

DAGGER

The Light at the End of the World

by

Walt Popester

First volume of the Redemption Saga

PUBLISHED BY:

Walt Popester

waltpopester@yahoo.com

'Dagger – The Light at the End of the World'

Copyright © 2013 by Walt Popester

Professionally edited by progressivedits.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and places are product of the author's mind or are used in a fictitious way.
To my parents.

For the never-ending patience and tolerance, from Nassau to Trieste.
To the reader:

The author promises that in this novel you will not find any funny dwarves, elegant elves, paladins, wizards, little magicians, or sparkling vampires. Nor will there be the umpteenth land of the five lands terrorized by intestine wars.

The following novel contains coarse language, unavoidable elements of Satanism and scenes of graphic violence. The reader's discretion is advised. It is recommended for an adult audience; however, due to its contents, it should not be read by anyone.

Anyway it's just a book. Real life is out there.

Enjoy.

1. Dagger

Dagger put a hand to his waist to make sure, once again, of the presence of that one object from which he would never separate: his switchblade. Crouching in a dark alley, his bare ankles deep in the gutter that ran parallel to the wall, Dagger leaned over to look at the street. The unstable sign of the Gypsy was rocking back and forth in the rain, making fun of him with its cold and rusty chuckle. The light inside the tavern was still on, but no one had come through that door for at least an hour.

Curse you, Ktisis! he swore to himself, flattening against the wall.

His toes were tingling, as if bitten by a thousand needles. The beginning of a freezing, he thought. He had seen many Spiders lose their fingers that way and be degraded to mere beggars, forced to drag their pathetic stumps around to move people and ask them money. He didn't want to end up like that. He pulled one foot out of the icy water, then the other one. He tried to move his toes, but he could no longer feel them. He had to hurry to accomplish his job, or else return to the guild with empty hands. And with all the consequences the latter would involve.

He leaned back to look again, checking out every movement of the shadows around him. When he turned to the right, his heart missed a beat: a shadowy figure was coming toward him, slowly, in the rain. Dagger wrapped his fingers around the handle of his knife, then he realized he was looking at a city guard and the desire to use his blade suddenly passed. There were accords to respect and accords were important, the old Mama always said.

The guard stopped not far from him, with no intention of sneaking into one of the back streets. It seemed he just wanted to finish his shift and get back to any place with a roof, or at least a floor. "Look at my boots!" he said, his voice little more than a boy's. He raised his face to the sky. "Curse you, Ktisis! Enough already!"

The sky answered with a burst of rain. Discouraged, the boy who was forced to dress as an adult by society, drew a leather bag from his pocket and poured a little magic dust onto the back of his hand. He took a long sniff and stood there, motionless, gazing into space for an interminable time.

For a moment, it seemed he was staring right at where Dagger was hiding; but his eyes were fixed, dull, and were not looking for anyone or anything. Soon they filled with tears. Dagger felt a deep shame at having spied on the intimate pain of the boy. He felt like a thief, more than when he robbed customers outside taverns to survive. Ktisis must really be too busy for us, he thought.

The young guard resumed his solitary journey through the dark. Dagger watched his shadowy silhouette move away and finally disappear, revealing a wooden statue at the end of the road, in a shrine surrounded by red lights: Ktisis, the jackal god of violence and sin, creator of the world and all the creatures condemned to walk upon it. Almighty Ktisis would not listen to any prayer if it was not accompanied by a bloodbath worthy of his name. In truth, now that his annual festival, The sacred slaughter of the origins, was approaching, Prefect Mawson's guards were just waiting for the opportunity to catch a thief like Dagger and to sell him to the organizers of the sacrifices required for the occasion. For that special kind of event organizers could pay well, since the city's clergy was never short of money.

Dagger had seen a sacred slaughter only once, when one of his companions had been caught and sentenced to repent for his sins through pain. The old Mama had said that it would be good for everybody to watch what happened to those stupid enough to get caught. In fact, what Dagger witnessed had been quite convincing. Some of the sacrificial participants were still alive when the ceremony was over and the audience was leaving the amphitheater. Even if he feared and worshiped his god, as everyone else in that city, he did not want to witness one of the sacred slaughters again. Least of all be one of its protagonists. He did care for his thing. They could tear anything away from him, but not his thing.

He got to the middle of the street, planting his feet on the hard cobblestones surface. It felt good to get out of the icy mud and gradually regain possession of his toes. He even managed to move them. Maybe he was not going to lose them after all. He looked up at the sky, watching the raindrops falling on his face, and prayed. He prayed to the dreadful, eyeless god, the foul lord of torment and orgasm, the one who had created the world and then, seeing the many worries to which it had condemned mankind, decided to reward it with wine, lust and everything that made life more bearable. He prayed. He begged Ktisis to stop being an asshole and be helpful at least that night, just that night, then somehow he would have paid off. Only then his god finally seemed to listen.

A gruff voice broke the silence, tearing his prayers. "When we close, close!" cried the host, the gypsy in person. "Not stay open for one person! Fuck you home!"

Dagger had already disappeared into the alley when a guy landed on his back in the street, tearing his coat and skin. After a brief struggle against gravity, and water that made the ground slippery beneath his elegant loafers, he managed to pull himself up and tried to shout something that his thick tongue found difficult to articulate into syllables. The gypsy answered slamming the door and turning off the light at the window. The young customer looked at the closed door, muttering, then lolled against the wall and managed to rest an elbow on it, before vomiting on himself. He soon fell to his knees, sobbing for the various pains of life and all the things that were not fine.

Dagger left him plenty of time to complain, finding that it was the right thing to do, but when the young drunk stood up to begin his journey home, the boy in the shadows acted in a flash, tightening his arm around the drunk's throat as he dragged him into the alley, like a spider carrying an immobilized fly inside a hole.

He pushed him to the ground, a blade already on his neck and a hand over his mouth. It was easy to handle drunks, he thought. That was why he always chose taverns for his nightly routines.

"If I were you I'd avoid crying for help," he said. "It's dark. Nobody sees you die in the dark and no one helps you in the dark. Not in this town."

Two eyes full of tears and fear silently answered in the affirmative. Dagger removed his hand from the mouth and the boy did not scream. He merely peed on himself. He wasn't much older than he, judging by his size.

"Your voice... you're just a kid, ain't you?" he mumbled. "Do you feel so lonely t—?"

Dagger stunned him with his legendary fist. Legendary at least in the Spiders' Guild. The boy spit blood and teeth before Dagger lifted him by the collar. "Be good. Let me work quickly and soon you'll go home. Alive. And whole."

The boy stretched out his arms, starting to cry again.

Dagger cleaned him up quickly, with fast movements refined by practice. He found six Dragoons on him, a real fortune in those days, a sign that Ktisis had woken up somewhere up there in Almagard, the big tavern of afterlife.

Entranced by the unmistakable touch of gold he smiled spontaneously, but that moment of distraction cost him dearly: his victim reached out and snatched the handkerchief from his face, screaming madly: "A thief! A fuckin' thief!"

Dagger cursed and clenched his hand against the screamer's mouth. The other one bit it, so he flicked the knife under his eyes and that was enough to calm him down, but a light was turned on and lit up everything. Dagger looked up. The gypsy himself stood on the door with a lamp in his hand.

"The color of your eyes!" The boy on the ground noticed. "Oh, Ktisis! What color are your eyes?"

Checkmate the king, Dagger thought. Rule number one! Screamed the voice of old Mama in his mind. Who sees you in face while you work, dies!

"Curse you Ktisis!" he muttered again.

The boy merely raised his trembling hands in the air. "Don't kill me! P-please, don't kill me!" he whined. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I don't want to die here, please! I'm afraid!"

"Just shut up, dammit!"

"Wadda fuck happens there?" the gypsy shouted from the door.

"Shit!" Dagger cursed.

"Help!"

"Man, just shut up!"

"Oh, de fuck I come out there to help a stranger!" the gypsy decided, before closing the door once again, and turning off the light.

Dagger looked down at his client and felt him tremble under the knife.

"And... now what?" the boy gasped in fear.

Dagger smiled. "Now? You've seen my face, what do you think happens now?" he replied. "You must die, there's no alternative. 'A dead man tells no lies' the old man always says and he's damn right. If I don't kill you, there will be consequences, we both know it. There are always consequences in this world, especially for the ones like me. However, takin' your life away, I can fix all this mess. You'll probably agree."

"No!"

"Yes."

"I have a sister, a little sister. Please, please, I want to see her again! She has only me in the whole world!"

Dagger stood still, knife clutched in his hand, the edge pressing on the throat's skin, on the carotid and the red life that flowed into it. Then the grin disappeared from his face. He closed his eyes and, cursing his god no longer, but for the day he was born, he stood up. "It's your lucky night, motherfucker," he said. "You did say the magic words."

When the boy's eyes asked for an explanation, Dagger kicked at his temple. He hoped the blow was strong enough to make him forget about a lot of things.

* * * * *

Dawn was breaking when Dagger got back to the ship cemetery. The district of Melekesh where anyone who had something to lose, including life, was advised not to approach. Here, there were no streets, and no alleys. The cemetery was entirely made up of ships that had been beached and abandoned to rot in the sun. Over the centuries, many were reduced to wooden skeletons that didn't seem to have ever seen better times. Eroded by water, gnawed by rodents, dismantled for firewood before water soaked their souls. Their groans rose into the air in an endless dirge, weaker in summer, stronger in winter when dampness swelled the wooden planks making them split.

In that unhealthy place, where everything was suspended between mud, tar, and sea, blades claimed more victims than hunger. Few of its inhabitants lived to see their thirtieth year. The old Mama, the master of his guild, was one of them. Perhaps he had survived all that time because he rarely got out of his vessel. To tell the truth, Dagger could not remember ever having seen him get out of his cabin. In a small pond, crowded with sharks, Mama understood that attracting little attention was a good way to stay alive, especially when it meant not stepping on the toes of the district's most influential guild, located in the three imposing galleons anchored at the center of the cemetery. There went those who could make a career in that small, dirty world populated by usurers, rapists and thieves, whores, fences and smugglers. Where you killed for nothing and died for less. Even Mawson's guards were afraid to venture into the neighborhood. There were no laws, except the ones its inhabitants gave themselves from death to death.

Dagger set foot on the deck of the old ship where Mama had established his lair. The deck had collapsed in several places and been carpeted with repairs that, over time, had changed its original architecture. It was no longer a ship, had never been a home, and would never become a refuge. It was just a burrow, a spider hole to scurry into at the end of the night.

He knocked three times by six on the door and waited. Two big green eyes appeared from the slit of the peephole. "Password."

"Prefect Mawson's hands stink of our shit," Dagger answered.

The eyes disappeared and the door opened in a rattle of bolts and chains. He was sure he was the last. All the other Spiders quit hours earlier, maybe some didn't even get out that night. It was becoming easier to accept the relentless punishment of Mama on those rotten days, rather than venturing out in the dark and rain, given the proximity of the sacred festivals held to honor Ktisis and their unique rituals.

A misty light barely penetrated through the cracks in the ceiling, falling on a group of Spiders. They were sitting down, playing dice. Their knives planted in the ground. He wondered where they could find all that energy at the end of the night. Then he saw. Some of them were secretly licking magic dust from their dirty fingers and, judging from their delighted smiles, he realized that Mama would get seriously angry soon again. He hated when his Spiders used those remedies to stay awake and not feel the hunger. They were an income for him, all of them. Those he did not lose because of the guards and the diseases, he lost to that damn dust. Some Spiders were coughing. Others violently scratched the pustules on their arms and legs. Some were lying on the ground, unconscious, at least he hoped, because of fatigue or starvation.

Alone in a corner, one of them spat a blood clot on the ground. It was no wonder that the others avoided him. The little wretch held out his hand, looking at him with eyes sunken in their sockets. "Give me a Dragoon, won't you?" he whispered. "Do you got a Dragoon, Dag?"

Dagger walked on. The wretch was already dead, helping him would only serve to prolong his suffering. Green death did not spare. With the yellow one, maybe you could get by somehow, if someone amputated your hands before decay ate the rest of your body. With the green one, it was better to surrender as soon as possible: you rot slowly, day after day, you could watch yourself falling apart. The smell you took up was no longer that of a human being, not a living one at least: it reminded one of fish left to rot under the sun on a hot summer day. It was a disease with a subtle sense of irony, however: when the rotting stopped, when it seemed things were getting better, and you thought you have survived after all, that was the worst moment. You could be certain that the disease had begun to eat you from the inside and suddenly, one day, you woke up with larvae pushing against the skin of your belly to open a hole through which it would escape.

He let himself fall to the ground at the end of the room, laying his head in the crook of his arm, falling asleep immediately. He was awakened by a slap on the nape.

"How long did I sleep?" he instinctively asked.

"Your head practically bounced on the floor, big bro."

Dagger managed to keep his eyes open. He remembered his name, he remembered who he was and what kind of world he lived in, but again was missing why. He crossed Seeth's gaze, who was looking at him, smiling as always.

"A little tired, uh?"

"Well, I worked this night, little sis!"

"How much did you get?"

"... 'lemme sleep..."

"Dag, how much?"

"Six Dragoon, clean clean," Dagger muttered, rubbing his eyes and yawning. "And you? How much did you scrap up?"

"Nothing!"

"Oh, really?"

"Nothing at all," Seeth repeated, looking down. "This place can't feed us all. We're too many. Any white trash spewed from the city ends up in the guild, so—"

"How much do you need, this time?" Dagger interrupted.

Seeth raised her face. She hated asking for help, he knew, but she did it all the same. At least until there was someone stupid enough to help her.

"Three. I told you, I didn't scrap up anything."

Dagger looked around before putting a hand in his pocket. He took three of his Dragoons to drop them in her hands, one at a time.

Tum, tin, tin.

"I won't always be so lucky," he said. "Try to learn how to take care of yourself. I spent the whole night in the rain to beg Ktisis for a stroke of luck, and you? I'd bet my soul you gave up at the first difficulties to get back here. Sometimes I wonder how you can be still alive in a place like this. It would be much easier for me if you were not here!"

With a moment's delay, he realized that he had said too much. He saw her smile disappear from her face, slowly, very slowly. She bent down her head and closed herself in that offended and impenetrable silence of hers. She did not answer even after he stroked her hair. Crap, Dagger thought. She was really upset. He hated when she made him feel guilty like that. This time she was not doing it on purpose, as she always did. He could see through her emotions. In truth, he could literally see through her body: Seeth had white skin, white hair and white eyebrows. She was thin and looked like the ghost of a girl her age. Yet he found her beautiful; a frail, rare and priceless beauty that did not belong to that world, certainly not to the ship cemetery. Everyone in there thought she had a demonic nature. This was the reason why they always kept her at a distance, at least, those who did not approach her from time to time in order to try to sacrifice her to Ktisis. Dagger too knew what it meant to be considered a monstrous creature. Nobody ever wanted to have anything to do with him either, because he had one thing in common with that little girl, just one thing: his eyes. Red as if the flames of hell themselves burned in them. In that world of snakes, having eyes of the same color was enough to feel close to someone. If it were not for her, his life would have been unbearable. If it were not for him, Seeth would have ended in a brothel, or worse, but perhaps there was no need to remind her every time.

Ktisisdamn. I'm really an ass when I put myself to it.

"Come on," he said. "Take that look off your face. You know I didn't mean it. I never mean it. I'm an asshole, remember?"

Seeth shrugged. "I just couldn't do it, really, Dag, I tried to, but tonight I couldn't stay in the rain. If I get sick once again I won't be so unlucky to survive," she coughed. "You never get sick."

"Your cough on request is becoming more and more impressive, little sis."

"Did I already say 'fuck you'?"

"No."

"Well, fuck you!"

Dagger looked around and saw that the other Spiders were so taken by the magic dust that they hadn't noticed anything. He hated this place, full of spies. He hated his fellows. He hated being there.

He kissed Seeth on the forehead, under a lock of hair white as milk, to remind her that he cared about her at all times, ever since their paths had crossed.

"You and I are one," he said. "What happens to you, happens to me."

"Are you drunk?"

"No. It's that without you I... I..."

She smiled and hugged him. "Love you, Dag. Even if you are a disaster at words."

Dagger closed his eyes and hoped that moment could last a bit longer than those in which he felt alone. She was his refuge from the ugliness of the world, those skinny arms, that one creature who needed him. If, for her, Dagger was salvation and the only form of protection in the world, for him Seeth was even more. She was his only Redemption, the one element of his life that the Overgods would not fault him on the day he would die. Leaving behind his mortal remains, he would have faced them on Almagard's threshold, asking for toll; a single act of pure and selfless good accomplished in the sea of mortal sin. Redemption.

Seeth was his.

It had been like that ever since his companions brought her in there for the first time, in a bag, closed with a punch. He observed her fragile body pushing against the worn fabric, felt her desperation in the weak moans filled with suffering coming from the inside.

'Guess what's in here!' the spider holding the bag asked, his eyes dilated, a stupid smile on his face, his fingers white with magic.

'A dog!' one of the little Spiders answered, yellow in face.

'No, a cat!' another one replied, his skin greenish.

'No matter what it is, let's eat it!' the last one stated, causing the laughter of all. But not that of Dagger. He immediately realized that there was a little girl in there.

'Where did you find her? It's not funny, let her go!' He noticed that, just hearing his voice, the little girl in the sack had begun to move slower. They had been bound then, without having yet seen each other. He was only seven-years old, but he had no misgiving to face three Spiders of twelve years each. He already knew how to use a blade, at least well enough to leave one of his older companions bleeding on the floor, with a hand to his open throat, and the other two unarmed and with their bare hands outstretched toward him. Dagger seemed to be born with a dagger in his hand.

'It was just a joke!' they had said, stepping back. 'Calm down, you little shit, you keep her! You can do whatever you want with her.'

And Dagger had kept her. He could have done whatever he wanted with her, so he had made a sister. From then on, he and Seeth had grown up together, inseparable. She was the closest thing to the concept of family he ever knew. Every time he looked into her red eyes he felt free, even if in a cage and despite all his rage.

She smiled. "Dork."

He opened his mouth to answer something, when a rough voice broke through the guild: "Dagger! Bring your ass here if you got back!"

They both turned to the door of Mama's cabin.

"If you've done something stupid tell him before he finds out, as he always does," Seeth said. "It's impossible to hide anything from the man. I don't keep secrets from him, not in here."

"So he knows I give you a hand, too?"

"Did I already say 'fuck you'?"

"No more than necessary."

Seeth rested her head against his chest, closing her eyes. "Don't you do something stupid," she said. "Don't you ever. Don't you leave me alone."

"I'm afraid it's too late."

"Hmm?"

"I fucked up tonight. He saw my face."

"Who?"

"The client I robbed."

She shivered. "And I suppose you didn't kill him, right?"

"You know I never kill. Never."

"Shit!" Seeth whispered through clenched teeth. "You and your damned pact with yourself! Why? Why must you always be so stupid? There's no other moral in this town. Either they die or you die."

Dagger kept silent.

"Ain't you about to say that you're different?"

"We are different. We are not like this place. We can be better." He bowed his head and waited for his sister to go into a rage.

"Where did it happen?" she asked instead.

"Outside the tavern of the 'Gypsy.' That jerk was drunk, I swear, he looked like... I threw him on the ground, with the knife on his throat, and then he stretched out his hand and tore the handkerchief from my face, screaming like a madman. The gypsy turned on the light and illuminated me. Fortunately, he didn't feel like getting out in the dark to help a stranger."

"You had to kill him. You're in deep shit. Mama will know about it. Mama always knows everything. Maybe if he was really drunk he won't remember your face."

"I don't think so. He clearly said, 'Oh shit, what color are your eyes?'" He grinned bitterly. "You easily remember a pair of red eyes."

"Shit."

"You already said that. I will think of something this time too."

"This time is different. This time we lose."

Dagger passed his hand through her hair one last time, before getting up to face the old man. Advancing toward the door, he felt someone crying beneath the floor. He froze. Mama always used to wait until the night's accounts were closed before punishing those who had done something stupid, or had refused to go out into the night to bring him the Dragoons. The moans and screams of pain that rose from the lower deck every night were a torture even for those who had been good. Surely they were a warning. Not pissing off the man was essential for survival between those rotting walls.

"The prayers!" the voice of Mama admonished.

Dagger turned. Right next to the door, locked up in a sacred shrine and surrounded by black and red candles, Ktisis watched him gnashing his wood fangs, roughly carved in his eternal sneer. He knelt down and prayed. He prayed Ktisis to help him just once more, only once. But the god did not answer. He just kept on staring at him, grinning.

Dagger opened the door and found himself absorbed in a magnetic gaze, the stifling gaze of eyes dark as night; sitting behind the desk, old Mama was waiting for him. His presence filled the whole room. It was like the notebooks where he used to write everything, the trunks in which he was the only one who could get his hands into and the dusty, rusty weapons around him were appendages of his body. He was that room. He didn't just live there. Everything in it reflected his own personality, especially the trapdoor in front of the desk. The lament of the Spider closed below rose even more desperately, hearing his footsteps. Dagger had been down there only once, but not to be punished. Mama never did punish him, not even when he did something really stupid. He got down there pushed by curiosity, one of the many times the old man was drunk to the bone. He did not find anything special in that great, dark and cold space. There was definitely nothing scary. It was just a cold and dark hold, with a filthy mattress lying on the ground. He could not imagine what the old man did to his fellows down there. None of them had ever wanted to talk about it, as if they were ashamed. But every time he summoned one of his Spiders, the old Mama made him stand upon the trap door, painted in black with splashes of red paint, from which came the need to never make him angry, not in there. Dagger stepped forward, prisoner of his eyes, until his bare feet stood on the rough painted surface of the trapdoor.

The old man looked at him in silence, his eternal grin on his face. "Tell me." He began. "Did you get the three Dragoons even tonight?"

One by one, Dagger dropped the three golden coins on the desk.

"Three?"

Dagger nodded.

"Admirable!" Mama replied, staring into his eyes. "And you're still helping your sister, aren't you?"

The boy nodded again.

Mama smiled lovingly. "I know," he replied. "I can understand that, I'm not so cruel. I myself had a sister once, a sweet sister with blond and long curls. I avenged her, you know? Oh yes. My father looked into my eyes as I killed him. He knows that it was me who killed him, and why. They say revenge is never complete if your victim does not know that it was you who killed him and why. Yes, because my sister is dead. Oh, I already told you, but that's another story." He looked at the desk's surface with lost eyes, softly uttering obscene words, barely understandable, among which suddenly emerged, "Now, is there anything else that I should know?"

Dagger shook his head. He left out the small detail of not having killed the client who had seen his face, that night. Sure that somehow Mama would still come to know. It was a terrible certainty, as night that follows the day, but if he had known that morning, his life would have ended there, so he had everything to gain. If nothing else, a few hours of sleep.

"Three Dragoon," Mama repeated, fiddling with a cigar between his fingers. "You're the only one that still manages to bring them to me, except of course your sister, but that's another story. You must have been at the tavern of the gypsy. Yes, that place would remain open late even if the entire city would end under water. And you have waited a long time, since you got back this late. I like it, Dag, it means you can wait for the right time and that sooner or later you always get what you want. You'd have a long way with me, if you weren't a hopeless troublemaker who sooner or later will bring me to war with the Three Galleons. It already happened, remember?"

Dagger nodded.

"And maybe you're still wondering why I haven't killed you after what you've done," Mama thoughtfully continued, in one of those moments in which he seemed to be speaking only to himself. "Disfiguring the face of a member of the Three Galleons. You have to be really crazy, or desperate, to do it."

"But he wanted to gouge out my red eyes and burn me alive because he thought I was the son of Kti—!"

"Shhh!" the old man said, raising an index finger. "Do. Not. Interrupt. Me. We paid a high price. I had to hand them three of your fellows, of course the most incompetent, but that's another story. Only Ktisis knows, in his divine cruelty, how much those guys have suffered before they kicked the bucket. If they are already dead. In that guild, there are people able to torture you for the rest of your days, you know? Once they used to work for me, then they made a career. This world brutalizes. You don't have a little remorse?"

Dagger shook his head and Mama slammed his hand on the table, before bursting into wild laughter. "To Ktisis! Neither do I!" Also his yellow eyes laughed with him, weeping as when he was really happy, or really drunk.

He's crazy. He's totally crazy!

"I'm glad I kept you with me, because you will have a long way," Mama summed up, trying to get serious. "The fact remains that you must never hide anything from me. I know how to fix things. I can treat. This is why we're all still alive, or at least afloat, in this rabid dog's world. Pacts are important. You always have to compromise with existence. Many think I'm crazy. They proved me right. They proved me wrong. But they could never last this long." He drummed his index finger on the desk. "Not in this hell. I've gone crazy in this hell. Once I was not like this. I was a legend, a living legend, they called me. I had a tower, you know? From there you could see the desert, the whole fuckin' desert, with the Ktisisdamn ruins and everything. Then you came. The infamous fate, in his unconscious and inscrutable wisdom, has decided to entrust you in my sinful hands. Yeah, I was a legend once, but you know what remains of human deeds once time buries them under his generous load of shit?"

He looked Dagger straight in the eye and suddenly there was silence. There was no longer the murmur of the other Spiders beyond the door, or the sound of waves crashing timidly against the ship's rotten wood.

There was only the cry of the boy closed below.

"Tell me," the Great Mama uttered. "I will not punish you this morning. Is there anything else I should know before I get a visit from the Three Galleons' emissaries, or the men of the prefect, or both, knocking on my door, armed to the teeth?"

Dagger lowered his eyes and shook his head.

"Good. I believe you," the old man replied. "It's just that in your eyes sometimes I read things that... well, that are not there. I haven't been a good father to you. All this responsibility made me mad, but once it wasn't like this. It would have been better to die a thousand times than to live this life, and now you know that too. One day I killed my father, you know? He killed my little brother. I killed him. But that's another story."

Dagger spun on his heels, walking to the exit trying not to look as if he wanted to get away from there as soon as possible.

"Ah. Dagger?"

He stopped, turning again. Mama was standing in front of him. He didn't even hear him move. He found himself hit by a punch in the stomach, more legendary than his, and when he looked up he found a fat index finger against his face.

"Next time you help that little bitch get the three Dragoons I throw you both into the sea, together. With your ankles tied." He laughed. "Oh yeah. It will be a nice thing to see. From now on she must do it alone, otherwise it's useless she remains here with us! This district is full of brothels and with her exotic beauty I won't have trouble selling her. You know she's not your sister. Why do you help her?"

"Because she's my only hope of Redemption," Dagger said.

Mama remained silent, struck by that answer. Then he shook his head. "Oh, but there's no redemption in this world. Not for you. So this is your problem. You still need to understand it, but don't worry. Now I'm going to help you. I always know what needs to be done for your own good."

For a moment he looked at him seriously, then burst out laughing. Dagger stood up and left the room without another word. He reached Seeth, lying under a porthole, and snuggled against her dirty back.

"Without you, I am nothing," he said, supposing she was asleep. "What happens to you, happens to me."

She turned in her sleep, pillowing her sprawled face on his arm and snorting. Dagger smiled and closed his eyes. Fatigue got the better of him. In the land between dream and reality he felt, as always, the wind in his hair. That wind-borne sand was about to push him in the Antiworld, the world of unconsciousness and dreams where even dead were given to speech.

But he was drawn back to reality when he heard the door to the Mama's cabin open again. He listened to his voice, barely a murmur to some Spiders nearby. Then he heard their footsteps, slowly approaching, and put his hand to the knife, getting ready. When it was the right time he jumped up, pointing the blade toward them.

"What do you want?" he asked but, looking in their eyes, he realized that those five were not there to talk, and they were so high on magic that they didn't fear even death. They were there to obey an order of the Great Mama, and they would at any cost. Dagger did not wait to attack. No one could compete with him in there when it came to the blade. He fought back all their attacks, far too weak and predictable, and came to cut one of them in the face, thrusting the blade into the cheek and a spray of blood hitting him. With pleasure, he heard his scream of pain mixed with toxic panic. Before realizing he had fallen into their trap with both feet, two of the Spiders grabbed Seeth, still lay on the ground and dragged her by the hair toward the studio of Mama, laughing crazily, their pupils dilated.

"Dag!" his sister cried, waking with a start and grabbing her hair. "Dagger!"

He looked at her getting farther and farther away, helpless, as if in a nightmare, while the other ones kept him busy with his knife, indifferent to hurt as only someone under the effect of magic could be. They let him go only once sure he would not make it; Dagger reached the door just in time to have it slammed in his face. He tried to ram it down, kicking it, but the Spiders lifted him up and pushed him away, still laughing. He slammed his back against the wall and slid to the ground, unarmed, taking his head in his hands as they continued to beat him ferociously, with kicks and punches in the open face. When they stopped, he heard the trapdoor being opened among the hallucinated laughter.

"No! No!" he whimpered helplessly, spitting out blood. Now he understood what Sannah had meant with his last words. He would not punish him, he never would have. Dagger heard the screams of Seeth throughout the night, as well as all the Spiders, as she was administered suffering. At every cry of pain he repeated to himself it was all his fault, of his illusion, because there was no hope, no redemption in that world, not for him. Gods didn't listen to a street Spider's prayer.

He was learning his lesson.

He was no one. He was nothing.

"I'll take you out of here," he whispered. "I'll take you out of here even if it's the last thing I do!"

Only when the sun had begun its slow descent into the putrid horizon of Melekesh, the screaming stopped. Pain had the better of him and he closed his eyes.

He heard the wind.

And the wind-borne sand.

* * * * *
Thirteen years earlier.

2. Desecrated Trinity

The cry of the wind was the only audible sound in the vast silence that hung over the ruins of Adramelech, the ancient and glorious Gorgors' Metropolis, made a desert by the tireless work of time. The titanic stone faces that emerged from sand, the ruined domes and megalithic walls were all that remained of its ancient inhabitants' dream; to build a city worthy of Skyrgal, their god and creator, where he could bring his reign in blood once he'd risen again. Now there was nothing left of the ancient splendor, but the ruins half buried under the desolate dunes, sent from the desert to claim back the space from which it had once been stolen. Under the ocher line that bisected the city, hid the ancient Master way. It was this path the woman was following, head bowed and her step uncertain. She wore a worn-out tunic and a cap on the hair as the last refuge from the fury of the elements. The ruins swirled the treacherous currents to push dust between her lips and the narrow slits of her eyes, blinding her. Still, she stubbornly dragged forward, propelled only by the fear of failure.

For a Guardian, failure is never contemplated, she recited in her mind, and then again, All steps you have taken in your life have led you here!

The first commandment of the Guardians. Her favorite one. Those words had a personal meaning for her since the first time she read them. They were engraved in the stone arch at the entrance to the Fortress of Golconda, that one place that, even if for a short period of her life, had been synonymous with home. The pain of a memory suddenly seized her: 'It's not really a commandment. It seems a sort of premise,' she said to her Guardian instructor when, as a child, she stepped in the arena for the first day of her training. Long, long before then. She remembered how he smiled, putting a hand on her hair, as if to caress her. She remembered. She remembered the coldness in his eyes as he began to beat her viciously in front of her companions, to teach her in the most effective way the meaning of blind obedience, the unquestioned loyalty to the six commandments of Angra. For a moment, she wondered if it was not just the complete confidence in the truths revealed from above to have led the world to ruin. It was only a fleeting doubt, soon swept away by the storm along with what remained of her strength. Now, that first, unusual commandment only sounded a bit sarcastic to her. Truly, many steps had taken her right there, on her knees in the dark and cold.

A long howl made her skin crawl. For a moment, at the top of an obelisk, she saw the shadow of a Tankar, a marauder of the desert, opening wide his jaws to the sky and stretching his claws to the currents of the East. He was alerting his companions she had entered their territory. From then on every moment was the right one to shake the cold hand of death. She grinned. No. They would not attack her, they were afraid. Not of her, of course, but of the shadow that was chasing her. She hugged the burden she was carrying to her breast, as if she was hiding the most important thing in the world. Then she pulled herself to her feet to walk on.

I'm almost there. Almost!

Entranced by her tormented thoughts, she nearly didn't notice she had reached the 'light at the end of the world' and, with it, the only refuge that night would offer. It was a filthy tavern for stonecutters, created under the imposing arches of a bridge collapsed, nobody knew how long before, in the dry bed of the river that once it crossed. The first, or last, outpost of civilization, there at the invisible boundary with the Pacific desert and the horrors that lurked in its yellow womb.

After days of walking through the ruins, she set her foot on the one wooden step that was still emerged from the sand. She knew she was suspended between the two lives she had lived. Or maybe, between life and something that had never been life. The fragments of voices coming from inside the tavern crept in the wind, together with the clinking of mugs. They sounded like the enchanted sounds from a world far away, forever lost. She opened the door and let the fury of the storm in. Some of the stonecutters who sat in the heat turned to her, their faces barely lit by the dancing flames in the fireplace.

"That door won't close on its own!" cried the innkeeper, somewhere in the faint, reddish light.

The woman closed the door behind her and pulled down her hood, revealing a pleasant face marred by a deep scar on the right cheek. Despite this, many of the stonecutters looked with a cloudy interest at the small breasts' protuberances under the worn and dirty clothes, the white skin and the hair that shone like copper in the dim light. Some of them, not necessarily the most drunk ones, would have tried to win her favors in a more or less legitimate way, was it not for the giant broadsword secured on her back, the belt of daggers on her belly and the long knife tied to the calf.

The woman stumbled undisturbed to the table at the bottom, the most discreet one, and collapsed on a stool. At no time did she broke the protective embrace on the bundle she carried with her. She arranged it in such a way that no one could peek inside it, though very few were wondering what she was carrying in there now that her firm buttocks, perfectly laid on the stool, awoke in them feelings that some thought even lost.

Soon I'll kill you. Soon I'll kill you and it's going to be all over.

"This fucking storm has stopped everything. The quarry, the shipping, everything!" She heard someone murmur behind her, while someone else, on her right, said,"Yes, truly a nice ass."

"Three months, Ktisisdamn! Three months that none of us works! I talked to the boss, told him, 'What the fuck, do you want to starve us to death?'"

"Yeah, you were right..."

"The fool just answered, "And what am I supposed to do, pray to the gods? Go to the light at the end of the world, and you'll eat for free!' I thought he meant death, with that expression."

"Yeah, death..."

"Then I come to know that, as long as the storm lasts, the desert mayor threatened to raze to the ground the taverns that do not empty their warehouses, and I realized what he meant. Yep, I love that man and the way he talks to people, I mean it. I will vote for him again but, holy shit! Now there's only beer left!"

"Yeah, beer..."

"Barrels and barrels of beer and not a fuckin' bone to chew on! My little one, he's begun to hunt mices, you know? He runs after them with a stick, smashes their skull with a blow and would eat'em raw, for the hunger, if someone does not stop him. If the wind keeps on blowing like this I'll have to kill the dog, though I doubt there's still meat attached to that four-legged skeleton. My children won't like that. We picked it up from the street just six months ago, but at least they'll have something to eat. At least I won't have to kill the weakest of them to feed the brothers, just like last year. They didn't know where that meat came from, they were too hungry to ask. But I did. I cannot debone another one of my children, Iahn! Do you know the noise it makes a bone so small when it's broken? I hear it every night. Every damn night!"

"Yeah, every night..."

She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and prayed. My Angra, how can you allow all this suffering? she thought, but said nothing. All the world that was dying around her was none of her business.

The innkeeper came and planted his fists on the table. She lifted her face to look at him, finding no welcoming smile. Those people were not accustomed to good manners, it seemed. And they stank. They stank of the stale sweat brought as a gift by the lack of water and the long hours of work under the worst weather conditions possible, spent at dismantling the old Adramelech' walls to extract stone for the civilized world.

She felt an instinctive sympathy for them.

"I'd recognize a Guardian of that Ktisisdamn Fortress even from miles away," the old innkeeper began. He ran a hand over his dirty apron in a nervous gesture. "Probably for that trunk of a sword that you always carry around. A sword of Manegarm, ain't it? When I was a little kid my grandfather always told me about your swords. He said you could catch the soul of a god with those, yes, those fuckin' swords. Even then I wondered what depraved and corrupt people would play with a god's soul. Wherever they go, guardians bring death with them, and also inside." He looked at her, grimly, before adding, "What do you want, in this place of peace?"

"Beer. A lot of beer. And milk."

The old man looked at her in disgust and opened his mouth to reply, when the chubby hand of a newborn baby popped out from the bundle on the woman's chest. Now it was clear for whom was the beer and for whom the milk.

"Uhm," he muttered. "A Guardian and a baby. Terrible match. For the wrath of Skyrgal, a child so small shouldn't—"

"Milk," she ordered, looking at him as if suggesting that whatever she was doing there, was none of his business. He passed his hand on the apron once again.

"We have no milk here," he said. "I mean, look around you, woman. People is fuckin' starving here! Where do you think I—"

"I know. I've kept my ears open. In addition to the chatter I heard other voices, barely perceptible, talking about how your son is not even losing weight while in this poor people's slum death follows death, hopping from one baby cot to the other. Voices that came from that table over there DON'T turn around, dammit, do not turn around. The man without a hand and the woman older than him, surely you know them. They were talking about making you pay for it, if they discovered something about it. The way they thought to make you pay... well, I'll spare you the details. However, nothing compared to what a mother discreetly armed can do, with a child who has not eaten in a long time in his arms. Now that's a terrible match."

The innkeeper was shocked and she smiled. He loved to read in the eyes of the people.

"We've got only Mokai."

"And what is that?"

"Skar – raw milk, fermented in a barrel with honey, bacon and dried fruit. It's the specialty here. We also give it to small children to help them survive the cold, of course... not so small."

"Well, that won't kill him," she replied. "And I always like to taste the specialties of the place, even when it comes to a bunch of yokels – plague victims like you."

She smiled and waited for the innkeeper to go away, together with his stupid skeptical look, before taking off a strip of cloth that wrapped the baby to look at him. She could not remember how long it had been since the last time she had done it. The hardness on her face, the deep furrows of tiredness, even the scar on her cheek melted into a sweet motherly smile.

"Soon I'll kill you, sweet child o' mine," she whispered. "Yes, soon I'll kill you and it's going to be all over. At least for you."

In that moment, she heard him coming. Maybe not just her. Even some of the stonecutters raised their eyes to look around, confused, as if they were aware of something wrong beyond the sweet wall that intoxication had erected around their senses. The temperature lowered, as well as light. Her heart began to beat stronger and faster and she found herself planting her nails in the table to remain calm.

She could feel his stench.

The tavern door swung open and everyone turned. In the rectangle of darkness, opened on the storm, a shadow appeared, vaguely human, that even sand and wind seemed to circumvent in fearfulness.

It's him! she thought, while an electric thrill ran through her legs. He didn't send Gorgors after me. He wants to do the dirty work himself!

The host slammed a mug of beer on the counter and shouted,"That damn door!"

The shadow took no notice of his words. He moved a step, emerging from darkness. Rich black silk fabrics wrapped his whole body, including his face, exposing only the right eye in which shone a yellow and malignant light, not reflecting that of the hearth. An ancient scimitar, with a finely crafted handle, was by his side. The shadow had nothing else with him,no bag for food, no water supply, no equipment to deal with the eternal winter of that land. He marched under the astonished gaze of everyone to reach the table where the woman sat, and looked down on her. The innkeeper went to close his damn door by himself, before approaching the two with a no longer hostile, but seriously worried, expression.

"What can I—?"

