God of Emptiness

by Walt Popester

  “You’re not the first one to say so.” He looked around, in the starry darkness.

  “If I were you, I’d start wondering why.”

  Dag stopped. “I’ll tell you I was expecting something more from the Hermit, not a brat mimicking the voice of an adult.”

  “Hermit…” the voice repeated. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that name. They called me that at the Fortress, I think for my constant need—almost a mania—to be alone for long periods of time. How odd. Today I would like a little company, here in the dark.”

  “Like Aeternus, your teacher?”

  There was silence. The boy reappeared right in front of him. A hood cast a shadow over his fair, freckled face, his lips suspended in an amiable smile. “Nothing gets past you, Red-eyes.”

  “You should do something to make the place a little less…chilling.”

  The other boy shook his head. He walked toward the throne, his hands still behind his back. “My real name is Baomani Quondary,” he said. “But you already know that. You’ve stuck your nose in my memories and you should know several details of my human life.”

  “Are you the one who created me?”

  The child looked up to him with his crystalline eyes. “More or less,” the adult voice replied. “I, Aeternus, Skyrgal…everyone has done his part. Yet it’s unfair to deny the merits of your mother, who was the only one to create you in the true meaning of the word. ‘The power of Angra and women. The power of Creation’, she always said, even while they did…” He stopped. “…certain things to her.” His smile disappeared.

  Dagger realized they were climbing down a staircase of darkness made matter. For a moment they walked suspended on a starry, sickening void, before touching the hard surface of the slabs again—a walkway suspended above a pool stretching endlessly in front of their eyes. Water slid along the green marble walls, and shook with small circles the stars on the transparent bottom.

  Suddenly, Dagger thought he saw the swollen, bruised corpse of a little boy lying on the bottom among the heavenly bodies.

  A children’s choir deafened him and Dag found himself once again with the only company of the peaceful water flow.

  Baomani reappeared just up ahead. “Excuse me. Sometimes it happens that my memories take over.” He smiled timidly. “It’s not always easy to have full control over them. Once, they hunted me this far, but with time I learned to manage them. To keep them away.” He walked again. “When I was alive, I liked to listen to the murmur of water on the marble. The starry heavens, the wooden bridges across the lakes of the Glade…when we were kids, when we were young, things seemed so perfect. Sometimes it seems that afterwards—I don’t know—the rest of my life was just a show.”

  “How did your brother die?” Dagger asked pointblank.

  The Hermit went on and seemed unwilling to answer. “Our father cared a lot about the training of his three children,” he said. “And didn’t consider any method too rigid when the goal was to learn, and to learn quickly. One day, our brother didn’t resist satisfactorily to one of his favorite endurance tests, and drowned.”

  “Ktisis.”

  “The desert, Dag…it was that day that I realized it. Sooner or later, the desert always wins and takes the total sum of our bets. My brother Sannah was a child so sweet that he would save a fly from a group of boys intent on tearing its wings. Since then, instead, he slowly became mad. He spent whole nights swearing that he would find a way to get back at our father, who in turn fell asleep thinking about us. Mumakil felt threatened by our presence. Our every word, even the most innocent one, was seen as a veiled reference to what had happened, to what he called ‘the unfortunate incident’. I think he’s always been mad, in a world that often rewards this trait in those who hold its reins. Soon we began to speak no more in his presence, but our silence fueled his delusions of persecution. Mumakil feared that we would reveal what had happened, but he was the Dracon Delta and couldn’t risk it. So he chose for us an especially hard Test, as you should have seen.”

  “A Test from which you were not expected to come back.”

  “Not alive, at least. During the journey to the Throne of Skyrgal, Sannah fell into a ravine and I…I still believe that he was dead. When I managed to reach him—risking my neck in turn—I found him in the arms of the First Disciple. Aeternus had hidden for centuries in the belly of the desert. Sunlight was a torment for his body plagued by Skyrgal. We had fallen into his trap, but he decided to use us.”

  “Aeternus sent you to retrieve Benighted, and in return he gave you knowledge. But to do what?”

