Dagger followed Schizo into the darkness, accompanied by the threatening climbing plants. They entered a secondary cave, an immense space where sizes lost all meaning. At the light of a distant fire in the endless blackness, a skinny girl played with a little mouse. Far on the right a man carved a piece of wood, while on the other side a woman ran a ladle into a pot, without taking her eyes from Dagger.
He reached out a hand to cover her with his thumb. They seem sparks of life, lost in the infinity of Creation.
“This way.” Ian led him up one of the mighty branches. They walked that unusual ramp to the point where it had knocked off the wall, penetrating the spiral stairs around the well. They climbed until they reached a domed room overlooking the pit. Here the vines had covered the rocky vault and part of the floor, creating a hybrid place of stone and wood.
What was supposed to be the pack leader sat with her back to him—a shadowy profile against the arch of light. She was a girl with long, black hair, and she wore leather armor reinforced with metal rings. She drove a dagger into one of the branches, worked its surface, and carved the bark to extract its juicy pulp.
“Hey. Look what the cat dragged in,” Ian said.
The pack leader turned to him. In the dim light, the two lapis lazuli she had for eyes sparkled.
Dagger was breathless. “Kugar?”
“Who goes around, comes around.” She took the greenish pulp to her mouth and looked straight at him.
“Could you at least pretend to be happy to see me?”
“Ian, would you be so kind as to leave us alone?”
“Don’t be too hard on yourselves, you two.” Schizo left the scene with a bow and disappeared climbing the old ramp.
Only the silence between them remained. Of all the words Dagger wanted to say, all the dreams he had built on her memory, only silence.
The girl drew nearer and Dag looked at her with fear. She could react in any way to his presence there after what had happened the last time they had met, the farewell they had been denied, Erin.
Does she know about Erin?
She stopped in front of him and smiled.
Dagger smiled too, before being stunned by a punch. Shit!
“She was pregnant when your paths split!” Kugar shouted. “You knew it, didn’t you?”
“I—”
“Shut up!” She interrupted him. She reached out her hands and he took cover behind his arms, but she encircled his neck and hugged him. “Shut up. Don’t ruin everything, as always.”
“Kug—”
“You were my light at the end of the road in my dreadful hours. You’ve always been.”
Dag gave an amused sound. “Oh. Really?”
“Are you sure there’s nothing more romantic to say?”
“Funny.”
The girl looked at him and clenched a fist. They stared at each other, then they burst out laughing. This time it was he who hugged her close. He lifted her into the air and ended up on the ground on top of her. He ran his fingers on her cheek, to move a lock of raven-black hair from her smile.
“You’re crying,” Kugar said.
“We were…we were children, the last time we met.”
As a tear fell on her smile, she took his face in her hands. Dagger rested his forehead against hers, now that there were no bars to keep them separate.
“It’s still your lucky day, punk,” she said. “I know much more than you think.”
“About Erin?”
“About Araya’s plan. It was unfair, Dag. No one should play with our feelings. They had no right to tell us what was the most rational choice.” She hugged him strongly—friend, sister, lover. “The road across the emptiness was long and lonely for both. I know it. I’ll never judge you. I love you, Dag. I loved you from the first moment and in all those spent waiting for you, in fear of never seeing you again. But Angra is good. Angra ensured that our streets crossed again, and I ask for nothing more. I just want to stay here with you as the world out there rots day after day.”
She said this. But the world—the real one, made of guilt and broken dreams—got between them again. “Where is she now?”
“You’re not going to like what you’ll see.”
“Kug. Where?”
Kugar parted from him and looked into his eyes. She nodded at the passage through which Schizo had disappeared. “Ian is making her presentable. As far as possible.”
Dagger hurried along the rocky and wooden guts, clinging to the branches. As he ascended, he heard her screams, blind shrieks of pain. Running faster and faster he came to a bare, wet cavern that smelled of feces and putrefaction. The continuation of the helicoidal ramp was walled by the branches, except for a black hole—an eye opened on the dark past.
