Read Dagger - The Light at the End of the World Online
Authors: Walt Popester
Tags: #horror, #fantasy, #heavy metal, #dagger, #walt popester
Dagger - The Light at the End of the World (25 page)
red-hot blade, but Dagger tried not to show it. The dying eyes of
Seeth filled his whole mind. Seeth who was sleeping her eternal
sleep on the bed he had dug with his bare hands.
“
You should learn how to
defend yourself.”
“
It’s very
powerful.”
“
What?”
“My dagger blew his arm off. Look!”
Kugar grinned, turning to the dismembered
corpse. “It’s truly an extraordinary weapon. Not just because of
the material it’s made of. I’m afraid there’s much more to
it.”
“
What do you
mean?”
“
Hypotheses. You and that
weapon seemed inseparably linked: it kills only in your hands, as
if it obeys only you. If wet with your blood, it becomes even more
powerful.”
“
I don’t remember having
told you it got wet with my blood.”
book or two,” she went on then. “Some of which I was not even
allowed to read. Not so many talk about the Living weapons.”
“
Living weapons?”
“
It’s that damn metal that
makes them alive, but I cannot tell you any more. There’s only one
book that talks thoroughly about them, about their creation and
use, but no one knows where it is kept. Moak has been looking for
it for years. I’ll tell you we came to this world to look around
and see if, maybe, it was here. Funny.”
face of a bookworm.”
“
But you’ve got the face of
an asshole! Now we have something else to think about instead of
that damn knife!”
“
And what should we
do?”
“
Respect your certainties
and get to the bottom of them. You were the one who wanted to ‘find
out from where they pop out.’ Good, now you’ve got a
chance!”
“
You have not yet
recovered.”
“
My body regenerates
quickly, almost as fast as yours!”
wounds and Kugar started at the pain.
“
Well, almost,” she
corrected herself, clenching her teeth. She moved her eyes on the
flames. “Neither Tankar, nor human. I’m in the middle.”
“
If your mother was a
Guardian, then her own blood flows in your veins,” Dagger
encouraged. “Your Tankar blood is not a doom, it can be a weapon.
Like today.”
replied, “it’s the biggest bullshit I’ve ever heard. And just in
case you’re wondering, the answer is no. The two of us have nothing
in common. You are an abomination. I am still part of this world.
Thanks to Angra!”
Dagger shrugged. “I think I already got it.
I was just trying to say something, there’s no need act like a
bitch.”
“
I appreciate the effort,”
she allowed. “But everyone has his own monsters to fight and only
few are really scary. I’ll tell you, I prefer mine.”
good idea. Talking is never a good idea. We have to get set if we
want to recover the time lost.”
“
I need a blade.” Kugar
approached the beheaded corpse of the Tankar. She pulled the glove
from his clawed hand and tried it on, moving her fingers in the
light of fire. “I have to say, I appreciate many aspects of their
culture.” She smiled smugly before turning to him. “On
march!”
* * * * *
when they got back to climbing the winding staircase that led up to
the top of the cave. Dagger made his way using Redemption, even
though its light made them far too easy prey.
Kugar followed him in silence, her every
sense alerted, as if waiting for a surprise she already knew would
be unpleasant. “If shadows are not coming to greet us, it’s only
because they are waiting for us,” she opined.
Dagger sheathed Redemption. When his vision
adapted, he realized that darkness was not complete. He could even
see the vault, white and red, with numerous cracks through which
filtered a crystal clear water. Gliding along their surface, water
fell from the stalactites crashing on the distant stalagmites,
making them look like two cold lovers decreasing their distance
drop by drop until, when that tyrant called time had been defeated,
they would finally reunite.
Dagger turned to Kugar. He could see her
bright blue eyes in the middle of the wide, black nothingness
behind.
You and I are forever
bonded. What happens to you, happens to me
,
he found himself thinking, blind to his own emotions.
to climb and climb, often slipping on the dank steps at the risk of
falling into ruin, they came to the beginning of a new tunnel.
Dagger looked down. It was impossible to see how deep was the void
at their feet, so he grabbed a piece of white stone and threw it.
He did not hear anything.
Kugar grabbed him by the arm, sifting out
the apparent silence. “Did you hear that?”
“
What?”
“
Swords! Someone’s
fighting!”
time, before running in the belly of the semi-darkness. They
emerged into a new cave whose high blue walls rose up to a distant
rift in the vault, from which the ethereal light of dawn came
through. Dagger stopped to look in ecstasy at the sunlight, a sight
he had not admired for so long. The beam fell from the top and
widened into a broad cone, just before a precipice. Kugar invited
him to look there.
In the circle of light, Olem inserted a
sword in the neck of a Tankar, leaving him alive long enough to
scream at him, “Yes, you’re dying! You’re dying bastard, and it’s
me who’s killing you! Go tell the Overgods that you’re my
Redemption. I’ll come later!” He turned the blade so that he would
suffer more, then slipped it off to decapitate him with a single
blow.
The Tankar’s head rolled on the ground to
the feet of Moak, kneeling with his hands wrapped around the neck
of a Gorgor. Scattered all around them were the broken chains, the
dismembered bodies and broken heads of the other eleven Gorgors, a
Tankar and a Guardian.
“
Three against thirteen.
We’re getting better,” Moak pointed out. He let go the lifeless
body of the shadow and shoved a knife in his head.
dead Guardian, lying on the ground. No emotion transpired from his
face. He bent over him and ran a hand over his eyes, closing them
forever. “Rest in peace, blood brother,” he whispered, his lips
moving in a silent farewell.
