Dagger - The Light at the End of the World

by Walt Popester

  In the circle of light, Olem inserted a sword in the neck of a Tankar, leaving him alive long enough to scream at him, “Yes, you’re dying! You’re dying bastard, and it’s me who’s killing you! Go tell the Overgods that you’re my Redemption. I’ll come later!” He turned the blade so that he would suffer more, then slipped it off to decapitate him with a single blow.

  The Tankar’s head rolled on the ground to the feet of Moak, kneeling with his hands wrapped around the neck of a Gorgor. Scattered all around them were the broken chains, the dismembered bodies and broken heads of the other eleven Gorgors, a Tankar and a Guardian.

  “Three against thirteen. We’re getting better,” Moak pointed out. He let go the lifeless body of the shadow and shoved a knife in his head.

  Olem threw down his sword and turned to the dead Guardian, lying on the ground. No emotion transpired from his face. He bent over him and ran a hand over his eyes, closing them forever. “Rest in peace, blood brother,” he whispered, his lips moving in a silent farewell.

  He has some glimmer of humanity, after all… Dagger thought.

  Then the Dracon stood up. He pulled back the junk of Gorgors with a kick and retrieved his sword, which the shadows had brought with them, considering it of some value. He caressed the blade, as if touching the face of his daughter, and said, “I’m sorry. I promise no one will ever touch you again.”

  “We’d better get moving, Holly,” Moak interrupted.

  “Don’t call me that. Only Aniah could call me that.”

  “Ktisis!” Moak put a hand to his shoulder, watching it covered in blood. “I just need a vacation.”

  The Dracon looked around nervously. Only then did he notice their minute figures hidden in darkness. He instinctively pointed his recently regained sword and “Come on, there’s something for everyone!” he boomed.

  “Give it a rest!” Dagger and Kugar screamed with one voice.

  Olem watched them advancing inside the circle of light, assuming on his face an unreadable expression that could have been either happy or angry, relieved or shocked to see them again. He lowered his sword and turned to Moak with a grin. “Look what the cat dragged in!”

  Moak shook his head. He did not seem happy at all to see them. “What are you doing here? In this moment, you should be en route to the portal, not in the Ktisisdamn wolf’s den!”

  “The forest is teeming with Gorgors, master,” Kugar replied. “They would have smelled him before dawn.”

  Olem nodded in understanding. Then he moved his arm in a flash and took her by the neck, lifting her off the ground. “So you thought it wise to bring him here!” he growled. “Without even giving them the trouble to hunt him down. A perfect plan!”

  “I… could not… do anything… else!” the girl muttered, clinging to Dracon’s forearm not be stifled.

  “Leave her, asshole!” Dagger roared.

  “You, you know how important you are?” Olem precised, talking to him while still looking at Kugar. “Do you think it’s all a game? Do you think—?”

  Moak froze Olem with his eyes. The Dracon let her go.

  Kugar put her hands around her neck, breathing heavily. “You… wanted to kill me?”

  “If I had really wanted, you would not be here asking such a stupid question!”

  Dagger stared at Olem. “I won’t be safe even at the Fortress,” he said, with no inflection in his voice. “I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get there if I were you. The enemy is in front of us just like behind us. No matter whether we go forward or backward, we still have to fight. But now we have a chance to see what’s at the bottom of all this. We need to know!”

  Olem froze.

  “He has a point, ” Moak added.

  The Dracon turned to face him. “Have you also gone insane, now?”

  “To see what awaits us at the end of this cave system is the only good thing we can pull out of this whole damn situation,” Moak continued. “And you know it too. You’re not a fool, Olem. You’ve never been. Don’t act like one.”

  “I am the Dracon in here!” Olem cried. “I make the decisions, not a Poison Guardian brought up by the fuckin’ lizards!”

  The echo dispersed itself in the giant cave. Moak looked into the Dracon’s eyes, impassive. Something horrible would have been said or done if one of them had not taken a step backward. Dagger realized that a long friendship had bounded the two Guardians for a long time, when he heard Olem pronounce words not made for his mouth, “Forgive me, friend. It’s just that… it doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.”

  “No, it’s not good,” Moak allowed. “But it’s still an idea, and it’s the only one we have. Trust him, as you once trusted his mother.”

  The other one did not answer. His mother, Dagger thought, Olem was bound to him because of that shadowy figure, shrouded in mist and oblivion that had given birth to him.

  “Pick up everything you may need,” Moak resumed. “Maybe we won’t get back to this place. Not alive, at least.”

  Dagger advanced among the corpses. The sole of his right boot, covered by the oily layer of Gorgor’s blood, attacked and detached itself from the floor in a sticky noise. “How did you surprise them?” he asked.

  “They gave us their back,” Moak simply answered. “They were distracted by your smell. When they turned all together, it was already too late.”

  Kugar picked up the sword of the dead Guardian, preferring it to the Tankar’s glove. Their eyes met for a moment, and then Olem stepped on the edge of the precipice on top of which they were. Everybody watched him, silhouetted against the dark.

