“Dagger? Dag!” Warren pulled him up by the shoulders, wrapping him in a cloak.
“What happened?”
“They wanted to take advantage of the battle’s chaos to revive both Skyrgal and Ktisis. Only they didn’t evaluate a possible problem.”
“Which one?”
“Me!” the white blood replied with satisfaction.
The son of Skyrgal got up and took a few uncoordinated steps, only to find himself on the brink of the big hole in the wooden platform. Looking out, he saw the pool of blood beneath them, Skyrgal’s blood, petrified in hundreds of waves and evolutions where the bottom of the left ventricle was eternally contracted to push it upward.
Warren walked beside him. “If your blood had come in contact with that, your father would have risen again. We came so close this time.”
“What would happen then?”
“You, that is Ktisis reborn, would get out of here to see Skyrgal slowly coming back to life inside his body; then, we can rightly say the end of the world.”
At those words, the boy turned around and saw Erin lying on the ground on her side. She had a wound in the middle of her chest, where the sword had penetrated to eradicate Skyrgal’s soul. “Did you kill her?”
“No,” War replied with a bitter note in his voice. “Apparently, she’s an ancient and immortal creature. Don’t worry: I’ll take care of her, and I will take your blood to safety. Marduk and Aeternus managed to escape. Recover your clothes and run after them!”
“How did you stop them?”
“Who? A human larva without his armor and your uncle? Skyrgal was the key, the one to hit first. He was focused on you and concentrating on the ritual until he found himself with a blade through his chest. When I held the Sword, with the god’s soul back into it, the fallen Dracon knew they could do little.” He sat on the edge of the platform with his legs dangling just a few feet from the petrified blood. “They killed my parents. They tried to take me, too, but Araya adopted me to protect me. He taught me how to lock my mind and trained me in many interesting things in the short time we had. When he helped me infiltrate the small conspirators who gathered in this body, I quickly realized there was something else, that the problem was elsewhere. Then, I was on Marduk’s back.”
“Why him?”
“I didn’t feel his fear,” Warren replied. “And I don’t trust those who, on the eve of an impending disaster, keep on telling me that everything will be fine, who show no insecurity. There are many things you learn from Messhuggahs, like looking beyond.”
“This is why they are all crazy.”
“Maybe. And you, Dag, are you genius or insane?”
“I’ll find out some other day. How do I get out of here?”
“Have a guess…” The white blood winked at the short tunnel that passed through the heart and the trachea of Kam Karkenos, introduced in his esophagus and then down into the visceral depths. “I’ll stay here for a while. I think I deserve a break.”
* * * * *
12. The final thunder roaring
The gate to the portal had been thrown down and from the tunnel beyond poured Tankar after Tankar. They died fast and by the hundreds above, below, and against the merciless traps set by the Poison Guardians. They were heedless of the flames, explosions, and acid that rained down from everywhere. Yet when he got back to the Glade, Dagger understood what Araya meant with They have numbers on their side: a river of titanic bodies and shiny blades, the desert wolf-men marched on the corpses of their fellows, only to die at the foot of the high wall that defended the Guardians. Soon a ramp made of dead bodies allowed the beasts to get closer and closer to the top.
Moving the gloves against the Guardians, the warriors waiting for their chance to die screamed fearsome battle choruses: “Sada machakara uru! Kuru! Ratta Mahatta ta uku, turu! AAAHAHHH! Kana masakara horo! Koro! AAAHAHHH!!! Kampfar! Kampfar!! Kampfar!!!”
“We will not fall back!” one of Olem’s Faithful Twelve shouted to his comrades. “We will not break!”
A rash Tankar jumped to grab the top of the wall. The flash of a blade, and his hands were amputated as a reward. The beast fell onto his dead brothers, allowing others to climb on top of him. More fell, heads and limbs separate from bodies, building the pile of injured and corpses, until the first man-wolf could set foot on the wall and drive his sharp glove in the belly of a Delta. As the traps still claimed victims, in a dance of fire, the beasts conquered the wall, moving the first decisive step toward victory. The Guardians would not win that battle, not this time, not against this enemy. Everyone knew it, and yet being sure of losing was not a good reason to stop fighting. It was written in their blood, so they waited for Tankars on the ground, forming a human wall to block the advance.