The shadow silenced him just by raising his hand. Two red and fat larvae emerged between the bandages folds, falling on the floor, satiated of death. The hand was black and skeletal, with a few flesh shreds still attached to the yellowish phalanges. It did not belong to a living being, nor a being that had died recently, after all. The host swallowed a lump of saliva and walked away, silent.

The Shadow sat down and the buzzing around them faded into a overwhelming whispering. "Aniah, light of my life," he began. "Where were you going, precisely? I think you've got something that belongs to me."

The bandages folds did not moved at all as he spoke, as if that evil hiss was coming straight from the depths of his decomposing body. The sound was produced by the mechanical movement of the larynx of a dead man and what remained of his diaphragm. Then, there was the echo that overlapped it, coming straight from the realm of the dead. Sometimes Aniah had the terrible feeling that the echo arose within her, merging with her own thoughts and causing a nauseating feeling.

She observed that one eye, digging deep into the fatal glance, and grinned. "I'm afraid the beauty treatments you administer yourself are not giving great results, Skyrgal," she said. "You should try the sulfur baths of your loyal Gorgors. They have softened the edges of my wound, you know?" She put a hand to the scar on her face. "The one you opened on my face as you laughed at my stupidity."

The Shadow cocked his head to the left and right, making his neck vertebrae crack. Then he looked at her once again. "Sulfur," he hissed. "Very funny! Irony, especially if drawn out at less probable times, is something that has always fascinated me in you. You mortals, I mean. Also Crowley used to make completely out of place jokes and the more they were of a bad taste, the more he found a dark pleasure in it. I have found him irresistible since the beginning."

Aniah smiled. "Oh yes, Crowley had a great sense of sarcasm. Maybe that's what made me fall in love with him. I don't dare think about how many jokes would come to his mind seeing the state you are reducing his body. You're making him fall apart. It's very rude of you. You used him only to convince me to follow you and impregnant me with your..."

She could not finish the sentence. Her smile disappeared, irony disappeared, and she had to fight against her eyes not to cry. After all that time, she could not still understand, or nominate what she had given birth to. She shuddered when she realized to have named him always and just 'Sweet child of mine'.

"What can you do about it?" Skyrgal added, amused by her sudden dismay. "A mortal body is not made to accommodate a god's soul for too long and you simply can't imagine how boring that can be. Do you think it was nice scratching my nose and then finding it between my fingers? Oh, my dear. Inside me, I feel infinite cavities filled with putrid liquid and gas just waiting to get out by unnatural ways. It's not a good existence. Put yourself in my shoes. Well, they're encrusted with all sorts of dry fluids. So, let's say, see it from my side,I find it of the utmost importance that you come back home, together with what belongs to me." He raised his index to indicate the child. "That is my blood and I need it. I need it badly."

"Where's your other hand, sweetheart?"

"It must have fallen somewhere. Where, I do not know. With the shortage of protein in the local diet some beast must have already collected and digested it, as time does with your stupid human lives, more or less."

"What a subtle metaphor."

"Thank you."

"That hand with which you used to caress me," Aniah remembered, as her eyes got lost. "Vowing that you would protect me forever."

The god remained silent. The bandages on his left shoulder moved, letting out a puff of fetid gas. "You think you can still talk to him, don't you?" he deduced. "Hidden inside this rotting body, you think you can reach Crowley Nightfall, Pendracon of Golconda, vicar of Angra and all that blah blah. You think you can tell him, 'Fight against him, love of my life! Come out! I'm waiting for you with legs wide open!' Oh. That's stupid, woman, very stupid, and technically wrong,the man you loved is now only the skin I wear. You should have realized it after what I did to you. He would have never done anything like that, to you. He used to love you, he used to love you deeply."

"Oh. Really?"

"Yes I know. Because I also have his memories. Your stupid memories."

She froze. "Don't do it. You took him away from me. Leave them to me, at least those."

"You know which one is my favorite? The wild scent of the Glade of Golconda. If I'm not mistaken, your first time together." Now Aniah felt that treacherous hiss born inside her. The bastard was doing it on purpose. "What a romance, my little one. The invincible warrior who had killed and fought and won his wars was so embarrassed to get inside a woman's body for the first time. He was no more than a little kid, all red with shame. A fledgling with its willy. But you were there, expert filly, telling him what to do, 'Put your hands here, push, bite me here...' Ah! Worth dying in laughter! Well, since you were weaned so young it's no surprise you were a little more experienced, honey. You gave him self-confidence. You didn't make him feel stupid when every other woman would have humiliated him. I appreciate it, you know? You were even able to make him climax, even though he didn't reciprocate the favor. This man will never know how much we enjoyed ourselves, instead. Oh yeah! I felt you. Surely the force that has lived through all eternity has some more experience, sugar, you have to concede me that at least!"

Aniah locked her fingers into two fists, as Skyrgal shook his decomposing body in an obscene and slow imitation of sex.

"Yes, ride your favorite god once again! To the stars and then down into the throat of hell!" He stopped only when he heard her laughing instead of crying. "Oh, you think it's funny?" Now the voice was coming straight from the sidereal depths of that mass of bandages. Skyrgal was genuinely surprised.

"I find another thing funny," she said.

"What?"

She raised her head to look at him, grinning through her tears. "Even now that you just got reincarnated, you lost your left hand," she said. "Just like the one Angra tore away from you with his teeth, according to the ancient scriptures! Remember how you felt weak as he cut you into pieces? Remember how it was humiliating to scream in pain at his feet, while you were exiled from your true body?"

She laughed in his face, showing the courage she did not have.

"Yes," Skyrgal replied after a long pause. "You'll find a lot to laugh about when I'll take care of your torture again, bitch!"

"Oh. Wasn't it you who hated coarse language?"

The voice answered inside her,"But this time, I'll first chop off your hands and feet. So I'll be sure you won't escape again. You'll become a nice human larva, Aniah, naked in a cold and damp cell. It will be nice to see you try to eat, and crawl, and drink from the floor water mixed with the waste of my faithful ones. Of course, I will let them vent all their most vile instincts on you. And I'll be there watching while you get humiliated to your core. Totally to the core. Only then, will I begin to administer your pain myself. I like to delve into the turbid side of humans, more or less metaphorically. There's no greater suffering than that which I reserve to those who try to escape from my grasp, nor longer than the one I reserve for those who succeed."

"Apart from this smell of rotten eggs? Did you far—?"

Skyrgal slammed his hand on the table and Aniah winced. For a moment, time seemed to stand still. Everyone turned to look at them, yet the god kept silent. That terrible silence in which she had seen him make the worst things. Even inside her.

"I hate to be observed in these conditions," he hissed. "If these beggars don't stop looking, soon they'll no longer have eyes to do it."

Every bit of irony disappeared from her mind. No, it was no longer funny, if ever it was. Perhaps only then Aniah remembered who, or what, she was actually facing. Kam Karkenos the ancients called him. The force that has lived through all eternity.

"They are good people," she said. "This doesn't concern them."

"I love vulgar displays of power. You should read all those books that talk about me."

When she saw him bring the hand to his scimitar, Aniah knew he was serious. A force, after all, was always serious, so she stood up and shouted, "Well? What the fuck you look at my brother for?" She looked around, trying to sound convincing. "You never seen man devour'd by leprosy?"

A stonecutter without his nose, drunk, tried to stand up with a knife clutched in his hand. "T' man bothers you, ma'am?" he stammered.

She pointed to the sword on her shoulders, as if to say that certainly she didn't need his help. The background buzz arose again within the four tavern walls, but Aniah drew a sigh of relief only when she saw Skyrgal rest his hand on the table again."

"You're too good," he pointed out, watching her as she sat back. "You've always been. You keep on exposing yourself to save the lives of others, even though I don't remember anyone has ever done much to help you. Not when you were a child and your father played with you in a... somewhat unusual way, or when you were grown up. Men have always walked all over you, Aniah, but you never learn," he sighed, drumming his skeleton fingers on the table. "Well, all of you mortals will die, one day. It's part of your nature. Then what's this desire to survive and save others from their fate?"

"A Guardian lives forever as long as the Guardians live," the woman recited, looking him straight in the one eye. "Sixth and last commandment."

"Oh. You don't know how many times I heard such a stupid thing in the course of eternity. And where are they all now? Where are the people and their essential wars fought in the name of non-existent gods? Scattered like dust in the infinite abyss of the universe, a dust composed of beings that in different times and places thought to be the center of Creation."

"This one is nice, where did you read it?"

"But it could be different for you," the force continued, as if he had not even heard her. "Yes, it could be different, as for all those who have served me well. If only you stayed with me, you'd discover how beautiful it is to live after death. I could make you an eternal being."

Aniah nodded. "I know that kind of living. The existence of your most faithful servants. I saw you rot, hour after hour, and drag in your slow decline that one person, for me, synonymous with life. From then on, yours was just a slow swim in death's murky black waters. Angra really killed you that distant day, leaving you alive."

The god did not answer this time, and he did not laugh. Only hearing that name awoke in his mind sorrows as old as time, rekindling a grudge never faded.

"Your body. Angra kicked you out of your body—"

"Stop it."

"...when even a rat rotting in a sewer has its own!"

"Stop that!"

Aniah didn't go on, relieved to have found his weak point.

Skyrgal bowed his head. "You're right," he allowed in a whisper. Then he looked up at the baby the woman was holding in her arms and became serious, impassive. A wild light of desire shone in his eye. "But sometimes, in view of the ultimate objective, the moral quality of every single action that leads us to that totally loses importance. We, eternal beings, are not afraid to compromise, not even with death, and those of you who want to become almost as powerful as we have to learn this art among the less noble ones. If Gorgors had not stumbled upon the sacrilegious knowledge preserved for thousands of years by the desert sands, I could have never reach the world for my second coming. Now that I have, I won't just rot in a corpse, or wander from man to man for eternity. I want my true body, kept on top of your Ktisisdamn sacred mountain. It belongs to me!" He clenched his hand into a fist, then seemed to relax, spreading it peacefully on the table. "Yes. I just had to make my blood flow back into this mortal world, no matter by what means. I was able to do so only thanks to you. Thank you, woman, for giving me a son!" Beneath the bandages, he seemed to smile. "His divine blood will give new life to the colossal stone limbs of my body, allowing the end to this torment, the end of my exile. The power, fruit of thy womb, is ancient, Aniah. Where do you think you can hide a being like that?"

"I won't hide him. He must not live! I'll take him to the Fortress so that my blood brothers can kill him."

"Kill him?"

"Araya will!"

"NO!" Skyrgal bowed his head. "No," he repeated.

He brought a hand to his chest, making way through the bandages that covered it. He exposed the black and necrotic sternum where, as if composed of inextinguishable flames, burned that red blood symbol that she knew all too well.

∞

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!"

Hammoth put a hand on her shoulder, looking down on her. "Let's get back to Golconda," he said. "There, we will decide what to do with his son."

Aniah bowed her face and silently began to cry. When a cry of pain overcame the wind and reached them, "WHAT DID I BECOME?"

Hammoth turned in time to see the shadow of a shapeless body crawl away into darkness.

"WHAT DID I BECOME, HAMMOTH? WHAT DID HE DO TO ME?"

Aniah stood up. "He's still alive!" she said, her voice broken. She started forward, but the Pendracon held her by the arm and stared into her eyes.

"Whatever he's become now, that's no longer the man you loved!" he said. "Nor my warrior King! Crowley is dead!"

Aniah looked at him helplessly, begging for mercy with her eyes. She was caught in the middle of the desire to escape once again behind her lost love, and the inevitability of fate that kept on making fun of her. Hammoth raised his arm to point at the way from which they had come, and brought it down.

The Guardians remounted their Mogwarts, giant cats with long ivory tusks and thick black hair, the only animals able to face the desert's wrath. They were soon on the march; two rows of Guardians, under the silent gaze of Adramelech's ruins.

"These walls have eyes to see, I tell you," one of his men muttered. Hammoth couldn't find the strength to answer.

* * * * *

The Pendracon took Aniah with him. He was concerned about the possible reactions of his men. The Guardians watched the woman suspiciously now, some with open contempt. Many had known her for a long time – some had even trained with her as children – but the sight of what she had done and what was now forcing them to do had changed their attitude. It was no wonder. The Guardians pledged their lives and deaths to Angra, the god of equilibrium. It was irresponsible to ask them to accompany such a creature, the son of his old enemy, Skyrgal, to the heart of their stronghold. And even if everyone knew that this insanity was the only sensible thing to do, Hammoth already felt his authority creak under the weight of corruption.

"I loved him," Aniah whispered, at some point of the long way home. "I swore him eternal fidelity in front of Angra. But Crowley is now alone. Out there."

The Pendracon turned to her. "Do not talk," he ordered. "There's still a long way to the Fortress."

She kissed the sweet child on the forehead. Hammoth found himself feeling pity for her, for all of them. He wondered what he would do once back at Golconda. They left the sacred mountain six days before in search of hope, and now were bringing back ruin.

On the third day of the march they were attacked by Tankars, the mighty wolf-men of the desert. They managed to fight them off but lost two Guardians, pierced by the sharp blades of their clawed gloves to defend Aniah and her burden, the one the Tankars were trying to reach. It was not the hunger brought by famine that moved them. In their bloodshot eyes, Hammoth had seen a blind and murderous rage. They wanted the child; it was the primal instinct to consider that baby the greatest threat. Greater than the men, greater than the swords they wielded, an incomprehensible blasphemy for their violent and pure souls. Now that they had learned their lesson, the beasts kept following them at a distance, watching warily among the tall rock formations, eroded by wind.

The two companions' death made mother and son even more undesirable in the eyes of the Guardians. One of them protested, screaming hysterically, and crying, that it was all madness. Hammoth was forced to slap him in front of the others to reassert his authority. He felt a deep shame. From that moment on, he shunned the eyes of all. He feared the situation would soon get out of hand. Back to the Fortress, for some of his men, a couple of beers would have been enough to unleash their tongues and talk about what they had seen. The word would spread quickly and the Guardians would have soon turned against the presence of the son of Skyrgal at the Fortress. They would have conspired against him too if he had failed to agree immediately with their side. Some were idiots enough to do so, and talkative enough to convince the other ones to do it. They would never accept that blasphemy among them. He could ask them to be quiet about it, but soon, he realized that no agreement could ever prevent a Guardian to speak with complete freedom with his blood brothers, with whom they shared life, war, and death.

At the end of the fourth day's march, the wind got weaker. The Pendracon decided to camp for the night saying that the worst part was over. Now they could proceed with more calm. After the horror they had witnessed, and the fatigue of the long march, his men were heartened by the idea of finally being able to sleep in the shelter of their tents. They decided guard duty with a draw of straws and, to set a good example, Hammoth made himself available. When he was roused in the middle of the night by the hand of the watchman who preceded him, he realized that the dreadful hour had come. He waited until they were all asleep. Then he drew his sword. He chose to start from the most faithful among them: Worton, his old instructor, who provided him with all his knowledge and made him the man he had become. The same who had the honor of pulling his eye out when the Council had elected Hammoth Pendracon of the Guardians. He closed his lips with his hand and slid the blade along the neck, choking his short and mute surprise. There ended his humanity. Once he found the courage to begin it, that task got easier. He delivered to death his chosen Guardians, men and women who had offered to his service the best years of their life and unquestioned loyalty. Throat after throat, tearing jugular veins and carotid arteries, he got to the last one, the youngest.

Hammoth realized he was not sleeping. He had watched everything in silence, waiting for his turn with maniacal discipline. He did not scream. He did not tremble. He just nodded and, with his last words, he said, "Do it, my King. It is the right thing to do. A secret is worth a thousand explanations."

The Pendracon bowed his face and closed his eyes. He put his sword against his throat and leaned with all his weight against the handle. The boy died with dignity. His blood, still warm, soaked into the sand, turning the camp into a quagmire where his brothers' corpses were already resting in their eternal sleep. He turned. Aniah was awake and held the child in her arms, looking at him. She said nothing.

The Pendracon rose with a bloody punch of sand in his hand and threw it in her face, then took another and pressed it against his lips, sucking the blood of his loyalists. "May the shame of this night and your sins remain forever within us! Eat! Eat the consequences of your actions, bitch!"

The storm ended completely on the fifth day of march. They continued to move forward on that one, old road that ran through the desert. He began to think things would get better when he saw the dry land shaking its mantle of sand off. With another day of march, the earth was dressed with a shy and suffering vegetation. Soon they found themselves crossing the central plain of Candehel-mas, marching past crumbling farmhouses, empty barns and low, white stone fences, which didn't seem to protect anything; that land was stubbornly arid. The poor and dirty peasants bowed as they passed, the children flocked barefoot and saluted with their bony hands. But not the animals. The dogs snarled, hurting themselves against the rusty chains in the attempt to reach them. The birds in the sky, in turmoil, deafened them with their screeching. Soon the farmers stopped bowing, looking wary. Hammoth took the woman on, his face still, unmoved. On the seventh day, he saw a mountain rising against the red sky and breathed a sigh of relief. They were home, no matter what they had left behind, nor what lay ahead.

At the top of the sacred mountain of Golconda, the Titan of Skyrgal stood high. The body of Kam Karkenos petrified, locked into place, as it was when Angra deprived him of his soul. Hammoth marched more slowly, watching with fear and reverence. The mighty right arm, the only one remaining, seemed today to shade his eyes from the merciless sunlight, in what was in truth Skyrgal's last desperate act of defense in the presence of his destiny. Everything about him was the specter of the ancient terror. The four horns twisted, deformed, along the evil goat's face. The gaping jaws. The large and empty eye sockets. The flames that were once his body now became thin stone blades, sharp as the nightmare he continued to embody in those born at his feet.

Hammoth clenched his fists and looked away. You won't break me! He thought. You won't take me! I'll fight you under blood red skies!

That colossal body was waiting since and for eternity. Around it, walls were constructed on walls. Wars fought after wars. Each page of their bloody history had been written before his twisted horns. But now everything was changed again. He looked down on the tender infant in the woman's arms and shuddered. Everything had changed and he was afraid.

Sweet nauseating pain. Is death the only release?

With their faces obscured by their hoods, they advanced through the walls of Agalloch, the city built at the feet of Golconda. Entirely erected in the hard, yellowish granite obtained by the dismantling of Adramelech's colossal ruins, Agalloch was a huge, perfect circle traced at the feet of the sacred mountain. Every rock seemed to remember the desert it came from. Often, in the buildings' facades, it was possible to see the eye, or the fang, or the claws of the sculptures they were part of. Its straight and closing-in alleys, its improbable architectures, the long faces of its inhabitants never failed to disquiet him. That was the city that first absorbed the attack of the desert and its foul creatures, their first defense. No one could count the times it was sieged in its tormented history, invaded but never destroyed, its people kidnapped, raped, tortured, dismembered but never defeated. That stone, filled with blood, could not die, as the gods it once portrayed. That city, that perfect circle, was eternal.

Halfway between heaven and earth, on a natural step on the high mountain, the Guardians had erected their impregnable Fortress, its soaring towers overlooking the desert; to be again in the sight of his impenetrable defenses gave him a precarious sense of security, immediately swept away when a dog appeared out of nowhere to attack them. It tried to jump against the woman and her son, but the owner rushed to stop it. The beast then turned against him, sinking its jaws in his neck and not letting go until he had died. A passerby came with a hammer and smashed the skull of the ferocious beast, and the dog and its owner lay dead on the ground. All those who had witnessed the scene looked at them suspiciously while they continued to ascend the sacred slopes of Golconda, looking indifferent to the death that surrounded and followed them.

When they got through the gate of the Fortress, two children ran to meet them with big smiles on their face. "Dad! Daddy!" they screamed. The Pendracon forced himself to watch the smile disappear from their faces, as the gate was closed behind him without any following. Children understood things quickly, especially the worst. They didn't weep and he envied them for their courage.

My fault. The pain and solitude that are going to accompany you forever, from now on. Even when you will take a wife and have your own children, not even those will fill the emptiness of a denied childhood. My fault. All my fault.

When, at last, he got in the room at the top of his tower, finally alone and sure that no one could see him or judge him, Hammoth gave himself over to a long, desperate cry. He hurt himself punching the wall. He smashed everything he found in his hands but, in the end, what was left of his anger was just a huge void and a long series of decisions to be made. Sitting on the ground, as a homeless man in the room of a king, he used his wine reserve to drown his fears and force the voices inside to quiet. Only at sunset he found the courage to look out from the balcony of the tower, the tallest of the Fortress. It was located at its exact center, towering above all. The bottle in his hand, now empty, slipped between his fingers and flied down, far away, before crashing against the council hall. He grabbed a fragment of glass and turned it several times in his fingers, his eyes seeking refuge in the Far East, that desert full of threats from which he had just returned. Crushed on the horizon, he could still see the dark outline of the ruins of Melekesh. He had fought against everything to arrive in time for the appointment with Aniah, but now that he had made it, now that the impossible was accomplished, he understood the fight was just started and they were already losing.

In that complete silence, he heard a cough, and shuddered. From behind him came a deep voice,"Pardon me, my Pendracon. I did not mean to frighten you."

He turned around. Dracon Marduk was on the threshold of the room, knelt to the ground and wrapped in his amaranth cloak. In the dim light of the fireplace, glistened the twelve daggers from which he never separated, the two-handed sword on his back, and the knife on the calf.

"How's that bitch sister of yours?" the Pendracon asked, before spitting a laugh.

"Aniah is shocked. Thank you."

"Forgive me, Marduk, I'm... completely drunk."

"My lord—"

"I couldn't defend her!" Hammoth almost screamed. Then he added in a whisper, "The fault is ours. Mine!"

A current of cold air came into the room and made the flames dance in the fireplace, waving the shadows reflected on the walls. The Dracon joined him on the monumental balcony, avoiding the pieces of destroyed furniture, asking no question, making no statement, as was his style. He looked at the horizon with him, knowing that somewhere in that huge and dark nothing, the enemy was already reorganizing to strike.

"His soul got back in the sword as the blade of a knife slips in hot butter," the Pendracon asserted. "It's impossible, Marduk. The sacred scriptures speak of a booming energy, a gap opening in the fabric of the universe that sucks everything, even time! I expected to die after trapping him again, I was ready for it! But no, Kam Karkenos jumped in his prison just like... like..."

He squeezed the crystal in his hand, until a few drops of blood fell into the void. He did not finish the sentence.

"The bind between body and soul was probably weak," Marduk opined. "A mortal can't host a force that has lived through all eternity, even if we are talking about the body of the greatest man that ever walked upon this soiled earth. That soul corrodes, my King. Crowley did not deserve such an end."

Hammoth squeezed his eyes shut. "You're not allowed to feel sorry for him," he growled. "Pity is a form of contempt!"

"Excuse me, my lord. Anyway, now we know what was the reason for Skyrgal's short and miserable reincarnation. Giving birth to a son in whom may flow his curse blood."

"A son. Can he really have a son?"

"It looks like one of us, just a human being," Marduk went on. "It seems so fragile, and helpless. I hate to think what rite Aniah suffered to generate it. She does not want to talk about it. She hides those memories behind her tears, but the marks on her body are obvious, even within, burns and cuts. I asked Dracon Araya to examine her thoroughly; I would not accept anyone else to touch her.

The Poison Dracon kept silent all the time, trying not to say anything and look relaxed. But the look in his eyes spoke for itself. He was in a hurry, Hammoth, in a hurry and afraid. I swear I saw him cry when he discovered the Spiral on the baby's chest." He drew a long sigh. "That mark should not be on a mortal. It is the symbol of the infinite; the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth, that regulates the flow of the great All. It's the symbol of the gods. He has already sent one of his most trusted student beyond the walls of Agalloch in hopes of discovering a little more about what happened, as well as what expects us, but when Aniah begged him in tears, saying, 'Kill him, Poison lord! At least you can kill him, can't you?' His answer was a gloomy silence. In that way, he confirmed that one suspect I never wanted to become a certainty, there's no way to kill him. He is immortal, all like his father."

"Then we have to hide him!" Hammoth ordered. "There's nothing to talk about!"

"The boy?"

"That bastard!" he specified. "Gorgors have eyes and hands even in here, you can bet on it! We have to hide him as far as possible, where they will never find him. if they do find him, the consequences could be unpredictable."

"You speak with wisdom but there's no place that far. Not on this world, at least."

"So what should we do? Close him in a crate and let him spend the eternity on the ocean's floor? So to lose control and leave him at the mercy of the currents of fate?"

"Angra would never allow it," Marduk said.

"Was he already informed?" Hammoth asked. Marduk nodded. "And what does he think about us?"

"He just bowed his face, without answering. He looked humiliated, and disappointed."

Hammoth shook his head. "We betrayed his trust. You can betray the trust of a god only once. We are now impious to his eyes. No storm will ever wash away the blood on our hands."

A gust of wind slammed against them, shaking their clothes and hair, before leaving them to silence. It was the Scream of Skyrgal, the strong wind that used to come and go with suddenness, knocking men on the ground, bursting open the windows, stripping the trees of their leaves.

"While I was coming here I was thinking about a possible solution," the Dracon said. "It's not a good idea, but it's still an idea, and it's the only one I have."

The Pendracon raised a hand. He looked at him with firmness and fear at the same time. "Make him disappear," he said. "I do not want to know where. No one must ever know I just killed twelve Guardians to protect this secret." He let those last words ring within his conscience, as he looked at his hands. "Yes. I killed them. And you've already figured that out if you're still the Delta Dracon I know. This secret is worth more than our useless lives. There are spies here at the Fortress, after what happened to Crowley I'm sure about it. If we can't trust all our men, we can trust none of them. The child and his cursed blood must disappear, nobody can know where. The salvation of all for which we have fought depends on it."

Marduk looked at him. "It's a great burden you give me."

"Yes. It is."

"And I hope to be worthy of your trust."

"You'll have to be."

Hammoth looked down to him. He put a hand on his shoulder and sent him away with that gesture. Marduk bowed as a sign of obedience and strode to the door. Then, he stopped. He turned to look at his Pendracon, overwhelmed by responsibility, drunk, exhausted. He looked at him with compassion and felt remorse. A Guardian, especially a Dracon, could not look that way at their infallible, irreplaceable guide, the man from whose decisions life and death of all depended. He could not doubt his unquestioned integrity but, in the end, not many years had gone by since they were both just Guardians, blood brothers, friends of a Pendracon called Crowley Nightfall. He heard his wild laugh, remembered the light in his amused eyes as he watched them vomit their soul out after a night of drinking. They were just men who played at being gods, which was the crux of the matter. Charged with responsibility, no one could ask a man to never do the wrong thing, to always be fit for the situation, even when he held, in his trembling hands, the fate of the entire world.

"Hammoth," he said. "My friend. What is done is dead. Now his son is in this world and we can only hide him. If nothing else, at least now Skyrgal and the child are in our hands and not in Gorgors.' If they want to come and get them, we'll be here waiting, armed to the teeth as has always been in our glorious history. We'll face any attack, the example of Crowley's end will not be lost. Leave it to me. Leave at least this burden on me. You're not the only one who has killed Guardians for the common good. I'm still the Delta Dracon you remember."

Hammoth remained silent for a while. Then he answered in a way that Marduk would have never expected. He laughed. A dark, drunken laugh. He stood up and threw a bottle against the wall.

"Crowley is still alive!" he shouted. He put his head in his hands and shouted again, "Our old Pendracon is still out there! He survived the soul of Kam Karkenos and... and...!"

He laughed again. Marduk felt a deep pain, the pain of a child who saw his father become weak and unreliable just when he most needed him. He left the room and the tower behind him, marching fast on the bridge. He went into his tower and climbed the stairs to the top floor.

Aniah was there, where he had left her, sitting on a stool in front of the fireplace with the sleeping baby in her arms. "I managed to put him to sleep," she said as soon as he heard him enter. "He was tired. Be quiet."

"You're leaving!" Marduk said, slamming the door. "Tonight!"

She continued to rock the child, staring into void, chanting softly. The Dracon leaned back against the wall, watching her in the gloom. Now that she had changed her clothes, she had a dignified look. Her amaranth tunic of wool, typical of the Delta, hid the best qualities of her body. The darkness in her eyes, however, still blinded who was forced to watch it. Especially those who, like him, had once seen those eyes full of light, childish and happy to be alive.

Time passes and everything changes, he thought. And it is a huge shit.

"Aniah—"

"What fate has been given me?" the woman asked. "Why must I feel... this pain?"

The Dracon stepped forward and forced her to look at him. He saw her eyes red with tears and he felt compassion. "We cannot rewrite the past. We can only make up for what you did," he said. "If we can't kill his son, we will hide him!"

"And where are we supposed to hide him? He's not safe here at the Fortress?"

Marduk shook his head. "Why do you ask, when you know the answer better than I? You've been with Gorgors. You know that their hand moves in here too. If what you say is true, they are getting ready for a war they think they have already won. So we must take him away from here!"

"Where?"

Marduk darkened. "We'll hide his son where Gorgors could set foot only once they razed the Fortress to the ground and killed the last one of us!"

She looked aghast. "No. You can't think of that hell! How can you—?"

The Dracon stroked the scar on her face, the scar with which Skyrgal had branded her as a head of cattle. Then he looked up. Above the fireplace was framed a portrait of Crowley, his eyes still and solemn. The pain of a memory crossed his mind:

'What a fuckin' expression you're making? You look like a fool!'

'Marduk, I'm your new Pendracon now. We should check again our way of speaking in public.'

'Ah, come on! As children we used to poo in the same place to make a joke to the same man, I think I have the right to—'

'Oh! Don't start again with this story!'

'You look like a jerk. Besides, this painter is deaf to the bones.'

'Let him finish this fucking portrait, Mar, so we can go to drink!'

'Hammoth's right, I'm getting a paresis standing like this! Skyrgal be cursed, I need a beer...'

'And where could we go? Now everyone may recognize you. A Pendracon is not supposed to drink in public.'

'Let's saddle our Mogwarts!'

'You're crazy as fuck, your grace.'

'Fuck it! I'll be crowned ten days from now. Let's ride on the desert for the last time, as in the old days. I know a place that you'll like, near the boundary with the Tankars' land.'

'Which one?'

'The light at the end of the world! Marduk and I ran into it five years ago, during a patrol on the damn wolf-men's lands. Damn, that place earned its name, but there they serve a beer mixed with Mokai that... ah! You'll tell me if I'm not right. But first, let me finish this Skyrgaldamn portrait.'

Portraits made people look different from what they actually looked like, he thought. He would have preferred to see his old friend and king depicted at the time of his greatest splendor, with his face covered with the enemy's blood in a scream of killing wrath. He ran his hand along his sister's face, down to the golden pendant she wore around her neck. Aniah never parted with it. Inside, there was the same portrait, perhaps the only thing left of her old life, the person she used to be. He hated portraits. They reminded him of the time that passed and made all things look older, grayer, sadder, miserable. He took it to put it around the child's neck.

"You will leave tonight," he said again, looking into her eyes. "You will reach Arleb in the world Beyond, the only Guardian who has definitively established himself on the other side of the portal. He is a noble man, blessed by fortune. You will give him the child. You will give him my orders. Then, you will come back here. Arleb was a Dracon, he will know what to do. He will watch secretly over Skyrgal's son. This will give us the time necessary to understand what are the enemy's intentions, now that Skyrgal's soul is back in our hands. Just the two of us know it. No Guardian, subjected to the most atrocious torture, must ever reveal the place where this beast is kept hidden. Time. Time is the only thing we need now, and it's the only thing we can't afford to lose."

The woman was unable to respond immediately to that series of orders. Perhaps not the words she had expected from her brother in a similar moment.

"That world," she said. "You really want to leave him there, where our ancestors used to exile the most feared criminals in whole Candehel-mas? You, who are a Guardian, would leave my son in—?"

"He's not your son!" Marduk cried, clenching his fists. He lowered his face and gritted his teeth. "Surrender to the idea that for him you were only a... a..." He could not finish. He turned to the wall and hit it with bare knuckles, making them bleed. "Take what you need," he said in a small voice. "And go away!"

"You're giving me up too, right?"

"Aniah..."

She shook her head, standing up. "After all, I'd do the same thing with you if you were in my position."

Marduk knew it was not true. He stopped her by the arm and turned her around. "Aniah..." he repeated, but couldn't continue.

She smiled. "Yes, I know my name," she said. "It is the only thing I have left. However, big brother, I left you speechless. How many people in here could say the same thing? Your talent for sarcasm seemed to know no end, a little like our conviction that we could look over the Equilibrium forever. Skyrgal was right. This world is already at an end. It's only a matter of time. Sooner than not we will kill the weaker puppies to feed what's left of the litter. As in the story our father used to tell us when we were kids, remember? Before you fell asleep, sure that in that house nothing was going wrong. This time there won't be a new dawn at the end of the night. Not even for you."

"Don't say it!"

"We are already dead, and if you are still the Delta Dracon I remember, you know it better than me."

He slapped her, and she did not answer. She left the room, carrying the fruit of her love.

"I'm sorry," Marduk said when she could no longer hear him.

* * * * *

Oh, Crowley...

Aniah walked the stone avenue that bisected the Glade, the cave of rare beauty opened in the womb of the sacred mountain. Its lush trees, the towering waterfalls and the multicolored vegetation made that place a perpetual hymn to life, in stark contrast to the disruptive death of the desert that surrounded it. Even now, though her heart was torn by remorse, the Glade inspired her absolute peace. Its muffled silence was broken only by the sound of water gushing from the numerous cracks in the rocky vault. No one had ever understood where that water came from. The legend spoke of the tears of Angra, sorry for what he had done to his brother Skyrgal, but she was too pragmatic to believe this. The falls were high and unreachable, no one could ever follow the course back to their source. She thought if one day someone managed to do it, the beauty of the place would be somehow affected.

She crossed the forest of ancient oaks and emerald green lawns dotted with flowers of every shape and color, yellow daffodils, red poppies, snowdrops, wild violets, cornflowers. She walked on the pretty wooden bridges suspended above streams full of life. The placid purple light of Ensiferum balls, scattered everywhere, illuminated the beloved places where she had spent the few happy moments of her life. The woods where she played at war with her brother, the tree trunks she stripped by dint of blows when from the wooden sword she passed to that of Manegarm. The trees among which she was stripped, to give herself over to the pleasures of the flesh. She was crushed by the memory of Crowley's skin and his sweet words whispered in her ear, the bites on her back, the fire of passion that Angra, the god of the universal order, always wanted to be kept alight.

Oh, Crowley...

Yes, her god. She looked up,n the right of the Glade, a large wooden building, like a gigantic stable, towered above the treetops. From the slots just below the roof an eye of pure light watched her escape from his world. Nothing, ever escaped him.

Angra, my only god, she thought. Will you, at least, forgive me?

A roar of pain went through the Glade. The god took on her suffering. Aniah felt reassured. She began to think that, after all, there would be a return home, even for her. Her only crime had been to love a man beyond rationality, to believe him alive when she knew him for dead, to follow him down trails he would have never taken her. For a moment, she came to think that love could never, ever, be a crime.

Angra come to earth, I thank you.

The rich vegetation gradually disappeared, giving way to a barren expanse of black stone. She passed through the endless graves of the Guardians, buried in that place since the dawn of time. The tombs grew older as they flowed past her, becoming, in the end, simple blocks of stone whose inscriptions were gone, forever lost to time. Beyond the cemetery, she arrived at the gates where the Glade ended. Wrought-iron spikes pushed out of the bare rock, as the tusks of a wild beast that wanted to swallow her and make her forever disappear. She found herself in darkness, descending a long staircase. The echo of her footsteps became the only company of her gloomy thoughts, as a red and dismal light rose to illuminate the way.

Against the light, the shadows of five Guardians appeared. They were waiting with arms crossed on their chest and a sadistic grin on their faces.

"Where are you going?" one of them asked. "The world Beyond is not a suitable place for a woman, especially one that has so many things to tell."

She took a step back. Coming out of nowhere, two hands pushed her forward.

"Twelve of our blood brothers died to come and rescue you!" the voice behind her said. "I hope you are a bit sorry, at least. What are you hiding in that rag?"

"I must go to the world Beyond. This order comes from Dracon Marduk," Aniah said, as she realized those men were not there to talk. A blow on the temple blurred her sight and everything disappeared. Hearing the cries of her terrified child she came back to her senses. She drew her sword, blindly beheading the Guardian who tried to tear him from her arms. Immediately, the other ones threw her on the ground and closed on her to hit her again and again, and again. She felt the fingers of one of them reach beneath her tunic. And then inside her.

"Open your legs, come on!" a grotesque voice snarled as two hands grabbed her ankles. "Do it for all those who died because of you, before we cut your throat like a sow!"

She felt his saliva on her throat and wept helplessly, still holding the baby against her breast as they began. They had been sent there, they had not come on their own, she knew it. She was being punished for her betrayal. She hoped it would all end soon then, suddenly, she were soiled by a spray of warm blood. She looked up and saw the throat of the Guardian over her slashed by a deep cut. The other ones cursed and backed away in terror, vanishing. Aniah took the lifeless body of the Guardian off from inside her, before kneeling on the floor and screaming.

Marduk appeared in front of her, emerging from nowhere. He had a bloody dagger in his hand.

"Marduk," Aniah groaned, throwing herself into his arms. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry big bro!"

"Shhh, little sis..." he said, stroking her hair. "It will be okay, you will see. Now, you see what the situation is here at the Fortress."

"I'm sorry."

He spoke softly and clearly. "Everything you have been through has only made you stronger. Even this. You have a mission to accomplish. When you do, come back. I will find a solution for you too. You will leave the Fortress and change your life. I will think about it. I will think about everything, as always. Do not worry about anything this time."

She slowly left his protective embrace, putting a hand to her waist to unsheathe the dagger of Mayem, the only that survived the destructive fury of Skyrgal in the tavern of Adramelech, days earlier.

"Here," she said. "It's a gift."

Marduk looked at her suspiciously as he took it from her hands. "A dagger of Mayem?" He was aghast. "Where did you get it? These weapons are cursed!"

"When the time comes it will be useful to you, I am sure. In this, lies what I, now, love above everything else. Even though it is my death and ruin."

Marduk did not understand those words. When he looked up to ask for an explanation, Aniah had already gone.

There were still many things he wanted to tell her and, he was sure, many things she had not said.

* * * * *
3. The old man

That night, like every night, old Sannah was sitting at the desk in his studio, surrounded by endless piles of papers and dust, somewhere in that maze of channels and wrecks that was the neighborhood of abandoned ships; best known as the ship cemetery. That room had been the cab of a commander once. In there decisions had been made that had decreed the death of many men. Approach maneuvers, boardings, tortures and turns of the keel to punish the unruly. He smiled at the thought. Now it was just the asshole from which he ran the Spiders guild, not one of the most important associations in the putrid city of Melekesh, perhaps not even a real guild. Perhaps the only refuge for a bunch of mutts, abandoned in the world, that did not have anything better to do with their lives than get killed while trying to sneak something for him.

The gentle rocking of the floor went along with the weak cemetery sea waves, while old Sannah drew another entry on a register stained with moisture. He rubbed his chin, covered with sticky stubble, twirling between his fingers the round earrings that dangled from his left ear, the only one he still had.

"That's totally wrong. Totally wrong again!" he said, tearing up the paper and throwing it into the brazier. "Bah! Incomes from the sale of the boys, little, only twenty Dragoons. Who buys them thin as they are? Incomes from theft, still less, no more than twelve Dragoons. They are good only at getting caught, the little bastards. Begging, Uhm. one hundred and forty Dragoons. The specialty of these damn wankers. Total... a hundred and ninety Dragoons."

