“Did you follow me, too?” Dagger wanted to know.
“No! Otherwise I would have stopped you before you got down there. Are you completely crazy to go into that crypt alone?” He watched the petrified corpse at their feet. “It was Erin who convinced me. Follow him, even if it’s not our turn tonight. I don’t trust that fucking Messhuggah anymore. I think that fucking Messhuggah she was talking about was you!”
Kerry hissed.
“Then the lizard here got in the middle and tied me up against a tree,” Ash continued. “Would you believe it? Against a fucking tree!”
“We had to make them come out into open air, and we did! I’ve always said that to my father, but he was all No no. Too risky. Oh yes.”
“I expected someone of the Hammer to pull a trick on you, but there’s much more at stake, as it seems.”
Kerry leaned back on the petrified corpse, inspecting it. “I hope you were sarcastic, whitey.”
“Stop calling me names, slimer!”
“Cut it out, the both of you! We have to find the one that flew away.”
“Unfortunately, someone let him slip by.”
“Ah. Ah. I’ve already warned everyone,” Ash said, unnerved. “At this hour, Deltas should be searching half the Fortress.”
“In vain,” the Messhuggah opined. “Shit, my father must be seriously pissed off in Almagard!” Then he thought about it. “No. The Overgods surely didn’t let him pass after what he’s done in the last centuries. You let him escape just like Ash would! Oh yes, I can already hear him.”
“You found yourself a good bodyguard, Dag,” the white blood replied, as the light of a torch lit up their faces.
Shortly after, Marduk came out of the trees followed by his Faithful Twelve. He looked at the corpses, the wounds, and the katar shining in the young Messhuggah’s hand. He didn’t lose himself in unnecessary assumptions. “Get out of here. Right now! If They exposed themselves so, it’s just because They’re about to strike!”
* * * * *
Looking out the window on top of the Delta tower, Ash watched Agalloch surrounded by the night, a vast black sea dotted with unquiet lights. Kerry ran his penknife on his blades, crouched in a corner. Dagger was in front of the hearth, holding out his hands as he unsuccessfully tried to draw heat from the fire. He looked up at the torn portrait of Crowley, who returned his gaze, enigmatically.
When Marduk entered, everyone turned.
“Did you find him?” Ash asked.
The Dracon closed the door and came forward, visibly worried. “No,” he replied in a whisper.
The white blood turned back to peer out the window. “He must still be here!” he growled. “How could he disappear into thin air? He must still have that mark on his chest and that mask with him. We have to…Ktisis! We have to inspect every room, put the Fortress upside down until—”
Marduk raised his hand and the boy said no more. “We can’t. In short order, there will be a battle to the death against Gorgors and Tankars, or have you forgotten? Sowing the seeds of suspicion among us would just be the final blow to our already faint hopes for success. At least now that the cockroaches have left us.” He sat behind his desk.
“Your dear old Disciples have returned, apparently. Oh yes.” The Messhuggah jumped up and cut through the air with his blades, pervaded by the energy of the newly acquired soul. “I really needed one of their souls for my own katar.”
“Who set this jerk on me?”
“I don’t know, Dag. It doesn’t matter,” the Dracon replied. “Apparently, someone thought you would need a special watch. And that someone was right.”
“Was it you?”
“I’m not that rich. Do you know the cost of a Messhuggah, nowadays?”
“And son of a Dracon, too, please. Oh yes! It’s not safe to go for a walk alone, little one. Better to make sure someone has your back.”
“It didn’t seem so hard to stop them.”
“Only if you know how,” his uncle pointed out. “There’s only one way to do it, as Kerry showed you—breaking the damn symbol on their chests with a blade of virgin manegarm or mayem. This is why the lizard’s katar could save you. For each blade, one soul.”
“And what happens to it, once trapped?”
“From then on, it’s bound to the metal, giving it supernatural powers that few in this world are able to handle. Only the Disciples, perhaps, or anyone who learns the secrets of the Immortal Rites—ancient knowledge partly kept in the temple of Ktisis and partly in the Benighted code.” Marduk darkened. “A sacred code about which only two men, both dead, knew something. Our dear Sannah and a man who…left the Fortress a long time ago.”