He saw her shadow silhouetted against the purple light. Erin sat cross-legged and gave her back to the whole world, her hands resting on her knees. She rocked back and forth staring at the malignant eye as if it were looking at her.
Dagger took a step.
Ian stood next to the entrance and stopped him. “She doesn’t want to be seen by anyone in this state. She tried to hit Kugar, to really hurt her. Sometimes she doesn’t let anyone touch her. Not even me.”
Dag walked past him and reached Erin, unable to deny the truth. He ran a hand through her hair and her wave motion—so similar to that of the dunes they had crossed together—pervaded him too.
Only then the girl turned around. Dagger clenched his eyelids to refuse what he had seen. Erin lifted her hand, the one she still had, to grab his chin. With delicacy and firmness she forced him to look.
“I couldn’t kill ‘em all, when we were freed,” Ian said. “I slaughtered some, I did! In the worst way I could do it. But that’s not enough, Dag. No. It’s never enough.”
Dagger hadn’t even heard Schizo. He put his hands to Erin’s face. They had partly shaved her bald, and they had partly peeled the scalp off her skull. Two narrow black holes had taken the place of her nose covered with freckles. He wanted to scream but he couldn’t, he couldn’t even breathe. That awful emptiness that had surrounded him since the journey began came back again. Seeth’s face, he thought. The restless beast beyond the bars growled. Dagger saw Ktisis at the bottom of the long table look up and smile at him because the desert, and not love, conquers all.
The desert and not love. The desert and not love! The emptiness broke down the portal, spreading inside him. The cage door opened and the beast sprang out, freed from the shackles of reason.
Dagger tried to avert his gaze, but Erin held him where he was like when she had forced him to confess his feelings for Kugar at the shelter of the Tree of Life.
You must watch over me as long as necessary.
“No…”
She forced him to look at her, and with the silent gaze of her single eye she asked him.
“Ian. Leave us alone,” Dag said.
“What?”
Dagger knew he had to act quickly. Schizo would have never abandoned his sister. He was crazy, not stupid. It was the only thing Dagger thought about as in one movement he unsheathed Solitude and pierced Erin’s frail body. It all happened at once. The girl put her hands to her ripped open belly, Dagger pulled the blade free and immediately parried the wild lunge of Ianka, who had run to stop him and was beaten only by surprise.
Manegarm rang in the humid cave.
“YOU KILLED HER!”
“Let me—” Parry, lunge. “—explain!”
The blows Schizo dealt were not those of someone willing to listen.
Dag took another step backward. If only you could die! he thought, and perhaps there was no other way to bring Ianka to reason. With his back against the wall, Dagger tried one last time to shout, “She’s like me, she’ll come back to life!”
Maybe those words went deeper, and managed to scratch Ianka’s anger enough to make him lose concentration for a moment, allowing Dagger to pierce his left shoulder.
“Argh!” Schizo parried a new desperate b
low, then threw himself against him.
Swords fell and the two friends rolled together on the ground. Ian landed two fists. Dag delivered a headshot on the friend’s throat and kneed him in his groin. He clenched his hands on Schizo’s throat, who repaid his courtesy. Then it all became a competition to see who would faint first.
Fate threw its dice and tapped Ianka’s shoulder. His eyes went out, tumbled in their sockets. His head fell back.
Dagger rolled over on one side and inhaled air greedily, coughing it out as if, on the verge of asphyxiation, it had become poison. He got up on all fours and reached Erin, who was dead on the ground. He caressed and hugged her, lying down beside her cold body.
*
Schizo woke up bound hands and feet, with every sharp objects kept out of his reach.
Dagger and Kugar looked at him, as they watched over Erin’s body.
“She’s a goddess,” Dag said. “You asshole. She can’t die.”
Ianka tilted his head to the side. Of all the things he could say, he came up with, “Was it not enough to explain it, you moron?”
Dag raised an eyebrow.
