Planeshift

by J. Robert King

  The dragon clung on with damnable tenacity. His back struck the windscreen of the bridge, shattering it.

  Glass shards hailed Sisay. She shut her eyes but clung to the wheel. Flying on motion sense, she steered the ship high into the sky.

  In moments, the glass had ceased its deadly hail. Sisay opened her eyes. What she saw horrified her. No longer did Rhammidarigaaz obstruct her view. Already he had shattered the hatch and clawed his way down toward the engine core.

  * * *

  —

  With a violent fist, Rhammidarigaaz ripped wide the companionway that led to the engine room. He drew himself down. Talons sank into the inverted ceiling and dragged him deeper into the ship. He reached for the engine room bulkhead. Ruby claws tore the wood asunder.

  The room beyond was flooded with power. It limned every metal plate and shone in each mana module. It reverberated through the chamber and sluiced down around Darigaaz. The engine whined as the ship righted itself and struggled skyward. Soon, all this power would be destroyed.

  Darigaaz reached toward the thrumming machine.

  Suddenly, something appeared in the way. It seemed an animate door—too heavy, too huge to be a living thing. Still, it tickled the corners of his memory. It was not until the thing spoke, its voice like distant thunder, that the dragon remembered:

  “What have you become, Rhammidarigaaz?”

  Karn. There was but one voice in all time like it. He and Rhammidarigaaz had worked side by side in the mana rig at Shiv.

  “You once fought for Dominaria. Now you fight only for yourself.”

  The answer seemed plain: “I once was mortal, but now I am a god.”

  The metallic eyes of the silver golem fixed his. “You once were good, but now you are evil.” The metal man clomped forward, grasping the dragon’s horns. It seemed he wanted to wrestle—a ludicrous thought—but his metallic touch created a mental conduit.

  Darigaaz reeled at that touch. What was this? Divinity was awakening in Karn. Power undeniable. The silver man had lived a forgetful millennium, but now that his memories were returning, they were transforming him.

  Memory was creating this fledgling god, and with a touch, Karn awoke Darigaaz’s own memories.

  Into the Primeval’s mind came an image of a long-ago time. He was a young serpent. He flew, wings spread, above Weatherlight. They struggled to escape Serra’s Realm as it collapsed around them. Once a home for angels, the place had become a perfect hell. Its mad ruler saw foes everywhere and slew all those she could. Refugees crowded Weatherlight, the final few who would escape.

  Once, you would have sacrificed yourself to save another. Now you sacrifice everyone to save yourself.

  The Primeval’s response sounded hollow. Altruism is a mortal flaw.

  Karn replied only by dragging forth more memories:

  Darigaaz saw Rokun, sacrificed upon the magnigoth. He saw the four dragon lords sacrificed within the catacombs. He saw the hundreds of serpents sacrificed in the watery cave. And now…now every last dragon in the world was a living sacrifice to the Primevals.

  “What has become of me?” uttered Rhammidarigaaz.

  Those words seemed to break the bond that held him in place. The dragon’s horns pulled free of Karn’s grip. He drifted backward, up the companionway, as if in a dream. Weatherlight flipped over again, struggling to be rid of him.

  Darigaaz did not fight. He slid effortlessly up the companionway and out the shattered hatch. In battering winds, he hung for a moment beneath the inverted deck of Weatherlight. Then he tumbled free.

  He could have spread his wings and caught the air but did not. What have I become? He could have saved himself from the volcanic caldera below, but he was no longer interested in saving himself.

  One final sacrifice would break the circle of Primevals, would free the dragons from their bondage and make the dragon gods mortal once more.

  In his last act, Rhammidarigaaz gathered the power of his ancient homeland. He sent it in a blazing column down into the caldera. He could not awaken a whole volcano, but he could awaken a single molten shaft. It would be enough.

  Lava erupted. It rose around him and coated him. It encasing him in a broiling fist and dragged him down. He would be dead before he struck ground.

  For all the red-hot rock, for all the agony, he saw not his own sacrifice, but that of Gherridarigaaz.

  His mother had chosen rightly. She had indulged the mortal flaw.

