by Cory Herndon
The effect of the wave on the flying nim was even more devastating. Geth’s head had bounced off the waved like a ball, but every nim that collided with the sphere disintegrated into a gaseous green cloud. By the time the sphere had reached the interior to dissipate harmlessly against the silver surface, the nim were gone.
Simultaneously, the leather straps holding her in place went slack and dropped to the floor. Glissa felt a sudden surge of power as the restraining magic released her, and she stepped out of the rack on unsteady legs, not really sure what had just happened.
“No!” Memnarch bellowed and crab-ran to Glissa once more.
“NOW YOU PLAY FAIR, HUH?”
The voice emanated from millions and millions of tiny, insignificant builder constructs.
Memnarch skidded to a stop just in front of Glissa, staring at the silver sky above him. With a quick glance at Raksha, who nodded, Glissa launched herself at the Miracore as the leonin dove into one of the Guardian’s spindly legs.
The Guardian howled with rage as all around them his plan did its best to come to fruition without him. The air was thick with the odor of ozone and a vibration that Glissa could feel in her bones more that she could hear. The elf girl grabbed hold of the Miracore and yanked down with all her might, but the chain was too strong, and didn’t give. Glissa felt warm blood flowing into her hands as the edges of the talisman sliced into her skin, but she refused to release the Miracore.
At the same time, Raksha collided with Memnarch’s leg, which buckled and folded under his body. The combination of suddenly losing one corner of his support and the violent downward pull Glissa exerted on the Miracore was too much to take. Memnarch toppled over and fell sideways onto the lift disk that had carried the elf girl into the chamber in the first place. The round metal plate dropped under the Guardian’s weight. As power continued to pour into the web with nowhere to go, Memnarch roared from below as the disk reached the floor of the foyer level. Glissa heard a series of clacks and clangs as he opened the doorway heading out.
The elf let out a battle cry and jumped feet first into the hole, Raksha landing with a clang and a little more grace beside her. They tumbled out onto the occultation disk and scrambled after the Guardian onto the surface into the humming air above the mana core.
Magic surged and made her bones hum. Glissa could barely hear herself think. But she didn’t need to think to get her hands on the Miracore. Glissa and Raksha charged toward Memnarch, side by side. To the millions of watching gemstone eyes that encircled the Ascension Web, they looked like suicidal insects attacking a hungry vorrac.
Memnarch continued to scream and rage, his fury no longer expressable in words. The last-minute breakdown in his plan seemed to have driven the Guardian completely mad. Glissa wasn’t listening anyway. She was stretching her mind out to the Tangle.
“Raksha, stay back,” she said as they barreled toward the Guardian.
“Not a chance,” he replied.
“Sorry, someone’s got to get back to the surface and tell them what’s happened,” Glissa said. “You’re the only one who can do it now.” Before the leonin realized what was happening, Glissa spun and landed a solid punch on the leonin’s muzzle. He dropped in mid run and rolled to a stop, unconscious. Glissa, still running, whirled and continued headlong into Memnarch, who had his fists in the air, imploring the wild energy all around the interior to enter his body.
“You want the spark?” Glissa yelled. “Then you can have it!”
The elf girl vaulted into the air from a dead run, her skin tingling with suppressed spark energy and Tangle magic, and finally released the destructive power into Memnarch’s face. His new metal body writhed under the emerald fire, and the Guardian clawed the air, screeching in agony. Still channeling the destructive energy, Glissa slammed into the Guardian’s chest and dug her claws into his silver skin, which melted under her touch.
Menarch brought up an insectoid leg and swiped at Glissa, who had to release her grip to dodge the blow. She lost her her concentration, and swore as she felt the destructive energy fizzle out. Somehow Memnarch still stood.
The two combatants circled each other warily. Memnarch moved slowly and smoldered, his shiny new form blackened and scorched, but the blast of destruction had only weakened him. The remaining serum tank on his back started to glow and pulse, and he turned to close on Glissa. The elf girl tried to get around him, but she was too near to the edge of the occultation disk.
