Onslaught mtg-1

by J. Robert King

  Akroma gathered her wings and dived. It felt good to move again. It felt good to have something to fight. She brought her lightning lance out before her and prepared to kill Phage.

  How like the coliseum battle this was-Akroma stooping down from the air, Kamahl guarding his evil sister, and Phage lying, near-slain, on the sands. Only the deathwurms were different, ravaging all the world.

  One wurm veered toward them. In two more bounds, it reached Kamahl. He leaped aside, allowing the monster to devour his sister. Its jaws never snapped closed, though. The monster plunged into her, slipping to nothingness. Phage was destroying the deathwurms. She was fighting the same battle that the creator had assigned to Akroma.

  It didn't matter. Akroma was made to destroy Phage. With her lightning lance foremost, she plunged from the sky upon her greatest foe. In moments, she was there.

  It was so easy. Phage didn't even flinch. The avenging angel rammed her staff down into the unmoving form Except that something hit Akroma and knocked her aside. The lance missed Phage. It pierced the ground deeply enough that the weapon was ripped from Akroma's hands. Careening out of control, the angel crashed down, along with the thing that had hit her: Kamahl. The two of them rolled together in the desert sands.

  Snarling, Akroma raked his chest with her claws. Kamahl shouted and tumbled free. Akroma spun once more and rose from the sands.

  Already, the barbarian had scrambled to his feet. Deep gouges crossed his chest, and blood poured across a wound on his belly. He crouched at the ready for attack, but his hands were empty as he lifted them. "You cannot kill her."

  "You are not my creator," she said, stalking toward her lightning shaft, which shuddered in the ground.

  Kamahl shifted before her. "Only Jes-only Phage can stop the deathwurms."

  Growling angrily, Akroma backhanded the barbarian, knocking him aside. She grasped her lightning lance and strode toward Phage.

  The woman placidly watched her approach. "Unless the wurms return into me, all of us will die. Tell your creator-"

  Akroma's eyes grew flinty. "The creator is gone."

  "Gone…" Phage echoed incredulously.

  Akroma lifted the lightning lance. "He sent me to fight the wurms, and now he is gone."

  The lance glinted in Phage's eyes. "It was his last command, that you fight the wurms," she said. "Then why do you disobey him? Why are you destroying your one chance to kill the wurms?"

  The staff trembled in Akroma's hand. Her angelic features were as hard as granite. "I am sworn to kill you."

  "Once the wurms are gone, you can kill me," Phage said serenely.

  "First, I must seek my master."

  "Whatever. Finish the wurms, find your master, and then finish me," Phage replied. "Do it however you want-but first, help me defeat the wurms."

  Akroma's eyes blazed, but she lowered the staff. "What must I do to shunt these wurms into you?"

  "The blue sparks," Phage said, struggling to sit up. "They brought the wurms out. They can gather them in again."

  "I will summon them," Akroma said. A new resolve straightened her back. "Until the creator returns, I will command his disciples. I will protect his creation."

  Her wings spread and surged. The blast of air threw Kamahl to the ground and whipped up a stinging cloud of sand. Plumes beat again, and Akroma's feet lifted into the air. A third surge, and she was flying away above their heads.

  "For the creator," Akroma said to herself as she vaulted into the sky.

  With each stroke of her massive wings, she climbed higher above the sullen world. She was ascending, and not simply in body. Until Akroma could find the creator, she had to assume his mantle. Ixidor had brought this dream into being, and Akroma would keep dreaming it lest it disappear. Such was her destiny.

  Piercing the endless blue, Akroma reached the apex of the sky. She held the lightning lance high overhead and sang.

  Never before had a star sung above the world. It drew the ear of every creature below. In their pell-mell flight, the routed armies looked back. The creatures of the jungle poked heads from their lairs. Even deathwurms paused to crane oozy necks skyward. It was right that they should witness the ascension of this new god over Topos.

  Akroma sang again. Her wordless tone was filled with longing for the creator. All of Ixidor's creatures heard and yearned skyward, though most were land-bound and could not rise. The birds in their chromatic choruses flashed above the treetops, but their wings were insufficient in the vast blue. Only quintessential creatures could join the singer, only beings that were kin to the stars.

  The disciples came. They seemed faerie fire emerging from the windows of Locus and scintillating along rails and pilasters. The sparks gathered above onion domes and swarmed together into the sky. Following paths through the air, they soared toward the angel.

  Akroma's song resonated in them, and the skies sang with dread and longing.

  Motes reached her and coursed about her. They traced her face, lingered along her wings, and pierced her mind. In moments, they knew what distressed her and what they must do.

  Stars slowly peeled from their angel-god. At first, they came away as one, a glittering veil of energy that retained her shape, but then the gossamer sheet spread. Disciples tumbled down blue stairways of sky, out across the nightmare lands, and toward the deathwurms.

