by Jess Lebow
Nim flesh splashed from the end of Glissa’s sword. The levelers were closing in, and she was trapped. On one side, she and her companions fought with an unending mob of undying monstrosities. On the other, the artifact creatures that had so efficiently killed Glissa’s family and best friend were coming on.
“Should we make a run for it?” shouted Glissa. She brought her sword around again, smashing a nim in the face and taking the top half of its head off. The creature lost its balance momentarily then continued up the hill, swinging its bony claws.
“Not enough time,” replied Bruenna. She too fought the nim. She used the reach of her wickedly barbed halberd to great advantage, cutting down the undead before they were within reach. The wizard looked over her shoulder. “Even if we had seen them an hour ago, we couldn’t have outrun them. They’re just too fast.”
“Couldn’t you fly us from here?” asked the elf between decapitating blows.
Bruenna shook her head. “I’m afraid we didn’t bring along enough of the right magic for this situation.”
Glissa looked to Bruenna.
The blue wizard shrugged. “Flight just isn’t in the cards for us today.”
Bosh stepped into Glissa’s field of view. Kicking out, he knocked a dozen of the nim backward, sending them tumbling down the slope. But behind them there were more shambling monsters, and these ones packed in so tightly that the falling undead were caught before they fell too far. Landing on their brethren, the kicked nim returned.
“Bruenna is right,” said the golem. “We can’t outrun the levelers, and even if we could, where would we go?”
Glissa shrugged. “Some place where they’re not?”
“Good plan, huh?” interjected Slobad.
Bosh shook his head. “We came here to get inside the Mephidross.” He lifted his heavy arm and pointed out over the swamp. The moons were still rising in the sky, but there was plenty of light to see what Bosh was looking at.
There in the middle of swamp, surrounded on all sides by foul liquid, stood the corrupted and pockmarked façade of the Vault of Whispers. It seemed like a long time since Glissa had been inside the fortress in the middle of the swamp. But it couldn’t have been more than a couple of moon cycles. Glissa thought about the girl she had been when she had first entered that foul place. She was angry. She wanted revenge for the death of her parents. And she had wanted to set things right, set herself free from the pain of her loss by seeing that justice was served.
She was different now. Discovering that the plane she lived on was hollow had changed her. Discovering that the force pursuing her had a name—Memnarch—had changed her even more. Standing here, on the threshold of the swamp once again, she realized that she still wanted the same things she did when she had been here last. Now she wanted more. Not only did she want to set herself free, but she wanted to free everyone else as well.
Glissa looked up at the golem. “You’re right,” she said. “Just because it isn’t easy to get inside doesn’t mean we should stop trying.”
Bosh nodded his approval.
The group of elves, humans, goblin and golem was pushed back over the lip of the slope, back up onto the plain. The nim hordes had filled the entire hillside, but the flood of new undead bodies ceased, and the grotesque liquid at the bottom of the hill became still.
“Now that we’ve decided to stick it out, that just leaves us with one problem,” said Glissa after bashing aside the claws of an advancing nim.
“What?” asked Slobad. “That you still crazy elf, huh?”
“How do we fight the levelers and the zombies at the same time?”
No one had time to answer. The levelers broke through the end of the razor grass and charged across the open plain. In the blink of an eye the killing devices were upon them, and Bruenna’s wizards turned to face the new threat.
Blue energy arced out over the plain, the light reflected in the metallic plates, catching the levelers across their chests, making their steering sails look green and their silver bodies a dull gray.
The white moon had been the first to rise, leaving the world suited in its natural colors. The next up, not more than a few second later, was the blue. It tainted the white, exaggerating the shadows, deepening the contrast between colors, and bathing everything in a harsh, unflattering light. As the black and red moons rose, colors began to mix and fade, turning everything once again to a ruddy brown.
“This light is making casting magic difficult,” said Bruenna.
