Dagger - The Light at the End of the World

by Walt Popester

  “Marduk Nightfall,” the old man’s lips spat. “I realized it was you when I saw the cut on these guards’ throat. I would recognize your clumsy signature even in a battlefield all covered with dead bodies. Is this the way I taught you to kill?”

  “You may not be dead, but you still smell like a corpse, Dad,” Marduk said, turning with sword in hands. “Tell me; did you drink so much in the afterlife to be kicked out even from there? Drunk and disorderly in hell. It would be typical of you.”

  “And you never change jokes, right?” Sannah limped a step forward. “Sometimes I wonder if you really kill with your knife, or if you bore people with your sarcasm until they die!”

  “A little of this, a little of that. I like to vary when I kill. Irony is hereditary in our family. Even your daughter had a lot, remember?”

  “Where’s Aniah?”

  Marduk let his guard down. “Oh. Hear him! So you’re the one asking questions?”

  “What’s going on here, old man?” Dagger asked.

  “Do you know who this guy is, Dag?” The great Mama said, pointing to his son with the tip of his knife. “This is the man who decided to lock you up in this huge prison. It’s him who ordered your mother to take you to this world, and you want to know why? Because he was afraid, like all cowards. I’ve never been afraid of you, not once in my life. Maybe that’s why I’m mad.” He laughed.

  Dagger turned to Marduk, but he had eyes only for his father. He was looking at him with an unconditional hatred, buried for years but not yet extinct.

  “On this world?”

  “Oh yes, it’s a damn long story,” the old man kept on. “You don’t even know. It starts with two fucking gods slaying each other like pigs at the top of a mountain; it continues with an endless series of wars fought at the foot of a fortress; to end with your birth, disgusting abomination!”

  “You’re drunk as always, stop it!” Marduk growled. “Say one more word, and even if you’re not dead I’ll kill you right where you are. I swear it on the dead body of my sister!”

  “Where’s Aniah?” Sannah asked again. Then he listened, finally hearing his son’s words. His face transformed under their eyes, seized by pain. “You said, ‘on the dead body of my sister’?”

  Marduk bowed his face. An howl rose straight from his gut. With a kick, he hurled the desk against the window and smashed it to pieces. From outside came the wind, warmed by the fire that ruled on the neighborhood.

  “Aniah is DEAD!”

  Sannah fell to his knees, resting his hands on the ground. “No.”

  “Oh, you are sorry?”

  The old man hid his face between his hands and the floor. “How did it happen?” he asked in a small voice.

  “What do you care?” his son replied drily. “You’ve been here all this time, not saying anything. How could you? How could you make us lose all these years?”

  Sannah clutched his head in his hands. “You dirty shitface!” he replied, raising his face and looking at him with his bloodshot eyes. “You come to lecture me, now? You, who sent her here to deprive herself of that one being who could mean something to her? You, who treated her as a pawn in your chessboard, an expendable pawn for your fuckin’ Equilibrium! Yes, oh yes, how brave you were! Now tell me how the fuck did my daughter die!”

  Marduk took umbrage, suffering every word like a blade in his belly. “After being forced to disown her son, Aniah gave herself over to a slow madness,” he revealed. “For twelve years, she remained locked in her room, refusing to eat, talking by riddles. I often thought she was just making fun of us to protect her secret but sometimes, looking into her eyes, I was convinced that pain had really made her crazy. Only on her deathbed, reduced to little more than a skeleton covered with skin, she confessed having hidden him here. Of course, she left out the small detail to have entrusted her son to you. It must have been her last left-handed shot. ‘I abandoned him to a man who will amaze you’ she said. Then, grinning, she was dead.”

  “Why only now? Why she didn’t tell you before?”

  Marduk shook his head. “I always had the feeling she knew about this story more than us,” he said. “Of course, she wanted to keep him away from the Fortress as long as possible. According to Dracon Araya, now that the boy has turned thirteen they can smell his blood. He’s no longer safe here either and she knew it. She had read all the prophecies concerning the birth of his son, at first hand in the temple of Adramelech. His blood is now flowing.”

  Dagger shuddered and turned to Sannah. “What?!” he asked, but got no answer. He turned to Marduk.

  “Sannah. We have to take the boy away from here before it’s too late, then we will be able to accuse each other of all the wrong choices made along these years.”

  “I think it’s already too late,” a third voice said. Only hearing it, Dagger shivered. Sannah jumped to his feet and all three turned to the door blades in hands.

  Prefect Mawson took a step forward, wrapped in his inseparable black cloak. He stopped in the doorway and planted his full attention on Dagger. “Here you are, little brat!” he said. “You have been more stupid than I thought, apparently!”

  “And who the fuck is this now?” Marduk asked, putting himself in front of Dagger.

  Mawson looked up at him. “You’re the one who killed my guards, right?” he asked. “Damn, you’re good.”

  Marduk shrugged. “Thank you. It’s always good to hear you’re good!” he answered. “Years and years of hard training finally make sense, though you could train your guards a little better! Damn, they didn’t even move!”

