Dagger - The Light at the End of the World (27 page)
Read Dagger - The Light at the End of the World Online
Authors: Walt Popester
Tags: #horror, #fantasy, #heavy metal, #dagger, #walt popester
“
Eaten and dumped by a god,”
Olem considered. “That’s something to tell your grandchildren. Who
knows how many metaphors are giving you an orgasm now, huh
lizard?”
nervous.
They found themselves once again in the
colonnade of the temple, decked out with skeletons of the Burzum,
while the crucified Mastodons watched over their path as the angels
of death.
“
Ktisisdamn,” Moak let
out.
ended in a colossal arch, supported by the skeletons of a Burzum on
the right and a Mastodon on the left. Beyond, they just saw a
titanic foot of stone. Judging by the size of that, Dagger thought
that the head of the statue must have been so high that it wouldn’t
be possible to see it. Olem motioned them to stop. He immediately
unsheathed his sword and stood listening.
Kugar sniffed the air. “Smell of trouble,”
she said.
They hid fast behind one of the vertebrae
scattered at the base of the colonnade, shortly before the steps of
two creatures were heard. Soon came a voice, “Yay, stupid Gorgors
take long time arrive! They lost orientation, you wait and
see!”
“
And if they dead dead?” the
other one supposed.
“
They dead dead? No, who
kill them on the world Beyond? Shadows do not orient themselves
under the ground, this is problem. I wonder why master to trust
them and not us!”
“
Gorgor stupid. Creatures
stupid more servile and maneuverable. Master know this. We too
clever and unwieldy, but better times arrive, my friend, you wait
and see.”
to breathe but his heart was beating so loudly that he feared it
would attract the attention of the beasts.
“
How still we
wait?”
“
Better times?”
“
No, you idiot. Gorgor and
their news! I want to know how much we have to wait before putting
the world on fire. That boy cannot hide himself forever. I want
humans to amputate their tender limbs. Look into their eyes while
slowly prune them like trees.”
“
Yay! Human little endurance
of pain, they always scream, right right? And the sound of their
bones severed by an ax. Is there anything better?”
The other one barked in
agreement, before adding, “Shadows stopped in caves on the world
Beyond, stupid creatures without blood, eating disgusting purple
meat of their birds! Ah, master, master! Too much trust in them,
little in us, yet we dug beneath desert and found darkness into the
light.
We
found
great knowledge!”
“
This I say!”
“
Yay! We found forgotten god
and all things he wrote when mad! And we finally triumph, you wait
and see!”
Their voices grew louder and
closer. Dagger got the hand close to Redemption, ready for the
worst, his heart about to burst, every thought wiped out in the
time to kill, as the old Sannah had taught him. You think about
nothing when it’s the knife that’s given to speak. The instinct of
domination fills the whole mind, killing is a
pure
act. He heard the footsteps
getting closer and stood ready to emerge from darkness to sow death
but, as soon as they transited in front of Olem, the two Tankars’
heads rolled on the floor, with no other sound heard except the one
of the blade cutting short the vertebrae. Dagger found himself with
Redemption in his hand, lighting his deluded face. The Dracon
looked at him with superficiality, sheathing his sword under his
astonished eyes. Even if he could not always reason in a very lucid
way, there was at least one thing Olem could do, and also very
well.
He’s a killing machine, not
a man!
Dagger thought.
“
These were two
big guys
, look at how
they are dressed,” Moak noticed, approaching the two Tankars. “We
would have had problems if forced to face their
opinions.”
“
You didn’t really put
yourself to study how they dress, in that fucking library?” Olem
roared, not minding the two bodies and walking on. “I’ll be
castrated if I do get scared by two leaders of their clan, tribe or
whatever the fuck organization they give themselves! We are close
to the truth or death, or both, don’t waste time!”
“
Wait!” Moak intimated,
bending down to search the two corpses.