  Flickering like candle flames, Ixidor's disciples dropped into the brows of the beasts. Their radiance was snuffed in black folds of flesh, but their spirits reached on through lightless innards. There, the disciples encountered hunger, hatred, and rage, but they continued on, seeking the essence of the beasts. It would be the darkest comer, the most heartless desire.

  One by one, the sparks found it: the death wish. They sank their hooks in that horrible desire and streamed backward.

  From the snapping mouths of the beasts, the disciples emerged, drawing black strands behind them. They soared into the sky and converged, weaving together their webs of power. En masse, the disciples turned and plunged toward a single target.

  Jeska.

  *****

  "Here they come," Kamahl said quietly.

  Blue points of light traced lines across his eyes. He knelt, holding his sister despite the virulent poison beneath her skin. He could only just bear to hold her, with three wurms within. In moments, when the blue sparks arrived, her touch would be death.

  "You're getting your wish," he said.

  Jeska's eyes were hard, but her voice pleaded. "Remember me, Kamahl. Remember what I do today, even if I never emerge again."

  "Don't say that. You'll-"

  A blue light soared in, smacked her forehead, and disappeared, dragging a black filament after it.

  Jeska shuddered as the darkness drilled into her mind. A spark fled from between her lips.

  Kamahl gaped, watching the line sink deeper. "No, Jeska… no!"

  With a shriek of tortured air, the slender thread widened into a huge beast. It poured itself into Jeska. She convulsed and grew pale, and her flesh stung like nettles in Kamahl's hands.

  He did not let her go. He would cling to her as long as she was Jeska.

  Another blue spark impacted, and a third.

  She thrashed her head, as if to break the black threads. They only plunged faster into her. Her limbs trembled, and her eyes glowed with evil flame. Two more sparks fled from her howling mouth.

  Swallowing, she gasped out, "One more… and I will be gone, Kamahl… One more…"

  The tails of the two wurms slipped into her brow.

  Kamahl leaned over Jeska, tears streaming down his face. He embraced her one last time and kissed her pale cheek. "Good-bye, Sister." Laying her gently on the ground, Kamahl backed away.

  A fourth spark struck, and a fifth, a sixth. Glowing creatures cascaded from the sky. They made Jeska bounce, writhe, and kick. The wurms were filling her, possessing her, but also healing her wound.

  Jeska stood, her hands open wide to the influx of the monsters. She seem
ed a worshiper invoking a god.

  Kamahl could not bear the sight. He turned away.

  No wurms remained on the corpse-strewn battlefield. Few fought on in jungle and desert. All those that were left were connected by black threads to Jeska… to Phage. They drained across astral channels into her.

  She was doing it. She was saving Otaria and damning herself.

  In a flash of blue and white and black, it was done.

  The wurms were gone.

  Jeska was gone.

  Only Phage remained.

  *****

  Akroma saw it all. How she wished to kill that witch, and yet, Phage had saved Topos and Locus and Otaria.

  Turning in the sky, Akroma winged toward Topos. If Ixidor was anywhere, he was there. She would seek him, find him, and turn her wrath on the one named Phage.

  *****

  Kamahl sat in that sandy waste, the birthplace of a goddess.

  Phage stood with her back to him. Her hands were yet lifted to the heavens, though they had poured out all their damnation already.

  "Phage," Kamahl said reverently.

  She turned. Her eyes were dark, no longer the eyes of Jeska. Without saying a word, she walked away.

  "Don't waste yourself on the fights, on the Cabal," said Kamahl. "I won your freedom from all that. You can do anything you want, wander free. Why don't you come with me to Krosan? We can make a home for you there."

  "We are enemies," she replied over her shoulder, "the saved and the damned."

  EPILOGUE: JOURNEYS END AND BEGIN

  Akroma flew above Topos and sought signs of Ixidor. Her paws dragged over the fronds of the forest and startled birds, red and gold among leaf shadows. They darted away, their cries silencing the howl of monkeys. Akroma spread her wings and soared out above a trampled trail.

  A deathwurm had passed here, heading toward the lake.

  Akroma followed the path. In two strokes, she reached the shore.

  Once the lake had been sky-blue, but now it was gray, its bottom torn up. In the midst of the tainted waters, Locus rose. Its arches and towers gleamed despite the gray ooze that draped them, despite the failing mortar and crumbled ramparts. The deathwurm had climbed all across that glorious palace.

  Akroma had never noticed how beautiful Topos had been.

  Rising on heated air, she soared along the front gate. The slime trail led her up the wall, around the central tower, and to the master's balcony. With a final surge of her wings, Akroma vaulted over the dripping balustrade and landed.

  The balcony was crossed with stress fractures. Beyond shattered glass doors lay a bedchamber in utter ruins. It seemed a gaping mouth. Ceiling, walls, and floor ran with gray ooze.

