The cultivated fields of Valeron would normally be full of the hustle and bustle of Bant citizens tending to their crops, but not now. Now the farmers had been replaced with soldiers and the only thing on the soil was blood.
“It’s all their fault,” thought Mage Kellot of the Sighted-Caste, as he ground another zombie into the battlefield. The moaning creature’s head turned to mush beneath his foot and the body stopped writhing. Around the Rhox, the battle between the forces of Bant and Grixis raged, a mass of courageous soldiers struggling to stem the tide of the invading undead.
Angels and demons sliced through the sky, engaged in immortal combat, while Aven soldiers conducted hit and run attacks against huge zombie behemoths that snapped at them in frustration. What had been two ordered battle lines engaging had devolved into a frantic, chaotic clash; with every combatant watching their own back. Bantian soldiers hacked down the zombies with their gleaming swords, and in turn were pulled apart by rotting hands.
As one of the few mages thrust into this chaos, Kellot looked for opportunities to turn the tide of battle in favor of virtue. With his massive build, typical of the Rhox kind, Kellot could see head and shoulders over the human-sized combatants all around. A short distance ahead an ogre-sized mass of corpses had been crudely stitched together and then animated by one of the Grixis necromancers. The shambling creature was hurling squires away as though they were rag dolls with a host of arms that sprouted from all over it like spines. Drawing on White Mana through his steel mage’s battle-staff, Kellot pointed the sapphire head at the disgusting creature and let the Mana loose, casting a simple ensnarement spell.
Instantly the undead horror’s form was bound in magical chains, shackling its many arms and rooting it to the spot. Immobilized, it was soon overwhelmed and chopped apart by the squire’s blades.
Looking up Kellot saw a lesser angel struggling to take down a colossal demon. With a laugh like a chorus of pain, the demon lashed out with a whip made from some colossal beast’s spine, and caught the angel across the wings. Blood arched through the sky as the angel began to fall, the grinning demon descending after it like a predator moving in for the kill.
Quickly Kellot channeled another spell, ignoring the exhaustion beginning to overtake him after nearly an hour of constant battle. In a split second the falling angel was restored, as holy White Mana replenished her body and sealed her wounds. In an instant the angel had ceased her falling spiral and surged back up to the demon, spear extended and a prayer on her lips. Kellot followed up by blessing the angel with a spell for some extra divine might, and watched as the angel’s spear tore through the demon like a hot poker through a scroll page.
As Kellot elbowed aside a skeleton warrior, shattering it into broken pieces, he heard the cry of awe that went up from the angel’s victory turn into a wail of dread. Nearby, a proud Sigil-bearing paladin, a veteran of a countless honorable duels and proud example to all Bant’s citizens, was struck by dark sorcery – a hundred sharpened pieces of bone ripped through the knight’s armor, the knight, and his steed. The attack was clearly magical and Kellot felt his blood surge anew despite his exhaustion. One of the foul necromancers was nearby! At last, an opportunity to take vengeance on one of the dreaded beings responsible for this invasion!
As the knight’s punctured body hit the ground with a rattle, Kellot traced the spell’s path to a figure who had gained some height on the battleground by standing on a pile of bodies. Kellot sized up the figure he would strive to slay.
In contrast to Kellot’s sapphire-capped steel staff, the necromancer clutched a heavily carved wooden staff topped with a severed hand, presumably preserved with magic. His weapon was not the only contrast to Kellot. While Kellot was a hefty, solid Rhox, the necromancer was an extremely lean human with very pale skin. A ragged cloak fluttered behind him despite the still wind. And while the top of his head was obscured by an impressive helmet made from the skull of a Nayan plowbeast, his mouth was exposed revealing a dark grin with pointed fangs. Kellot’s hand gripped the shaft of his staff that much more tightly. Not just a necromancer then, a vampire.
With singularity of purpose, Sighted-Caste Mage Kellot moved towards the vampire.
Crack! Kellot brought his staff down on the vampire’s head, sending it reeling. The vampire staggered but quickly recovered, lunging forward with a snarl and a clenched fist. Kellot braced himself against the blow, and absorbed the punch with his huge palm, gripping it tightly. The vampire was incredibly strong, as much as Kellot himself, but Kellot had the advantage in weight and height; and more importantly he knew how to use it. As soon as he had a firm grip on the vampire’s fist he pulled back hard, yanking the necromancer bodily off its feet. Kellot brutally slammed the vampire into the dirt with a whipping motion. Without pause he pulled again, smashing the vampire into the ground again. Before the vampire could move Kellot had the tip of his staff pressed against the necromancer’s throat, the staff’s head thrumming with magic.
