God of Emptiness

by Walt Popester

  “I’m the one who asked Warren to talk to you.”

  “Hmm?”

  “When he told you to stay with me, or something.”

  “He didn’t tell me to stay with you.”

  “Oh. Didn’t he?”

  “He smoked a jointee and said it will all end badly. I think he has a crush on you.”

  Erin raised an eyebrow. “Telling Warren what to do is always a wild card. Well, there is a reason why I asked him to talk to you.”

  “Are you pregnant?” he asked as a joke.

  She didn’t answer.

  Dagger felt his testicles shrink. “When did you realize that?”

  “I’m late.”

  “To go where?”

  She looked up at him. “You must be joking. I mean, you know how it works, right?” She traced circles with a finger in the air. “That thing…?”

  “For a few days every month, girls become more intractable than a Gorgor with a broken nail,” Schizo said coming to his aid. “Enough to make you wonder why you waste so much time and energy with them. Then, at the end of those days, they usually remind you why you waste so much time with them.”

  “Ian!” She scolded him.

  “Even that is a circle, isn’t it? It reflects Creation and Destruction and it goes around and around, like all circles—blood and life, death and continuous rebirth.”

  Erin grabbed the ensiferum sphere and threw it at Ianka. “Surely it’s a cycle, you asshole!”

  They laughed as the sphere bounced on the floor making the painted figures dance in the light and the shadows. Ianka stood up and began to flick it with his feet, so skillfully that it seemed he had been practicing those movements for a long time. “All I need is an audience. I’m an exhibitionist.”

  “He must still have a little magic dust in his head,” Erin said dispassionately.

  “It’s in my blood. I’m the Ktisisdamn Pendracon’s son,” Schizo continued. “He doesn’t want me to be a dancer. He’s training me and he wants me to become a great Guardian. But it’s in my Ktisisdamn blood: dance.”

  They watched him in silence. At that moment, Dagger only remembered, Have him reproduce, and confusion pushed the wrong words past his lips, “Mission accomplished?”

  Erin broke free. “Don’t you ever say that again!” She punched him in the nose. “Don’t say that! DON’T! Never again!”

  Dagger forced her face down. “Stop it!”

  She tried to tear free. “You don’t know what it means to me!” She burst into tears in his arms, driving her nails into the ground. “How do you think I feel? You…you…” She pushed him back and tried to hurt him again, then gradually calmed down, surrendering to his embrace.

  “I’m sorry. Please, I’m sorry.” Dagger said. “You know I didn’t mean it. I never mean it. I’m an asshole, remember?” Do you remember, Seeth? He closed his eyes and damned himself.

  “You’re confused. I know. But you don’t know what it means to me.”

  “And I don’t know how it works for us! What will it be, dammit? I’ve…” I’ve dreamed it. “I’ve never been afraid in my life.”

  Erin shook her head. She looked at Ian through her tears. Now she was still, nearly catatonic. “I don’t know. And neither does Warren.”

  Schizo continued to juggle the sphere and didn’t seem to hear them. “I’m the son of the fucking Pendracon. But dancing is in my blood!”

  “I asked Araya,” she continued. “The Cry of Mankind, that’s how he called it, then he just said, The Hermit knows something. It was his idea. Surely you’re the only one fit for the purpose.” She turned to him with a deep sadness in her eyes. “The purpose,” she repeated. “That’s what the lizard said, as he gave his back to me sitting at the top of his damn library. After all, who else can host his divine seed if not the daughter of Angra? You must watch over me, Dag. I can’t die now.”

  “I will do it.”

  “You must promise. I want to raise my child…our child, so that one day it will be the salvation of the world. That’s all I ask. After that, you can follow that damn light until the end, even straight to your ruin. But now you must watch over me as long as necessary.”

  “I’ll bring her back to the Fortress,” Schizo said, blocking the sphere on the ground with his foot. “At least, this way I’ll get some sleep instead of hearing you do snu snu every night.”

  “No,” she said. “Splitting up isn’t a good idea. If we do it, we won’t find each other again. That’s how it is. That’s how it’s always been.”

