God of Emptiness

by Walt Popester

  “Are you alive or dead?” Dag asked them.

  “They’re just grateful to be nowhere,” Mumakil said. “It often happens with mere executors of orders. They believe that passively accepting any command will lead them to live in a better world, one day. Then, one day, they wake up sedated by their saviors.”

  “I AM! THEIR SOURCE! OF SELF-DESTRUCTION!” Varg thundered.

  “Lower your voice,” said Mumakil with detachment, looking resignedly at Dagger, as if to say, You see the morons I have to deal with? You dig it?

  But Dagger was too busy holding together his body, pierced by the arrows of agony.

  “My Faithful ones know it’s no good rebelling against those who pull the strings.” The Anti-Pendracon dangled the vial toward the man who had lost an arm because of Solitude. When the Guardian reached out the surviving trembling hand, Varg turned away. “And they know I can reward and punish like no one else, now.” He stopped in front of the most corpulent Guardian and handed him the vitreous container.

  The man in the armor knelt to the ground like a miserable puppy looking at his messiah and opened his lipless mouth. A drop fell on his tongue—or the half that was left of it. His face and his every limb were pervaded by new life. He stood up and put a powerful hand to his hammer, gripping it tightly as he turned triumphantly toward the other Guardians, happy to have been chosen by his savior.

  “A new class of warriors will rise from the ashes of the Hammer, thanks to the Remission that Mumakil has given us!” Varg outstretched his hands toward his Blood Brothers. He poured the red liquid on his fingers and sprinkled his men in rapid movements.

  The Guardians crowded forward to reach their coveted blessing. The ones who could receive it reawakened, and joined their guide in the dark.

  “In March, Guardians Reborn!”

  A black bird flew above their heads, flying fast away.

  Cra!

  That was the last thing Dagger saw before a blow on his temple knocked him out.

  *

  6. Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath

  The darkness at the beginning of the world.

  “Dag, open your eyes, damn you!”

  Before the light.

  “I’m coming to break your nose.”

  The light takes us.

  Dagger opened his eyes to a slit. A torch was burning in the dark at the edges of his vision—beyond the bars, the limits of his narrow perception.

  He was rocking back and forth. He struggled to raise his eyes. A hook pierced his wrists between the radius and the ulna. It kept him secured to the ceiling making him a sinister meat chandelier dripping with blood and pain. His hands were gone. Threads of encrusted blood streamed down his arms and torso. He looked at the floor and tried to touch it to relieve the sense of suffocating weight. Only then did he realize he no longer had his legs. He felt the heavy Solitude on his shoulders. It asphyxiated him, dragging him down. It really didn’t like to be separated from him, even if it meant to make him suffer even more.

  Why don’t you leave me alone? You could start a new life. He smiled, or at least he thought he did. What happened to me? An indistinct haze clouded his view, but he tried hard to see, to remember, to understand. The first thing he noticed were new bars across the corridor of what looked like a prison, and a white, human silhouette chained to the wall.

  The silhouette looked at Dagger. “Dag. Can you hear me, Dag?”

  Dagger was surprised. He thought that the one on the other side of the bars was just another ghost come to haunt his confused waking states. He kept on rocking. “I…” His vocal cords betrayed him in a graceless sound. “Warren?”

  “It’s me.”

  So what’s my name? It took a while for his exhausted mind to provide the answer, Konkra, that’s my name. “Why did you do it? We were friends. You and me.”

  “Don’t talk. They listen.”

  “You have something in mind…you have—”

  “No,” War answered. “Not me. Not this time.” He dropped to the ground, exhausted. “I’m so tired I can’t sleep.”

  “Where’s Ash?”

  “What do you want from him now?”

  I need a jointee. “Where?”

  “Somewhere far beyond. I don’t know.”

  A damn jointee. “Were you tortured?” Dagger rocked.

  “They torture only you, but until now you were too dead to notice. He said he’ll come back, and you must be brave, okay? You must not shout, for you must not give him satisfaction or he’ll never stop!”