“The Hermit?”
Marduk didn’t reply to that assumption. However, by a barely perceptible flicker on his face, Dagger realized that the answer was positive.
“Only now, we know that our fears were justified when we decided to hide you in the world Beyond,” the Dracon continued. “Or better, when I decided to hide you on that world against the opinion of all.”
“You’re not boasting about it, right? You brought me in a fucking bigger mousetrap! Everybody says so, also—” Skyrgal, he was about to say, but he stopped.
“Watch the language,” his uncle warned.
“Of course, They are moving, but what will They do to me? It’s my life you’re talking about, dammit! Angra hinted at something. Angra knew what They would do, but he’s dead!”
“He’s not dead. He’s become the holy diver.”
“He looked pretty dead to me…” Dag snorted. “Well, Araya knew something, too, as did Moak. But they are dead—they are all dead and gone.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Of course I am!”
Marduk nodded. “Very well. Kerry, Ash, would you be so kind to go back to your rooms?”
“We’d better stick to—”
“Your rooms,” the Dracon repeated as if the Messhuggah had not understood those last words.
The white blood nodded. The lizard followed him out reluctantly.
Once the door was closed, Marduk folded his hands on the desk and looked at him straight in the eye. “Sit down.”
Dagger shook his head. “Just talk.”
The Dracon seemed about to begin a very long speech. Then he raised his head, looking at the darkness beyond the window and the starless sky that hung over them all. “What do the Disciples want from you, you ask me.” There was emptiness in his eyes.
“Uncle?”
Marduk slammed his fists on the desk. Then he gathered his head in his hands. “Why do you do it? You can’t change who you are, don’t you understand? You can’t fight against yourself. You can only choose between the options that life—even the eternal one—gives you. Stop deceiving yourself, or this will drive you crazy. And your madness will last forever!”
“Are you talking to me…or to you?”
The Dracon looked up. “Promise you won’t fight,” he said. “Promise me you won’t make it more difficult.”
Dagger understood everything. He wielded Redemption and was about to strike when a blow hit his head. Darkness embraced him in a storm of sparks.
As everything vanished, he listened to Marduk say, “I’ll take care of your friends myself. Have no fear. They won’t suffer.”
* * * * *
11. In the heart of darkness
Dagger breathed the unhealthy, turbid air.
Marduk held him by the hand as he dragged him up a flight of bumpy stairs, lifting him where one or two steps had been swallowed by the dark.
His head was bursting.
“Oh, are you waking up?” the Dracon whispered as he tugged Dagger through the purple semidarkness. “What’s the use of opening your eyes now? Rest, my son, soon it will be done.”
This is the abandoned tower. It’s like the others, only… Dagger felt his heart progressively slowing as they ascended. He breathed no more and found out he no longer needed it. Everything was still, eve
n the dust in the air, the atmosphere increasingly fetid and moist as they went up, until they came to the door on the top. Marduk did not knock. They were expected.
A voice said, “Come forward. How I’ve waited for you to come…”
Hearing it, Dagger came to his senses and tried to break free, but the Delta Dracon pushed him inside with a kick and closed the door behind himself. Here, blackness was almost complete except for the purple light that lay on the floor, bowing to darkness. In the room, something was altering the rules of nature.
“Marduk, what…?”
“Shut up and kneel!” his uncle interrupted. “Don’t you know whom we’re in front of?”
Dagger was knocked down, the Dracon’s hand on his neck, forcing him to kiss the ground. From there, he could only see two electric-green metal boots under a desk. The mayem armor? he thought. The same the Divine once wore!
“Hey, Marduk, tearing it out of Araya’s hands took you more than expected, huh?” Dagger asked.
“Oh, no more than what you’d think,” his uncle replied. “It was enough to bring the person who had to hide it over to our side. They found a way to convince him.”
“Yeah, them!”
“My sweet creature,” the one sitting in the dark greeted Dagger, with a warm, deep, quiet voice. “Now that you’ve come back, everything is about to be accomplished.”