  Schizo rolled the sphere back and forth. The crab seemed to dance grotesquely on the wall behind him. “So what?”

  “We keep on marching, as always.” Erin lay her head on Dagger’s chest.

  Dag looked into the void. Forgive me if I wanted to save the world that I love so much. It’s all arranged, you just have to make the right choice, Angra had said the night he had died in the Glade. Now Dagger understood the meaning of his words. What else could I expect from the god of Creation? “Saving the world with love.”

  “You always save the world when you love someone.”

  He held her close. “We must find the Hermit. I must know what my child will be.”

  “It will be just a child like any other.”

  A chill ran down his back. “I think someone told my mother, too. We’re perpetuating the mistakes of the past, don’t you see?”

  This time she was the one who said, “Stop it.”

  “I hope he’ll have your eyes.”

  “There are many qualities he could take after his father, though.”

  “What if it’s a girl?”

  “Well, if she takes after her father, she would be a slut!” Ian flicked the sphere in the air with an elegant movement of his foot and caught it in his hand. “Shit, how long does it take the two whitebait to piss?”

  Soon a doubt took the comedy right out of it.

  Dagger jumped to his feet. “How long have they been gone?”

  “Too long, if they’re not more than sixty.”

  Erin and Dagger turned to Schizo, who had spoken.

  “Old people have trouble starting a satisfying urination,” Ianka explained. “They need time, I mean…bah, the Ktisis with it!”

  Ensiferum in hand, they advanced among the columns. After a few steps they found Ash lying unconscious on the ground in the middle of the corridor.

  “Ash!” Erin ran to him. She knelt and put two fingers on his throat. “He’s still alive.”

  Dag heard a voice behind him, “It’s an unjust world, red-eyes, more than you still believe.” He turned around. Warren had approached stealthily. At his side, wearing black and shiny armor in the timid whispers of light, stood two Hammer thugs.

  Or what’s left of them, Dagger thought. One had a jaw wrecked with deep wrinkles and his skin was falling apart in decomposed, grayish flaps. The other didn’t have a jaw anymore. His palate was suspended above the wet hole of his throat, his tongue uselessly dangling among bone fragments, candid spikes, and the stripped muscles. Mucus strands dripped from his chipped, decayed teeth defending the colony of worms housed in his throat.

  “Did someone fuck your ass so hard it blew off half your face?”

  As if awakened by Dagger’s words, the two dark figures raised their faces showing the swollen capillaries in their eyes. Other figures were in the shadows, watching them.

  “You drove us straight into a trap,” Dag said.

  “Nothing will happen that you don’t want.” The white blood’s voice was uncertain. “Please, don’t fight and everything will be fine.”

  “You betrayed us!” Ianka moved against War, shouting, “What brother sells his own blood to the enemy?!”

  Erin snapped and immobilized Schizo with a knife on his throat. “Stop, damn it! Do you want to get killed?” In the effort to hold him, her blade cut him superficially. She hit his nape with her forehead in the hope of stunning him, so powerfully that she stumbled and nearly lost consci
ousness in turn. Blood trickled down her face as Ian slid to the ground, his eyes rolling up in his head.

  A voice in the darkness, “Hey, sweetheart!”

  Erin turned around. A giant mallet impacted against her face, smashing it into a shapeless, reddish pulp. The girl turned around several times in a long, scarlet blood splatter before falling to the ground in a pool of blood. The gray matter oozed slowly out of her skull, along the bare rims of her split temples.

  “NO!” Dagger threw himself on her body, struggling to remember that she was immortal, that she would resurrect, that all that gore meant nothing. Or maybe not. You must watch over me, Dag. I can’t die now. You must watch over me as long as necessary. He had failed again. He looked up, staring at Warren, who said nothing.

  “Don’t be angry with your friend,” said a mean voice in the dark. “He just followed his orders.”

  “Don’t fight,” Warren repeated. “You don’t know why I did it. You’ll understand when you see.”

  Why aren’t you laughing now, like every time your plans succeed to perfection? Why do you seem on the verge of a breakdown? Dagger raised a hand to Solitude without unsheathing it.

