The Darksteel Eye (21 page)

Forcing himself to relax his shoulders, the commander knocked on the door.

“Enter,” came Pontifex’s voice from inside.

The door slid on its tracks, and Marek opened his eyes and stepped through.

Pontifex was sitting at the long meeting table in his chambers. He had several old, heavy-looking contraptions opened before him. Marek had never seen anything quite like them before. He was aware that such things existed, but they were not very common, and most people lived out their entire lives on Mirrodin without coming into contact with these “books,” as they were called.

As Marek got closer, he could see that these books were comprised of dozens of thinly pressed metal sheets, each with
different symbols and characters on them. To the vedalken guardsmen, it looked as if the text had been carved or etched into the surface of the metal with either a very sharp blade or a corrosive substance.

On the left side of each sheet, holes had been punched, and bits of wire had been woven through them. It looked to Marek as if the pages had been purposely bound that way, so they would stay together no matter how you handled the package. The warrior nodded as he looked at it. Quite ingenious really.

Marek pulled his eyes away from the contraption. Pontifex continued to look through the book.

“You called for me, my lord?” asked Marek.

“Yes,” replied Pontifex, turning the page and examining a new set of runes. “Where is the elf girl now?”

“In the Dross, my lord.”

This brought Pontifex’s attention away from the book. “The Mephidross? What would she be doing in the Mephidross?”

Marek shrugged. “I don’t know, but perhaps Geth could tell us.”

Pontifex nodded. “Yes, I’m certain he could.” He closed the book. “How soon can you and your men be ready to leave for the swamp?”

Marek smiled. “We’re ready now.”

Pontifex stood up and put his hand on Marek’s shoulder. “You are perhaps the last thing I can truly count on in the world, Marek.” He looked through the warrior’s helmet, locking eyes with his lieutenant.

After a long moment, Marek looked away. “Thank you, Lord Pontifex. I try.”

*  *  *  *  *

Malil sat atop his personal leveler as he and his squad of killing devices mowed through the razor grass field. His whole body ached—not a muscular ache, for Malil didn’t have any muscles that could feel pain or fatigue. What the metal man felt was desire. He needed something he didn’t have, and he was on his way to get it. But first, before he could have it, he needed to capture the elf girl.

After his interrogation of the troll, Malil had come straight to the Dross, and here he had waited. He didn’t know how the girl had managed to elude him and his levelers in the Tangle, but she wasn’t going to be so lucky this time.

Nearly three full days passed before Malil had gotten word that the one called Glissa had arrived. She was on the other side of the swamp, and she had accumulated more friends along the way.

Some of the story was beginning to come clear. If she had taken the shortest route to the swamp from the Tangle, she would have arrived on the opposite side of Mephidross, the side where Malil had been waiting in ambush. Since she came in from the other side, it made sense that she and her companions had gone through the other side of the Tangle, which would also account for the long wait he’d had to endure.

And a long wait it had been.

In his relatively short life, Malil had never felt time the way he had over the past few rotations. Before he had taken the serum, he had been patient in all things. The movements of Mirrodin went on, and Malil stood his ground, blissfully unaware that there was anything he needed other than to serve his master. Now though, he felt a sense of urgency in everything he did. Time ground on him, taking its toll as the hours and minutes ticked past. Each moment was just another in a long line between right now and when he would taste the serum yet again.

Now that wait was almost over. All that stood between him and capturing the elf girl was a patch of razor grass. His levelers had been designed to level entire fields of the sharp metal reeds without slowing down. That thought brought a brief wave of relief that flooded over his aching frame. The end was finally near. The waiting would be over, and once again he would be granted the clarity of the serum.

Nim flesh splashed from the end of Glissa’s sword. The levelers were closing in, and she was trapped. On one side, she and her companions fought with an unending mob of undying monstrosities. On the other, the artifact creatures that had so efficiently killed Glissa’s family and best friend were coming on.

“Should we make a run for it?” shouted Glissa. She brought her sword around again, smashing a nim in the face and taking the top half of its head off. The creature lost its balance momentarily then continued up the hill, swinging its bony claws.

“Not enough time,” replied Bruenna. She too fought the nim. She used the reach of her wickedly barbed halberd to great advantage, cutting down the undead before they were within reach. The wizard looked over her shoulder. “Even if we had seen them an hour ago, we couldn’t have outrun them. They’re just too fast.”

“Couldn’t you fly us from here?” asked the elf between decapitating blows.

Bruenna shook her head. “I’m afraid we didn’t bring along enough of the right magic for this situation.”

Glissa looked to Bruenna.

The blue wizard shrugged. “Flight just isn’t in the cards for us today.”

Bosh stepped into Glissa’s field of view. Kicking out, he knocked a dozen of the nim backward, sending them tumbling down the slope. But behind them there were more shambling monsters, and these ones packed in so tightly that the falling undead were caught before they fell too far. Landing on their brethren, the kicked nim returned.

“Bruenna is right,” said the golem. “We can’t outrun the levelers, and even if we could, where would we go?”

Glissa shrugged. “Some place where they’re not?”

“Good plan, huh?” interjected Slobad.

Bosh shook his head. “We came here to get inside the Mephidross.” He lifted his heavy arm and pointed out over the swamp. The moons were still rising in the sky, but there was plenty of light to see what Bosh was looking at.

There in the middle of swamp, surrounded on all sides by foul liquid, stood the corrupted and pockmarked façade of the Vault of Whispers. It seemed like a long time since Glissa had been inside the fortress in the middle of the swamp. But it couldn’t have been more than a couple of moon cycles. Glissa thought about the girl she had been when she had first entered that foul place. She was angry. She wanted revenge for the death of her parents. And she had wanted to set things right, set herself free from the pain of her loss by seeing that justice was served.

