“The light at the end of the tunnel,” Dagger said in a small voice. “The shining outline of a door in the dark, or at the top of a ladder. Yes. Yes, I can understand.”
“Yet Ktisis and his Creation are bound seamlessly. If he exists, the All exists. If he dies, everything dies with him.”
“And I suppose Ktisis failed to commit suicide, otherwise we wouldn’t be here talking about it.”
“You’re very smart.”
“Thanks!”
“Try to figure out what I want you to ask.”
Dag kept silent for a while, looking at the red moon advancing among the stars in its cyclical wedding march. He moved his lips without thinking. “Ktisis is not dead.”
“No. He can’t be dead.”
Dagger lifted his gaze to meet Angra’s eye and looked at his own reflection. Only then a memory buried in his mind came back to surface with all its violence—reflected in the eyes of Skyrgal, he remembered the grin of Ktisis.
His smile.
Dagger slid to the ground with his back in the dust. He got up on his elbows and backed away from the god’s imposing face.
“Don’t run from your nature, Dag,” Angra said.
“Am I Ktisis?!”
“Let’s say yes.”
“Let’s say?”
Angra grunted an enigmatic laugh and Dagger looked up at the stars, suddenly threatening in the immense yet claustrophobic domed sky. He let himself be carried away by the cosmic spectacle of continuous death and rebirth. He allowed it to seep through him, he drowned in the ineluctable emptiness that shrouded every living thing. It was life in death and death in life. Beyond there was only the end and its persuasive call. For a fleeting moment he thought to understand Ktisis, but when he tried to grasp that vertiginous infinity, it was already gone.
Angra was talking again. “…thanks to the divine pain of your children, the mysteries of Creation and Destruction hatched before you. You sank deeper and deeper into that murky knowledge while the shining screams echoed endlessly in the doomed temple. You continuously incarnated Mastodons and Burzums to exploit their agony, but reaching Megatherion soon proved beyond your capabilities. There was some sort of protection on the higher power that you couldn’t overcome.”
“Stop.”
“What?”
“Talking to me like that.”
“Like what?”
“As if I were Ktisis!”
Angra fell silent. He raised an eyebrow, as if amused by that consideration. “Forgive me, Kam Konkra. The transition has taken away those memories. You’re still just a street kid, aren’t you.”
“I don’t want—I can’t be him!”
“Not yet. But you’re the creature in which his divine blood flows, and only inside you could Skyrgal reincarnate the soul of our father, creating the hybrid he needs to reach Megatherion. Did he tell you this?”
Dagger’s other memories attacked him at once: the marble covering the temple in the desert; the screams of the sacrificed gods, and finally, that forgotten grin reflected in Skyrgal’s eyes before his resurrection.
One day, my son, we will climb once again the sacred stairs of the temple of Adramelech to meet our destiny.
“Yes, Skyrgal told me,” Dagger remembered. “But I didn’t want to hear. I saw my true nature and…”
“…and you were afraid,” Angra continued for him, sensing his dismay. “Don’t worry. If you were to revert to that form, you’d forget your human life. It would be like your mortal existence—an insignificant, wonderful dream lost in the flow of eternity—had never been. Of course I’ll do anything to prevent that, even at the cost of resorting to extreme solutions.”
“Extreme solutions? If I don’t bring back the gods, what will become of me? Will I continue to wander and run, continuously abandoned and disgusted by death itself?”
Angra looked hard at him. “It was not me who created you as a HUMAN!” he exploded. “That’s why you’re called blasphemy! Do you think that it was me who wanted you? You’re a giant mess, but this is the burden you’ve been given and you can’t help it! Ktisis, damn it.”
He paused, and Dagger could feel the perpetual snarl of his immense vocal cords. “It was a sacrilege,” Angra continued, “the biggest one, to think that you could mix eternity and mortality. When they brought Skyrgal back to life in the body of Crowley, they went down a one-way street. They! They did it, I know it! In their cursed vengeance, they’re unleashing Ktisis and Skyrgal against me! And now there’s no solution, only a thousand…revolting partial solutions. What I hate more than anything else—compromises!”
Dagger bowed his head. “A giant mess—is that what I am, even to you?”
“Stop it.” The force stroked the boy’s back with his nose. “A god doesn’t know the word sorry, even if he can express regret when he calls things by their names in the wrong tone of voice. Well…okay, things and people, you know…dammit, I’m a disaster with words.”
“I’m not Ktisis, not yet. Certainly I don’t want to be him. It’s not my fault. I didn’t do it!”
“Ha! I didn’t do it. Isn’t it what all the boys your age say?”
“Ha. Ha.”
Angra’s faced turned serious. “Yet you’re still a mortal, unstable by definition. They know it and they’ll use that against us. Pain is one of the greatest dangers, if the one who endures it wields an immense power. Think about Aniah. Think about Crowley. Suffering can provoke you or any other sentient being into irrational and devastating choices. In the end, you know the desire to die, don’t you?”
“It’s rude to read people’s minds.”
“I have the intuition of a god. My pain causes vibration in all things, just as I am attuned to the vibrations of their pain.” Angra stroked him again.
