God of Emptiness

by Walt Popester

  Dying was not sweet.

  *

  Stone. Smooth and cold under his hands.

  He raised his face.

  Kam Karkenos returned his gaze, sitting on his throne high and immense above him. “We both knew it would end like this, didn’t we?”

  If he’d had a stone in hand, Konkra would have thrown it against his father’s head. But that was the black earth at the boundaries of the All—uniform and without irregularities if not for the unusual seat in front of him. There was where he belonged, even if sometimes he tried to forget that.

  He watched his own body, and the silver letters linked to each other.

  “You did it all wrong,” his father scolded.

  “Yes,” Konkra admitted. “I think I made the big mistake. I tried to see it once my way.”

  Karkenos fell back on the backrest. “Dag…damn it.”

  “Shouldn’t you call me Konkra, here?”

  The Lord of Destruction shrugged. “I warned you. You’re a god and ‘god’ is always synonymous with endless solitude.”

  “Oh. My father does care for me, after all.”

  “You can say so. You didn’t follow my directions and ran after your human instincts, including those that were used against you. You have no idea what the consequences will be, now that you’ll meet that konkradamn cluster of exoskeletal malignancy.”

  “The crab?”

  “Kom Hanoi will be your living ruin. Your end eternal.”

  “And what will it do? Will it pinch my feet when I’ll pursue my enemies in the water?”

  Karkenos shook his head. “You’re so irresponsible…and like all the irresponsible, you’ve led to the death those who found you irresistible.”

  “Leave my friends in peace.”

  “I was talking about us gods. You probably remember. When Angra died, I told you that the real goal of his last mission was not to close the second portal, the one in the temple, but that his trip had been too long and there was more.”

  “And what?”

  “I think Kam Kres pulled that man out of there, using his own divine blood. That’s his style, although I think he was totally drunk when he took such a decision.”

  “You’re talking about Mumakil…”

  “Yes. I’m talking about Mumakil.”

  “What does he want from me? Does he want to stop me, or help me, does he—”

  “Right now, that man just wants to kill your children.” A kind of grin opened in the goat face. “It’s not so hard to understand, and it shouldn’t be anything new to him. You’ve been irresponsible to get two small gods in the pipeline. I can already feel their unbearable presence in the All.”

  Konkra tilted his head to the side. “So Erin is expecting twins. Cool.”

  Karkenos stared. Then he uttered a single, amused syllable, “No.” He leaned forward, looking at him straight in the soul. “Also Kugar is pregnant now. Ktisis! How fertile you are, my boy…all your father!”

  His laughter accompanied Konkra out of death.

  *

  Epilogue

  “Kugar?!” Dagger cried.

  He jumped up, sweating and struggling to remember who he was. He opened his mouth to breathe, but only managed to cough.

  He was inside some sort of wooden cabin. He ran a hand over the sand around his uncomfortable bed of straw and thought, All this effort, and still in the desert?

  It was hot. He wore cotton rags. He crawled on all fours up the rickety door and fell outside, searching for the sky with the desperation of a condemned man.

  Oh…Ktisis! He looked down to admire the moon-reflections dancing on the sea. The white limestone of the high, benevolent cliffs loomed over him, as a palm stretched its neck to hear the whisper of the waves.

  Everything was peaceful, there, and kind with him.

  I’m dead. I’m dead forever, and this is Almagard.

  He stood up and reached the bank, rinsing his face with salt water. Only then did he search for his sword, but he no longer had Solitude.

  A fire flickered far along the beach. He stumbled barefoot toward the light. It was a bonfire and a man sat in the profile of the flames, a hood hiding his face. He moved the small burning logs to make them burn in the night.

  Dagger watched. “Where am I?” he asked, but the figure in black didn’t answer, nor did he raise his face to look at him. “Who are you?” Dag stepped forward. He wasn’t frightened. If someone had taken care of him during the long sleep following his death, it had to be the man in front of him.

