The latter grinned. “Well”, he said, turning to his followers. “Let chaos reign supreme!”
At those words, as a command, the novices stood up and rushed wild at Warren. They beat him cruelly, anywhere, saving only his face not to leave marks difficult to hide. They clobbered him long and with sadism so that when they were finished, all that remained of him was a body dripping with sweat and blood, lying on the ground on its side.
Then, the son of the late Pendracon coughed out his pain in violent spasms. In the silence he stood up looking straight ahead. “Out of the darkness, into…the shadows, I am born again…in front of you, Brothers.”
The young master of ceremonies helped him to his feet.
The followers chorused, “Spirits rising from darkness! Burning shadows in the dead of night! Icy fingers touch my hand!” Warren was accompanied to the altar, while everyone still sang, “Take me to the place where she lies! Finally They are back! Finally we’re free!”
The girl on the altar was still basking in her toxic insensitivity, smiling and talking. Greedy, she swallowed the ruby tablet the Grand Meister slipped between her soft lips, sucking his thumb.
He smiled and kissed her. Then slowly brought the curved knife to her throat, severing the carotids with a fluid and elegant movement.
Constant the idiotic smile on her face, she exhaled with violence and a thick red gush splattered in every direction, flooding everything and everyone, the living skin and petrified flesh. The adepts did not pull back. They stretched their twisting hands to be blessed by the blood, before taking them to their lips and sucking greedily.
Warren approached the ripped neck to drink the dense fluid straight from its spring, a red river flowing on the skin of both. He continued to drink and drink until, in a spasm, she gasped for the last time. She held her breath on her lips, open as if to say something, her half-closed eyes shocked by a sweet and murky agony. Then she suddenly relaxed and seemed to smile as her skin became white and purple-mottled.
The son of Hammoth raised his head, impassive, his white and red hair glued with blood. When he was released, he turned to the throne where the First Disciple had watched everything without flinching. The young man who sat above them all stood and slowly descended the steps to the altar. He took the curved, bloody blade from the Grand Meister’s hands and held it suspended in mid-air, to separate his gaze from that of Warren.
The latter locked his right hand around the blade as if his fingers were its scabbard, until abundant drops of blood fell to the ground. “In front of you I rise again and become a Disciple,” he recited. “Recognizing in the first, sacred core of the Guardians the only true body to which now I belong, and from which I will never part. As blood flowing in common arteries; as memories lying in the depths of a single mind; as the one heart beating in the chest of every chosen one; one body, one mind. Well, it is time now…to obey!”
The First Disciple just nodded.
Dagger stared, when he saw that everyone was undressing. What are they doing? he wondered, before seeing girls and boys unite themselves in one body dripping with blood and sweat.
“This is too much even for you, right-right?” Dag heard these words hissed at his back. He turned just in time to see a dark figure disappearing into the blackness of the intestines, walking backward as it said: “Oh, it makes me feel strange to see you so innocent despite everything you’ve seen in your life!”
The son of Skyrgal turned one last time to look at that scene that horrified and intrigued him at the same time. When, despite the horror, he had some kind of unexpected reaction, he fled to throw himself in the pursuit of the shadow that had spied on him until then.
Dag crawled fast, hitting the stone blades that responded to his blood with dazzling flashes of red light. He came out and looked around, but could not find anyone.
“Up here, you piece of shit! Oh yes, that’s definitely the appropriate thing to say!” the voice whispered again.
Dagger turned left—dark against the starry sky and the sharp profile of a thousand razors, a shadow watched him with two brilliant golden eyes. “Ktisis! How did you climb up there?” he asked in a whisper. “How did you not hurt yourself?”
“You call me Ktisis? Ain’t this the pot calling the kettle black?”
“It was an interjection!”
“Inter-what?”
“Fuck you!”
The dark figure chuckled. “Did you see, in there? The evil that men do lives on. The good they do is often interred with their bones.”
“I don’t like riddles!”
