The Tankar Dawn

by Walt Popester

  “You’re too scared too see, to remember. Sometimes you have to believe that beyond your past you’ll find your way.”

  You close your eyes and listen to the sound snaking between the stars, above and under you in the umpteenth eternal night. You hear again that music without notes and push yourself further. Now the shadows are scared, this is why they’re getting away and thinning out, but soon you suffocate. An electric darkness explodes and pushes you back in the world of the worthless dreams, and everything—everything—is lost again.

  You’re on the ground. “Ktisis shit!”

  That draws a smile on the lips of the lord sitting on his throne. “The thorn in my side was right. Hanoi has freed you from your divine blood, but it was that which held the soul of Konkra at bay. The dog is loose now, and follows a will of his own. Maybe he doesn’t want to remember. Maybe he doesn’t want to go back.”

  “The jackal…”

  “The form with which he’s manifested himself in this world matters less than nothing.”

  “And now? Without the blood of my father, will I watch my body decay piece by piece as it happened to Crowley?”

  Khalifa shakes his head. “The bond with Kam Karkenos was an obstacle to the full realization of yourself. Now you won’t talk with him anymore when you die.” He doesn’t continue.

  “There was a giant but hanging on your lips.”

  “But your mortal body will decay. It will take more time than Crowley, that vile creature. But it will, Dag. This is why it is so damn important.”

  “What?”

  “To remember.”

  That recurring word freezes you again, as you feel drawn toward the boundaries of the dream. “How can I break into that memory if Konkra doesn’t want it?”

  “You must find what’s left of the soul and memory of Ktisis. You must bring it here, in this generator of nightmares. It’s the only way toward the solution of the mystery. Only with Redemption will we put together the pieces of what you were.” He watches you. “Neither words, nor actions…only memories reveal our true nature, the reason behind our every action. Those are the key to get to every mortal or divine being. How deep is the furrow they dug in our conscience, channeling the way we act? A river. Memories are a river, and you can let yourself go with the flow or fight to swim upriver.”

  “Where are you going with this?”

  Khalifa becomes serious. “I? I’ve already reached my destination, because you are here and maybe only now you want to remember. You found something that you loved more than yourself and let it be your ruin, and that of us all. It’s happening again, can’t you see? The fall from grace. The fall, Dag. Nothing ever bothers her. She just wants to love herself.”

  “The light.” You close your eyes trying to grab that memory now that the wall of reason has given in a little more. “If light takes us.”

  The light. The distant light beyond that dark infinity. ‘There’s something beyond,’ you think. ‘But what?’

  The mortal awareness breaks through you once again. A dull sound and the vision fluctuates like the surface of a pond after a stone has hit it.

  “He doesn’t want you here,” Khalifa says as everything shakes. The floor rises and breaks, but you’re not scared.

  You only dream because you’re alive, and you can’t die in a dream. ‘Or maybe I can?’ You whisper, “My sons.” Now you’re rushing more than your host. “Olem said that…”

  “Yeah, yeah…I remember now.” Khalifa smiles. “Erin is beyond your reach, for the time being, but you can save Kugar. You must bring her to Hanoi. He will free your son from the blood of Karkenos just like he did with you.”

  A column trembles. You move before seeing it crumble. The vision fluctuates again. You feel a step away from knowledge but you know that it will never be complete as long as your memory is broken up. This is enough to bring you back to the worthless dream. Now it seems that the Twilight Hall is not shaking anymore. You only hear the viscid snaking of the guts of the crab, which are looking for you. They are destroying everything inside and outside.

  Khalifa is again before you. “Hanoi is the anti-god of Skyrgal,” he says. “He’s hunting for every trace of his existence. This is why I evoked him, that distant day. This is why I threw him against the Fortress.”

  “And he lost against Angra.”