  Maybe he was just dumb.

  “I lost my sword,” Dag said.

  “No. You didn’t,” the shadow answered. “Just like you haven’t lost your stupid habit of asking one question after another.”

  Dagger shivered. “I…” His mouth hung open. “Where have I heard your voice?”

  “And what did you solve, getting the answers?” the shadow continued as if he hadn’t heard Dagger. “You sunk more and more in the matters concerning you. And the more you went down, the more you wanted to know. But knowledge is an illusion, my boy, a chimera. The true knowledge—the knowledge of Hanoi!—lies in the mind of a new-born baby who hasn’t yet perceived anything of the world around him, who believes he is the world, before vision gives him images, and hearing gives him sounds on which to speculate.”

  “What the Ktisis are you talkin—?”

  “And the more he sees and hears, the more he wants to know, drawing further and further away from that initial state of potential omniscience. Because for every thing we learn, we exclude from our minds countless others. Your whole illusion is based on this. At every step you took, you got more and more entangled in the web built around you. You’re a god. You are the one who weaves the web, and you’ve always forgotten it!”

  “Believe me, this is all very nice, but—”

  “What happened to my sword?” the shadow anticipated him. “You haven’t learned to despise it. It’s his form that incites violence, don’t you understand?”

  Dagger cocked his head to one side. “This is not the first time that someone said that to me.”

  The man was silent. He stood up and lowered his hood, revealing a burned, nose-less face.

  “Hagga?”

  The other shrugged. “Who were you expecting?”

  Dag snorted. “I know how it works. Now you’ll be my teacher—strict but fair—and when I’m ready you’ll give me back Solitude and all that blah blah.” He shook his head. “Couldn’t we shorten the matter?”

  Hagga offered a grin difficult to interpret. “You did well to take Erin with you. Here I’ll be able to thwart the plans of the gods…All gods. It’s the final solution, my boy, you just had to let the river flow. You just had to come here.”

  “And where is here?”

  The man walked around the fire. “The place where he’s been hiding. The unknown, the first why?, the spark of Ktisis madness. I had to come back here and study him at any cost. I had to understand what lies in him, but I never expected such a disaster. Someone has been here before.”

  Dagger remembered the words of his father: Angra! “Why?”

  “Ask yourself why Candehel-mas is the world in the middle of the All.” Hagga raised a finger to point at the top of the cliff. “The answer is up there. Run, my little one. Ride on the wild side of infinity!”

  A path climbed the side of the cliff. Dag hurried with bare feet on the gravel, plodding upward. The darkness gave birth to the shadows of a thousand ghosts—the ones of the past which never forgot. He thought he saw Marduk and Sannah, the Divine, Varg and even Araya, standing in the shadows and confident as if they had a thousand shadows tied to their fingers by thin threads.

  Dagger reached the top.

  And he laughed spontaneously.

  The crab stood at the end of the night, huge against the starry sky. On its broad carapace embedded in the pearly mountain, limestone concretions as old as the world itself had been excavated and adapted to dwellings,
and light came from within. On a hammock near the entrance, two amber-skinned children were playing and laughing as if there were no tomorrow.

  One claw emerged from the ground. When Dagger saw it move, he fell back in surprise and looked up. Two huge eyes spied on him.

  The appendages of the crab’s mouth opened in the valley that lay beyond, which was bathed in a pearly, unnatural luminescence. The white ramifications of the pulp crossed all his visual, and were strewn with minute, ancient skeletons—mostly intact—entwined by the candid tentacles in motion.

  Dagger walked toward the entrance, bypassing the remains of an altar made of basalt, but the jaws closed. He shifted his gaze back on those eyes—two blue spheres silhouetted against the sky. “Who are you?”

  For a moment, he doubted the crab would speak.

  There’s a light at the end of the night, the creature answered in his own mind.

  Dag took a step forward. “A light, you say?”

