Dissension

by Cory Herndon

  Crixizix’s gentle grin took on a sterner cast, but she said nothing.

  “Sorry,” the imp said. “Go ahead.” Crixizix nodded, and the grin returned.

  The goblin released the rope and leaned back, allowing Pivlic to see the thick cord run past overhead, seemingly of its own volition. Crixizix leaned in close to Pivlic’s ear. “You’re right. Your lower body is crushed, and in normal circumstances I’d say it looks bad.”

  “You shouldn’t go into nursing,” Pivlic rasped.

  “Maybe not,” the goblin laughed hollowly, sounding less confident to the imp than she was putting on. Well, better false confidence than none at all, Pivlic reasoned. The imp saw the glint of reddish light from out of the corner of his eye, and heard the telltale clinking of teardrops.

  “Won’t work,” Pivlic said.

  “Sure they will,” Crixizix said, “as long as I apply them fast enough. And I’ll have you know I’m faster than I look.” She turned over her shoulder and without any warning at all shouted, “Pull!”

  With a pair of mighty grunts, two unseen ogres hauled on the rope. The column started to rise, slowly at first, then faster as the weight shifted in the ogres’ favor. In another few seconds, feeling returned to Pivlic’s lower body, and he tried to scream. The blood welling up in his throat prevented any sound but a pathetic gurgle.

  Crixizix’s hands moved in a blur. The goblin slapped opened teardrops, two at a time, into the imp’s lower abdomen and legs. The pain continued, burning as nerve endings grew back in the time it took to blink. The agony reached a feverish crescendo as he felt and heard shattered bone slip back into place, grinding as it did so. The torture finally subsided just as Crixizix pressed the last two ’drops she had left into Pivlic’s side.

  The imp made a habit of avoiding bodily injury, especially to his own person. It was part of a sound business strategy, staying whole and alive. Therefore, he’d rarely had need for this kind of first aid. It was over before he knew it.

  Pivlic blinked. He wriggled his toes. “Better,” he managed.

  “Good,” Crixizix said. “Can you still fly?”

  Pivlic flexed his wings and sat up to take a good look at his lower body. Aside from some cosmetic scarring, he appeared whole. “I think so,” he said.

  “Hurry!” a growling voice called from overhead.

  “Right,” Pivlic said. “The column. But I can’t carry you.”

  “No need,” Crixizix said, rocking back onto her heels. “In fact, this will go more quickly if—For now, just hold onto my shoulders, tight.”

  “Er,” Pivlic said, “all right.”

  A few seconds later, the imp heard the goblin clack her heels together, then together they blasted up from the crater that was the center of Pivlic’s most recent—and most recently destroyed—place of business. Orange flames blasted from the bottom of Crixizix’s feet, carrying them high into the air. Below them, Pivlic could make out the ogres, one of which growled, “Them out! Let go!”

  With a crash, the stone pillar dropped back into the hole that was all that remained of the Imp Wing. It almost hurt as much—no, more—than the pain of being crushed from the waist down, he decided. Pivlic released the goblin’s shoulders and flapped his wings, hovering. Crixizix did the same, ratcheting down the output from her feet enough to float effortlessly alongside the imp.

  The ruins included not just a successful establishment of which the imp had been justifiably proud. The Imp Wing had also held all of the records in the baroness’s temporary offices—Pivlic could take comfort in the fact that the records would have been no safer in the baroness’s new mansion—along with a great number of his own zinos, and some rare illicit art that would cost Pivlic a fortune to replace.

  With a final, resounding crunch, the hole collapsed inward swallowing the expensive column completely, one final insult.

  “Krokt,” Pivlic said. “Was that really necessary, my friend? True, I live, but the deductible on my assurance contracts—”

  “The damage was done,” Crixizix said. “I doubt any contract you’ve got covers this, though. You want to blame something, blame those.”