“Do you have any final words, Abomination?” asked Kellot, preparing to deliver the deathblow.
The vampire grinned, tongue slurping up a trickle of blood leaking from its mouth. “I do. Are you a Mage, or is your staff just enchanted?”
Kellot frowned, confused by the question. “I am a Mage of the Sighted…”
“Oh, good, I was afraid this would be over too soon.”
Before Kellot’s eyes could widen the vampire struck the Rhox wizard in the chest with a stream of shadows as solid as lead. The force of the shadow spell launched Kellot into the air. At the end of a short trajectory Kellot ploughed through the surrounding melee of Grixis and Bant warriors, his heavy frame and momentum hurling unfortunate allies and enemies in all directions. When he came to a stop, Kellot beat at the shadows as though he was aflame, dispersing the darkness before it could attempt to entangle or consume him. The threat averted Kellot got to his feet, locking eyes with the smirking vampire who was striding forwards through the death-soaked battlefield as though through a beautiful field of flowers.
“Come on! Don’t you want to play again?” called the vampire, raising his arms in mock frustration. “Don’t give up on me yet! The fun is just beginning! C’mon, give me your best shot…”
The necromancer was dangerous, and powerful. He had to be dealt with quickly. Kellot knew the only way to do this was to use maximum force, no time for subtlety or strategy, just raw power. Letting out a long breath and closing his eyes, Kellot summoned every particle of White Mana he could into his being, drinking the energy in from the land around him like a parched man at an oasis. He could feel the magical energy brimming under his skin, thrumming through his blood, a holy and pure force.
Gripping his staff in both hands he aimed the sapphire head right at the vampire. Not the time for subtlety, Kellot roared the spell’s verbal component with all the righteousness he could muster. A thin but solid lance-like beam of pure sanctified light roared out of the staff’s head, as dangerous as any bolt of lightning.
The suddenness of the attack took the vampire off guard. There was none of the clichéd, heroic preamble he had come to expect from the weak do-gooders; no grandstanding moral speech to announce an impending attack; just a beam of hungry magic heading right at him. A normal opponent would have had no time to react, but despite his surprise the vampire had inhuman reflexes on his side and he reacted with unnatural speed, unleashing his own spell; a soul-sucking ray made of raw evil.
The two streams of opposed magic met each other en route to their targets, clashing like starved wild beasts. Each wizard suddenly felt a drain on their energy as the spells tried to destroy each other, both fuelled by huge reserves of raw Mana. As the clashing spells bucked and thrashed against each other it became clear to each mage that this would be a titanic struggle and that to win, one of them would have to summon more magic than they had ever summoned before.
The battle raged on and Kellot and the vampire lost themselves in their contest. Teeth gritted, hands gripping their staffs with white-knuckled intensity, they forced out all the power they could into their spells. The war around them faded into unimportance, it didn’t matter now. The sounds of swords clanging and zombies groaning ebbed away, the frantic movements of combatants fighting for their lives seemed to grind slowly to a halt in their peripheral vision. The two combatants just shut it all out, entirely focused on their one goal: the destruction of the other wizard. Sweat dripped down their bodies as they exerted themselves, their muscles strained and protested; but neither backed down.
In between them the forces of light and darkness battled, two elements anathema to each other forced into contact. The White and Black Mana roiled and thrashed, sometimes the white would pierce the black mass like a lance, almost cutting it in two, and then the blackness would almost swallow the light, only to be forced back again.
Minutes, or it could have been hours, ticked away but neither Kellot nor the vampire could gain a lasting advantage over the other, much less destroy him. Kellot was exhausted as he had never been in his life, tired to his bones and deeper, no mage was supposed to funnel Mana at this intensity. Kellot was literally forcing the Mana out, pushing it forth in great bursts, and it seemed as though the necromancer was doing the same.