Memnarch raised his humanoid hands, which began to glow as the Guardian summoned his own destructive spell. This was Glissa’s chance. When the Guardian shouted his incantation, she ducked under his raised arms, seized the Miracore in slippery, bloody hands, and jerked it free, breaking the chain from which it hung. She dove under Memnarch’s torso and through his arachnoid legs, emerging on the other side, and onto her feet in one smooth gymnastic motion. Dizzy, she turned back to face her foe.
Memnarch lumbered around to face her, their positions suddenly reversed. Using every ounce of will she had left, Glissa drew in the power of the Tangle above and felt the spark energy reignite. She raised the Miracore in both hands and slammed it flat against Memnarch’s chest, pouring green destruction through the ancient artifact and into the Guardian, who now had no flesh to resist her power.
Memnarch screamed anew. The Guardian, his spell forgotten, stumbled back … back. Glissa pressed forward, pain beginning to blossom in her forearms as the Miracore melted into the Guardian’s silver skin. The artifact fused with Memnarch’s metal body in the blazing heat.
Glissa still had the Miracore firmly in her grasp when Memnarch’s two rear legs slipped from the edge of the disk. Memnarch didn’t stop screaming until the entangled enemies passed through one of the wide openings in the mesh sphere and plunged headlong into the mana core.
Though his mouth hadn’t spoken a word in years, Slobad screamed when Glissa and her nemesis fell into the mana core. He saw Glissa die from a thousand different angles and points of view, each one causing him to scream anew.
The only friend he’d ever had….
But Slobad didn’t have time to scream any more. The intricately planned Ascension Web was still operating as designed, despite the deaths of the two beings that were supposed to be on the receiving end. Slobad watched from his bug constructs’ eyes as the web sent more and more magical energy into the mana core, which started to glow brighter and brighter until even his remote crystal eyes couldn’t stand the glare.
As the mana core reached its limit—something no being on Mirrodin had the power to change, even Memnarch—the energy boomeranged back into the web and immediately exceeded the carrying capacity of even a plane-sized artifact. Purified, amplified, and devastating, the wash of power was like nothing Slobad had ever felt before, even in the last five years of being connected to the machine.
The magic surged into the goblin’s withered, limbless body through his connection to the rack. Slobad suspected he screamed again, but if he did he couldn’t hear it. Millions of tiny pinpricks of pain stabbed his mind from the inside as the energy of all the soul traps on Mirrodin forced its way in.
Raksha Golden Cub, back broken, legs useless, pulled himself through the small narrow door at the base of the diamond structre in his best attempt to escape the blistering heat of the core. He flopped onto his back in the small room, neither knowing nor caring that his bare feet still protruded from the entrance.
The energy struck the occultation disk like a tidal wave, but the leonin, protected by darksteel, easily survived the initial blast.
The victory was short lived. Rolling on to collide with the reflective silver surface of the interior, the wave shattered a small, square, glowing object, one of thousands within the needle spires that lined the lacunae above.
Raksha Golden Cub was dead before he hit the floor.
In a narrow draw lined with craggy ironstone walls, a wizened old goblin prophet stood between a pair of lumbering megathreshers and a few hu
ndred of the last free people on Mirrodin. Even Vektro’s bomb had not ended the attack, and things looked grim once more. Dwugget had both hands raised, palms out, and they started to glow red. His guilt over his complicity long forgotten, if not forgiven, the goblin was determined to save those he still could.
“Hochocha!” Dwugget cried, and twin spheroids of devastation launched from each hand. The fireball clusters engulfed the mighty constructs in flame, and after a few seconds the fire was no longer magical as the creatures’ delicate innards ignited. Black, oily smoke roiled into the sky.
Dwugget spun around to see who was still with him. He’d been fighting so long, he didn’t even know if the Khanha or Bruenna were alive. They’d left so long ago, and if the battle had reached this far, he suspected they were already dead.
Three seconds later, so was Dwugget. It was a small blessing that the long-suffering goblin didn’t see that the people he had tried to save, leonin and goblin, young and old, dropped dead at the same time. Krark-Home went from refuge to graveyard in a heartbeat.