  “Lost? An anti-god never loses and with time Hanoi will get what he has come for. He freed you from Skyrgal’s divine blood. He’s given peace to Crowley, and now he’s walking the world once again.” He leans forward. “Bring him Kugar, if you want to free her from the curse of Skyrgal. Otherwise the child that you put in her womb will open his way through her belly and kill her.” He doesn’t blink as he says, “He will kill her, Dag. You must find Kugar. You must bring her to him.”

  “Here?”

  Khalifa shakes his head. “The Gate at the end of the world, the only one still functioning. Reach it, if you can. There you will face the choice between what you are and what you have been. Make the right choice, Dag. Make it again and forever.” He raises a hand to say goodbye, as the tentacles of the anti-god wrap and tighten your neck. “Who lives in the light will never understand those like us, who belong to darkness. We’re just shadows in his dreams, but this is a dream of mirrors. Lost in a paradox, we’re not here.”

  * * * * *

  6. Noises in the Head

  At the dawn of a new night, Dagger was spat out by the crab and rolled over on the sharp rocks, injuring himself.

  He looked up at Hanoi, silhouetted against the stars under the amorphis arch. His claws were moving. “Did you…wake up?”

  Does the noise in my head bother you? the anti-god said. I fear someone is trying to sedate me, infecting my mind and destroying my body.

  Dagger heard a noise, now slimy, now dry as the creaking of a ship.

  The crab moved eight steps back, walking on the faces of the dead. His eyes went out, his claws closed.

  Are you dying? Dag thought, but soon he realized he was wrong. He feared the situation could escalate fast when something white and big began to come out from the posterior of the beast. He saw the eyes of Hanoi again. They were white and shone in the black sky, reflected on the perfect surface of the arch. Dag had to shield his face to keep looking. Soon the rest of the crab came out of the carapace.

  Is he…shitting himself to the world?

  Hanoi was being born to a new life. He stretched out his gelatinous claws, already covered by the fragments of what, with time, would become his new armor against the horrors of the world.

  Now Dagger could hear his voice more clearly. I am forever immersed in darkness as I turn my eyes away from the sun. The white and shiny beast stood on his feet and slowly walked backward leaving behind the ghost village built on his back. I’m in this world to bring back a certain individual. Until I find him, I’m never going to stop searching.

  “Where are you going?” Dag screamed as he ran. “Tell me! Can you save Kugar!?”

  We all live for vengeance. From father to son, from the cradle to the grave. One day you’ll understand what it means. The voice of the anti-god was getting more and more distant. Find your destiny, and the river will get you there. The river, Dag. The place where you came to this world for the first time. That’s the end of the world. That’s the end of the road.

  Hanoi disappeared along the drained course of water, as if the river was a memory living only in his ancient mind. Silence snaked into the river bed. It soaked the petrified wood and the debris under his feet, and soon it steeped in Dagger too, standing alone in the middle of nowhere.

  Where I came to this world for the first time…he thought.

  His own breath was suddenly unbearable to him. Something had changed inside his body and soul. He heard once again the harmonic motion of the stars, but took care not to go too far with his perception. He brought his gaze back on the comfortable ground under his feet. The helm of Ktisis lay there beside him. It was bruised and deform
ed as if it had just been pulled out of a furnace. He picked it up, but now it was just a useless block of scrap metal which didn’t react in any way to the touch of his fingers. It’s empty, he thought. The part of the soul of Ktisis it housed is again inside me.

  He marched among the broken glasses and the remains of the Gorgors, now putrefying. How long does it take for a Gorgor to rot? he wondered. How long have I been in there?

  He had to put a hand to his eyes when the answer exploded in his head, Three days! Don’t you remember?!

  Those were the acid words of a Gorgor. He felt them inside himself, but they were not screamed or cried out—he visualized a frenetic writing on the black wall of his mind. More engravings appeared as new shadows, hidden in the dark, poured their thoughts against him—angry, crazy scratches, and then bigger letters: the scream of the Gorgor who had first spoken brought everyone back to order.

  Dagger’s eyes were still closed when the shadow quietly asked, Why did you do that? Letters on the wall. Who will defend us from them, now?