“No, you don’t. You just like to put your nose where you shouldn’t. Maybe you did not understand what you witnessed tonight, if you looked only with the two eyes standing sentinels to your nose. You’ve perceived but the shadow of the terrible powers that soon will sweep the silence of the desert away. So let’s say you did not see anything, and we have a deal. Stay out of this, careless friend, if you wish to know the continuation of your eternal life!” Then the shadow jumped down, as if he didn’t fear to die smashed to the ground.
Dagger rushed down the stairs, sliding on his butt at the bottom and landing hands and face to the ground. He stood and chased the spy in the gloom of the steep tunnel leading to the Glade.
Dag almost didn’t notice the two statues of Angra emerging from the rock. Shit! He threw his arms back before falling into the void, and ended up balancing on the ledge. He teetered on the balls of his feet, his weight distributed now forward, now backward, the difference between life and yet another death. He watched his toes hanging over the star-sea of the Glade, and felt the gravel beneath his feet sliding into nothingness.
Then he fell.
With his butt on the ground.
He immediately stood up to descend along the escarpment, but the shadow who had spied on him had to be well trained. Following him soon appeared beyond Dag’s abilities. He ran down the rough path at the cost of dying again, sure that the damn spy could not have thrown himself down. Reaching the ground, the Glade and the stable world under his feet, Dagger fell to his knees. His heart felt ready to burst in his chest, yet there was no trace of the spy. He was still there, Dag knew, watching him and hidden in the trees.
“If you’re my bodyguard, you could at least introduce yourself, asshole.” He stood up. “And then, I don’t even need a fuckin’ bodyguard!” he yelled. He didn’t expect an answer and didn’t receive it. He thought he heard the hiss of a laugh, somewhere to his right, but maybe it was just his imagination. “Messhuggah,” he murmured. “Shit people, Olem is right about that!” he provoked, before letting it go.
Yes, the Ktisis with everything! He just wanted to get back to his cot and leave the night behind with all its dark rites, the guts of rock coming back to life and the altars with their slaughtered virgins.
Was that some vision or reality I saw before my eyes? he wondered. This can’t go on. I have to tell someone.
Dagger wandered aimlessly through the forest trying to figure out where he had come from, when he caught through the trees a glimpse of white with violet reflections. Despite the fear and hope of running once again into danger, or a senseless act of violence, he decided to follow the vision to its source. So he found himself in front of an imposing metal structure, a giant silvery monolith shining in its own light. It was located at the center of a perfect circle of tall firs that hid it from view, like a solemn cathedral placed in the heart of the forest. Silence reigned: even the voice of the thundering waterfalls was muffled by the thick foliage.
Dag took a step, following with his eyes the entire length of the monolith—the green trees reflected on its surface, burning in a white fire melted with the shining darkness of the rocky vault. Only now, the boy remembered what Olem had said and realized he was in the presence of the huge manegarm sword of Angra.
The sword from which come all the blades the Guardians use in war.
A dark arc opened there where the groove of the immense blade met the l
and, studded with lights as if it revealed a crowded night sky.
He crossed the access path and went inside without looking back. The gravel would betray any pursuer, be it spy or bodyguard.
Apart from a Messhuggah, be it spy or bodyguard.
Inside the metal temple, silence reigned still, but not darkness: even though there was not a torch to be seen, the manegarm walls emitted the light accumulated during the day or, perhaps, a larger and more terrible period of time. Dag thought he could see the shadows of the devotees reflected on the walls as if they were still present, and heard the distant echo of a man reciting his prayers. He thought he heard spirits rising and burning shadows, but probably it was just his imagination.
As he walked by, the metal lit and darkened reflecting the faces of those who were there no more. Not a single item was added from the outside in that place: everything had been carved with it, also the altar on the bottom with an open-winged Angra dominating everything from above, enlightened by the shadows of its invisible believers.
One single mistake, and they would have carved everything all over again, Dag thought. This temple was built by people who never mistook.