  “If you cared so much about me, why did you…betray me?”

  “I’m still a Hotankar.”

  “You locked me up here. You caused their death, that of our…of my friends. You…”

  “I saw,” Warren said in the dark. “It was him who showed me. You’ll never know until you see. That’s always been true. That’s always been true.”

  “Mumakil…!”

  The white blood laughed softly—a sound full of loneliness. “Tears flow, but why am I crying? I’m not afraid of dying. Don’t we Hotankar believe there never is an end? While every link holds, the whole chain does. But he…he is now part of a longer chain, the cosmic funeral holding together the horrors of the great beyond.”

  Six rings. One is missing. Is that still me? Dagger sensed pain in his friend’s voice. He is sincere, at least now…whatever he is saying.

  A door opened in the dark. Metal steps advanced, accompanied by the endless rattling of metal rings.

  “Don’t scream,” Warren said again before the imposing bulk of Varg Belhaven broke their eye contact.

  The man raised his right hand, casually. Four hounds of the Hammer high on Remission came forward. They opened the cell door and stood still in front of him, promising pain only with their silence.

  Dag smiled. “Don’t you want to talk about it, Varg?” he said in a husky voice. “You’re not going to tell me what a jackass I was to slaughter your son?” He laughed. “In that way…in front of everybody…like a jerk!”

  “You already said that.” Varg closed his eyes and, despite everything, Dagger felt petty. He wanted to explain that it had been the world that got in the middle, as the world often did, that to kill someone was the worst thing that could happen to anyone, except to die.

  Then Varg said, “Hold him still,” and Dagger knew that the time for words was over.

  Hooks tore his skin, driven between his ribs and through his groin. Chains ran into his flesh making him puke and bleed. He shouted. He cried so loud that he awakened the demon on the depths of consciousness. He saw its wild eyes beyond the bars. He saw it stand up on all fours and wander and wander, grinning and grinning. Pain. I feel it every day, here in emptiness.

  Warren shouted, somewhere in the darkness. “Leave him alone!”

  No, please. Not my skin. Dagger saw the skin parting from his chest and falling to the floor, showing his white, shiny bones in the blood-soaked tissues. When they ripped through his pecs, a Guardian stepped aside so he wouldn’t be hit by a crimson splash darting from a torn artery.

  Varg lowered his blade to the boy’s groin.

  No! Take everything away from me, but not my thing!

  They left him there on the stone floor, naked and immersed in his own blood. He tried to say something. He suffocated.

  He didn’t die.

  He couldn’t die.

  He couldn’t get out.

  He could only wander in the amber night, while the rain fell ceaselessly on the treetops.

  A pack of wolves descended the slopes of a mountain covered with ruins, to reach the forest in the valley. One of them was wounded and slowed the march of the pack.

  Dagger waited for them, sitting on a fallen tree in the middle of a glade.

  “The wounded wolf slows down the march of them all,” a nearby voice said. “He knows he’s a burden. He’ll ask to be left behind and the others will abandon him. Humans never do that. They never leave behind the weakest link of the chain,
because to protect the weak element is the justification itself of their living together. There’s no alternative to being together.”

  Dagger turned to his right.

  Olem was sitting beside him, his armor dirty with earth and blood, a gash on his chest at the height of his freed heart. “Keeping the lame wolf in their own home—this is what will bring the human herd to ruin. Nature doesn’t tolerate weakness and there’s no hope for those who show fear.”

  “Holly. Who’s the hounded wolf? Is it us? Was that you? What did you mean in those days?”

  “The wounded wolf wants to be abandoned, Dag. There’s no way to save those who don’t want to be saved.”

  The lonely beast came before him. There was not a forest behind the wolf, now, only a vastness of ruins that attracted and repelled him at the same time. Dagger was convinced he perceived their thoughts—the tears of the matter, the whisper of the past caressing the threshold of his perception. Beyond, Dagger saw the lifeless bodies of the wolves lying on the ground, black noses in the dust. All dead. All dead at the feet of the great shadow throne.

