by Jess Lebow
“Yes,” replied the Guardian. “She is a hard one to catch. We have yearned for her, yet both you and Malil have failed to bring her to us.”
“I am sorry, my lord,” replied Pontifex.
Malil stood stock still beside the open laboratory door but did not say a word. He wished it was him lying prone on the floor, being berated. It was worse to be chastised for his failure indirectly.
“Once again, Memnarch will forgive your incompetence,” said Memnarch, “but that is only because the Creator wishes it so.” He waved his hand over his scrying pool and looked into its depths. “We have more time.”
From where he stood, Malil couldn’t see what Memnarch saw, but it apparently did not please the guardian.
“The next great convergence is coming,” the Guardian said. “The mana core is overripe. It will erupt soon. When that happens, we must be ready. We must. We must.” Memnarch ran his finger through the pool. “Memnarch is almost ready. Is not that right? Only a few more preparations to take care of, and all will be as we have planned.…” Memnarch went silent, his voice trailing off, staring intently into the pedestal.
Malil stood quietly for several minutes. Pontifex did not move from the floor, his face pressed hard against the tile.
After a long while, Memnarch spoke. “We must have her by then. Do you understand us?” He waved his hand over the pool once again.
“Yes, my lord,” replied both men in unison.
Memnarch raised his fist into the air and brought it down inside the pool. Blinkmoth serum slopped from the pedestal in a huge splash.
“Damn, damn, damn!” he shouted. Spinning away from the scrying pool, he turned to Malil. The guardian pointed at Pontifex, still prostrate on the floor. “See him out,” he said. “Memnarch must speak with the Creator again.” The Guardian raised himself to his full height. “In private.”
Malil nodded and crossed the floor to the worshipping Pontifex. “Time to go.”
Pontifex looked up at Malil, hatred in his eyes, but he got up off his knees and followed Malil from the laboratory. “I will bring you the elf, my lord,” he said over his shoulder on the way out. “This you can count on.”
The metal man led the vedalken lord down the curved corridor and waited until he was aboard the lift.
“You know the way out,” he said.
The lift descended.
Pontifex slipped silently through the floor, disappearing from sight.
* * * * *
Memnarch paced in circles around his laboratory. The clicking of his sharpened limbs mingled with his words as he spoke.
“Things were easier when Memnarch and the creator were the only creatures on the plane.” Memnarch laughed. “Yes. Yes, they were. There were occasional visitors, and sometimes the Creator left for long stretches at a time.” Memnarch pointed his finger in the air. “Still, he always returned.
“Now things are different. Memnarch has explored the entire plane. There is no more sense of wonder.” He shrugged. “There was not much to it really, at least, not before Memnarch brought in the test subjects. Back then, the only unique things on the plane were the blinkmoths.”
He listened.
“Sure the towers and chambers you created for us were interesting, but how much can an observer really learn from a tower? The blinkmoths, though, they could be studied, dissected, and experimented upon. Memnarch found the most amazing things. Yes he did.” He giggled, rubbing his hands together. “Memnarch discovered their separation anxiety. Yes. And found their threshold for distance.”
He cocked his head, listening again.
“Yes, Memnarch remembers the first experiments. The solitary moth taken more than a few meters from the other moths became frantic, smashing around inside its containment cube.” He laughed again. “As if it could build up enough momentum to break the glass walls.” Memnarch lifted an empty containment cube from the desk. He looked at it with all six of his enhanced eyes, admiring his own handiwork. “It could not, of course, Memnarch had seen to that. Eventually the moth expired. Separated for too long and at such a distance proved to be fatal.
“At first, Memnarch was saddened by the deaths of these delicate creatures. They had died of loneliness.” He shrugged. Putting the cube back on the desk, he headed across the lab. “That is what led us to populate Mirrodin with test subjects. Yes. To eliminate loneliness and to have more creatures to experiment upon.
“But that was a long time ago. A long time ago.”