  “I would follow his advice.” The shadow that had spoken moved against the darkness, at the edges of Dagger’s vision. “Lower your hand. Do you think you can do something against me?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t been introduced yet.” Dagger turned around. “Come forward, whoever you are.”

  A sinister laugh. A black face appeared out of nowhere. It was so hard that it seemed made of leather and was framed by long hair—white and thin as silk threads. The man, or whatever it was, bowed. “Mumakil is my name. You’ve probably heard of me.”

  “No.”

  Mumakil cocked his head sideways, but it was hard to tell if his pride was wounded or if he was faking. “Anyway, I’ve heard a lot about you, Kam Konkra. Maybe too much.”

  “Oh, good boy. You studied the definitions,” Dag spat out. “Everyone who’s trying to take me out calls me by that name.”

  “I’d really like to know what you mean by take me out, it’s a human term. Reality is always more complicated than it looks. Humans are unreliable—I hope you have learned that, at least, today.”

  “Thank you for your lesson. Just what we needed, the black man jumping out of the closet to give me advice.”

  “Out of the crab, please.”

  Dagger froze. “The crab?”

  The black man smiled amiably. “You’d have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you’d listened to the advice of he who knows you since before you were born,” he said. “Every being is given a place in which it’s expected to remain. There’s always a conflict when someone forgets one’s own position in the food chain, and that can happen to every link: Tankars, Gorgors, lice, humans, Messhuggahs, gods, and finally, Ktisis.”

  “Here I am!” The son of Skyrgal bared Solitude and the Hammer Guardians stepped forward.

  “Do not kill him,” Mumakil ordered, causing them to stop. “He wants his moment of glory. He’s just a little, spoilt diva. Whatever happens, he must not die.”

  “Are you afraid that I speak with my father?”

  “Creation or Destruction?” the black lips asked. “It was you who decided. This is just a date with fate.”

  Dag glared at Warren. “Nice rhyme.”

  A familiar voice boomed, “Enough already!” A giant came forward. He wore an old wooden mask split at the height of his left eye, which was looking at Dagger with hatred while the other one—white painted—stared straight into the void. He was tall and mighty. His thudding footsteps were accompanied by the rusty rattling of the rings of his armored skirt.

  “Well, we’re all here, now.” Dagger turned toward him with Solitude. “An ambush of Pendracon Varg Belhaven in person. What an honor!” He stepped back, but three robust Guardians took him from behind, forcing him to his knees and face down.

  One of them tried to take Solitude. The result was the literal explosion of his arm. Dagger turned around when he was hit by a shower of soggy tissues. When the Guardian stood up and screamed, the boy tried to get to his feet but a new metal hand forced him to the ground, this time refraining from importuning Olem.

  Varg stared down at him and for the first time Dag looked away. Not because of what he saw, but because a suffocating stench came from under the ancient funerary mask.

  “The best traps are the ones that snap shut, don’t you think?” Varg looked at him coldly, then produced a sinister laugh. He faced Warren. “Mumakil was right, you’re really back to the mother’s nest.”

  “Difficult times require bold choices, Anti-Pendracon,” the white blood replied. “It was all for the bes—” A metal fist slammed against his face, knocking him to the ground.

  “You fucking triple-agent, how far do you think you can fool us?” The Anti-Pendracon kicked him in the side. “Do you think this will make up for the loss of Skyrgal?” Another kick. “Or for all the troubles you’ve caused in the service of Araya? That Sword…what happened to that?”

  War held his belly in his arms, without a word. He pointed at Dag. “I bring you…something much more important, Dracon Varg. Ask your new…boss.”

  “I’m your Pendracon and a Pendracon has no boss!” Varg grabbed Warren’s neck, lifted him from the ground and raised a fist in the air, without striking. “You will address me with that name, from now on. I’ll return to my Fortress, what do you think?” He emphasized each sentence with a jolt. “You still work for the Messhuggah, don’t you? Well, just know that we’ll soon march on what remains of the Guardians! I’ll take back what’s mine by divine right, you hear me? This time I won’t share it with anyone: God! Man! Or lizard!” He was silent for a while. “Nor with any creature in the middle.”