  “To take revenge against our father. To punish Mumakil.”

  “Mumakil…” That name came out of Dagger’s lips in a whisper. “What did you do to him?”

  “I’ll never tell. I still feel a deep shame. To close him inside there and let him experience the cosmic funeral, the infinite terror that lies beyond the boundaries of Creation…that was horrible enough to open our eyes about the nature of that power and push us to go to extreme measures. On the way back from that place, we met Aeternus again to eliminate him. But the Immortal Rites, written in the black book, had made him strong again. Certainly, we too were hardly the kids on the run he had first met. We managed to defeat him and stole Benighted.”

  “You should have eliminated him.”

  “You should have tried that yourself.”

  “You could at least destroy the book!” Dagger noticed the anger in his voice. “If you’d done that, a lot of troubles would have never arisen.”

  “Troubles like your birth?”

  “Troubles like…” He didn’t finish. He bowed his head.

  “My boy. Only in that book is hidden the way to eradicate them from the face Candehel-mas. The code of Benighted is both the strength and weakness of the Disciples. It always has been. We knew that destroying it would allow them to live forever, so we broke it in two. Because of the contents, so different from each other, we called the two halves Dawn and Dusk.”

  “The beginning and the end,” Dag muttered to himself. “Creation and Destruction.”

  “Sannah was destined to become the Pendracon of the Fortress and chose to keep Dusk.” Baomani shrugged. “But one night he ran away. With a note and nothing more he said he would take refuge in the world Beyond and to share this information only with his daughter Aniah. I haven’t heard of him since then. Certainly, I hope you never meet such an individual.”

  ‘Please, tell me that you’re joking,’ Dagger thought. He just said, “I met worse people, I think.”

  “I took refuge at the Sanctuary to continue my search for the First Disciple. But it was Aeternus to find me, after pushing Skyrgal to kidnap Aniah. He threatened to do horrible things to her, if I didn’t help him. Funny, by helping him I made sure that the most horrible thing happened to her. All I had to do was to read those parts of Dawn of which neither Aeternus nor Skyrgal had any notion. They couldn’t understand the power of Creation. The power of Angra and women.”

  “The student who shows his teacher a thing or two?”

  Baomani shook his head. “Aeternus hadn’t had the time to interpret all Benighted before we took it away from him. Our training continued in a forgotten underground at the Fortress, with his blood brother.”

  “A Disciple?”

  “The second Disciple, who had vowed to fight him in every way the day Skyrgal blessed the world with the Red Dawn. Korkore was his name.”

  Dag bowed his face. “Why did you care so much about my mother?”

  “Why do humans ever care about someone?”

  “Oh. For a lot of reasons.”

  “Bonds,” the Hermit replied. “She was only three, when she hugged my head saying that she loved me in that way we’re able to do only when we’re little, before the…rest. Before the useless lessons of life—deeper and deeper, more and more distant from that one truth. Unconditional love, that of children. She was my respite, the safe place where I hid when I most ne
eded it. Maybe you can’t even understand what I’m saying.”

  “No. Really.”

  “Sannah didn’t deserve her. Sannah didn’t deserve anyone.”

  “So you helped her escape as soon as you could.”

  Baomani nodded. “And now it’s time to help you. I don’t know what’s happened to the son of Skyrgal after we split. I suppose you’ve had some troubles. I understand that from your character, hear it in your voice. I knew that the damned lizards were beating themselves up about what to do with you. So, as soon as I had the opportunity, I sent that message.”

  “Damn Aeternus, Skyrgal sucks his anus! Nice closure. From there I realized that you wanted to stop them, too.”

  “They’ll be here for me soon. They’re already in march, if their cursed messengers saw you approaching the Sanctuary. Maybe they’ll get me out of here somehow, even though they know I won’t help them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s no torture they can inflict on me, and nothing to take away from me anymore. What they really want is Benighted. In it lies the secret to end the curse of the Disciples, and the only way to ward off Megatherion forever. Dawn is here at the Sanctuary.”

  “And what about Dusk?”