Dagger was petrified. “Your voice…I know your voice!”
“I think so. Maybe I should tell you, Close your eyes and forget your name, step outside yourself and let your mind go, as you go insane…”
“Aeternus!” Dagger understood. “It’s you, you dirty—!”
“Shut up!” the onetime Delta Dracon said, pushing the boy against the floor with more strength.
“Marduk,” Dag continued, moving his lips against the rough wood. “You betrayed your own blood.”
“Betrayal is a relative concept, son,” the voice in the darkness calmly answered. “It presumes one’s nature is different from that of the enemy, doesn’t it? Instead, Marduk is no different from us now. He’s one of the new proselytes blessed with our sacred blood. If you only knew how many there are here at the Fortress!”
“But why?”
Marduk bent down, and Dag saw only half of his face illuminated by the purple light, the other half shrouded in darkness. “Is it me, or just a shadow that is dancing on the wall?” Half his mouth smiled. “What choice had I left after having lost all the people I loved?”
“You have used his pain against him, haven’t you?” the boy snapped against the darkness.
“Your words are improper,” the latter replied. “What path do you think there is, for you and for us, if not that one leading to the end? I’ve been watching your every move, hoping to see you take the only choice on your own. But you entrusted yourself to all the illusions the Guardians placed in your way, not realizing it was not them fighting for your own good, but us. And we won’t let you walk the path that you’ve chosen.”
Dagger tried to wriggle and moved a hand to Redemption.
Marduk twisted Dagger’s wrist, locking it behind his back. “Be reasonable,” he advised. “Don’t unsheathe your blade against us. You’ve already tested our power. After all, if we disappear into the metal, others will come looking for you until you won’t let us reach Megatherion. You can’t fight against yourself. Never believe you can escape the purpose you were born for.”
“Forced to live forever, we just want to die, to sleep. Nothing more,” Aeternus continued. “And to do it, there’s no alternative but to break the circle. This is why we created you. You could see it as the largest suicide mission in history, and the most sensible. What’s the point of throwing yourself into the arms of death if you know the entire world is still free to live? Especially he who betrayed you and didn’t pay for his crime, and his descendants, the rotten fruit he spread in the world. This is what propels us.”
“I wonder what moves him?” Marduk said, tugging Dagger.
Aeternus laughed. “Your uncle is right, Dag. What is it you hope for, now that you know you can’t die in any other way? Conscious of the higher power that moves you as a puppet in the little theater of existence, why don’t you fight for the eternal purpose, too? Why mortals themselves don’t fight for it? Illusions, my boy, just illusions…the same that you’ve chosen. What joy can birth be if it leads to death? What relief is there in happiness, if it’s the interruption of a greater suffering? Look at the pain around you; this is what you’re fighting for.”
“The enemy is about to attack. I…I have to warn my friends,” Dagger said.
“Your friends?” Aeternus’ voice was sympathetic, not sarcastic. “Dracon Marduk, how did his friends react when they saw the mark on his chest?”
“Oh, they wanted to tear him to pieces and give him to the flames!” the fallen Dracon revealed. “I had to defend you from them, my boy, would you believe it? Let me bring him to safety, I said, uncovering the mark on your chest. He’s become a Disciple and is in cahoots with Crowley, you see? He made him run away. He’s the spy Angra talked about! They bought it so fast as to make me doubt their feelings of friendship. They were bodyguards, after all, just bodyguards…somebody must have already told you.”
“I don’t believe it!” Dagger spat.
“You should,” Aeternus said. “Dracon, was there someone in particular who turned out more grieved than the others?”
“Yes,” Marduk replied. “Erin seemed deeply wounded. You lied to her, my boy, because you were selfish and stupid. She grabbed you by the wrist, planting her nails into your skin because she wanted to take you from my hands and tear you to pieces with her daggers. I saved you from a horrible death.”
Dagger closed his eyes. “You’re lying! You’ve always lied. Why should I believe you now?”
The Delta Dracon twisted Dagger’s arm to show him the wound he was talking about: deep marks, made by fingernails like Erin’s; the imprint of a small hand, also like Erin’s.