  Sannah stood beside him. “Be careful, son. This one likes to play dirty. Anyway, to me you looked clumsy all the same.”

  “Leave the boy to me and I’ll let you walk away.” Mawson said. “He’s too important for me!”

  “Oh, really?” Marduk replied. “You know… instead, I made my way through all this shit just to come and see how he was getting by. Be a good boy, whoever you are: go back into the asshole you come from. Maybe I’ll let you go with your head still on your shoulders. If I want to.”

  “It was you who ordered all this, wasn’t it?” Sannah asked.

  The prefect laughed heartily, nodding. “Oh yes!”

  “But why?”

  Mawson pointed Dagger. “Him,” he replied. “I know everything about him. They taught me. And I know everything about you too: Guardians of Golconda; temples in the desert; a dark knowledge written in blood and gods exiled from their bodies. Oh yeah, they told me many things about the wicked world you come from. I am in the Divine’s service, I’ve always been. I am his representative in this world.”

  “The Divine?”

  “It’s the way they call Crowley, now,” Marduk murmured.

  Sannah turned toward his son, eyes wide open. “And Crowley is still alive?”

  “I don’t think it’s the right time for a summary, Dad.”

  “Well. After the soul of Skyrgal had been torn from his body, his limbs were still moving,” the prefect said. “At least, those that remained. I don’t know if ‘alive’ is the right word. For sure, now he’s not a friend of yours.”

  “And now, as this shit on two legs is saying, he’s here,” Marduk pointed out. “Perfect.”

  “Oh, and not just him,” Mawson replied. “Gorgors also set foot on this world, searching for the boy.”

  “And how? How, if we hold the only link between the two worlds?!”

  The prefect laughed. “Well, this is our little secret. You’ve been stupid and predictable. Your only luck is that no one knew where the boy was, not even yourself. But now, his divine blood is taking over the human one and Gorgors are on his trail. The countdown for your extinction has finally started.”

  Marduk bowed his head to the side. “Nice metaphor,” he said. “I’m impressed. Then you are not just an ignorant, asshole, crazy bloody wanker placed halfway into the social pyramid of this sewer, between the nobles who rule it, and the rats that wallow in it.”


  In response, Mawson pulled the sword from under his cloak. “There are many things that you don’t know,” he said. “And that probably you’ll never know. In the next life, try to be more vigilant.”

  Sannah yelled. Before his son could stop him, he snapped against Mawson. The latter did not even look at him when, with a single blow, he ripped his belly. The old man fell to the ground with guts in his hands, drenched with his blood and stool.

  Dagger found himself transfixed. The smell. He knew well the smell of a gutted man. Many spoke of blood and guts, hands trying to get them back inside, but it was the smell that made the difference between a man with an open belly, and another who was dying of any other violent death. The penetrating reek of shit.

  “Kill the bastard…” the old man managed to spit out.

  Marduk threw one of his daggers, but Mawson repulsed it with the sword, laughing, amused.

  “Come here. My collection misses a Dracon.”

  “Some people collect just about anything,” replied the Dracon. Then every shade of mockery was gone from his face. He gripped his sword with the right hand, a dagger with the left one, and faced his opponent. The two began to walk around the room, staring at each other, both waiting for the other one to expose himself first.

  “You know, it is an honor to duel with the great Marduk. The Divine told me a lot about you and your legendary humor. Always present, even in the most difficult times.”

  “Yeah, like when you’re forced to deal with the great… sorry, what’s your name again?”

  Seized by the sharp tongue of his rival, Mawson turned his back to Dagger. The boy knew that Marduk had calculated that too. He reached for a long shard of glass, praying Ktisis not to fail him once again. He waited for the right moment, then snapped.

  The prefect dodged him nimbly, laughing at his innocence as he pushed him to the ground with a kick on the back. But the trap had worked perfectly, looking down, the prefect saw that Sannah was not dead as he thought.

  The old man tightened his arm around Mawson’s ankles and cleanly severed his tendons, causing him to ruin on the floor. Then he crucified him, pinning his hands with his knives. The ecstasy was so strong that he completely ignored even the guts that hang out of his belly, as they drew abstract red figures on the black waistcoat of the prefect.

  “This is for Arleb and his children!” he growled , before falling to the ground.

  Dagger knew that his time had come. He planted his knee on the chest of Mawson, crucified to the ground. He brought the shard of glass to his throat, his heart pounding fierce in the middle of his thorax as he watched the prefect trying to escape.

  Terrified.

  “I don’t want to die,” Mawson said. “I cannot! Who will take care of him?”

  “I am Dagger. When you get to hell, tell Seeth it was me who sent you.” And the boy cut. He tore the prefect’s throat and blood spurted on his face in a warm gush. He looked into his eyes as he died. He thought of something important to say, an epic phrase. But time had already run out. Mawson could no longer hear him, because Mawson was dead.

  Funny. He had thought that he would have wasted all his life to carry out his revenge. Instead, it had been far too easy. It had not been worth all that pain. Revenge sucks.