“They slaughtered her and forced me watch,” Dagger said, recalling Seeth’s helpless eyes as she died. “Do you know what it means to see the only person you care about die that way? How can you criticize me for wanting to die with her?”
“I can, little asshole.” The god breathed, sending up dust from the ruins around them. “Because I know. How do you think Skyrgal managed to piss the hell out of me me?”
The boy didn’t seem to have heard. Silence fell between them.
“Are you confused?”
“No,” Dag answered. “After the first jolt, it’s not so bad to discover that you were born to destroy the world.”
“Not just the world—”
“You know what I meant! I saw him in his temple: Ktisis had a slash wound in the middle of his chest, just like Skyrgal. You killed him the same way?”
“It wasn’t me, but your father. Ktisis signed his death sentence when he was forced to create Skyrgal and I, two children finally provided with a will of their own. He couldn’t reach Megatherion with only his strength, but he sensed that is was dangerous to create a being exactly like him, so he thought it best to split himself into two opposite beings. For the first time he put the seed of freewill in the breast of the All, not considering that this always—always!—leads to rebellion against the established order. This is what’s always happened since then, with both gods and mortals. Will is the most precious flower blossomed in the Creation, a divine spark reflected in the eyes of those who see, and act accordingly. It brings the gift to oppose and scream I won’t do what you tell me! So Ktisis had to bend us to his will.”
“How much are you simplifying?”
“A little bit.”
Dagger clicked his mouth is disapproval.
“Well. There began the torment at the hands of our father. It was a complex torture, much more than mere physical suffering. He could leverage our emotions against us. Something that a human can’t understand, perhaps.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
Angra continued, “Until one day, like the thunder that announces a storm, the question that can shatter any preestablished equilibrium exploded in Skyrgal’s head: why? Why were we still alive
in that pain? That spark burst into flashes. Flashes became fire. My brother realized that our father had never aimed for our heart, so he wondered what it held. After a long session of torture, he managed to get hold of the mayem hammer that Ktisis had used to torment him. He chased Ktisis up the stairs to the altar and pierced his breast with it, rooting out his soul. That was the original Fracture between past and present, the same that created the portal which is now in the belly of the Pacific desert. There had never been an I before then. There had never been Here and Now before death. When he found out he could kill, Skyrgal understood that he was, and that he could address the chaotic flow of events with his actions. His pain was not an inevitable part of the order of things, but merely one possibility out of many, and one he didn’t have to accept.” Angra paused for a moment, looking hesitant.
Dagger realized that Angra’s voice had trembled with excitement. He hadn’t even considered the idea that a god could be moved by his memories.
“He came to me and set me free,” the force continued. “We wandered in the temple to see what our father had written in that endless time. On the sand-colored walls, in the blood of our unconscious brothers, everything was written: the laws that govern the chaotic and harmonic flow of the All. While I lingered on the first laws—those of Creation—Skyrgal proved more interested in those of Destruction. So we moved away from each other, following the writings to the two opposite ends of the temple. In this way, I completed my…” Angra looked around, casting about for the right word.
“Training?” Dagger suggested.
Angra smiled. “Yes, I think that will do. Obviously, it was a complex process, where studying was synonymous with becoming, which is an integral part of being. By reading and studying I was becoming myself. I completed my training as Lord of Creation, and Skyrgal, sinking deeper into the laws that governed the action of chaos, became every inch the Lord of Destruction. Thus we learned that the corridor, used by Ktisis as a giant scroll, was actually a perfect circle, and his two opposites were contiguous. I still find it curious how the last law of Creation coincides with the last of Destruction, the two concepts linked like the rings—”
“—of an unbreakable chain.” Dagger recalled the writings on his body when he died and went to his father. He raised his face and was absorbed by the god’s magnetic gaze.
“Curious, how such different concepts can be part of the same process,” Angra remarked. “That’s the Node that someone surely told you about. That’s where the secret of your creation and the realization of Megatherion lie. And that must be the part of the temple that’s come back to light, if you’re here today.
“At the extreme of what we had studied and become, I met Skyrgal again. He had changed. He claimed that he had seen it all: that our father was right and we had to put an end to the All—we had to break the circle. There was an unfathomable void in his eyes, a fear of something greater than gods, greater than even Ktisis himself. God is alone, he said. God is alone. At that time, I couldn’t understand those terrible words. I told him that if we didn’t want to be alone any more, we could populate the world with other creatures. There was a way to do it, I had studied it. But he still wielded his hammer, which shone with the divine life that it now contained, while I was unarmed. Any being, mortal or divine, can understand a message as simple as that. He began to cry…well, that’s not quite exactly right. The cries of a god are different and…” Angra looked at Dagger from above and snorted. “Yes, so, with bloodshot eyes and whatnot, he said that I had to help him achieve Megatherion.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t. And so my torment resumed, this time at the hands of my brother. He tore at my body with the blades of mayem and manegarm, tortures even more atrocious than those that our father had inflicted upon us. In the temple, however, I had learned that a manegarm sword could exile the soul of a god to the end of the All. It was my secret, Skyrgal couldn’t know. At the first opportunity, I took a manegarm sword and fled, knowing that in the hands of a god, this metal had another great quality: it could create new life! Having studied the laws of genesis and evolution, I created a being in my own image and likeness.” He paused. “A son. I thought that if I showed Skyrgal the power of Creation, he would come to his senses.”