On the apse shone a high relief that told the mythology of that holy and raped land—the massacre of the gods; the creation of the Sword, men, and the Fortress of Golconda; then, infinite wars for the protection of the Balance. He got lost in history, written there in silvery blood, until a mighty roar echoed through the Glade. He ran outside, looking up at the distant boundary between light and darkness, there where the rocky vault met the universal one. Only the presence of the stars marked the border between the finite and the infinite, and a winged figure crossed it, flying east. Angra held in his claws a glittering weapon, whose light was much more intense than that of the moon above him. The Sword which contained the soul of Skyrgal had expanded beyond measure and now shone in his hands.
The god of Creation was flying in all its glory toward his last battle.
* * * * *
When Dagger got back to his room in the Nest, he found the shadow of a boy sitting on the window sill, waiting for him. His nerves led his hand to Redemption, which was no longer at his side. Then he saw that the boy had a leg dangling outside, while he held a small cigar between his long and skinny fingers. Certainly, he did not look like a Messhuggah. His short and platinum hair glowed pink to the red light of the moon, as well as his white eyes, framed by visible swelling. His roommate was Ash, Warren’s younger brother.
“You, too, still awake?” Dag observed.
The other one exhaled a cloud of thick smoke that filled the room. “No.”
“No?”
“No one here ever sleeps for real,” he replied. “After all, dawn is not that far: the moment in which a merciless light will lay everything bare, and everyone will be forced to wake up.”
Dagger raised an eyebrow and closed the door. Approaching, he noticed that the smoke did not smell like tobacco. It was more bitter and yellowish. Wrapped in thick mist, Ash turned to observe the Glade. He handed the little cigar to Dag, saying nothing.
“What’s this?”
“A key,” the son of Hammoth Korpiklan answered.
“A key?”
“It opens some doors, the smallest ones. For the ones bigger and more dangerous you need keys…bigger and more dangerous. In here, only Araya can handle those. The keeper of the keys.”
“And which door does this one open?”
“Each key opens a different door. Some doors you open to feel a little better, others to be a little less alone—some to understand, some to forget. Others just to spend your time, as life goes and goes. This is only a jointee, the eternally greener grass on the other side.”
Dagger took the jointee between his fingers and inhaled a mouthful of smoke. He coughed once. “What the f—“ twice. “—uck! This is not just tob—” thrice. “—acco!”
Ash smiled sardonically, before taking the unusual cigar back from Dag. When he opened his eyes—Dagger could not tell if they were red because of tears or other reasons—he focused his attention on some furtive shadows moving in the dark, returning quickly to their accommodation. “Besides us, there are many people who do not sleep, apparently,” Ash considered. “Children who play at conspirators in places bigger and more important than them. The enemy is hiding among us, little Hotankar, but I think you already figured it out.”
“What do they think they’re doing?”
“They must have forced the entry of a sacred place, found old texts they were not supposed to read and clumsily improvised ancient rites they can’t even understand. Archaic rituals our ancestors practiced to appease the fury of the desert, when the world was young, brutal and innocent. They return from a sacred and cursed place. There was created the order of the Guardians and everything you see around you. There was written, signed, and declared, the oath of allegiance to the Equilibrium by the founding fathers. Now it’s just the dark cave where someone spends some serene happy hours….” He smoked again. “…fumbling with keys that don’t come from Araya’s magical pockets, but from black hands that move in the dark and have no other interest than driving wires into their bodies. The master of puppets knows those kids just want to have something to do.”
“Something to do?”
“They are just repressed, little perverts.” Exhaling, Ash became even more serious. “Children of the key figures of the Fortress. One night I tried to follow them, but some sentries were left to guard the path and I couldn’t get close without being detected. So I gave up, at least for the moment.”
“I followed them tonight….”
“I know. I saw you, and probably not just me. This is why I’m trying to explain what you think you’ve seen.”
“…and there were no sentries.”
“Are you sure?”