Raising pointed stakes, the Guardians of the second row created a long phalanx against the wave of the beasts. Many died, but others climbed on their impaled corpses, immediately countered by the men of the Fortress. It was numbers against organization. War’s brutal butchery was given voice in a roaring song of screams, shouts, and metal blades tearing flesh. Hands wielding the swords fell beside paws wearing clawed gloves. Blood rained as death played in crescendo its symphony of devastation.
Dagger grabbed Redemption. In the corner of the eye, he saw Olem fighting side by side with his Faithful, spreading death with his huge blade. He saw Ianka rage against both dead and living Tankars, dismembering bodies into heaps of muscle and fur dripping with blood. He thought there was still something to fight for and someone who wanted to do it at his side, but that illusion was immediately swept away. He found himself on the ground, knocked down by the wing of a Cruachan. He turned back and saw that Marduk was riding it.
“There you are, little thug!” the Delta Dracon croaked behind his dead-skin mask, before shaking the reins and pouncing on him again. Dagger stood up and waited for him, blade in hand, but Olem interposed himself in the beast’s trajectory aiming at it with his sword.
Marduk held back the winged steed. “What the fuck do you think you are doing?”
“Go on your way! Dag belongs to the Fortress now! And even I!”
The fallen Dracon gritted his teeth, pointing his finger. “You dirty traitor! We did what you asked for, and you repay us like this?”
“Go to your master and tell him he won’t have him, too! Tell him I made my choice and my choice is FUCK YOU ALL!”
Marduk dug his knees into the sides of the Cruachan, pushing it to the right and left, undecided. “Shit!” he yelled. Despite the desire to sink its claws again into the boy’s body, he seemed to realize he wouldn’t win the clash and flew away, screaming incomprehensible words.
Gorgors arrived on the battlefield, foretold by the blood flowing from Dag’s chest. The shadows sneaked among the fighters, brandishing their gleaming Hvis scimitars, severing throats with pride.
Dagger felt himself lifted from the ground. The Sword Dracon took him away to the Nightfall crypt. The Guardians’ blades closed to protect them, as Gorgors and Tankars gathered to launch their final, fatal blow. If until shortly before war’s symphony raged everywhere, now a glacial silence lay over everything and everyone.
“Look!” Olem said.
Dag looked up. Hundreds of flaming arrows shot from the treetops behind them, and for a few moments the rocky vault was flooded with light. Even Gorgors rolled their small, red eyes to the sky to admire the sinister show. Shadows and beasts and men were suddenly one—dreamy children taken away from the atrocious spectacle of war before being inexorably returned to it. Flames flared under the feet of the enemy army, in the ground prepared for the purpose by the Poison Guardians. An impressive blaze rose up to the screams of panic and pain. The ardent silhouettes of Gorgors began to run everywhere and the Glade became a huge furnace. Many of the same Guardians found themselves entrapped, but even hell itself proved unable to stop the invasion of the shadows.
“In line!” Olem shouted through the voice of fire. His Faithful Twelve, who h
ad never deserted him, echoed the command.
The Guardians formed a new rank of fragile blades, when Gorgors and Tankars, including those burning alive, charged with all their might. Impacting against the shadows and their hounds, the line of defense was finally broken.
In the middle of chaos, Dagger recognized Ianka again as he planted the sword in the face of a Tankar; brain rained. He nimbly avoided Gorgors when they attacked him, giving all himself to his sworn enemies, until one of the wolf-men charged from behind, knocking him down.
“Ian!” Dag yelled rushing to his aid.