“
What do you expect to find,
their orders?”
something in the pockets of one of the two. He sneered, pulling out
a rolled parchment with the broken seal.
The Dracon snorted. “The usual lizards’
luck!”
“
There is little light, I
can’t read,” Moak said, examining the parchment. “Hel-lo! It would
seem the alphabet of–”
“
We are close to the
solution of the whole fucking mystery!” Olem interrupted. “Don’t
waste time behind a small clue, as Messhuggah always
do!”
parchment in his bag and stood up. “There will be time to read it.”
He turned to the path that awaited them. “If we survive.”
“
Failure is never
contemplated. Fourth commandment. The Poison Guardians don’t study
the seven commandments?”
“
Actually, they are
six.”
“
Who cares!” Olem
replied.
Dagger realized that their eyes, confused
by the disproportionate size of the place, had been deceiving them.
And were still deceiving them even now that, advancing, the foot of
the statue seemed to move away, while the arc was growing tall and
imposing above their heads together with its two skeletal
sentinels, the Mastodon and the Burzum, mercilessly used as an
ornament. Beyond the arc, the ceiling of the temple had collapsed
and the warm glow of a setting sun could penetrate, tinging the
walls of a uniform blood-red. The light flowed along the mighty
forms of the statue that stood in the center, making it fully
visible despite its size: it was Ktisis. Ktisis shouting his silent
rage to the sky, cursing as the sunlight revealed his hideous
features. The statues encountered up to that point were stylized,
their poses unnatural. The dynamism broke with them. The contract
muscles; the copious slime dripping from its wide open jaws; every
detail gave the impression of being in front of a being who once
lived, now petrified forever in that pose at the moment of death.
When Dagger noticed the deep open wound in the titan’s chest, he
began to have more than a mere suspicion they were not in front of
a statue.
Beyond the titan’s foot you
went down into the temple’s immense hall, a cathedral where
thousands of voices and cries echoed. The Dracon stepped forward
with his sword held out in front of his steady gaze, but only
Dagger found the courage to follow him at the top of the long
staircase, leading straight down to their doom. The steps were
high, too high for any mortal. Ktisis used them to ascend to his
temple, he
knew
.
Or maybe he remembered. Imaginations invested him and he had to
close his eyes. That place was different once, covered with
precious red and white and green marbles, the floor as the columns
and the vault. There was a light, a strong light, and there echoed
the footsteps of the Creator, to be lived through all eternity
ascending to his altar. He could hear his voice, reciting
blasphemous verses, and in addition to that the cries of terror of
those who were to be sacrificed.
“
Did you hear what I said?
Get down!”
Now at their feet, in a vast but
meager ambient, was a host of Tankars. Judging by the look on the
Dracon’s face, he realized that it was the largest host he had ever
seen. At the center of it was the Gorgors’ headquarters, made of
black leather tents where a man could hardly get inside.
themselves from a tent to the other, their arms outstretched along
the body, heads cocked sideways. They looked like black nightmares
made of flesh. The Tankars’ camp laid all around, spacious, ordered
and well organized. Unlike their allies and masters, they drank and
sang, fought and emptied their wooden pints, spilling their foamy
content on the tables as much as in their mouth. They made love in
front of everyone in a violent and wild way, never ceasing to drink
and yell, in alcohol, sweat and blood. Not far away, a Tankar was
slain for some trifling reason, while everybody laughed and cheered
around his executioner. In comparison to the Tankars’ sinister
vitality, the sense of death that prevailed in the Gorgors’ camp
was even more amplified. Even if they were only savage beasts
guided by bestial instincts, Dagger would much rather find himself
in front of a group of well-armed Tankars, than one disarmed
Gorgor. Maybe this was suggested by the mark, which advised him,
with a slimy drop of blood, to get away from there as soon as he
could.
Hundreds of Cruachan, their winged steeds,
had been tied in a makeshift fence. Others were brought in
continuously, harnessed and submissive.
