Dagger - The Light at the End of the World

by Walt Popester

  Marduk shook his head. “Never stop fighting!”

  The boy was about to answer, when he noticed two small red lights against the dark wreckage they had just left behind. He saw them disappear and reappear several times, and realized they were two eyes. In addition to those, others soon appeared.

  “What the Ktisis are those?” he asked.

  “Problems,” Marduk replied without looking, as if he had noticed them some time ago. “Problems bigger than all the guards of this Ktisisdamn town. Mawson was right, Gorgors have come to this world and they are looking for you.”

  Dagger could not stop looking at them and thought, for a moment, that those eyes were returning their gaze to him.

  “Do not worry, they’re practically blind,” the Dracon added. “But their sense of smell is infallible and are following the stench of your blood.”

  “My blood?”

  “Yes, but in this sewer they can’t feel it. I think you and this world stink too much even for them.”

  Dagger’s eyes widened. “Stink! Sewers!” he exclaimed. “Of course, the sewers of Melekesh lead right here!”

  Marduk made a crooked smile. “And I suppose it’s our only way out, isn’t it?”

  Dagger merely raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay, boy. Show me the way.”

  They marched on the rocks, careful not to slip on the wet surface and kept a low profile, so as not to make their presence known to anyone, be it man or shadow, that could be on their trail, or waiting in darkness. Soon they saw the great, black circle of the pipe sticking up from the dark bowels of earth, spilling its dense sewage into the sea. Dagger was about to rush toward the longed-for salvation, when Marduk stopped him.

  “Always, look!”

  Just in that moment the boy saw a small light in the dark circle. He saw it moving from top to bottom and then vice versa, several times.

  “Gorgors?”

  “Don’t be stupid! Someone is smoking a cigar in there,” Marduk replied. “Even the sewers are guarded. Well, it was to be expected, no one can get out alive from this hell.”

  “What are we gonna do, then?”

  The Dracon grinned, as if surprised by the stupidity of that question. His hand went to his dagger, but he stopped when the guard lurking in the darkness emerged.

  “Look how them buuurn!” They heard him mumble. He was joined by four other men armed to the teeth, drunk to the bone.

  One of them was holding a nearly empty bottle. “Ktisis almighty, riivenge for all our dead! Ffuck you guilds!” He raised the bottle and emptied it in his guts, surrounded by laughter and curses.

  After that, the gang disappeared into darkness, singing “With a rusty hook we gut’em, got’em! With a dirty knife we cut their throat, and gut’em. And if they yell again we’ll make’em shut up forever, with no tongue and no lips, with no eyes and no ears! Kti-sis! Kti-sis! Flood the world with beer and blood! Kti-sis! Kti-sis! To you we owe our kids and foes! Kti-sis! Kti-sis! Thy will be done! Thy kingdom come!”

  Marduk shook his head. “Three of them are completely drunk,” he noted. “Only one of them seems lucid enough to hold a weapon in his hand, even if he would use it as a stick. One is limping. One visually impaired. They must not be glad to have been sent to monitor the sewers, and got drunk, even if only to better endure this stench. They are well armed, but their coat of boiled leather makes me laugh. I think you can do it by yourself, let’s say, you have a fifty percent chance, if you kill first the less drunk. What do you say, wanna give it a try?”

  Dagger turned.

  Marduk smiled. “Okay, I’ll do it, this time,”

  He stepped up to the duct, climbing inside. It all happened very quickly. Dagger, from outside, did not hear a noise apart from a strangled cry. Before long, he saw Marduk emerge from darkness with a body on his shoulders. He threw it into the fetid waters and beckoned him to come closer.

  In the darkness of the sewers, the stench became unbearable even for him. They left behind the entrance in a hurry and, with it, the light of the flames. As they advanced through the gloom, Marduk occasionally pointed to where the bodies of the other guards were. “There may be others, farther on,” he whispered. “Make little noise, sounds are amplified in here.”