He scratched his head. He hated it when on the paper he found more Dragoons than he could find in his chest. He hated above all not to understand how much of that money had been spent on alcohol and in some kind of mushrooms, or what might have been stolen by his Spiders. The first one was more likely. Spiders knew all too well what they were getting if they were caught stealing in there. Death would only be the final consolation. No, the mistake had to be his, since every time he repeated the addition the result changed. 'You never miss a thing, huh?' said a voice inside that he decided to ignore. The old man knew he did not get a particularly long education. He had been educated at the game of sword and war in a place and a time far from those. For a moment, he let his mind wander to the high towers of the Fortress, the desolate landscape on the ruins of Adramelech, the bloodstained faces of his companions after a long day of war. The Glade. Yes, the Glade: a pure diamond embedded in that damn desert where people fought and died.

Uhm, let me write this down. I can write a poem on it, he thought.  
Then every questionable inspiration was swept away by the confused clamor from the other side of the door.

"You can't get in!" the voice of a young boy shrieked. "He doesn't want to be interrupted when he tries to settle the score!"

He did not understand the answer, but he did recognize the voice that answered. The voice of a woman he had not heard in a long, long time.

The studio door was thrown open with a kick, but Sannah did not jump up and grab the dagger he kept stuck on the desk, ready for use. He always tried not to sound surprised, especially when, like that time, he really was. He kept his hands crossed in front of his lips and looked at the woman as she came in, wearing a pair of boots soaked with fetid water as well as the worn amaranth tunic she wore. Over her shoulders rose the handle of a two handed sword, in addition, of course, to the daggers on her belly and, he was sure, the knife on her calf. All this would leave very little doubt about her identity, at least to who could recognize a Guardian of Golconda even from miles away, a Delta, to be precise, their damned chosen squad, of which he had once been the Dracon. The only thing that Sannah just couldn't make out was what the fuck that woman was doing right there. Only afterward he noticed the bundle clutched to her breast as if it was the most important thing in the world to her, and he knew that in one way or another, big trouble was coming.

A skinny boy, whose ribs were about to pop out from the skin thin as he was, burst into the room. "I'm sorry great Mama!" he screamed. "We could not stop her! I tried to—"

Sannah raised a hand and the boy fell silent. "Get out," he just said.

The Spider bowed and obeyed, fearfully closing the door behind him. The old man and the woman remained in silence, deep silence, in which suddenly emerged the moan of a newborn. Sannah raised an eyebrow.

"The trip was long, I suppose," he said. "And, just to know, what brought you to the world Beyond, Aniah? You haven't come to bring back your old father, I hope."

Aniah walked slowly forward, looking around. "Nice little place you've pulled up, Dad. Exactly, what do you do now for a living? And why do they call you 'great Mama'?"

Sannah shrugged. "It began with one of the older ones that amused the others mangling my name. Sannah, Mama, sounds pretty much the same," he paused. "I cut off his tongue," he went on. "Yes. I've wore it around my neck for a week, so that the other ones would remember how much I hate when people mess with my name. But, with time, I found it funny and let everybody call me that, apart from the one who had done it first, of course. I offer a roof and half a meal a day to a host of irresistible rogues abandoned in the world by their whore mothers. In return, they do something for me. It's the closest thing to an orphanage you will find around here. Funny, isn't it?"

The woman made a skeptical expression. "You could do better," she said, looking at the corpse of a rat skewered by a fork rotting in a corner of the room. "Yes, you could do much better, whereas in Golconda there are still some books that talk about you as a legend. And many people too."

Sannah grinned bitterly. "Life is mutable, Aniah, and luck too," he said. "Once I landed on this world I had to invent something to survive. On this side of the portal, life is harder than it seems, but I suppose it's difficult to understand it in the shelter of the warm walls of the Fortress. These people are sick, more than we, you should really see the passion they put in tearing apart each other. Even I am a beginner in comparison. At least they say, since I wouldn't get out of these four walls for any reason!" He chuckled, his hearty and hoarse laughter, before pulling a puff of smoke from the cigar hold between his dirty fingers. "As for the legends about me, well, you know what remains of human deeds once time buries them under his generous, and inexhaustible, load of shit?"

Aniah did not answer. There was no need to answer and the old man himself left the question hanging over his grin.

"So why you came here?" He continued. "Not just to remind me how hard life is on this sick world, I hope. This sick world already does so."

"I've got a problem. We both have."

"Oh. Seriously?" Sannah said, coughing out smoke. "Well, after all this time I've been waiting for you, do you know what can you do about your problem? Any problem? Go tuck it in that mastodontic ass of your beloved Angra!"

Aniah drew a dagger, bringing it against his neck so fast that the old man found just time to helplessly open his arms. "Do not mention Angra in vain!" she growled. "This is just a demonstrative gesture, but if you nominate him again, oh Ktisis be fucked! I put an end to your atrocious life now and where you are, whoever or whatever you have been for me!"

Three boys dressed in rags burst in through the door, armed with switchblades that only asked to be used. Judging by the look in their eyes, Sannah thought that they had not expected to find a scene like that: their master, perhaps their owner, with a knife to his throat. They had the expression of someone who believed such a thing was not even possible.

"Get out of here. This is none of your business!"

"But—"

"Get the fuck OUT!"

The three could only obey that order.

"That's better," Aniah continued, lowering her blade. "I don't really feel like shedding more blood today. The trip was far too long."

Sannah put his hand around his neck, massaging it nervously to make sure there were no cuts. "Damn, you got good at it! Nothing I wouldn't expect from my daughter, of course; not even your brother Marduk could put me up against the wall so quickly. I'm really proud of you."

"You've been a lousy father and not a day goes by that I do not curse you in my prayers," Aniah replied in the same tone of voice that she could use to order a beer in a tavern. She was good at not showing her suffering. She had always been. "Angra will understand. My god always understands the grudge."

Sannah laughed again, rubbing his stubble. "You're right. If Marduk has become a Dracon that's because of my teachings, so we can say I spent some more time with him. To tell the truth, I don't even remember ever taking care of your training."

"You took care of me in many other ways."

"It's just that I couldn't conceive such a thing," the old man continued, as if he had not heard. "For me, you were just a woman, and women should not play at Guardians. Women need to make babies, don't you think?"

She took the blow. He saw it. It was stupid that he could hurt her again with a few simple words, after all that time. Aniah sat down, resting her filthy boots on the desk, and uncovered the bundle she held against her breast.

"A child," Sannah observed. "Yes. I was expecting to see one when I heard that cry."

"When you'll understand who it is you'll find very little to laugh about."

"Who's the boy, your son?"

"Look at him."

Sannah watched the little one as if he were a strange artifact, taking him in his hands, more than in his arms. The only weird thing he noticed was the color of his eyes: blue, but with thin red veins around the pupil. The little one stretched out a hand to grab his nose, curious, and seemed to smile. Sannah smiled too. He loved children, this was why he dedicated to them what remained of his life, even though in a questionable way.

"Oh, you're just a little son of a bitch. Yes, yes you are?"

The child wore around his neck a golden pendant, with a portrait of his parents inside. An Arsis. All the Guardians' children had one and if his mother had already put it around his neck that meant she was going to leave him there. Awful story, but if he would have sold it he would have gained something, at least enough to feed him for a few years. Or to drink for one week. Or to buy a pair of those kind of mushrooms that eased his long sleepless nights.

He noticed something underneath the pendant, like a symbol tattooed on the white sternum. At first, he could not believe his eyes and thought he had been drinking too much again. Then his face turned into a mask of silent horror and his lips barely uttered, "Oh, shit! It cannot be!"

The boy smiled. Sannah laid him on the desk, trying not to drop him, and found himself rubbing his hands as if to clean them. He raised his face to look at his daughter. Aniah smiled back impassively.

"Ktisis damn! He is—"

"He's my son," she said. "And not just mine, as you can see. You know that mark: it should not be on the chest of a mortal. Yet."

"This is a living blasphemy!" the old man snapped. "It must not live, must not be! How can you be its mother?"

The woman stood up. She walked past the desk and got to the large window in the back of the room, all covered with the dust of decades. She couldn't enjoy a beautiful view from there, just a lousy corner of sea filled with abandoned boats and decrepit wrecks, the last refuge of a multitude of wretches who had made crime their reason to live.

"Inside me, they created him," she said. She put her open hands on the glass, bending her fingers as if to break her nails and, in that way, appease her real pain with a purely physical suffering. "A mother should always be fond of her son, shouldn't her? And I love him. He's also mine, and my life and death are forever linked to him. Yet I must not."

She closed her eyes.

"How could this happen?" the old man asked. "Who? Who has been so fool to make it?"

"Skyrgal himself," Aniah said. "Skyrgal brought back to life," she rested her head against the glass. "In the temple of Adramelech, where the father of all gods sacrificed his children. Those sandstone walls are still soaked with the immortal blood spilled in the old days. The sacred writings, Sannah. They interpreted those!"

"They... they found them?"

"They found a lot of things."

"And did you see them?"

"Oh, I've seen too many things," she answered. "Therefore I will not be allowed to live. It doesn't matter. Even my stupid feelings do not matter anymore; now, I just have to make sure that Gorgors can no longer get their hands on this sweet child o' mine. If we can't kill him, we can at least hide him where they'll never find him."

Sannah shook his head. It was all too much for him, he was late one night to settle the score and suddenly he was facing a bunch of crap too big for his bare hands. He looked at his daughter for a long time and, for a moment, thought he could understand how she felt.

"And what are the Guardians asking me to do?"

"What I'm asking you to do," Aniah pointed out. "My orders were different. Marduk wanted him entrusted to a Dracon come to this world years ago; a noble man, blessed by luck, who would take care of him, he said, bringing him up in a respectable way."

"Arleb?"

"Yep."

"But Arleb was executed three days ago!"

The woman grinned bitterly. "Executed? No, I don't think that's the exact word for it. The house where he lived was razed to the ground and his entire family nailed on the pillars, children included. A truly memorable show. No one had the mercy to take them down from there and crows were still feeding on the charred insides, spilled from the gutted bellies, pecking at the stumps of the wrists and neck. Not exactly what I wanted to see after the long journey that brought me to his door."

Sannah looked down. "It must have been a miserable time for you."

"Oh. You have no idea."

"I don't know why it happened. It was the typical lightning process that's become so popular around here. Guards barged in his house with an accusation of betrayal and the sentence was carried out immediately, by the prefect Mawson in person. Judging from my Spiders' resume he did horrible things, Aniah." He bowed his head, rubbing his temples. "Horrible even for this world. Women and children first, under his eyes. Him at last. Arleb was on the list and when your name is written there for you, it's already over. Every week the guards expose it in the square of Infamity and people come, a little scared, a little curious, to see who got at the top. Often, just reading there, people find their own name. Some commit suicide there on the spot, preferring a quick and painless death rather than be tortured in a cold and cramped cell by the prefect's guards. Others are grabbed and torn to pieces by those who since the day before they called intimate friends, even before they have a chance to make their way through the crowd and read their name on the list. In any case, the looting soon begins on their bodies and lives. Everyone can take everything, money, property, even his wives and children. Tsk. Many people end up on that list only because of their wealth. Many people have been killed by their beautiful house in the city center, by some piece of jewelry, or by the most beautiful daughters on which someone wanted to put their hands. However, that leads to a coarse regulation of the entire process. Who's got the sharpest knife cuts the biggest slice, but it's always better not to overdo, or at least not to get noticed, if you do not want to end up on the next list and follow the dead in their endless march."

When he stopped talking he looked at his daughter, but Aniah had eyes only for the child. "What do you think to do, now?"

"Why, do you think I came here just to have a chat with my beloved father? Now that Arleb is dead, you are the only Guardian on the world Beyond. There's no alternative."

"I can imagine."

"My son must disappear. If you don't want to do it for me, do it because Marduk ordered it. He must become invisible, one of those about whom the world does not care."

Sannah grinned. "And you thought of me? Thank you so much."

"You're welcome!"

"Marduk is just a son of a bitch if he compels you to make a choice like that!" Sannah broke out. "You must have the right to bring him up. How can you leave him here?"

"I'm following my orders, as a Guardian should always—!"

"Oh, the hell with this CRAP!" the old man boomed. "All your Ktisisdamn commandments! Spare me the perfect recital of the Guardian. So obedient and blind as not to see that his world is going to pieces! You were always a fool, a puppet in the hands of others. First in mine, then your husband's. Now of Marduk's!"

Aniah looked down under the strict father's eyes, biting her lower lip.

As when she was a child, he thought.

"You're probably right," she said. "But I don't care about it anymore. I'm just a ghost, the pieces of the woman I used to be, at least since the last illusion has shattered in my hands like a layer of dry sand. I'm not here to discuss it. You will bring up my son, and hide him. When there's no alternative, making the right choice is far too easy, right?"

"Those were my words."

"Yes, they were."

"And you? What will it be of you?"

"Me? I don't know. After what I did, I'm no longer welcome to the Fortress. They already tried to..." She paused.

"They tried to punish you for what you created, isn't it?" She did not answer and Sannah knew he had the right of it, as always. "With a little luck, I may even guess who the mandator is. A bald and robust man, who thinks he's the savior of the world, locked in his cursed tower. He's got the look of someone who would rape a woman to punish her."

"Your intuition. It's always been your best quality, perhaps the only one."

"I had many, once."

Aniah kept silent. "The son of Skyrgal is placed under your protection," she replied after a while. "How many inhabitants has this city?"

"No one has ever understood. In Melekesh you fuck more than you kill, and you kill too much. The regular population must be around a million, then there are the passing-by ones, the illegal ones, the wanted ones, in addition to those who reside here at the cemetery, which no one ever really counted as human beings. All the towns perched along the coast and those scattered in the archipelago gravitate around this city. They won't ever find him if they don't know where to look, if that's what you're thinking about."

She nodded. "You can't deny it to me," she said. "You owe me."

Sannah nodded slowly. "I'm afraid so. The Overgods won't be merciful with me. My soul is chained at the bottom of the murky sea of an atrocious existence, far from the clear surface. Only in this hell, I could find a refuge, stifled by the fear of dying without having served a single one of my faults. Maybe this boy will be my Redemption"

"Very touching. Really. However, if your only task is to try to be a better father than you were for me it won't be that difficult."

"I was the Delta Dracon, I can protect him, but how long? The mark on his chest is clear. He will live forever and we have to keep him hidden forever, or die trying."

"For the moment he just has to be invisible," she said. "Exploit him as the lost souls that live, or are dying, in this place. No one is more invisible than who is under the eyes of everyone and doesn't get noticed."

She said no more. Sannah watched her crawl to the door, exhausted. When she opened it, the kids who were leaning on it, eavesdropping, fell inside and looked fearfully at her, retreating. She turned not to look, not wanting to see what her son would become for her faults. Dirty, hungry, and at the same time powerful as the forces that ruled the flowing of the great All. Only then, that situation appeared to her in its bare squalor.

"You still didn't say what name I should give him."

"Any one," she replied, and stopped at the door. "The first one that comes to your mind. But remember, when you give a name to something you become responsible of it."

"This is why you didn't give him a name, right?" Sannah guessed, approaching. "You didn't want to be responsible for him. Ktisis. You're still his mother!"

Aniah grinned bitterly.

"You do not become a legend by chance," she said. "You're right, Dad. Perhaps you've always been right. That's why I hate you."

"Try to take care of yourself. You may embrace him again someday. Time will fix everything, and he has in abundance."

"I'll try." She raised her eyes, red with tears. "But tell me one thing before I go, why did you get only me to know it?"

"What in bloody Almagard are you talking about?"

"Why haven't you let everybody else know you're still alive, not even to Marduk? Why only me?"

He grinned. "When I saw what I was not supposed to see, when I left Candehel-mas and the stupid never ending fight of the Guardians, there was only one person I wanted to meet one last time before I die."

Aniah looked at him in silence, then she nodded. "Now you've seen me," she said. Her lips trembled in the attempt to control her emotions. "But you don't have my forgiveness. The moment you'll die, you'll remember this, I have not forgiven you. I hope you burn in hell, as you're already doing. I was just a kid and you had to protect me. Forgiving you may be a sufficient Redemption to convince the Overgods to let me in Almagard. But I won't. I prefer to stand outside, as always. After all, I haven't done anything else for all my life because of you. I..."

She relaxed the fist in her right hand, and forced herself to silence.

Nothing has changed in you, sweet child o' mine, Sannah thought. Still that day no one had to know her pain. Not her masters, nor her brother Marduk. No one. You can go through the gates of hell and back, but some things never change for those who are used to struggling.

When Sannah watched his daughter go, his old Dracon blood told him that was the last time he would see her. And that parting, like all the partings that had characterized his life, had sucked.

"What name do you give to the son of a god?" he wondered as he got back into the room. Just then he saw that the child had crawled on his desk, to fall asleep next to his dagger.

With his little pink hand around the blade.

* * * * *
Thirteen years later

4. Never say goodbye

"Dagger!"

"Seeth! Where are you, little sis?"

A cruel laughter arose all around.

"No redemption! NO FUTURE FOR YOU!"

"Where are you?"

"Under the trap door..."

"... beyond the light at the end of the world!"

The fog had descended upon the world like the white shroud of night. He saw it infiltrate the guild as a malignant and treacherous presence. He stood up, walking among the Spiders lying on the ground, all dead, all dead, and looked out on the deck. The rickety sign of the gypsy rocked back and forth in the rain, laughing at him with its ugly and toothless face.

His client laughed, with his throat cut. "We will die all, because of you!" He was holding the handkerchief he had torn from his face.

"Give it back to me!"

"Under the trap door! Under the trap door!"

"You're dead!" the client said. "You're dead because there's no Redemption in this world!"

He saw a white silhouette against the dim lights of the neighborhood, on the edge of the cliff, next to the tavern, next to the Spiders, all dead.

All dead.

The wind blew stronger, loaded with sand.

"Seeth!" he called to her, but she did not turn around. Dagger did not want to get close, sure that she would vanish under the touch of his bloodied hand. Only the dead were smiling. He rested his shoulder against the doorjamb and waited.

The gypsy laughed.

Everybody laughed.

"It's my fault," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Seeth."

She bowed her head and a gust of wind shook her hair, stained with blood. The sign rocked back and forth. The wind took her sobs to him. He tried to get closer, slowly, fearing she would move that last step toward the great beyond, and disappear forever.

"Don't do stupid things. Don't you ever leave me alone, Seeth!"

"You left me

under the trap door

all dead."

The client crooned, sad as death,"I've see-en yoo-ur faa-ce! I've see-en yoo-ur faa-ce!"

"Rule number one! Who sees your face, dies!" Mom yelled behind him, somewhere, beyond the dead.

Seeth, on the brink of the precipice.

"Sister..."

Sister don't you leave me alone. Sail away with me, sail away sweet sister...

... in the lap of the gods.

When he managed to lay a hand on her shoulder, Seeth did not disappear.

The rickety sign laughed at him. Only the dead were smiling.

He turned her and saw what was left of her face.

"Don't look at me like that," Seeth cried. "Please Dag. Don't turn away from me!"

He fell to his knees and hugged her legs.

"NO REDEMPTION!"

"What did he do to you?" he said. "What did he do?"

Seeth put a hand on his head, stroking his hair the color of sand.  
"As he cut me, he said he was doing it for your own good," she said. "Why? Why for your good, Dag?"

"I've worked her good, you see?"

The sign stopped swinging. It made a full turn, again and again, never stopping

in the rain

laughing at him.

Dagger shook his head, his face contorted in silent spasms of weeping. He said nothing, thought nothing. Pain became a deep, huge emptiness that filled his whole mind, absorbing every feeling.

"No redemption! No future for you!" a voice behind him cried.

He could only see the lit outline of the door in the dark. It beat like a heart, repeating those horrible words at each beat, no redemption. No redemption! NO REDEMPTION!

Soon he realized he was embracing nothing.

"Seeth?"

Laughing.

"He's coming."

"Who?"

"Run away. He's coming! They brought him to life, with the words

in the temple

where the father of the gods

the father of the gods laughed!"

From under the door came a trickle of blood, black as night, which slid slowly to his feet.

"Who?"

'The light at the end of the world!'

"Get up!"

a kick

"NO FUTURE!"

"Seeth?"

"No REDEMPTION!"

A powerful kick on his side welcomed him back to the world of the living, and Dagger understood that only for the dead it was really over.

"Get up!"

He found himself pulled up by the collar of his tunic. It was Mama; the old man looked at him with bloodshot eyes, more pissed off than when Dagger's actions forced confrontation the Three Galleons.

"You and your bloody red eyes!" he barked. "You got seen in your face and you don't tell me anything!"

Dagger grinned and looked him straight in the eye, to let him know he was no longer afraid of him. Not now that he had taken away everything he could take from him. Not now that there was no future for him. It was over, all over. The struggle for survival, the struggle against that damn city, against the guards, the hunger and the disease. Against everything. He was dead and he was beginning to like the idea.

"Redemption!" yelled in his face, grinning.

"Redemption? Yes, I'll give you redemption!"

The old man shuffled him along the guild under the gaze of the other Spiders, now amused, now terrified. He slammed him outside on the deck, to the red light of dawn slowly undressing itself of the fog.

It was a wonderful day to die.

He looked up and saw, all around him, twelve city guards armed to the teeth. He didn't wonder what they were doing there. The guards pushed into the district only in exceptional cases. Most of the times, to claim someone's eyes to show those who had paid more than the usual to get a quick and effective justice. He deserved to be an exceptional case. If he really had to part with that world, he wanted to do it in style. He brought a hand to his knife, when he noticed that, in addition to the guards, there was also a tall, broad-shouldered man, dressed in a long black cloak, black coat, black pants and black boots, each bearing the silver symbol of the city Watch: the amputated hand above the log. The man was staring at the horizon without paying any attention to what was going on behind his back. He was whistling a happy tune as if he was, or wanted to be, far from there. When he found himself surrounded by silence, he realized everyone was waiting for his word. The tune came on minor, dark, grave keys. Until he snorted, cursing softly, "Ktisisdamn!"

He turned and Dagger dropped the knife from terror. The man understood it and smiled. He advanced slowly and looked down in him with his black and cruel eyes, framed by a square face and prominent cheekbones, and thin lips split by a hideous scar.

"Yes," Prefect Mawson said. "This boy has the red eyes I'm looking for. And he stinks, like this whole damn sewer."

He took a few steps around him, like a vulture in the sky carefully watching over the agony of his next meal. "Son," he said in a fatherly voice. "There is a code of conduct for everyone in this city, even for you and for me. Yours, requires you be careful about what happens around you in every single moment, even when you sleep. Mine, especially when I sleep. Yours, requires to stay away from the big fishes, mine from the little ones. But when someone sees my face while I'm on duty, my code of conduct requires that this person feel fear. Yours, requires that he die." He stopped again in front of him and dug inside his eyes. "Because a dead man tells no lies," he resumed. "And you should know it, considered the place where you've grown up. Yet you made that mistake, typical of some of you, usually the last one that you can commit in your lowly existence. You felt pity for someone you had to kill. Pity for someone who did not hesitate a moment to denounce you. Sure it did not help—the color of your eyes, my men had just to ask a few questions to figure out where you were. If you had killed your client, now we would both have a problem less and return to our usual occupations. But now you have become my problem. And my problems have a very short life, I'm afraid."

"Prefect—" the great Mama started to say.

Mawson needed just to lift a finger to shut him up. "Do you want to bargain, old man?" he said. "Then I'll make you an offer to avoid other accidents like this. Me and my men close all of you in this wretched place and set it on fire. Yet I doubt these four axes of rotten wood can catch fire, and anyway, what would be the use of it?" he snorted. "What good would it be to burn down this whole damn sewer? Rats like you would find a way to escape and, within a short span of time, you'll build from scratch your little wicked world once again. Because wealth feeds on misery. And all in all, this city is very wealthy. At least for those who rule us all from the top of the Hill and say, with their every action, 'keep the change!'"

The Great Mama assumed a serious expression. "How many of them do you want?" he tried. "Ten? Twenty? They're all yours. You can do what you want with them. I don't think what this little piece of shit has done is worth more than the life of twenty of the others."

"Not if this little piece of shit has robbed the son of a nobleman."

Mama's eyes widened for the surprise. "The son of a—?"

"Yes. The son of a particularly obsessive nobleman," the prefect interrupted him. "And you know how my ass and yours is afloat until the balance that governs the existence of this crappy city is not compromised. I must say, this is a very effective way to compromise it. If the child of a nobleman is robbed, the latter will ask me to bring him the head of the guilty. Otherwise he will have the lawful right to take mine. And I don't want to lose my head. I need it."

"We've never worked on the Hill, we know that it's forbidden!" Mama said.

"I know, I know. But apparently that good boy did well to occasionally frequent the bad places," Mawson replied. "Of course, the boy here has been a little unlucky, but such is life."

Once he said that, he pulled the sword from under his cloak, as if he had got tired of words.

Just seeing the sharp blade, rekindled the survival instinct in Dagger. He looked around, but the situation was falling apart too fast to think of a solution. He looked at Mama, who was also caught off guard. The old man was never caught off guard and this only increased his sense of loss. Surrender or fight to the end? It was over, all over, he thought, but he did not want to die. Only now when his time was close at hand he realized how much he cared to live.

Funny.

"Go... to hell!" Everybody turned around. Seeth was standing in the doorway. She spoke again, "Leave him alone!"

Dagger shook his head, speechless. Seeth came forward and limped past him.

"Even dead may walk," Sannah muttered, aghast.

Her face. Her face was like in his dream, a framework of deep and red cuts. Dagger felt the cold hand of terror grab his throat and prevent him from breathing.

"It was me. I'll pay for what I did, whatever the price!"

Dagger took her by the arm and pulled her, but in a moment Mama threw him to the ground and blocked him with one foot on the neck. As always, the old man had already decided who suited him best to sacrifice.

"Red eyes!" he said. "Of course! This fuckin' albino also has them!"

"NO!" Dagger cried in the grip of panic. "No! Please! NO!"

Mawson shrugged. "Really touching."

Seeth collected what was left of her strength and spat in his face. She was immediately landed and beaten by the guards, for long, methodically. When they were finished, she was stunned and could not speak anymore.

"Sons of a bitch!" Dagger cried. "Sons of a bitch!"

"Shut up!" Mama ordered, struggling to hold him down. "What in bloody hell do you want to do, be torn to pieces in her place? Look! She's already dead!"

From that position Dagger could see only Mawson's boots approach.

"What happened to the girl's face, old man?"

"It was an accident."

"An accident? It seems to me someone has enjoyed to redraw it, just like you filthy animals usually do to punish your subdued. You should really try it out."

The old man was about to reply when, in a single motion, the prefect opened a gash on his cheek and then on the other. Right to left. Left to right.

Sannah yelled but did not move, merely bringing his hands to his bleeding face.

"Anyway, you did well to leave her eyes in place," Mawson replied, sheathing back his dagger. "Those will be enough. Keep the boy if you care so much about him. My men will think about everything."

That said, he turned away. Dagger grabbed the knife from the ground and broke free from the hold of Mama, still distracted by his wounds. He sprang to the prefect, but Mawson turned around, unsheathing his sword at the same time, and wounded him on the chest, tearing his robe.

The boy was on his guard. "Leave my sister be, asshole!"

Mawson lowered his sword and raised a hand to the guards, who were about to pounce on the boy. "Stop!" he ordered. "ALL OF YOU!"

Dagger wondered why he had not let the guards massacre him. Maybe he just wanted to save that pleasure for himself, he thought, when he realized the prefect was not looking at him with hate, now, nor in anger. He looked suspicious. He approached and, with the tip of his blade, uncovered his chest. His eyes were suddenly crossed by a spark of desire and fear. Dagger could read in people's eyes, he had been forced to learn it from the game of survival; that was the look of a man in front of a wealth too big to be hold with his bare hands. The prefect's lips trembled, twitched, to let finally escape a shaky, "Oh, Ktisisdamn!"

Dagger looked down.

∞

The mark. Mawson had seen the mark that was on his chest since he had been abandoned. Dagger knew its story, Sannah had told him. That was the symbol pirates used to tattoo on the sternum of the children in whom they found clear signs of a curse, before abandoning them to the currents of the sea. The old man had picked him up on a beach, in a wicker basket, and took him with him. Doom, red eyes, abandonment. He never questioned that story, he never had the interest nor the reason. It did not matter. It had never mattered.

He took advantage of the situation and snapped in a flash, with the sole purpose of scarring that man. When he felt the blade slide down his freshly shaven cheek he did not dare to strike again. He realized he had made it. He would never thought it was possible to hurt the prefect, but he had done it. The whole town would remember his name since that day and now, he said to himself, he was ready to die.

Mawson ran a hand over his face, to uncover his blood-stained grin. "Make that bitch stand up!" he ordered his guards, who dragged Seeth to stand up face-to-face with Dagger.

The two looked each other into their red eyes. Mawson nodded to a guard, who immediately immobilized the boy with the black arm around his neck.

"You see," Mawson said. "You probably don't think I'm a good guy, but I have this problem, I don't like sewer rats like you, and sewer rats like you do not like me."

Mama came to his senses. "Mawson, you can't—" he tried to say, before being interrupted by a fast slap from the prefect.

"I know what I can do! I know what I have to do to keep everyone of you in line!" he boomed. He pulled his sword and laid it on Seeth's neck, held in place by one hand on the forehead to expose the most tender part of her neck. The girl did not tremble. She showed no sign of fear or weakness. Maybe it was slumber to make her so brave, or maybe not. Maybe she had always been better than he.

She looked straight into Dagger's eyes, and smiled. "Don't be afraid, big bro," she said. "You make a funny foolish face when you're scared."

Then the blade slid on her throat, opening a red smile of death. Her eyes turned up, her mouth opened, her legs were shaken by an electric thrill. Seeth paid her last red tribute to the world and fell on the floor. A pool of blood formed on the ground and in that blood Dagger fell to his knees, deprived of all his strength.

"No," he just whispered. "No, don't leave me." Once again, the great emptiness was filling him. He never thought there might be a pain so deep.

Mawson brought his sword on his neck and Dagger lifted his bare throat, as if he were looking for nothing else than death. The prefect was no longer grinning now. "You," he said. "You are nothing. And those like you only deserve to live to see their failures."

He stared into his eyes for one last moment, but Dagger saw nothing but fear in his. That man was afraid of him. Why? That question remained dormant in his mind when the prefect stunned him with a kick to his temple. He clenched his fists and tried to get up in his sister's blood—without success. Mawson sheathed the blade and Dagger, on the ground, watched him go. His mind emptied of every thought and feeling; his contracted lips trying to say something. He didn't even feel pain, now. In the land between consciousness and unconsciousness, he swore to himself he would have killed the man.

He would kill him, he said. Then he fainted.

When he opened his eyes again, it was dark. He was still lying on the ground and was hitting the floor long enough to make his knuckles bleed. Mama was sitting next to him with a bottle of wine next to half-full, in addition to those he had already emptied. He noticed that the boy was awake and held out a hand, but Dagger ignored it. He caught a glimpse of the compassionate Spiders' eyes, perhaps the only family he had ever known, looking at him, peeping out of the door. Now none of them was laughing. They were sorry for him, but he did not want their pity. Pity was a form of despise, he had always believed.

The old man made an impatient gesture and all the Spiders went back into their holes, leaving him alone in the cold of night. Dagger turned to look at what remained of Seeth. He passed a hand over her remaining eye; the other one had been dug out as a proof of death to show to the nobleman who had decreed it. He closed it forever. Her face was cold. He, too, was going cold and soon there was no place for pain. He just felt that deep emptiness swallowing him more and more at every breath, at every heartbeat.

He tried to pull himself up and found himself on his knees with hands planted in dry blood. "You killed her," he said. "It was me who had to die."

Mama sighed. "I cannot let you die," he replied. "After all, you cannot die. This is why, there's no Redemption for you."

The cruel tone that had always characterized his voice was gone now, but Dagger had not heard a single one of his words. He raised his open hand. With the other drew his knife. The Great Mama looked nervous, perhaps forgetting that Dagger would have never dared to strike him. The boy used the knife to open a cut on his hand, fusing his blood with that of Seeth. Then he clenched his fingers into a fist and looked at their blood falling drop by drop, melted together forever.

"Nothing's left to us but bury her," said the old man.

"I won't let you bury her," he said. He got up and loaded the frail body of his sister on his shoulders, before starting to walk. The old man was too drunk to stop him.

* * * * *

Twelve years he had wasted looking for the Spiral, anywhere, from the port of Melekesh to the Hill; beating every damn street, every house; torturing and destroying entire families.

Fuck!

Every death had deprived him of his humanity, in the meantime, pushing further his goal, until it had almost disappeared. Until he had forgotten what was the purpose of that bloody research, and there was nothing left but the pleasure of it in itself.

Shit. Shit! SHIT!

Killing had become living, a worthy vent to his inner malaise. He had been repeatedly punished for his incapacity and, after each punishment, he was back on the search with even more tenacity, making his work more brutal every day. Blacklisting and public sacrifices; indiscriminate violence—he had put that whole city under siege against itself, without ever being able to get the spider out of the hole. Get a spider out of the hole, he thought. Sometimes fate shows a subtle sense of irony.

He had never considered that Guardians could have been so foolish as to hide the boy in that one place, where there were not even human beings worthy of the name. Where no one even ventured, except in cases of absolute necessity. After all, what's a stroke of genius, if not a folly which no one would think of?

As he descended the long spiral stairs dug under the tooth of Marbal, the remnant of an ancient volcanic cone eroded by wind, Mawson could not help but let his meandering thoughts torment him. Now, it all made perfect sense. Now everything would change. Yes, he could go down those stairs as a free man to claim his well-deserved reward.

Twelve years of waiting were finally over.

Only, the shadows. He hoped those would agree too. They despised him. They roamed the infinite staircase that went down into the putrid bowels of earth, hidden in the dark, carefully watching his every move. He felt them, and knew he was not welcome. Every so often, he thought to glimpse their red eyes or feel a fetid breath on his neck; he could see, on the edge of his vision, black silhouettes darker than the blackness surrounding them. But when he turned, they were already gone.

He tried to convince himself that his senses were cheating him. That he was alone, yet the shadows were there and were jealous of him. Mawson was the only referent of the Divine in that city, his legs and hands, since he had been brought under there for the first time, in chains and semiconscious. Everything had changed that day. His life, his expectations, even his fears. That place still smelled of death even now that twelve years had passed.

He went down the stairs and crossed the narrow tunnel that would lead him to his presence. He did not perceive any noise down there. Everything was still. His heart was not beating; he did not need to breathe; he felt airborne dust spread against him as he advanced, as if time itself refused to come down there. It had no sense, it could not be, yet it was.

Slowly, from the shadows, emerged the ghostly purple light that illuminated only the black rock floor, leaving the rest of the room in complete darkness. Sat on his throne, the Divine was waiting for him, as always. Light prostrated at his feet, making visible only the boots of the armor he wore. In the still air, Mawson felt the stench of his decomposing body. Several times the Divine had told him he didn't have his legs and right arm anymore. It was just that armor that allowed him to move. It was made of pure Mayem, the sacred metal that responded to the will of the wearer and, he thought, even to his emotions.

As former chief of the Three Galleons, the prefect always wondered what the value of an armor like that could be. Maybe there was no possible buyer, not on that world. There was no price a father would not pay to see his son walk again. There was nothing he would not do in return.

Behind the throne, the shadows were watching him quietly, safe in the protective embrace of the big dark. They were hostile.

"What do you want from us?" the voice in the armor hissed. "Your confused thoughts upset me." Light was shaken by the sound waves of the voice.

"I've found him, your Eternity."

The shadows twitched and erupted in their incomprehensible cries, similar to those of a flock of birds in flight. Mawson had never seen them but he knew they were there, in front of his eyes, where they accompanied the Divine's reaction with their gruesome cries.

"Explain yourself, mortal."

"The boy you're looking for is hiding here in Melekesh, as you've always sustained," the prefect said. "To be precise, at the ships cemetery."

The Divine's right foot moved. Mawson imagined him leaning forward to pay full attention. He had been waiting for that moment for years, after all, away from existence.

Twelve years, rotting in darkness.

"Are you sure?"

"Guardians surely knew you were on his trail and put us off the track. The bastards are smart. If only I had known the color of his eyes, I could—"

The Divine slammed his fist. The sad figures echoed his anger with the gnashing of their teeth.

"DO YOU THINK THIS MATTERS?" he shouted. "Where is he now?! Why you didn't bring him me here?!"

Mawson bowed his face. "My Divine. I..." he paused. "I was afraid."

Then there was silence.

"Fear, you say," the one who sat in darkness replied. "Yes. You are telling the truth. I can feel it. I always feel everything. It's this armor, which you think it's only a prison, to confer me this power. You are really afraid. Afraid of us; afraid of all matters that affect our world; afraid of the ancient god we worship. But I feel even desire. Desire to learn; desire to share, and this is a good thing. Curiosity drives us beyond the boundaries from which fear keeps us away. However, I also feel you're not telling the whole truth. Tell me what you really want."

"Eternity. I thought it inappropriate to bring the boy here, without having previously discussed my reward."

The shadows shouted their outrage, deafeningly, as the Divine stood up. He advanced, protected by darkness, and Mawson watched his feet getting nearer and nearer. Until, raising his face, he saw a small yellow light shining at a short distance from his face. It was his eye, cursed by Kam Karkenos.

"Are you negotiating with us, Mawson? Do you dare to negotiate with us?"

"No, I'd never dare!" the prefect squeaked, like a mouse trapped under the cat's paw. "I'm just begging you to reward me as you've always promised, at least now that my task is fulfilled. My son. It was them, the inhabitants of that filthy cemetery, to reduce him so. Prostrated at your feet, I beseech you, Eternity! You promised that—"

The shadows interrupted him, but the Divine yelled. Only one deafening scream, which forced everyone to silence. The armor produced a flash of light that allowed him, for a single moment, to perceive the true appearance of the shadows. They were more than he could ever think and they were observing him. He looked away, refusing to watch. Now that darkness had returned, he just wanted to forget what little he had seen.

"Your task will be done when the boy is brought to our presence," the Divine replied. "That will be the end of my torment and the beginning of my kingdom come. Do not fear. I always used to keep my promises when I was alive, when I was the warrior king of the Guardians. Now I will not be outdone. Your son will walk again, I promise. I will give you my armor and it will be as if these long years have never passed. Only think about bringing here the boy marked by the Spiral. Destroy this whole damn city if needed. It does not matter. Your whole world, does not matter. If you fail, this time I won't punish you anymore. I'll have your son brought here. And then his feet and hands won't be the only thing you will regret."

The Divine sat back and the shadows subsided. A spark jumped between the armor leggings, clear sign of his anger.

Son of a bitch! Stupid, rotten son of a bitch!

"Mawson?"

"Yes?"

"Remember that Skyrgal gave me a tremendous power before leaving my body. Make it so, that you can still be useful to this stupid son of a bitch. Even when I was just a human, I was much more powerful than you in this latrine you call a city."

As if to underline those words, a shadow came forward. He could see its red eyes in the dark and hear its hungry breathing.

"Servant of your will, Eternity," the prefect concluded. He took his leave with a bow and retraced his steps. He had a job to accomplish.  
Damn quickly.

In the darkness behind, the Divine raised a hand. The two red and shiny eyes came obediently forward.

"The prey is going to be smoked out," he said. "Thirteen years have passed since its inception. Now you should be able to perceive his blood. Bring him to me. I won't contemplate any more failure on your part, Gorgor!"

The dark shadow bowed, then withdrew. It also had a job to accomplish, damn quickly.