  Purple writings covered the pavement—letters linked to each other and continually changing. He raised his face. There was no longer a wolf in front of him, but a white Tankar, the face of a beast with a will.

  “And the wounded wolf will be the only one to survive, when the strong will fall.”

  He turned back. Olem was already going away, shrinking smaller and smaller as he went toward the black horizon.

  “Stand by me! I can’t do it alone!”

  “I never abandoned you.”

  “Olem!”

  “Let yourself go, Dag. Let the river flow. It keeps us all connected, imperceptible to the human eye. Give yourself over, Dag. Let the river flow.”

  Dagger reached out for him, then felt himself falling backward.

  “Olem!”

  “Shhh…come on, open your mouth and pull out your tongue.”

  “Don’t take it away from me, because you don’t know what—”

  “Open your eyes.”

  Dagger did as he was told and found himself observing the black face of Mumakil, white hair around his leather face. His white teeth gleamed in the gloom, challenged by the distant and solitary torch. Don’t give in to the shadow. Please, don’t give in to the shadow, not you too. He stuck out his tongue and the black man poured two drops of a thick, bittersweet liquid. Remission. He’s drugging me.

  Everything became clearer and less painful.

  He was lying on a straw bed soaked with his waste. He raised his arms and saw that they ended into two white bandages, brown and caked with dried blood. He lowered his gaze looking for another indispensable component of himself, without finding it between his legs which were amputated above the knees.

  When you think it couldn’t get any worse…He found himself laughing and realized that he was walking on tiptoe on the boundary between reason and madness, separated only by a door at the mercy of his inner, uncontrollable impulses.

  Mumakil sat with his back against the bars. “You must not be angry with Warren. Now he works for me. Shhh. Don’t ask questions. I struck him on the road to Vardo, and I allowed him to see just an instant of the great show I have witnessed for too long. It was the only way to make him understand that you need humility to deal such matters. He’s only an infinitely small pawn on a vast chessboard. He had to understand that you can’t play with madness.”

  “Pointing at people and making them feel like shit is not really the best way to introduce yourself,” Dag said. “And it’s unlikely that Warren would trust someone other than Warren.”

  “You’re fond of an unmanageable guide that no longer exists. I opened his eyes. I have the power to do that. I have the power to do many things.”

  Dagger raised his maimed arms. “And how are you at regrowing things?”

  “They’ll grow again. Everything will be soon back in place…by now, you should know the procedure. Far more deep and irreconcilable is the nature of other wounds, the ones of memories and feelings. No one should play with yours, and you shouldn’t allow it so easily.”

  “I’m confused. These days I don’t even get back to my father when I die. At least, he’d know how to comfort me with his humor, instead of a long series of sermons.”

  “Watch the manegarm needles on your ribs.”

  Dagger looked down: five metal needles made their way between his ribs, emerging about one inch. By touching his divine blood, each one had veered toward a different color. His skin seemed to twist around them and was flushed. “What the Ktisis…?”

  “I’m keeping your soul tied, a simple trick to prevent you from talking again with your father. I believe Karkenos has already done too much damage.” Mumakil watched the vial, turning it thoughtfully between his fingers. “I’m sorry for what Varg is doing to you.”

  “It wasn’t your intention, preacher?”

  “I just said I’m sorry,” the preacher answered. “I could make him stop whenever I want, but it’s crucial that you learn your lesson, too. You’re dealing too lightly with your nature. No one should ever do that, let alone the god of Emptiness. Going to the Sanctuary would have been pure madness. You’d have faced serious troubles if I didn’t stop you.”

  “Seriously, I don’t know how to thank you.” Dagger slid to the floor and took some time to regain a half-sitting position. “Now you’ll be kind enough to tell me what happened to Erin.”

  “It was necessary to kill her and stop…a certain process. You can’t understand, not yet.”

  Dag knew all too well the meaning of those words. “Did she lose it?”