  “What is there, beyond?”

  Olem did not answer right away, and then said, “Come and see it by yourself.”

  Dagger went beside him and looked down, only to retract all a sudden. He clenched his fists to quell the chills and dizziness as he tried to look out again. A chasm, immense, opened at their feet. Its unusual shape suggested that it had not been opened by nature’s hand, at least not the same that had generated the rest of the world. It had the conical shape of a perfect spiral, as if a hole opened in the bowels of the earth and a helix of stone had constricted around it. On the bottom of the vortex there was a light, red and gloomy, too far away to understand what it was generated by. Long, endless stairs, carved out of one of the spiral’s arm, brought down.

  “To the light at the end of the world,” Dagger whispered.

  The light at the end of the tunnel had never proved to be anything good since that story had begun, he thought. He knew that even that would be no exception.

  Olem outstretched an arm to stop him, but he dodged and began to descend. Everyone followed him. They went down and down, spinning around and around the abyss, down in the vortex, until they lost their sense of space and time. They did not talk. They walked. Dagger felt a growing sense of relief as he approached the Light. It broke up fears, eased the tedium of fatigue and hunger. He felt his heart freed from a burden of which existence only now he became aware. They went down and down to the end, until the last step before the void. Another one, and they would have been swallowed by the Light. Or the dark inside it, because only now that he was so close, Dagger could see that at the exact center of that pure light was a circle of sheer darkness, obscurity made substance.

  “What crap is this?” he whispered.

  Olem slammed a fist against the rocks. “The end of the Guardians,” he answered. “The end of our world and of our eternal task. Of everything.”

  “The Light that comes from darkness,” Moak added. “The matter generated from nothing. This is a portal, Dag. A fracture in the great All, the break point in the eternal equilibrium of Creation.”

  “A second portal,” Kugar specified. “Opened by Gorgors and on which we have no control. Here’s how did they get here. This world is not our secret garden anymore.”

  “And where does it lead?”

  Moak nodded. “There’s only a way to find out.” He said no more, and took a step into the voi
d, getting swallowed by the darkness into the light. Caught off guard, Olem joined him fast, followed by Kugar. Dagger looked at the Portal one last time, far away at his feet, then he let himself fall forward.

  He felt buffeted by violent and opposing forces of gravity, swallowed by darkness and finally spit in plain, blinding light. He found himself rolling on the ground, in an environment where air was hot and muggy and it was difficult even to breathe. He tried to get up, but stumbled and fell to his knees as the world continued to twist and turn.

  The strong light still prevented him from opening his eyes.

  “Where are you? Where am I?” he asked.

  “It’s over!” said Olem’s voice, somewhere. “Skyrgal be cursed, take him up!”

  It was hot in there, very hot, and he felt suffocated. Kugar helped him to his feet and Dagger clung to her arms. He opened his eyes in a crack and saw the shiny vortex from which he had emerged, parallel to the floor. Its only view sickened him. Opening his eyes once and for all, he realized they were in an ambient totally different from the one they had just left behind. Two rows of colossal sandstone columns lay in front of him, as far as eyes could see, supporting a ceiling high enough to hide itself in his own darkness. Small water drops fell against his face, because that place, although closed, was so broad it had its precipitation. It was not built by mortal beings, he thought, or at least not for mortals. When he saw that some columns were carved in statues depicting anthropomorphic creatures, of which he could not see the head, high as they were, he felt the anxiety of a man in front of his avenging god. When he noticed the symbol on their chest, fear took over concern. It was the same mark at the center of his sternum.

  ∞

  “I’ve already been here,” he softly said. “The smell of this place, of this stone, is engraved in my memory.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Kugar murmured.

  “You know where we are, right?”

  “Come on,” Olem ordered. Everyone followed him.

  They walked between the columns, under the hidden gaze of the ancient gods that were sculptured among them.

  “Yes. I’ve been here before.”

  “This is where you were created, Dag,” Kugar explained, trying not to be heard by the two Guardians ahead. “This temple is your home.”

  Dagger squeezed his eyes, in the attempt to sweep away the fragments of memory that were trying to make their way to the surface of his consciousness. Farther away, one of the statues had lost half of its head, fallen shattered to the ground. As if emerging from the floor, a giant eye now seemed to look just at him, giving him the welcome back. He found it still hard to breath and he constantly turned, listening to voices from the darkness calling him in a language that one time, he was sure, he had known. He heard his name, his other name, Konkra, echoing among the columns and the statues.

  Something happened here! he thought. Something horrible.

  The monumental stone eye prevented them from continuing, so they turned left. The Portal’s light, the only one present in the temple, barely got there, but was still strong enough to allow them to see. The columns became less impressive, so that it was even possible to appreciate the shape of the statues’ heads.

  Dagger realized that their appearance was familiar to him. “Does he really exists?”

  “Who?”