“Lyese, I’m hit,” Bruenna said. An aerophin blast had finally scored. She whipped out an arm and blasted the flying artifact, one of the last stragglers on the field. It spiraled out of control and collided with a pile of dead nim, which burst into green flame. Bruenna listed in her saddle and nearly fell off. She placed a palm against her ribs and they came away wet and red. Blood poured from a hole in the mage’s side.
The elf girl jumped from her zauk and helped the mage dismount. Bruenna felt a wave of nausea as she saw claret running down Lyese’s forearms. She slumped into the elf girl, who gently lowered the human to the ground. “Bruenna, what can I do?”
“My belt,” Bruenna said. “There’s a vial. Just pop the top and—”
Lyese’s eyes opened wide and she threw her head back. She flopped back onto the ground as Bruenna spasmed once, coughed, and fell still.
ACCIDENTS HAPPEN
Slobad felt fluid running from his ears, and hoped it wasn’t his brains. Despite his pathetic condition and the dark, suicidal thoughts his hidden self had entertained over the last few years, the goblin’s self-preservation instinct was very much intact. He gritted his remaining teeth and fought the urge to pass out as his hollow body bounced and jerked in the rack, muscles spasmodically twitching as a plane’s worth of mana and souls entered him, surrounded him, consumed him, and vice versa. Slobad’s body glowed with a dim white light, grew more luminous by the millisecond, and was soon almost as bright as the mana core itself.
With one last rolling boom of thunder, it was over.
Slobad gulped deep, sweet breaths of ozone-charged air. He blinked, and squinted against the unbearably bright core.
Actually, it wasn’t that bright. He opened his eyes a little more and stared directly into the mana core, which the book of Krark promised would burn your eyes to cinders and cause your feet to turn into hooves. He’d never understood that last part, but the first part had always made sense.
Only it didn’t hurt to look at it. Not even a little.
The goblin unbuckled the leather straps that had held him in the rack and stepped down from the device for the first time in five years. He searched, but didn’t see Glissa anywhere. Or Memnarch. He scratched the top of his head and tried to rember the last place he had seen—
He was scratching his head. With his finger. Which was attached to his hand, leading naturally to an arm. Slobad’s eyes kept going down his body, which ended, as they once had, in a pair of short legs with wide, bare feet.
Slobad wiggled his toes and was gratified to see the toes wiggle back. Yes, those were his feet.
Magic. He’d taken the brunt of the power backlash, and somehow it had made his fondest wish come true. His body was restored.
But had that really been his fondest wish? If his wishes had come true, why wasn’t Glissa here?
“Why is she still dead?” a baritone voice asked. “She is not the only one, I am afraid.”
“Yeah, why?” Slobad pleaded. “I’ve got arms, and legs. Memnarch’s gone. But Glissa, well it’s just no—” The goblins froze and turned to face whoever had just spoken.
A gleaming golem, his shimmering body rippling like liquid quicksilver, leaped with catlike grace from atop Memnarch’s scorched hibernation chamber and landed without a sound beside Slobad.
“Hello,” the golem said amiably. The quicksilver giant extended a hand large enough to scoop Slobad up and have room for two more goblins, and Slobad cautiously extended his own. The golem gently placed his other gargantuan mitt over the goblin’s hand. “I am Karn,” the golem said.
“Karn?” Slobad said. “You mean he was—there’s a—but Menarch was—”
“He was many things,” Karn said sadly. “An explorer, a scholar, a visionary, and at one time a friend.”
“Too bad he went nuts, huh?” Slobad said as sympathetically as he could manage. “But I guess maybe he wasn’t that crazy, if you’re really here. If you actually exist. Why couldn’t I see you before?”
“I was not here,” Karn said. “But Memnarch thought I was. He is a being a great power, power that I foolishly allowed him to shape on his own. His certainty—perhaps faith is a better word—was so strong, that the specter of his false Karn kept me from manifesting on this plane. He was no planeswalker, nor was he meant to be, despite his ambition. But his faith was stronger than I could ever have imagined.” The golem planeswalker sighed. “In my desire to create one like me, I gave him far too much power. A great … mistake. One of many.”