The Tankar took Schizo by the neck, lifting him in the air. He traced four long blood lines on his face, slowly stripping the boy’s cheek. He was about to return the courtesy on the other side, and blind forever his green eyes, when Dagger was on him. The bloody glove fell to the ground together with the forearm, amputated by Redemption. The beast released his grip on his victim to bring his hand to the stump, barking in pain, just in time to get incinerated by the blade plunged into his gorge.
Dag took Ianka away, behind the lines, among the graves at the foot of a stand of trees. He stopped to observe him. The right eye was saved but the left one was out of the orbit, cut in half, and that whole side of his face a hideous blood-mask.
“I have to save you all! I must—”
Dag interrupted his useless screaming with a fist and then another, hoping to have just stunned him. If they believed him dead, they would leave him in peace. He stood up and staggered toward the battlefield, putting a hand to his chest out of which his black blood flowed in a steady stream. He saw a Delta standing with his shoulder leaning against the trunk of a fir tree, motionless and staring at the flames.
“Save yourself!” he yelled.
The Delta seemed to turn around, but it was only an illusion: the body fell to the ground turning on itself, a Hvis blade stuck in his back. Dagger froze. He heard a ravenous laugh and looked up. Marduk was watching him, crouched on a branch.
“Finally!” he yelled through the half burned dead skin mask of his own face.
“Dag!”
The boy turned just in time to see Olem throwing himself in flight, just as Marduk jumped on the attack. He felt dragged to the ground until he banged his head against the tree. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself face to face with his teacher…whose blood dripped against his cheeks.
“No,” he whispered, but only the triumphant cry of Marduk answered him, as he took the blade out from the back of the Sword Dracon. It had gone through his whole body, injuring Dagger too. The pain came afterward, when Olem rolled over coughing blood and air in a single, long gurgle. His executioner was still laughing when Dag got up and drive Redemption straight into his trachea. The fallen Dracon was pushed back by the lightning strike, which almost completely separated his head from the neck, leaving it dangling on his back. He put both hands to the blade, now black and off, removing it from the throat and throwing it to the ground. In a panic, he disappeared into battle limping and spreading his filthy blood.
“Run away…only now, you can do it!”
Dagger turned to Olem, who had just spoken, and embraced his weary body.
“Do it fast!” the master continued. Thick and red saliva dripped from his lips. “We Disciples are here just for you!”
The boy looked into his eyes, sensing in those simple words more than they said. He uncovered the Dracon’s chest and saw it: the Spiral, looming on all the people who had driven him in those days of madness. “No!” he whispered. “No! No!! NO!!!” He punched the mark as if, in that way, he meant to delete it.
Olem grabbed him by the collar with his last strength. “Run away from the Fortress! You can’t let Aeternus take you, nor the Disciples…you can’t let my sacrifice be in vain!” A tear of Dagger fell against his face, dissolving the blood and sweat covering it.
“Holly. Why?”
The Dracon grinned. “Why…?” He tightened his hold around the boy’s neck and got him face to face. “If, one day, you were ever to lay down your arms and surrender, do it only at the foot of the greatest illusion…”
“Power? Revenge?”
Olem shook his head. “Love,” he replied. “The only way to be happy is to love, Dag. I made the wrong choice. I believed in life there could be something greater than life itself. Don’t you ever do it. Amaze yourself. Hope. Deserve the beauty of the world that’s shown every day to our eyes, and that doesn’t want anything but our happiness. I couldn’t help following them, when They promised to bring her back to life.”
“Missy? Your Muse?”
Olem eyes stared into space. “I miss you so, little sister.”
Dagger disentangled himself from his grasp and hit him with a punch, bursting into tears on his chest. “No! FUCK YOU! No!”
The Dracon seemed to lose consciousness for a moment, before resting a hand on the boy’s head as if to caress him. From there, Dag could not see the baleful yellow light that had wiped out the human one from the man’s eyes. “When I saw what They had actually done to her, I decided that you would be my Redemption, my revenge,” he said, as his hand gripped the boy’s hair. “You’ll fight to the end to erase the shame flowing in all of us. Promise me! In me and Missy…I’ve saved you for this because only you can give us peace, quell the torment.” When he breathed, Dagger could hear the blood work its way into his lungs. “At least in Almagard I will have my family. At least there, I won’t be alone.”