A involuntary shudder ran through Kellot’s body, a sign of the incredible strain he was putting himself under, but the Rhox clenched his jaw and just kept pushing. The task was all that mattered. The task was to kill the vampire. The vampire must be destroyed. Good must triumph. Ignore the pain. Ignore the exhaustion. Good must triumph. Any moment now he would surely win. He just had to hold on a little longer. A little bit longer. A little bit longer… minor spasms rippled through Kellot, but he simply focused on keeping his arms still. Still chanting inside his head with the intensity of a maniac, Kellot forced himself to actually take in what his eyes were showing him for a moment.
The vampire was speaking, but Kellot couldn’t hear anything over the crackling of the warring spells, which roared in his ears so loud that it was started to verge on white noise. The necromancer seemed to be spitting out a continuous stream of what was probably vile curses if Kellot was correct, but he couldn’t hear them. The clash of spells had grown larger, as though they were feeding some over-stuffed animal. The writhing disturbance was almost obscuring the combatants, and seemed to both suck in and hurl out light at the same time.
Kellot had pushed all his limits, he had broken his pain barriers and who knows what else, smashed them into dust, and even the focus of the chants wasn’t helping now. His strength was failing; he had no more Mana or stamina left to give. His arms slowly but surely dropped and his torrent of White Mana began to lesson to a trickle.
The vampire saw a final chance at victory. Though he was also exhausted and under incredible strain – the extent of which had began to cook his brain inside his head – the necromancer seized the chance with the fury of a shark smelling blood. Drawing upon his last resources (and condemning another small piece of his sanity to oblivion in the process), the vampire sent a sizeable chunk of Black Mana out through his staff. Without the energy to contest this development, the necromancer’s darkness spell was finally the ascendant power and began to shunt Kellot’s light beam out of the way. Deflecting the light like a mirror, the ball of pitch-black death approached at a steady rate. Kellot struggled to do something, anything, but there was no Mana left. He was just a ghost in a shell.
As the death spell pushed agonizingly closer to its target, Kellot saw the self-satisfied grin on the vampire’s face. I’ve won, it seemed to say. You were a worthy opponent, but it’s over now. And at the sight of that grin, something within Kellot’s mind snapped, some part of his rational mind just released the catch on something pent up, or perhaps repressed. The foul creature would not defeat Mage Kellot of the Sighted-Caste. Evil would not overcome good. NOT. GOING. TO. HAPPEN.
The air crackled with static, the ground split. The very battle seemed to stop. A glowing nimbus of blinding Mana surged through Kellot like lightning out of a cloud. It slammed into the spell’s meeting point, and this extra contribution of power was the tipping point. The clash of opposing energies was too much for the fabric of reality to take on in its current form. With a piercing whine that shattered glass and crystal throughout the battlefield, the combined Black and White Mana compacted and imploded inwards until the nearly house sized mass turned into nothing bigger than a crystal ball. But it didn’t stay that way for long; a split second later the concoction reversed and erupted out into an exponentially growing blast sphere of impure yet powerful magic.
The vampire’s jaw dropped and despite the glare Kellot’s eyes widened in astonishment. Neither had time for more than that before the energy blast engulfed them and seconds after that it exploded out for kilometres around, devouring the countryside, as though hungry for more. The entire battlefield disappeared into the phenomenon’s belly. Trees instantly rotted into slimy remains and were scatted on the gale force winds, soldiers and undead alike blasted into calcified statues. Nothing was left of a sizeable portion of the Valeron fields except a smooth clean crater.
As soon as the explosion touched him, Kellot felt his soul blaze with something unknown. He physically felt, through some sense that was not touch, a dark and evil power pour into his being. The touch of White Mana, always a comforting sensation in the past, now burned him as though he was within a volcano. Kellot could feel his heart beating as loud as hammer blows and within his chest something blazed like a dying star. His mind staggered as it tried to translate the incredible metaphysical sensations into actual physical feelings, but the task was beyond him.
Kellot opened his mouth to cry out, to scream, to pray, to articulate something. Before he could utter a sound, his pupils contracted until they almost disappeared and his whole world went black and then there was nothing.