“I mean…” Ian thought about it. Only then did he seem to get the meaning of those words.
“She’s Angra and Adonna Nightfall’s daughter,” Kugar explained. “She is one thousand and two hundred years old. Give or take a month.”
“I killed her because in three days she’ll be born again. You dig it? She’ll be alive and whole.”
Ianka smiled. He shook his head and laughed.
“She’ll rise again, in three days,” Dagger repeated. “Come and see!”
Ian got up, then looked at his tied ankles. “I don’t see me jumping there, it’s a little undignified—I’m the First Hotankar!”
“Promise you’ll do no shit and I’ll untie you.”
“All right, Dag.”
“Just your feet for now. I trust you, but dammit don’t make this more difficult than it has to—”
“Dag?”
“Hmm?”
“Untie my fucking feet.”
Dagger made Schizo walk to the lifeless body of Erin. Her nose had partly regrown, as well as her ears.
“Great Angra! My sister is a goddess!”
“Can I untie your hands now?”
“Yes.”
“And—”
“And I won’t do anything to you, asshole.”
Dag released him.
Ian smiled. Then he hurled himself on Dagger, pushing him to the wall. “Don’t you ever try to choke me! It was the same way he punished me!”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter!”
“I…” Dagger lowered his red eyes to the blade pressing against his throat. “Where did you keep that? We disarmed you!”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, remember you can’t kill me.”
“It would be worth it.” Ianka threw him to the ground, lowering his dagger. “What kind of creatures are you?”
“Friends.” This time it was Kugar to answer. “A group of friends who’ve never given up. We’re Hotankars, remember?”
Ian looked at her and quivered. His shoulders rose and fell to the rhythm of his breath. He looked like a Tankar now, one of his sworn enemies. “I need a drink. Shit, I need a drink!” He disappeared down the ramp.
Kugar turned to Dag. “He took it well. You know what he’s like.” Then she looked down at Erin. “I’m afraid of when she’ll begin to tell her story. Ktisis…what went through Warren’s head when he made you use that passage?”
Dagger knelt on Erin’s body. “Schizo was stunned before the best twist. Warren was under the yoke of a…some kind of black man.”
An intuition swept light away from Kugar’s eyes.
“Kug?”
“What happened to Ash?” she asked.
“It’s better that way,” Dag said. “It really is. They experimented with the Immortals Rites on him. He was becoming something else.”
The girl bowed her head. “He had a crush on me, you know?”
“We all did.”
Kugar made a sad, amused sound. “Stay with her. I must keep this place running. Working prevents me from thinking.” She seemed about to add something, then she took her leave.
Dagger stayed with Erin for the rest of the day and the next one. He ate the pulp of the roots, and most of the time he lay against her cold, still back waiting for the first breath of her new life.
Angra, Lord of Creation…He often began to pray, unable to continue. He wished the god was there at his side in that moment, yet it wasn’t so. The Lord of Creation wandered in the endless abyss of nothingness, unreachable for him, too. Soon he was praying to another god. God of Emptiness. I know you watch over me, father of all the pasts and all that will ever be. The first and the last; guardian of all that live, watcher of all that die. Can you at least hear me?
He wasn’t expecting an answer and didn’t receive it. The void had withdrawn on the other side of the portal, waiting. It watched him from the bottom of his conscience, laughing safely behind the bars. Am I going crazy? He slept near the only creature who had once been his refuge.
When he awoke, Erin was gone. Dagger hurried down the passage and reached the room of the pack leader. Here he found Erin—a shadow against the light. She knelt like a wounded animal on the edge of the precipice and howled, her hands and arms extended toward the infinite.
“Erin!”
She turned to him and stared. A divine purple light shone in her eyes, reflection of the Ensiferum. “If I live, you live!” she shouted with her newly-found tongue, her hands relaxing and twitching like two hearts throbbing grudge. “Is it me or just a shadow that is dancing on the wall? Is it me or just a shadow? Do you see it? Do you see her?”
A breeze moved her white robes.