Dagger hugged him. “Just survive, please,” he whispered. “I need you.”
“I’m already dead,” Olem replied. “And in death, I live again. This is the nature of our curse.” He smiled. “Don’t you think it was taking me a bit too much to kick the bucket? It’s a classic: the guy who dies with the last truth on his lips, and takes hours to reveal them, only to die in the thick of it.” He reached the sword of their father, hidden to his side, and handed it by the hilt. “You already know it doesn’t work this way for us. Penetrate my chest and my body will have the peace it deserves. I’ll live forever in our sword and will follow you everywhere. I will still be the shadow watching over your steps.”
Dagger shook his head. “I can not.”
“Look at the light in my eyes! If you don’t, I will roam the world, still alive as my body falls into decay, eternally regenerated. I’ll never be like the only one who could mean something for me. You won’t allow it. You owe me!”
“No…”
The Dracon seemed to gather his energy to hit him, but he did not. “Crowley. Missy. If they only knew how hard I tried to find my place and satisfy them too, but now life is gone and silence claims every unspoken word. Now there’s only time to say goodbye. Goodbye Dag, my only Blood Brother.”
Dag looked at him one last time. Then he shifted his gaze on Crowley’s sword, that weapon binding their triple destiny. He pointed it on the Spiral in the center of Olem’s chest. “Goodbye, Blood Brother,” he said, laying all his weight on the hilt. He felt the blade sliding along the flesh and breaking the bones, piercing his cursed heart.
The blasphemous life abandoned the Sword Dracon, exhaling in the last breath, as the soul flowed into the metal. His chest, as well as the entire body, soon became made of stone. His face serene. His hands open to grab the last fleeting gleams of existence.
The boy pulled out the sword, glittering of vital energy, and dropped to the ground. He was drained of strength, even the battle around him was not of interest anymore. He rested his head against the belly of Olem, watching the rocky vault in the dancing, red half-darkness given by the flames. Despite all, he found himself amazed. He looked in the face of hostility and found inexplicable beauty in it—that of death, of the end, of the disaster. The sword in his hand was his only sister, now. He used Redemption to etch a notch on its handle, the thickest and longest one, then passed the edge on the palm of his right hand, like the one he had opened the day Seeth had died and that had disappeared after his first resurrection. Now, in his bloo
d, the life and death of the two people who had sacrificed themselves for him flowed together.
He looked at the blood on the silvery manegarm—his and Olem’s, indissolubly united. “I’ll stop them,” he promised, watching the light in the metal. “I will deliver Aeternus and the Disciples to death, then Marduk and all the traitors. I’ll stop Skyrgal forever and, if I can, even myself. This is the promise I make on your desecrated body.”
He stood up and walked around the clash as he watched the Guardians of the Sword and Delta stubbornly attack the Gorgors. The shadows felt him. Sniffed him. They turned one after another, but it was already too late. Dagger walked like a shadow in the night toward the portal, through the flames that rose, heavy with smoke, against the rock sky. Regardless of burns and pain he avoided the corpses of the fallen, as tissue fragments peeled off his body. I won’t be afraid of the light! I won’t be afraid and I will ride the lightning! He stuck Redemption into his right wrist, in the burned flesh, up to the handle. With the tip and a good part of the blade sticking from his palm, for the first time completely wet with his blood, the knife turned into something else. The perception of time and space changed along with it. As when he had danced in the arms of Araya’s mushroom, he found himself isolated from reality as if he were looking through a glass pane.
The Glade was at his feet and the Beast was in the middle, high above the burned tree tops, as high as the Fortress above them all. It had two legs and a pelvis of pure blackness, just like part of the trunk, developed in an obscure parable. It had only half of a jackal’s head, with one red eye burning wild.
Dagger 2 - Blood Brothers - A Dark Fantasy Adventure (Born to Be Free series) Page 27