The Fifth Dawn

by Cory Herndon

  Slagwurms never lost the taste for the flesh of their sibling, and that was the only reason their populations hadn’t taken over all of Mirrodin. For the most part, the only thing that could kill a slagwurm was a bigger slagwurm.

  This one had the rusty coloring of a mountain variety. It must have burrowed into the ground under the Tangle, and surfaced only recently. Glissa was sure she would have noticed the monster’s path on their recent walk from the lacuna to Viridia. As they drew closer, she could make out the patterns that covered the wurm’s armor plates, and smell the sulphurous odor of the enormous annelid.

  “You remember what to do?” Glissa asked.

  “Yep!” Slobad nodded.

  “Go!” Glissa shouted, and the pair dived straight for the writhing torso of the towering slagwurm. Please, Glissa thought, stay in the air. Keep screeching. Keep your head up, you big ugly wurm. Don’t drop just yet….

  Just before the elf and the goblin would have collided with the wurm’s armored hide, they split, peeling off in opposite directions, missing the wurm by inches. Glissa reached out with one hand and caught the lip of one armored plate, then swung herself around and grabbed hold with the second, which left her half-hanging, half-floating two hundred feet in the air. She heard Slobad squeal as he did the same.

  “Here they come!” Glissa shouted. “Wait for it!”

  The single-minded levelers treated the slagwurm as if it was just another part of the landscape, something to be overcome on the way to their prey. The levelers began to climb the mammoth annelid, jamming their sharp claws into the wurm’s side. So far, the creature was paying the levelers no more heed than it had Glissa and Slobad, but the elf knew it would have to notice the extra weight soon. Just then, the slagwurm screeched and started to wave more vigorously against the sky.

  “That’s it, Slobad! It feels them! Let’s get out of here!”

  “Don’t need to tell Slobad twice, huh?” the goblin shouted from the other side of the slagwurm. The pair continued on at top speed to the still-smoldering hole in the ground that would lead them to their enemy—and would hopefully lead their enemy’s minions to their doom.

  Behind them, the wurm screeched again, a sound now filled with pain. The creature’s death scream was soon followed by a tremendous crash as its massive bulk flopped back to the ground like a heavy chain. Glissa checked back over her shoulder. The wurm was thrashing in the midst of the swarm, tossing silver bits of levelers and a growing spray of its own ochre blood all over the forest. She felt a pang of regret that the majestic wurm was going to die—she had held out a faint hope that the creature might be able to take on all the constructs, at first—but in its death throes the slagwurm had cut the number of levelers by a third.

  She silently thanked the wurm and pressed on. Pitting the monster against the levelers had been a trick of opportunity. Her real goal was just ahead.

  The lacuna looked even bigger from above. Surrounded by trees and foliage knocked flat by the shockwave of mana that had launched the new moon into orbit, the hole that led to the center of Mirrodin resemble an enormous pressed bladeflower.

  Glissa was gratified to see—and feel—that the residue left by the passing of the moon still pulsed with magic. Giant vorracs snuffled around the lacuna’s edge, baffled at what from their perspective must have been a suddenly shrunken world. Massive porcine djeeruks scampered over the wrecked trees, shattering any semblance of calm with the thunderous crash of cracking metal. Here and there, patches of debris had woven themselves together into shambling parodies of magical walls, covered in thousands of skittering stinger monkeys picking for tasty needlebugs. The average pack of stingers numbered around a dozen.

  Slobad pulled up alongside Glissa and looked down. “Huh,” he commented. “Why can’t Slobad see all the way to the center?”

  “That little point of light—I think that’s the end,” Glissa said. “We’ll be there soon enough. You ready?”

  “Ready,” Slobad replied. Glissa checked on the levelers, which had left the twitching wurm behind, its corpse oozing ichor into the forest floor. But many had been destroyed, and with luck, the lacuna would take care of the rest.

  “Okay. Try not to lose sight of me.”

  “You sure this work, huh?”

  “Of course not. I just couldn’t think of anything else.”

  As if on cue, Bruenna’s flight spell finally gave out, and the pair dropped like stones into the lacuna.