  "Did you die here, Master?" wondered Akroma.

  Never before had she allowed the thought that he might be dead. She knew he was gone, yes, but dead? It is a very different thing to serve a departed god than a dead one.

  Leaping into the air, Akroma followed a second slime trail that spiraled down the wall. The path led through a ravaged garden, across rooftops to a shattered rose window. Akroma dived through the circle of shards and into a long gallery. Her breath caught. In the carnage of toppled statues and torn paintings, Ixidor was everywhere. His head lay here in stone, his arm there on canvas, his spirit throughout the chamber.

  Lighting on the runner, Akroma took a deep breath. "This will be a shrine to you, Master. I will clean it and save every fragment of you, so that future generations will glimpse your face in the pieces."

  The far wall of the gallery had been shattered by the wurm. Akroma winged through. The trail led across more rooftops and then precipitously down a wall and into the gray lake. A black hole lay in the bed below.

  If the wurm had gone there, it must have followed Ixidor.

  Akroma tucked her wings and dived. Air shrieked across her pinions, and then she clove into the water. The impact was like thunder. Waves opened around her and then clapped closed.

  Akroma swam to the bottom of the lake and into the pit that the wurm had dug. It was a cold black throat. As she descended, walls of sand gave way to walls of mud, then to rock.

  Akroma entered a wide, flooded chamber, its magic lamps gleaming eerily through the gray water. The place had been ravaged, ruined furniture trapped against the ceiling Someone stood there.

  Master!

  Akroma swam toward the silhouette of Ixidor, shimmering in the murk. As she neared, though, she realized it was not the creator but an unman. He was the doorway to where the creator had gone.

  Using her wings like fins, Akroma propelled herself to the unman, and through him.

  She spilled with tons of water out the other side and into an upper chamber of the palace. It was half-flooded. Its furnishings had already washed out the door. Water rushed into the corridor beyond and down the nearby stairs.

  Ixidor was not here, nor the wurm. The unman would have closed if the creator had made it safely through.

  He was gone. It was a certainty. He was dead. Her god was dead.

  Akroma stood amid the shoving waters and wept.

  *****

  Your journey is done. Mine only begins.

  Jeska had said that. She was wise-wise and damned.

  Kamahl sat in the ravaged ziggurat of Krosan. No one else ventured here, so near the rapacious heart of the forest, but to Kamahl, this spot was sacred. He came here to think.

  His journey was finished and his wound only a healed-over scar, a testament to all he had done.

  Kamahl had slain his former self and saved his former sister. He had even saved the forest, pouring the darkness from his own soul into the Mirari sword.

  How strange. His salvation had come by emptying himself of evil. Jeska's had come by filling herself with it.

  He glanced toward the thistle wall, beyond which General Stonebrow waited. The giant centaur guarded his master and wished for more wars.

  Let him wait. He could learn something in waiting.

  Kamahl had a waking dream: A deathwurm chased him to the edge of a cliff. He climbed halfway down it and clung to a tree that grew there. Another deathwurm waited at the bottom of the cliff. Death above and death below. As Kamahl held onto the tree, he realized it was an apple tree. It bore a single huge apple, the roundest and reddest he had ever seen. He reached out and plucked it and ate.

  Life was no longer about running from death. It was about eating apples.

  Poor Jeska. She could not run from death, for one can't run from oneself.

  "My journey is done. Yours, Sister, only begins."

  *****

  "Behold the glories of the Nightmare War!" the man shouted. He was not Braids-no one would ever truly replace Braids, leaping like a manic goat around the rim of the coliseum. But she had not returned from Topos, and the show must go on. The man's shout reverberated among a hundred thousand spectators. They avidly cheered the reenactment.

  On the sands below, a dementia summoner played Phage. She brought giant, undead serpents from her mind and piled them in a coiling mound at the center of the arena.

  "Behold, the deathwurms!" The crowd loved the gnarly pile. "Remember, all bets on individual warriors pay three to one for survival! Who will live? Kamahl? Ixidor? Braids? Phage?"

  The true Phage did not fight this time. She was too grand a personage to engage in such vulgar sports. She sat where she belonged, in the royal box beside the First.

  Black robes and black silk, seats of iron and the best views in the coliseum-Phage and the First stared unblinking at the battle. In their eyes, the whole deadly drama played out in miniature.

  An undead serpent attacked the summoner who had created it. The beast ate her to nothing, to the delight of the audience.

  'That would never happen," said Phage quietly.

  "Of course not, my love," replied the First. He reached his hand to hers.

  She took that killing grasp and squeezed.

  "We are the eaters of death," he said, eyes still on the melee.


  Phage nodded. "We are the dreamers of nightmare." ***** In the belly of the beast, Ixidor finally found Nivea.

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