  Pivlic followed Crixizix’s pointing finger to the nephilim. Having flattened Utvara, the enormous creatures had set out to explore the rest of the world that they had once called their own. The three of them had turned to the west, crashing through the Husk and onto the wide road that led back to the City of Ravnica. Their unimpeded physical growth had apparently ceased, but even at this distance the trio looked gigantic: the snakelike creature with its unsettling humanoid arms and that damnable eye, the stomping crustacean mountain, and the tentacled beast covered in bulbous growths that seemed to float over the stony ground on the sucker tips of its writhing appendages.

  “They’re leaving, at least,” Pivlic said.

  “And heading right to the city,” Crixizix said.

  Pivlic, as was his wont, immediately started to dwell on what this bizarre turn of events meant for Pivlic. The baroness had only left him in charge for a couple of days, and in that time the entire town had been flattened. From his new vantage point, Pivlic could see a great many toppled mining towers too. The Cauldron was completely destroyed and looked disturbingly paved while fires raged on the edge of the Selesnyan territory and across the Golgari fields.

  He might have taken this opportunity to warn the Utvar Gruul, but Vor Golozar’s tribe was quite far from his mind. His first responsibility was to his baroness, and she was back in the city. No, Pivlic corrected, his first responsibility was to himself, as always. But warning the baroness qualified as protecting Pivlic’s interests, he reasoned. It made the decision easier to think of it that way. And since the baroness was currently directly in the path, as luck would have it, of three of the five monsters that had just ruined her finances in only a couple of hours, he’d be one sorry Orzhov if he didn’t figure out a way to make that a win in the Pivlic column.

  Crixizix shook her head. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “It’s all gone. Even if the containment teams arrive now, this place—and there’s something else I have to tell you. Niv-Mizzet was here.”

  “The dragon?” Pivlic said. “Right! I remember seeing a dragon. He was—He was a good dragon of sorts, yes, my friend? Where did he go?”

  Crixizix pointed to the horizon.

  “Gone.”

  “Dead?”

  “No. But I … I do not know if he will return any time soon,” Crixizix said. “I will have to go on without his guidance, it seems. At least for now.”

  “You think you’ve got problems,” Pivlic said, falling on his old standby, cheerful ignorance. “I’ve got to go tell the baroness about all of this. You, on the other hand—who’s to know where Niv-Mizzet is? You understand me, friend? You say he’s left you all, but maybe—maybe he’s left you in charge, yes? Who can say otherwise?”

  For a moment, Crixizix looked as if she might tear the imp’s wings off with her teeth. Then she began to giggle, a little madly, but to Pivlic’s relief it settled into a release of obviously pent-up tension.

  They settled upon a stable portion of the ruined transguild courier’s office. Two of the golem messengers lay smashed and motionless in the rubble, but the building’s marble floor was solid and intact.

  They found some food in an unbroken storage cooler and feasted on cold flatbread and dried fruit for a while, the only conversation meaningless small talk that helped the shock wear off.

  At last the goblin’s face grew somber once more. “Thank you, Pivlic, for your perspective. Are you sure you will go back to the city?” Crixizix asked.

  “After a jolt like that,” Pivlic said, “I could probably fly to the other end of the world. But I’ve got to get to the baroness, yes. What will you do, my friend?”

  “The ogres have sort of, er, made me their chief,” Crixizix said, a strange but proud grin spreading across her features despite the devastation. “They said that in a crisis like this, the ogres nee
ded one, and one of them saw this little trick,” she pointed to her feet, “and decided I was perfect. Very practical, ogres. And somebody needs to try and help the injured. Most of the people got out, I think, but there are still people trapped down there. Until I hear otherwise, I’m going to help. That containment team has to get here sometime, and I’m going to put them to work.”

  “What about—”

  “The dragon?” Crixizix said. “I will tell them … something. I am not sure yet. Great Niv-Mizzet, in truth, was never a very hands-on manager when it came to the guild.”

  “Holiest,” Wenslauv said. She instinctively reached for one of the teardrops on her belt, but before she could snap off the tip and apply it to the worst of Razia’s wounds—a gaping hole in the angel’s chest that exposed heart and rib—the guildmaster held up a hand.

  “No, I can’t—Don’t use those,” she managed. “Save that for yourself.”