  “I’ve never seen anyone kill so easily in the dark,” Dagger whispered.

  “Well, because you’ve never seen a Delta of Golconda in action. Except for Sannah, of course, but that’s another story.”

  The light behind them soon disappeared, leaving them in complete darkness. Marduk took a small metal ball from under his cloak and rubbed it between his hands, until it emanated a purple light. He lit up his face and looked at him from head to foot. “Everything okay?”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “A ball of Ensiferum,” the Dracon replied. “The metal created by Ktisis, the prime mover of the universe; the one who brought light into Creation when humans did not exist. Well, when nothing existed, in fact, since he existed before anything else. Cool, isn’t it?”

  “Ktisis is the god who gave alcohol to men. To repay them for all the sorrows of life.”

  Marduk looked at him skeptically. “Sannah didn’t taught you anything about him?”

  Dagger shook his head. “On Burzums and Mastodons, on Gorgors, on the Guardians? On Borknagar, the creation of the portal, the Exile of—”

  Dagger shook his head once again.

  “Angra come down to earth, I bet he did not say anything even about your… about Skyrgal!”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, fu—” Marduk bowed his head. “This is really funny. I hate to think about what he taught you in these twelve years!”

  “Oh. To survive.”

  The Dracon grinned. “This won’t be of any use to you, my boy.”

  He said no more. He began marching again and Dagger followed him reluctantly.

  “What did you mean by that?”

  Marduk turned and put a hand over his mouth. “I told you not to raise your voice in here. They’ll hear us!”

  He let him go. Dagger swore to himself, following him into darkness. They suddenly emerged in a vaulted room, connecting the conduit in which they were with other two little ones that there converged to continue their journey to the sea. The bigger one was virtually unused. It could be a good way to go as a dead end, but it seemed that Marduk had no intention to find it out soon.

  “Let’s stop here,” he said. “We have to dry ourselves off.”

  The vault had partially collapsed and, to their right, there was a small beach composed of debris, twigs and dry leaves. Dagger ran ahead and climbed up to a hole in the wall, where he took two flint stones. He got back down and began to beat them one against the other over a pile of branches and leaves, placed at the center of a circle of blackened stones.

  Marduk watched him. “Tell me, this is not the first time you set foot in here, right?” He sat down next to him, taking off his boots and emptying them of the muddy water. “Dag?”

  “As long as you don’t want to speak, don’t talk to me!”

  “What’s this? An oxymoron?”

  “What?”

  “Stop it!”

  He moved him aside, put the tip of his knife on the wood and rubbed it a few times. Fire instantly sprang to life under the boy’s astonished eyes.

  Then the man raised his blade to divide their sight, grinning mockingly. “Yes. We, Guardians of Golconda, know all the properties of the sacred metals. This is a knife Hvis, the metal with which Gorgors kill and light the fires. Or both at the same time. It’s a battle trophy,” he smiled, but Dagger wanted to respect his vow of silence. “In fact, I’ve never figured out how the Ktisis you light a fire with flint stones. It always seemed to me nonsense, only good for novels.”

  “It takes time!”

  “Oh. I’m sure it does,” he added. “What the heck is this place?”

  “The only safe place,” the boy replied, eyes fixed on the flames. “Me and Seeth often ca
me here to hide from guards, when they were running after us. This place saved my throat at least a couple of times.”

  “You ran away in the sewers?”

  “No guard will ever follow you into the sewers. To tell the truth, most of them are too well fed to pass through a manhole.”

  The Dracon looked at him with compassion. “Oh Dagger…”

  “Yes, that’s my name.”

  “What a ridiculous name to give a boy.”

  Dagger tried to punch him, knowing that he could never succeed, yet unable to resist the temptation. Then he hugged his knees with his arms and went back to staring into the fire.

  Marduk put his hand under the cloak, pulling out a small box of carved wood. He opened it, but the pipe that was inside was all soaked with water, as well as the tobacco. “Uhm,” he muttered, throwing everything into the fire. “What a crappy day. In every possible way.”