  The boy didn’t open his eyes. The new awareness given by the anti-god was enough to see the shadows where they were, hidden in the mute arch of a door or behind a column—small red eyes, deformed mouths under the viscid slimy cracks they had for noses. Yet something was wrong, something wasn’t as it should have been. There was a tear in the fabric of the world that he had not perceived coming there.

  He unsheathed Solitude and walked forward. He felt a sharp pain in his head, pounding to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

  Why did you take him away from us? the writings on the wall were insistently asking, as Dagger advanced leaving the remains of the fossil forest behind. He opened his eyes again, or at least he tried. At every step he took, the wound in the world seemed to get closer. He didn’t know what it was, he only knew it was there and kept him from watching.

  The writing on the black wall was slow and melancholic, now, Why did you take him away?

  “Because Crowley wanted to die, can’t you see?” Dagger said loudly. The mere thought that the shadows could infiltrate his mind sickened him.

  The dark wall was silent.

  “He used me for this purpose, as some kind of last favor I owed him,” he continued. “No, you can’t dig it. Khalifa understood the freedom of a world without gods, and now you can’t accept it. It can’t really be over like this after what Skyrgal has done to you. Give it up. A world without gods is a world where people looks for funnier excuses to kill each other like dogs.”

  The darkness was still silent.

  Ktisis, what was there in the crab so powerful to get me in touch with Gorgors, too? “What do you want to do now? Kill me? Well, do that. It seems like everybody is scratching that itch.”

  He waited with closed eyes for the answer, which was slowly drawn: It’s stupid to kill whom we hate, because if he dies he doesn’t agonize anymore. We prefer to see you run and suffer every day of your impure existence.

  He didn’t understand the nature of the emptiness he felt growing inside him. It was pity, almost tenderness, for the shadows before him. And a bit of nostalgia for his simple and understandable enemies, honest shadows that just wanted him dead. Since he ran away from the world Beyond his enemies had become increasingly complex and subtle, and too often had worn a friendly mask.

  “Never stop dreaming, little black devil. If you have courage you’ll never be weak.” Dagger tried to open his eyes once again, but found it impossible. “Don’t make me waste my time. I’m evil, tired and pissed off.”

  Again the words on the black wall. You’re the one who doesn’t understand.

  Darkness.

  You are like us.

  Silence.

  You insist on living an earthly life, disgusted by gods and mortals alike. Do to us what you want, old man. Do to us what’s needed. Revenge is the only thing that remains to both of us.

  Dagger opened his eyes in two narrow slits and saw them: shadows. Long, humanoid shadows. Three Gorgors sat on the ground before him. Behind them were burning three funeral pyres made with the bodies of their companions. The fetid smoke rose slowly toward the mysteries of the longest night, channeled by the high walls of the gorge.

  He looked around. An obligatory path through the corpses led toward the three Gorgors, but in the ever-present wind he heard the beating of their hearts. There were others hidden.

  “So, someone has survived.” He stopped and grabbed his sword with both hands. He was stunned by the pestilential fumes. “Come on. Cry your sharp squeaks and say hello to my little friend, here.” With eyes shut he charged, Solitude in his hands.

  Only then did he realize that the wound in the world was hidden by the debris under his feet. After a short fall, he touched the hard, cold surface of a metal structure. A cage! He tried to stand up, but a slab of amorphis closed above his head, hopelessly locking him up in the dark.

  “NO!”

  The metal cut him off from the rest of the world, trapping him with the company of his panic. He tried to perceive what lay outside the cage, but his energy seemed to bounce against the walls and fall back on him, knocking him down.

  He got up and tried again. The gusts of vacuum burned him and he had to take cover from himself. His powers came undone. He felt helpless and breathless.

  Warren’s voice echoed mockingly in the most complete darkness. The proposal I made to the lizard shouldn’t be entirely discarded. To lock you up inside an amorphis crate and bury you alive where no one would ever find you.

