Dagger - The Light at the End of the World (6 page)

Read Dagger - The Light at the End of the World Online

Authors: Walt Popester

Tags: #horror, #fantasy, #heavy metal, #dagger, #walt popester

∞

The
Spiral
. That same symbol that his son
had on his chest, black and turned off, sign of a nature
blasphemous and divine at the same time.

She looked away.

“
My son is immortal, just
like me,” Skyrgal hissed. “He can be buried, his body dismembered
and scattered to the four corners of the world. He can be burned,
drowned and tortured to madness. He can be eroded by a thousand
acids and killed by a thousand poisons. He will come back. He is
immortal. I created him so, in my image and likeness, so he may one
day serve the purpose.” He looked at her. “When my faithful
servants raze your damn Fortress to the ground and set foot on the
sacred mountain, through his blood I’ll come back to life once
again. Who will face me, then? On which side will you want to be,
then? You! Who have tested my power, have an obligation to go back
before it’s too late! I grant you to live and watch him grow until
that day! In the end, is this not the only thing you want? The only
thing a mother would want? To bring up your own son until he
reaches the purpose for which he was born!”

The woman let him finish. Then, slowly but
firmly, she shook her head.

“
You and Crowley couldn’t
have children, right?” Skyrgal said. “That’s your
problem.”

“
Stop it!”

“
You tried for a long time.
Do you remember how painful it was to be different from all those
women? Because it’s this, what makes a woman,
regeneration.”

“
Stop it,” Aniah whispered,
in tears.

“
And now that you hold a
child grown in your lap you can’t give up the illusion that he’s a
bit yours. I understand that. Your tortuous emotions are a source
of great interest to me, they even fascinate me. You have given
birth to him with pain, a pain bigger and deeper than any woman has
ever experienced to give birth to her offspring. Pain binds more
than anything else in the mortal world. You feel bound to this
creature, even though you say you want to put an end to his
existence. But he’s mine! It’s my blood!”

His voice got stronger and that last scream
sounded human to her. Silence fell and everyone turned to them
again. Aniah realized that something horrible was going to happen,
and it was going to happen soon, when the innkeeper came up again
with a worried expression on his face.

“
I must ask you to leave,”
he said. “You’re disturbing the peace of this place.”

Skyrgal kept silent for a time that seemed
interminable. Then he nodded, and she knew that most of those
people, perhaps all, were already dead.

“
Yes, I was just leaving,
dear middle man,” he said. “Certainly I do not want to disturb the
peace of this place. No one will ever do it from now on,
remembering what happened here. All that blood. Those people torn
to pieces.”

He stood up and drew his scimitar. The
innkeeper made a surprised, intrigued expression when he found
himself holding his own purple bowels in his hands. He had not seen
him move. He looked at him, as if asking for explanations, then
fell to the ground calling the name of a woman who was not there
with him as he died. Everybody stood up. Chairs fell, beer was
overthrown on the tables. The younger tried to run to the door, the
older ones remained where they stood, petrified with terror. No one
had time to escape. Aniah unsheathed her sword when Skyrgal was
already performing the final crescendo of his symphony of
destruction, decapitating a girl, a little more than a child.
A carpet of dismembered bodies covered the
wooden tavern floor. Blood, leaking from the severed arteries, ran
along its cracks, mingling with the thin layer of sand that covered
the floor. In the quagmire only half a man survived, dragging on
with his trailing intestines. He turned and looked at his legs, far
from him, his pelvis, the spine that emerged from the guts. Beyond
the wall of pain, he understood. He bowed his head to abandon
himself to the protective embrace of the big nothing.
He’s still very powerful, even in that
body!
Skyrgal turned, surrounded by blood and
naked flesh. “So,” he said. “What were we saying?” Aniah tried to
attack him, but when the god opened his palm toward her all her
weapons were shattered to pieces. Only a dagger still survived on
her waist and she drew it out. But looking at it, she realized it
would serve little purpose— its blade was rough and porous, of a
greenish color. It seemed to belong to a museum.