* * * * *
4. Redemption

A wave, higher than the previous ones, crashed against the rocks. The splashing hit him right there, on the bed of loose soil on which he was lying. Dagger awoke in the middle of night. He could not remember where he was, nor how he got there. He only knew he was scared, and cold.

The wind blew with violence, giving voice to the rocks. Instinctively, he sought the eyes of Seeth lying next to him. When he didn't found her, it all came back to him with merciless clarity. Seeth was gone. She was sleeping six feet under, now. Mawson had executed her and he had buried her in their favorite place, the Horrido of Ktisis. An expanse of stones eroded by wind in the most twisted ways, overlooking the sea.

In a world that had never needed him.

A piercing pain was pulsating in his head to the rhythm of his heartbeats, a painful gift bequeathed by the prefect's kick. He stood up, clinging to the sharp rocks. The clouds were mustering in the sky, ready to wash away the blood from the world. The storms of Melekesh befell rapidly and with violence, leaving the city to its knees and submerged in water. Apart from the district on the Hill. That was why nobles lived there since always.

He shrugged his arms, shivering, walking on the escarpment along the coast. He had many scores that needed to be settled with his past, before he could realize what he would do with his future. If there was a future for him, after all. He would gladly throw himself into the cold embrace of the great silence, once he had completed the revenge against Mawson. But first came his easiest target, the old bastard.

Distracted by his dark thoughts, he hardly noticed he could see his own shadow in a moonless night. He looked up and saw that a huge fire was devouring his miserable world. The ship cemetery was burning.

As he approached, he saw the city guards entering the district in long, black columns, carrying barrels of pitch and torches. Judging by the deployment of forces, Dagger thought they wanted to raze the entire cemetery to the ground. Probably, it was just what they were doing.

He disappeared into shadows, moving with discretion, eyes downcast, as if none of that concerned him. When he thought he got far enough, he dipped into water, keeping his head under the surface. He swam through a narrow opening, injuring himself several times against the wood splinters sticking out of the mud. When he emerged, he found himself in a dark peripheral channel, where the neighborhood's abattoir threw the carcasses of the slaughtered animals. Including those of some men who, indebted to the marrow, were only worth what covered their bones.

He almost choked because of the bittersweet stench as he swam fast to reach and climb on one of the wrecks' mast. He looked around, trying to understand what was happening. Soon the situation turned out all too clear: with methodical expertise, the guards had set fire to the cemetery area farthest from the city, so that flames were slowly advancing. They would have left no part of it unscathed. This, of course, gave the guards the necessary time to draw, from their duty, the shameful pleasure of exercising the darkest power, the one to dispose at will someone else's suffering. Burning in front of his dry and tired eyes, was the final showdown between the city and its nightmares; between the strong and the weak; the rich and the poor; the ones to which life had never denied anything, and the desperate.

He saw that the smugglers, occult caste of that world, had been awakened in their sleep. Bound to each other with barbed wire in a circle, they were forced to look toward the center, where their families were torn apart. The pile of ears, feet and tongues, suggested that for the cemetery there would be no dawn after that night.

Why? he wondered, resting his forehead against the rough wood. Smugglers were useful to the whole city. They fed the vices of the guards and of the entire town with magic dust, some kind of mushrooms and all sorts of substance that came from the other side of the sea. Yet that night they were slaughtered too, erased from the face of that dirty world. For a moment, he thought to be the cause of all that. Yet robbing the son of a nobleman was not enough to explain a similar reaction. No, there had to be more.

He went back down and decided to go all the way, driven by his inextinguishable thirst for truth. Something heavy fell on his shoulder and he instinctively pulled away, afraid of having been discovered. He turned around in time to see the severed head of a woman thrown down into the water, with eyes wide open. Then he heard a shrill scream, the clatter of a blade, and saw another head falling down a little farther on. This one of a child. Dagger retreated against the wall of the old sailing ship that housed the greatest pleasure house in the neighborhood. The guards who once, in plain clothes, had come to give rise to their most vile instincts, now came in uniform to give death. He went under water and felt the mud mixed with blood fill his nose, as if to choke him. When he emerged again, he found himself in a blind alley. He climbed along the hull of a fishing boat and looked around. The Three Galleons were burning. The sun around which the whole neighborhood used to orbit was burning for the last time. Their absolute leader was gutted like a fish, bound the helm. His five lieutenants dangled from the yardarm, hanged, their half-charred corpses swinging back and forth in the infernal air, heated by the flames of the surrounding barracks. All the other members of the guild were nailed to the ship. Some of them were still alive and screamed with less and less force, less and less, as fire claimed their body. Until there was a last atrocious cry, and silence swallowed their lives.

Dagger turned to the den of Spiders; that part of the district had not yet been lapped by fire. He jumped down and swam as fast as he could to reach it in time. He climbed the bumpy side of the old wooden vessel and passed through a crack opened by moisture. In the safe and sinister gloom he stood silent. Noises reached him on the sly, now. The screams of pain and the wild cries of the guards; bodies falling into the water; above everything, the voice of the merciless fire. He got deeper into the bowels of the dark, using his hands to orient himself. When he came under the grate opened on the deck, he crouched against the wall, away from the mortals and red rays of light coming from above. In the metal grid, he saw the shadow of two feet. The feet of a man who was silently watching the macabre show around him.

"He must be escaped. That little son of a bitch must be somewhere out there!" It was Mawson's voice.

A guard stepped forward and bent to his knees. "Must we suspend the search?"

In response, the prefect stuck the sword inside his face. Then he pushed him to the ground with a kick, watching his body shaken by the spasms. Blood flowed beneath the grate, dripping hot and dense on Dagger's face.

"No," Mawson replied. "None of this old game is of any importance, anymore. There are no more rules, no more terms to be respected. Let violence reign supreme on this night. Give free rein to your every meanest instinct, but watch over this place and make sure that flames do not embrace it. Maybe he will come back, if he's more stupid than I think."

Then he left. Dagger listened to the clattering footsteps of the guards placing themselves around. Then there was only the raging of fire, the barking of dogs and the screams of agony. Now he could be certain that they were looking for him. That carnage was all for him. He didn't wonder about the other Spiders' fate. He doubted that Mawson had knocked before entering.

I am more stupid than he thinks. Perfect, prefect!

He had to get out of there in a hurry, out of that hell, then he would have time to think about what to do next.

He got back to the crack through which he had entered, but found out that fate had rolled the dices, having fortune take two steps backward, he barely had time to hide, before encountering the watchful eyes of one of the guards. From the deck, they were now watching over the channels between the ships. He felt the instinctive desire to punch the wall and swear Ktisis. However, that would surely not come in handy this time. He walked away from light, being swallowed by darkness. He explored the walls with his hands, for long time, hoping not to run into a hole on the floor that would make him fall hopelessly in the never explored lower decks of the ship. Soon he lost orientation. He was no longer able to understand where he was, nor how to get back. He was on the verge of surrender, and wait for death to come or find him there—to kill him at its will, with fire or hunger.

Then he found himself walking in a spacious and dimly lit room. The little light came from a bright square on the ceiling, high above him. He walked on until, with his outstretched hands, he met an old wooden ladder. In that moment, he knew exactly where he was. The punishment room, where Mama locked up the Spiders to torment them at the end of the night. That place where he had sent only once, coming just through that bright square. The trap door in the old Mama's studio.

He climbed the rungs until his fingers brushed against the ceiling. There he stood for a while, listening, imploring his heart to beat more slowly. Then, with the caution that prudence advised, he opened the trap door to a crack. He saw two boots and immediately closed it.

Shit!

He rested his forehead against the top rung. When he heard the sound of an unsheathed blade, that sound which he would be able to distinguish even in the uproar of hell, he hoped his hour had come. He was exhausted. His world existed no longer. He wanted to reach Seeth in Almagard, the large tavern of the afterlife, and get drunk to unconsciousness in the company of the dead. But he realized that the blade had not been unsheathed for him, when he listened to the last lament of the guard who had just been slaughtered. He heard him fall to the ground and die, as blood penetrated through the cracks of the hatch. The murderer landed heavily on the floor, jumping from the ceiling where, probably, he had remained hidden for so long.

He could not hear his footsteps as quiet as he was, yet he was able to track his way, following the sound of the blade. He imagined it sticking in the flesh of the guards, surprised, their throats cut, one by one. Only when he heard him getting out on the deck, Dagger jumped out of the hatch and rushed through the cabin of Mama. In the gloom, he saw the shadow stick his knife into the neck of the last guard, and then he slammed the door and stepped back.

Time passed. Nothing happened.

All of a sudden, the shadow tore down the door with just one kick. Dagger saw his black silhouette against the crimson glare of the flames, advancing through the cabin with fingers clenched on a shining dagger. He observed him getting closer and closer, as he stepped back and back, until he found himself with his back to the wall. He dropped to the ground, resigned, taking shelter behind his arms in a last, desperate gesture of defense.

The shadow grabbed his tunic and pulled him to his feet, with the same ease with which he would have lifted an injured dog from the ground.

Then he uncovered his chest. And smiled. "Umh. Look what the cat dragged in." He examined him from head to foot. "Damn. You've grown up since the last time!"

Dagger wriggled out with a jerk, putting a hand to his knife, but keeping it sheathed. "Who are you?" he asked.

The shadow stood motionless for a moment, then he pulled down the hood to uncover the face of a man in his fifties, hardened by deep scars. He had blue eyes and gray hair that had once been auburn, like his.

"I am Marduk," the man replied. "Delta Dracon of Golconda. Usually, I do not save people's lives. Usually I kill them." After that consideration, he slowly looked around, taking his time to examine every dark corner of that place.

Overwhelmed by his Spider's instinct, Dagger drew his knife but Marduk threw him to the ground without even looking at him.

"This place is impregnated with a familiar smell," he said calmly. "All too familiar. The man to whom this stench belongs must have died a long time ago. I'm confused."

The boy was on his feet again, knife clutched in his hand. He gasped, refraining from attacking.

Marduk lowered his gaze back on him. "Let's get one thing straight," he said. "I saved your life. It's very rude of you to try to kill me. And then, if you really want to do it, try with a decent weapon. Not that... thing!"

He put a hand to the belt of daggers on his chest. He picked one and handed it to him. "Happy Birthday!" he said. "Some time ago you turned thirteen, you know?"

"What the Ktisis is a birthday?"

At that, Marduk laughed. Then he realized that Dagger was serious. "This is a gift," he continued, handing him the handle. "Do you know at least what a gift is?" The smile on Marduk's lips turned into a bitter grin when the boy shook his head. "It means you must not be afraid of me," he added. "I'm here to get you out of this mess. As long as you want it."

Dagger examined the knife. He had never seen a blade like that. It was rough and porous, of a greenish color, mottled with yellow as if it had spent a long time on the bottom of the sea. The handle was engraved in a tangle of abstract shapes, reminiscent of thorny brambles and tentacles. It belongs to a museum, he thought. Then he realized that weapon had killed. There were marks on the blade, one for each life taken from a man. When he took it out of Marduk's hands, sparks of purple light went through its entire surface, changing it under his eyes. It looked like his fingers brought the dagger back in time, to the day when it was a shining and sharpened blade, ready to kill.

He looked up in amazement. "What the fuck—?"

"Aniah was right," Marduk said. "This is a confirmation that it's really you."

"I never had any doubt of really being me," Dagger answered.

The man grinned again. One last time. His face suddenly froze. Pulling back the cloak, he put his hand to a hidden sword that hung by his side and Dagger did not dare to move. He looked at him open-mouthed, dumb.

Marduk unsheathed his silver blade and stood still. "When I sensed your smell, I didn't even want to believe," he said. "You should be dead!"

Only then, Dagger saw the old Mama come forward at the man's shoulders, limping. He clutched two knives in his hands and his face was a mask of blood. He didn't wonder how he managed to make his way through the guards. He must have been more clever than he had ever believed and, judging by the pace, even drunker than he had ever been.

"Marduk Nightfall," the old man's lips spat. "I realized it was you when I saw the cut on these guards' throat. I would recognize your clumsy signature even in a battlefield all covered with dead bodies. Is this the way I taught you to kill?"

"You may not be dead, but you still smell like a corpse, Dad," Marduk said, turning with sword in hands. "Tell me; did you drink so much in the afterlife to be kicked out even from there? Drunk and disorderly in hell. It would be typical of you."

"And you never change jokes, right?" Sannah limped a step forward. "Sometimes I wonder if you really kill with your knife, or if you bore people with your sarcasm until they die!"

"A little of this, a little of that. I like to vary when I kill. Irony is hereditary in our family. Even your daughter had a lot, remember?"

"Where's Aniah?"

Marduk let his guard down. "Oh. Hear him! So you're the one asking questions?"

"What's going on here, old man?" Dagger asked.

"Do you know who this guy is, Dag?" The great Mama said, pointing to his son with the tip of his knife. "This is the man who decided to lock you up in this huge prison. It's him who ordered your mother to take you to this world, and you want to know why? Because he was afraid, like all cowards. I've never been afraid of you, not once in my life. Maybe that's why I'm mad." He laughed.

Dagger turned to Marduk, but he had eyes only for his father. He was looking at him with an unconditional hatred, buried for years but not yet extinct.

"On this world?"

"Oh yes, it's a damn long story," the old man kept on. "You don't even know. It starts with two fucking gods slaying each other like pigs at the top of a mountain; it continues with an endless series of wars fought at the foot of a fortress; to end with your birth, disgusting abomination!"

"You're drunk as always, stop it!" Marduk growled. "Say one more word, and even if you're not dead I'll kill you right where you are. I swear it on the dead body of my sister!"

"Where's Aniah?" Sannah asked again. Then he listened, finally hearing his son's words. His face transformed under their eyes, seized by pain. "You said, 'on the dead body of my sister'?"

Marduk bowed his face. An howl rose straight from his gut. With a kick, he hurled the desk against the window and smashed it to pieces. From outside came the wind, warmed by the fire that ruled on the neighborhood.

"Aniah is DEAD!"

Sannah fell to his knees, resting his hands on the ground. "No."

"Oh, you are sorry?"

The old man hid his face between his hands and the floor. "How did it happen?" he asked in a small voice.

"What do you care?" his son replied drily. "You've been here all this time, not saying anything. How could you? How could you make us lose all these years?"

Sannah clutched his head in his hands. "You dirty shitface!" he replied, raising his face and looking at him with his bloodshot eyes. "You come to lecture me, now? You, who sent her here to deprive herself of that one being who could mean something to her? You, who treated her as a pawn in your chessboard, an expendable pawn for your fuckin' Equilibrium! Yes, oh yes, how brave you were! Now tell me how the fuck did my daughter die!"

Marduk took umbrage, suffering every word like a blade in his belly. "After being forced to disown her son, Aniah gave herself over to a slow madness," he revealed. "For twelve years, she remained locked in her room, refusing to eat, talking by riddles. I often thought she was just making fun of us to protect her secret but sometimes, looking into her eyes, I was convinced that pain had really made her crazy. Only on her deathbed, reduced to little more than a skeleton covered with skin, she confessed having hidden him here. Of course, she left out the small detail to have entrusted her son to you. It must have been her last left-handed shot. 'I abandoned him to a man who will amaze you' she said. Then, grinning, she was dead."

"Why only now? Why she didn't tell you before?"

Marduk shook his head. "I always had the feeling she knew about this story more than us," he said. "Of course, she wanted to keep him away from the Fortress as long as possible. According to Dracon Araya, now that the boy has turned thirteen they can smell his blood. He's no longer safe here either and she knew it. She had read all the prophecies concerning the birth of his son, at first hand in the temple of Adramelech. His blood is now flowing."

Dagger shuddered and turned to Sannah. "What?!" he asked, but got no answer. He turned to Marduk.

"Sannah. We have to take the boy away from here before it's too late, then we will be able to accuse each other of all the wrong choices made along these years."

"I think it's already too late," a third voice said. Only hearing it, Dagger shivered. Sannah jumped to his feet and all three turned to the door blades in hands.

Prefect Mawson took a step forward, wrapped in his inseparable black cloak. He stopped in the doorway and planted his full attention on Dagger. "Here you are, little brat!" he said. "You have been more stupid than I thought, apparently!"

"And who the fuck is this now?" Marduk asked, putting himself in front of Dagger.

Mawson looked up at him. "You're the one who killed my guards, right?" he asked. "Damn, you're good."

Marduk shrugged. "Thank you. It's always good to hear you're good!" he answered. "Years and years of hard training finally make sense, though you could train your guards a little better! Damn, they didn't even move!"

Sannah stood beside him. "Be careful, son. This one likes to play dirty. Anyway, to me you looked clumsy all the same."

"Leave the boy to me and I'll let you walk away." Mawson said. "He's too important for me!"

"Oh, really?" Marduk replied. "You know... instead, I made my way through all this shit just to come and see how he was getting by. Be a good boy, whoever you are: go back into the asshole you come from. Maybe I'll let you go with your head still on your shoulders. If I want to."

"It was you who ordered all this, wasn't it?" Sannah asked.

The prefect laughed heartily, nodding. "Oh yes!"

"But why?"

Mawson pointed Dagger. "Him," he replied. "I know everything about him. They taught me. And I know everything about you too: Guardians of Golconda; temples in the desert; a dark knowledge written in blood and gods exiled from their bodies. Oh yeah, they told me many things about the wicked world you come from. I am in the Divine's service, I've always been. I am his representative in this world."

"The Divine?"

"It's the way they call Crowley, now," Marduk murmured.

Sannah turned toward his son, eyes wide open. "And Crowley is still alive?"

"I don't think it's the right time for a summary, Dad."

"Well. After the soul of Skyrgal had been torn from his body, his limbs were still moving," the prefect said. "At least, those that remained. I don't know if 'alive' is the right word. For sure, now he's not a friend of yours."

"And now, as this shit on two legs is saying, he's here," Marduk pointed out. "Perfect."

"Oh, and not just him," Mawson replied. "Gorgors also set foot on this world, searching for the boy."

"And how? How, if we hold the only link between the two worlds?!"

The prefect laughed. "Well, this is our little secret. You've been stupid and predictable. Your only luck is that no one knew where the boy was, not even yourself. But now, his divine blood is taking over the human one and Gorgors are on his trail. The countdown for your extinction has finally started."

Marduk bowed his head to the side. "Nice metaphor," he said. "I'm impressed. Then you are not just an ignorant, asshole, crazy bloody wanker placed halfway into the social pyramid of this sewer, between the nobles who rule it, and the rats that wallow in it."

In response, Mawson pulled the sword from under his cloak. "There are many things that you don't know," he said. "And that probably you'll never know. In the next life, try to be more vigilant."

Sannah yelled. Before his son could stop him, he snapped against Mawson. The latter did not even look at him when, with a single blow, he ripped his belly. The old man fell to the ground with guts in his hands, drenched with his blood and stool.

Dagger found himself transfixed. The smell. He knew well the smell of a gutted man. Many spoke of blood and guts, hands trying to get them back inside, but it was the smell that made the difference between a man with an open belly, and another who was dying of any other violent death. The penetrating reek of shit.

"Kill the bastard..." the old man managed to spit out.

Marduk threw one of his daggers, but Mawson repulsed it with the sword, laughing, amused.

"Come here. My collection misses a Dracon."

"Some people collect just about anything," replied the Dracon. Then every shade of mockery was gone from his face. He gripped his sword with the right hand, a dagger with the left one, and faced his opponent. The two began to walk around the room, staring at each other, both waiting for the other one to expose himself first.

"You know, it is an honor to duel with the great Marduk. The Divine told me a lot about you and your legendary humor. Always present, even in the most difficult times."

"Yeah, like when you're forced to deal with the great... sorry, what's your name again?"

Seized by the sharp tongue of his rival, Mawson turned his back to Dagger. The boy knew that Marduk had calculated that too. He reached for a long shard of glass, praying Ktisis not to fail him once again. He waited for the right moment, then snapped.

The prefect dodged him nimbly, laughing at his innocence as he pushed him to the ground with a kick on the back. But the trap had worked perfectly, looking down, the prefect saw that Sannah was not dead as he thought.

The old man tightened his arm around Mawson's ankles and cleanly severed his tendons, causing him to ruin on the floor. Then he crucified him, pinning his hands with his knives. The ecstasy was so strong that he completely ignored even the guts that hang out of his belly, as they drew abstract red figures on the black waistcoat of the prefect.

"This is for Arleb and his children!" he growled , before falling to the ground.

Dagger knew that his time had come. He planted his knee on the chest of Mawson, crucified to the ground. He brought the shard of glass to his throat, his heart pounding fierce in the middle of his thorax as he watched the prefect trying to escape.

Terrified.

"I don't want to die," Mawson said. "I cannot! Who will take care of him?"

"I am Dagger. When you get to hell, tell Seeth it was me who sent you." And the boy cut. He tore the prefect's throat and blood spurted on his face in a warm gush. He looked into his eyes as he died. He thought of something important to say, an epic phrase. But time had already run out. Mawson could no longer hear him, because Mawson was dead.

Funny. He had thought that he would have wasted all his life to carry out his revenge. Instead, it had been far too easy. It had not been worth all that pain. Revenge sucks.

He turned. Marduk was holding his father in his arms. The crazy old man was still alive.

"It's just in your style to be run after all this time and die only once I find you again," Marduk growled. "Damn you, Dad!"

Sannah half-blind gaze moved to Dagger, watching him covered in blood from head to toe. "You've had your revenge, huh?" he whispered. "It's not worth living a single day, for revenge, huh?"

Marduk hugged his father, hiding his face. He would not be observed in that moment. "Why?" he whispered. "Why?"

In a last surge of fatherly strength, Sannah tried to hit the son with a punch, but only managed to touch him. "Shit, Marduk! Get it over with the whys!" he murmured, with less and less strength. "Ask yourself who, instead!"

Marduk raised his face. "Who?"

Sannah laughed. "Who is betraying the Guardians, since the beginning?" he said. "There's a hole as big... as big as an abyss in your... our fucking Fortress. Who?" Sannah rolled on his side, panting. He stretched out his arm to indicate the shattered glass. "Go!" he said. "And when we meet in Almagard, you'll tell me who! I'm... curious!" He chuckled softly, then reached out for one of his knives and pressed it against his chest. His eyes watered from the agony. "But first..."

Marduk paid attention to his last words, "First tell Dagger what a fucking monster he is!"

The old man closed his eyes and died. Marduk lowered his face. Dagger felt nothing. He had never been bound to the old man if not from simple necessity. He was his roof, his food, his protection from the rest of the world. A sadistic bastard who never missed the opportunity to vent his violence against them. He spat on the ground and turned to the flames, now licking the threshold of the guild. They were gaining strength. Every escape was blocked, except for one.

"You know these channels," Marduk said, still bent over the body of his father. "You're the only one who can lead us to safety. Do it, and I promise I will give you all the answers you need. If we're lucky, we'll be home soon."

"What home?" he asked.

Marduk grinned through his tears. "Golconda. The place where we all belong. Perhaps you too!"

* * * * *

5 . Shadows of a moonless night

When he found himself immersed in the red and sticky water, Dagger distinctly felt the pungent stink of blood. The fitful light of fire made the lifeless faces of his old companions emerge from the dark. Eyes wide open; half-closed mouths; faces torn by the impact against the wood spikes. Not all of them had been killed immediately, since many had found all the time to take their hands to the sharp sting sticking out of the abdomen, or chest, trying to break free from cold grasp of death. It seemed that with the older ones Mawson's guards had had fun a little longer.

Even Marduk was watching them with an expression of disgust and pity on his face. "Look at that one, for Ktisis sake! They took his..."

"I've seen," the boy cut him off.

"Let's go, dammit! With what kind of monsters did we populate this world?"

Dagger led the Dracon away from that hell.

Fire was getting stronger, now that the wind was solemnly announcing the coming of a storm. Most of the guards were already back on the mainland, but a few still lingered among the wrecks to complete their methodical work of death. Their wild cries occasionally crept in the subdued whispers of the flames, among the barking of dogs and the approaching thunders.

They stopped just in time to avoid being caught by five guards, intent to administer justice to an old man. They had thrown him into the quicksand after having chopped off his hands and feet. Now they were enjoying his pathetic attempts to stay afloat, as the blood mingled with mud all around his body, fully tattooed with figures of pagan gods.

"Where are your gods now that you need'em, eh? Invoke Ktisis, mot'fucker! He alone can save you!"

They laughed, drunk with the satisfaction of the man's fear of death. Then the quicksand reached up to his chest, refusing to claim the rest of the body. The old man stood half among the living, half already swallowed by the kingdom of the dead. Agonizing, he looked into their eyes without saying a word. Beyond the wall of intoxication, the guards didn't find it funny anymore. Using a stick, they pushed him down, away from what remained of their humanity.

Dagger and Marduk went back on their way. They passed an endless series of wrecks, dodging innards, bumping with their feet the severed limbs and broken heads that guards had thrown into the sea. Then they found themselves surrounded by a surreal silence, broken only by the agonizing cries of a prey that had been smoked out. Swimming along one of the canals, that now were broader and deeper, they finally reached the northern edge of the neighborhood, where a cliff marked the gross water basin of the cemetery. They clung to the rocks, pulling themselves onto a dry surface to observe the sad show. Fire was spreading faster and faster. Only now, the last guards were retreating to the mainland, pouring pitch as snails do with their slobbering trawl. The youngest and most inexperienced among them was trapped by the fire. Their companions were not striving to save them; they laughed heartily as they watch them burn alive. They were drugged. All of them. He could tell by the sound of their laughter, he saw it in their eyes.

He turned away, exhausted by that overdose of death, but it seemed that problems had only just begun— a few feet away the sea was giving its worst to himself, giving birth to waves so high that they jumped over the cliff and washed away the blood and mud from their faces. The guards were still stationed on the bank, to make sure no one came out of there alive.

"There is no way to escape," Dagger concluded. "Neither by sea nor land."

Marduk shook his head. "Never stop fighting!"

The boy was about to answer, when he noticed two small red lights against the dark wreckage they had just left behind. He saw them disappear and reappear several times, and realized they were two eyes. In addition to those, others soon appeared.

"What the Ktisis are those?" he asked.

"Problems," Marduk replied without looking, as if he had noticed them some time ago. "Problems bigger than all the guards of this Ktisisdamn town. Mawson was right, Gorgors have come to this world and they are looking for you."

Dagger could not stop looking at them and thought, for a moment, that those eyes were returning their gaze to him.

"Do not worry, they're practically blind," the Dracon added. "But their sense of smell is infallible and are following the stench of your blood."

"My blood?"

"Yes, but in this sewer they can't feel it. I think you and this world stink too much even for them."

Dagger's eyes widened. "Stink! Sewers!" he exclaimed. "Of course, the sewers of Melekesh lead right here!"

Marduk made a crooked smile. "And I suppose it's our only way out, isn't it?"

Dagger merely raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, boy. Show me the way."

They marched on the rocks, careful not to slip on the wet surface and kept a low profile, so as not to make their presence known to anyone, be it man or shadow, that could be on their trail, or waiting in darkness. Soon they saw the great, black circle of the pipe sticking up from the dark bowels of earth, spilling its dense sewage into the sea. Dagger was about to rush toward the longed-for salvation, when Marduk stopped him.

"Always, look!"

Just in that moment the boy saw a small light in the dark circle. He saw it moving from top to bottom and then vice versa, several times.

"Gorgors?"

"Don't be stupid! Someone is smoking a cigar in there," Marduk replied. "Even the sewers are guarded. Well, it was to be expected, no one can get out alive from this hell."

"What are we gonna do, then?"

The Dracon grinned, as if surprised by the stupidity of that question. His hand went to his dagger, but he stopped when the guard lurking in the darkness emerged.

"Look how them buuurn!" They heard him mumble. He was joined by four other men armed to the teeth, drunk to the bone.

One of them was holding a nearly empty bottle. "Ktisis almighty, riivenge for all our dead! Ffuck you guilds!" He raised the bottle and emptied it in his guts, surrounded by laughter and curses.

After that, the gang disappeared into darkness, singing "With a rusty hook we gut'em, got'em! With a dirty knife we cut their throat, and gut'em. And if they yell again we'll make'em shut up forever, with no tongue and no lips, with no eyes and no ears! Kti-sis! Kti-sis! Flood the world with beer and blood! Kti-sis! Kti-sis! To you we owe our kids and foes! Kti-sis! Kti-sis! Thy will be done! Thy kingdom come!"

Marduk shook his head. "Three of them are completely drunk," he noted. "Only one of them seems lucid enough to hold a weapon in his hand, even if he would use it as a stick. One is limping. One visually impaired. They must not be glad to have been sent to monitor the sewers, and got drunk, even if only to better endure this stench. They are well armed, but their coat of boiled leather makes me laugh. I think you can do it by yourself, let's say, you have a fifty percent chance, if you kill first the less drunk. What do you say, wanna give it a try?"

Dagger turned.

Marduk smiled. "Okay, I'll do it, this time,"

He stepped up to the duct, climbing inside. It all happened very quickly. Dagger, from outside, did not hear a noise apart from a strangled cry. Before long, he saw Marduk emerge from darkness with a body on his shoulders. He threw it into the fetid waters and beckoned him to come closer.

In the darkness of the sewers, the stench became unbearable even for him. They left behind the entrance in a hurry and, with it, the light of the flames. As they advanced through the gloom, Marduk occasionally pointed to where the bodies of the other guards were. "There may be others, farther on," he whispered. "Make little noise, sounds are amplified in here."

"I've never seen anyone kill so easily in the dark," Dagger whispered.

"Well, because you've never seen a Delta of Golconda in action. Except for Sannah, of course, but that's another story."

The light behind them soon disappeared, leaving them in complete darkness. Marduk took a small metal ball from under his cloak and rubbed it between his hands, until it emanated a purple light. He lit up his face and looked at him from head to foot. "Everything okay?"

"What the hell is that?"

"A ball of Ensiferum," the Dracon replied. "The metal created by Ktisis, the prime mover of the universe; the one who brought light into Creation when humans did not exist. Well, when nothing existed, in fact, since he existed before anything else. Cool, isn't it?"

"Ktisis is the god who gave alcohol to men. To repay them for all the sorrows of life."

Marduk looked at him skeptically. "Sannah didn't taught you anything about him?"

Dagger shook his head. "On Burzums and Mastodons, on Gorgors, on the Guardians? On Borknagar, the creation of the portal, the Exile of—"

Dagger shook his head once again.

"Angra come down to earth, I bet he did not say anything even about your... about Skyrgal!"

"Who?"

"Oh, fu—" Marduk bowed his head. "This is really funny. I hate to think about what he taught you in these twelve years!"

"Oh. To survive."

The Dracon grinned. "This won't be of any use to you, my boy."

He said no more. He began marching again and Dagger followed him reluctantly.

"What did you mean by that?"

Marduk turned and put a hand over his mouth. "I told you not to raise your voice in here. They'll hear us!"

He let him go. Dagger swore to himself, following him into darkness. They suddenly emerged in a vaulted room, connecting the conduit in which they were with other two little ones that there converged to continue their journey to the sea. The bigger one was virtually unused. It could be a good way to go as a dead end, but it seemed that Marduk had no intention to find it out soon.

"Let's stop here," he said. "We have to dry ourselves off."

The vault had partially collapsed and, to their right, there was a small beach composed of debris, twigs and dry leaves. Dagger ran ahead and climbed up to a hole in the wall, where he took two flint stones. He got back down and began to beat them one against the other over a pile of branches and leaves, placed at the center of a circle of blackened stones.

Marduk watched him. "Tell me, this is not the first time you set foot in here, right?" He sat down next to him, taking off his boots and emptying them of the muddy water. "Dag?"

"As long as you don't want to speak, don't talk to me!"

"What's this? An oxymoron?"

"What?"

"Stop it!"

He moved him aside, put the tip of his knife on the wood and rubbed it a few times. Fire instantly sprang to life under the boy's astonished eyes.

Then the man raised his blade to divide their sight, grinning mockingly. "Yes. We, Guardians of Golconda, know all the properties of the sacred metals. This is a knife Hvis, the metal with which Gorgors kill and light the fires. Or both at the same time. It's a battle trophy," he smiled, but Dagger wanted to respect his vow of silence. "In fact, I've never figured out how the Ktisis you light a fire with flint stones. It always seemed to me nonsense, only good for novels."

"It takes time!"

"Oh. I'm sure it does," he added. "What the heck is this place?"

"The only safe place," the boy replied, eyes fixed on the flames. "Me and Seeth often came here to hide from guards, when they were running after us. This place saved my throat at least a couple of times."

"You ran away in the sewers?"

"No guard will ever follow you into the sewers. To tell the truth, most of them are too well fed to pass through a manhole."

The Dracon looked at him with compassion. "Oh Dagger..."

"Yes, that's my name."

"What a ridiculous name to give a boy."

Dagger tried to punch him, knowing that he could never succeed, yet unable to resist the temptation. Then he hugged his knees with his arms and went back to staring into the fire.

Marduk put his hand under the cloak, pulling out a small box of carved wood. He opened it, but the pipe that was inside was all soaked with water, as well as the tobacco. "Uhm," he muttered, throwing everything into the fire. "What a crappy day. In every possible way."

Dagger reached back the wall and pulled out a brick, looser than the others, making appear a pipe and some tobacco. He came back to the fire and handed them to Marduk. "This belonged to Seeth, I don't think she'll need it anymore. Take it. It's a gift."

"Aren't you too young to smoke?"

"Yes, but also for getting us disemboweled in front of a paying audience."

The Guardian took the pipe on his hands, turning it on with a firebrand. He drew the first puffs, assuming an expression of utter relaxation. Every wrinkle and scar on his face seemed to melt, rejuvenating him a few years. "Yes," he said. "Much better."

"Oh, I'm glad you feel better," Dagger said. "Now tell me why the fuck they set fire to half a city to get me! Who is looking for me? What do they want from me? And who are you, to save people who are not asking to be saved!"

Marduk blew a cloud of smoke and watched it slowly rise into the air. Then he shook his head. "Not exactly the question I wanted to hear."

"I'm sorry, I do what I can."

"You have the irony of your mother, you know?"

"I've never known her!"

"I KNOW!" Marduk cried. He rested his forehead against his fist, pulling a new, nervous puff from Seeth's pipe. It looked like he wanted to say nothing more, then he broke off, "I know, Ktisisdamn! You're just a boy all covered in blood, left alone in the cold of night, forced to take refuge in a sewer to survive! Your tired eyes have seen it all. Your hatred is blind. You are hungry. You are alone."

"I know my life. It was me who has lived it. Tell me something I don't know."

"You know? What do you know? This life is an illusion for you, no more pleasant, nor real, than a nightmare. It's a cover, you could say, have you at least figured this out?"

Dagger sat down. "A cover? And for what?"

"You are the son of a god," Marduk simply answered. "The son of a god banished from my world at the dawn of time. In your veins flows his cursed blood, the one his servants need to bring him back to life. Tadà!"

Dagger kept silent, bowing his head to the side. Then he smiled.

"The son of a god," he repeated. "Well. That's not shit you hear every day!"

The Dracon laughed. Even Dagger laughed. Then Marduk grabbed him by the collar and took him face-to-face, to look him straight in the eyes. "Listen to me!" he growled. "Everything you thought was real or plausible in your life is going to be swept away, like the carcass of a rat in a sewer! Your fears are about to become deeper and darker. They will soon corrode you from the inside. There will be no more room for anything else! You will be denied all hope, even that stupid illusion, completely human, that one day things will get better despite all the contrary evidence! If you think you have been unlucky until now, wait some more, the worst part of eternity is just about to begin!"

"Take it easy, big boss!"

"It's going to get worse at every breath, at every heartbeat, and every step you take will drag you more and more toward the abyss to which you belong. You're not ready for truth. It would be foolish to believe otherwise! But all too soon you'll realize how deep is the sea of shit in which you're drowning! What good would it be to explain something to you now? Explain who the shadows are? Who is looking for you? Where you are from? Who created you! No, it would not help. Now there's only one question you need to ask. Ask it, dammit!"

"What question?"

"Oh, the one you've asked yourself any given night of your life, before going to sleep, under a gray sky, in this sewer, or in the guild where Sannah brought you up like a beast! Every night the same question, I'll bet my soul. The soul I've lost in these last thirteen years looking for you!" He kept on looking at him straight in the eye, digging deep into his consciousness.

"Why was I born?" Dagger replied, almost in a whisper.

"Yes. Why!"

"And what do you know about that?"

The Dracon frowned. He let him go, grabbed his pipe and went back to smoking.

"Too much," he said after a while. "Too many dark matters. Just know that you're not the only one who has cursed the day you were born. Nothing will be clear to you now."

"You already said that, yet everything is clearer than you think," Dagger got up to leave. "You're just a crazy old man, and I'm crazier than you to stay here and listen."

"Where are you going?"

"Out of here. Anywhere. I'll be fine. I've always been."

"Stop!" Marduk demanded.

Dagger stopped—certainly not for the peremptory Dracon's order. He felt something mounting inside of him, and this time it was not mere anger. A hammer slammed against his chest, a piercing pain that took possession of his every nerve ending, numbing his mind. He put a hand to his sternum and felt that the mark had become swollen. Pregnant. His body was shaken by a powerful beat that was not of his heart, then another and another one. He looked at his fingers and saw that they were stained with a slimy and black blood that was not his. He felt it running down his belly, his legs, all the way to his ankles. He tried to stanch the strange wound but the mark opposed him as it kept on spitting more and more blood. He turned to Marduk, showing his dirty hands and pleading help only with his eyes.

The Dracon jumped to his feet, two daggers already in his hands and the pipe still in his mouth. "Fuck!" he spat. "Gorgors are here!" He put out the fire with his feet and dropped the ball of Ensiferum to the ground, leaving the ambient bathed by its ghostly purple light. He beckoned him to come closer. This time, Dagger found nothing to object.

"Stay here," the Dracon softly murmured. "Your blood is calling them." Then, arms in hand, he went back into the dark belly of the tunnel from which they had come out.

Dagger stood next to the fire embers, unable to do anything, now that blood was no more coming out drop by drop, but in a steady trickle. Pain stiffened his every limb. He had to muster all his strength to breathe, when he felt his heart contract a last time and then cease to beat, replaced by the pulsing of the mark. An intimate, powerful roar that shook all his body. And his memories. He felt sticky sand on his skin. He heard terrible screams of pain exploding in the darkness. He smelled the stench of death. Now, he could hear in his head, words of an unknown language spoken by a hostile voice. Then again the pain, again the hammer blow on the chest.

"I'm fucking dying here!" he hissed and put his hands around his neck. "I'm... dying... here!" He realized that everything was lost, when he heard an evil hiss behind him. He turned. Two red, small lights appeared in the darkness of the abandoned duct. He was sure that those adverse and killer eyes were looking for him. Just for him.

"Who are you?" he whispered. "Will you at least tell me, before you kill me?" He felt their thoughts were in touch. He experienced its fatigue at the end of a long search, its urgent need to kill. To kill him. For what purpose, he could not see. He grabbed the dagger Marduk had given him and pointed straight in front of his eyes. Sparks of blue light walked its entire surface, going down his arm. He got back in possession of his body, and pain disappeared. The blade was giving him new strength, he knew. It calmed down the evil within.