Joshua Olsen
Email: jarraltandaris@hotmail.com
Kas’ nose was filled with the stench of death as he awoke. Blood, burnt flesh….. some of the weaker Viashinos had voided their bowls at some point, most likely when claws had sheared them open or fangs split them apart. The potent combination filled Kas’ nostrils, helped to rouse him. Groaning, Kas cracked his eyes open, one only getting to a slit as it was currently a mass of bruised tissue. He looked about. Around him, the members of his Thrash lay dead, their eyes unseeing, their limbs bereft of movement, their bodies marked by fire and tooth and claw. Those same flames still licked the area, feeding on the last patches of moss and lending the cavern a glow of slaughter and destruction. Kas stood, shaky on his feet, using Tear’s haft to steady himself. At his feet was Raz’s body. Reverently, Kas laid a hand on Raz’s body, gingerly closing his remaining eye shut. As his hearing started to return Kas realized realised that the sounds of battle had not ceased. Someone was still fighting the dragon!
It was Elder Drassom! Kas must have only been stunned for a few moments. The chance to make a difference flooded Kas’ frame with fresh resolve, and he started to jog over to the titanic duel of legends.
The fight had cost the Dragon dearly, the combined efforts of the whole Thrash taking a heavy toll in blood.
Cuts and gashes covered its body all over, dribbling blood, not much at individually but taken together they made an impact. One of its rear legs was held protectively off the ground, clearly hurt. By some amazing feat, Drassom had managed to ram Slayer into the side of the dragon’s head. It had only slightly penetrated the heavy scales, but the wound was saving Drassom’s life, the pain causing the dragon to strike erratically and move slowly. Both Drassom and the Hellkite were breathing heavily. The Elder, with his weapon removed had taken a sharp piece of rock from the floor, and moved it from hand to hand like an expert knife-fighter.
“Eldar Drassom!”
Kas didn’t know why he said it. A small part of him knew it was probably fear. Distracted by the unexpected voice, the Elder turned to see Kas moving towards him. Surprise crossed his features.
“Run, youngling! Get out of here now!!!”
While its preys’ back was turned, the Dragon lunged. Teeth the size of spears flew at Drassoms’ back. Kas went to yell a warning, but it would have been too late. Warned by his long-honed survival instincts and the change of Kas’ expression, Drassom instantly dived to the side with no hesitation. Such a move had saved the Elder countless times in his life, but for the first time it failed, as the Dragon’s jaws snapped shut around his leg. Howling, Drassom was yanked into the air by the Dragon.
As the dragon increased the pressure from agonising to excruciating Drassom gasped in agony. He still had the jagged piece of rock in his hand, and with an incoherent scream Drassom dashed it against the Dragon’s head. His pain driving him into a frenzy of hate, Drassom starting pounding the rock around the Hellkite’s nostrils, where he could do the most damage from his immobile position.
“Come on! LET’S FINISH THIS!!!”
Kas watched in stunned awe as even mortally wounded Drassom refused to go down without trying to cripple his murderer. The Dragon shook its head to try widely, but Drassom continued to attack with the stone. One of his strikes landed somewhere soft and the Dragon hissed, spraying blood from its sinuses.
All of a sudden the Hellkite flicked its head and relaxed its jaws, launching Drassom into the air like a bullet, almost all the way to the cavern’s ceiling. As gravity began to take hold again Drassom turned himself in the air, shifting so that he was falling head first, the rock held in a two-handed stabbing grip. Below him the Dragon looked up, mouth wide open as it prepared to snatch him up. It was unsure what the Elder thought he could do, but if nothing it was going to be defiant. Kas knew Drassom was doomed, but perhaps the Elder could land one more blow on his hated enemy.
“RAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!!” roared Drassom.
With incredible speed, the Hellkite moved, its jaws once more snapping shut with bone-pulverising force, this time around Drassom’s head and neck. There was a tremendous cracking, and just like that Elder Drassom went limp, the rock falling from his hand without protest. The Dragon worried the body for an instant, ripping Drassom’s head off and sending his body to the floor in a spray of gore. By cruel fortune the body landing at Kas’ feet, spraying him in his Thrash-mate’s blood. It was thick and sticky, and Kas had to suppress the urge to scrape it off. But he had bigger problems.
With a terrifying rumble of contained fury the Dragon turned to regard Kas, the sole Viashino of the Flame-Thrash to still be alive. Wounded, with a sword jutting obscenely from its head and hideous lightning-bolt injuries to its chest and wing, the beast still lived, and it was determined to finish the last of the prey off. Kas gripped Rip and Tear so tight his knuckles creaked. It was time to follow his leader’s example. Time to die with his hands wrapped around a weapon and a curse in his throat.