  He had never thought it could really happen.

  “No!” He punched the cold surface and felt everywhere for a chink, a breaking point, but soon he realized he was inside a perfect metal burial. “No,” he screamed against the suffocating silence. “No!”

  It couldn’t end like that after the long road he had walked. It shouldn’t. He heard the noise coming from outside and pondered. Even though locked up in a cage, he was still in the hands of other living beings…or something like that. Sooner or later they would make a mistake. Sooner or later destiny would offer a breach as it had been for Skyrgal and Ktisis.

  Chaos is my only hope, now, he thought. No captivity lasts forever. That precarious certainty was broken by a cold sound of rings. A sharp cry, and the chains were pulled. He felt pushed down, rhythmically, and finally thrown against the wall to his right. They hoisted the crate out of the ground. That’s a start.

  The footsteps moved away until they became part of the desert’s voice, that vast silence interrupted only by icy and endless gusts of wind.

  The metal lit to his right. An electric shock crossed the low ceiling and the floor replied with a flash of protest.

  He saw someone, and turned. A voice called him and another laughed.

  Dagger used his bare arms to shield himself in the presence of the electric nightmares before him. Leave me alone, he whispered to the smiling, mangled faces thronging to give him the torment. He felt them touch his hips, ribs, his face. He drove them away, he shouted, trying to breathe, he screamed and screamed again. Scars on a face and cut throats, a skinned body and a long sword sticking out of a belly. Scarred lips opened in the void and accused him, For you. All this pain, just for you.

  He waited for a long time in the forgotten gorge, hunted by himself and by fears so vivid they seemed real. Then he heard new, frantic steps.

  Gorgors! You haven’t abandoned me, my sweet enemies. At the other end of that taste of eternity, the shadows were scared. He could almost see them.

  He heard the familiar sound of the chains attached to the crate, and soon that of the metal dragged on the debris.

  Why are you taking me away? To give me to the Disciples, to use me…or just because you’re afraid? He laughed. Are you dragging another stone block to rise a throne of your master?

  None of the Gorgors were speaking now, but he heard their groans when they loaded the crate on a cart. He tried to expand his perception, but the amorphis impeded that once again, burning him.
Not even that could stop the sound of a whip when the cart moved.

  The wind rose proud and cruel. Gusts of sands beat against the metal walls, making them resound in a thousand crystalline notes. The faces of friends and foes emerged from the depths of silence to stare at him, pity him, or remind him that the ruin of their existence was his fault, all his fault. They were his only companions. They would never abandon him until light had taken him too.

  A grate was opened and a black hand tossed a sphere of ensiferum inside. That light, which on any other occasion would have been comforting, became pure agony. He looked around, blinded. The interior of the cage looked blue and compact, with faint wavy, purple shades like a soap bubble.

  A shadow passed behind him. Dagger turned around fast enough to lose his balance, but the dark figure took shelter at the edge of his vision. There was someone with him, and this time it wasn’t a product of his mind. He knew that brutal, animal snout. Yet when he tried to face it, it eluded him. Dagger backed up and touched the metal with his back.

  “Please.” The beast was at the corner, now to the right, now to the left, now again to the right. Dagger threw himself forward and tried to shield the light to make the shadow disappear. The ensiferum rebelled and burned more strongly, so that the light crossed the filthy robe with which he had tried to subdue it. Soon he had to tolerate the monster who was watching him in the dark, and closed his eyes to deny its existence. It’s not here. It’s not here. I’m not here.

  He heard a bark which, maybe, came from outside.

  The procession began a long climb.

  The sphere rolled on the ground, advancing toward Dag.

  “No!” Dagger trudged back toward the bottom of his prison. He kicked it away with a foot, yet the light always came back because of the inclination, or for any other reason it had to torment him. He tried a useless ascent toward the dark, following the direction of the caravan. He broke his nails against the caustic metal and shouted, “Let me out! Let me out, he is here!”