"Come forward, whatever you are!" he said with a voice barely recovered. He heard no response but a step in the sewage, then another and another one. The steps came nearer and nearer, until a shadow was born from darkness, to attack him with his long sharp claws. Dagger instinctively dodged and sliced through the air, missing it. Now the shadow had the Ensiferum light at its back and could be distinguished from darkness, it was not something that belonged to his world. It was a being without meat or skin, a materialization of nightmares. Light came through the membranes of its body, overshadowing the sharp bones and the deformities of the internal organs. He could feel its breath and its atrocious thoughts. He was scared, but he held his nerves and, when the shadow attacked, he set off again, bent to the ground, springing forward as he would with any jackal of the Three Galleons. He felt the blade sink into the non meat, pierce the jelly belly making the unclean and smelly blood come out. He smiled when he heard the creature scream for terror, and felt his pain when he threw it to the ground and hit, hit, hit, struck by its last thoughts. The black blood mixed with the sewage, sliding on the bare stone, blow after blow. The beast was still writhing in pain, when Dagger pulled the knife from its womb to stick it into the neck. He heard its deaf cries of agony bubbling out of the cut throat, as it raised its hands to Almagard and tried to scream. Then the cries waned and the sewer fell back into its rotten silence. A deafening silence.

The mark on his chest slowly stopped bleeding. Pain was gone. He could not feel his heartbeat, his other heartbeat—the heart of darkness pumping death in his arteries.

He got up and threw all his tension out in a scream, kicking at what remained of the shadow. He gave new life to the fire, using the sparks of his dagger, then threw the corpse into the flames.

"I'll teach you what happens when you break my balls!" he screamed.

Fire quickly consumed the slender body. When Marduk ran back, he could only see the humanoid creature's face disappear into the flames. What was left of it was just a misshapen skull, flattened, without cheekbones nor nose, no jaw nor mandible. Only two small orbs for eyes and a hole filled with twisted bony plates instead of a mouth. He saw a greenish liquid drip out of his mouth, a fluid that seemed to have its own will. It rebuilt the backbone, regenerating foamy and flabby tissues. From the bony plates of its mouth came a moaning. Dagger felt lost, sick, when he understood that the shadow wasn't already dead. He turned to the Dracon.

"Gorgor!" Marduk quietly pointed out, coming closer. He penetrated the creature's head with his blade, making a greenish liquid come out. A suffocating stench filled the air, an acrid smell of rotten eggs. Tissues stopped regenerating, and the bony plates moaned no more.

The Gorgor was dead.

"The head. Always separate the head from the rest of their body, if you can. Then open it, smash it or pierce it, and you will have no more problems. These are no ordinary creatures."

"Ktisisdamn it!" Dagger cursed. "Ktisisdamn it!"

"Surviving in this city did teach you something, it seems," Marduk said, pleased. "I must say, that you know how to defend yourself."

"But... who are they?"

"These? These are the same creatures that contributed to your creation," he said. "They are looking for you, Dag. They are following the scent of your blood and soon others will come. It's you, who's bringing them here!"

The boy found himself transfixed. "What can I do?" he asked.

"Just one thing," the Dracon continued, shaking his head. "Stand still. I'll do everything."

A new pang of pain shot through him. Blood gushed abundantly out of his chest. Murky voices filled his head again as he felt the beating of his other heart. Two, four, six new red eyes appeared in the darkness. He pointed at them, when he found himself pierced by a sword. He looked down. He brought his hands to the blade protruding out of his belly and knew he was dying. He looked up and saw Marduk's face, now stern and impassive, rising above him.

"Excuse me," he said. "We'll talk about this later, now we have no more time. By the way, you're immortal."

Then everything faded.

* * * * *

Darkness seeped into his body and claimed his every thought, sentencing him to the silence born within. Time and space were freed from the unnecessary reins of human thought, to blend together as it was in the beginning. Everything was nothing and nothing was everything.

A deep and dark laughter rose all around as, in darkness, the Spiral materialized, that red Spiral pulsing like a heart.

"We are blind to the world within us, just waiting to be born," a voice hissed. "Come to me. I've been waiting for you for a long, long time."

He felt something under his hands, smooth and cold stone. Since he could feel, he realized he still existed. He opened his eyes and found himself on all fours on an endless expanse of black rock, with no interruption until the dark horizon. The distant voices of memories were running inside his mind, reminding him that he had been alive once. But what was he now? He looked at his own body, black as night, an adult body where every muscle seemed carved in relief. Its surface was crossed by numerous shiny symbols which, like open wounds, gave off a white and intense light. The symbols kept on changing position, but remained bound to each other like the links of an unbreakable chain; a universal design where the individual was part of the whole.

Am I a part of the whole? he wondered. He looked up and found himself in the presence of an infinite Spiral, a long ribbon of light lost in the celestial fluid of matter and void. The great All flowed like a never-ending stream, with neither end nor beginning. It was one, indivisible and found its balance in the destructive and generating harmony of chaos. He saw the stars merge, destroy and regenerate themselves in the fatal attraction that moved and changed everything that existed.

He was overwhelmed by a wind load of gray dust, when the voice spoke again, "Now I'm here."

He noticed a blue light, far away, and walked toward it. He thought that trek would last forever. Life after death was just like that, the eternal walking toward the light at the end of the world. Often the light trembled and disappeared but he, whatever he had become, knew that light would always come back to guide his path. It was his heart to tell him so. When he reached the intense and blue light he saw it enveloped in a dust-laden wind, like a dense fluid that protected it without affecting its luster.

"How I've waited for you to come," the voice in the light said. "I've been here, all alone. Now that you got here please, stay a while. I promise I won't keep you long. I'll keep you forever."

"Who are you?"

"I am Kam Karkenos. And you. Who might you be?"

"I am Dagger."

Kam Karkenos softly laughed. "Yes, this is your name as a mortal," he said. "The name that you think you have, not the one I gave to you when I created you, Kam Konkra. I know your name. I've been waiting for you since I was locked up here."

"And where is, here?"

"Here is a place that knows no life and death, beyond the breach in the impenetrable wall of Creation, where only we can pass through. We, the forces that have lived through all eternity. There are those who call us gods, or demons. However, these are only the names that mortals use in the desperate attempt to rationalize the power that dominates, surrounds, generates and suffocates them. This is your home."

"Looks nice!" Kam Konkra replied. He put his hand to his abdomen, instinctively. "A sword went through my belly. Now I should be dead, together with Ktisis in the great tavern of Almagard."

"The tavern of... Almagard?"

"The kingdom of the dead. Where you can eat and drink and laugh forever, together with the people who came before you."

The light disappeared and reappeared, in a blink of an eye. "What a curious conception of the afterlife. I've heard many, but this one beats them all. Now, leave father Ktisis to his problems and take a look around."

Kam Konkra turned. He just perceived the army of shadows behind him. He turned again. The shadows were all around, he knew it, but they didn't want to be seen. He only felt them at the edges of his vision.

"This is the true aspect of what you'd call the afterlife," replied Kam Karkenos, serious. "The place outside the great All. Here the souls of mortals end up when they die. The last visitor has no human form, nor of monster. The true form of death is silence. I know, because this is my conviction, live death here, outside of the Creation, where silence reigns supreme."

"These are the souls of the dead?"

"Yes, they are. After the end of the pleasant dream they call life, mortals delude themselves that they end up in a place similar to the world of their happy hours, if they behaved correctly, or in a place full of fire, pain and pitchforks if they found pleasure in the suffering of others. In fact, the great beyond welcomes everybody and makes everybody equal, with no moral and no prejudices. However, watch your body. You're different, aren't you?"

Kam Konkra observed once again the writings shining, and alive on his black skin.

"I created you so, Konkra, in my image and likeness, in the short time that I was free to walk again on the world you come from."

"And I guess I'll have to call you Dad."

The god did not respond to his humor, out of place.

Konkra himself did not find much to laugh about. No, it was not funny, if ever it had been. "What do you want from me?" he asked. "You've not been a very present fatherly figure, after all."

"You have my same irony, you know?"

"I've got the irony of my mother!"

"Your mother? You did not have a mother, not a real one. Your mortal body is an illusion. You are still blind to the world within you, waiting to be born. There's only me, who knows you for what you really are."

"You can understand me?"

"Oh, I know and see everything, although in exile. I was with you when you were abandoned by the woman you call your mother. I trembled with you in the coldest nights of Melekesh. I felt your fear of dying in a public sacrifice and know the name of your every enemy: Mawson, Sannah, even Lothar, the bully of the Three Galleons that held you captive for days when you were just a kid, waiting to burn you alive because of your red eyes. I suffered with you at every step that brought you here..."

"Maybe. But in those moments I felt quite alone."

"... even as they cut Seeth's throat before your very eyes."

Konkra froze. "You do know a lot of things about me."

"I can see the world through your eyes," Karkenos said. "You and I are inseparably bound."

"When I was just a Spider I always realized when someone was trying to get something through his words. I don't think it works differently with you. You want something too."

"And what do you think I want?"

"That I free you from here."

"You're a smart one, aren't you?"

"I should be the ironic one!"

Karkenos laughed. "Don't hurry. We've got a whole eternity in front of us. For now, I just have to warn you."

"About whom?"

"About all those who will die one day," Karkenos said. "All those who claim to fight for you, but who fight for no one else than themselves. The Guardians of Golconda swear to protect you. And from what? From yourself, what you are, what you will become? There's only me who knows the reason why you exist. They're just afraid of you. And they haven't any reason to be."

"They got me out of that hell while your shadows were trying to tear me apart, as I recall."

"You're looking only at the surface of the matter. Typical of mortals. I did not expect you to understand quickly. You're still the embryo of what you'll become, and I admit that it's still too early."

Konkra locked his fingers into a fist. Even now that he was dead, he hated when people thought he was too young to understand something.

"I may be a little young, but certainly I ain't naive," he said. "And, most of all, not so stupid to throw myself into the hands of your servants only because—"

"Oh, but I'm not here for that," Karkenos interrupted. "You got me wrong. Do you really expect me to advise you to throw yourself into Gorgors' hands? No. I tell you to flee from them. Once they were my servants – you're right, clever guy. – It's them I have to thank if I could for reincarnating and creating you. But now everything has changed. An external and destabilizing element has intervened, and now Gorgors are serving another master, their leper messiah. A man, or what's left of it, who is relentlessly looking for you. He was the Pendracon of Golconda once, the most powerful among the Guardians. Then it happened he hosted my soul for a time and, when he lost it, he was condemned to live forever in its search. You've heard about the Divine, haven't you? If I come back in life in my true body, for him it will be over. And he knows it. He will never again possess the sole object of his desire, the only reason for his hideous and shameful life. Stay away from Gorgors, and him. I'm afraid he knows the way to... well, to have you spend the rest of eternity in an unpleasant way."

"Unpleasant way?"

"He wants to keep us apart. Forever. It's best you don't get caught by him and yes, this means that you will need to accept the Guardians' help. Let them protect you. Let them accompany you on Candehel-mas, the world of the origins. Only once you're safely back in their Fortress, I'll let you know what to do so that our destiny is fulfilled. Until then, nothing will be clear. Guardians will fill your head with their nonsense about the Equilibrium and the universal order. You know it's not like that, you're seeing it now: the great All feeds on chaos. It is in its nature. You will also meet their god, that bird of ill-omen who hates you and hopes you disappear into thin air. Maybe it will be good for you to spend some time with them. It will give you the opportunity to figure out which side to take."

"I thought they were acting for my own good."

"Who?"

"The Guardians."

"Oh, they are, in some way."

"What a fucking story."

The light grew stronger. "I hate coarse language. Never use it in my presence!"

"I'm sorry, Daddy."

The light faded a little. "What part of 'for the moment' don't you understand? For now, get some help from them, but do not drink the poison they'll spit on you. They don't have a good opinion of you, just like they don't have a good opinion of me, which is why they made you grow up like a beast. It's their fault, all your suffering. Don't you hate them a little?"

Konkra didn't answer.

"Never forget that only by me, one day, you'll reach your ultimate goal. You are destined to a greater power, my boy. Many will try to deceive you to make use of you, or destroy you, and perhaps you will even come to trust some of them."

"Don't worry. Defending myself from everyone is really nothing new to me. I will know how to keep safe from you too."

"Oh. Do you really want to fight against yourself? Don't you worry, my boy: it's ok to be confused. Soon I will address you to those who can show you the path. They are my... contact on your world. They will tell you what to do so that everything is done. Until then, remember, you exist only because I wanted you. When you give a name to something, you become responsible of it, and I baptized you, Kam Konkra, I know why you were born. Everyone else will lie to you, for their vile purposes and power games. You, who have never had anyone, are too much important, for too many."

Dagger was about to reply, when he looked at the light getting stronger and stronger. She wrapped him. For a moment, he was sure he could see two eyes, black as night, staring at him from the bottom of the shiny nothing. And sharp fangs, and deformed horns.

He saw a sincere grin, then the light went through him from side to side and everything disappeared.

* * * * *

6. Archipelago

In the dark, he opened his eyes. He sat on the bed of straw where he had slept, he did not know for how long. He did not even know if he had really slept, after all. He was lying under a closed porthole, through which came a circle of orange light. The room was moving. When he heard the whisper of the sea, he realized he was on some sort of ship, in navigation.

All this efforts, and still on a ship?

He threw the blanket on one side and put his feet on the floor. When he brought a hand to his stomach, he found there was no injury; only a thin scar, as an old cut, there where the blade had emerged from the skin. He still remembered the pain, perhaps the strongest he had ever experienced: a dense, sheer suffering that had paralyzed him from head to toe. Mortals experienced that pain only once in their life, before they died. He thought they were somehow lucky: the mere idea of having to face the great nothing once again terrified him. Marduk had found a very convincing way to explain the matter of his immortality, although he had lacked some sensitivity. Everything that had come after seemed only a dream. A damn realistic dream.

He stuck his thumb's nail into his palm and felt a reassuring pain. It's nice to be alive again, he thought. Then he opened the porthole. After having got accustomed to the light, he saw that the ship was cutting fast through the waves of the blue sea. Water was clear and frothy, not greenish and muddy like he had always seen in it his life. Even the sky was different: of a bright orange now that the sun was setting, free from the fog wall of the Melekeshian evenings.

The ship was sailing among the islands of an archipelago. Dagger hoped the commander knew well his job, because of the large number of rocks that surfaced from the water. He closed the porthole, when a cold and salty foam washed his face. He had to know where he was, but most of all where he was headed. He opened the door of the little cabin, and found himself in a spacious and dimly lit ambient, with cargo crates and barrels secured to the walls. There were at least thirty Guardians around him, wearing leather armor worn and soiled with blood, or amaranth tunics that had definitely seen better days. Many were smoking ivory pipes, or sipping their mugs of beer lying on the ground. Others were playing dice, thoughtfully twirling a knife between their fingers. Blood stains on the floor drove up to the corner where some were sewing up their wounds. No one had less than a dozen blades on hand, including daggers, knives and swords.

Three Ensiferum balls were placed at the center of the hold. Around these, two Guardians sat, sipping their beers. When he came forward, everyone turned toward him. Dagger looked at himself: he was still wearing his old, filthy tunic, with the Mayem dagger tucked in his belt, his face reduced to a mask of blood. It seemed he had just escaped from the amphitheater of Melekesh in a day of celebration. Some pretended not to see him, others stared at him for a long time, in silence, leaving open a conversation, keeping the dices in their hands or needle and thread between their teeth, with the wound still bleeding. When everybody pretended to get back at what they were doing before his coming, Dagger got to the wall and slid to the ground. He looked at the floor between his bare feet, thoughtfully, wondering once again why he was in the world.

"You're safe now," a voice said. He looked up. One of the two Guardians, who he had seen sitting in front of the Ensiferum balls, was now in front of him. He had approached without being noticed by his Spider's senses, even though he was fat and no less than two meters high. Dagger realized that he could learn a lot from him. The man, completely bald and with a gentle face, spoke again, "Marduk has entrusted you to us. He's decided to stay on this world to try and figure out if he could understand more about what's going on. Or, alternatively, take down some more Gorgors. We're taking you to the Golconda Fortress, the only safe place for you. We, the Guardians, defend it since always. It is everything for us: our home, our life, our future. If the Fortress falls into the hands of the shadows, everything would be lost."

Dagger nodded. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Me? I am Moak, but that does not matter. You are Dagger. And, if you're wondering, the answer is yes: I know you. Everyone here knows you. We came to this world just to bring you home."

"I'm leaving home, now, and it was hell," Dagger replied, impassive. "But this is not the problem. Marduk killed me. He pierced my guts from side to side, but I'm not dead. This game is not funny, you know? Have you ever tried to die? Do you have the slightest idea of the pain you feel?"

The smile faded from the man broad face, replaced by a confused scowl.

Moak looked at him puzzled and the kind expression vanished from his face. "Come," he said. "There's someone who's been waiting for you for a long, long time."

Dagger followed him toward the light where a tall and robust man sat. Differently from the others, this Guardian wore a cuirass formed of electric blue plates, with shades of purple, yellow and red. He had an olive skin and, despite his young age, his face looked more experienced than the ones around him, mainly because of a deep scar that plowed his whole right profile from the forehead to the chin. He still wore his sword, well secured on his back, and he was armed only with that. His sword did not seem made to be held only by two hands. It was longer, thicker, wider. Old symbols were engraved on the groove. The double-edged blade dazzled with bright reflections. On the handle at least four hands would have found place.

A four-handed sword, he thought. What need can ever have a man, of a four-handed sword? "You care a lot about showing your manhood. Got something to hide?" he said.

The man did not answer. He just looked at him. Prisoner of those eyes, Dagger stood waiting for him to speak. "And so you would be the reason for all this?" the man said at last, with a deep voice. "I was expecting something better from Aniah. To tell you the truth, I was expecting something better even from your father. Sit down, damn you!"

Dagger stood still, as if he didn't want to look like he was obeying his orders. Then he sat on the stool in front of him and stared through the purple light.

"I am Olem, Dracon of Golconda," Olem said. "And this is Moak, the best friend I could ever want, or perhaps the only one who I managed to endure in my short but meaningful existence. You are on a ship bound for the world where you belong. You will follow us without making a fuss. You do not belong only to yourself and, if you have a little wit in that head, you should have already figured it out. Otherwise, it's time you get used to the idea, or you're not going to last much even though you are immortal." He said no more, and it did not seem he wanted to add more.

Dagger looked down. After having talked to Skyrgal, he felt that none of the experiences had in that life and on that world were important anymore, nor the words heard, nor the people met. "From one prison to another," he murmured. "I had already figured that out. And, once we get to there, what will you do with me?"

"This will be the Pendracon's decision," Olem said dryly. "You can be sure, you're lucky that this decision is not up to me."

"And who might the Pendracon be?"

"Our guide in the dark, according to the language of the ancients. In your veins flows the blood of some of them. You are come from an illustrious family, on your mother's side. Certainly better than what you'd deserve."

"I thought only Skyrgal's blood flowed in my veins."

Just hearing that name, the two Guardians froze and every trace of mockery disappeared from their face.

"Who told you about him?"

"Oh, You would never guess."

Olem snapped and grabbed the boy by the neck, moving so fast that Dagger, the Spider with the most ready reflexes of his guild, could not even see him. The Dracon clenched his fingers as if to choke him but, before the situation could escalate, Moak put a hand on his arm and Olem let him go.

"The typical irony of his family, don't you think?"

Olem composed himself, without taking his eyes off Dagger. "Yes," he replied, while everybody around started to talk again. "And you know how much I hated their irony. Sometimes I think that was their ruin."

"He must have talked with his father when he died," Moak speculated, looking straight in the eyes of the boy. Dagger tried not to show that this assumption was correct. "When they die their souls are reunited, at least from what I've studied on the code of Benighted. Surely he won't tell us. He does not trust us, why should he? It's a miracle that he is not gone crazy."

"What do you think about him?"

"What do I think? Judging from the smell, he's swum in a more or less metaphorical sea of shit, and it will be difficult to manage him. But we might as well give it a try. I'll take care of it. Since Araya sent me around Candehel-mas to study everything that concerned his coming, I've always wondered what he really looked like. He looks so... human."

"He looks like a jerk!" Olem replied. "But I have to admit that it was not entirely a mistake to take you with us, Moak. You've wasted a lot of time behind all this crap."

"It's called 'studying', my Dracon."

"Studying? The fuck! It's called 'waste time on books instead of training'! A bit of admiration for what they have created shines through your voice. I am just afraid."

"It's ok to be afraid. Even he is afraid of himself, can't you see?"

Olem looked down. "Everybody is afraid of himself. And everybody is a bit sick of himself."

"Oh, what a deep thought!"

"Fuck you."

"You're drunk. And when you're drunk, you begin to act like a philosopher, even though you can't afford it. You've wasted too much time with a sword in your hand to be able to think in a manner worthy of a human being."

"You decided to piss me off, Guardian?"

"Oh, come on!"

"Bringing him back to the Fortress will be like leading him straight into the lair of the enemy! And if he runs away? How can we defend him if he decides to do so? At Golconda, life is so hard that we're all used to fighting since the cradle, he—"

"My whole life has been a struggle!" Dagger broke. "What the fuck do you know about it?"

"Dagger," Moak interrupted.

"No, no, let him finish!" Olem said, glancing back at him. "Let me hear the whine of the guy who has seen too many things. What is it, you got stabbed sometime? You've seen so many people die? You are ridiculous. Your world is ridiculous, and it's false! It's the world we used to keep you hidden. Dammit! We hid you so well that we could no longer find you ourselves!"

"Olem—"

"Well, Dracon, I bet you've never risked to have your balls ripped in front of an applauding audience!"

"Dagger!"

"Oh, really? Well, the worst part of your life is just about to begin!" Olem continued. He grabbed Moak's mug without asking for permission, and drained it. "Those shadows are hunting you down and now they know where you are! Do something stupid – only once! – and you will not have just a black eye to show your guild fag buddies! You! What the fuck do you know, asshole?"

"Olem!"

Dagger did not answer, but did not look away either. Not a single blink of an eye. After all the times he found himself face-to-face with death, he did not find it too difficult. He realized that Olem too had struggled a lot in his life.

"Look in his eyes," the Dracon said. "He's just a thief. He grew up in the streets and we can't expect anything good from him."

"Do I have to remind you the asshole out of which Crowley and Aniah pulled you out?"

"I was different!" the Dracon broke. "And certainly I was not a—" He paused, lowering his voice to a whisper. "...damn monster."

Silence fell.

"Olem. Many things have happened down in Melekesh. Marduk thought it right to get the boy out of this place. After all, at this age, he's got the right to know the world he comes from."

The Dracon nodded, but unconvinced. "To have him brought to this world was the first mistake," he pointed out. "If this decision had been up to me, the story would have gone differently. I would have buried him in a crate of Amorphis, to rot with his cursed blood for all eternity."

"Aniah would never let you."

"Oh yeah, his mother. Dead and buried like all heroes!"

Moak grabbed Dagger by the arm, preventing any action the boy was going to take with his already clenched fist. "Once you get to know him better, you will understand that Olem is all smoke and no fire," he continued. "It's just... he likes so much thinking about the past. Oh yes, he would take a bath in the past. He always thinks back about how things might have turned out, what he could have done, but most of all what others could have done. Sometimes he just doesn't understand that what is done is dead."

"Flattered," he answered. "And believe me when I tell you that, after all these years at the helm of the Fortress, I recognize the smell of shit even from miles away, unlike Marduk. And unlike you!"

Moak shook his head. "Marduk has always proved right," he said. "Always. And like all the right decisions, his are unpopular. He seemed to have made a mistake only when he pushed the Pendracon to choose you as the new Dracon of the Sword, when you were just twenty years old. No Dracon had ever been elected so young, and of so humble origin. Do you remember how many people would have preferred to see you dead, in those days? And remember how some did try to kill you? But then... then you rebuilt the Fortress after the devastating war against Gorgors and Tankars. You pushed us to raise our head even when the new Pendracon lingered. And today, you defend the Fortress as if it was your home."

"Your false flattery will not get you anywhere."

"Oh, I'm not flattering you. I'm just saying that Marduk had never been proved wrong, not even about you. Dagger will get back home and he will probably be brought up as a Guardian. Right now, this madness is the only sensible thing to do. The entire world, or worlds, out of the impenetrable walls of Golconda are a death trap for him."

Olem stood up. He said nothing. He did not take leave from them, nor tease them one last time. He just left.

Dagger watched him go and disappear into the darkness at the bottom of the hold. What kind of an asshole! He thought.

Moak toyed with his empty mug. Then he looked at him as if he was about to start a very serious talk. "Olem is not a danger to you, Dagger. He was bound to your mother and he has never forgiven himself for not having... helped her avoid her fate. I think in some way he even likes you."

The boy stared at the ground. "I never had a mother."

"Your mother did not want to abandon you, if that's what you accuse her of," Moak continued, before stopping to look within himself for the right words, probably not finding them. "You were a danger, and you still are."

"A danger?" Dagger shook his head. "When someone becomes a danger you leave him behind, or send him away as far as possible, where he may not cause harm to others than himself. If you think I'm going to look for the truth about my mother with all my strength, you are wrong. I don't feel anything for her. In the end, I don't even know her."

"No. It must not have been easy for you, but her decision was right, my boy. She hid you even from us. Did she already figure out what was the situation at the Fortress?"

Dagger looked away. His same feelings turned indecipherable to him. "And what's the situation at the Fortress? From what you say, it does not sound so safe to me."

"No, it is not. Olem is damn right about this, yet there's no other place we could take you, right now. If you lingered in this world, this story would end very badly, and very quickly. You already met the Gorgor. You know they can smell your blood from afar and, if what I have studied about the matter is founded, even your blood can feel them."

Dagger shuddered.

The Guardian noticed it. "I see it is true."

"My blood comes out of my body when I am close to them, as if it were attracted. He wants to get back to them or some shit of the sort?"

"Very interesting."

"Yeah! Interesting!"

Moak found himself wrong-footed. "I'm sorry."

"Why don't you tell me something about my father? By now, you've realized that I already talked with him when I was dead. Why is Skyrgal there? What's been done to him?"

Moak froze. "Do not call him father, I beg you. Skyrgal is an ancient god, even if the few who have studied these matters know that this is a misnomer."

"A force that has lived through all eternity," Dagger specified. "Yes, I know that too. Tell me what happened to him."

Moak did not answer. He got up from the stool. "It's too late. It will be better to go to sleep."

I had no doubt! Dagger wanted to answer, but he did not. He merely took note that on many things Skyrgal was right, those people were lying and wanted to keep him away from the truth. Although, by the time, he reserved the right to think that they did it for his own good, or for any other good reason. Moak took him back to his room and shut the door, without saying good night. The boy realized he was the only one on board to have a cabin, which probably he was not free to leave whenever he wanted. They had already begun to keep him locked up in a cage and probably would never stop. He looked at himself. The Spiral was there, silent and ominous, an alien element that did not respond to his will. Everything revolved around that. Just looking at it, a thousand faceless shadows materialized in his head. Lying on the bed of straw he slowly drifted into sleep, as Skyrgal's voice echoed in his mind.

'I know why you were born. Everybody else is lying.'

* * * * *

When Dagger woke up the next morning he found himself dripping with sweat, filled by a total and overwhelming terror. He put his hand to the mark, but found it silent. It was its fault, he knew— his blood was making fun of him.

He stood up and looked out the porthole for a long time, letting the voice of the waves clear his fears. He was hungry and, even though he had slept for a long time, he was more tired than when he had fallen asleep. Hunger and fatigue; it was somehow happy to still feel them, but he knew it was all an illusion. He could starve to death and then come back to life soon after. He would live forever. 'Forever' was an easy concept to understand in words, yet to find oneself living it firsthand was slightly different. Nothing was forever in human life. Love was not forever, not even the most intense; friendship was not forever; the things that you bought or stole or tore away from the hands of others were forever. Fear took over, when he realized that only an eternal being like Skyrgal could really understand how he felt. Only he, could understand how painful forever could be.

He got out of his room, or cell, and found the Guardians breaking their fast. They had split open most of the boxes in the hold, emptying them, and now they were eating with the enthusiasm of those who did not know when they could do it again. Dagger had never seen all that food, all together, so close at hand. At least, not without the danger of being sprinkled with honey and fed to the ants if caught in the act. When he was hit by the smell of bacon, his stomach growled in acknowledgment.

Sitting in a corner, Olem was eating in company of his men. He was still wearing his armor, as if he had gone to sleep like that. Everyone laughed at his jokes but he did not laugh at the jokes of anyone. He was conscious of being a leader and, in the eyes of the others, he read only respect and fear. Just looking at him, Dagger risked to lose his appetite.

Moak sat in front of the light in the company of a girl, no more than thirteen. "I heard you scream this night," the Guardian said, watching him approach while pouring some yellowish and fat liquid in a cup, to which Dagger preferred three large slices of bacon.

"Veally?" he asked with full mouth. "I gueff you were guavding the door."

"Of course I was. What were you dreaming about? It would be interesting for my studies."

Dagger shrugged, continuing to eat. "I don't remember."

Moak stared at him, before winking at the girl. "She is Kugar. Kugar, this is Dagger, the boy I told you about some time ago."

But the girl continued to stare at the ground, quietly sipping the liquid in the cup as if she were far away from there.

"Kugar?"

"I'm not here," she said.

"What?"

"I'm not even supposed to be here."

"Girl, the pact was different."

Kugar lowered the cup. "I do not make pacts, with anyone." Her voice was rather deep for a girl her age, in stark contrast to the fine appearance, the long raven-black hair, the fair skin adorned with small scars. In addition to two eyes so blue that no sea had ever seen.

"Uhm, you're wrong here," Moak replied, calmly. "Maybe I just have to leave you alone. He is not one of them, he deserves a chance, but it will be hard for him to decide which side to take if he doesn't even know where he comes from. Do just like I told you and explain to him what he should know."

"I'll try, lizard Guardian. I'll try."

Moak got up.

Olem, from a distance, saw him. "Come with us, lizard!" he yelled through the hold. "We were talking about the mothers of you Guardians of the Poison, about how they give birth on the fly between a murder and the other."

Everybody laughed at his wild burst of laughter but, when he stopped laughing, everyone stopped laughing with him.

"He'll never grow up," Moak snorted before going to him.

Dagger turned to Kugar, but she continued to ignore him even now that the Guardian had left them alone. For his part, he did not have much to say to that girl who pretended to have a lived-in appearance, but who probably had never risked ending crucified to please the gods. He looked down at the big tray, filled with bacon, and only after he had filled every usable space in his mouth he looked up.

Kugar was now peering through the purple light, with her cold stare. "It's impossible to hide anything from Moak. I wouldn't keep secrets from him, if I were you. He smells bullshit even from miles away."

"Really, this is nothing new to me."

"He's a Guardian of the Poison, he's my master. He has read and studied too much to be teased by a piece of shit like you."

Dagger swallowed the bacon in one gulp. "He will never be as good as Sannah," he replied, starting back to eat. "The old man could understand what you were hiding, why were you hiding it and what you were afraid he would do you once he discovered you."

Kugar grinned. "Sannah was not a Guardian whatsoever. He was Dracon of the Delta, at least before he lost his mind and fled from our world. The Deltas are the elected body of the Guardians, the only people Hammoth would ever give the task to bring you back to the Fortress. Many Guardians have died fighting Gorgors in Melekesh, while you were dead and quiet on Marduk's shoulders. Don't you feel honored, and a little guilty, you who are alone?"

Dagger grinned. "I'm afraid you'll have to commit yourself a little more if you think you can hurt me with so little."

"Challenge accepted."

"Why do I piss you off? You don't even know me!"

"Oh, me and Moak know about you more than what you think you know," she resumed. "On Candehel-mas you are a sort of—"

"Legend?"

"Oh, no. A sort of story, the kind that are told to children to scare them, 'if you're not a good boy the black man will come and rape your mother.' Stuff like that."

Dagger clenched his fists, absorbing the shock. "You're really nice. If we were at the guild, I'd have already killed you."

"You've never killed anyone. The look in the eyes of someone who has killed someone is different. It's a look without light. It must be the little trick you used to retain a glimmer of humanity in spite of what you did to survive. At least you thought, since there's nothing human in you. In fact, you're not even human."

"You're quick to understand people, huh?"

"I do my best."

"So what am I supposed to be?"

"An abomination," she continued, naturally. "Just talking to you makes me shudder. You are the summary of what there is most vile and obscene in our world. The son of Skyrgal for many. Just the living container of his blood for others. The negation of everything we believe in and the result of a betrayal; the betrayal of a woman against her god and her blood brothers, against their values, even against herself and her being a mother. Even she has disowned you, kicking you out of her life." She sipped from the cup. "Uhm, delightful, this Mokai."

"If you don't stop trying to hurt me with that bitch talking, I'll go and tell Moak that you're nasty," Dagger replied.

Kugar grimaced, annoyed by his constant irony. She did not know that Dagger had always hidden all his pain behind that.

"Sure I'm not your enemy," he resumed. "And you don't need to be Moak to understand that even you carry your enemy inside yourself. Yes. You're not the only one quick to understand people. You could say I used to do it for work. You have been abandoned, more than once, and most of those words were about yourself. Poor, poor blacks curls."

The girl lowered her face. "You little son of a bitch," she whispered after a while.

"Tell me about that bitch. Who was my mother?"

Kugar chuckled. In response Dagger snapped and threw her to the ground, with one hand on the throat and the shining blade against her white, beautiful face, treating her not differently from any client out of the tavern of the gypsy.

"What you say? Now that I know I'm a monster, I may begin to kill someone," he told her face-to-face. Everybody were looking at them now, even Olem, yet no one wanted to intervene. "Why did my mother betray you? Why did she accept the son of Skyrgal in her womb?"

"How should I know? Perhaps she wanted to experience the thrill of getting fucked by a god?" The fist arrived on time and Kugar took it in plain face, but when she turned again she was still grinning. "Your mother was not in love with the god, you stupid!"

"I'm sorry. I... I didn't mean to hit you."

"...but with the man in whom Skyrgal had reincarnated. Happy little family, right? He, she... and the god that penetrated both, although in different ways."

Dagger shivered. "That man. Is he the Divine?"

Kugar just nodded and Dagger let her go.

"Once, his name was Crowley Nightfall" she said, sitting down again. "Once he was our Pendracon and won a war that everyone thought lost. He was captured by Gorgors and led to Adramelech, their ancient metropolis, where they stacked the soul of Skyrgal inside his body," she paused. "Well, excuse me for the brutality. When Skyrgal came back to your mother hidden in that body, you can easily imagine what happened."

"She thought that Crowley was still alive," Dagger deduced in a whisper. "And she has followed him, only to find herself prisoner of Skyrgal!"

Kugar nodded. "Karkenos used her to pursue his sole purpose," she continued. "The only goal he had set for the short time he was allowed to spend as a mortal: to find a way to regenerate his blood, the one he needs to return in his true body. You."

That said, she looked at him, but Dagger was no longer listening. "Mom," he whispered.

"Yeah. Bitch must have had a bad quarter of an hour when the illusion fell, as she watched the body of the man she loved falling apart day after day."

Dagger closed his eyes. "Continue."

"After realizing she had only been exploited, Aniah managed to escape from the desert where she was held prisoner, bringing you with her to steal you from Gorgors hands, and hand you over to the Guardians."

"To hide me?"

"Oh, no. To kill you," she specified. "That was her initial intention. She hoped that Araya, the Dracon of the Poison, knew a way to do it, so to rectify her mistake. She must have really loved you. Too bad you can't die, as Marduk effectively showed you. And bringing you to the Fortress she has only doomed us to hide you forever."

They kept silent for a while.

"I've known her," Kugar resumed. "I was there when, reduced to little more than a human larva, she revealed the place where you were hidden. Only after that, she abandoned herself to the last relief. Hers is a sad story, a story of loneliness. I cried when she left, cursing her at the same time."

Dagger tried not to show any emotion.

"You already know the rest of the story: you've been missing for all this time and, for us, it's been like having a poisonous spider hidden under the bedsheets, ready to bite any time, anywhere. We've searched for you far and wide and like us, it seems, even the damn shadows."

"But how did the Gorgor know I was in Melekesh, in this world? And how did they set foot here?"

"What do you think?"

"I think in your goddamn Fortress there's a hole in the fence where a lot of big fishes come through. That's why my mother did not tell you where she hid me until it was unavoidable. She did not trust anyone, not even you."

"What a fine intellect. Well. Now you understand."

"Yes, now I understand what the 'situation at the Fortress' is. To get me back there will just be crazy, Olem is right."

Kugar shrugged. "Olem is always right. When he is wrong, he does not speak, but sooner or later he will understand too there's no other choice. My teacher just wanted you to know who you are once and for all. Now you know you can only trust yourself. No one really cares about you, your company is just a necessary evil. We don't even know how you really work."

"I am a person, not a thing!"

Kugar grinned. "Oh. Do you really believe that?"

The flow of words stopped there.

They sat in front of the light, speaking no longer. Dagger stealthily looked at Olem, intent to charge his ivory pipe with tobacco as he sat next to Moak. They had been watching them all that time, he was sure. They seemed somehow curious about what would happen between the two of them.

Then a door was thrown open and woke everyone from his thoughts. One of the sailors got down from the deck, a big man, tall and mighty. He approached Moak and whispered something in his ear. After that, the Guardian raised his face to look at him in amazement. There was concern in his eyes. He immediately followed him on the deck, closing the door behind.

Kugar kept on staring at the purple balls of light, while Olem stopped loading the tobacco into his pipe. Their eyes met for a moment, then Dagger moved his attention back to the door and Olem began to reload his pipe, dark in face.

The door was opened once again. This time it was Moak who hurried down the stairs, trying not to look nervous. He approached Olem and spoke into his ear. Dagger saw the expression on the Dracon's face become more and more serious, as the ever-present grin disappeared from his face. He lit his pipe between his lips and followed Moak above.

"It's something serious," Kugar deduced. "If Olem stood up while he was smoking, it's something terribly serious."

Minutes followed minutes and nothing happened when Kugar, tired of waiting, decided to climb the stairs and get out on the bridge. Dagger followed her. Outside, the two Guardians and the sailors were staring at at a black point on the horizon, like of a distant ship. It was still difficult to distinguish its shape and size but, judging from the expression on the face of Moak, he realized that something wicked was on the way.

A shadow passed over them. Dagger took a look to the sky and saw a few tiny black dots, such as birds flying at high altitudes. Kugar looked up too. The birds came nearer, so that now it was possible to make out their shape: they had webbed wings and long and hooked beak.

"And what the Ktisis are those?"

"Troubles," she said after a little.

His bewilderment increased when he realized those beasts were ridden. Some shadowy silhouettes that he knew all too well sat on their back, holding long reins in their hands. Gorgors had followed them all along and were now hunting them from above. Dagger found himself shaken by memories too vivid to be easily erased.

"Do you have armor?" Kugar asked.

"What's the use of an armor when you're immortal?"

"Yeah, sorry. Professional deformation."

She turned to the Guardians, who were still looking at the ship on the horizon. "Cruachan!" she cried.

Just hearing that name, Olem and Moak suddenly looked up. Even the Guardians who were still in the hold got up to show outside, some of them already with a sword in hand.

Olem approached them with great strides. "Get down!" he ordered. "Everybody, get down! Arm yourself to the teeth and wait for my orders! If we have to fight in this world too, we'll do it, Ktisis bastard!"

The Guardians did as ordered and descended into the belly of the ship.

Olem turned to Kugar and looked as if he wanted to kill her just with his glance. "Try to spread panic among my men again and I'll cut your tongue!"

The girl bowed. "Forgive me, Dracon."

Moak came to them. "They don't want to attack us for the moment. Otherwise, they would have already done so. It seems they are just following us. What do we do, Dracon?"