  Dagger reached back the wall and pulled out a brick, looser than the others, making appear a pipe and some tobacco. He came back to the fire and handed them to Marduk. “This belonged to Seeth, I don’t think she’ll need it anymore. Take it. It’s a gift.”

  “Aren’t you too young to smoke?”

  “Yes, but also for getting us disemboweled in front of a paying audience.”

  The Guardian took the pipe on his hands, turning it on with a firebrand. He drew the first puffs, assuming an expression of utter relaxation. Every wrinkle and scar on his face seemed to melt, rejuvenating him a few years. “Yes,” he said. “Much better.”

  “Oh, I’m glad you feel better,” Dagger said. “Now tell me why the fuck they set fire to half a city to get me! Who is looking for me? What do they want from me? And who are you, to save people who are not asking to be saved!”

  Marduk blew a cloud of smoke and watched it slowly rise into the air. Then he shook his head. “Not exactly the question I wanted to hear.”

  “I’m sorry, I do what I can.”

  “You have the irony of your mother, you know?”

  “I’ve never known her!”

  “I KNOW!” Marduk cried. He rested his forehead against his fist, pulling a new, nervous puff from Seeth’s pipe. It looked like he wanted to say nothing more, then he broke off, “I know, Ktisisdamn! You’re just a boy all covered in blood, left alone in the cold of night, forced to take refuge in a sewer to survive! Your tired eyes have seen it all. Your hatred is blind. You are hungry. You are alone.”

  “I know my life. It was me who has lived it. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “You know? What do you know? This life is an illusion for you, no more pleasant, nor real, than a nightmare. It’s a cover, you could say, have you at least figured this out?”

  Dagger sat down. “A cover? And for what?”

  “You are the son of a god,” Marduk simply answered. “The son of a god banished from my world at the dawn of time. In your veins flows his cursed blood, the one his servants need to bring him back to life. Tadà!”

  Dagger kept silent, bowing his head to the side. Then he smiled.

  “The son of a god,” he repeated. “Well. That’s not shit you hear every day!”

  The Dracon laughed. Even Dagger laughed. Then Marduk grabbed him by the collar and took him face-to-face, to look him straight in the eyes. “Listen to me!” he growled. “Everything you thought was real or plausible in your life is going to be swept away, like the carcass of a rat in a sewer! Your fears are about to become deeper and darker. They will soon corrode you from the inside. There will be no more room for anything else! You will be denied all hope, even that stupid illusion, completely human, that one day things will get better despite all the contrary evidence! If you think you have been unlucky until now, wait some more, the worst part of eternity is just about to begin!”

  “Take it easy, big boss!”

  “It’s going to get worse at every breath, at every heartbeat, and every step you take will drag you more and more toward the abyss to which you belong. You’re not ready for truth. It would be foolish to believe otherwise! But all too soon you’ll realize how deep is the sea of shit in which you’re drowning! What good would it be to explain something to you now? Explain who the shadows are? Who is looking for you? Where you are from? Who created you! No, it would not help. Now there’s only one question you need to ask. Ask it, dammit!”

  “What question?”

  “Oh, the one you’ve asked yourself any given night of your life, before going to sleep, under a gray sky, in this sewer, or in the guild where Sannah brought you up like a beast! Every night the same question, I’ll bet my soul. The soul I’ve lost in these last thirteen years looking for you!” He kept on looking at him straight in the eye, digging deep into his consciousness.

  “Why was I born?” Dagger replied, almost in a whisper.

  “Yes. Why!”

  “And what do you know about that?”

  The Dracon frowned. He let him go, grabbed his pipe and went back to smoking.

  “Too much,” he said after a while. “Too many dark matters. Just know that you’re not the only one who has cursed the day you were born. Nothing will be clear to you now.”