Time for a last stand.
*
Impatient to get this last morsel out of the way and to retreat to its lair and hibernate away its injuries, the Dragon lunged. Kas didn’t possess Drassom’s reflexes or experience. There was no way he could get out of the way, so instead he flung Rip, his stone cleaver, at the onrushing behemoth.
It was a poor throw. Rip was about as aerodynamic as a Drake with no wings, only the Viashino’s raw strength allowing it any semblance of distance. Combined with the one handed rushed fling, Rip was never going to sail blade-first into the Dragon’s outstretched maw as Kas imagined in his mind’s eye.
Instead the throw went wide, sending the spinning blade perilously close to the dragon’s face. Following the instinct all creatures have when presented with an object flying at their eye, the dragon shut its eyes and twisted its head slightly to the side while trying to back away. This locked the Hellkite’s legs up and it started to skid as its weight and prior momentum worked against it. With a flinch-worthy crunch the Dragon’s jaws snapped shut centimetres to Kas’ side, sparing him for a moment. Time seemed for one impossible moment for Kas to slow to a crawl as the Dragon’s huge head slid by him. He could see Slayer glinting in the light for a moment, almost like its obsidian surface was winking at him. Just behind it was the Hellkite’s closed eye.
Strike now the blade seemed to say. This is your only chance.
Kas wrapped his hands tightly around Tear. His breathing was ragged, his body screamed out for rest, but his heart screamed for blood. And that was what he would get. Closing his eyes and grateful to the cosmic forces for this one last twist of the knife on the creature that had taken everything from him, Kas swung with all his might. He fully expected that this would be the last act of his life, but by whatever gods existed, he was going to give the hell-damned dragon something to remember him by. Kas swung. It was all down to this.
The Club swished aside the air with deadly force.
*
It was the shot of a lifetime. Any gambling man would have put his life savings on the club missing, or bouncing off a scale, or just failing to do any damage. Knightly orders on a dozen other worlds who had plied the soldier’s trade for twice the length of Kas’ whole life would say such a feat was impossible, and it was suicide to try. But fate, or luck, had other plans. The solid heavy stone head of Rip landed, not on the Dragon’s eye as Kas originally intended, but on the pommel of Slayer, jutting from the dragon’s head.
Like an oversized brutal hammer striking a brutal oversized nail on the head, the strike drove Slayer directly into the Dragon’s head. The force of the blow was enough to push Slayer through the Hellkite’s thick skull, where it kissed the edge of the creature’s brain, severing synapses and fibres by the dozen. “Brain damage” didn’t really cover it; “catastrophic cerebral trauma” was more on the mark. About the best that could be said for the Dragon was the parts of the cerebellum responsible for breathing and autonomous body functions hadn’t been shredded.
At once the Dragon reared up, screaming now in true terror. It clawed its head, brain overloaded with fiery pain. The dragon tried to think, but that was well beyond it ability right now. Dimly, the Dragon also realised it couldn’t feel its back legs. Or its wings. With a pained bellow, the huge creature fell over backwards with a massive crash that shook the mountain.
As the dust began to clear, a figure strode towards the prone Hellkite. It was Kas. He was holding Rip again, while his good eye was narrowed to a hateful slit. Without fear or preamble, he neatly vaulted atop the felled titan, striding along the huge length of Dragon to its chest. The Dragon’s neck and head lay against the edge of the cavern, propping it up so that it could see Kas approach. Damage to its brain had the dragon’s limbs spasming gently of their own accord, the beast was helpless. Kas came to a stop at the beast’s chest, his feet firmly planted as the expanse of flesh below him contracted in and out with wheezing breaths. Kas speared the Dragon with a glare of half-madness, a glare that promised great violence.
“You killed my thrash.”
Kas lashed out with his cleaver, hacking deep into the Dragon’s softer underbelly. The pinned predator howled in fresh agony.
“You killed them all. You killed my Shaman. And Elder Drassom.”
Kas’ cleaver rose and fell, widening the wound.
“All dead. Everyone I know gone. In a single day.”
Rip swung to the side, catching one of the Dragon’s forelimbs. Muscle parted beneath the serrated edge. Kas’ voice rose in volume as he took deeper and deeper breaths, his frame swelling with emotion and energy and his blows started to pick up speed as his anger spilled forth.
“YOU killed them! YOU took them from ME!”