  Beyond the void, beyond the last border, the creature repeated. Is the light the true face of horror?

  “I saw more frightening things, my friend. Light has helped me to keep me going, you know? To overcome things.”

  Why is it beyond the great void? I saw it, I saw it. I tell you no lies. Where does it come from?

  Dag tilted his head to the side. “From…somewhere?”

  Yes. Somewhere. There’s something else, somewhere far beyond.

  “Another universe?”

  Ruled by how many gods? And how many more universes beyond the cosmic wall, on the wild side of the infinity? It’s scary, really scary, the eternal wandering on the prairies of what is and is not. I saw it, I saw it. I tell you no lies. It is approaching. You’re bringing it here.

  “Why do you speak my language?”

  Because I am you. I am you all. I am all here at the center of Creation.

  The steps of Hagga behind him. “He repeats that continuously. The light beyond the void, beyond the cosmic wall. We can’t perceive the magnitude of this horror. The scriptures say you can do it only inside the crab, in his jelly heart, and I can well believe that.” He pointed to the strange being. “Its interior consists of pure Solstice. There’s an infinity of it, so much that it branches out into the depths of the earth and infiltrates the underground river. Wherever the river goes, there goes the unknown god and his mortal knowledge. The Nehama Tankars were the first to discover it, yet I believe that the peripheral roots are somehow less imbued with Solstice, and less effective than the pure substance here in front of us.”

  “The white ramifications arrived as far as Kugar’s den,” Dagger recalled, still shaken by the words on the light. It is approaching. “To the Tower itself, this is why Evoken could perform his experiments led by Mumakil.” He focused on the curious structure at the center of the crab, a white, hollow trunk covered with slime.

  “Mumakil fled. Only the sacrifice of a god could break the link that kept him imprisoned.”

  “Was it Angra?”

  Hagga nodded. “I don’t understand why he did it.”

  “If he did, there must be a reason. A right reason.”

  The man shook his head. “The nightmare before us drove the father of the gods himself crazy. The one who was on the other side should have never come back.”

  “What will we do now?”

  “We’ll go forward with our project. Thanks to you, Erin is here and safe and that’s the most important thing. Someone tried to probe the mysteries of her belly—to compromise the plan!—yet he only managed to slow down the normal course of events. You’ll see. In the shelter of this cliff, I’ll arrange her so that everything is done.”

  “And what do I do?”

  “Right. You.” He smiled. He stroked him with a hand dirty with purple blood. “For you it’s already too late.”

  Dag opened his mouth to reply, but was out of breath. He looked down and put his hands to the claw crushing his diaphragm as if it meant to break him in half.

  I saw it, I saw it. I tell you no lies! Are you bringing it here? Pay the price of Hanoi!

  “You’re the Hermit!” Dagger realized, trying to break free.

  Baomani nodded, amused. “By now, you should know my real name.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t realize that before! The last time I touched it, the chest of mayem was empty.”

  “Empty?”

  “It didn’t turn on! Your soul was inside there and Hagga pulled it out. You’re inside his body, you…you pervert!”

  Hagga, or Baomani, laughed and took a few steps around. “When you grow old, you must take into consideration that you may sooner or later need a new pair of legs. Hagga was my student, what did they expect? During our long walks in the desert I got to teach him the few things I knew would have come in handy someday.”

  “Like transferring the soul of a Disciple into the body of a mortal?”

  The Hermit nodded again. “It was written in Dawn, for those who know where to read. Some Immortal Rites can be taught even to common humans, some can’t. What you experienced in the Hammer of Skyrgal was real. No one knows Benighted better than I do. I just needed a body to go back to study.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “You’ll see. It will all turn out for the best. If only the lizard would hurry up…he should be here, I don’t understand why is he taking so long.” He rubbed Dagger’s hair, sprinkling more holy blood on him. “But this is no longer any of your concern. In every show, even that of life, there comes a time when the hero bows in front of his audience and leaves the stage.” Baomani stepped back. “Don’t be angry at me. After all, I warned you: there’s a force opposite to Megatherion and it’s the one that we must pursue. If the forces that have lived through all eternity are fallible and have devastated the world they were supposed to protect, why can’t I try to be a god? The Beast will pave the way for that. It will be my creature, and not even the combined forces of Candehel-mas will ever stop me. Nothing is ever under control. This is the greatest illusion.”