  CHAPTER 36

  To Bow Before Yawgmoth

  “What did you say?” hissed Gerrard ferociously. Flexing his shoulders, he almost succeeded in breaking free from Ertai’s four-armed grip. “What did you say!”

  Crovax leaned toward his captive. A shark-toothed smile broke across his face. “I said, ‘Yawgmoth has Hanna.’ ”

  “No!” Gerrard roared.

  His elbows swung backward and rammed Ertai’s metal ribs. His fists punched forward and broke the man’s grip. Gerrard lunged out of his grasp. He swung a brutal uppercut. Good-old Dominarian knuckles cracked Crovax’s jaw.

  The evincar of the Stronghold reeled back. A triangular tooth flipped from his mouth. Oily pulp dribbled down his lip.

  Ertai reached for Gerrard, but his arms were suddenly full of goblin.

  Squee wore an impish grin as he head-butted Ertai.

  For all the Phyrexian enhancements done to the young sorcerer, none made his skull the equal of the goblin’s. His arms shuddered, and he staggered back.

  Squee gave him no quarter. He scampered up Ertai’s front and slid down his back. Fists pounded the mimetic spine as though it were a xylophone. Each blow sent jabs of rogue energy through Ertai’s body.

  He convulsed, flailing at the goblin.

  “Run for it, Gerrard!” Squee shouted. “Squee save you again!”

  “Not likely,” Gerrard barked, fists held up before him. “How about it, Crovax? How about an honest fight for once? No angels, no devils. Just you and me.”

  Claws curling into fists, Crovax waved off Selenia and his guards. “All right, Gerrard. You were willing enough to mop the deck with me aboard Weatherlight. This is my ship. Now you’re the mop.”

  “I’m looking forward to this,” Gerrard said with a grin.

  He faked with his left and swung a right hook.

  Crovax caught the punch. Claws spiked Gerrard’s fist.

  Yanking him down to his knees, Crovax snarled, “All you have is bravado. Bravado is nothing in the face of death.” With his free hand, Crovax grasped Gerrard’s neck and hurled him toward the ceiling.

  Gerrard soared upward. He wriggled like an airborne cat and slid just to one side of a brutal spike. Arms wrapped around the stalactite, and he held on. Legs lashed out to an adjacent corpse. With a wet sound, the body sloughed free and plunged. It spattered atop Crovax and made a sunburst on the floor.

  “Bravado is everything in the face of death,” Gerrard said.

  Squee meanwhile proved it.

  Still swarming over Ertai, Squee shouted to the moggs, “Get dis here stinkin’ goblin offa me!”

  The moggs converged on Ertai. Groping and pinching, their green arms were indistinguishable from Squee’s. The canny cabin boy crawled from the fight as Ertai unleashed his first spells.

  Fire burned a mogg’s arm to ash. Lightning fried the nerves of another. A third withered into a black lump. A fourth liquefied into a puddle.

  “He’s killin’ us. He’s turned on us!” Squee shouted as he scrambled behind the moggs’ legs. “Stop ’im! He’s gone loony!”

  As Ertai hurled spells out at his attackers, moggs hurled fists in at him.

  Taking advantage of Squee’s diversion, Gerrard dropped from the ceiling to stand, fists raised, before Crovax.

  “You are a liar. Yawgmoth may have dominion over the souls of his own creatures, b
ut he has no power over others. He has no power over Hanna.”

  The evincar of the Stronghold circled, just out of fist range. He still dripped the putrid fluids of the corpse that had landed on him.

  “You are wrong, Gerrard.” He gestured toward Squee. “I returned the soul to your friend here—brought him back to life.”

  It was true, but there had to be another explanation. “Squee died in your Stronghold, in your grip. Of course Yawgmoth could snatch his soul,” Gerrard said. He punctuated the comment with a sweeping head kick. His heel caught Crovax’s jaw, cracking loose two more teeth. “Yawgmoth had no hold on Hanna when she died.”

  Crovax smiled. The bleeding sockets that had held the two teeth folded closed, and the gums rolled outward. Two new teeth ratcheted into position.

  “Didn’t he? Hanna died of the plague, Yawgmoth’s plague. She died in his grip.”

  Blood swelling his face, Gerrard swung a left hook.