The dragon bellowed at the top of its lungs, but could do nothing to defend itself.
“I saw them die! I will make you feel it! Everything you have done to me! You will feel everything! FEEL IT!!!”
Anger turned to Rage, and Kas saw red, the world turning as red as the blood of the dragon. As red as the blood of this Thrash-Members. All of Kas’ frustrations: the living in constant fear of predators and death, the indignity of being on the bottom of the food chain, the scrimping and hiding in cramped and uncomfortable valleys: it was all unleashed out in an avalanche of hate. Kas could feel himself losing control, and then that point was abruptly behind him.
“YOU KILLED RAZ! YOU KILLED RAZ! HE WAS MY FRIEND!!!!”
Muscle and bone, cartridge and tendon: it began to disintegrate under Kas’ cleaver. He wrenched the scaly skin apart with his teeth, ripping it aside to get to work deeper and deeper. Somehow the Dragon still clung to life, writhing feebly underneath him. There were tears flowing from the Viashino’s eyes, tears rooted in sorrow but grown beyond control with fury.
“FEEL IT! FEEL THEIR PAIN! FEEL THEIR DEATHS!”
He stood in pile of gore knee-deep, the dragon’s chest cavity a red ruin that would make a serial killer ill. Bone now splintered beneath Kas he lashed out like a butcher, buckling the dragon’s reinforced sternum. He was splattered with gore but it wasn’t enough. The need to kill demanded more.
“DON’T YOU DIE ON ME! NOT YET! YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO DIE YET!”
Another chop, and there before him it was: the Hellkite’s heart, a great crimson organ larger than Kas’ head. It was still pumping. Madness seized Kas: he was hungry, hadn’t eaten in days. All this running and fighting and jumping: his stomach demanded meat. Fresh meat….
With an unrestrained howl, Kas threw Rip aside and seized the heart with both hands, wrenching it upwards with strength of madness. Tubes and arteries resisted at first and then ripped free as Kas hefted the heart aloft. He bit into the heart, filling his mouth with the hearty taste of meat and his tongue with the copper of blood. Like an animal Kas wolfed down chunks of flesh, filling his crocodilian gullet with chunks of meat as he gorged.
As its living heart was pulled from it and devoured, the great dragon, mightiest of predators on the whole of Jund, arched in pain, letting out a scream that would have cracked glass. It was the death knell of a creature that had lived for hundreds of years, now cut short in an orgy of violence. Then there was nothing left to do but die. Kas felt it as the great body around him shut down, the great and stubborn life seep from the shattered and torn flesh, and he both revelled and mourned in it. The dammed thing was dead, but it was too soon: he hadn’t finished avenging his Thrash. There were bones left to crack and flesh to tear, organs to split beneath Rip’s edge. He wanted to pluck the dragons eyes and strip the flesh from the skull. To destroy, to crush. To unmake this beast. The rush of power was incredible, intoxicating and electrifying.
Finally, he was the biggest, the strongest. He has cast down the Dragon and fed on its strength! No more fear, no more hesitation! This was all he needed, the kill, the fury, the reward of destruction on a world that had given him no favours. He was a predator, not prey. He would hunt again and again, never grow hungry or back down. Kas tipped his back and howled, bellowing defiance and anger. He wished someone could see him now, injured but unbowed, covered head to toe in the blood of a great Hellkite, his stomach full and his victory glorious beyond imagination! Where was the Thrash? They had to see this! Drassom, and Raz….
The Thrash. Drassom. Raz. No.
Kas roared again, a bellow of pain so loud that he thought the whole mountain would collapse on him and end it all. Certainly it seemed like his world was ending: the heat in this corpse-strewn killing field was no comparison to the heat in his chest. It wasn’t the hot blood coating him, wasn’t the fire of anger, but something deeper. His chest blazed. Kas sunk to his knees. He’d done it then: pushed his body too far. Something must have ripped open, ruptured, bled out. So this was it then. Death just at the moment of triumph. The fire burned brighter.
“MMMRAAAAAGHHHHH!!!!”
Fury, determination and raw battle-lust combined in that moment, and a shimmering nova ignited within the simple being known only as Kas.
One moment Kas roared, a terrifying primeval declaration of hurt and dominance that he thought would mark the end of his life. The next moment there was a thunderclap of raw power and he disappeared, a shockwave of destructive force rumbling out from where he had stood to scar the rock walls with its progenitor’s passion for destruction.
