probably just a signature.”

  “Uhm.”

  “And where did you learn their language?” Olem asked.

  Kugar looked down. “In the Messhuggah’s library,” she answered.

  “And what were you doing in the—?”

  “Olem!” Araya interrupted. “We have too many things to think about. We’ll discuss the rules to access my library some other time.”

  Olem turned to Kugar. “What are you waiting for? Translate!”

  “There’s written, more or less, ‘not yet taken the son of the damned. Waiting for the attack. Only few Cruachan for now. Satanke’. Did you notice the symbol on top?”

  “Do you think we didn’t see it?” Moak said, tucking the message and putting it in his pocket. “The message is pretty clear: they are waiting to attack because they want to get their hands on you know who and they don’t have enough Cruachans to move in this world. Temko or wait. This is the key word for them as well as for us. The narrow and dark tunnel through which we passed, might have been only a secondary passage. They couldn’t have a whole army march through there. They moved like shadows in the night sky, using the great rift in the mountain that we have… I have blown up. They must open a new passage for their Cruachans to move again and this takes them time. They’ll make it, but not in a few days. For once, we were lucky.”

  Olem nodded, focusing back on the window. Night was falling fast.

  Dagger came up. “We’ll be attacked tonight?”

  “You can be sure,” Olem replied. “As I’m sure you’re hiding something.”

  * * * * *

  At nightfall, they barricaded the door and the windows and climbed on the roof armed to the teeth. Araya took off his coat, revealing the red armor he wore underneath, modeled on the forms of a human musculature, made to perfection: the deltoids, the trapezius, the biceps and the pectorals shining and vermilion like the muscles of a flayed man. He put on the helmet too, a skull of a metal blue, like the one which composed Olem’s armor, forged in death’s eternal battle cry. For the rest, the Poison Dracon wore his arms: two scimitars on his back, two belts of curved daggers across his chest, two long chains coiled around his arms and ending in a sharp point, suspended in the air, two katars ready to use, on his hips.

  Dagger looked at the simple bow he had, feeling like a kid with a defective toy in his hands.

  “Do you know how to use it, at least?” Olem asked.

  In response, the boy shot an arrow against the bark of a tree, centering it. “A spider has many hidden qualities.”

  “How in bloody hell does this thing work?” They both turned to Kugar, intent on arguing with her crossbow. “Can’t we just poison the entire forest?”

  “Why did you choose that? It’s slow to reload!” Olem warned.

  Just then, a dart inadvertently set off from the crossbow. The unequivocal piercing scream of a Gorgor stunned them, followed by a rustling, and footsteps. At last, they saw the shadow stumbling in the dark, before it collapsed to the ground with the dart planted in the front.

  “Not bad!”

  There was a brief moment of silence, then the Gorgors’ acute cries rose from the forest, like a flock of predators about to pounce on a helpless prey. Dagger looked down. The mark on his chest beat once, twice, and he felt blood dripping down his belly. He unsheathed Redemption and let his hand and knife become one.

  “So it begins,” Olem muttered, gripping his sword with both hands. “Remember, shoot them in the head!”

  Now they could hear the Gorgors’ footsteps break the branches and grind the dried leaves, somewhere in the impenetrable darkness. Soon there appeared the flaming blades, which made them far too easy targets. An arrow whizzed by his ear and Dagger fell to the ground in time to see the traps, placed everywhere in the clearing, starting to work. The unlucky ones condemned to march first died impaled, burned and dismembered. Traps closed on their legs, cutting them neat; deep holes claimed their feet, sticking them in such a way as to make it impossible to break them free. For a moment, it seemed that very little of them would manage to get across. But soon the shadows realized that, if they marched on the path, they would not incur in the traps. However, who did not understand that found it too easy to march on their comrades’ corpses.

  Araya threw two knives, both hitting their mark, then swung his long, silvery chains and pierced a Gorgor’s face from side to side. He put a hand to his belt and soon after a fireball appeared on his hand. He waited a while before throwing it against the enemy. A deafening roar hit them while the Gorgors’ dismembered bodies flew into the air.

  “And I thought to be good!” Olem said.