  The Hermit smirked. “Dusk is wherever Sannah is.”

  ‘Which means in one of his cursed chests, there in the world Beyond. Perfect!’ Dagger thought. “No matter. Those fucking books will be no use if I can’t interpret their symbols.”

  “It’s hard to open any door without the right key, let alone those of min—”

  “Oh, key here, and key there!” Dagger spread his arms. “Is there any way you’d care to tell me what—”

  “Nehamas called it Solstice. It’s a rare substance. Extremely rare.”

  The boy stood with his arms in midair, then lowered them. “Interesting. And what effects does it have?”

  “It causes creeping ulcerations of the skin, intense pain, profuse sweating, difficulty in breathing, loss of consciousness, violent convulsions and, finally…death.”

  “Um.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ve already seen those effects.”

  “But before that it allows you to open the eyes of your mind and interpret the language of the gods. It’s toxic for all mortals, except for the Nehamas themselves. They probably assumed small quantities of it throughout their history, acquiring resistance to its side effects. Their Asmeghin obtained powerful visions with it. Who knows what he would experience taking it in the temple of Ktisis when they found it.”

  “I don’t feel as if I am a Nehama.”

  “No. You lack a little white hair here on your neck. For centuries, the ancestors of the Disciples danced in the arms of the mushrooms to understand those writings, dictated by Angra and transcribed by the Guardian scribes, generation after generation.”

  “But their knowledge was patchy…”

  “Incomplete, like that of the damned lizards. Aeternus was the first to take Solstice when he led the Guardians into the heart of the holy city and discovered its chemical wonders. He got Skyrgal out of his metal prison, and since then the world has never been the same. And neither was he. He still had a bit of Solstice when he took care of our…training.” The Hermit was silent. He wanted Dagger to understand the rest by himself.

  “You and Sannah didn’t die when you took Solstice. Aeternus made you—”

  “—like him? Yes. He blessed us with his own blood, so that we could understand the word of the god and die, and resurrect, and continue to study. Life after death and death after life. What do you think—must I thank him or curse him?”

  ‘This means that Sannah…’ He opened his mouth and said, “He’s still alive.”

  “Who?”

  “Sannah!”

  “Of course he is, what’s the wonder? And wherever he is, he’s still keeping Dusk.”

  “So I should take that stuff, watch myself lose control of my bowels, die with excruciating spasms and pain just to understand what’s written in that damn book?”

  “More or less.”

  Dag was silent for a moment. “Okay. Where do I find it?”

  The Hermit shook his head. “Let it flow. Let it flow and everything will fall into place.”

  They reached the end of the walkway. Dagger watched the statue in front of them. It portrayed a mother—no features on her face—nursing a baby.

  “The power of Creation.” Baomani caressed the woman’s smooth face. “Can you understand that? How abhorrent it is to break the circle—to prevent new life to arise from the ashes of the past. There’s a force opposite to Megatherion and it’s the one that we must pursue.” While his right hand lay gently on the statue, his left was locked into a fist. “One day it will be just you and me. You’ll see. Everything will be fine, in the end.”

  “I’ll do whatever is necessary.”

  The Hermit nodded absently. “Necessary…I did horrible things, my boy, and I won’t tell you all. Sometimes I try to convince myself that it was necessary—all necessary—but that’s not true. It was, and the only thing left to us is to face the consequences. You’ve covered this distance to find an ally who met his fate on the road taken to avoid it, so know this: I will not be your friend. I will not be a strict but benevolent mentor. I will help you neutralize your power, and when you’ll do that, I’ll be the first who will enjoy the benefit of death. So that damn lizard can sleep soundly, knowing that my knowledge will die with me.”

  “Araya followed your instructions. He did his best to have me reproduce.”

  “And who did he choose for the purpose?”

  ‘This is the moment of truth,’ Dagger thought. “Erin, the illegitimate daughter of Angra,” he said.

  Baomani turned to him. “WHAT?”