The elf and the human stood back to back. Glissa fought off the nim, and Bruenna threw spells at the charging levelers. Sandwiched between the two threats, the allies bunched tightly together. For a brief moment there was a separation between the good and the bad. Though they were squashed between levelers and nim, Glissa knew which way to point her sword. Then both groups pushed in, squeezing between the friends, cutting off allies.
Glissa, Bruenna, Slobad, Bosh, Al-Hayat, and all the human wizards were completely overrun.
Levelers rolled over warriors. Their scythe blades cut down the humans like they were long strands of razor grass.
Nim scratched at eyes, sank their teeth into live flesh, and piled on top of anyone they could reach, using their superior numbers as a weapon.
Glissa fought from side to side, parrying scythe blades to her right and rotten flesh to her left. The three distinct forces swirled and mixed together. It looked like a formal ball, everyone dancing and turning and moving in a great undulating mass.
The nim continued climbing over the lip of the hill, swarming over the plain to get into the fight. Six more came after Glissa, joining the four already slashing at her with their plague-infested claws, poisonous gas rising from their backs. From behind she fought off a pair of levelers. One would strike from the left, then the other would strike a moment later from the right. They took turns, creating a sort of scissoring motion with their sharp blades.
She could only watch as the six shambling monstrosities came on, barely able to keep herself alive without having to worry about more nim. As they closed in, Glissa fought off the urge to close her eyes. She had no control over this situation, and she didn’t want to watch the undead beasts tear her apart piece by piece. All the while, as she fought, she knew that sooner or later the sheer numbers would overwhelm her.
That moment had come sooner than she had hoped.
The nim reached out. Glissa dug down deep, trying to make her blade move faster—but she was at her physical limit. Lunging forward, the elf skewered two of them with one blow.
“I’ll take you all with me,” she shouted.
Her sword was lodged on a bone inside one of the two nim. Slime and rotten flesh covered the hilt of her sword. Yanking with all of her might, Glissa leaned back—and she lost her grip. Falling backward from the force of her pulling, the elf landed flat on her back, looking up at eight nim.
A pair of scythe blades closed just over her face, and for a brief moment, Glissa was grateful for having fallen. If she had been standing when those blades closed down, she would have surely lost half of her left leg—if not more. But that moment passed as the nim closed in.
The first of the undead creatures stepped on her stomach, and Glissa tightened her abdomen to avoid being crushed. Then another stepped on her, and another. The nim were surprisingly light, their bodies made up of little more than desiccated bone and rotten flesh, but they were heavy when all eight of them climbed on top of her.
Pulling her arms up to her sides and twisting away, Glissa curled up into a ball. Three of the nim lost their footing, slipping off and landing easily on the ground. But the others continued to trample her. She was pinned, trapped under the onslaught.
What a funny way to go, she thought, crushed to death by a mob of undead.
The crushing footsteps continued. The weight kept her lungs pinned down, and she had a difficult time breathing. The hard ground underneath was unforgiving, and it pushed back where the nims’ feet pushed her down
. With each successive attempt, her breath became shallower, and her vision began to narrow. Everything on the periphery dissolved, and a dark circle began closing down.
Glissa could hear the thumping of her heart in her ears as it labored to keep up with the dwindling air supply. She could feel the soft connective tissues in her body begin to separate and pull away from bone. Pushed past their limit, they were giving way—and so was her life-force.
This was it. She would die here. Her lifeless body would be baked to jerky under the convergent moons, and within a few days the only proof of her existence on Mirrodin would be the stain her corpse left on the interlocking metal plates of the plain.
One by one, the undead creatures stepped off of her. The heavy load lifted. Glissa gasped, swallowing air in giant gulp. Even the fetid swamp gas of Mephidross tasted sweet to her starved lungs. The thumping in her ears faded away, and her vision opened again. Lifting herself up to one elbow, Glissa looked up at a still-raging fight.
The nim who had trampled over her were now locked in combat with the levelers. Their bony claws did little to the armored hide of the killing beasts. Still, the wave of putrid flesh surged forward, throwing themselves fearlessly on the invaders.