  Crovax caught his fist again and grabbed the right cross that followed. Hoisting Gerrard, Crovax hurled him across the throne room.

  Gerrard crashed headfirst into the wall. His vision narrowed to a wavering tunnel. He slumped. The wall draped down on top of him. Black flowstone formed into bars that wrapped around Gerrard and solidified. He was trapped.

  In that same instant, Squee’s fight came to a horrible end.

  Ertai slew the final mogg. Squee could no longer hide in plain sight. He dived away. Ertai snatched his ankle, hoisted him up, and swung him over his shoulder like a maul. Squee’s head struck the floor. There came a bursting sound and a red spray. Squee’s body lay utterly still. His life spread across the floor.

  Ertai stared with haunted eyes at the slain figure. Was it hatred that twisted his face, or fury…or regret? Whatever it was, when a vampire hound loped up to lick the floor clean, Ertai kicked the beast in the chest, driving it off.

  Crovax walked with slow relish toward Gerrard. Over his shoulder, he said, “Nice work, Ertai. Why don’t you go recharge yourself? I know you can’t resist the mana infuser.”

  “I’ll stay,” said Ertai. His voice was feverish. “I want to see this through.”

  “Suit yourself,” Crovax said offhandedly. He reached Gerrard and crouched beside his flowstone cage. “Do you see what has happened to Ertai? Do you see what has happened to me? We have gone the way of all heroes. We have joined the winners.”

  “You aren’t heroes. You never were. Flawed, weak, seduced by darkness—monsters. In your hearts you were monsters all along,” snarled Gerrard.

  “What do you think of Commander Agnate? Hero or monster?”

  “Why do you care?”

  A simple hand gesture from Crovax indicated the center of the throne room.

  There, as solid as Selenia, stood Commander Agnate. Beneath his battered armor, his flesh was riddled with rot. Two axe clefts split the man’s head, but still he gazed at Gerrard with seeing eyes.

  “He made a bargain with death and then thought to cheat death of its due. Agnate was clever but not clever enough. He could cheat a lich lord, but he could not cheat Yawgmoth,” Crovax said evenly. He cocked an eyebrow. “What do you think of Rhammidarigaaz? Hero or monster?”

  “Don’t tell me he—”

  Suddenly, the red dragon was there beside Agnate. His figure was deformed as if clutched in a brutal fist. Burns covered his skin, but he too seemed solid and alive.

  “He sacrificed hundreds of his own folk to become a god. He attacked Weatherlight and almost succeeded in ripping the power core from the ship. Your friend Karn paralyzed him with visions, and Rhammidarigaaz plunged down into this selfsame volcano—into the grips of Yawgmoth.”

  “They were heroes, both of them,” Gerrard replied. “Yes, they had made bargains with death, but as soon as they realized the price of those bargains, they ended their own lives. They did everything they could to escape you. The fact that you hold them means nothing.”

  “What about Urza Planeswalker? Hero or monster?”

  Blood fled Gerrard’s face. “No, you are lying….”

  “Am I?” asked Crovax. A final sweep of his hand indicated a nearby arch. A pair of thick doors slid aside. The scene beyond told that this was no mere doorway. It was a portal—a portal that led to a deep level of Phyrexia.

  In floating blackness hung a coliseum. It was not hewn of stone but built up out of pure mind. Glowing lines were etched into the emptiness. They formed rings of seats up from the circular staging ground where the portal opened. At the center of the staging ground rose a round dais. Its perimeter was ranked with countless weapons—polearms, scimitars, staves, axes, maces, daggers—all in fiendish design. Like the rest of the place, these weapons too were formed of thought, not of matter.

  “What is this?” Gerrard whispered incredulously.

  “This is the mind of Yawgmoth,” Crovax replied. “All of Phyrexia conforms to his will, but on the ninth sphere, the thoughts and desires of the Ineffable are all that shape reality. To walk here is to dwell in the mind of a god. Your friend dwells there even now.”

  Urza Planeswalker lay, prostrate in obeisance, at the center of the coliseum. He was the only real thing there.

  “How did you capture him? How did you bring him there?” Gerrard asked, disbelieving.