“Seeth?” Dag said unconsciously, taking a step.
“If I live, you live! Don’t ride on the wild side. It’s okay as long as your heart is left in peace…oh no, no! Never mess with the heart of a god.” She curled up on herself, hide her head between her dirty, naked knees and continued to rock back and forth, in tears. “You remember the pain, you remember it forever. She couldn’t get out. When you get out of the cage—no, never get out of the cage. Share the fate of mortals and what do you get for your pain? Betrayed desires and a piece of the game. Harvester of sorrow, is that what you are? It was our grief and where were you? Where were you?”
He took another step.
She stroked her belly, staring at him. “It makes me sick to think that you were far from us when we most needed you. You are like them, just like them, RIGHT?” She raised her arms to the sky. “Oh no, no, please, God HELP ME!”
“See me.” He knelt down and hugged her. “Feel me!”
Erin stood still as the scream died in her throat in a suffocated yelp. “Where are you?” She longed for the light falling down on her, who was unreachable in that deep well. “We’re only the shadows.”
“Touch me.”
“The shadow of the people we used to be.”
Dagger felt her breath quivering with rage in his own arms. “Heal me.” He laid his head on her shoulder. “Touch me!”
She rebelled against physical contact, screaming, “Heal me, Dag. Please, heal me!”
She broke free and Dagger looked at her—hands and knees on the ground, wounded and humiliated. He reached out a hand to her hair, but she lashed out and bit him. “Argh!”
Erin let him go and ran away.
Dagger clutched the wound to his chest and bowed his head. Even that far he could hear the silent laughter of the desert. The emptiness was calling him because that was where he belonged, in the womb of nothingness.
Kugar had stood in the shadows until then. She walked to him barefoot and without armor. “See me.” She tried to hug him.
Dagger turned abruptly and hit her flank with his elbow. She almost broke contact except for a hand lying on his shoulder. Her ha
nd slid slowly down and was about to let him go. Just then he crossed his fingers between hers, silently asking not to leave him, not her.
“Feel me.” Kugar brought Dagger’s hand on her chest.
At that moment, he collapsed. He didn’t punch the stone wall, he didn’t scream, he didn’t cry. He fell to the ground and lay on his side, motionless apart from his trembling breath and the tears mingling with his blood. The beast grinned through the bars and watched him, only him. His was the face of Erin, of Seeth, of Kugar and his mother—the face of guilt and anger toward them and toward himself, too, for having lost them.
Kugar hugged him. “See me, Dag.”
“Erin…”
“Feel me.”
“Seeth.”
“Touch me.”
“Kugar.” He looked at her and ran his hand over her face.
She kissed chastely him on the forehead, holding his face in her fingers. “Let it flow. Let it flow, Dag.”
“Heal me, Kug. Please, heal me!”
She lay on top of him, but Dagger screamed and pinned her down. To his eyes the girl’s face became that of Erin, then again hers, then that of Seeth.
“Dag…not like this!”
He clenched her neck with one hand. She couldn’t scream when he began to heal her. She cried, and he healed her more and more, again and again.
Erin. Seeth. Erin. Kugar.
The murky pleasure of her agony became so strong that the girl lost control over her own blood. Her teeth lengthened into fangs, locks of white hair emerged from her skin. She snarled and cried, as a human gaze returned in her blue eyes.
Dagger healed her. He healed until it hurt and emptiness became an orgasmic collapsing—a river sweeping away every agony and despair.
He slowed down more and more, until he collapsed on her sweaty body unable to cry, think or breathe.
She dug her nails into his shoulder. With her other hand she stroked his hair, while she was shaken by spasms and sobs of crying.
“I’m sorry. Please, Kug. They…they…”
“Shhh,” she said through tears. “Feel me. Feel me, Dag.” She hugged him. Kugar’s heart beat so strongly it seemed to throb in his own chest.
The rising sun found them in each other’s arms. Dagger woke up first, his ear resting on her belly and his hand on her heart.
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