She was different now. Discovering that the plane she lived on was hollow had changed her. Discovering that the force pursuing her had a name—Memnarch—had changed her even more. Standing here, on the threshold of the swamp once again, she realized that she still wanted the same things she did when she had been here last. Now she wanted more. Not only did she want to set herself free, but she wanted to free everyone else as well.

Glissa looked up at the golem. “You’re right,” she said. “Just because it isn’t easy to get inside doesn’t mean we should stop trying.”

Bosh nodded his approval.

The group of elves, humans, goblin and golem was pushed back over the lip of the slope, back up onto the plain. The nim hordes had filled the entire hillside, but the flood of new undead bodies ceased, and the grotesque liquid at the bottom of the hill became still.

“Now that we’ve decided to stick it out, that just leaves us with one problem,” said Glissa after bashing aside the claws of an advancing nim.

“What?” asked Slobad. “That you still crazy elf, huh?”

“How do we fight the levelers and the zombies at the same time?”

No one had time to answer. The levelers broke through the end of the razor grass and charged across the open plain. In the blink of an eye the killing devices were upon them, and Bruenna’s wizards turned to face the new threat.

Blue energy arced out over the plain, the light reflected in the metallic plates, catching the levelers across their chests, making their steering sails look green and their silver bodies a dull gray.

The white moon had been the first to rise, leaving the world suited in its natural colors. The next up, not more than a few second later, was the blue. It tainted the white, exaggerating the shadows, deepening the contrast between colors, and bathing everything in a harsh, unflattering light. As the black and red moons rose, colors began to mix and fade, turning everything once again to a ruddy brown.

“This light is making casting magic difficult,” said Bruenna.

The elf and the human stood back to back. Glissa fought off the nim, and Bruenna threw spells at the charging levelers.
Sandwiched between the two threats, the allies bunched tightly together. For a brief moment there was a separation between the good and the bad. Though they were squashed between levelers and nim, Glissa knew which way to point her sword. Then both groups pushed in, squeezing between the friends, cutting off allies.

Glissa, Bruenna, Slobad, Bosh, Al-Hayat, and all the human wizards were completely overrun.

Levelers rolled over warriors. Their scythe blades cut down the humans like they were long strands of razor grass.

Nim scratched at eyes, sank their teeth into live flesh, and piled on top of anyone they could reach, using their superior numbers as a weapon.

Glissa fought from side to side, parrying scythe blades to her right and rotten flesh to her left. The three distinct forces swirled and mixed together. It looked like a formal ball, everyone dancing and turning and moving in a great undulating mass.

The nim continued climbing over the lip of the hill, swarming over the plain to get into the fight. Six more came after Glissa, joining the four already slashing at her with their plague-infested claws, poisonous gas rising from their backs. From behind she fought off a pair of levelers. One would strike from the left, then the other would strike a moment later from the right. They took turns, creating a sort of scissoring motion with their sharp blades.

She could only watch as the six shambling monstrosities came on, barely able to keep herself alive without having to worry about more nim. As they closed in, Glissa fought off the urge to close her eyes. She had no control over this situation, and she didn’t want to watch the undead beasts tear her apart piece by piece. All the while, as she fought, she knew that sooner or later the sheer numbers would overwhelm her.

That moment had come sooner than she had hoped.

The nim reached out. Glissa dug down deep, trying to make her blade move faster—but she was at her physical limit. Lunging forward, the elf skewered two of them with one blow.

“I’ll take you all with me,” she shouted.

Her sword was lodged on a bone inside one of the two nim. Slime and rotten flesh covered the hilt of her sword. Yanking with all of her might, Glissa leaned back—and she lost her grip. Falling backward from the force of her pulling, the elf landed flat on her back, looking up at eight nim.

A pair of scythe blades closed just over her face, and for a brief moment, Glissa was grateful for having fallen. If she had been standing when those blades closed down, she would have surely lost half of her left leg—if not more. But that moment passed as the nim closed in.

The first of the undead creatures stepped on her stomach, and Glissa tightened her abdomen to avoid being crushed. Then another stepped on her, and another. The nim were surprisingly light, their bodies made up of little more than desiccated bone and rotten flesh, but they were heavy when all eight of them climbed on top of her.

Pulling her arms up to her sides and twisting away, Glissa curled up into a ball. Three of the nim lost their footing, slipping off and landing easily on the ground. But the others continued to trample her. She was pinned, trapped under the onslaught.

What a funny way to go, she thought, crushed to death by a mob of undead.

The crushing footsteps continued. The weight kept her lungs pinned down, and she had a difficult time breathing. The hard ground underneath was unforgiving, and it pushed back where the nims’ feet pushed her down. With each successive attempt, her breath became shallower, and her vision began to narrow.
Everything on the periphery dissolved, and a dark circle began closing down.

Glissa could hear the thumping of her heart in her ears as it labored to keep up with the dwindling air supply. She could feel the soft connective tissues in her body begin to separate and pull away from bone. Pushed past their limit, they were giving way—and so was her life-force.

This was it. She would die here. Her lifeless body would be baked to jerky under the convergent moons, and within a few days the only proof of her existence on Mirrodin would be the stain her corpse left on the interlocking metal plates of the plain.

One by one, the undead creatures stepped off of her. The heavy load lifted. Glissa gasped, swallowing air in giant gulp. Even the fetid swamp gas of Mephidross tasted sweet to her starved lungs. The thumping in her ears faded away, and her vision opened again. Lifting herself up to one elbow, Glissa looked up at a still-raging fight.