Dagger was about to answer, then he remembered the figure who had spied on him for the whole night—his golden eyes in the darkness, his sharp laugh. “A shadow is at my heels. He was looking inside from this same window, when I woke up, then he must have followed me to the cave . I think he’s watching me even now.”
“A Messhuggah…” Ash answered. “They could climb a wall of sharp blades without getting a scratch. They live just like they kill—in silence and grinning. Much of the death that meanders in our history books is their work.” He reasoned for a moment. “Killing a Blood Brother is always a sacrilege, the absolute evil for every Guardian, yet evil depends on the aim of actions, not on the actions themselves, and this I have learned from them.”
“What was the point?”
“The point is, always hope to have them as friends. Those lizards can make very drastic choices if they think they’re on the right side. In the unlikely event they get caught, they would be able to keep a secret on the right side of their lips even if tortured to death. Someone must have stuck him to your ass to avoid you getting hurt while you go out at night and put your nose where you should not. If he wanted to do you harm….”
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Dag concluded.
Ash inhaled the smoke of his jointee, getting more and more relaxed. “It’ll be okay, in the end,” he said. “And, if it won’t be okay….” He was about to continue, when two dangling legs appeared in the window.
After a while, even the rest of the body came down: Ianka landed on the windowsill. “Hey, Ash!”
“Ian.”
“Dag!”
“Ian.”
“What are you doing around, at this hour?”
Ianka winked to the upper floors. “I made a trip to Tina,” he answered, before heading to his right.
“Who, Miss Open Legs?” Ash guessed.
Schizo had already disappeared when they heard him say “Wide open legs!”
Ash turned back to Dagger. “We were saying?”
“Something about things being okay in the end.”
The white blood nodded. “Of course. Those morons—who put you in this
big mess you call your life—are hiding this from you. Everything will be okay because we’re alive. Everything will be okay because the world is benevolent and we just have to be grateful for every mug of draug that’s given us, the open thighs of a girl and the soft and white skin we can hold in our hands as we ride toward happiness. Oh yes…grateful for the green fields and the sun and a mirror of crystal water, you know? Grateful for when we can grasp the true meaning of things and we are drunk and…and the positive energy of the crazy, fucking world seizes us with its rays of vital light, pink as the most precious flower a girl can rub under our eyes. Grateful, yes, always grateful, because the abyssal mysteries of the All are too great, if even Ktisis failed to explore them all and felt fear facing what lies beyond. What do we care about what lies beyond? It’s outside of our control, while everything on this side of the boundary of perception is beauty, pink and fragrant beauty ready to be grasped. The only thing for which it’s worth living life, any life, is life itself—to drink and go together with everybody else. Do you get me?”
Dagger found himself nodding. “Yes. You’re completely gone, too.”
“Of course I am, but that’s not the problem!” Ash handed him back the jointee. “Finish it.”
“Asking stupid questions?”
“No. Finish this jointee. A single inspiration. It will make you understand a lot of things that mom can never explain to you. Some keys make you larger and some make you small, but the ones that mother gives you don’t do anything at all.”
Dagger finished the jointee in a single breath, as explained by his friend. He resisted against the cough and the urge to kick it all off. He smoked deeply, and exhaled.
Meanwhile Ash had begun to speak again. “…beauty and happiness lie in the body you can hold in your arms, the rush of positive energy you feel when draug flows. Everything is so close at hand, everything is so simple. Yet we damn ourselves and tell others how they should live their lives, when we fail to surrender to our insatiable thirst for happiness, and we are persuaded that it’s well to suppress our instincts, because others tell us so. Do you understand? It’s our duty to be unhappy, because boredom is more normal, more acceptable. But out of this contrast are born monsters like the ones you saw tonight—sons of the oppression, the need to hide what we are and indulge our most genuine instincts on the path of pain and torment. The torment, I tell you! Angra’s right. He loves us and wants only our happiness, that we venerate him with every pleasure he’s given us, because we are the best poem he’s written.”
Dagger 2 - Blood Brothers - A Dark Fantasy Adventure (Born to Be Free series) Page 16