“
Uhm
, look what the cat dragged in,” Skyrgal said. “Who gave you
that knife?”

Aniah did not answer. She glanced several
times from the god to the useless blade she still held in her
hand.

“
That weapon was carved from
a single block of Mayem,” Skyrgal explained. “It contains something
very valuable for my son and it was quite jealously preserved. I
wonder who gave it to you. I wonder who helped you in all this
useless runaway, after all, but now it doesn’t matter anymore.” His
inexorable gaze fell on the child. “Nothing matters, anymore,” he
continued, moving a step. “I was pleasantly surprised by your
courage. If it was my respect you were looking for, I must admit
you’ve earned it. But now stop opposing my growing
power.”

“
The greatest power is that
of creation,” she said, as she watched him approaching. “It’s the
power of Angra and women. A power you will never
understand!”

Skyrgal stopped. “How moving,” he told her
face to face. He raised his scimitar and placed it on her hair,
using it to clean the blood from the blade. “You’re a stubborn
little girl, just like all the Guardians. Sometimes I think you
fight only for the pleasure in it, because you have never done
anything else in your long, pointless history. Beyond what moved
you in the beginning and your current potential for success. It’s
stupid to fight when you already know that you will lose. What’s
the use of it, if not prolonging your agony?”
Aniah felt weak and powerless, while
outside of the tavern came a Tankar’s cry, a howl loaded with
pain.

“
The desert raiders have
been lured here by blood,” the god observed. “Sure they’ll fight to
death to snatch the last piece of flesh from your bones, once I’m
gone. For them there’s no alternative, but for you there is. Don’t
pretend to be braver than what you are. Come with me, and I promise
this time you will not suffer. In the end, I really want you to
bring up my son until he serves the purpose.”

The woman handed him the baby, as if she
just wanted to get rid of it. “Take me away, please. I don’t want
to die in the fangs of those beast. It was all crazy, forgive
me!”
Skyrgal sheathed his scimitar. He grabbed
the boy by one leg and held him up in front of his eyes, looking at
him with lust while he was desperately crying. “Yes!” he hissed.
Under the bandages, his devastated lips smiled and his eye shone
even brighter. “Yes!”
The child screamed until he was out of
breath. Then the god put it in the crook of his elbow, rocking him
gently. He broke the bottles and glasses and poured their alcoholic
content on the floor, then he disseminated the embers of the
fireplace throughout. When he was sure that fire would purge that
place, he opened the tavern door and, with the penitent woman on
his side, came out.

He stopped immediately,
looking up. The wind laughed at him, shaking the bandages on his
face. “
Uhm
,” he
murmured. “Look what the cat dragged in…”

“
You never change words, do
you?”

Twelve swords were pointed
against him, held in the hand of twelve men and women in their
amaranth tunics, facing him to form an impenetrable phalanx.
Skyrgal recognized those swords and the metal in which they were
forged Manegarm, ‘Slaughter of the soul’ in the ancient Mastodon
language. The only metal able to weed out and imprison the soul of
the
forces that have lived through all
eternity
, a peculiarity he knew too well.
Caught between the cold light of those blades, and the fire that
would have not forgiven his already worn out body, he realized he
was trapped. Especially when at the head of the twelve Guardians he
saw a man whose long white hair was barely contained by the cap. He
had only one eye, as all those who had taken place at the head of
the Fortress throughout history, as Angra’s vicars on
earth.

“
Hammoth,” Skyrgal noticed,
smiling. “What an honor. The new Pendracon in person has bothered
himself to come and take what remains of his predecessor. Forgive
me, if it’s not much.”

He looked down at the deadly sword he
wielded and felt his body shuddered with terror. That was the sword
in which he had spent his exile. Aniah walked past him, supporting
her blood brothers in the hardest hour. There was no shadow of fear
in her eyes, just the satisfaction of having accomplished her
desperate plan.

“
It was all an ambush. You
knew they would have reached you here!” the
force
hissed. “I’ll find out who
helped you and will boil him in the blood of his sons!”

“
Blood does not boil,” the
woman said. “It coagulates.”