  “Good plan!” Slobad shouted as they plummeted into the lacuna’s maw.

  “In the plan, I was—ow!” Glissa yelped as a wiry, melted treeroot hanging from the inside wall of the lacuna smacked her in the shoulder. “I was alone, and I had time—oof—to call on the energy here!” She flailed, trying without much luck to get a grip on the lacuna wall. The walls were smooth and freshly polished by the heat of an erupting moon, but her claws did come back with a few splinters.

  Glissa could make out screams and howls from above as the levelers reached the clearing and cut into the many hapless creatures that had been drawn to the magical energies. The animals reacted as any animals would—by fleeing or fighting back. The result was that many of them were tumbling down the lacuna as well, along with wrecked or unbalanced levelers.

  “So? We’re still here, huh?” Slobad shouted. “Give a try!”

  The goblin had a point, Glissa realized. She was in the heart of the magical field, which was just where she wanted to be. She kicked at the nearby wall, pushed herself closer to the center point of the lacuna, and closed her eyes. This time, instead of imagining the end result of her attack, she focused inward. She visualized the power flow from the spark into her bones, down her arms, to the tips of her claws, the raw energy of the lacuna …

  Glissa felt flickers of energy crackle down her arm, and opened her eyes in time to see green-white flame erupt from her hands and shoot straight upward. The destructive blast richocheted off the smooth walls of the lacuna, crashing back into itself and creating a maelstrom so bright that anything on the other side was lost. Glissa held her arms upward, ignoring the effect the massive output of magic was having on her rate of speed, rocketing her downward.

  The energy was going to carry her past Slobad, but she managed to hook the toe of her boot in his tunic as she blasted downward. The goblin grabbed onto Glissa’s shin for dear life as they shot toward the center of the world on a rising plume of fire.

  Glissa felt the levelers dying above her, both in the circular tunnel and on the rapidly receding surface. Surrounded by the greenish glow of intense mana residue, the experience made her feel more like a conduit than a destroyer. She felt as if all the magic in the Tangle flowed through a central point in her chest, filtering through her willpower to become ribbons of light that cut into wriggling segmented torsos and slashing, scythe-like blades. She struggled to maintain control.

  Half a minute later, the last of the levelers burned out under Glissa’s withering assault. As the realization came, she felt the well of energy go dry, and she was once again just an elf falling to her doom. Only now she could expect to find herself under several tons of twisted metal, when she landed.

  Wait. Where would they land?

  “Hey!” Slobad cried through the storm, still clinging to her leg. “We slowing down, huh?”

  “What?” Glissa shouted in reply, but realized the goblin was right. The downward pull of gravity wasn’t as strong, and their descent was slowing by the second. Fortunately, the ruined leveler army over their heads didn’t get any closer. “It must be something affecting everything in here,” Glissa said. “Look, the levelers are slowing down too.”

  “Glissa?”

  “Yeah?

  “Why we slowing down when I still barely see end of tunnel, huh?”

  Glissa craned her neck to look down to the other end of the lacuna, where they would emerge among the towering mycosynth spires in the light of the burning mana core. It was bigger than the pinpoint she’d seen before, but
they were still easily as far from the center as they were from the surface.

  “That’s it!” Glissa shouted. Though the wind whistling in her ears was no longer as loud, the clatter of construct parts tumbling down from above had become almost deafening. “We’re reaching the center!”

  “No, that down there,” Slobad bellowed. “Big ball, remember?”

  “I mean the center of the lacuna. It’s magic.”

  “You think?” Slobad asked.

  “I mean a big, big enchantment. Something that covers the whole world. Makes it so you can stand on the inside and fall ‘down’ toward the surface, or—”

  “Stand on surface and fall just plain down, huh?” Slobad said. They were drifting like feathers now, almost floating. The wreckage above them had become a slow-moving chaotic swirl, like a handful of sand released underwater. But these grains of sand were jagged, twisted, and occasionally burning. Even if everything dropping down the lacuna came to a stop in midair, which was looking inevitable, it would still leave them floating in a deadly mess of metal with very sharp edges.