  “He brought himself. He slew a fellow planeswalker and defused the bombs they had planted to destroy Phyrexia. He even left his brother, Mishra, in eternal torment—all to arrive at this deep and sacred place. We did nothing to him, only let him see the glory of Phyrexia, the glory of Yawgmoth. He did what any creature would have done. He bowed down in worship.”

  Gerrard closed his eyes and dropped his head. “What do you want from me, Crovax?”

  “Gerrard, Gerrard, Gerrard…Everyone eventually must bargain with death, even you. In the end, death gets us all. The question is what you will get from death.” With the air of a schoolmaster whose lecture was completed, Crovax stepped away from the portal.

  A figure stood there. Even with his eyes closed, Gerrard could sense her presence. He lifted his gaze, and his heart broke. “Hanna.”

  She was just as he remembered her—whole and hale, slim and strong. There was not a trace of plague in her flesh, no rotting corruption, no agonized emaciation. Her golden hair was drawn back in a ponytail, the quickest way of getting it beyond the reach of grease and gears. Still, a few strands refused to be contained. They draped down about her slender face. It had been so long since he had peered into her eyes, and longer still since they had looked back with anything but pain. Now, they were full of love—and sadness. Though her lips remained closed, as red and round as rose petals, her eyes spoke to him.

  They said, Come, Gerrard. Take me out of here. Take us out of here.

  Gerrard wanted to look away, but his gaze was locked with hers. “Hanna,” was all he could say. “Hanna.”

  “You can return to her. You can have her back. You can hold her in your arms again,” Crovax said. He withdrew across the throne room to take the hand of his angel love. He bowed to her in grotesque courtliness, and his fangy mouth kissed her hand. Running a claw along the angel’s jaw, he said, “Or is your love not strong enough to conquer death?”

  Gerrard rose from the floor. He had not even noticed when the flowstone restraints had pulled away. It didn’t matter. For Gerrard, there was nothing but the woman beyond the portal, nothing but her eyes.

  “All you must do is step through. Take her hand. Know that she is real. Walk with her to the dais, and there, beside Urza, bow to our Lord Yawgmoth. Then she will be yours.”

  The words echoed within him. No longer did they come from Crovax. They were the words of his own heart: Step through. Take her hand. Bow to Yawgmoth….

  Gerrard reached the portal. He breathed his last Dominarian air. Without pause, he stepped through.

  Hanna greeted him
with a sad smile. Her arms were real and warm. She breathed in his scent. They stood for an age that way, embracing.

  Into his ear, she whispered, “What are you doing, Gerrard? You do not belong among the dead.”

  He replied with utter confidence, “Once nothing kept us apart except my foolishness. Now everything, even death, stands between us, but we are together.” Again, the voice came in Gerrard’s head: Bow to Yawgmoth….“Soon we will be together forever.”

  Clasping her hand, Gerrard strode with Hanna out across the central staging area. His feet walked on nothingness. Only Hanna was real. Reaching the dais, he released Hanna’s hand and climbed.

  Urza still lay prostrate upon the platform.

  Approaching him, Gerrard stared at the black dais. He would kneel on it. He would press his face to it. He would do whatever it took to be with Hanna forever.

  One knee kissed the black dais. The other settled into place beside it. Gerrard spread his fingers on the cold surface. Easing himself down to his face, Gerrard lay prostrate.

  “Release Hanna—release her whole to me—and I pledge myself to you. I am your servant, Yawgmoth.”

  * * *

  —

  In the throne room of the Stronghold, Evincar Crovax swept up his angel in a three-quarter dance. Victory. Yawgmoth had snared the planeswalker, and Crovax had snared the hero. In mere days, all of Dominaria would be theirs.

  As the dancers stepped lightly across the floor, Crovax dispelled the illusions of Agnate and Rhammidarigaaz. They had served their purpose. He only wished Yawgmoth owned their souls, but he should not be greedy. Now even Gerrard belonged to Yawgmoth.

  “Great lord,” intruded a quiet voice into the dance. It was Ertai, standing above the body of Squee. “You had best see this.”

  On any other day, Crovax would have punished such umbrage with a shock to the mimetic spine. Triumph made him indulgent. Crovax patiently danced Selenia to the spot. He looked down.