"Dammit!" Olem growled, turning to the sky again. "If they have brought their fucking Cruachans on this world—"

"Gorgors have created a stable base on these islands," Moak finished. "That's no secret. But where did they get out from?"

"And that ship?" Kugar added.

Dagger looked at the spot on the horizon: it had taken the shape of a war vessel of the navy of Melekesh, sailing for them.

Olem nodded imperceptibly. "They're following us since we left the harbor," he said. "They waited for us to take into deep water and find ourselves trapped among these rocks. With those sails and this wind, it's no surprise they're traveling faster than us."

"I think the situation is clear," Moak said. "This whole world has been turned against us."

"How did they do?"

"It no longer matters, now. Now we have to be sharp."

"Our blades must be!" Olem replied. "They want to hunt us down? Fine with me. They'll find themselves in the belly of the sea before they have a chance to plead to their obscene god!" That said he disappeared through the door.

Moak shook his head. "It's all happening too fast. Olem is not Marduk. Not having much time at his disposal prevents him from thinking. And when he can't think, he thinks to kill which is what he does best. How I wish Marduk was here!"

"The Divine," Kugar muttered. "Even Mawson and the Melekesh authorities work for him! There must be another link between the two worlds!"

"Stop talking nonsense," Olem opposed.

"If Gorgors are attacking us they are doing it only for one reason— they know they have victory in hand!"

Moak turned Kugar to face her. "Knowing that you're going to lose is not a sufficient reason to stop fighting! It's the fifth commandment, dammit! The most important! Don't you ever forget it!"

Kugar glanced back at him. "Then I'll fight too!"

"Don't be stupid, you'd just get in the way. The two of you will remain hidden. When the ship is boarded, we'll fight to the death to beat them back."

"And if you don't make it?"

Moak grew dark. "If we do not make it. Well... I hope that someone at least discovers how do Gorgors get on this world!" He left them alone.

"I hope that someone discover how Gorgors get on this world," Dagger repeated, looking around. The sails were spread to the wind and sailors, with the sun-baked skin and dark hair, idly managed the ropes under the orders of the bosun, a fat bald man who had more fingers than teeth. At the helm, there was another old man with both eyes and both legs, which was a rare quality for someone aged on the sea in that corner of the world.

"These people have no fear," Dagger noticed.

"So what?"

"You don't understand. They are the ones who sold you out," Dagger deduced. "They're too calm. They're waiting for a reward. I'll be damned another time if there's not the shadow of betrayal in their attitudes."

Kugar looked at them in turn, and answered nothing.

The ship plowed the waves among the high cliffs of the archipelago. He knew those islands were virtually unpopulated, except for a few villages along the coast, inhabited by fishermen so used to the adversities of life to fear nothing, neither isolation nor storms, nor the violence of pirates. Just as well, he thought to himself. He had many things to ask Skyrgal. He would run against the first sharp sword that someone would be so stupid as to put it before his nose.

When he got back down into the hold, Dagger wore armor too, though he doubted that simple boiled leather cuirass would be of any use for at least two reasons: the first one was his immortality, the second one, concerned the sharp arrows with which Gorgors had started to hit them and that had already killed two sailors.

The sailors, for their part, were so frightened they had taken refuge under the deck and nothing, not even Olem's curses, could convince them to get back out there to steer the ship. Some of them knelt down and began to rock back and forth. Many yelled at the captain that they did not want any damn reward, while the latter striked struck them with his glances. Soon, his head rolled down the stairs, sheared clean off by Olem's sword.

"Traitors!" the Dracon growled.

The other ones raised their hands to a rough statuette of Ktisis they brought around the neck, begging for their god, and even Olem, to spare their lives. They had left the sails unmanaged and the rudder locked, so the ship was now traveling out of control. In the midst of all those rocks, it would soon become a problem.

It seemed Gorgors had already won the battle simply manifesting their presence. Olem was anxious to go out on the deck to fight, but currents were stronger in that stretch of sea and now the ship was moving so violently it became difficult to keep one's balance.

The big ship that was pursuing them was approaching faster and faster, safely plowing the waves. Dagger, grabbed at a porthole, watching it get closer. It had hoisted the banner of Melekesh, only the last evidence that the whole world was now under the control of the Divine.

"They want to sink us," Moak whispered. "They have no scruples. They will send us into the abyss knowing that you will not die, anyway. This way they would get everything they want: our death, and your blood!"

Dagger turned to him. "I hope you have a better plan than let them do it."

A predatory cry crossed the wind, making him creep. He saw the face of the Guardians grow dark, terrified. Apparently, the enemy ship could not board them in those weather conditions, but nothing could prevent Gorgors' winged beasts to land undisturbed on the deck, now deserted.

"On guard!" Olem roared, unsheathing his sword.

The first cry of warning was followed by the trills of Gorgors, landed on the bridge deck. Only a wooden door, not even locked, divided men from shadows, armed to the teeth to kill each other.

"Kugar," Moak called in a whisper. "Go down to the deck below and do not come out for any reason, even at the cost of losing your life. You know what I mean!"

Kugar bowed her head as a sign of obedience and dragged Dagger away.

"I can walk!" he said but Kugar, pressed by the eyes of Moak, took him down just like a prisoner. They descended a half-moldy staircase and found themselves in complete darkness, at the mercy of waves and with a battle about to burst over their heads. Dagger felt the girl's hand flapping tar on him.

"Use this!" she said. "Maybe it will prevent them from smelling you!"

Reluctantly, Dagger did as told. He soon found himself covered by a layer of tar. "It burns!"

"Remember you are immortal, unlike me!"

They sat at a corner, clinging to a wooden beam, trying to figure out what was going on above their heads. Soon they heard the infernal cries of the shadows, mixed to the voice of blades. The battle had begun but, before they could realize who was getting the better, they realized that it was already concluded. They heard the wails of the last dying Guardians, then nothing more. Dagger found that silence more sinister than any battle cry. Now they were alone, and knowing to be immortal was no longer a consolation.

"It's over!" Kugar whispered. "At least for me. For you, it's only just begun."

"We must do something!"

"Like what? Go out there and ask them to let us pass?"

Dagger was about to reply, when the hull hit the rocks and they were thrown to the ground. The ship tilted and the rocks tore its side while it, driven by wind, still followed its way. In the darkness, he heard the thunderous roar of water burst into the decks and realized that the gash was straight in front of him. The ship struck another rock. He found himself immersed in the salty and turbulent water, trapped, unable to open his eyes until the ship did not start to turn, turn and turn, finally laying on its side. Now one of the gashes faced the sky.

Dagger looked around and saw that Kugar was unconscious, maybe dead, her face underwater. He put his arm under her shoulders and pulled her back, while the ship was unleashed back again on its uncoordinated trail. He climbed to the gash, finding in his senseless fear of dying a courage and strength that he would never have suspected inside himself. He looked outside. The Cruachans were back in flight, but they were no longer ridden, a sign that even Gorgors had been trapped in the wreckage. The ship continued to sink, so that even that hole was soon underwater. Holding his breath, sure that waves would hide his runaway, Dagger managed to get out from that huge coffin dragging Kugar with him.

Slipping below the water, he tried not to breathe but he found out that he needed to. Probably, if he drowned he would rise again. He began to think that a power like that would serve little purpose in such situations. He came up to the surface and looked around. The wreck of the ship had beached once and for all, half submerged, with a rock firmly planted in the right side holding her still, masts broken, torn sails. A dead animal, once alive, whose ligneous lament still rose high into the air.

Kugar was not breathing. He swam to shore as fast as he could, thanking the rocks that split the waves and made them more lenient. Soon he reached a small cove located between two high cliffs. Glad to feel again the sand under his feet, he dragged Kugar by her clothing soaked with water to the edge of the forest that covered the entire island. In the shelter of trees, he lay her on the ground and slapped her several times.

"Breathe!" he screamed, but Kugar stared at him pale and silent. Dagger knew what had to be done. He had seen it for the first time practiced by one of the smugglers of the cemetery, a man who came from beyond the sea. He placed his hands one over the other at the center of her chest and began to push several times, as if to coerce life back in the body. It did not work. He breathed into her mouth, continuing until he found himself exhausted. Then he screamed with anger and struck her with a single punch on the heart, putting all his strength in it. Kugar exhaled only a "What the fuck?" Imbued with new life, she turned on the side and vomited all the water she had drunk, breathing once again.

Dagger looked at her in amazement. "Seriously, what were the chances it would work?"

Kugar, exhausted, did not seem to hear. Dagger focused back on the situation, even if it did not take long to figure out it was desperate. They were on an island in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a sea in storm and killer shadows who wanted him, only him. Looking up he saw there was no trace of Gorgors, but he could hear their distant trills.

Approaching.

"They're... calling you..." Kugar whispered.

"Do you think someone survived?"

She dragged herself up to him. "Yes. Gorgors surely did," she replied, sitting against a rock. "Ktisis bastard!"

A few moments later a lightning revealed the warship that had hunted them down, making it emergence from the fog. The enemy ship had dropped the anchor at a safe distance from the rocks and seemed to be waiting. The Cruachans twirled above it, trilling nervous.

"There's a reason we were shipwrecked on this island. This is not just any place. They must know it."

"What do you mean?"

"The Portal to Golconda is on this island."

A boat was lowered from the vessel, carrying twelve men wearing the military outfit of Melekesh, and the shadowy figure leading them. Black silk robes covered his entire body, even his face, shaded by a large hood. Only two armored boots stack out from those clothes. When he saw the living electricity that ran through them, giving the impression that the shadow was walking on light, he realized they were made of the same metal of his knife. The Mayem.

Kugar woke him from his thoughts, "He's the one who's looking for you," she said. "And whom you are looking for— the Divine. He uses an armor of pure Mayem to move, an ancient and cursed artifact. It's alive and answers the will of its wearer. How strange life is? Once Skyrgal used his body to move about our world, now he uses that to do the same. The pitcher goes so often to the well..."

They were far enough not to expose themselves, close enough to see what was going on. the Divine raised a hand and soon a flying Gorgor reached the wreck. He got off the back of his Cruachan, keeping in perfect balance on a broken beam, while the winged beast, with total peace of mind, begin to lick the wounds on its dark wings of membrane. He drew his Hvis sword and clung to the edge of the gash to look inside. He saw something and turned to his dark comrades, shouting acute and ungraceful cries that, although they reminded the Cruachans' bestial cries, were articulated into syllables and had to be a real language.

"What's he saying?" Dagger whispered.

Kugar listened to the words in the wind. "He found someone alive. A bald man," she deduced. "He's making fun of his weight. I think it's Moak."

Other Cruachans landed on the wreck, anywhere, while most stood in the sky. The Gorgor looked inside the ship once again, but jerked back. An arrow flashed just above his head, struck from the inside, and a distant scream was heard, "Come here, son of a leper Tankar!"

"Olem!" Dagger said.

"Shit! This time he will manage to get killed!"

"What do we do?"

"We wait!"

The Gorgor seemed to giggle. He got back on his Cruachan and, with a flick of the reins, jumped back in the air. The winged beast circled over the ship's carcass a few times, then it spread its wings to the wind and remained suspended in midair. It fell swoop into the crack, to pop out, a little later, with its claws planted in Olem's bloody shoulders. The Cruachan dropped him in the midst of his companions, as a predator who throws the helpless prey to the hungry chicks in the nest. The Dracon immediately tried to get up, but he was disarmed with a kick on the hand and another one on his back. A shadow had already unsheathed his sword and looked on the verge of killing him, but the Divine admonished him and they all stopped. He yelled something in their hard language, consisting of guttural consonants and characterized by the almost total absence of vowels.

"What's he saying?" Dagger asked.

"He's ordering the Gorgors not to kill the prisoner, because he's more useful alive than dead."

"And they're listening to him?"

"It seems so."

Under the orders of the Divine, the Gorgors lowered themselves into the belly of the ship. They gathered a total of five survivors, including Moak and Olem, then began to feast on the bodies of the dead: a couple of Cruachan amused themselves quartering the corpse of a Guardian, feeding on his viscera under the complacent eyes of their riders. They were soon imitated by the rest of the squadron. The wreck became a huge slaughterhouse for human flesh, with entrails and blood sliding on the side of the wooden ship toward the pink sea foam. Moak looked confused as did the other survivors. Olem alone still had the strength to yell at those beasts, before being silenced by a kick in the face.

The Gorgors began to beat up the prisoners, screaming all the way.

"They are looking for you," Kugar said. "They knew you were on board. They are forcing Olem and the others to talk. You're lucky that it's them, I would not have thought twice before selling you out."

The Gorgors continued to pound the Guardians until they lost consciousness. One of them lost his life too and was thrown into the sea, to become immediately prey of a Cruachan who had not yet had his ration of meat. The Divine went back on board the ship anchored in the bay, while the survivors were loaded on a boat and taken ashore, escorted by ten Gorgors; an abundant escort for four stunned and shackled Guardians. The other ones got back in their saddle and flew to the island's interior.

Dagger noticed that one of the Gorgors remained on the ground was sniffing around.

"The wind is changing," Kugar noticed. "We must get away before they smell you."

They went into the forest, getting too far to see what was happening as well as to hear the horrible Gorgor's cries.

Kugar looked uncomfortably at the trees that surrounded them. "We need to steer clear of them."

"We have to follow them," Dagger corrected. "If they are transporting prisoners by land, it means it's from here they pop out. We must understand from where!"

The girl grabbed him by the collar, and brought him face-to-face. "We must go home. It's already hopeless as it is, why complicate our lives even more?"

Dagger drew back her hand, looking straight in her eyes. "You will all end up in the stomachs of those beasts if you don't understand where they come from! I spent my life hiding from those who wanted to kill me, I can give you a hand!"

"Give me a hand to do what?"

"To descend into the depths of the wolf's den."

"It's not what we were ordered!"

"A Guardian does always what he is told?"

"Well, yes," Kugar replied.

Dagger found himself wrong-footed. "Then I'm not surprised things precipitated so far. There won't be other opportunities to follow them without being seen. Decide now, or never!"

The girl bowed her head, thinking in silence. "The wind blows from the north."

"So what?"

"It's a headwind. It will blind them, at least until it changes direction. Then it will take your smell straight to their nostrils and we'll find ourselves in a trap." She reasoned about that one last time. "Damn you, Dag!" she growled. "Let's go!"

* * * * *

7. Fear of the dark

Life was not walking trails with innumerable forks in the road, Dagger thought. Life was wandering in a pathless forest where a dark shadow seemed to lurk at every corner, ready to pounce when you least expected it, to take away everything for which you had always fought. Even if it was mere survival.

Insects as large as grapes marched up his legs, planting their feet into the skin with greater force when he tried to pull them away. Thorns scratched him, branches held him, every single drop of icy water seemed to have the only purpose to get under the collar of his armor, and slide there where he could no longer dry it. He was already lamenting the mud and the slippery cobblestones of Melekesh. All roads in a city led somewhere, even if straight toward death. In the maze of a forest it was different;you had to create a way and often it did not lead anywhere. In this situation, he could only do what he had always been no good at—relying on those beside him. So he followed Kugar blindly, wherever she might have brought him.

After hours of marching in lockstep, she grabbed him by the arm. Climbing on the branches of a tree, they saw the Gorgors had tied the prisoners. Everything, in their behavior, suggested that they did not consider the idea of being followed. Olem had come back to his senses and was cursing them once again. Dagger wondered how long it would take before he managed to be killed. Moak was still unconscious, as well as the other two Guardians.

One of the Gorgors unsheathed two Hvis saber and rubbed their blades, making everybody pull back when the flames rose in the air. When he walked over to the prisoners, two of them cried out in terror.

"Shut your mouth, Guardian!" Olem cried. The shadow turned to him and pressed the back of the blade against his shoulder. The sound of the frying meat came up to them, but Olem didn't yell as he gritted his teeth and endured the pain with discipline.

"Are they are torturing them?"

"Not precisely," Kugar answered. "They're having fun disinfecting their wounds with fire."

Dagger thought it was a bit rough as a mean of disinfection, yet practical in its own way. He knew other methods, perhaps even more effective: he couldn't count the times he had used his own urine as a disinfectant on himself or Seeth. He had never seen a wound getting infected that way. When he saw one of the Gorgors urinate in a corner, he realized why they didn't: his green jet pierced the bark of the tree, penetrating deep and raising an acid vapor. One of the other Gorgors trilled something and the one who was urinating laughed. He got in front of the Guardian bound between Olem and Moak, the most run down, and splashed urine on his head. Dagger's hand flew to his mouth when he saw the Guardian's face melt under the acid spray.

In the torpor that preceded death, the Guardian shouted, spitting out blood and bits of tongue. The Gorgors untied him and threw him face to the ground, still laughing. One of them drew his saber and scraped his back, baring his muscles. Then he urinated above his naked meat, digging a hole from side to side through tissues, bones, and organs. Then he stood up, pleased to see his creation, and decided to finish him: he put his hand into the hole he had created and ripped the heart from behind, throwing it to one of his companions while it was still beating.

Dagger turned and vomited his breakfast, trying to do it noiselessly. Then he leaned his forehead against the tree. "They melted his face! Oh fuck. They—"

"They don't want to kill'em all, at least not right away," Kugar deduced, not at all upset. "They did away with the one who slowed their march. Extremely practical." She grabbed him by the arm and forced him to look. "Watch them, kid. Imagine what they would be able to do to you to—"

"—pull out my blood and bring my father back to life?" Dagger answered and then paused, his eyes still closed. "I know. If you're trying to convince me not to throw myself into their arms it's a waste of time. I'm not planning to."

They watched the Gorgors tear apart the Guardian, cutting him in half, gutting him and tearing his limbs into small pieces. They packed the muscles for the trip and ate raw what they could, especially the liver of which they seemed particularly fond. Then they resumed their march.

"When a prisoner slows their march it becomes useful only to be eaten," Kugar said as she led him through a patch of larch trees, so dense that a second green sky now stretched above their heads.

They heard a long thunder and soon the soft pattering of rain filled the cold and moist air. When the drops penetrated the leaves, falling on the invisible path they were following, Kugar had to bend down more often to search for enemy footprints. Sometimes it passed some time before she decided which direction to take. He began to think they got lost when they arrived, suddenly, in the presence of a high rock wall, an impenetrable barrier placed on their path, enclosed in a horseshoe. There was no way to continue. Under their eyes, hundreds of tracks, old and recent, crowded on top of each other.

"It would seem a dead end. Instead, this is a point of passage," Kugar asserted, bending down to look at the footprints. "And not just for Gorgors."

Dagger got close. "And where does it lead?"

"Begin to search!"

They explored the long, curve, rocky wall looking for a passage. They searched everywhere, until the thing in front of their eyes turned out to be just an impenetrable stone wall.

Kugar walked away thoughtfully. She planted her sword into the ground and sat down, resting her chin on her fist. "Uhm" she mumbled. "Man can go even through the gray stone."

"What?"

"It is a saying of Golconda, probably invented by someone who has never faced a real wall of gray stone."

Dagger, obstinate, continued in his search. "You have to go though, somewhere!" He tried to push the rock with all his strength. When he heard a strange sound, like the wail of a wounded beast.

"Stop!" Kugar urged.

Dagger turned, but he could read only fear in the girl's eyes. He pulled away from the wall.

"He's looking at us."

"Who?"

Kugar raised a finger to her lips, staving off any other question. Her senses were more sharpened than his, it seemed, this is why Dagger continued to trust her even when he saw her bring one hand behind her back, to reveal a throwing knife.

"What in bloody Ktisis—?"

"Do you intend to step away or stay there?"

Dagger moved just in time to hear the hiss of her blade. A Cruachan fell to the ground right in front of his eyes, trilling in pain because of the knife plunged into its chest. It struggled and threw the knife away before attacking Dagger, eyes bloodshot with killing spree. The boy managed to dodge the hooked beak just in time for cutting the thin neck and decapitate it. The Cruachan's body was crossed by the Mayem sparks while still trudging forward, driven only by instinct. Finally it fell to the ground, with no strength and no life. Dagger took a step back, still pointing the blade against the beast.

"Dag!" Kugar said, approaching with an open hand. "It's over."

Despite her words, he planted his knife in the middle of the decapitated head. Only when he saw the bluish brain trickling between its eyes, he agreed to consider the Cruachan dead. Then he fell to his knees.

"It's over," Kugar told him again.

"No, it's not over! If there was one, there will be others! They're coming. It's me who's bringing them here!"

The girl leaned over, looking at the animal's lifeless body. "Don't be stupid. It was left behind," she observed, lifting a wing to show him the wide gashes that had prevented the beast from flying. "It was wounded during the clash with the Guardians. It slowed their march. That's why they have torn its wings, before leaving it behind. Poor beast. Alone against the whole world."

"Poor beast? He tried to gut us!"

"Beasts kill and no one can blame them for that," Kugar replied, her eyes unfocused. "There are no courts in the forest, there's no moral code. Either you are the predator or you become the prey. In any case, it has nothing to do with the group we are following."

Dagger stared at her. "And what happened to the ones we were following?" he asked.

"And how the hell do I know? At this point, it's best to let go and get back to the portal. It was all madness, I shouldn't have trusted you from the beginning!"

"Do you want to give up like that? This is the turning point!"

"This is just a damn wall!" Kugar cried, before looking around. She realized that it was better not do it again, if she wanted to see the sunset alive. "If this were the entrance to their lair, it would be monitored much better and we would already be dead!"

"Their companions will join them soon, when they won't find me in the wreck," Dagger opined. "If they come through here, they will show us the way!"

"It's risky!"

"Risky? When we stepped off the ship you weren't even alive!"

"All right!" Kugar interrupted.

Dagger was surprised. He would have never thought to win so easily.

"It will be better to find a suitable place to spend the night," she went on, retracing their steps. "A tree, possibly. Soon, we'll find ourselves in mud up to our knees."

They found a tree sturdy enough to bear them, close enough to let them see, far enough not to let them be slaughtered by any passer-by. The rain grew more and more intense. Kugar could collect enough water to drink, with her cupped hands. Then she pulled the hood over her head and, with her back resting against the trunk, began to look straight at the wall.

Dagger lay down on the branch, letting the rain soak him as always. He watched his dagger, the one that had saved his life. When it was in his hands, nothing could affect its luster. He touched the edge and got cut.

"Don't play with it," Kugar warned. "That light is visible from afar and makes us easy prey. That's no ordinary weapon, respect it."

Dagger didn't answer. He sheathed back the blade and clasped his knees with his arms, staring at the rock wall in turn.

"What name did you give it?"

"To what?"

"Your knife," Kugar answered. "Guardians always give a name to their weapons."

"I never thought about that. If it really must have a name, it's going to be Redemption."

Kugar grinned. "What a fucking name for a dagger! Anyway, nothing strange from someone who got called Dagger."

The time passed slowly and nothing happened until, beyond the clouds, the sun began its slow descent into the horizon.

"Soon Mothernight will fall and it will be completely dark," Kugar said quietly. "There are no lights in a forest, and no taverns. Have you ever spent a night in a forest at night, Dag?"

"No," he replied. "But if you want to play at 'who's got the longest one' about the most dangerous place where we have spent the nights of our life, you would lose. First, because you're a girl. Second, because I hope you've never spent an entire night under the corpses of your comrades, to look dead in the eyes of those who would have liked to see the color of your guts. If we stay with our butts on these branches, nothing will happen to us."

"Don't fall asleep, then. I'm not going to pick you up from the ground."

"Did I already say fuck you?"

"No more than necessary."

Dagger shuddered.

"What, are you stunned?"

He did not answer. He lay down on the branch, keeping in perfect balance with one leg dangling in the air, and closed his eyes.

'Seeth.'

"Dag!" Kugar called in a hissing voice. "Wake up, dammit!"

Dagger sat abruptly up and almost lost his balance. He had fallen asleep as the night spread its dark mantle over the world. The face of Kugar slowly emerged from the shadows, illuminated by a light getting stronger and stronger, nearer and nearer. With a finger to her lips she was advising him to keep silent. Dagger found nothing to object. Soon from the black of the night emerged he, or that being, that was making his way through the trees, severing the dense undergrowth with blades mounted on a clawed glove. He was not a Gorgor, nor a human.

"And what the Ktisis is that?"

"A Tankar," Kugar revealed. "A desert raider. Even them, here."

The thick fur, wet from the rain, shone at torch's fire, giving the Tankar's mighty body a statuesque appearance. Atavistic and overwhelming horror were instilled in his sharp fangs and bloodshot eyes; the black lips contracted in a constant grin, drooling copiously; the bony orbits and the prominent forehead; the mane that ran down the back from the head to the sacrum. The arms, strong and muscular, were as long as his legs, forcing the being to walk bent to the ground. Every single vertebra, malleolus and bony prominence emerged from the skin, while the rest of his body seemed made up of muscle fibers and tendons. There was not an ounce of fat on that beastly and ancestral being, in which everything seemed conceived to allow survival in extreme environments.

It was a living machine of brutal, savage death.

Dagger turned to Kugar: light shone on her face, like on everything else around them. If the beast had looked up, he would have had no difficulty in seeing them. But luckily he walked on, arriving in front of the wall. Here, he began to push aside the mud with his paw, of which he used only the front part, like dogs. Then he stooped down. With the index claw he began to make little circles on the ground, searching for something, that he seemed to have found when he grunted smugly. He put his fingers into the ground, lifted a manhole, and vanished below it.

A trapdoor! Dagger thought, feeling suddenly the dumbest creature in the world. "A fuckin' damn trapdoor!" He turned to look at the mocking eyes of Kugar, who must have felt as stupid as he.

But a gust of wind, cold and heavy with rain, made him feel even more alone than he already was and Kugar had disappeared. He looked around, convinced that she was on the trail of the beast. He called her in a whisper, as not to arouse the shadows around him; in the reconquered darkness, it would be difficult to recognize a real one from one drawn solely from fear. He unsheathed Redemption and, with it, was not afraid anymore. He dropped from branch to branch and jumped to the ground, making his way through the leaves and clawed branches. He called Kugar again, before he found himself in front of the rock wall but she was not there.

He bent down to the ground. In the pouring rain, he saw that a frame of leaves, mud and stones perfectly camouflaged the trapdoor, making it invisible with the complicity of the rain. He picked it up and found himself in front of a deep hole.

"Yet another leap in the dark," he considered. "Let's hope it's not another hold." He looked around again, then leaned in to watch. Too forward: he skidded on the mud and fell face down on the rough stone floor. "Damn you Ktisis!"

He got up on his knees, immediately on the watch. In front of him was a long tunnel with smooth and linear walls, as if it had been carved by expert hands and not from the cold nature's will. He saw the distant light of the torch, becoming smaller and smaller, and nothing else. Only a spark in the dark, he thought, to follow or from which escape. He turned to the forest, black and threatening above him. It was not exciting to venture back out there, alone. Without the guidance of Kugar, it would take a long time to end up in the loving embrace of Gorgors, but also the light in front of him would probably run straight to the shadows. Soon he realized that the only option he was granted, at that time, was between a sinister light to follow and the darkness that hounded him.

With the faithful blade at his side, he took the first step toward the light.

* * * * *

Darkness helped the most remote fears emerge back on the surface from the depths of his conscience, after the brief respite they had given him. Loneliness and pain returned, as well as the fear of dying, faced with the inexperience of a child. The lifeless eyes of Seeth appeared in front of him, the gash on her throat, the screams of pain rising from the punishment room in the long sleepless nights at the ship cemetery. It was one fear with different faces: Sannah and Mawson, Gorgors and the doped city guards. He pushed that fear back from where it had emerged. He would not lose control, he swore to himself. He had to repeat it with more and more conviction when light disappeared, and he suddenly found himself in complete darkness. He was tempted to grab Redemption to enlighten his path, then he quickly changed his mind: it would manifest his presence to the Tankar.

He felt a slow howl behind him and turned fast, ready to grab the handle. Fate was playing with him, finding it funny to torment him. He stood still, listening. Having left the trapdoor open, any beast could follow him down there, waiting, step by step, the right moment to attack. Certainly not a Gorgor, who would not lose a moment to strike deadly, but maybe another Tankar, who was enjoying hunting him calmly sipping his fear, before he could taste his blood. On the second howl he knew he was caught between two fires: he was chasing and followed in turn. This realization fueled every possible paranoia, as alcohol with fire. He saw the face of Sannah projected in the overwhelming darkness, his dead eyes, the ever-present grin, soon replaced by evil red eyes staring at him out of nowhere. A gash on white skin opened before his eyes, his dirty hands digging and digging and digging. And again the howl. He struck his forehead several times, to return to his senses.

Stand and fight! Stand and fight!

Where was he, what were the boundaries of that darkness? He forced his mind to silence, suppressed every thought and went on putting one foot in front of the other, because that was the only way he could deal with that enormous trouble: one step at a time. The faint glimmer appeared once again before him, driving away the ghosts from his head. Slowly, it continued to move forward until it stopped reflecting on the low tunnel's ceiling to get lost in the void and begin to rise, and rise.

As a spirit rising from the grave.

When he heard the whisper of a thousand water drops echoing all around him, Dagger realized he was in a cave of vast proportions. He found himself balancing on a precipice and felt a giddy thrill. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, from the darkness of his senses, emerged the irregular profile of the stalagmites and stalactites, the chalky flows and the translucent veils carved by the unconscious time in the depths of the earth. That one torch could not illuminate the whole ambient. The more it got far, the more darkness returned to hide what it had just revealed, as ignorance with knowledge.

The beast was marching on a winding ridge of limestone that ran through the cave from side to side, carved in a staircase, at the top of which stood tall columns of calcium salts, such as a white redwood forest. He waited until the Tankar ended his climb, before following him. The stairs were steep and uneven, slippery. The fear of falling into the void obliged him to measure each step. When he reached the top, he saw with pleasure the warm light of a thousand torches, hung everywhere, reflecting on their humid surface and illuminating the path between the white columns.

He heard a confused chatter and advanced until it was possible, before hiding to observe. The Tankar had reached one of his like, sitting on the floor in front of a fire. Beyond them, the winding path continued to ascend toward the top of the cave, but for the moment it seemed the two didn't want to go further. They passed from hand to hand a large leather bag, from which they drew great drafts of a thick and frothy liquid. Between the sips, in that silence where even the smallest sound had its moment of importance, he heard them speak in an articulated language and understood they could not be mere irrational beasts.

In addition, he could roughly understand what they were saying, "Shadows made things big big," muttered the one he had followed there. "Ship destroyed, made prisoners. All very Bum Bum! Fire and blood everywhere!"

The bigger one, barked in satisfaction. "Yay, fire and blood!" he replied. "Saw humans pass in chains, in terror. Perhaps fools understand where Gorgor come to this world, pity they not live long enough to tell their fellows."

They both laughed heartily, drinking on.

Then the smallest one frowned, running his tongue over his black lips. "But this time we big risk," he said. "Yes, too much attention on us and fucking passage. Guardians not so stupid stupid."

"We and shadows got power to resist any attack, now!"

"No, we not power! Not until the boy still in their hands! Better to stay hidden in dark for a little, at least until he back in our hands!"

"They not find him?"

"Nay, he not found. The remains of the ship searched top to bottom, and the whole sea. No trace of the boy. Shadows look for him for years. Time they hurry up!"

The big one growled. "Maybe healthy old torture come in handy handy. Sure prisoners know something!"

"By the way, I show to you one thing. Had some sort of pain in the ass for a while, following me since I came into the tunnel. And who think me so stupid as not to feel his smell of corpse left in the sun for days." He stood up and turned around, grinning with his lucid fangs as he looked exactly at where Dagger was hidden. "You come out now!" he barked. "I know you to be there, what you believe? Do you think I not noticed? You come out and I kill you quickly. You make me come there, and I will entertain with you a little more more!"

Holy shit!

"With who you talk?"

"Someone followed me this far. Yay! His smell gets up to Adramelech!"

The big one jumped up. "And you let yourself follow here?" he barked. "Stupid, this serious serious! Passage no longer secret!"

His mate growled and wore the glove with long metal claws. Even the big one put it on, ready to fight. Apparently, they wore only one on the right hand, keeping the other one free to grab the neck of their victims. The blades gleamed menacingly in the firelight. They were sharp and pretty damn long, definitely longer than Redemption.

With fire at their backs, the two beasts moved a step forward, but Dagger came out from behind the pillar and pointed the blade against them.

"Not a step further!" he menaced, trying to sound more determined than his trembling legs would indicate. The two stopped and looked into each other's eyes.

"A boy?"

"Yes, sweet boy to eat raw."

"You made follow you from a boy?"

"Come on, look how he dressed! Bet one of them, a Guardian!"

"He's only a novice, he's not even... oh come one, look how he holding his dagger!"

At that, the little one cocked his head sideways as if reasoning. "One moment!" he said.

"What?"

"Light! Light!" he barked. "The dagger shines! Him the Boy! Yay! The Boy!"

"Bring it on, motherfuckers! I've already killed several of mangy dogs like you!"

The two Tankars looked at each other again, this time only to burst out in wild laughing barks. Dagger took advantage of their distraction and started forward, recommending his soul to Ktisis and, now that he was around too, even to his father Skyrgal. He stuck the lightning knife into the chest of one of the two. Who answered just throwing him to the side with a single backhand hit on the belly. Dagger barely had time to notice he was suspended in midair, before slamming his back against the rock wall and slide to the ground, folded in two like a handkerchief.

The Tankar ran his hand over the charred wound. He licked his own blood as he looked straight into his eyes. He looked seriously pissed off now. Dagger forced himself to ignore the pain and stand up again.

"You boy very imprudent," the giant said, pointing him with his index finger. "Yay, you very unwise and not even know how to use that dagger! That be very powerful if you know how to use it. Too bad you do not have more time. Now we Tankar eat you slowly, the hell with our orders."

"You do not do shit!" the little one warned. "Do not forget who he is!"

In response, his buddy turned around with his arm outstretched and decapitated him.

Dagger jumped into the fire and grabbed a firebrand, waving the flames in front of him, in hope that the bestial nature of his enemy feared fire.

Seriously, how do I think to get away with it, this time?

The beast growled, moving the menacing blades in the air, before shooting forward at full speed. Dagger closed his eyes, resigned to his umpteenth death. Then he heard a hellish commotion and new ferocious barks. Hearing, he knew he was still alive, or at least part of that world. He opened his eyes and saw that a Tankar with thick white hair, born out of nowhere, had bitten the neck of the giant moments before killing him. He sprang to his feet, watching the two beasts clung to each other in a desperate struggle for survival. Without asking himself too many questions, he stuck the burning wood in the eye of his enemy, who abandoned the fight against the white wolf to pull the ember out of his skull. Even with a face reduced to a twisted mask of blood and burning hair, he was back on his feet. The white one was whining, hair stained with the blood gushing from a gaping wound on the side.

Dagger was not unprepared. He dodged the giant's gloved hand and planted Redemption in the middle of the mighty left bicep. This time, the shock blew up the arm of the beast, who yelped in pain as he tried to stop the bleeding with the remaining hand.

The white Tankar came again to his aid, but the disfigured and dismembered one managed to turn around in time to draw four lines of blood on his chest, knocking him out. That was the last thing he did, as he himself seemed to understand bringing his hand to the bright blade stuck in his throat.

"Die, you bastard!" Dagger cried, working his way through the neck of the beast, aided by the Mayem's vital force. He levered on the cervical vertebrae and chopped off his entire head. The giant seemed to raise his claws against him, still shaken by the unholy life that had suddenly abandoned him. Finally, the chopped neck gave his last gush of blood, and the body was abandoned to a deserved death.

Dagger knelt in the sticky red fluid, panting. He looked at the blade, wondering why only now it showed all that power. The handle was covered up with blood. His blood. When he saw it rapidly absorbed, or drunk, by the cursed metal, he realized the Guardians had not told him the whole truth. Now that it had taken his blood, he could feel the blade's surface as if it were the skin of his hand. It had become part of him, the natural continuation of his arm. The feeling passed only when the blade slipped back inside the sheath, becoming silent and unusable again.

He turned to the white Tankar and stepped back in surprise, because on the ground was no longer the beast who had saved him.

With four lines crossing the bloody belly, lying on the ground was the naked, lifeless body of Kugar.

* * * * *

He rubbed his fingers to loosen the layer of coagulated blood that covered them. When he dropped it into the flames, he was hit by its sour and disgusting smell. He moved his skeptical look to Redemption, silent by his side. Giving him the cursed weapon, Marduk had done for him more than anyone else had ever done. Even Kugar, in one way or another, had risked her life for his salvation. The Guardians did not trust him any more than he would trust them, yet they were dying for him.

Who can love you anymore than I, that I wanted and created you? said Skyrgal's voice in his head.

He unsheathed the blade, turning it in his hands. "I do," he replied to the voice in his head. "I love me more than he who created me."

Kugar moved in her sleep and let out a groan of pain. "No," she yelled, jumping up. She looked around, trying to figure out where she was. She saw her wounds, then turned to the headless Tankar's corpse.

"There was a fight," Dagger said, sheathing Redemption. "We had the best of it."

"It looks so." Looking at herself, the girl realized she was stark naked.

Dagger blushed and looked away.

"What? You've never seen a girl as she is?"

"Stop it."

She smiled. "Nice virgin god that I've found me," she said. "I hate to think at what you've done while I was unconscious."

"I just medicated you!"

"Really? And with what?"

He did not answer.

Her eyes widened. She took her fingers to the wounds, then the nose. She grimaced in disgust. "Dagger!"

"I've never seen a wound infected in that way, and I had no other means!"

"You pissed on me!?"

"No, I just tamponed it with a cloth soaked in...! I mean..."

She tried to punch him, but he dodged and pinned her to the ground. They looked into each other's eyes, before bursting into laughter. They stayed like that for some time, lying on the ground facing each other.

"I'm afraid this is the most beautiful thing someone has ever done for me," Kugar said. "Shit, you must really care for someone to do such a thing."

Dagger became serious. He ran a hand through her hair.

"Hey?" she said.

"What?"

"Don't get any weird ideas. I'd better find something to put on me." She pushed him away, got up and went to rummage through the human remains at the base of a column, probably the last meal of the Tankar who stood guard. She found a worn-out coat and bent down to pick it up, slowly, wearing it despite the caked blood stains on the fabric. Then she sat down before the fire, hugging her knees with her arms. "The show is over, kid."

Dagger's heart was pounding like horseshoes on cobblestones. "You don't remember anything, do you?" he managed to ask.

"Nothing at all, sweetheart," Kugar replied. "Since I ran away with hair growing everywhere on my skin," she paused, before growling, "I hate it! I hate every time it happens!"

"And how many times is that?"

"Sometimes every day, sometimes it does not happen for months. I never know if I'm about to become a threat to those around me. At any given, Ktisisdamn, moment of my existence."

"When I did not see you anymore, I decided to follow the beast in this cave," Dagger explained. "But he found me out. He was going to kill me, then you came. You must have followed me into the cave, and you saved my life."

"I did not do it on purpose."

"What?"

"Saving you. It was just instinct. Probably it's like when dogs bite other dogs before attacking their masters."

"It's all the same. You did not drown when the ship sank and I have not been gutted in this place. Now we're even. In fact, I have even medicated you."

Kugar smiled and shrugged her shoulders under the rags.

"You're one of them, right?" Dagger supposed. "I mean—"

"No," she interrupted him, getting serious. "I'm not one of them, even if their blood flows inside me. My mother was a Guardian, my father a Tankar,." She looked down at the beast's severed head. "The wolf men that inhabit the desert of Candehel-mas, Gorgors' allies, or pawns. Really delicious individuals, as you may have noticed."