  “Slobad, we have to get to the wall.”

  “How?” Slobad asked. “Can’t swim through air, huh?”

  “If we get there, we can stand. Remember the last lacuna?”

  “Right, we run down inside. Been trying to forget that,” Slobad said.

  “Well, if we can’t outrun that falling metal, you’re going to forget everything you ever knew, and so am I.” Glissa flapped her arms and kicked her legs, trying to get closer to the side of the tube. Slobad yelped and finally let go of her leg. Flare, why had she kicked out to the center in the first place?

  Glissa’s efforts didn’t help much. She got a few inches closer, but it was slow going. She needed a push, but the far side of the lacuna had to be half a mile away.

  “Hey, have idea, huh?” Slobad said, floating alongside. “Watch.” He reached up at the nearest hunk of shattered leveler, and pulled himself closer to the wall. Then he caught another piece, carefully, and pushed himself closer, repeating the process. Glissa thought he looked like a bottom-feeding scavenger fish pulling itself along a silvery river bottom. Glissa reached up and grabbed her own hunk of leveler, careful to avoid the sharpest parts, and pushed off, floating after her goblin friend.

  “Slobad, your gift for finding obvious solutions is vastly underrated,” she said.

  As soon as she made contact with the lacuna wall, Glissa felt gravity shift again, this time becoming stronger and pulling her upright—with her feet flat on the wall. A chunk of construct smacked her in the back of the head. “Ow!”

  “Duck,” Slobad said, a little too late.

  “Thanks.”

  Slobad extended his hands. The left contained a small, sharp piece of metal that looked like a leveler mandible yanked out at the root. In his right he held, point down, a blade that Glissa knew had recently been attached to the forearm of one of the deadly constructs. “Which one you want?” Slobad asked, though Glissa could see his right arm was drooping under the weight of the severed scythe blade.

  “The big one, I think.” Glissa said diplomatically, and took the proffered weapon. It was a little off balance, but felt surprisingly good in her hand. The blade had not broken off, but had been severed—by what, Glissa couldn’t say, but she suspected it had been a piece of fellow leveler—just below the joint of where it had been affixed to the construct’s limb, leaving just enough metal to form a hilt. Not perfect by any means, but better than nothing. It would go through Memnarch’s chest, and that was the important thing.

  “Better do this if we’re gonna do it, huh?” Slobad said, tucking his improvised dagger into his belt and marching off toward the far end of the tunnel. The goblin was going to waste no time getting clear of the remaining leveler wreckage. Glissa set off after him before another of her fallen enemies could get posthumous revenge.

  They made good time down the long, cavernous lacuna, though the walk was long. Unlike the older tunnel under Lumengrid, this one was fresh and free of moisture and muck. Glissa was surprised to see wiry mosses and flaky copper lichens growing bountifully on the lacuna walls, and patches of soft Tangle grass sprang up every few feet.

  “Glissa?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How you going to kill Memnarch, huh?”

  Such a simple question, and one she was going to have to answer soon. For now, she replied, “The way I’d kill anyone else that was trying to wipe out everything I know and love.”

  “That not an answer,” Slobad said.

  “All right. I don’t know. Is that what you want to hear?” Glissa said. “I can try magic, or this ‘sword.’ Maybe I’ll just talk him into taking a flying leap into the Great Furnace. But we’ve got to do something. I don’t know what doing that—” she jerked her thumb in the direction of the clattering wreckage that still unhung suspended in midair behind them—“takes out of me.”

  “Slobad can see,” Slobad said. “You still on fire, huh?”

  Glissa looked down at her clothes. A few wisps of persistent greenish smoke still clung to them, and she batted at it with one hand.

  Glissa suddenly felt very weary. “I can’t keep doing this. I feel so drained,” she confessed. Her voice echoed down the tunnel, rebounding around the tube and coming back to her strange and altered. Drained. Drained. Drained …

  That wasn’t her voice. The slippery tones rang ominously in her head, a stranger who hadn’t been invited. The words slithered through her consciousness, whispering, pleading, threatening and inviting. Drained …

  Glissa shook her head, and the sound faded. Odd. She rubbed her ear with one thumb and jogged to catch up with the goblin.