Getting to her feet, Glissa found her sword and found Bruenna fighting a pair of levelers. The wizard bashed away attacks from all sides with a practiced ease. Except for the look of utter concentration on her face, the woman’s movements were as calm and smooth as if she were doing nothing more taxing than preparing a light spell.
Glissa stepped up beside her friend, engaging one of the levelers.
Bruenna’s staff came around and a huge bolt of energy shot from the end. The magic struck the leveler and spread out. Jagged lines of blue power crackled along the seams in the artifact creature’s armor, and the leveler stopped dead in its tracks. Its scythe blades seized up, and its steering sail went limp.
Then the buzzing lines of energy slipped inside the creature. It was as if they had been sucked up in a giant breath from the leveler’s belly. The device shuddered once, then with a giant clang, things started falling off. Armored plates dropped to the ground. Scythe blades twisted and rolled away, making a satisfying ring as they hit the metal surface of the plain. All the plates and pieces that made up the insides of the leveler suddenly let go. With what seemed a final coughing gasp, the artifact creature splashed to the ground—completely dismantled, now nothing more than a collection of spare parts.
Glissa sidestepped as the shiny bits of the leveler’s insides spread out on the ground before her. Dodging an ill-timed strike by the other killing device, the elf twirled the Sword of Kaldra over her head. Grasping it in both hands as it came around, she brought the sharpened, magical edge of the blade down on the leveler’s head. The legendary sword parted polished metal as easily as it parted rotting nim flesh. Gears strained, and springs groaned, but they couldn’t overcome the might that Glissa had brought to bear.
With the unmistakable sound of metal crashing against metal, the leveler fell facedown onto the ground.
“What happened?” asked Glissa. “Why’d the nim stop attacking us?”
As if in answer, a trio of undead creatures lurched toward the two women.
“They didn’t.” Bruenna twirled her staff.
Glissa was faster. Bringing to mind the verdigris spires and thorny growths of the Tangle, the elf pulled in mana and funneled it into a spell. The ground shook and tiny motes of green light seeped from the cracks between the metal plates on the floor of the plain. The zombies before her, caught within the maelstrom of magic, withered and melted, dropping before they got close enough to strike with a blade.
“Why didn’t you do that before?” asked Bruenna.
Glissa shrugged. “Magic is a delicate art form,” she said, a smile blossoming on her face. “It takes a lot of concentration—”
“You mock me now, but—” Bruenna was interrupted by a clawing nim. She cut the shambling beast in half then continued. “We should have this conversation later—” she glanced around, indicating the battle raging around them—“perhaps when we’re not in such immediate danger.”
Straight ahead, Glissa spotted Bosh, his head rising high above the rest of the battle. Al-Hayat stood beside him, Slobad on his shoulders. They were surrounded by a ring of attackers, metal and putrid flesh alike.
Meanwhile, all around, nim battled with levelers.
“So they haven’t stopped attacking us,” said Glissa, “but they have started attacking the levelers as well.”
“To their eyes, we all look like invaders,” replied Bruenna. “The nim don’t care much for who is chasing whom. As long as we’re in their swamp, they’ll fight to keep us all out.”
Glissa bashed aside another shambling undead. “Then let’s let the nim deal with the levelers.”
* * * * *
Malil stood knee deep in rotten flesh. He had no conflict with these creatures. Why were they getting in his way? Didn’t they know who he was? Didn’t they know how badly he needed to get the elf girl?
The metal man raised a heavy sword in one hand and brought it down on an advancing group of zombies. Gummy flesh parted, and the oncoming ghouls fell to the ground in a bloody mess.
“Flesh is weak,” snarled Malil, cutting down another score of slogging creatures with a single flick of his wrist. “You will not stand in my way.”
The rest of his levelers were having an equally easy time with thenim, but the sheer numbers were staggering. Where a scythe blade cut one down, two more stepped up to take its place. There was an unending supply for these undead creatures, and they swarmed in. To make matters worse, in order to stop them from coming, a leveler had to cut the beast to shreds. Simple wounds didn’t stop their advance as they did with elves or humans—or sometimes other levelers.