He has some glimmer of
humanity, after all…
Dagger
thought.
the junk of Gorgors with a kick and retrieved his sword, which the
shadows had brought with them, considering it of some value. He
caressed the blade, as if touching the face of his daughter, and
said, “I’m sorry. I promise no one will ever touch you again.”
“
We’d better get moving,
Holly,” Moak interrupted.
“
Don’t call me that. Only
Aniah could call me that.”
“
Ktisis!” Moak put a hand to
his shoulder, watching it covered in blood. “I just need a
vacation.”
then did he notice their minute figures hidden in darkness. He
instinctively pointed his recently regained sword and “Come on,
there’s something for everyone!” he boomed.
“
Give it a rest!” Dagger and
Kugar screamed with one voice.
circle of light, assuming on his face an unreadable expression that
could have been either happy or angry, relieved or shocked to see
them again. He lowered his sword and turned to Moak with a grin.
“Look what the cat dragged in!”
Moak shook his head. He did not seem happy
at all to see them. “What are you doing here? In this moment, you
should be en route to the portal, not in the Ktisisdamn wolf’s
den!”
“
The forest is teeming with
Gorgors, master,” Kugar replied. “They would have smelled him
before dawn.”
his arm in a flash and took her by the neck, lifting her off the
ground. “So you thought it wise to bring him here!” he growled.
“Without even giving them the trouble to hunt him down. A perfect
plan!”
“
I… could not… do anything…
else!” the girl muttered, clinging to Dracon’s forearm not be
stifled.
“
Leave her, asshole!” Dagger
roared.
“
You, you know how important
you are?” Olem precised, talking to him while still looking at
Kugar. “Do you think it’s all a game? Do you think—?”
let her go.
Kugar put her hands around her neck,
breathing heavily. “You… wanted to kill me?”
“
If I had really wanted, you
would not be here asking such a stupid question!”
even at the Fortress,” he said, with no inflection in his voice. “I
wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get there if I were you. The enemy
is in front of us just like behind us. No matter whether we go
forward or backward, we still have to fight. But now we have a
chance to see what’s at the bottom of all this. We need to
know!”
Olem froze.
“
He has a point, ” Moak
added.
also gone insane, now?”
“
To see what awaits us at
the end of this cave system is the only good thing we can pull out
of this whole damn situation,” Moak continued. “And you know it
too. You’re not a fool, Olem. You’ve never been. Don’t act like
one.”
“
I am the Dracon in here!”
Olem cried. “I make the decisions, not a Poison Guardian brought up
by the fuckin’ lizards!”
cave. Moak looked into the Dracon’s eyes, impassive. Something
horrible would have been said or done if one of them had not taken
a step backward. Dagger realized that a long friendship had bounded
the two Guardians for a long time, when he heard Olem pronounce
words not made for his mouth, “Forgive me, friend. It’s just that…
it doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.”
“
No, it’s not good,” Moak
allowed. “But it’s still an idea, and it’s the only one we have.
Trust him, as you once trusted his mother.”
Dagger thought, Olem was bound to him because of that shadowy
figure, shrouded in mist and oblivion that had given birth to
him.
“
Pick up everything you may
need,” Moak resumed. “Maybe we won’t get back to this place. Not
alive, at least.”
of his right boot, covered by the oily layer of Gorgor’s blood,
attacked and detached itself from the floor in a sticky noise. “How
did you surprise them?” he asked.
“
They gave us their back,”
Moak simply answered. “They were distracted by your smell. When
they turned all together, it was already too late.”
Guardian, preferring it to the Tankar’s glove. Their eyes met for a
moment, and then Olem stepped on the edge of the precipice on top
of which they were. Everybody watched him, silhouetted against the
dark.
“
What is there,
beyond?”
said, “Come and see it by yourself.”
Dagger went beside him and looked down,
only to retract all a sudden. He clenched his fists to quell the
chills and dizziness as he tried to look out again. A chasm,
immense, opened at their feet. Its unusual shape suggested that it
had not been opened by nature’s hand, at least not the same that
had generated the rest of the world. It had the conical shape of a
perfect spiral, as if a hole opened in the bowels of the earth and
a helix of stone had constricted around it. On the bottom of the
vortex there was a light, red and gloomy, too far away to
understand what it was generated by. Long, endless stairs, carved
out of one of the spiral’s arm, brought down.
“
To the light at the end of
the world,” Dagger whispered.
The light at the end of the tunnel had never proved to be anything
good since that story had begun, he thought. He knew that even that
would be no exception.
he dodged and began to descend. Everyone followed him. They went
down and down, spinning around and around the abyss, down in the
vortex, until they lost their sense of space and time. They did not
talk. They walked. Dagger felt a growing sense of relief as he
approached the Light. It broke up fears, eased the tedium of
fatigue and hunger. He felt his heart freed from a burden of which
existence only now he became aware. They went down and down to the
end, until the last step before the void. Another one, and they
would have been swallowed by the Light. Or the dark inside it,
because only now that he was so close, Dagger could see that at the
exact center of that pure light was a circle of sheer darkness,
obscurity made substance.
“
What crap is this?” he
whispered.
end of the Guardians,” he answered. “The end of our world and of
our eternal task. Of everything.”
“
The Light that comes from
darkness,” Moak added. “The matter generated from nothing. This is
a portal, Dag. A fracture in the great All, the break point in the
eternal equilibrium of Creation.”