  “Did you hear something?” She asked.

  “No, but echo crazy in here,” Slobad replied. “Hey, something making no sense, huh?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The levelers, the aerophins, all of it,” Slobad explained. “Why attack you on the surface, when this tunnel is wide open? Why not send levelers up the other way, too? Slobad no general, but even I can see that just bad strategy. No need to attack from so far away when good tunnel right here.”

  “Flare, that hadn’t even occurred to me,” the elf said. She wished she had an answer.

  “Hold up,” Glissa said, eyeing the distant end of the lacuna. She could see the swirling anti-color of the mana core crackling at the center of Mirrodin, but nothing else. She had no way of knowing what might be on the other side. The lacuna appeared empty, but Glissa was a hunter. Appearances could deceive.

  “What you think, huh?” Slobad asked.

  “Flare!” Glissa swore and clenched her fists in frustration. “That’s it. So, so stupid.” She slapped a hand to her forehead. “They weren’t chasing us. They were herding us. He wants me to find him.”

  “Why? You wanna kill him, huh?” Slobad said. “Why he want you to find him?”

  “Because I think it’s a trap, and we dropped right into it.”

  “So why chase Slobad, huh?”

  “I don’t know,” Glissa confessed. “Maybe because you’re important to me.”

  Slobad blushed, blood flushing his greenish face a rusty crimson.

  “But he played with us either way,” Glissa continued. “He couldn’t lose. The levelers—and the aerophins—were sent to either chase me back here, or kill me. Damn Yulyn! If he hadn’t taken us in, we could have made sure Memnarch was dead. This might all be over now. We gave Memnarch time to regroup, and he took it.”

  “But crab-legs blew it, huh?” Slobad said in a transparent attempt to brighten her spirits that failed miserably. “No way to get the spark. The moon was the only way, right? Right?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Glissa replied, but she wasn’t. “Now he just wants me dead. I hope.” She slapped a hand on Slobad’s shoulder. “Well, what do you say? Should we go check out this track, or try to get back up through that floating deathtrap?”

  Slobad cinched up his belt, puf
fed his chest, and grimaced. “One second,” he said, then reared back and released a long, lingering belch that echoed through the lacuna. “Sorry. Ate too much elf food,” he said when he saw Glissa’s incredulous look. “Onward, huh? Don’t want to stick around here.”

  “Slobad, I can’t imagine why you lived alone when I met you.”

  “That nothing, huh? You stop by the Feast of Krark sometime—you see the real talent.”

  The lower half of the lacuna took a while longer to traverse than the upper half, but then again, Glissa and Slobad were no longer plummeting. The elf girl was surprised to see small animals dashing and hiding amongst the brill moss and razor grass. She wondered if they’d been spontaneously summoned by the magic that still hung thick in the air, or if the little creatures had overcome fear of the unknown to colonize this strange new home. Some she recognized immediately, but a few were peculiar. Denizens of the interior, perhaps.

  Odd to think of the ground she had walked and hunted for so many years was only a silver eggshell surrounding a very large yolk, and she was reminded of the flare-vision that had struck her when they first arrived at Viridia.

  “You know,” Glissa said, “I think we might be paranoid after all. We’re almost through. If he doesn’t try something soon, we won’t be cornered anymore.”

  “What, you trying to get us killed?” Slobad hissed just ahead of her. “Don’t crazy elves know anything about bad luck, huh? Jinxes?”

  “Sorry,” Glissa said. “Just thinking out—”

  She froze in mid-sentence when a tall, humanoid figure materialized from thin air at the edge of the lacuna, maybe twenty feet in front of them. The glare from the mana core—what Slobad’s people, especially his friends in the Krark cult, referred to as “Mother’s Heart”—obscured the figure’s features and face, but a corona of silver outlined the shape. Slobad skidded to a halt and had his mandible-dagger drawn before Glissa could say a word.