  Then, the Gorgors seemed to decide they had played long enough. One of them let out a battle cry and his companions emerged from the trees, running and investing them with sharp and acute screams in the night. Kugar centered one of them, Moak two, however the fastest was Araya. Flawlessly he killed five Gorgors with a single blow of his chains, decapitating them in such a short time that, to Dagger, it was just enough to shoot a new arrow and miss the target. Other Gorgors sprang up everywhere before their eyes, marching on the bodies of their comrades as a sea of shadows. In a short time, some attempted to hoist themselves up. It
was probably the moment Olem was waiting for. Racing along the edge of the roof with his drawn sword, he decapitated the shadows before they had a chance to set foot on it. Dagger centered the front of a Gorgor who escaped Olem’s wrath. Then Kugar shouted something and he barely had time to turn around, before a giant Cruachan fell on him with a chilling trill. He found himself on the ground with claws stuck in the chest. Kugar came to help, but the beast needed only to beat its wing to fling her aside. The Cruachan’s eyes, red with lucid madness, absorbed his thoughts, looking at him fixedly and steadily. Everything stopped. The clash faded away. Death, the clatter of swords, the whole world dying around him, everything. On the beast’s back sat a shadow. He saw his black eye and, inside it, a yellow and malignant light, on a decomposed, distorted and unnatural face. With horror, he realized that this shadow was wearing a dead skin mask, the flayed face of a man, but only when he saw his Mayem boots the boy knew who he was actually facing. The Divine got off his winged steed and grabbed him by the neck, lifting him into the air as if he was just a disobedient dog. Dagger clung with both hands at the wrist and struck him with Redemption, but it was not shining anymore, not even in his hand. It was turned off, harmless, and could no longer protect him. He choked. The whole world was confined to that black eye and the light it held, in which he could read the reckless rage of a creature forever doomed to evil. This time, he didn’t feel the malignant mark just eject blood from his chest; it corroded his skin and flesh. It caught breath in his throat. It afflicted him with a stuffy asthma, a sense of total destruction that clenched his senses and asphyxiated any attempt to fight back. He felt it working within, taking possession of his nerve centers. He was becoming something else. In the darkness of the mind and senses, he heard a hissing sound, barely audible in the dark. “You won’t bring him back, Kam Konkra! Your blood will be mine! Why must I be a slave to this power? I don’t want to die, I was a god, why can’t I live on?”

  “Ffuck you!” Dagger let out.

  Then the lips of the dead face grinned. “I will hunt down with no mercy!” the Divine promised. “I will hunt you down all nightmare long! When you’ll wake up, you’ll discover how horrible it is, after death, to live forever!”

  He pointed the sword, a sword of Mayem, against his chest. Dagger realized that the end had come. A single, quick flick of the wrist would be enough for the figure in black to pierce his heart. He wanted to banish him from the world as it had happened to Skyrgal. It breathed on his face, the rancid breath of death, but he was not afraid, even though he knew there would be no return if the Guardians had lost that battle. Then he felt the clasp on his neck let go and he fell on the roof, drained of all energy, deprived of the control on his body. Everything slowly came back to life around him: the battle, the screams of pain, the clatter of knives. He managed to get up on his knees, but still could not use his arms, or hear. He looked up. As the battle raged, and Gorgors died under the murderous impetus of Araya, Olem had run to his aid, knocking the Divine to the ground. Now he was on top of him, his broadsword between their two faces. With just a wave of his hand the Divine freed himself, flying Olem on the roof. He drew his scimitar, giving the Dracon the time to get up and put on his guard, as if he just wanted to enjoy a clash with an outcome already decided.

  Dagger was taken by Moak and dragged away.

  “We’ll never make it against him, we have to fall back!” the Guardian screamed.

  With the corner of his eye, the boy saw Olem collecting the powerful, two-handed attacks of the Divine, whose chilling laughter rang out in the cold and metallic air. A hit harder than the previous ones made him lose his sword and the Dracon seemed to realize that only a miracle would save him this time. However, it was not a miracle that fell from the sky. It looked like a lizard. Araya jumped above the Gorgors and managed to overcome the defenses of the Divine, wounding him with his own claws, just a smear on the neck.

  The figure in black brought a hand to the cut. “Poison!” he screamed. “Damn lizards, you and your fucking poison!”

  The Divine charged. Araya mounted with one foot on his scimitar and jumped back, running away now that he had been successful in his attempt. Other Gorgors jumped on the roof, screaming in a horrific way, about to surround them. Dagger was the first to jump down. He landed on his hands and got up in time to see Moak reaching him, falling face down, broken, with a knife stuck in his back. He got up to help him, feeling him expire in his arms.