  He turned. Marduk was holding his father in his arms. The crazy old man was still alive.

  “It’s just in your style to be run after all this time and die only once I find you again,” Marduk growled. “Damn you, Dad!”

  Sannah half-blind gaze moved to Dagger, watching him covered in blood from head to toe. “You’ve had your revenge, huh?” he whispered. “It’s not worth living a single day, for revenge, huh?”

  Marduk hugged his father, hiding his face. He would not be observed in that moment. “Why?” he whispered. “Why?”

  In a last surge of fatherly strength, Sannah tried to hit the son with a punch, but only managed to touch him. “Shit, Marduk! Get it over with the whys!” he murmured, with less and less strength. “Ask yourself who, instead!”

  Marduk raised his face. “Who?”

  Sannah laughed. “Who is betraying the Guardians, since the beginning?” he said. “There’s a hole as big… as big as an abyss in your… our fucking Fortress. Who?” Sannah rolled on his side, panting. He stretched out his arm to indicate the shattered glass. “Go!” he said. “And when we meet in Almagard, you’ll tell me who! I’m… curious!” He chuckled softly, then reached out for one of his knives and pressed it against his chest. His eyes watered from the agony. “But first…”

  Marduk paid attention to his last words, “First tell Dagger what a fucking monster he is!”

  The old man closed his eyes and died. Marduk lowered his face. Dagger felt nothing. He had never been bound to the old man if not from simple necessity. He was his roof, his food, his protection from the rest of the world. A sadistic bastard who never missed the opportunity to vent his violence against them. He spat on the ground and turned to the flames, now licking the threshold of the guild. They were gaining strength. Every escape was blocked, except for one.

  “You know these channels,” Marduk said, still bent over the body of his father. “You’re the only one who can lead us to safety. Do it, and I promise I will give you all the answers you need. If we’re lucky, we’ll be home soon.”

  “What home?” he asked.

  Marduk grinned through his tears. “Golconda. The place where we all belong. Perhaps you too!”

  * * * * *

  5 . Shadows of a moonless night

  When he found himself immersed in the red and sticky water, Dagger distinctly felt the pungent stink of blood. The fitful light of fire made the lifeless faces of his old companions emerge from the dark. Eyes wide open; half-closed mouths; faces torn by the impact against the wood spikes. Not all of them had been killed immediately, since many had found all the time to take their hands to the sharp sting sticking out of the abdomen, or chest, trying to break free from cold grasp of death. It seemed that with the older ones Mawson’s guards had had fun a little longer.

  Even Marduk was watching them with an expression of disgust and pity on his face. “Look at that one, for Ktisis sake! They took his…”

  “I’ve seen,” the boy cut him off.

  “Let’s go, dammit! With what kind of monsters did we populate this world?”

  Dagger led the Dracon away from that hell.

  Fire was getting stronger, now that the wind was solemnly announcing the coming of a storm. Most of the guards were already back on the mainland, but a few still lingered among the wrecks to complete their methodical work of death. Their wild cries occasionally crept in the subdued whispers of the flames, among the barking of dogs and the approaching thunders.

  They stopped just in time to avoid being caught by five guards, intent to administer justice to an old man. They had thrown him into the quicksand after having chopped off his hands and feet. Now they were enjoying his pathetic attempts to stay afloat, as the blood mingled with mud all around his body, fully tattooed with figures of pagan gods.

  “Where are your gods now that you need’em, eh? Invoke Ktisis, mot’fucker! He alone can save you!”

  They laughed, drunk with the satisfaction of the man’s fear of death. Then the quicksand reached up to his chest, refusing to claim the rest of the body. The old man stood half among the living, half already swallowed by the kingdom of the dead. Agonizing, he looked into their eyes without saying a word. Beyond the wall of intoxication, the guards didn’t find it funny anymore. Using a stick, they pushed him down, away from what remained of their humanity.

  Dagger and Marduk went back on their way. They passed an endless series of wrecks, dodging innards, bumping with their feet the severed limbs and broken heads that guards had thrown into the sea. Then they found themselves surrounded by a surreal silence, broken only by the agonizing cries of a prey that had been smoked out. Swimming along one of the canals, that now were broader and deeper, they finally
reached the northern edge of the neighborhood, where a cliff marked the gross water basin of the cemetery. They clung to the rocks, pulling themselves onto a dry surface to observe the sad show. Fire was spreading faster and faster. Only now, the last guards were retreating to the mainland, pouring pitch as snails do with their slobbering trawl. The youngest and most inexperienced among them was trapped by the fire. Their companions were not striving to save them; they laughed heartily as they watch them burn alive. They were drugged. All of them. He could tell by the sound of their laughter, he saw it in their eyes.

  He turned away, exhausted by that overdose of death, but it seemed that problems had only just begun— a few feet away the sea was giving its worst to himself, giving birth to waves so high that they jumped over the cliff and washed away the blood and mud from their faces. The guards were still stationed on the bank, to make sure no one came out of there alive.

  “There is no way to escape,” Dagger concluded. “Neither by sea nor land.”