Memnarch strapped himself into his apparatus once again. Before he had the device, he had created a portable tank that would deliver the serum to him in measured doses throughout the day. It was uncomfortable and limited his movements around his laboratory, so he preferred to simply dose himself while he worked within Panopticon. If he needed to leave his fortress to tend the soul traps or take specimens off the mycosynth growths, he wore the tanks. Today, though, he was working hard and would have no time to leave.
The straps came down around him, and he guided the articulated arms into place.
The door to the laboratory slid open, and Malil entered.
Memnarch looked away from what he was doing, examining his servant as he came into the lab. “Damn him,” said the Guardian. “He’s so perfect, so metal. Oh, to be made only of metal again.” He sighed. “If only to be able to remember what it was like to be blissfully ignorant again.”
Memnarch tilted his head, nodded.
“True, the serum has expanded Memnarch’s intellect, but who would have known that consciousness could be such a burden? You never spoke of such things.”
“Master, is everything all right?” asked Malil as he stepped closer.
Memnarch channeled mana into the device. “Yes. Yes.” He turned away. “Perhaps achieving the state of planeswalker relieves some of the strain. Memnarch hopes so. It is a lot of work to struggle with the responsibilities of running an entire plane.”
He pushed his head back into the soft cradle, and the red lights raced over his skin.
Memnarch looked across the room at Malil.
The metal man stood stock still, watching.
“Do you understand what we are doing?” asked Memnarch.
“Yes.”
“Perhaps soon we will let you taste the serum.”
Glissa’s eyes adjusted to the dark inside of the lacuna. The mossy ground glowed as it had before, but its light was far dimmer than that of the mana core.
“Can you see where you’re going?” she asked Bosh as he bounded up the tunnel, carrying her and Slobad.
“Yes,” came the metal man’s reply.
Bruenna hovered along behind, just off Bosh’s shoulder. She looked up the lacuna, and when Glissa looked over the golem’s shoulder they were almost face to face.
“How’s your leg?” asked the elf.
“It hurts.”
“How long will that spell keep you in the air?”
“Long enough to get us back to Lumengrid—if we don’t run into any vedalken or levelers.”
“Don’t look now.” Slobad stuck his scrawny arm out in front of him, pointing down the tunnel. “Well, maybe should look, huh?”
Glissa turned to see the point where the two paths in the lacuna joined, heading up the surface as one tunnel. Coming around the corner, spears held high, was the front of the vedalken army.
“Hurry,” shouted Bruenna. “If we can get past these few before the rest of them make the corner, we might be able to get by.”
Glissa could feel Bosh’s whole body rumble as he spoke. “Good plan.” The golem took off at double speed.
“Hope crazy elf can do that trick again,” said the goblin as they closed on the slowly growing group of blue-skinned soldiers. “Better figure out how to make it happen, huh?”
“Yeah, right,” replied the elf.
* * * * *
Marek turned the corner and looked down the other passage of the blue lacuna.
“There she is.”
; “Sir, we’ve cut them off,” said a soldier beside him.
“Lord Pontifex will be pleased.”
“What should we do?”
“We should …” Marek looked back over his shoulder.
More vedalken soldiers filled the tunnel. It would be some time before his entire squad could march up the passage and join the fight, but more than a dozen soldiers already stood by his side, and more were arriving every minute.
“Sir?” asked the soldier.
“We should delay them, give the rest of the squad enough time to catch up with us. Don’t let them get past, and don’t let them go back down the lacuna. When more of our soldiers arrive, we’ll capture the elf girl and kill the others.”
“Sir, there are more than enough of us here to capture an elf, a goblin, a human, and a rusty old metal golem.”
“Perhaps.” Marek looked into the warrior’s eyes. “But we will do things my way, and you’re going to follow my orders. Right?”
“Yes sir,” replied the soldier. “We will delay them until the rest of the army arrives.”
Marek smiled. “Good. Make sure the others have their orders.”
* * * * *
“Are you sure we can get through?” asked Glissa as they scrambled up the lacuna.
“No,” replied Bruenna, “but what choice do we have?”
“We could go back.”
“The levelers have surely followed us into the lacuna. We’ll be trapped between two armies.”