  “No,” the Guardian could only say, before giving up his soul.

  Araya jumped down too and pulled him to his feet. “Hurry up, there’s no time for that!”

  “Olem and Kugar are still there!”

  “That poison will not stop him for long!”

  Dagger opposed, ready to get back on the roof to fight, but something horrible put an end to the rapid worsening of the situation. They could not see what was happening on the roof. However, they could hear, the wild roar of a beast, not Gorgor, nor Cruachan, nor human. It was soon run over by the cries of the Gorgors who, taken by surprise, were cut to pieces. Their torn limbs flew in the air. Their bodies, their meat, their heads and slimy guts rained down from the roof, blackening the land with their filthy black blood. Araya killed the few who, jumped down, still dared to fight for life. He slipped the dagger into the belly of the last shadow, and then there were no more.

  In the silence, the howl of a beast wounded to death was heard.

  Dagger climbed back on the roof to see what had happened. He saw Kugar lying on the ground in a pool of blood. She was still breathing under the armor, torn in tatters from her uncontrollable shift, but every breath seemed the last. Olem pulled out the sword with which he had pierced her chest, gasping for breath, shaken by what he had seen and done.

  Dagger ran to hug her, getting soiled with her blood. “You killed her! You killed her, you bastard!”

  The Dracon looked at him, lost. “She… it was going to attack me!” he whispered, confused.

  “What’s going on up there?” Araya cried from below. “We have no time to lose. The Divine has escaped in flight and will soon return with reinforcements!”

  “Araya, dammit! That bitch was a Tankar!”

  “A Tankar?”

  “She’s not a Tankar!”

  “Get over it!” Araya ordered. “We must go through the Pass and we must do it now, even in the dark. The Divine will return!”

  “And what do we do with this damned half-wolf? She’s still alive!”

  Araya did not answer. Dagger looked Olem straight in the eyes.

  “We must kill her, boy. You have to understand.”

  “I won’t let you murder her!” he growled. “You’ll have to kill me too!”

  “A Tankar would not think twice before cutting your throat, fool!”

  “Should I carry her body on my shoulders, I’ll take her away from this hell!” Dagger spat back. “She saved your life, tonight. You won’t kill her!”

  “Then stay here with her!” Olem cried. “I’d be pleased to see what you would do, once—”

  “Olem, for Skyrgal sake!” Araya interrupted. “We have no time!”

  The Dracon opened his mouth to yell something, before diverting his scream into his clenched fists. He bowed his face and swallowed bitterly. “May you be damned! More than you already are!” He grabbed Kugar by the shreds of the armor, dragging her down like the carcass of an animal, throwing her at Araya’s feet.

  “She will survive,” the Messhuggah just said, putting two fingers between the jaw and the throat. “Even if I don’t know how long. One more reason to get back to Golconda as quickly as possible.”

  “We should have left her here.”

  Araya jumped up and struck Olem with a punch, so fast that the other Dracon did not even defend himself.

  “Holy shit!” he screamed. It was the first time Dagger saw him lose his temper. “Do you know how important this girl is, now?”

  Olem answered nothing. He disappeared from their
sight, among the trees.

  There was no time to give Moak a proper burial. Araya took out his heart, using a knife and his bare claws, and place it inside of a dirty cloth. “At least your heart will be buried home, brother,” he hissed. Then he carried the body into the hut, before giving it to the flames. He would never let Cruachans feast with his remains.

  Watching the flames rise into the night sky, Dagger swore he could hear the lizard cry. But maybe he was wrong.

  “This is the end of an era, worth to be lived,” he said. “Now a new one begins: An age of fear.” He took Kugar on his shoulders. “Come on, my boy.”

  They went into the forest beyond the hut, reaching Olem there where two tall conifers, with their hair, formed the natural gate at the beginning of a dirt road, immediately swallowed by darkness. A thick leafed blanket and the branches hid the path to the sight of any creature crossing the sky. They would not have to fear the Cruachans’ attacks, in there, but in the presence of the umpteenth path in the shadows, Dagger did not feel safe. He began to fear the worse when he saw thin strands of a silvery metal, dividing it in a sinister chessboard, barely visible in the dim glow of the Ensiferum sphere held by Olem.