  “Lose? No, you can’t lose a child like that. What I’ve done will give us time, maybe not enough, but I’m doing everything I can. In the meantime, she’s been entrusted to the loving care of Orgor, who will escort her to a safe place. At least she’ll stop meddling in the plans of the adults. I had to send her away from here. And from you.”

  Dagger remembered Kerry’s words, before he had died, Orgor’s raiders, that disgusting pig. They raped anything that moved. “Are you pure evil?”

  “Yes. And that’s why I’m your only friend on this side of these bars, but you’re blind, too blind to see. You’d better treat me with respect.” Mumakil stared at the torch. “Ianka would be happy to know that you asked about him, too.”

  Dag felt caught off guard. “Of course, what happened to—?”

  “The slavers will make a great dancing bear of him. He’ll fight in their arenas.”

  “Schizo will get himself killed.” Dag slammed his forehead against the bar. “I’m thirsty.”

  Mumakil poured water into a bowl and handed it through the bars.

  He’ll spill it on the ground to make fun of me. Oh, it’s close, so close! He touched the cup with a trembling stump and drank with such fervor that most of the water did end on the floor. He felt the icy liquid run down his guts. Oh, Angra, I thank you. He swallowed and felt miserable. “You destroyed my life. What else do you want from me?”

  “To give you the strength to hold your head up.”

  “Oh. It was so clear.”

  “You don’t need any key to open a door. You can break down the walls.”

  Dagger looked around. “For now, I’d like to get out of this cell.” He looked for a comfortable sitting position, but the inseparable Solitude kept him from that. He just dragged up the wall and lay his head against it. He caressed the cold bars with the stump of his arm. From there he could watch Mumakil’s profile against the torchlight. He looked like a basalt statue. “You played well your part with Varg, but not with me. You’re not a Disciple.”

  The preacher turned to him. “Oh, you don’t say?”

  “You breached my consciousness in the temple of the unknown god. Otherwise, Varg would never beat me.”

  “Or maybe that’s what you like to believe.”

  “No. Even if only for a moment, I felt your energy. A simple Disciple couldn’t do
that, and they don’t talk like that, they talk faster. So who are you really?”

  Mumakil shrugged. “The unknown factor?”

  “You’re the Hermit.”

  “Tsk. You are way off target. Sooner or later that little thug and his little brother will pay for what they did to me, have no fear.”

  Yet another score to settle. “I’d give you a hand, if only I knew where it is.”

  “It’s not so hard to understand who he is, if you carefully examine the legends that insist on not dying.” He bent his face. “Stay away from him. Trust the words of an old preacher.”

  “You know nothing.”

  Mumakil stared at him with his cold eyes. “Do you want to know the truth? Well, I’ll tell you the truth. You’re going to burn in a lake of fire if you don’t tear down the wall they’re building around you.”

  “Let’s start with this one.”

  “First I want to make sure you learn your lesson.”

  “Yeah, I forgot.” Dag lifted his stump to one of the metal needles, which warned him with a shock. “Shit!”

  “Don’t play with the needles, they don’t like it. I will remove them when the time comes.”

  “And when will the time come?”

  “When Varg will end it for good with the two white blood, and with you. You owe him. You made that man suffer beyond any reasonable right.”

  Dagger felt his heart beat faster. His skin and eyes were dry. He felt nausea, but he knew that something could end any symptom. “Give me some more.”

  “No.”

  “Come on, just a little. I feel like dying. I won’t ask you anymore. I can stop whenever I want. But not now.”

  The preacher pulled out his vial and poured a red drop on the boy’s tongue. “But only because you’re going to die anyway,” he emphasized his words with his forefinger. “I think you’ve already seen its effects on a human body.”

  Dagger soon felt better. An inexplicable happiness arose in the middle of his chest, there in the void.

  “I distilled Remission in the depths of Sabbath to make these mindless thugs meeker and less offensive,” the black man said. “It devours their faces and bodies, giving them a constant and destructive orgasm. I needed to take the tower to intercept you more easily. I hope this won’t offend you. With Sabbath in my hands, I must say I could handle a lot of situations better.”