"And I suppose I'm the only one to know your true nature."

"What do you say? The Guardians would banish me forever beyond the walls of Golconda, if they knew my true nature. And they would do well. I would do the same with myself!" Her voice was loaded with rage, in the end. "Do you know how to keep a secret or do I have to kill you?"

"A secret must just be kept on the right side of your mouth," he answered. "In the end, I owe you. If you had not intervened, it would have ended very badly for me. I hate to think where I would have resurrected this time."

"What part of the sentence 'it was just instinct' you did not understand? Besides, I don't think I was the only one to risk her life for you, given the thoughtlessness with which you throw yourself into the arms of death. To follow a Tankar in his den. Tsk! You have to be completely crazy to do it. Maybe you cannot die, but others around you can. And do!"

That phrase slipped inside his heart like a 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?"

Dagger looked up. "Redemption," he said. "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."

Kugar kept silent for a while. "I've read a 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."

Dagger shook his head. "You don't have the 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!"

In answer, Dagger put his finger on her 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."

Kugar listened in silence, then grinned and 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."

Dagger shook his head. "Talking was not a 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!"

* * * * *

The reassuring fire light left them fast, 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.

Light came from somewhere above. Continuing 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!"

They looked at each other's eyes one last 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.

Olem threw down his sword and turned to the 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.

Then the Dracon stood up. He pulled back 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."

The Dracon looked around nervously. Only 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.

Olem watched them advancing inside the 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."

Olem nodded in understanding. Then he moved 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—?"

Moak froze Olem with his eyes. The Dracon 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!"

Dagger stared at Olem. "I won't be safe 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.

The Dracon turned to face him. "Have you 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!"

The echo dispersed itself in the giant 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."

The other one did not answer. 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."

Dagger advanced among the corpses. The sole 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."

Kugar picked up the sword of the dead 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?"

Olem did not answer right away, and then 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.

Olem outstretched an arm to stop him, but 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.

Olem slammed a fist against the rocks. "The 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."

"A second portal," Kugar specified. "Opened by Gorgors and on which we have no control. Here's how did they get here. This world is not our secret garden anymore."

"And where does it lead?"

Moak nodded. "There's only a way to find out." He said no more, and took a step into the void, getting swallowed by the darkness into the light. Caught off guard, Olem joined him fast, followed by Kugar. Dagger looked at the Portal one last time, far away at his feet, then he let himself fall forward.

He felt buffeted by violent and opposing forces of gravity, swallowed by darkness and finally spit in plain, blinding light. He found himself rolling on the ground, in an environment where air was hot and muggy and it was difficult even to breathe. He tried to get up, but stumbled and fell to his knees as the world continued to twist and turn.

The strong light still prevented him from opening his eyes.

"Where are you? Where am I?" he asked.

"It's over!" said Olem's voice, somewhere. "Skyrgal be cursed, take him up!"

It was hot in there, very hot, and he felt suffocated. Kugar helped him to his feet and Dagger clung to her arms. He opened his eyes in a crack and saw the shiny vortex from which he had emerged, parallel to the floor. Its only view sickened him. Opening his eyes once and for all, he realized they were in an ambient totally different from the one they had just left behind. Two rows of colossal sandstone columns lay in front of him, as far as eyes could see, supporting a ceiling high enough to hide itself in his own darkness. Small water drops fell against his face, because that place, although closed, was so broad it had its precipitation. It was not built by mortal beings, he thought, or at least not for mortals. When he saw that some columns were carved in statues depicting anthropomorphic creatures, of which he could not see the head, high as they were, he felt the anxiety of a man in front of his avenging god. When he noticed the symbol on their chest, fear took over concern. It was the same mark at the center of his sternum.

∞

"I've already been here," he softly said. "The smell of this place, of this stone, is engraved in my memory."

"I'm afraid so," Kugar murmured.

"You know where we are, right?"

"Come on," Olem ordered. Everyone followed him.

They walked between the columns, under the hidden gaze of the ancient gods that were sculptured among them.

"Yes. I've been here before."

"This is where you were created, Dag," Kugar explained, trying not to be heard by the two Guardians ahead. "This temple is your home."

Dagger squeezed his eyes, in the attempt to sweep away the fragments of memory that were trying to make their way to the surface of his consciousness. Farther away, one of the statues had lost half of its head, fallen shattered to the ground. As if emerging from the floor, a giant eye now seemed to look just at him, giving him the welcome back. He found it still hard to breath and he constantly turned, listening to voices from the darkness calling him in a language that one time, he was sure, he had known. He heard his name, his other name, Konkra, echoing among the columns and the statues.

Something happened here! he thought. Something horrible.

The monumental stone eye prevented them from continuing, so they turned left. The Portal's light, the only one present in the temple, barely got there, but was still strong enough to allow them to see. The columns became less impressive, so that it was even possible to appreciate the shape of the statues' heads.

Dagger realized that their appearance was familiar to him. "Does he really exists?"

"Who?"

"Ktisis!"

Just hearing that name, Olem turned, but said nothing. The statues depicted the lewd jackal god of violence and sin that he had worshiped since he was a child, yet he was portrayed in a way different from the usual: he was not slaughtering the sacred pig, to flood the earth with its fruitful blood, nor was he holding in his hands the two halves of a man damned for all times to feed on his intestines, as new power arising from death. The statues depicted the god seated, with his left hand resting peacefully on the leg and the right one contracted into an authoritarian fist. In his divine composure, Ktisis kept his eyes straight ahead.

"So it did happen," Moak recited. "Close your eyes and forget your name, step outside yourself and let your mind go, as you go insane."

"Spare us this lizardries, dammit!" Olem grumbled. "I've got goose bumps just being here!"

"The forgotten temple of Ktisis has come back to light," Moak revealed. "With all that it contains. Needless to wonder who is guarding it now."

Dagger slowed down, fatigued. He watched the two Guardians confabulating to each other without being able to hear what they were saying. The echo of their footsteps got lost in space, while the sandstone divinities watched him carefully.

"Who is he?" he asked in a whisper, grabbing Kugar by the arm. "I don't think it's just the god of alcohol and sin."

The girl raised her face to look at the rising darkness above their heads. "Ktisis is the father of all gods," she said, grimly. "Father of Skyrgal, Angra and all their divine brothers. Somehow, he's part of your family tree, can you believe it?"

"And where is he now? In this place?" Kugar shook her head. "How can you tell? He is here, I can feel it!"

"What's wrong with you?"

"I don't know. I'm not me, not in here. I've been here before!"

"Ktisis does not give signs of his presence even before we humans made our appearance in the world," she explained. "If he were still here, we would know, I assure you."

"Who was he?"

"This story does not—"

He gripped her arm and she pushed him away, afraid.

"What the fuck!"

"Kugar—"

"Ktisis is the prime mover of the universe," she said, rubbing her wrist and looking at him with suspicion. "The one who created and populated it with his divine sons; Burzums, like your father, and Mastodons, as our god Angra. In the first, he incarnated chaos and destruction, necessary to the eternal regeneration of the universe. In Mastodons, he embodied the equilibrium of everything that exists."

"The good and the bad?"

Kugar sneered, shaking her head. "It's easy for us to identify evil in the Burzums and good in the Mastodons, but it's far too simplistic and wrong. Harmony plays the notes of chaos. In them, Ktisis wanted to embody the two forces that rule the universe. Destruction and Creation. You cannot have one without the other. It's an eternal cycle where only from death comes life. Skyrgal and Angra are the only survivors of the two divine offsprings and, in them, lies the very essence of Equilibrium, its opposite poles. In the great All there's no good and bad, as there's no day and night, before and after. Morals and ethics are useless coordinates with which man deceives himself of being able to organize the Creation, his logical necessities, but Ktisis has made it incomprehensible to our eyes, devoid of morality in his insatiable and destructive generating power. The truth is hidden from us, always, and the more we run to it the more it moves away from us, as a light in the desert, or at the end of a tunnel." She looked around, fascinated more than scared by what she was seeing. "You may have understood that, coming through the Portal, you set foot on another world. The world where you belong, Candehel-mas. This land is called holy, because here all the events described in Genesis took place. Here, Skyrgal and Angra collided. Here, his soul was eradicated from his body; here, in this world defiled with blood for which we all fight." She raised her eyes to look at a titanic face as they walk past it. "Some nightmares are never forgotten," she continued. "And this is one of them. Ktisis has left indelible marks in history, before disappearing into thin air; appalling evidence of its ancient power. Some of these were not to be found, some knowledge should have not return to light. Above all, not in the wrong, dark hands." She pointed to a strange purple paint on the wall to their right.

Dagger saw there were many others in similarity, everywhere, even on the floor under their feet and on the statues. They were not paintings, he soon realized, but letters of an incomprehensible alphabet traced in long spurts of blood.

"The blood of the forces that have lived through all eternity," Kugar said, hovering her hand over them, in amazement. "Millions of years old blood, that time will never wash off, paid by the children who Ktisis sacrificed to reach the ultimate power, Megatherion. The absolute abandonment to the great silence. The end of everything that exists."

She went forward and stopped a little further on, reaching Moak and Olem, silently examining the unholy scriptures in turn. The stretch of wall they were facing was entirely written. The red and barbed symbols looked like sharp and bloody blades, murderous words dipped in violence.

"He must have gone mad," Kugar soughed. "Can a god go crazy?"

"What's written on these walls?" Olem asked.

"I'm afraid I know," Moak answered. "And I'm afraid that Gorgors can now translate these ancient scriptures without any disturbance, while we still sit locked up in our ignorance, waiting for the inevitable."

Kugar snorted. "And if they were able to open a new portal, then they are already well on their work of translation."

"Can you translate?" the Dracon urged again. "You have studied anywhere in the world, you must be able to draw something out of this blood-shit!"

Moak concentrated. "Only in a place I could study their alphabet, or at least participate in its translation, before I realized it is no ordinary alphabet. This is the language of the gods, it works differently from ours. You see the symbols inside the letters? Each of those gives a totally different meaning to the word, and the letters are all linked to each other, like the unbreakable links of a chain. It is a perfect language."

Dagger shivered. Looking closer he realized those were the same symbols he had seen etched on his skin when he was dead and in the presence of his father.

"Let's see..." the Guardian went on. "This seems to be a sort of warning."

"A warning?"

"Yes. It says 'If you want to conquer death, you only have to...' ah , damn it! This part has been deleted."

"You are a really bad translator."

"Look here instead, 'He will come and it will be as if nothing ever existed.' But, thanks to the symbols in the letters, it assumes another meaning, 'The eternal life that will come from nothing.' And even more inside:, 'The eternity of nothingness.' More and more interesting."

"I'm glad you're having fun!"

Moak then frowned. Abruptly.

"What is it?"

He walked away from the wall, as if it were no longer a source of wonder, but horror.

"Moak?"

"Let's go," the Guardian said in a thin voice. "Some things should not be read."

"What—?"

"I can't read, I don't know! I didn't study anything!" He started walking again, lock-step.

Following him, they suddenly came in the presence of a deformed and monstrous skull, imposing, high above their heads. This time it was not a sculpture, Dagger realized. In the dim light around him, he saw the huge skeletons crucified on the pillars of the temple. The skulls with four deformed horns were silently watching him with their black sockets, smiling with their sharp fangs.

"Skyrgal?" he supposed.

"No," Kugar replied. "These are his brothers, or what's left of them. Tortured and killed by Ktisis to obtain the blood he used in his rites."

He looked up. On the high vault he saw dark nailed skeletons, but these ones had wings. "And those are the Mastodons, right?" he asked in a faint voice.

This time Kugar nodded. "The divine brothers of Angra, killed before his own eyes."

"We can't go around it, right?" Olem noticed, talking to Moak. "We have to go inside it?"

The Guardian observed the skull in front of them, a fortress of bones. "I'm afraid so," he stated, taking the first step into the gaping Burzum's jaws. They sank into the darkness in his mouth, among his teeth as tall as columns, under the grotesque white ceiling of the palate. They passed through the foramen of the head, beyond two horns planted on the ground as the colossal triumphal arch of death. They crossed the portico of the ribs, leaving the basin, partly collapsed as the ruins of an old, white palace.

"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?"

Moak did not reply. He looked too 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.

Far away, in front of them, the colonnade 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."

In the following silence, Dagger tried not 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?"

Moak stopped, when he seemed to have found 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!"

Moak reluctantly nodded. He put the 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.

They resumed the march.

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.

Olem elbowed him in the side.

"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.

Only a few of the shadows dragged 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!"

Dagger looked around, suddenly aware of how 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!"

Olem found something to laugh about in it. 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!"

But, before he could finish, Olem was 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.

Moak shook his head. "If he wants, he'll 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.

Everyone looked at him amazed, his face lit by Redemption. Olem opened his mouth to say something when he was interrupted by the rhythmic scuff of one thousand boots. Behind Dagger appeared, weapons in hand, the Gorgors and Tankars who survived the fratricidal battle.

Yet many, too many. They stopped in front of them, as if looking forward to the coming massacre and the just vengeance. Dagger held out his blade in front of their eyes and they seemed to hesitate. Then he heard the voice of Moak right behind him, "Son, do not pull the rope. I think it's high time we took our leave."

To this time he could not object. They hopped on the Cruachans and soared to the portal. They were chased through the temple of Ktisis by two Gorgors, who managed to get on their Cruachans in time, preying on them with their poisonous darts. They went through the portal and were thrown back on the world Beyond, in an explosion of light waves. Dagger was blinded, like everyone else. However, that did not stop Cruachans.

Once they emerged into the cave, where they had initially reunited, the Dracon yelled and stretched out his arm toward the rift, through which came the light of the sun. Dagger did not need to be told twice. They came outside, in the open air, as well as their pursuers. They fled on the trees trying to outrun them but, when these proved to be worthy opponents, Olem slowed and let them get near, leaving the reins to Kugar. He jumped to their closest rival, penetrating his chest and grabbing the Cruachan's reins, while the former fell and disappeared among the foliage of the trees. The Dracon waited for their second pursuer, who did not back down. They flew toward each other, sword at hand, but at the last moment Olem reined to gain altitude and flew over the enemy, crushing his head with a single blow.

When he came back to them, he commented with aplomb, "Well? What the fuck are you looking at? Moak! Close that damn hole!"

Dagger led the Guardian to the split from which they had emerged.

"Stop here!" Moak snatched a small metal ball from his belt. When the other Cruachans cries already echoed beneath the mountain, he threw it inside.

There was a powerful explosion and soon there was nothing but debris.

"Have it on foot, Gorgors!"

They rejoined the others and flew until sunset, before descending to the ground and camping for the night. The three Cruachan let themselves be tied to the trees without rebelling, watching Dagger like docile kittens.

"It almost seems they like you," Olem murmured, skeptical, as he tightened the noose around the neck of one of the beasts as much as possible, as if to strangle it.

"They don't respect me, it's Redemption they revere," he replied. Since the Dracon said nothing, he wondered if he knew anything about that blade, or 'living arm' as Kugar had named it. Then he let it go. Olem did not seem famous for his intellectual aptitude.

He looked stealthily at Moak, far too quiet though he had heard them talking.

They wouldn't light a fire for obvious reasons. The two Guardians would not have slept until dawn, watching over him.

* * * * *
8. The friendly danger

Dagger was awakened at first light of day by the big hand of Moak, shaking him by the shoulder. He opened his eyes and looked around; Kugar was already up, tightening a belt around her waist; Olem was in the same position in which he had left him. Probably he had not moved a single step from his lookout. Never beating his eyelashes, never yawning; the Cruachans lay broken in the dew, beheaded. He walked over and noticed the signs of their bites on the ropes that kept them tied.

"They were trying to free themselves," Olem explained. "As far as I'm concerned, I don't mind walking."

"Did you kill them?"

"They would have betrayed us as soon as they could hear their comrades' call."

"Gorgors know well where our portal is, it's crystal clear," Moak said. "They will hunt us down until then. We have a fair advantage, though. Let's not waste it!"

They set off when the sun was still rising above the horizon, covered by a blanket of gray clouds. Olem and Moak leading the way. Dagger and Kugar behind them.

"How far is the portal?" Dagger asked.

"Not much," Kugar answered. "We are gaining height. If we are lucky enough, and if Gorgors don't make risky moves, we'll get there no later than noon."

The footprints they were leaving on the muddy ground were too many and too deep to be erased. Any follower would not struggle to follow them, but Dagger had the feeling that the Guardians were already resigned to an inevitable clash. Perhaps they just hoped to reach the portal before the enemy.

When the sun behind the clouds was at its maximum height in the sky, a clearing appeared among the trees in front of them.

Olem stopped. "Noises. Further," he whispered, drawing his sword. He walked hunched to the ground and hid behind a tree, a moment before an arrow hissed in the wind to stick on the trunk. Moak smiled. He put his hands cupped around his mouth and let out a long howl. It had to be a sort of signal, for when Olem came out from behind the tree a second arrow was not shot.

"We've arrived," Kugar said.

To Moak's signal, another one answered, somewhere among the branches of the trees. Dagger looked carefully over their heads, but he noticed the shadowy figure, perfectly camouflaged, only when it moved to descend. He lost sight of it, then he heard a rustle of leaves and saw it leap to the ground just in front of him, completely wrapped in a green and brown patched cloak, of different shades, as well as the hood that covered his head except for the cloth grill at eye level. He stretched out his arm toward Dagger's face.

Only when he saw its hand emerge from the sleeve, Dagger realized he was not facing a human being. Its skin was wrinkled and green, the fingers clawed. It was the hand of a reptile, at least he thought. He got closer, until it struck his forehead with a slap, in an almost affectionate way. Then the strange creature approached the two Guardians. Dagger instinctively brought a hand to Redemption but, at the gleam of its sparks, everybody turned to give him a puzzled look. He felt stupid and let go of the grip with a shrug.

"I suppose you've never seen a Messhuggah," the hissing voice of the creature said, with a hint of derision. "Well, no wonder. There are no Messhuggah on the world Beyond, unfortunately and fortunately." He raised his face to look at Olem. "I was awaiting visits one of these days, from you or from Gorgors. I think I even saw some of their cursed Cruachans fly over the forest. I prepared myself for the worst."

"The worst is just what happened, Dracon Araya," Olem answered. "They attacked the ship on which we were traveling. The ones you see in front of you are the only survivors. The only ones, in the whole contingent of Guardians sent on Melekesh in the search for Skyrgal's blood."

The other one watched them in silence, below the hood. "Still better than I expected," he added. "The problem is, how did the Gorgors set foot on this world?"

"They came through the back door," Moak muttered.

"Moak!" Olem barked.

However, Araya hissed a laugh. He put his flaky hand on the Guardian's forehead, in a gesture of affection and forgiveness. "Brother Moak is one of the few humans we can have confidence in," he said. "That's why we accepted him as one of us. We Messhuggah are wary and reserved, but we appreciate his humor, Dracon Olem. The truth often lies in irony, and from his few words I think I've already figured out a lot about what happened, though not everything. You will explain the rest with calm. Now come inside and rest: it's ill to walk through the Death Pass tired, hungry... and with the girl's wound already stinking of infection." Araya dropped his gaze on Kugar, who cringed, as if she wanted to be far from there, in that moment.

That lizard could think damn fast, Dagger thought.

"Oh, do you think we didn't notice that too?" Moak said, looking in turn at the girl. "You continuously bring your hand to your chest, you're slow as you've never been, and you pant like a dog. No Guardian should ever hide his wounds to his companions. It goes for the salvation of everyone!"

"Stupid girl!" Olem added. "We need to know who needs to be protected!"

Kugar looked down. "I do not need to be protected."

"Oh, all Guardians need to be protected," Araya interjected. "Some, especially from their stupidity."

"We had a clash with two Tankars, before joining you back," Kugar explained. "They had the worst!"

"It was a miracle, believe me!" Moak concluded. He was about to continue, but Araya put a hand on his shoulder, holding a leather bag.

"Come on, brother Moak, we've all been young," he said. "And the more someone is young, the less he's able to feel the fetid death's breath on his nape; the less it's clear to him that he needs the help of others to avoid meeting the silent lady too soon. Water is already on the fire; I was cooking when I heard your arrival. Melt this lizard crap in it. Judging by the smell that's torturing my nose, I think we will need it."

The Guardian smiled. "The Poison Dracon is always ready for the worst, right?"

"More or less. But it will be better to get set fast. I feel also another smell, approaching. Smell of rotten eggs."

"How many?"

"A team, not particularly numerous, but there could be others behind them. They'll be here tonight."

"We'll greet them here tonight!" Olem precised. "We'll face them and we'll leave no survivor. This will be a straight message to them."

They followed Araya in the clearing surrounded by larches, at the bottom of which they saw a log cabin. Dagger would never have thought that, in the nearby, the boundary between the two worlds was hiding.

"Walk on the trail," Araya suggested. "I wouldn't want to see you skewered by one of the poles hidden beneath this beautiful green lawn."

"The birds stopped singing," Olem noticed, looking around. "Tonight we'll find it hard to get some sleep."

"Don't think about it. Rest now. My instinct tells me darker days lay ahead. And, after those, days even worse. Maybe you can't feel it, but the smell of his blood is strong."

"I can feel it!" Kugar protested.

Araya patted on her head. "Oh, I know, I know you do."

Dagger realized they were talking about him. "I can't do anything about it," he said. "It's not like a fart that you can hold inside!"

The Messhuggah laughed softly. "Yeah, it's not like a fart," he chuckled. "Good answer, my boy."

They entered the small hut, heated and lit by a lively fire in the hearth in which a pot of water was boiling. The furniture was reduced to the essentials: a table, a few chairs and old copper ladles hanging on the wall. Araya kept ready for cooking the carcass of some animal, skinned, cut into pieces and divided neatly on the table covered with blood. He had to get along well, alone.

Moak emptied the contents of the leather bag into the pot, a greenish powder with a pungent smell. Kugar reluctantly pulled herself on the table, pushing away a piece of the carcass. She uncovered her chest, having now become fiery red. The infection was galloping hard on her skin, starting from the long cuts bequeathed by the Tankar.

"Mighty Angra! Look at that!" Araya muttered, tamponing the wound with a wet cloth. "Nice smear cuts they do with their gloves. And what's this smell, did someone piss on you?"

"It's a long story."

Araya turned to Dagger, then back to Kugar, and laughed. "Oh, oh, oh! It must really be a long story," he commented, amused.

Moak showed up with the pot just removed from the heat. "I think it's ready, my Dracon."

Araya dipped gauze in the hot swill and blew on it. "This will harm a little, my lady," he warned, before dabbing the wound.

Kugar jumped and let out a groan, covered by Olem's wild laughter.

"Burns like fire, huh?" the man yelled. "Well, remember it's an honor to be healed by the lizard Dracon in person! Or in Lizard. Or what!" Then he looked out of the dirty and opaque window, his eyes moving slowly from right to left. "Kugar. When you're done getting your life saved, go below and arm Dagger as he should be. Adults need to talk about important matters. Come on, shoo!"

Kugar nodded. When Araya finished medicating her, she jumped off the table and took Dagger under her arm, leading him under a trapdoor in the floor. Dagger reluctantly followed her, since throughout this trip, and his life the worst things happened underground. The small basement was full of weaponry. At least a hundred gleaming swords were leaning against the walls and, in addition to these, bows and polished shields.

Kugar grabbed a sword, with a handle shaped like a claw. "Not all the questions in life can be solved with a knife," she stated. "Sometimes you need a sword."

"Nice one, where did you read it?"

"It's an old saying of Golconda."

"And this place. What is it?" Dagger asked. "I mean, what's that old wrinkled guy doing here on the world Beyond?"

"That guy is one of the five Dracons of the Fortress, like Olem and Marduk, so try to show a little respect. He's watching over the Death Pass since we came on this world. This is the last frontier. Can't you feel the portal's vibrations?"

Dagger brushed the gleaming blades, fascinated. They responded to the touch of his fingers, varying the intensity of their reflections.

"This is the Manegarm," Kugar explained "A metal that can rip the soul from the body of a god, as Angra did with your father. It's a sword like these that preserves the soul of Skyrgal, at the Fortress."

Dagger chose a sword and cut through the air repeatedly.

"You use it as a stick," Kugar noticed. "I hope someone will teach you how to handle it."

"All questions in life can be solved with a sword, but for some a dagger it's better."

"Dag?"

"This came to me now."

"Dagger?"

"What?"

Kugar looked at him in silence, before lowering her eyes. "Thank you for protecting my secret, so far," she said.

"Oh. That. It's nothing," he answered. "I don't give a damn about your secret. It's your burden, it's been giving to you and stuff like that. Everybody has to think about his own, don't you think?"

She nodded, then secured a sheath at her waist, grabbed the sword and sliced through the air a couple of times. She was good at it, it seemed. "Let's just try to survive the night. You too. You can come back to life every time you want, but if you wake up in their hands, for you it will be over all the same."

"Kugar?"

"What?"

He made no reply, save with his eyes.

"Dag, is there something you want to tell me?"

"Well, I..."

"Dagger?"

"I really appreciated all that... you've done for me."

Kugar raised an eyebrow. "Are you really sure there's nothing else?"

He stood silent. She smiled and approached him, holding his hands. She brought him face to face, so close that he could feel the hotness in her breath. Until he began to have a predictable reaction. He tried to break free, but she held him faster.

"It happens a lot of times, for a lot of reasons!" he apologized.

"I'm glad you appreciated my efforts," she said. Then, touching his lips with her mouth, made her way between them and kissed him in a way that Dagger had never been kissed before.

He closed his eyes, dragged away by that erupting and irrepressible power born in the middle of his chest, where his eternal doom was. Life and death, ceaseless torment and ecstasy of senses, were so close to each other they looked like the same thing. He decided to give himself over to that pleasure and forget about the rest, letting her do of him whatever she wanted.

When Kugar pushed him back, making him fall to the ground. "Now we'd better get back upstairs, abomination."

That's unfair! he thought, as his heart was threatening to give him up.

Kugar climbed up, looking at him in a mixture of challenge and something else. It was that something else that was driving him mad.

When they got back upstairs, they found Moak sitting in front of the fireplace, with his pipe between the lips, thoughtful. Olem must not have relived his eyes of the window for a moment.

Araya was intent on boning the carcass with his bare hands. He had taken off his cap so, when he turned to them, Dagger found himself glancing in two yellow eyes that were not of that world, sparkled with gold around the tiny black slits of the pupils. He ran a purple tongue over a double row of knife-sharp teeth. "No, old man," he said to Moak, as if continuing a conversation already begun. He put the index and medium fingers in his mouth, sucking them clean of blood, and focused back on the carcass. "Marduk is full of resources. He'll get back to the portal in one way or the other, finding out by himself what's happened."

"He runs too many risks, however, he's not aware of anything," the Guardian replied. "Gorgors will be looking for us throughout the forest and when they'll cross his path—"

"He's the Delta Dracon, he will make it," Olem interrupted. "And, if he doesn't make it, then he's not worthy of the name. A Delta moves in the dark, kills in a flash and feeds on death, a little like you of the Poison. They are just a little more loyal. They use their daggers and the cover of darkness to kill. They don't blow up your house or poison your beer. Your beer, dammit! Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with all of you guys. Can't you just love the battlefield?"

"Well, Dracon Olem, we've talked about it a lot of times." He slammed a piece of muscle dripping with blood on the table, packing it up. "There are many ways to win a war or a battle, or a fight, a dispute, an exchange of opinions or views. There's always a good reason and a good way to kill someone."

"Uhm," Moak considered. "Yes, Marduk will make it." There was a moment of silence, barely filled by the din of the fire burning in the hearth. "We'll all make it, but what for? Their host is on the threshold of this world. They'll take us from behind. Now that they have opened their portal, they will come through here to plunge into the heart of the Glade, hitting where we can't defend ourselves. And first strike will be deadly!"

"Brother Moak is right," Araya agreed. "They'll no longer attack the impenetrable walls of the Fortress as they've always done. Not now that, thanks to the two portals, they can... come through the back door."

"They'll annihilate us," Olem added. "Eating us from the inside like a cancer. Return him to the Fortress will be like saying, 'Come on in, we were expecting you!'"

Everyone turned to Dagger. It did not take long for him to figure out whom the Dracon was talking about.

"You say they are looking for me?" he replied. "Yes, I guessed so."

"Irony," said Araya. "The word of the gods or of the forces that have lived through all eternity, as they like to be called when time does not force us to shorten."

"So, if I went back to the Fortress, everything will be in one place," Dagger reasoned. "The soul of my father, his body... and me. If someone wanted to get their hands on all three, they could simply attack and storm the Fortress, right?"

Araya hissed in agreement. "What you say is true," he allowed. "And I understand where your words are leading. Yet, at the Fortress we'll know how to protect you, as for centuries we have protected the body of daddy and his damned soul."

"We are still ahead," Moak stepped in. "We will return to the Fortress, we'll build a new system of defenses in the Glade to counter their attack. Even if it were the last thing we do, we'll kick their ass as Crowley did!"

Hearing that name, a shadow fell on all of them.

"By the way," Olem said as if to change subject. "That message you found on the Tankar's commander down in the temple. Do you still have it?"

Moak put his hand in his pocket, as if he had remembered only then. He pulled out the parchment and unrolled it, reading it carefully. "It does not make much sense," he said.

Olem held out a hand, never looking away from the window. Moak handed him the parchment and Dagger stretched out his head to peep. He did not understand what he was reading, if those were words after all, but his heart skipped a beat when he saw the symbol on top of the message:

∞

Kudr ò Sktena amis.

Temko o 'kvana Ramidt.

Io'ten Cruachan koro. Satanke.

"What language is this, for Ktisis sake?" Olem said.

"Judging from the abuse of consonants, it seems the Gorgors' language," Moak answered. "But it's transcribed in our alphabet. Must be the way in which Gorgor and Tankar communicate between themselves. Sktena reminds their equivalent for 'damned' and Temko means 'wait'. For the rest—"

"Io'ten Cruachan koro sounds like, 'Only a few Cruachan, for now.'" Kugar intervened, approaching to read. "Satanke reminds one of their names, it's probably just a signature."

"Uhm."

"And where did you learn their language?" Olem asked.

Kugar looked down. "In the Messhuggah's library," she answered.

"And what were you doing in the—?"

"Olem!" Araya interrupted. "We have too many things to think about. We'll discuss the rules to access my library some other time."

Olem turned to Kugar. "What are you waiting for? Translate!"

"There's written, more or less, 'not yet taken the son of the damned. Waiting for the attack. Only few Cruachan for now. Satanke'. Did you notice the symbol on top?"

"Do you think we didn't see it?" Moak said, tucking the message and putting it in his pocket. "The message is pretty clear: they are waiting to attack because they want to get their hands on you know who and they don't have enough Cruachans to move in this world. Temko or wait. This is the key word for them as well as for us. The narrow and dark tunnel through which we passed, might have been only a secondary passage. They couldn't have a whole army march through there. They moved like shadows in the night sky, using the great rift in the mountain that we have... I have blown up. They must open a new passage for their Cruachans to move again and this takes them time. They'll make it, but not in a few days. For once, we were lucky."

Olem nodded, focusing back on the window. Night was falling fast.

Dagger came up. "We'll be attacked tonight?"

"You can be sure," Olem replied. "As I'm sure you're hiding something."

* * * * *

At nightfall, they barricaded the door and the windows and climbed on the roof armed to the teeth. Araya took off his coat, revealing the red armor he wore underneath, modeled on the forms of a human musculature, made to perfection: the deltoids, the trapezius, the biceps and the pectorals shining and vermilion like the muscles of a flayed man. He put on the helmet too, a skull of a metal blue, like the one which composed Olem's armor, forged in death's eternal battle cry. For the rest, the Poison Dracon wore his arms: two scimitars on his back, two belts of curved daggers across his chest, two long chains coiled around his arms and ending in a sharp point, suspended in the air, two katars ready to use, on his hips.

Dagger looked at the simple bow he had, feeling like a kid with a defective toy in his hands.

"Do you know how to use it, at least?" Olem asked.

In response, the boy shot an arrow against the bark of a tree, centering it. "A spider has many hidden qualities."

"How in bloody hell does this thing work?" They both turned to Kugar, intent on arguing with her crossbow. "Can't we just poison the entire forest?"

"Why did you choose that? It's slow to reload!" Olem warned.

Just then, a dart inadvertently set off from the crossbow. The unequivocal piercing scream of a Gorgor stunned them, followed by a rustling, and footsteps. At last, they saw the shadow stumbling in the dark, before it collapsed to the ground with the dart planted in the front.

"Not bad!"

There was a brief moment of silence, then the Gorgors' acute cries rose from the forest, like a flock of predators about to pounce on a helpless prey. Dagger looked down. The mark on his chest beat once, twice, and he felt blood dripping down his belly. He unsheathed Redemption and let his hand and knife become one.

"So it begins," Olem muttered, gripping his sword with both hands. "Remember, shoot them in the head!"

Now they could hear the Gorgors' footsteps break the branches and grind the dried leaves, somewhere in the impenetrable darkness. Soon there appeared the flaming blades, which made them far too easy targets. An arrow whizzed by his ear and Dagger fell to the ground in time to see the traps, placed everywhere in the clearing, starting to work. The unlucky ones condemned to march first died impaled, burned and dismembered. Traps closed on their legs, cutting them neat; deep holes claimed their feet, sticking them in such a way as to make it impossible to break them free. For a moment, it seemed that very little of them would manage to get across. But soon the shadows realized that, if they marched on the path, they would not incur in the traps. However, who did not understand that found it too easy to march on their comrades' corpses.

Araya threw two knives, both hitting their mark, then swung his long, silvery chains and pierced a Gorgor's face from side to side. He put a hand to his belt and soon after a fireball appeared on his hand. He waited a while before throwing it against the enemy. A deafening roar hit them while the Gorgors' dismembered bodies flew into the air.

"And I thought to be good!" Olem said.

Then, the Gorgors seemed to decide they had played long enough. One of them let out a battle cry and his companions emerged from the trees, running and investing them with sharp and acute screams in the night. Kugar centered one of them, Moak two, however the fastest was Araya. Flawlessly he killed five Gorgors with a single blow of his chains, decapitating them in such a short time that, to Dagger, it was just enough to shoot a new arrow and miss the target. Other Gorgors sprang up everywhere before their eyes, marching on the bodies of their comrades as a sea of shadows. In a short time, some attempted to hoist themselves up. It was probably the moment Olem was waiting for. Racing along the edge of the roof with his drawn sword, he decapitated the shadows before they had a chance to set foot on it. Dagger centered the front of a Gorgor who escaped Olem's wrath. Then Kugar shouted something and he barely had time to turn around, before a giant Cruachan fell on him with a chilling trill. He found himself on the ground with claws stuck in the chest. Kugar came to help, but the beast needed only to beat its wing to fling her aside. The Cruachan's eyes, red with lucid madness, absorbed his thoughts, looking at him fixedly and steadily. Everything stopped. The clash faded away. Death, the clatter of swords, the whole world dying around him, everything. On the beast's back sat a shadow. He saw his black eye and, inside it, a yellow and malignant light, on a decomposed, distorted and unnatural face. With horror, he realized that this shadow was wearing a dead skin mask, the flayed face of a man, but only when he saw his Mayem boots the boy knew who he was actually facing. The Divine got off his winged steed and grabbed him by the neck, lifting him into the air as if he was just a disobedient dog. Dagger clung with both hands at the wrist and struck him with Redemption, but it was not shining anymore, not even in his hand. It was turned off, harmless, and could no longer protect him. He choked. The whole world was confined to that black eye and the light it held, in which he could read the reckless rage of a creature forever doomed to evil. This time, he didn't feel the malignant mark just eject blood from his chest; it corroded his skin and flesh. It caught breath in his throat. It afflicted him with a stuffy asthma, a sense of total destruction that clenched his senses and asphyxiated any attempt to fight back. He felt it working within, taking possession of his nerve centers. He was becoming something else. In the darkness of the mind and senses, he heard a hissing sound, barely audible in the dark. "You won't bring him back, Kam Konkra! Your blood will be mine! Why must I be a slave to this power? I don't want to die, I was a god, why can't I live on?"

"Ffuck you!" Dagger let out.

Then the lips of the dead face grinned. "I will hunt down with no mercy!" the Divine promised. "I will hunt you down all nightmare long! When you'll wake up, you'll discover how horrible it is, after death, to live forever!"

He pointed the sword, a sword of Mayem, against his chest. Dagger realized that the end had come. A single, quick flick of the wrist would be enough for the figure in black to pierce his heart. He wanted to banish him from the world as it had happened to Skyrgal. It breathed on his face, the rancid breath of death, but he was not afraid, even though he knew there would be no return if the Guardians had lost that battle. Then he felt the clasp on his neck let go and he fell on the roof, drained of all energy, deprived of the control on his body. Everything slowly came back to life around him: the battle, the screams of pain, the clatter of knives. He managed to get up on his knees, but still could not use his arms, or hear. He looked up. As the battle raged, and Gorgors died under the murderous impetus of Araya, Olem had run to his aid, knocking the Divine to the ground. Now he was on top of him, his broadsword between their two faces. With just a wave of his hand the Divine freed himself, flying Olem on the roof. He drew his scimitar, giving the Dracon the time to get up and put on his guard, as if he just wanted to enjoy a clash with an outcome already decided.

Dagger was taken by Moak and dragged away.

"We'll never make it against him, we have to fall back!" the Guardian screamed.

With the corner of his eye, the boy saw Olem collecting the powerful, two-handed attacks of the Divine, whose chilling laughter rang out in the cold and metallic air. A hit harder than the previous ones made him lose his sword and the Dracon seemed to realize that only a miracle would save him this time. However, it was not a miracle that fell from the sky. It looked like a lizard. Araya jumped above the Gorgors and managed to overcome the defenses of the Divine, wounding him with his own claws, just a smear on the neck.

The figure in black brought a hand to the cut. "Poison!" he screamed. "Damn lizards, you and your fucking poison!"

The Divine charged. Araya mounted with one foot on his scimitar and jumped back, running away now that he had been successful in his attempt. Other Gorgors jumped on the roof, screaming in a horrific way, about to surround them. Dagger was the first to jump down. He landed on his hands and got up in time to see Moak reaching him, falling face down, broken, with a knife stuck in his back. He got up to help him, feeling him expire in his arms.

"No," the Guardian could only say, before giving up his soul.

Araya jumped down too and pulled him to his feet. "Hurry up, there's no time for that!"

"Olem and Kugar are still there!"

"That poison will not stop him for long!"

Dagger opposed, ready to get back on the roof to fight, but something horrible put an end to the rapid worsening of the situation. They could not see what was happening on the roof. However, they could hear, the wild roar of a beast, not Gorgor, nor Cruachan, nor human. It was soon run over by the cries of the Gorgors who, taken by surprise, were cut to pieces. Their torn limbs flew in the air. Their bodies, their meat, their heads and slimy guts rained down from the roof, blackening the land with their filthy black blood. Araya killed the few who, jumped down, still dared to fight for life. He slipped the dagger into the belly of the last shadow, and then there were no more.

In the silence, the howl of a beast wounded to death was heard.

Dagger climbed back on the roof to see what had happened. He saw Kugar lying on the ground in a pool of blood. She was still breathing under the armor, torn in tatters from her uncontrollable shift, but every breath seemed the last. Olem pulled out the sword with which he had pierced her chest, gasping for breath, shaken by what he had seen and done.

Dagger ran to hug her, getting soiled with her blood. "You killed her! You killed her, you bastard!"