Glissa looked ahead. The vedalken had lined up shoulder to shoulder, ten wide, across the tunnel, waiting. A second line had formed, and a third was beginning behind them as more soldiers came around the corner.
“What are they doing?” asked the elf.
“Clogging the tunnel,” said Slobad. “They hold us here for levelers. Cut us to little bits. Dead goblin. Dead crazy elf, huh?”
Bruenna nodded. “He’s right.”
“What do we do? We can’t fight all of them.”
“No,” said Bosh, “but we can bowl them over.”
“What—?” Glissa’s question was cut short.
Bosh lifted both she and Slobad off of his shoulders. A huge section of rusted iron opened on his chest, and the metal golem stuffed the elf and the goblin inside.
“You might get dizzy.” Bosh replaced the metal piece.
Glissa sat, knees jammed against her chest, in complete darkness. The heavy thumping of Bosh’s footfalls echoed loud inside the chamber.
“Is this going to work?” she asked.
“Don’t ask Slobad,” grunted Slobad. “Slobad don’t know what crazy golem doing.”
* * * * *
Bruenna flew behind the stomping golem. “What’s your plan, Bosh?”
“Stay behind me,” he said, “and stay close.”
With that, Bosh pulled his arms in to his sides. To Bruenna, it looked as if they were retracting. His head did the same thing, dropping down inside his body and disappearing from view.
The metal giant took three more bounding steps and leaped into the air. When he came down, he’d retracted his legs, and his whole body had turned into a perfect ball. The metal sphere rolled at the waiting lines of vedalken.
“Good plan,” muttered Bruenna, and she followed the rolling golem as he crashed into the soldiers.
Spears, helmets, and other accoutrements went flying, making a terrific noise as they smashed into one another and came down in a heap. Those soldiers who didn’t immediately jump from the way were squashed flat under the weight of the rolling metal ball.
Bruenna slipped in behind, following Bosh as he bowled the vedalken down like a patch of razor grass.
* * * * *
Marek couldn’t believe his eyes. One minute, there was a golem charging down the lacuna at him and his men. The next, a giant ball careened into his soldiers. Blue-skinned, four-armed vedalken were knocked every which way, many of them maimed or killed as the ball rolled over them and through the ranks. Marek dived out of the way to avoid being smashed.
Getting up from the ground, the vedalken lieutenant dusted himself off. He watched the still rolling ball and the flying human wizard as they passed swiftly through his shattered ranks, and continued up the lacuna toward Lumengrid.
“What was that?”
Moans were all he got in response.
* * * * *
Glissa braced herself against the inside of the golem’s empty chest. The steady beat of Bosh’s feet on the metal ground was interrupted by several loud slamming noises and one long grinding sound, then the world began to tumble. She wasn’t able to see anything in the lightless chest cavity, so she had no way of knowing which side was up. Whenever her head hit something hard, she figured she was upside down. Her legs, hands, and hair had become tangled with Slobad. Eventually, the two companions clung together for dear life.
“Slobad scared,” the goblin shouted.
“Me—”
Glissa’s response was cut short when her back smashed into something hard, knocking the wind from her lungs.
“—too,” she finished when she had regained enough composure to scream.
There were several loud thumps that sounded like something hitting the outside of the chest cavity. Abruptly, the tumbling stopped.
“Thank the maker,” said Glissa.
She had landed on her head. She was sure of this only because her neck hurt, and her feet seemed to be touching nothing but thin air. Flipping over, she untangled her body from Slobad’s and lifted herself up off the dark ground.
“Goblins not made for rolling, huh?” said the goblin. “Slobad sick.”
His words were followed by a gurgling sound, and the splash of liquid on the chamber floor. Glissa felt the wave of fluid flood over her feet.
“Nice, Slobad.”
The door opened and light poured in.
In the dark, Glissa hadn’t noticed how dizzy she had become. When she saw the wall of the lacuna, her head spun one way, and her eyes the other. She vomited.
Bosh’s stubby digits reached in and pulled the two nauseous riders out into the light.