  The angel Razia was in even worse shape than the rest of the Parhelion’s command floor. The Boros guildmaster sat in a sheltered alcove to the rear of the command deck. Her right arm ended in a charred, twisted appendage that was more claw than hand. Her holy sword was gone. Scorched, pitted holes and grievous wounds showed through gaps in her ornate, once-pristine armor.

  “You’re hurt,” Wenslauv protested.

  “And those won’t help,” the angel said, looking over the newcomer. The angel must have recognized the tri-wing pin on Wenslauv’s chest because she added, “Report, Air Marshal.”

  “The other angels—The others are dead,” Wenslauv said after considering what, exactly, her report should name first. “I’ve seen no sign of hostiles. I believe you are the only one left, Holiest. Forgive my protocol, but what happened here? Who did this, sir?”

  “If you are here …” the angel coughed, “if you are here, we must be back in Ravnica.”

  “Over it, sir,” Wenslauv said and, taking advantage of the opening, added, “We’re on a collision course with the Center, Holiest. From the look of it the helm is in pieces. I—I’m not sure what to do. I need your help. Can you stand?”

  “Yes,” the angel said but made no effort to do so yet. “The helm. And the rest—all dead. I remember. There was an attack. We have been in a war. There were boarders.”

  “Sir?” Wenslauv said. “I saw no boarders, though I have not been able to perform anything like a thorough search. The Parhelion is—We need to find a way to keep it in the air. I am a roc-rider, I am no stranger to flight, but this—Sir, I am not sure where to begin.”

  The angel extended her good hand. “I can stand. I will guide you.”

  Wenslauv pulled the angel to her feet. Standing, even hunched with pain, the guildmaster towered over the skyjek. The angel wobbled after a few steps, and she pressed her burned hand to her forehead.

  “Are you all right, Holiest?” the air marshal said.

  “I have been better,” the angel replied. “Help me to that station,” she said, pointing at one of the few panels on the wide array of command consoles that was still even remotely intact. “You will have to be my hands,” she said.

  “Of course,” Wenslauv said. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that they’d broken through the cloud cover during the time she’d been helping the angel to her feet. The white towers of Prahv were clearly visible through the invizomizzium screen.

  Air Marshal Wenslauv was, as she said, not qualified to pilot the Parhelion, but she had extensive experience estimating flight speed without magical instruments or multicolored switches and levers. She guessed they had, at best, three minutes, but only if their course held steady. With an unbalanced and still-burning propulsion system, there was no such guarantee.

  The panel was plain and didn’t look particularly important. In fact, it resembled nothing more than a rectangular mizzium plate with a single red gemstone off center. “What do I do?” Wenslauv said.

  “Press the gemstone three times. On the third press, you must speak the code phrase.”

  “What’s that, Holiest?”

  “ ‘Pin dancer.’ ”

  “ ‘Pin dancer’?”

  “And mortals think we don’t have a sense of humor,” the angel replied. “We don’t have much time, Air Marshal.”

  Wenslauv nodded, suppressed her opinion of the “joke,” and pressed her thumb against the red gemstone. One, two, three: “Pin dancer,” she said.

  The mizzium panel slid aside with a slow, wheezing grind. Beneath it sat a pair of levers with red handgrips. “I’m afraid this usually calls for angelic strength,” Razia said, “and I will not, unfortunately, be of any assistance.”

  “I’ll do my best, Holiest,” Wenslauv said and took hold of the red levers.

  “The one on the right controls our pitch, the left, our yaw,” the angel said. “Simple and only for emergencies.”

  “Yaw won’t help. People are going to die no matter which way we turn,” Wenslauv said. “Our problem is lift. We need to stay in the air.”

  “Agreed.”

  The air marshal released the left lever and took hold of the right with both hands in an iron grip. She placed the sole of one boot against the console and pulled with all her might.

  The lever would not budge. The towers of Prahv drew ever closer, and to Wenslauv’s surprise no skyjek patrols had risen to meet them. She tried again. No change.

  She scanned the command floor for some tool, anything, that would give her leverage. Nothing was close enough.

  A small gull collided violently with the windscreen. The impact helped Wenslauv estimate that speed somewhere around one hundred miles per hour. When the mess cleared away, the skyjek no longer saw sky.