“
Do you recognize the sheen
of this blade,
exiled
one
?” Hammoth thundered. “Hand over that
abomination and follow us on your will, or get humiliated in an
attempt to flee!”

“
You mortals cannot soil
your existence with the Exile of a
force
!” the god boomed. The light in
his eye became blinding as he raised the sword against them. “You
will not dare!”

“
Stop, everyone!” the
Pendracon ordered. “Don’t move!”

Skyrgal looked around and assessed the
situation. Stoic in the cold, regardless of wind, he watched the
Guardians one by one, still as the swords they kept pointed against
him. No, there was no way out except for one, the last that he’d
take into consideration. He watched the child clutched to his
chest. He looked at his son with anger and desire at the same
time.

“
Forgive me if we could be
together for such a short time,” he said. “I promise this is not a
goodbye. No, my son, this is the beginning of a long
journey!”

He kissed him on the forehead and everybody
wondered what he had in mind. Until they saw him fling the baby in
the air. When the Guardians broke the encirclement to catch him on
the fly, the god took the opportunity to escape. Hammoth understood
everything and jumped with his sword stretched out in the air.
“Ah!”
He felt the blade cleanly cut through the
rotting flesh, as a black leg fell to the ground. Skyrgal turned
around several times in the wind, broken, before falling down in
the sand. He rose up on his back and began to crawl back, but the
Pendracon ran to plant a knee in his rotten belly, immobilizing
him. He raised his sword in front of him and pointed it at the mark
in the middle of his chest. His one eye filled with fear as he
looked in the god’s eye.

The
force
found something to laugh about.
“What is it? You lack the guts?”

“
Go back in your prison,
exiled one!” Hammoth growled, piercing the spiral with his sword.
Skyrgal’s eye went wide as he tightened every decomposed muscle of
his body, screaming his last words as a mortal,“I’ll be back! Damn
servant of a traitor god, I’ll be back!”

Hammoth felt the hilt of his sword
quivering in his hands while the impure soul flowed into the blade,
leaving the desecrated remains of his predecessor forever. Soon it
was all over. Too soon. He pulled the sword out of the empty body
of Crowley and didn’t dare to look.

Crowley
, he allowed himself to think.
Forgive me, my friend.

The blade shone with its own light. He felt
heat on his skin and saw electric sparks running throughout its
surface. Immediately he put it back in the old sheath, on which
silver symbols, bound to each other like the links of an
unbreakable chain, were engraved. He felt the scabbard tighten
around the sword, taming its power. It was said Angra himself
traced those symbols with his divine finger when he had entrusted
that soul to men.

Hammoth fell to his knees,
his fingers digging into the sand. “Angra,
come to earth
. I thank you,” he
whispered, shocked by the extreme fatigue. He stood like that for a
long time, oblivious to the storm, waiting for light to come back.
He had restored the pledge of trust with his god. He would bring
that soul back to the Fortress and it was going to be as if nothing
had ever happened. Angra would forgive them and the cursed sword
would be back in the crypt, where it was preserved and protected by
the Pendracon since the dawn of time. That was just a hiccup, he
thought, an accident due to the unreliability of men and the
material gods they worshiped. Yet the fear of an impending danger
already weighed on his conscience, like a shadow walking behind him
to disappear only when he turned. He walked back on his steps,
eager to get in the safe light of the fire once again. The
Guardians were still in a circle around the baby, lying on the
sand. No one dared to pick him up, no one even dared to touch him.
He saw fear in his men, and then read his own fear reflected in
their eyes.

Aniah broke free from the
grasp of the two Guardians who were holding her and threw herself
down to pick up the child, clutching his fragile body against her
breast. “It’s over,” she cried. “Angra
come to earth
, it’s over!”

Other books

Whiskey Sour by Liliana Hart
El honorable colegial by John Le Carré
Upgrade Degrade by Daniel J. Kirk
Tithe by Holly Black
Sworn by Emma Knight
Redemption by Alla Kar
Conan: Road of Kings by Karl Edward Wagner