  “You already said that, yet everything is clearer than you think,” Dagger got up to leave. “You’re just a crazy old man, and I’m crazier than you to stay here and listen.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out of here. Anywhere. I’ll be fine. I’ve always been.”

  “Stop!” Marduk demanded.

  Dagger stopped—certainly not for the peremptory Dracon’s order. He felt something mounting inside of him, and this time it was not mere anger. A hammer slammed against his chest, a piercing pain that took possession of his every nerve ending, numbing his mind. He put a hand to his sternum and felt that the mark had become swollen. Pregnant. His body was shaken by a powerful beat that was not of his heart, then another and another one. He looked at his fingers and saw that they were stained with a slimy and black blood that was not his. He felt it running down his belly, his legs, all the way to his ankles. He tried to stanch the strange wound but the mark opposed him as it kept on spitting more and more blood. He turned to Marduk, showing his dirty hands and pleading help only with his eyes.

  The Dracon jumped to his feet, two daggers already in his hands and the pipe still in his mouth. “Fuck!” he spat. “Gorgors are here!” He put out the fire with his feet and dropped the ball of Ensiferum to the ground, leaving the ambient bathed by its ghostly purple light. He beckoned him to come closer. This time, Dagger found nothing to object.

  “Stay here,” the Dracon softly murmured. “Your blood is calling them.” Then, arms in hand, he went back into the dark belly of the tunnel from which they had come out.

  Dagger stood next to the fire embers, unable to do anything, now that blood was no more coming out drop by drop, but in a steady trickle. Pain stiffened his every limb. He had to muster all his strength to breathe, when he felt his heart contract a last time and then cease to beat, replaced by the pulsing of the mark. An intimate, powerful roar that shook all his body. And his memories. He felt sticky sand on his skin. He heard terrible screams of pain exploding in the darkness. He smelled the stench of death. Now, he could hear in his head, words of an unknown language spoken by a hostile voice. Then again the pain, again the hammer blow on the chest.

  “I’m fucking dying here!” he hissed and put his hands around his neck. “I’m… dying… here!” He realized that everything was lost, when he heard an evil hiss behind him. He turned. Two red, small lights appeared in the darkness of the abandoned duct. He was sure that those adverse and killer eyes were looking for him. Just for him.

  “Who are you?” he whispered. “Will you at least tell me, before you kill me?” He felt their thoughts were in touch. He experienced its fatigue at the end of a long search, its urgent need to kill. To kill him. For what purpose, he could not see. He grabbed the dagger Marduk had given him and pointed straight in front of his eyes. Sparks of
blue light walked its entire surface, going down his arm. He got back in possession of his body, and pain disappeared. The blade was giving him new strength, he knew. It calmed down the evil within.

  “Come forward, whatever you are!” he said with a voice barely recovered. He heard no response but a step in the sewage, then another and another one. The steps came nearer and nearer, until a shadow was born from darkness, to attack him with his long sharp claws. Dagger instinctively dodged and sliced through the air, missing it. Now the shadow had the Ensiferum light at its back and could be distinguished from darkness, it was not something that belonged to his world. It was a being without meat or skin, a materialization of nightmares. Light came through the membranes of its body, overshadowing the sharp bones and the deformities of the internal organs. He could feel its breath and its atrocious thoughts. He was scared, but he held his nerves and, when the shadow attacked, he set off again, bent to the ground, springing forward as he would with any jackal of the Three Galleons. He felt the blade sink into the non meat, pierce the jelly belly making the unclean and smelly blood come out. He smiled when he heard the creature scream for terror, and felt his pain when he threw it to the ground and hit, hit, hit, struck by its last thoughts. The black blood mixed with the sewage, sliding on the bare stone, blow after blow. The beast was still writhing in pain, when Dagger pulled the knife from its womb to stick it into the neck. He heard its deaf cries of agony bubbling out of the cut throat, as it raised its hands to Almagard and tried to scream. Then the cries waned and the sewer fell back into its rotten silence. A deafening silence.