“I suppose he wasn’t particularly impressed.”
“I was forced to watch as he killed him…to teach me my place in the world.”
Dagger shuddered and clenched his fists. He walked back to him and sat down, resting his back against the god’s paw. “Go on.”
“Skyrgal wanted me to desire the end, and with it the end of All. In that way he hoped I would help him take refuge in the protective embrace of the last relief. However, anger can be power. I saw him die, that one creature born to give a meaning to my life—and pain, instead of leading me to despair, filled me with vengeance. It was only for a fleeting moment, Kam Konkra, but in that moment I violated the innocence innate in all things, there in the very bosom of Balance. Here, on top of Gol-cohonda, you can see the outcome well. I exiled his soul through the same blasphemous ritual that he had used against our father. I wanted perpetual and eternal damnation for the killer of my son, just like mine: an imprisonment with no possible escape.”
Angra turned around, as if to jump against Skyrgal and resume a battle that, after all, was only in intermission. “The price to pay was the Fracture, the tear in the Creation. It still exists, spanning two worlds no one knows how distant—perhaps located at the two adjacent extremes of the universe. I’m bound to this place now, condemned by my crime to watch over the eternal rival who embodies everything furthest from my nature: my brother.”
He sighed. “Driven by selfishness, I decided that my solitude wouldn’t last long. I created you humans with the power of the sword, so in you coexists my generative force with Skyrgal’s destructive one—born to destroy and create.” He raised his eyes to look at the Main Road. “And the story goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began. There’s still a lot to be written, and soon you humans will face a new and unexpected enemy: yourselves.”
“You humans … why do you refer to me, too?”
“You’ve already decided which side you want to be on—you can’t hide that from me. You’ll fight to the end to keep your illusion alive, and this is legitimate, my boy; maybe it’s the same thing I’d do in your position. As long as you’re on this earth, you must choose the lie that will make you happier. It will be the only one to have made sense, when everything will come undone under your feet.” Angra gathered his thoughts for a moment. “You’ll find out the truth about yourself all too soon, about us gods and those who are looking for you.”
Who are They? Dag was about to ask, then he remembered Marduk’s admonition and the god’s reaction when Olem had merely hinted at the Disciples. He decided not to pull the rope.
“Now let’s get back to the Fortress,” the force concluded. “A short sleep awaits you before tomorrow’s sorrows.”
The god seemed exhausted by his story. He had many human characteristics, Dagger thought—the ability to feel remorse, longing, and anger, as well as to keep a secret on the right side of his lips and gloss over what he didn’t like to hear. As Dagger climbed onto Angra’s neck, he wondered whether the god had given men his best side or his worst.
This time the Lord of Creation merely glided above the porch side of the Fortress courtyard, slowing his descent with wings outstretched in the wind. Dagger dismounted and stroked the big feathers of Angra’s wings for one last time before returning to his prison in the Delta tower.
* * * * *
3.
The Council of the Five
Olem was awakened by the happy cry of a child. He saw him jump on the bed and hug him.
Daddy! said the voice. Dad…dy…
He caressed the little blond head, watching the happy face crumble in his hand as if made of sand and finally disappear.
“No,” he whispered. “Don’t go
away.” Again the great emptiness filled him.
Sleep dissipated, along with his retinue of bittersweet visions. The Dracon opened his eyes in the room at the top of the Sword tower. It had never felt good to wake up in there, much less now that his rage, fueled by alcohol the night before, had reduced it to a pile of destroyed furniture and shards scattered on the floor. Luckily, no one else had entered there in a long time.
He put his boots on the floor and took off his old leather coat, the best disguise to sneak undisturbed into one of the many taverns of Agalloch. No longer my favorite one, though.
He reached the wooden dummy that supported the the Sword Dracon’s shining armor. He stroked the glossy surface of the blue and purple Amorphis, feeling something that he could identify as love—perhaps the only sort of love possible for him.
He had sacrificed on that cold and metallic altar everything he had: the love of a whore who betrayed him in the worst way but who would have given him a son. He rested his forehead against the metal, sure the pain wouldn’t last long.
A son…
He heard a flapping of wings. Soon after, a messenger of the gods landed on the windowsill. It had large black feathers and purple-edged wings.
And a message bound to the right leg.
* * * * *
Araya woke up, sitting cross-legged in the position and place where he had fallen into a trance. He was in the penthouse of Messhuggahs’ library, there where the tops of the five oak trees that composed it joined to support the terrace. He didn’t remember much from the visions of that night. There was something wrong in the Glade—a strong negative force that had changed the whole energetic layout flowing from the portal. The terrace was a high enough vantage from which to observe it: the eye of wicked light from which the ruin of them all would soon come.
What to do? he wondered. I need a vision to understand. Migrate once and for all, or fight to the end? And in this case, how to prepare the defenses, and which ones?
Dagger 2 - Blood Brothers - A Dark Fantasy Adventure (Born to Be Free series) Page 6