  The towers of Prahv filled the windscreen, the translucent Senate dome dead ahead. If the Parhelion had been an arrow, it would have been headed directly for the bull’s-eye. At this distance, she could see a fleeing crowd. A few seconds later, she was close enough to make out faces.

  “Krokt,” she swore and turned back to the angel. “Holiest, it won’t—”

  A few seconds earlier than Wenslauv estimated, the Parhelion collided with the dome of the Senate. The crash was heard from the depths of Old Rav to the skirt districts beyond the city gates and even made the nephilim pause in their tracks.

  Are you as hungry as a demon? ‘Demon-size’ your order for only a few zinos—ask your server how!

  —Sign over the entrance to Pivlic’s Old

  Ravi Cabaret and Eatery

  (Destroyed by unexplained fire, 9963 Z.C.)

  31 CIZARM 10012 Z.C.

  Myc Savod Zunich had a fair amount of faith in the Selesnyan belief system, but with a Devkarin father who had a knack for necromancy to provide a counterinfluence to his half-Silhana mother, he had never considered himself devout. He wasn’t even sure what “devout” entailed. He wanted to be a ledev. There was appeal in the open road, a new adventure always coming down the path ahead. He also wanted to be a hunter, if not a guildmaster. They were two sides of the same coin, much like Myc himself. Though many Golgari worshiped the god-zombie, even now his father didn’t, so he didn’t particularly feel attached to that belief system either.

  One thing he did know—the Cult of Rakdos was certainly not any kind of religion he wanted anything to do with. It was the kind of religion that could put you off of religion for the rest of your life.

  He and his fellow scouts had been jostled, carried, hauled, and eventually dragged (when the indrik could not fit through the last stretch of subterranean tunnel) into a sweltering underground hall. Judging from what Myc could hear of the song, they were quite close to the Unity Tree, and it was somewhere overhead. That meant they had to be near the Center.

  Myc knew exactly what was underneath the Center because it rose like a burning sore in the middle of the Golgari domain of Old Rav. His father had always taken pains to point out Rix Maadi, the guildhall of the Rakdos. Rix Maadi was a beehivelike structure, so shaped because the Cult of Rakdos was constantly adding to it b
y piling on more junk. Jagged, spiky chimneys dotted the outer surface and leaked thin streams of black smoke. Rix Maadi was part of the undercity but in truth a separate Rakdos world that, it was said, had levels that went far deeper into the ground than any one stretch of the Golgari domain—deeper even than Grigor’s Canyon. There the Rakdos mined the metals that made them a major power in the world despite their distinctly antisocial bent. Jarad had made the boy promise he would never go near it without his father. Naturally, Myc had broken that promise the first chance he had gotten, but the closest he came to infiltrating the den of Rakdos iniquity was lurking around the perimeter with a couple of friends. Many challenges were issued, and the first kid to venture up to the Rakdos guards would have won the respect of them all. That respect had, to date, gone unclaimed. Myc would have done it, he always said, if it weren’t for the trouble it would cause his guildmaster father.

  Now that Myc was presumably in the heart of Rix Maadi, he could not fathom why he’d ever wanted to get inside. The place reeked of sulfur and rot, and was filled with smoke from hundreds of braziers burning Krokt-only-knew-what oily materials and foul-smelling incense. Rats crawled over every surface he could see, small, large, some the size of mossdogs and three times as vicious-looking—more rats than Myc even knew existed on Ravnica and all swarming like pets awaiting meal time.

  And the heat. The cavern was huge, and the open, glowing lava pit in the center turned the place into a heat chamber. A twisted honeycomb of ramps and pathways wound up the inner surface of the hive, and far overhead there was a way out that he couldn’t reach without a pair of wings—several of the familiar ventilation tubes that were a common sight everywhere in the undercity. There was a substantial network of chimneys and vents built into the structure’s walls and ceiling, but they didn’t seem to be doing a very good job. What ventilation there was had to compete with an open, glowing, viscous pool that bubbled ominously, like thick soup left to boil. Rix Maadi was a stinking oven the size of a small town.