The Dracon looked at him, lost. "She... it was going to attack me!" he whispered, confused.

"What's going on up there?" Araya cried from below. "We have no time to lose. The Divine has escaped in flight and will soon return with reinforcements!"

"Araya, dammit! That bitch was a Tankar!"

"A Tankar?"

"She's not a Tankar!"

"Get over it!" Araya ordered. "We must go through the Pass and we must do it now, even in the dark. The Divine will return!"

"And what do we do with this damned half-wolf? She's still alive!"

Araya did not answer. Dagger looked Olem straight in the eyes.

"We must kill her, boy. You have to understand."

"I won't let you murder her!" he growled. "You'll have to kill me too!"

"A Tankar would not think twice before cutting your throat, fool!"

"Should I carry her body on my shoulders, I'll take her away from this hell!" Dagger spat back. "She saved your life, tonight. You won't kill her!"

"Then stay here with her!" Olem cried. "I'd be pleased to see what you would do, once—"

"Olem, for Skyrgal sake!" Araya interrupted. "We have no time!"

The Dracon opened his mouth to yell something, before diverting his scream into his clenched fists. He bowed his face and swallowed bitterly. "May you be damned! More than you already are!" He grabbed Kugar by the shreds of the armor, dragging her down like the carcass of an animal, throwing her at Araya's feet.

"She will survive," the Messhuggah just said, putting two fingers between the jaw and the throat. "Even if I don't know how long. One more reason to get back to Golconda as quickly as possible."

"We should have left her here."

Araya jumped up and struck Olem with a punch, so fast that the other Dracon did not even defend himself.

"Holy shit!" he screamed. It was the first time Dagger saw him lose his temper. "Do you know how important this girl is, now?"

Olem answered nothing. He disappeared from their sight, among the trees.

There was no time to give Moak a proper burial. Araya took out his heart, using a knife and his bare claws, and place it inside of a dirty cloth. "At least your heart will be buried home, brother," he hissed. Then he carried the body into the hut, before giving it to the flames. He would never let Cruachans feast with his remains.

Watching the flames rise into the night sky, Dagger swore he could hear the lizard cry. But maybe he was wrong.

"This is the end of an era, worth to be lived," he said. "Now a new one begins: An age of fear." He took Kugar on his shoulders. "Come on, my boy."

They went into the forest beyond the hut, reaching Olem there where two tall conifers, with their hair, formed the natural gate at the beginning of a dirt road, immediately swallowed by darkness. A thick leafed blanket and the branches hid the path to the sight of any creature crossing the sky. They would not have to fear the Cruachans' attacks, in there, but in the presence of the umpteenth path in the shadows, Dagger did not feel safe. He began to fear the worse when he saw thin strands of a silvery metal, dividing it in a sinister chessboard, barely visible in the dim glow of the Ensiferum sphere held by Olem.

"It would have been better to deal with it during the day," the latter said, his rage disappeared. "One wrong step and we're dead."

Behind them, the far cry of a Cruachan invited them not to waste any more time.

"It's easy to choose, when you have no choice," Araya said. "Look at where I place my feet, the exact point. It takes little to die, walking in here."

He picked up a stone, not very big, and threw it. At the first bounce, it was hit by a spray of acid. At the second one, a trap snapped shut. At the third, it was hurled into the air by six metal spikes, appeared out of the ground so quickly that anyone passing by would have ended impaled. The rock flew up and spun several times before falling back to earth. There, nothing happened.

"Uhm. Curious," Araya said. "Make just one error and you won't tell this story. When it comes to building traps and handles deadly poisons, no one beats the Messhuggahs."

The lizard Dracon took a step forward and they followed him closely. He moved constantly from one quadrant to another, slowly, to allow them to see the exact point where he was setting foot. The Gorgors had got to the cabin on fire and were exploring the forest in search of them, he was sure. They felt his smell. He felt their presence at the center of his chest.

"Stuck in the trap of lizards," Olem grumbled. "While Gorgors walk free in this world. What have I done to deserve to see such a thing?"

"Oh, many things, Olem. Starting with all your bad racist jokes about Messhuggahs, but let's not talk unless it is necessary. Watch your feet!" Araya warned, proceeding slowly. Then he stopped, turning around. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

They stood in silence, until the light of a flare lit up the trail and they were invested by the Gorgors' screams of surprise.

"Front Row. Second quadrant," Araya noticed. "Bad choice."

The screams of those who were burning alive soon faded to low moans of pain, to end in a ghostly silence.

"Take it in the ass!" Olem growled.

Araya walked on, without distracting himself further. A step to the right, a jump to the left, straight forward and then right again.

"So, you have to go through this crap every time you want to go home?" Dagger asked. "There's something deeply wrong with you, you're aware of that?"

"If it was not for you, we would have never set foot in this brothel you call a world."

"Araya's right. The world Beyond is just a prison to us," Olem added. "Used to banish the cream of Candehel-mas society at the dawn of our history. Thousands of years ago, when the order was still young. Thieves, rapists, murderers. Everyone thrown here, out of our world."

"Here there were no bars, and no cells," Araya continued. "There was only the law written in blood that the criminals exiled beyond the portal gave themselves. Condemned to live in a world dominated by their same violence. I'm not surprised that, through the centuries, they have created a city as pleasant as Melekesh."

"This path was built just to make sure this would remain a one-way street," Olem added. "In fact, it hasn't been used so many times to return on Candehel-mas."

"My mother did."

The two Dracons exchanged glances.

"There was no need to specify," Olem muttered.

"And those Guardians who were here looking for me and died in the sinking of the ship? How long had they been here? Did they ever go home?"

Araya grinned bitterly. "There was no coming home for them. Once they came in this world, once they crossed the portal, those Guardians knew that they would not see home ever again. They had to find you and that would be the last thing they would do in their Guardians life."

"What, they would kill themselves?"

"Well, at least those who wished to come back to Candehel-mas. They could do it only feet first. The others would simply remain here to build a life away from Golconda, if they found it possible."

"You don't understand how far the sense of sacrifice goes, for a Guardian."

"Blind obedience," the boy guessed. "The Great Mama always talked about it."

"The Great what?"

"Sannah," Olem specified. "It's the name Sannah used on this world."

Araya let out an amused puff. "I understand."

"In Golconda they were declared missing," Olem went on. "As a cover for their mission. Men erased from history, you may say, sacrificed for the common good which was your discovery. We could not bear to know of your existence and, at the same time, not know where you were. As long as your mother didn't to speak, locked in her madness, the only thing we could do was look for you without ceasing. At the Fortress, there are children who will never see their parents come home again. Dead dogs waiting for their masters on the doorstep. Old parents surviving to their sons."

"It's the price of your secret, Dag," Araya continued. "No one outside the Dracons needs to know who you really are. When we get back to Golconda, always remember that. Talk little with the other ones, mind your business. Already too many people died because of you. The human being is corruptible."

"Would it not be easier to tell the truth? Tell your blood brothers, or whatever you call yourselves, that I'm the son of Skyrgal?"

Araya shook his head. "They would come to you at night," he answered grimly. "They'd put you into a sack, piece by piece. They would burn your remains and seal you in a case to throw you in the bottom of a ravine, or the ocean. Then you would come back to life. Your obscene self would be built again starting from a little piece of your heart. You'll find yourself waiting forever, at least until someone, in the course of ages, finds you. Then you will be already gone mad. Don't play with our superstitions, my boy. Skyrgal is a disturbing presence in our unconscious, part of the personal history of each of us, as well of our collective one. We grew up at his feet. Each stone of the Fortress was placed under his silent gaze. We saw him scream at the sky in his petrified anger every damn day of our existence." He bowed his head, and stopped his foot a few inches from the ground. He moved to another quadrant and continued to advance.

"I hope you're not getting distracted," Olem said.

"It was a mistake even to bring Moak here," Araya went on. "But when, after twelve years of fruitless searching, your mother emptied the bag and Hammoth the Pendracon sent also me and Olem to this world, he ordered us to take him too. 'You will need his help,' he said. And he was damn right. Moak was a trusted Guardian and would become Dracon of the poison at my death. One necessary exception to the rules."

"Why him?"

"Because Moak had traveled and studied much, even things that I do not know. Forbidden knowledge. He had searched extensively for the Temple of Ktisis and its damn inscriptions. It was the very reason of his existence. He was fluent in the language of Gorgors, had even made friends with some clandestine Tankar. He knew your story already before we informed him. He would definitely come in handy to follow your tracks on this world."

"And now he's dead," Olem added. "Dead because of you."

"Yet his knowledge did not go entirely lost," the Messhuggah replied, watching the face of Kugar, asleep, on his shoulders. "He must have passed on his knowledge to this student of his, at least in part. I'm not surprised he insisted so much in taking her with him. They traveled and studied a lot together and, I fear, they knew about your nature more than us."

"I'm just an abomination to her," Dagger said.

"No, I don't think so," Araya contradicted, grinning. "In some ways, I think she likes you, but you cannot see it. You must have had a sufficient experience of life, and a certain number of disappointments in love, to recognize some looks, some dynamics."

Olem struck him with a pat on the head, but Dagger did not answer.

Araya frowned. "But like them, there might be others who know too much about your nature. Hiding you has never been easy and, perhaps, only now we realize that it will be impossible to do it for much longer. In doubt, it's the only thing to do."

"The only thing to do. You repeat it all the time," Dagger noticed. "It's nonsense: there is never the only thing to do, at least that's what the streets of Melekesh taught me. There's always a choice, sometimes it's just deciding what we should sacrifice. Like the life of our blood brothers sent on a hostile and depraved world, for example."

"Only we Dracons had to be involved in your research after the mistake of your mother!"

"Kugar will keep my secret."

"We cannot know," Olem objected.

"And what do you want to do, kill her as we arrive at the Fortress?"

The two Dracons made no reply save with their eyes.

"There are other solutions," Araya said, at last. "Perhaps even worse than death. As for you, get used to the idea of not creating strong bonds with mortals. You will live forever, we won't. Trust this lizard, who lived so long to see the death of all his friends, and his only love."

Dagger had nothing in reply to offer.

"Could you please focus on your steps, lizard?" Olem said. "I don't want to end my days with a pole stuck up my ass! When you die, there will be plenty of time to reflect on your past."

"If you're trying to make me feel guilty, you are succeeding," Dagger said. "I lived in the belief I had never killed anyone, despite what I did for a living. Now you tell me that far too many people have died because of me, and that others will."

Araya shrugged. "Our world was not made for peace. Peace is an illusion placed in the middle of two wars. To mortals, death is a kind of indispensable habit. We are all expendable for the ultimate goal, the preservation of the Equilibrium that protects all and of which, unfortunately, you're a pillar."

"Watch where you walk!"

"There's no need, Olem," Araya said. They had arrived at a spacious and tidy lawn, surrounded by larches. The trail continued at the other end but, for the moment, the Dracon seemed to have no plan to deal with it.

"Let us rest. When they created the Death Pass, my ancestors knew that mind needs to rest after a prolonged effort. Now there are no traps beneath our feet, even if the lawn and all the Pass are surrounded by them. Try not to walk around."

Despite his words, Dagger waited until the Lizard Dracon advanced on the lush grass, green as poison, before following him, still putting his feet exactly where he was putting them. Olem gathered some branches and dried leaves, to light a fire in the center of a circle of blackened stones, used for that same purpose for who knew how long before. Perhaps even his mother herself. In front of the flames, the two Dracons sat down and lit the pipe between their lips, peacefully smoking after the long march.

"So ends our long journey," Olem considered. "A city in flames, thousands of deaths, and a Tankar in our ranks."

Araya blew a puff of smoke, watching Kugar lying on the ground beside him. "It could have been worse, Olem. A lot worse," he said, turning to Dagger. "Imagine if they had caught him, too."

"They'll take him, sooner or later. Eternity is a far too long time to have a minimum control on it."

"Stop talking about me as if I were just a fucking... thing!"

Araya looked at him, squinting his eyes into two narrow slits. "I hate coarse language. Stop using it in my presence!"

Dagger grinned. "Funny," he said.

"What do you find funny about that?"

"Nothing."

Olem stood up and grabbed him by the collar, bringing him face to face. "We are not aged through all this shit just to be taken for a ride by you!" he growled. "You find it 'funny'? There's nothing funny here! People are dying because of you!"

"Let me go!"

"Let him go!"

"What did you find so funny?"

"Kam Karkenos!" Dagger let out.

Olem dropped him on the ground, frozen, a sinister look in his eyes.

"Uhm," Araya said, puffing out smoke. "Few still use that name, my boy. Where did you hear that?"

"When I was dead, I've seen him." Dagger brought a hand to his throat, sitting down again. "Did you want to kill me, you bastard?"

Olem eyes widened. He was about to yell something.

Then Araya silenced him with a single gesture of his hand. "Did you talk with him?"

"Yes," Dagger continued. "And he says he hates coarse language too. This is why I laughed. You and my father have something in common."

"And what else did he say?"

"That he needs me, that I am destined to a greater power and that I should not trust anyone," he replied without looking at them. "Not even you. Funny again. I just wonder why I'm talking about it right now with you."

Araya was on his feet. He seemed on the verge of losing control, but he just locked his fingers into fists, before saying: "I hate! I hate not having control of you!"

Olem shook his head. "The old son of a bitch," he muttered. "The god is playing dirty. He really talked to him, Moak was right!"

Araya moved toward Dagger and looked down at him. "And what do you think?" he angrily hissed. "What do you think of what he said?"

"Me? I don't know. There was a time when I thought I'd trust him, I can't hide it. Come on, put yourself in my shoes!"

"Skyrgal only wants your blood!" Araya retorted. "Once he will have used you to return in his body, do you still think he will... love you?"

Dagger kept silent. Araya was on the verge of going on when the boy interrupted him. "And who tells you this is not what I really want? Death, the end of everything."

"I tell you!" Araya cut short. "Save us from your foolishness. He's just using your pain, can't you get it? You won't die once, they will do it! Death does not exist for a force lived through eternity! Each mortal touched by that god lives forever – think about the Divine – Imagine you are his son! The great power of which he speaks is something horrible. HORRIBLE!"

Dagger shivered. "What will happen to me?" he asked.

Araya looked away, just like Olem. He sat down again and looked at the wide emptiness in front of his old lizard eyes. "You'll you come back to be what you were before you were born," he finally revealed. "Something you don't want to be."

"What was I before I was born? I have some memories: sand, screams of pain, and when I was in that temple—"

"Stop it. Stop it, Dag."

"I remembered something. I don't know what, but it deals with an endless pain and... I'm afraid."

At that last word, Araya changed his attitude. "Fear. That's good. I can understand that, my boy. Fear is a good thing, it keeps a man alive."

"He even advised to let you help me."

"Really?"

"Yes, damn it! It looks like you are working for the same goal! Gorgors are no more trying to revive Skyrgal. Now they only serve the Divine and he wants to annihilate me to prevent his return."

"Tell us something we don't know," Olem said, puffing smoke.

Araya hissed, amused, then laughed and Olem echoed.

"Did you already know?"

"Ah! Of course!"

"And who told you that?"

"The Divine himself," Olem answered. "Or at least his emissaries. Each month a damn Gorgor presents himself under the walls of Agalloch, bringing his message: he wants you, only you. He's still looking for the lost soul of Skyrgal, he wants to possess it again inside his own mangled body. It's the reason for its existence, as a drug for a drug-addicted, alcohol for an alcoholic..."

"Go easy on the metaphors." Araya said.

"And if you brought him back to life, the Divine would lose his favorite game," Olem kept on. "He would be desperate, condemned to live forever in search for something he will never have again. So his ambassadors come to Golconda every month. We open the doors. We welcome them with courtesy, as fits to all ambassadors. We make them eat, rest, we prepare them a warm bath and let them fuck our sisters. Then they pronounce with their horrid accent, 'Where is the boy? Give him to us and you won't regret it!' It looks like they can't say anything else. It must have cost them a great effort to learn to say those few words, in such a way as to be vaguely understood. Well, it does not matter. In response, we shackle them, cut their hands and tongue, skin them alive, completely, making sure to put in it the expertise and the time required. Then we put them in salt to please Angra and ourselves, , before letting them dry in the sun with their testicles or a few fingers in their mouths, with sand in their eyes and wind eroding their face and anything that could make it a tad more excruciating a death. Their bodies regenerates, you saw it, which means we can prolong their suffering at our own pace. Only when we stop finding it funny, and this does not happen very often, I have to say – and surely not fast – we split their head in two. Generally these Poison's madmen retain their gray matter, or in this case green matter, for their horrid studies."

"It's only thanks to those studies that we were able to slow the Divine, mind you. From a Gorgor's brain, come the most powerful of poisons, poisons that make agreements with death itself, slowing it, dissimulating it... or simulating it. A lot of people didn't die before being buried," the Meshuggah added.

"A real show, I was saying," Olem continued. "We ensure to always put them so high that even from far away it would be possible to see them. Yet every month a new emissary comes to treat your delivery and the poor creature knows what end awaits him, once those cold, sterile words are repeated. Give us the boy. I'll tell I found it funny for a while, then I realized that their sense of sacrifice is similar to ours and I always wonder if it's not us to be in the wrong. In the end, they just want to do you in pieces and make you disappear forever. Anyone with some sense in his head would do the same." He smiled.

"Anyway, the Gorgors no longer want the return of their ancient god," Araya completed. "Now they worship a common one, their leper messiah. But there are others who serve the lord of Destruction, now, and those are figures less obscure than you could imagine."

Olem became suddenly serious, turning slowly. "Araya," he warned in a low voice. "It's really too early for this."

The Poison Dracon did not continue, perhaps regretting he had said that much, or perhaps caught in the middle of the urge to say and the belief that it was better to keep quiet.

"Who are them?" Dagger asked. "Who wants him back today?"

"If Olem says it's too early, it is."

"It's never too early for truth!" the boy replied, standing up. He drew Redemption, which tore the gloom apart with its light. "Speak!"

Araya froze him with his eyes. "Put that blade away before someone gets hurt," he said. "What do you want to do? Kill us?"

"Oh, no. I did not unsheathed it for you," he precised, taking the knife against his throat. "I just have to kill myself if I want to know more. I go to Daddy and come back in a moment!"

Darkness crossed the eyes of the lizard Dracon. "Don't! Never! We are not keeping anything from you, just the things you still wouldn't understand."

"I want to know, what will happen to me once they have squeezed the blood out of my body! I want to know who I really am, who I will be... who I was!"

Araya stood up, taking a step toward him. "I want to know who I am," he repeated, comprehensively. "That's what all humans say. Ask yourself if it's not others who tell us who we really are through the use they make of us." He took another step. "And through the lies they tell us with the sole purpose to use us. How many people, or gods, are trying to use you this time, Dag?"

Dagger could not answer to that. Araya was now in front of him and, with the greatest naturalness, lowered the blade tight in his fist. The Dracon's eyes hid a deep wisdom. He wondered how old that creature was, and how many horrible things he had been forced to see in his long existence. How many people he cared for he had seen die. He felt him somehow close.

"At the Fortress, I will ensure you'll receive all the information you ask for, at least the ones we have," Araya said, so as to be heard only by him. "You have my word, the word of a Messhuggah, and that you could write on stone. Now there's only one thing I would focus on if I were you, don't die anymore. Every time you talk to Karkenos, you walk away more and more from truth. There's only the voice inside you that you must listen, that is the only guide. I see it, my boy: you want to trust us! You do feel that only we can be on your side and, even if I would like to let you know that you're right, I cannot, I can't manage to prove it. The truth is big, and it's destructive, but at the Fortress everything will be explained to you all the same. Now is the moment of trust. Do you trust me?"

Dagger saw a sympathetic look, the look of a being who understood his pain and confusion. He found himself nodding, sheathing back Redemption.

"Good," Araya breathed. "Stay with us and I promise that you will like this round, this time."

"Araya, sit down. What the fuck, you're making me nervous!" Olem said.

The lizard Dracon sat back down. "He trusted Skyrgal."

Olem grinned. "Yes. I heard. I told you he did not seem so smart to me. Who would not trust a god banished from the world at the dawn of time? Bring him back to life, do! Then he himself will prove how much he cares for you... and for all of us!" Olem laughed, with his wild laughter, before slowly darkening, as if a black thought had seized his mind. "All fathers, in the end, just want the blood of their children," he said grimly. "To destroy the future they have created, eat the fruit of their gonads. It's the old man who's afraid of the new, the death that fears life."

"You should not be drunk, I didn't see you drink." Araya tried to say, but Dagger could see that those words had hit him somehow.

"When I'm drunk, I'm quiet."

"Oh yeah, I forgot."

"They'll take him sooner or later!" Olem went on. He took a new drag on his pipe. "Yes. They'll take him back and we'll lose control of the situation. Provided that we have ever had it."

Araya smoked in turn, reasoning. "Many pieces are moving in an unusual way in this gigantic chessboard," he added. "And are driving us more and more toward an inevitable failure. Or maybe this is not the chessboard on which we have always played, at least not anymore."

A deep silence followed.

"Dagger, don't die anymore," Olem said. "Your father can be very convincing when he talks with mortals. He could be able to convince them of anything, even to trust him. It's already happened: think about that bitch of your mother."

Dagger felt a sudden urge to open a smile from ear to ear on his throat.

"What is done is dead," Araya said in the end. "Rest, you who can, dark days lay in front of my eyes. And, after those, days even worse." He dumped the contents of his pipe to the ground and snuffed it out with his foot. He crossed glances with Dagger. "Go to sleep. We can guard."

"You never sleep?"

"We're too tired to sleep," replied the Dracon.

Dagger lay down and fell asleep almost immediately, confident that the watchful eyes of Araya would watch over him.

He felt the wind. The wind-borne sand.

* * * * *
9 . The end of the Divine

The trees, caressed by the wind of the morning, greeted a new day, shaking the leaves covered with dew. A nice view after so much death. Then his eyes fell on the path opening before them, and Dagger felt emptiness and fear fill his mind again.

Olem was sitting next to Kugar. He did not look tired, even though he must have spent the whole night awake. Araya was gathering their things without haste. It seemed they wanted just to enjoy the peace of the early morning, before the danger that awaited them. They didn't obliterate the traces of their passage, confident that no one would follow them in there. Soon, all too soon, they were again on the march to fight every step against death.

"All the steps taken in your life led you here," Araya softly recited. "First Commandment."

"What does it mean?" Dagger asked.

"That things go as they go, not as they should go, and everything contributes to the final result, even what we do not want. In life, there are no decisions, choices or experiences more significant than others. When you laugh and when you cry, when you are alone against the world or with the world on your side. The people you loved and left, those who betrayed and those who returned. All contributes to the final result. Almost nothing in existence depends entirely on our will, and all the steps taken in life..." He stopped. "Did you hear that?"

They stood in silence, trying to catch even the slightest noise in the now sinister voice of the wind. Soon the unmistakable cry of a Cruachan gave him the creeps.

"He's smelling us."

"They are waiting," Araya said, pointing straight ahead. From then on, the roof of branches and leaves that had been protecting them had been thinned, destroyed, so as to allow the light of the cloudy gray sky to penetrate.

"He's flying over the area," the Messhuggah murmured again. "He's hunting us, the son of a bitch!"

"And what are we supposed to do, run through the traps?"

Araya shook his head. "There are no traps in the last part of the Pass. Even they must know."

"Let's go ahead then, we can't do anything else. Give it a break with philosophy and think about your skin, or what the fuck you lizards have on your bones."

Araya continued to measure the distance, until they reached two large white stones on the sides of the road. From then on, he began to walk faster, regardless of where he put his feet. Dagger realized the traps were over. Now death could only come down from above the tops of the trees, thinned out more and more, making them easy targets.

"We're going straight into a trap and we can't go back," Araya deduced. "They want us to come out, then they'll attack."

Behind them, the prey cry of the Cruachan seemed to confirm his suspicions.

"And what's the plan?"

This time Araya did not answer. He just let the chains slip along his arms. Olem got the message and pulled the sword from the scabbard on his back. Dagger wielded Redemption. So, they went out to meet their fate, while the secure twilight brought as a gift from the foliage, thinned out more and more.

"Do you think we should start to run?" Olem asked.

In response, a Cruachan emerged between the branches and hovered over their heads, as if it wanted to smell them, before flying up again and remain suspended in the air, watching close. It cast its hellish trill. Araya threw a knife. The beast dodged. It continued to follow them, deafening them with its cries.

When, from behind, they heard the creepy rustle of leaves once again, they realized that all was lost. Nine Cruachans ridden by nine Gorgors appeared and began to fly in circles above them, savoring their downfall.

"Needless to escape," Araya resigned, stopping.

"What have you in mind?" Olem asked.

"Run. Take the kids and run to the portal. It's not very far, you should make it."

"And you?"

Araya turned the chains between his fingers, silencing him with his eyes. Olem clenched his fists, then looked up and realized they had no more time.

"Damn you!" he simply said. He loaded Kugar on his shoulders and began to run.

"Follow him," Araya said.

"And what are you...?"

"I said, follow him!"

The Cruachan, which until then had just been watching over them, waiting for its companions, plunged again. Dagger threw himself to the ground, just in time to hear the hiss of its passage above his head.

"Run, damn you!" Araya boomed again.

Dagger could only run behind Olem, while the lizard covered their shoulders with his formidable chains. He landed and killed the Cruachan, however this did not intimidate the others, and soon he found himself repulsing their attacks with his saber, receding more and more under the blows of sharp claws and scimitars. A Cruachan flew around the chains and threw itself immediately against them, but Olem encircled Dagger by the shoulders and threw him to the side. He got up again, then a dart whistled through the air— the Gorgor on its saddle was targeting them with his crossbow.

"We'll never make it, we have to fight too!" Dagger cried.

In response Olem kicked him on his back and pushed him forward, falling behind with Kugar resting on his shoulder and the giant sword in the right hand. He beheaded the Cruachan as soon as it attacked him again. In a single, fluent movement he stuck the blade into the head of the Gorgor too. Dagger quickly understood the message. He ran. He found the bottom of what was left of his strength and ran, as fast as when he was just a Spider struggling for survival in the muddy streets of Melekesh. The Portal appeared, straight in front of him. The two impenetrable rows of trees that had led them there were almost suddenly sucked into the vortex of light and darkness, melted with the high rock walls that flanked it. It was far away, yet so damn close. Dagger regained hope and ran even faster, trusting in the darkness into the light. But he turned around and saw that a Cruachan had grabbed Olem by the shoulders, pulling him in flight. He stopped, looking at the lifeless body of Kugar lying on the ground, abandoned by the Dracon just before the attack.

I'm not a coward! he told himself. I've never been!

He watched the Portal one last time, then spun on his heels. Looking to the sky, he saw Olem piercing the Cruachan's chest and hoisting himself on its back, knocking the Gorgor that sat on it with a kick in the teeth. He glided to the ground with the beast dripping with blood, and slid in the dust until he reached Araya. He limped to his side, then, arms at hands, the two Dracons unleashed hell and tried to resist to the last. They surely didn't need him. As Guardians, they only had to sacrifice their lives to give him as much time as possible.

Dagger reached Kugar. He loaded her body on his shoulders and ran back toward the portal. It was not long, before the Cruachans renounced their revenge against Olem and Araya to throw themselves against him, driven by the lashes of their dark knights. When he saw the whole squadron come to meet him, he realized his flight was over before it began. He felt the fetid breath of death on the neck. He did not even turn when three sharp claws penetrated into his back, sticking between his ribs. He tried to scream, but couldn't. He found himself lifted from the ground as blood flooded one of his lungs. He crushed his suffering under the heel of will so not to drop Kugar to the ground. The portal was already far away.

I had almost made it, he thought, almost. He looked up and saw that the Cruachan was ridden by the Divine himself. He could hear him laughing of his silly claim to survive the long hunting. He tortured him with the shock of Mayem while the Cruachan scorched his scalp with his spout. It was only the beginning, he thought, of what awaited him.

He felt Kugar breathe in his arms. He smiled. She was still alive.

Hang on, at least you! Don't you ever leave me.

Then a blinding purple light swept the world and time stood still. His sight faded. He could no longer feel fatigue or pain, fear or torment. Light passed through him from side to side and permeated throughout the world. He heard the Divine's scream of agony, as a strong wind swept away the Cruachans, as well as the Gorgors who sat on them. A lightning flashed, burning them alive. He heard their agony and terror, and saw their charred skeletons dashed without remedy. He felt a strong heat and immediately after a chill, while the claws that had gripped him, lifeless, let him go. Dagger fell to the ground and rolled over. He encircled Kugar by the shoulders and breathed in her hair, bittersweet smell in the middle of hell, then continued to drag her on toward the portal. In front of him, he saw the Divine rising, just a shadow against the purple haze. The shiny beast went out to meet him, growling with its ivory tusks, and staring with the one burning eye. Two huge wings overshadowed the forest, covered with feathers that had all possible shades from the bright white of pearls to the purple in the sky after sunset, as well as the fur that covered the immense body of a wolf. "Crowley!" he roared, shaking the entire world. "Why, Crowley?"

The Divine laughed in lucid madness, raising his sword to the god, but Angra snapped him by the chest, shaking him furiously. Mayem armor's pieces flew everywhere, uncovering the body of the last Warrior king, devastated by the living death. Dagger closed his eyes. He crawled in his own blood to the portal, because he could not walk, then felt himself lifted and dragged in flight. He picked up what was left of his strength to observe the face of his savior: the gleaming wolfish fangs; the thick shiny coat. It was a terrifying and wonderful sight, as dawn in a battlefield after a night of war. He felt good. He felt at peace. He did not fear anything. In that moment, he could surrender to the superior will and let his fate slid out of his hands, given he had ever had control on it. Everything was perfect. He was intoxicated by the endless relief, such as sleep after a long effort, the swig of water that extinguished thirst.  
The portal was in front of them. Exhausted, Dagger fainted and surrendered to the embrace, this time pleasant, of the great silence.

He felt better, as he died.

* * * * *

Stone, cold and smooth, under his hands.

"Oh no, not again!" He heard a laugh, slow and sarcastic, and looked up.

The light in the wind was high above him, watching his every move. "Now that you've found out you can come back to life as many times as you want, you just can't resist the temptation to die every ten minutes, can't you?"

"Hello Dad," Konkra said, standing up.

"Yeah. Dad," Karkenos replied. "I have to admit it feels strange to be called that."

"Oh, you have to admit a lot of things. I couldn't wait to die! I have so many questions for you that I don't even know where to start."

"Really? Like what?"

"Araya said that—"

"Oh, perfect! Didn't we just lack the fucking lizard prince breaking my balls!" Karkenos broke.

Konkra was blown away. "Wasn't it you who hated bad language?"

"Yes, but those lizards have the rare ability to make me lose my patience."

Konkra smiled. "You are afraid of him," he said, as the light remained silent. "Yes. He scares the hell out of you."

"See, my son. In many cultures and philosophies, of yours and other worlds, the lizard is seen as a symbol of wisdom for his unending search for light. A lizard would stay in the light even at the cost to burn."

"I'm not following you."

"Just digressing." He paused. "Where did you meet him?" he asked then. "No, wait, don't tell me: you have gone through that sick thing Messhuggahs built up to keep the two worlds separate, right?"

"The Death Pass?"

"Yeah, the Death Pass! Now sit down and tell me what he told you."

Konkra sat in front of the eye of light and patiently, word for word, told him all that had happened since their last meeting. Only then, he remembered that the light had once said he could see everything through his eyes. He realized that, in that way, he was just trying to understand his point of view about the whole thing. His thoughts were impenetrable to him. Could he really lie to that entity? Could he keep something hidden, or was he just bluffing? Playing dice with a fellow in the guild was different; there were facial expressions, the subtle movements of the eyes to interpret, but with a light in the wind, the exercise a bit more difficult. Could he read in his mind even now?

"What was I before I was born?" he asked, concluding. "You don't think of me as a son, only as a mean to achieve your ultimate goal. Getting back inside the body from which Angra kicked you out."

Karkenos kept silent. "I appreciate the elegance of the lizard. He has refrained from judging you. Those you call Olem and Kugar, on the other hand, have talked about things of which they don't understand. Do you really think they know about you more than me, who created you? I, who have crossed the abyss of time to get you?"

"What will happen to me once I—"

"You will die. You will die once I have used you. I will squeeze you like a juicy fruit to draw the blood needed to give new life to my body. I'll leave you there, empty, and life as you know it will no longer continue."

"And after hearing such a thing, you're still expecting me to help you?"

"Yes. For many good reasons."

"I'd like to hear them."

"How many times did you find yourself wishing the end of this life more than anything else?"

Konkra was blown away. "This is irrelevant," he answered. "Araya said that a real death is not what awaits me. He says I'll become again what I was before I was born, so we're back to the starting point. What was I before I was born?"

Karkenos giggled again. He hated him more and more each time he did it.

"To be born, to die! You're still watching the whole thing with your mortal eyes. This is your problem, and mine. Asking someone to talk to about your mortal nature is like asking..." He stopped.

"You can't think about a proper metaphor, right?"

"Well, it's like asking someone something about which he doesn't know a thing. You still don't understand the fundamental element of the whole matter. You are my son. Only my son. The son of a god."

"And the son of a god lives forever?"

"No," the light replied. "A force that has lived through all eternity, even as you are, lives since forever. It has always been."

Konkra felt a chill, as his father continued. "You still remember that feeling of having already been in the temple of Adramelech, in the depths of the desert? As if it was not the first time you were there?"

"I had already been there."

"Yep."

"And what happened, there?"

"A lot of horrible things, my son. I was there, and you too. We've known each other since before you were born, the lizard is right about that. But you don't remember."

"He never said that."

"So I tell you. Your present memory is nothing but a grain of sand in the desert. It begins from the moment you came out of your mother's violated womb. It's really a shame. All those memories, all that knowledge, gone up in smoke. Don't you worry. With time, everything will settle down. A force that has lived through all eternity has always lived, the name itself states it. You were never born, you've always been. Wait till you see the prison Araya and his friends are going to build around you. Wait to understand their real intentions. They are not going to do anything different from the Gorgors and the Divine, who wanted to pierce your chest with a Mayem knife and imprison you forever. The Guardians will do it differently, but the essence will be the same. Keep you away from what you were born to be. After all, haven't you ever wondered what lurks in that dagger?"

"In Redemption?"

"Just as you called it. Don't you wonder why it obeys only you?"

"It's a living weapon. Someone is hiding in there."

"In a way, yes."

"I'm not that stupid, I realized that. Some weapons can—"

"Some metals, please," his father corrected. "The Mayem, specifically. The same that composes the funeral equipment of the Divine."

"Whatever!" Konkra impatiently replied. "Some metals may contain souls. Who is hiding in Redemption?"

"Someone about whom you care a lot."

"Seeth?"

"Yes."

"Seriously?"

"No!" Karkenos laughed again. "Come on, how would it be possible? No, in there lies the soul of a key figure in your life. Perhaps the most important. Now, you'll ask what that has to do with what you call your death, or what will remain of you once I have used your blood. Well, you only need to know that, in that moment, only thanks to that dagger your real life, your divine life, will start again. What you have been, what you will be. One day, my son, we will climb once again the sacred stairs of the temple of Adramelech to meet our destiny, to finish what we just begun that distant day. Ah. I can't wait."

Konkra cocked his head sideways. "Uh?"

"You will soon discover the meaning of these words," Karkenos went on. "Memory. We were talking about memory, right? It will be back. Because bringing you back to their goddamn Fortress, the Guardians have made the last mistake they could commit. They think they are smart, but they are not. They're just desperate and desperate people make stupid choices. Soon my true servants will find you and it will be Them to show you the way."

"Them? Don't tell me the umpteenth dark knights in search of the predestined boy?"

Karkenos laughed. "I'm afraid not. It's a promise, the promise of a god, that you can write in stars. I think Them will amaze you."

Dagger knew that his time in the middle earth was again at an end, when the light at the end of the world enveloped him. He saw again the terrible face of Skyrgal framed by deformed goat horns. But this time he saw, reflected in his father's eyes, even his own true appearance. His real appearance. He was not a Burzum like Skyrgal, nor as a Mastodon like Angra.

For a moment, he had the absolute certainty that reflected in those eyes was the malicious grin of Ktisis.

Then everything disappeared and the big blind was the premise of his next resurrection.

* * * * *
'However, we have clear evidence that the first real meeting between Dagger and those who, out of respect for the reader, I will keep on defining 'Them', happened that night when the boy, or god, or vector of Skyrgal's blood or whatever you agreed to call him, went to his mother's grave in the Glade, to pay homage. We don't know all the details of the story, but thanks to my inquiries I can safely declare at least two details. One. Dagger had already met one of 'Them' before then, in particular during the difficult journey that took him from the world Beyond to Candehel-mas. Only that he still did not know. Second, everyone had lied about his true nature, some willingly, some not willingly. And this is a matter so delicate that it cannot be dealt so openly on a written text. Especially if you do not want to incur some inconvenience such as, for example, happened to my distinguished colleagues, the Guardians Reali and Popester, who have recently disappeared in mysterious circumstances after having argued that Dagger was the reincarnation of the god Ktisis.

I'm not advocating anything, nor moving any charges. I've never made enemies, I've always found it stupid and useless. But that freedom of expression in which I have always believed, and for which I have always fought forces me to report this thesis of theirs.'

Ismah Gordon. 'Uncompleted works', published post-mortem.
Note from the author and boring thanks page.

Many of the names used in this novel for characters and places have a double reference. Some refer to demons or evil forces belonging to different cultures (Adramelech, Angra, Marduk), others are inspired by characters from the sinister reputation (Crowley). At the same time, they are also the names, often deliberately maimed to improve readability (Candehel-mas, Melekesh, Tankar, Messhuggah) of heavy metal bands or songs that inspired the writing of this.

In fact, I think this is a work of heavy metal.

Finally, the shopping list that everybody put at the beginning of their work, but that out of respect for the reader I prefer to insert at the end, so those who do not want to put up with them can already close the book.

The thanks.

I thank my best friend, attendant to punctuation and enormous-pain-in-the-ass of a critic, Salvatore. With the benefit of hindsight, you must have the balls to have your best friend read your book and tell him to be sincere, with fear that he will hurt you, kill you, or set your house on fire depending on the quality of the novel. Balls that you must also have to criticize every conjunction used as a Kalashnikov in the book of your best friend, for that matter. Well, anyway, thank you. Thank you for being a friend, a drinking fellow, traveling companion, third or fourth reader, first editor and kamikaze press agent. Thanks also to his wife Sonia that somewhere, at some point, must have surely told him not to break so relentlessly my balls, mitigating the invectives of her husband on semicolons.

Thank you Daniel, equal pain in the ass and equal fervent blunder hunter, who has saved my career from untimely death in at least a couple of occasions.

Thanks Amanda at Progressive Edits for making the hell of a work with the editing.

Thank you Wirton, Wally and Ant for the last minute beta-reading, concy d'orazio for the informatics help, Vera for the graphic help.

And thanks to you, reader, whoever you are. If you arrived until here, there must surely be something wrong with you too, so I'm afraid we'll get along well. You will find my e-mail address at the beginning of the novel for critical appreciation, death threats, marriage proposals, reflections on the meaning of Redemption and light for the various characters of the novel. Usually I don't deny friendship on facebook, and in real life, to anyone who does not abuse of my unfortunately limited stock of patience for the human kind, moments of drunkenness apart.

The saga continues with 'Dagger-Blood Brothers'. Currently under revision.

I hope to see you again, otherwise it was a pleasure to meet you.

That's all folks.

Good night.
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