Marduk stroked Dagger, whispering, “You’re just like us, Dag. Much more than us, yes, but basically everything but a mortal.” He pushed the boy’s face into the ground. “Believe me! Your friends will try to pierce your heart as soon as they see you again, to exile your soul through the manegarm as they would with any Disciple.”
“It’s life that fears the end,” Aeternus added. “It’s the same law of nature that makes the living afraid of the color and the nauseating smell of rotten meat. They are terrified by death, because deep down they believe they will live forever; that old age and decline is something that concerns everybody else, not them.”
Marduk laughed inches from Dagger’s face. “And what do you want to do, believe you can live? Fool yourself into being different? You’re nothing but death to them, and they won’t leave you time to explain.” The Dracon measured out his words so that they could do more harm. He got his lips to Dagger’s ear and whispered, “They will break your heart, more or less literally. Ash, Ianka, and your whore…now they know who you really are. They won’t have mercy.”
“You have no more choice,” Aeternus concluded. “You must come back to us, your only family, and subject yourself to our will. Now that the Tankars are about to attack, we’ll come into the open and you’ll accomplish our ultimate dream, which is also your dream: to die…”
“…to sleep…”
“…nothing more!”
Marduk drew his sword, as if ready to kill Dagger. “What’s the matter in shaking hands with the great silence, when everything around you is just a fiction that will result in a greater lie?”
“Don’t kill me, not yet. Let me talk to them,” Dagger implored.
“Oh, don’t worry. I did not unsheathe this sword for you,” the Dracon Delta said. “A Disciple acquires his power only once he experiences his human death; then he wears his mortal remains as a stage costume to wander in the world of those who think themselves alive. I have been blessed by their blood. As the final thun
der approaches, I can finally give myself over to my new nature!”
In the faint light, Marduk put his knife to his own throat and sank the blade into the flesh, drawing a vermilion furrow behind his ear, and then across the front. He completed the oval, truncating the carotid arteries with a single swipe. Blood sprayed, abundant, on Dagger’s face and then down to the ground. The Dracon knelt, screaming in both ecstasy and pain, as he immersed his hands in the hot, viscous fluid.
Life left Marduk, and a yellow glimmer lit like a spark in the darkness of his eyes. Though he was dead, he was filled with a new life. “My heart!” he yelled. “It doesn’t beat? It doesn’t beat! AHAHAHAH!” He brought a hand to his forehead, slipping his fingers under the wound to unstick his face from his skull. As if it had been just a mask to his true nature, the skin came off in a mass of bloody filaments, uncovering the underlying muscles, his teeth a blur of horrifying gore in the denuded face.
The red grin of death smiled at Dagger.
“Follow your king, Dag,” Aeternus said from the darkness. “Follow the will of the only one who’s ever wanted you, my sweet creature.”
“Try to be more convincing,” Dagger said, displaying courage. However, his mind only whispered, Marduk…
He remembered the first time they had met, that long-ago day in the ship cemetery, when he abandoned himself to a fatherly figure able to take him away from the horror. Even that was all a lie just to make him get there, to that day, in a trap triggered to perfection. Kugar’s words sounded cruel and fateful, The son of Skyrgal here at the fortress, so close to his father? No, damn it! They must really have a good reason to do it!
“Now everything is arranged,” said the fallen Dracon Delta. “With the god of Balance finally out of the way, the Guardians distracted by a useless war, and every piece in its place, it’s all ready to bring your father—”
“Crowley is my father!” Dagger yelled. “Not Skyrgal! Not…!” He hid his face, crying.
Marduk turned to the dark to laugh with it. “Oh, isn’t he so sweet? Did you hear?”
“Marduk, have mercy on him,” Aeternus said. “Tell him the truth about the man he still calls father. It’s his ignorance about it that prevents him from letting himself go. You should have informed him before, as I suggested. I can’t believe he considers us his enemies. We who created him, who fight to let him achieve his purpose.”
Dagger 2 - Blood Brothers - A Dark Fantasy Adventure (Born to Be Free series) Page 24