  “Ktisis!”

  Just hearing that name, Olem turned, but said nothing. The statues depicted the lewd jackal god of violence and sin that he had worshiped since he was a child, yet he was portrayed in a way different from the usual: he was not slaughtering the sacred pig, to flood the earth with its fruitful blood, nor was he holding in his hands the two halves of a man damned for all times to feed on his intestines, as new power arising from death. The statues depicted the god seated, with his left hand resting peacefully on the leg and the right one contracted into an authoritarian fist. In his divine composure, Ktisis kept his eyes straight ahead.

  “So it did happen,” Moak recited. “Close your eyes and forget your name, step outside yourself and let your mind go, as you go insane.”

  “Spare us this lizardries, dammit!” Olem grumbled. “I’ve got goose bumps just being here!”

  “The forgotten temple of Ktisis has come back to light,” Moak revealed. “With all that it contains. Needless to wonder who is guarding it now.”

  Dagger slowed down, fatigued. He watched the two Guardians confabulating to each other without being able to hear what they were saying. The echo of their footsteps got lost in space, while the sandstone divinities watched him carefully.

  “Who is he?” he asked in a whisper, grabbing Kugar by the arm. “I don’t think it’s just the god of alcohol and sin.”

  The girl raised her face to look at the rising darkness above their heads. “Ktisis is the father of all gods,” she said, grimly. “Father of Skyrgal, Angra and all their divine brothers. Somehow, he’s part of your family tree, can you believe it?”

  “And where is he now? In this place?” Kugar shook her head. “How can you tell? He is here, I can feel it!”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not me, not in here. I’ve been here before!”

  “Ktisis does not give signs of his presence even before we humans made our appearance in the world,” she explained. “If he were still here, we would know, I assure you.”

  “Who was he?”

  “This story does not—”

  He gripped her arm and she pushed him away, afraid.

  “What the fuck!”

  “Kugar—”

  “Ktisis is the prime mover of the universe,” she said, rubbing her wrist and looking at him with suspicion. “The one who created and populated it with his divine sons; Burzums, like your father, and Mastodons, as our god Angra. In the first, he incarnated chaos and destruction, necessary to the eternal regeneration of the universe. In Mastodons, he embodied the equilibrium of everything that exists.”

  “The good and the bad?”

  Kugar sneered, shaking her head. “It’s easy for us to identify evil in the Burzums and good in the Mastodons, but it’s far too simplistic and wrong. Harmony plays the notes of chaos. In them, Ktisis wanted to embody the two forces that rule the universe. Destruction and Creation. You cannot have one without the other. It’s an eternal cycle where only from death comes life. Skyrgal and Angra are the only survivors of the two divine offsprings and, in them, lies the very essence of Equilibrium, its opposite poles. In the great All there’s no good and bad, as there’s no day and night, before and after. Morals and ethics are useless coordinates with which man deceives himself of being able to organize the Creation, his logical necessities, but Ktisis has made it incomprehensible to our eyes, devoid of morality in his insatiable and destructive generating power. The truth is hidden from us, always, and the more we run to it the more it moves away from us, as a light in the desert, or at the end of a tunnel.” She looked around, fascinated more than scared by what she was seeing. “You may have understood that, coming through the Portal, you set foot on another world. The world where you belong, Candehel-mas. This land is called holy, because here all the events described in Genesis took place. Here, Skyrgal and Angra collided. Here, his soul was eradicated from his body; here, in this world defiled with blood for which we all fight.” She raised her eyes to look at a titanic face as they walk past it. “Some nightmares are never forgotten,” she continued. “And this is one of them. Ktisis has left indelible marks in history, before disappearing into thin air; appalling evidence of its ancient power. Some of these were not to be found, some knowledge should have not return to light. Above all, not in the wrong, dark hands.” She pointed to a strange purple paint on the wall to their right.

  Dagger saw there were many others in similarity, everywhere, even on the floor under their feet and on the statues. They were not paintings, he soon realized, but letters of an incomprehensible alphabet traced in long spurts of blood.

  “The blood
of the forces that have lived through all eternity,” Kugar said, hovering her hand over them, in amazement. “Millions of years old blood, that time will never wash off, paid by the children who Ktisis sacrificed to reach the ultimate power, Megatherion. The absolute abandonment to the great silence. The end of everything that exists.”

  She went forward and stopped a little further on, reaching Moak and Olem, silently examining the unholy scriptures in turn. The stretch of wall they were facing was entirely written. The red and barbed symbols looked like sharp and bloody blades, murderous words dipped in violence.

  “He must have gone mad,” Kugar soughed. “Can a god go crazy?”

  “What’s written on these walls?” Olem asked.

  “I’m afraid I know,” Moak answered. “And I’m afraid that Gorgors can now translate these ancient scriptures without any disturbance, while we still sit locked up in our ignorance, waiting for the inevitable.”

  Kugar snorted. “And if they were able to open a new portal, then they are already well on their work of translation.”