“Damn,” shouted Malil.
He didn’t mind cutting down the beasts. He didn’t care who he had to slay to get what he wanted, but all this fighting was inefficient. He didn’t care if these creatures lived or died. He’d be glad to oblige them if what they wanted was a second death. Right now all he wanted was the elf girl.
But he couldn’t reach her.
He’d waited in this miserable swamp, separated from his master and the serum he desired, now only to be stopped by piles and piles of weak, rotting flesh.
Across the battlefield, Malil could see the elf and her companions. They too fought the nim.
“They like no one,” he said, taking the head from a desiccated figure that looked as if it once might have been an elf.
It appeared as if the elf was making her way toward the swamp. Caught between Malil and the nim, Glissa had chosen the undead, and now they were trying to once again get away from him. Driven by his desire, Malil pressed forward, urging his troops to cut their way to his prize. But the harder he fought the more his devices were mired in putrid flesh, and his levelers came to a lurching halt.
As Glissa disappeared over the edge of the slope, down toward the swamp, Malil felt his burning desire well up again in his belly.
“I must have her,” he said to an undead humanlike creature. Malil stabbed his greatsword through the creature’s belly and pulled it straight up, cutting the beast in half. “I must. I must.”
* * * * *
Slipping over the lip of the slope, the only living flesh creatures in all of Mephidross fought their way toward the water. It was a hard fight, and Glissa’s sword arm was nearly numb from smashing nim to bits.
Bruenna had lost many of her wizards in the battle, but she had managed to consolidate the remaining few, and the group followed the elf down toward the swamp. Al-Hayat and Slobad were next, and Bosh came last.
The big, mostly metal golem moved from the plain onto the downward slope. The ground was slick with vile things—rotten organs, broken shards of bone, melted flaps of rubbery flesh, black fluids, red gobs of meat, and yellow bits of putrescence. Bosh stepped on a pile of this slippery stuff, and his foo
t slid out from under him. His arms flailing, he tried to bring his other foot around, but it too sank into the filth. With a tremendous clank, the iron golem hit the ground on his back.
“Look out,” shouted Slobad. The goblin pointed to the falling golem.
His arms waving and his legs kicked up in the air, Bosh slid down the steep slope, hydroplaning on a layer of filth. Ruined zombies worked better than grease at lubricating metal, and the big guy picked up speed as he skidded toward the swamp.
Ten paces down Bosh crashed into a line of advancing undead. Even with eight legs, the creatures weren’t nimble enough to get from the way of the sliding golem. With a crunch and a splat, Bosh ran over them, squashing the nim flat against the hill and adding more lubrication to his decent.
Glissa watched this out of control slide. Where he slid, he cut a swath, and in his wake, Bosh left a wide corridor in the middle of the marching, gas-belching nim.
“Come on,” shouted the elf. Waving her hand over her shoulder to indicate the way, Glissa jumped into the air. Kicking her legs out in front of her, she landed on her rear and slid after the golem.
The filthy swamp smell was nothing compared to the odor coming off of the flattened nim. Glissa tried to hold her breath, but it was hard enough to stay upright. Using her sword as a rudder, she sat up, moving around the larger chunks as she slid toward the swamp. Down and down she went, picking up speed.
Ahead, Bosh tumbled over once, crushing more undead into paste. The slow moving swamp creatures couldn’t get out of his way fast enough, and a mound of ruined bodies piled up before him as he approached the bottom. With a splash the giant golem slipped into the briny liquid at the edge of the swamp. A wave of black swill shot into the air. Tendrils of the stuff separated, reaching up over Bosh like a skeletal hand.
The splashed swamp water peaked. The top curled over, making the hand look like a gaping, hungry mouth. Then it fell back down to the earth with a tremendous clap. The black, viscous slime completely devoured Bosh, and he disappeared from view.