“You must stop that,” said the golem. “It tickles.”
Glissa looked up at Bosh then leaned over his hand and threw up once again.
“Thanks for the warning,” she said. “What did you do?”
“We can cover that ground later,” interjected Bruenna. The wizard hitched her thumb over her shoulder. “Right now we’ve got a bunch of angry vedalken to outrun.”
Bosh lifted Glissa and Slobad onto his shoulders and took off along the tunnel.
Glissa clung tightly to the seam in Bosh’s neck. The fresher air and the light were helping her to regain some equilibrium, but she was still a little queasy. Slobad looked even worse off. Every few steps, his limp little goblin body threatened to fall from the golem’s shoulder. He hung on with all his might, his knuckles turning pale against his rumpled flesh. Every time one of Bosh’s feet landed on the ground, Slobad let out a little moan.
Bruenna hovered behind them. “You two going to make it?”
Glissa looked up, shrugged, then nodded.
“Good, because once we get up the Pool of Knowledge, we’ve still got to get out of Lumengrid.”
Glissa grabbed her head. “I’d forgotten about that. I’m not sure if I can make it.”
Slobad gagged. “Me neither.”
The company continued up the lacuna. The mossy stuff on the ground began to give way to simple metal, and the tunnel grew darker. The vedalken warriors were nowhere in sight, though Glissa knew they couldn’t be too far behind.
“We’re nearing the top,” exclaimed Bosh.
The giant metal golem came to a halt. On the floor, the edge of the tunnel rippled. An opalescent oval broke the regular metallic sheen before them—the bottom of the Pool of Knowledge.
Glissa looked at it. “I didn’t like this on the way out.”
“It’s easier on the way in,” said Bosh.
&n
bsp; The golem lifted his two passengers off his shoulders then knelt down. He poked his finger at the floor, and the silvery substance gave way, letting the golem’s whole hand pass through. Waves rippled off in every direction, as if a drop of water had hit a puddle.
“That all serum, huh?” said Slobad.
Bruenna nodded.
“But how does it stay there? Why doesn’t it just drain into the lacuna?” asked the elf.
The human wizard shrugged. “If I had to guess, I’d say magic.”
The sound of booted feet coming up the lacuna echoed up the tunnel.
Slobad dashed for the silvery wall. “Good enough for Slobad,” he said. The goblin dived upward into the serum.
The wall wavered but none of it came into the tunnel.
Bruenna levitated into it as well, disappearing from view after a bloop, bloop.
Glissa looked after her friend. “I don’t know, Bosh—”
“Time to go,” interrupted the golem and shoved the elf into the serum.
Glissa slipped through the wall, her mouth still open from her last word. The world around her was thick and slow. She felt the weight of the pool on top of her, and her chest seemed empty. Her ears felt as if someone had his hands cupped over them, and everything had gone silent.
Opening her eyes, Glissa looked up. The world was blurry. The top of the pool looked like the wall she had just passed through, only it was a long way away and wasn’t in focus. Ahead she could see a small, frantic green thing that looked like a child’s drawing. That must be Slobad, she thought. Behind him, a fluidly moving blue streak raced toward the surface. Though nothing was recognizable, Glissa knew this must be Bruenna.
Turning around, she watched Bosh transform from a disjointed reflection beyond the wall to a ghostly blob as he slipped into the serum. The golem moved toward her in a rush. Grabbing Glissa by the arm, he forced her up to the surface.
Kicking her legs, and with Bosh’s help, Glissa rose through the thick liquid. Her lungs burned, and her mouth was full of serum. She wanted to spit it out and take in a big breath. Looking up again, she tried to focus on getting to the surface. It seemed such a long way away. The pool hadn’t seemed so deep on the way down.
Glissa kicked harder, pulling free of Bosh’s grasp. Still, the surface came no closer. Reflexively, she tried to take in a breath, but there was no air, and all she managed to do was collapse her cheeks. She felt trapped, panicked. She might drown in this pool. Her heart pounded in her ears, and her limbs ached with fatigue.