  Dagger tried to free himself. He pushed and pulled, he held his breath, he closed his eyes and wished Olem was there by his side.

  Baomani laughed. “Relax. After all this wandering, don’t you think you deserve a little rest? Eternal, if possible. Just what you were looking for.” He became serious. “You are now my guest, Dagger. Forever.”

  Dagger was lifted into the air and watched the beach from above. He found himself admiring the perfect harmony of the rising and the falling of the waves. He noticed something beyond that black, infinite sea, a distant light, perhaps that of a new island, new people, new life.

  Funny, he thought. Really funny.

  Then began his descent into the jaws of the crab.

  *

  Note from the author and boring thanks page part…

  Nay. Wait a minute.

  Follow me.

  *

  A shadow sat cross-legged on the border of the terrace overlooking the ruins of Vardo. The sunset light danced on his scaly skin, when he put a sugar cube on the perforated spoon balancing on the shot glass before him. He poured an acid green liquid on it and the sugar dissolved, diluting sinuously in the water.

  The shadow watched the result, before throwing everything to the ground and downing the whole bottle.

  He put it down empty and coughed twice, as he looked at the immeasurable void laying before his eyes. We’re all on the same world, he thought. Our interests clash against each other, preventing us from reaching the full balance. He belched. As unattainable as the infinite lights at the end of the world. The stars, the great beyond…I saw it, I saw it. I tell you no lies. The undeniable charm and balance of the endless chaos.

  He heard fast and desperate steps climbing the stairs behind him. He smiled, recognizing the pace. “Ktisis, you really took your time,” he said, but the other didn’t answer, staying in the darkness to which he belonged. “I thought I had to wait for you much longer. You disappoint me.”

 
“What happened here? They’re dead, all dead.”

  “Nothing gets past you, Warren.” The shadow stood up, dropping down the scaly Messhuggah skin he was wearing. He walked past Warren.

  “Master, where are you going?”

  “To Asa Bay. To save Dagger, since I can’t count on you,” Mumakil replied. “You had strict orders: after the Tower, you had to—”

  “Fuck you!”

  “No. Not that.” The black man turned around. “Warren…you realized too there was something wrong in Orange, otherwise you would have never accepted—not even under torture!—to betray him and come around to my side.”

  “You let them skin my brother alive, you let—!”

  “Look around you, damn it! I should have come in time to save you, but I was held up. Can’t you see?”

  The white blood bowed his head. “Held up?”

  Mumakil smiled. “That son of a wrinkled bitch fought tooth and nail. I must admit that he was good, and things got a little out of hand.”

  “A little out of hand? There’s only slaughtered meat around here!”

  “Are you hungry, my boy?”

  “No,” the white blood replied. “I think my malaise is deeper.”

  Mumakil shook his head. “With what coin did you think you were going to be rewarded? That’s what you’ve always wanted to be, so come down to compromises with yourself and stop tormenting yourself.” He stepped forward. “Araya had nothing to do with all this, I knew it from the start. He’s never read Benighted, he couldn’t know what the consequences of the union between Dagger and Erin would be. No, this time there was another lizard pulling the strings behind the scenes, and I must say I found it fairly satisfactory to wear his skin.”

  “The Agent Orange…”

  “He himself. He was in league with Baomani, he always has been, at least since he led Baomani and Sannah in Korkore’s underground forge to be trained with them. Now I know. He turned a twisted message to Araya convincing him to use Erin for their insane purpose. I’m beginning to be tired of the little sons of bitches who plot against their own fathers.”