“
Look at that army,” Olem
whispered. “Look well at that. Soon they’ll come looking for you
and we won’t able to face them even with all our
strength!”
much they were exposed and vulnerable. A second drop of blood was
the last warning of his heart. “It’s always nice talkin’ to you,
but now think about our skin,” he replied in a whisper.
They got back to the titan of Ktisis and
hid beneath a stone claw along with Moak and Kugar.
“
We are facing their entire
army. At full strength,” Olem described, sitting down with his back
against the stone finger. “Far from home, far from everything. Even
if we could go unnoticed through thousands of Tankars, we wouldn’t
know how to get back to Golconda. There’s nothing left to us but
backtrack our steps.”
“
And how do you suppose to
do that?” Moak wondered through clenched teeth. “Getting here was
easy, just a step into nothingness. The way back will be a little
more complicated. You may have noticed that, if we crossed the
portal from this side, we would be launched into the air just to
come back here once again! It’s like a Ktisisdamn seal!”
“
And how do they?” Kugar
asked.
“
The Cruachans,” Moak
answered. “Of course! They fly through the portal riding their
beasts. But we are… on foot!”
He looked up at his friend, with a grin on his face.
“
And now what are you going
to do? Kill’em all to win our affection?”
“
Leave it to me. I can move
in the dark.”
“
You? You are heavier and
noisier than a drunk Tankar raping his hostages. You’re going to
get yourself killed!”
already out of their hiding spot, disappeared from their sight.
“That’s what happens when parents pay little attention to their
children,” Moak considered, yet he didn’t rush to stop him.
Something in his grin, Dagger thought, betrayed a blind faith in
the Dracon and friend.
Time passed very slowly, and nothing
happened.
“
Maybe we should go give him
a hand,” Dagger supposed, unnerved by the waiting.
manage to get killed even without our help,” he said. “Give him
time. And keep ready.”
Dagger was about to ask ‘For what?’ when he
heard the shouting coming from the temple antechamber turn into a
chorus of outrage, at first, and then anger. He could not resist
the curiosity and crawled on the floor to the top of the stairs. It
took some time to locate Olem. He had come a long way, climbing
almost to the fence where Cruachans were kept. Between his teeth he
was holding a black crossbow, taken from a Gorgor. Following the
screams, Dagger identified the source of the racket, a Tankar lay
dead on the table where he was drinking with his buddies, at least
before the dart shot by Olem hit him in the forehead. Obviously,
for the Tankars that was just a Gorgor’s dart, black and slimy like
everything that concerned them, penetrating the brains of one of
their blood and drinking buddies. The consequences were all too
predictable: soon their anger was transmitted from ear to ear,
mouth to mouth, involving the entire field. Some Gorgors came out
of their tents to see what was going on, some just in time to lose
their heads. In no time, a battle broke out. He watched the Tankar
chiefs get out of their tents and try to quell tempers when they
were already walking in their comrades’ blood.
Only then did Olem grabbed two Cruachans by
the reins, jumping on the back of one. With a kick in the side, he
was in the air and everyone saw him. The massacre ceased little by
little. Many Gorgors stood watching him, with a Tankar’s head in
their hands or a blade protruding from their bellies. Howls of
outrage echoed under the dome, when both beasts and shadows
realized they had been deceived. Olem was targeted by darts in
turn. However, he flied unscathed over Dagger’s head before being
thrown to the ground and roll. The two rebel Cruachans tried to fly
back to the camp, but Dagger grabbed their reins and was dragged
into a flight. He managed to get on one of the birds’ back, but the
Cruachan did not want to be tamed. Then he drew Redemption and
brought it close to its eyes. The beast’s attitude changed of a
sudden: it became docile, his flight regular. Dagger swore he could
feel its emotions, in that moment, the unpleasant sense of
imprisonment that had always characterized its short, miserable
existence. He retrieved the second Cruachan and returned to his
companions, landing at the feet of Ktisis.