  Everything shook. The green marble walls disappeared and gave way to columns made of red muscle. For a moment, quiet came back. Then horror spread. Blue children emerged between the muscle fibers and all together they shouted, “BROTHER! BROTHER! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”

  The Hermit turned around with eyes wide open.

  Marble and granite blocks fell into the pool.

  Dagger tried to reach for the arm of the statue but found himself holding the slimy skinned body a snake. “It was your plan! You sent that message to Araya, you—”

  “But not with her! NOT WITH HER!” Baomani interrupted, as the water beneath their feet began to boil. “When I wrote ‘have him reproduce’, I meant with a mortal! How can you think you can mix Creation with Destruction? Either you have one, or the other! Unless…”

  Everything slowly returned to its initial state. Dagger watched in amazement the multicolored fishes, and the water flowing back on the green marble walls. ‘Ktisis shit!’

  The Hermit raised his eyes and stared at him. “What if this is what he really wants?”

  “What?”

  “Bringing into the world the Cry of Mankind, the creature that will bring order back into the All—a clean, sterile order that tastes of death. Ktisis save us all if Araya decided to take a walk on the wild side.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “You have no idea.”

  Dag shook his head. “Araya is my friend. I…I trust him.”

  “Araya is a Messhuggah. A Messhuggah can’t be your friend. My boy, did you ever see them? You’re too young to understand that for a lizard the good lies in the purpose, not in the means, and their ultimate goal is always truth—the light. A lizard would stay in the light even at the cost of burning.” He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and opened them again. “You must stop it. It’s inconceivable that the Beast set foot on this side of the cosmic wall.” Baomani opened his mouth to continue, then cocked his head sideways in an unnatural position.

  Dagger watched him fall to the ground. He turned around and saw the most distant part of the non-world fall down, sucked by a nameless force. The void progressed voraciously and the stars collapsed, swallowed up by a whirlwind that twi
sted and turned taking the shape of a spiral.

  He saw it: the darkness at the beginning of the world, fertile and incandescent in the deep throat of nothingness. For a moment, he felt he could perceive its true aspect.

  It was beautiful. And dreadful.

  Then everything disappeared and he found himself on the ground, in the hall of the twelve armors. The Holy Father stared at him, his hands burned, his face terrified. He had picked Dagger up and pulled him off the Hammer of Skyrgal.

  The glitter of a blade. “ARGH!” Godivah screamed. Dagger felt his grip loosen in two hot splashes of blood, when a sword amputated both of the old man’s hands.

  Two Disciples came forward. They wore black robes, and silver, expressionless masks under their hoods. One of them rolled the priest over to the side. Godivah locked himself in his pain and cuddled his stumps, his clothes already red and sodden—all around, at least a hundred Tankars with animal fury in their eyes.

  Dagger found it curious that some of the wolf-men wore flashy sapphires and lapis lazuli jewelry, even thought they were armed with long scimitars and blue-painted metal breastplate.

  He sprang to his feet and drew Solitude against them, but the two stared silently and unimpressed.

  “Yes,” the one on the right said, taking a step forward. “It’s him.”

  Dag recognized him at once, “Marduk.”

  The fallen Dracon Delta took off his silver mask, revealing the one below, his true, asymmetrical and swollen face—his facial muscles badly stitched after the night he’d become a Disciple. “Stop running away. It’s time to go back home.”

  “I’m already here. And now I know what I’m looking for.”

  Marduk laughed grotesquely. “No, you don’t. You promised to erase us from the face Candehel-mas. You promised Olem, but we’ll only die with Megatherion. If you think about it, we’re fighting for the same purpose. This is the part of the story you still don’t understand.”

  “What do you know of my promise?”

  “Kill him and be done with it!” the other Disciple said.

  “We know everything. Always,” Marduk replied instead. “Our thoughts travel as fast as the birds on your head. We see the present. We can predict the future and, more importantly, we have a fairly good knowledge of the past. Who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past. You’re still my flesh and blood, and I suffer to see how everyone finds it easy to manipulate you. Do you think Araya is working for your own good? Reality is always complex, my boy. Didn’t life teach you anything?”