  Mumakil, called into question by those last words, just grinned. Dagger felt a sinister tingling and noticed a change in the attitude of all the Guardians, who moved a step back defensively—including Varg. The Anti-Pendracon lifted his mask to breathe and slowly turned to Dag. His smile was wider than usual. The Anti-Pendracon lacked his right cheek and showed his teeth up to his ear. He was missing part of his nose and an eye, replaced by a necrotic, yellow emptiness.

  “Are you a Disciple, too?” Dagger asked.

  “No, my boy,” Mumakil answered. “There are many effective ways to corrupt the body and soul of a man.” He approached Varg and handed him a red vial tied to a lace. “Come here, doggy.”

  “Yes!” The Anti-Pendracon grabbed the red container and took a long sniff out of it. There was a new light in his eyes. He closed his hand into a fist and hammered Dagger’s face against the floor. “You little shithead, the worst part of your existence is just starting. I don’t mean to miss an instant of your eternal torture. You killed my son. Now you’ll face the consequences.” He crushed Dagger’s cheekbone while his metal thumb nail stripped the boy’s temple. “One by one. And I’ll do it slowly, to make sure you understand.”

  Dag chuckled, full of agony. “I’m not surprised they cheated you with that red shit. After all, I’m the one…who provided the Disciples with a pain…to take hold of you!”

  “What?”

  “Your son. That slaughtered asshole!”

  Dagger expected to die with his skull smashed, but nothing happened. The fallen Pendracon loosened his grip.

  Ktisis, that memory must still hurt him. “You and your men…” Dag said through his teeth. “You’re just walking dead.”

  The Guardian who was keeping him immobilized looked up. “Dead?” he slowly asked, sniffling. His bittersweet breath played all the possible notes of decomposition.

  Varg lowered his face. “You will not question. That’s the one order a Hammer Guardian will always obey.”

  Yet the Guardian let go of the grab on Dag and took a step forward. “What did you allow him to do to us?”

  “STOP!”

  That was enough for Dagger. He snapped back with Solitude in hand.
“This is manegarm! Do you want to find out what it feels like to be pierced by my brother’s soul?”

  Varg’s laughter echoed as he lowered the wooden mask on the mess he had for a face. “You want heavy violence? I give you heavy violence!” He raised his hammer and moved in a flash. Dag was about to withdraw, but once again that powerful negative energy rained down on him and he just felt the impact, as if a beast had charged his side. His breath was broken and his ribs shattered in his own flesh.

  “Don’t hurt him!” Warren yelled. “You bastards!”

  “What…?” Dagger found himself on the ground, somehow. He tried to get up. He spat blood. “Who…?”

  Varg came up with a following clank of rings, Clang. Clang. Clang. “Sheathe your sword.”

  “I…” Dagger’s voice came out in a sort of yelp. Ktisis, that’s how you feel.

  “Come on. Be a good boy. Put Olem back in his doghouse. That sword is powerful. You’re not.”

  Dag raised his face. And spat.

  This time the hammer smashed his hand on the floor in a shapeless mess of flesh, bones, and agony. “AARGH!”

  Varg laughed. “You see? He’s not so brave, after all!”

  The boy brought the hand—or what was left of it—to his chest. The pain throbbed in his head, preventing him from breathing.

  “Now you’ll be kind enough to sheathe the sword, as I told you.”

  Dagger didn’t obey. He turned to the shadows. “Damn it. Don’t you see what…he’s doing to you?”

  “Do you still have the strength to speak?” Varg patted his hammer.

  “Stop it!” Warren yelled.

  “Don’t you see what—”

  “To obey is the only luxury that men poor of intellect can afford.” This time it was Mumakil who spoke.

  The Anti-Pendracon laughed. He walked around the four boys dead or stunned on the ground. “You underestimate the power shown by my new friend here. You’re right, he eased my pain with Remission. I thought that the Disciples were all the same, but he…he’s different.” He dangled the reddish vial. “He’s got the power, you know?”

  All the Guardians focused on that as if nothing else existed, yet no one dared to move a step.