“Waitaminit—you made him, right?” Slobad growled. “You—this is all your fault!”
“Yes and no,” Karn admitted. “I created this world, and named it Argentum. I transformed the Mirari into Memnarch long ago, and left him to his own devices.”
“Mirwhoeee?
“Mirari, it is—was—will be—an artifact of great power,” Karn said. “It was also intelligent. Sentient. I charged the Mirari with collecting information on the planes of the multiverse, and when it finally returned to me, it provided me with knowledge that would have taken millennia to learn on my own. I believed the Mirari had earned the right to walk and experience the world as a living being. And I wanted—offspring isn’t the right word …”
“Kids?” Slobad offered.
“One like me, but not me,” Karn replied. “Something to go on when I am gone.”
“But you’re a big-time planeswalker, right?” Slobad asked. “Don’t you live forever?”
“It seems like it,” Karn said. “But please, I have already gotten too far from the point. We have much to discuss, Slobad. You will need a mentor.”
“Well thanks, really,” Slobad said. “But I just want to find my friend. You’re a planeswalker, can’t you do it?”
“Planeswalkers are not gods, Slobad,” Karn said. “Do you feel like a god?”
“Me? Why, I—” What Karn had said about a mentor finally worked its way to the front of Slobad’s brain. “Me?”
Karn smiled, and reminded Slobad of his old friend Bosh. “Yes, you,” the golem laughed. “The power had to go somewhere. Memnarch had an amazing machine here. It worked as intended, truly amazing. Living souls are not channeled lightly.”
“Hey, I know about those, huh?” Slobad said. “Had a long time to look around while your not-offspring was sleeping in that big egg. That’s how Memnarch got people from other planets—no, wait, planes? Dimensions?”
“All of those are appropriate. The mana backlash wiped the traps out. My Argentum is an empty place again. The surface is littered with the dead.”
“So if all the soul traps are gone, why am I alive?” Slobad aksed.
“Simple,” Karn said. “The spark chose you.”
“It chose me? You said the spark hit me because I was strapped to that rack!” Slobad shouted, his temper starting to flare. “I didn’t even want it, huh?”
“And yet you have it,” Karn said. “And you now have a choice. I
did what I could to protect the people of Mirrodin. Though I could not return physically as long as Memnarch lived, I could send messages. Energy. Parts of myself.”
“What you talking about?” Slobad asked.
“The spark,” Karn said. “It gave me a tentative link to Glissa that allowed me to circumvent Memnarch’s interference. I sent the flares to Glissa, to show her the world she came from. All I could do was try to guide her. I am afraid that I failed again.” The quicksilver golem bowed his head.
“Everybody dead?” Slobad whispered. He looked up at the concave surface of the interior, which looked smooth as a mirror. “Everybody? But—you’ve got to do something! And if you won’t, I will! Slobad the planeswalker, huh? Okay, so …” Slobad closed his eyes and held his hands in front of his face in a crude approximation of Bruenna’s spellcasting moves. “I summon Glissa!”
He opened his eyes and was still looking at Karn, whose face was grim.
“True reanimation is difficult, Slobad. Even I cannot return the dead to life, not in a way that recreates the original person. There are simply too many variables.”
“You just told me I’m a g—a planeswalker,” Slobad said. “What can I do? I don’t want to walk the monkeyverse or whatever! Just want my friend back, huh? I want everyone to be alive. I want it the way it was. Even if I have to go back to living in a cave by myself. There’s got to be something I can do. I’ll, I’ll give the souls back. Everyone better, huh?”
Karn was quiet for some time. When he spoke again, his voice was tinged with disappointment. “There is a way, perhaps. If you act soon. The souls of millions are in your veins, so to speak. They are still individuals entities, but soon they will merge into your larger self, the planeswalker Slobad. But what you ask … I feel for the dead as you do, goblin. Perhaps more, in a way you were all my children, even more than Memnarch. But you must realize what it will cost you.”