The Viashino known as Kas was nowhere to be seen, as his blood-soaked elevation to a great power sent him hurtling through the dimensional cascade known as the Blind Eternities. Suddenly engaged with feelings and sights beyond mortal comprehension, a not inconsiderable slice of Kas’ sanity was at that moment blasted away forever in a storm of mental and emotional trauma. Truly Kas would never again be the individual he once was. But for those unfortunates who would find the Viashino later, dumped into their world though chance, he had gained much in its place.
He had gained raw power.
Which they would learn the hard way.
The Cavern was still there, surviving earthquakes and volcanic eruptions with timeless indifference. The cavern had new residents now, the bones of the once great dragon that had died there now home to webs and spiders that secreted themselves in sockets and spaces. When the cavern was lit, not by the half-light of the glowing moss that grew along the rock surface but by a prolonged ochre flash, the monstrous arachnids scuttled away to their hidy-holes.
A Viashino stood in the great space, but it bore little resemblance to the youth once known as Kas. His frame had bulked out with muscle and growth, more than even Eldar Drassom had ever possessed. Nature fetishes and hunt souvenirs adorned the muscular frame, swaying slightly from the aftermath of the planeswalk. Long and ugly scars in various stages of healing adorned the Viashinos body, and the wurm-hide armour the figure wore was dented and scratched. Held within Kas’ huge bear-sized hands was a weapon as brutal looking and destructive as its owner: a great double handed executioner’s axe fashioned from obsidian edged with Dominarian bronze. Its haft was crafted from some dead beast’s spinal column shot through with living creepers that bound it together.
Kas looked around the chamber, as though trying to match up every surface with his recollections. Slowly, lost in memories, he strode over to the dragon’s skeleton that lay where it had fallen against the wall. Kas stopped before it, not so gently planting his axe in the rock before it. Once it was stable, Kas strode forward, between the huge spires of ribs till he stood where once he had ripped a Hellkite’s heart from its chest. It was here he knelt on the floor, planting a knee amongst the garden of bone. His eyes tracked left and right, as though expecting to see something, but when he has ascertained all was quiet and still he closed his eyes and spoke.
“Thrash. I don’t know if you can hear me. I don’t know if any part of you, your minds or your spirits or anything remain in the world of the living. I don’t believe it, to be honest, but in my time away I have seen…. such things. Things I wouldn’t have believed possible. So, here I am, because if there is but a chance…. well, you all deserve that.”
“I have travelled far beyond Jund, to places so different from our homeland. Places where the weak subjugate the strong under word-shackles called ‘laws’, places where the law of nature has been pushed back into corners. Surviving on them is….. challenging compared to the simpleness of Jund, but I make do. I will always make do.”
Kas reached behind his back, pulling out of a rucksack a long metal staff. Swaying from various parts of the staff were long, dagger sized bone claws.
“Every day, I think of your passing.
“Nixl, you saved me from that Goblin attack on Firespear pass.“
“Rond, you shared your haunch of flesh that day the hunt went against me.”
“Drassom, whose bravery saved us all a dozen times. “
“And Raz…. you were my greatest friend. I miss you still.”
With a heave, Kas planted the staff into the floor like a marker, sending the trophy claws swaying and clattering like a wind chime.
“In honour of you, the Flame-Thrash, I put at your resting place a tribute of blood for blood. A Dragon took all nine of you from me. And so from nine different worlds I have taken nine different Dragons’ claws, ripped from the beast’s dying bodies by my own hand. I hope that it gives you pleasure to know I have avenged you.”
Kas stood, appealing to the heavens.
“I have no Thrash to call my own, and the name of The Flame-Thrash will die with me. Our ways and tales are dead, but I hope to keep them alive through my titles, which I have given myself for lack of an elder to perform the ceremony. In them I shall keep all of you with me.
No Viashino has slain a dragon for a hundred generations as I have, and so I name myself Zek, Dragon-Slayer. I have been further than any Viashino has ever been, and soon I name myself Arr, Traveller. You may remember my as Kas, but the wider multiverse knows me as Arrkas Zek, and as I shall not be coming back here, that is how I want you to remember me too. Goodbye Thrash. The multiverse awaits. A banquet of treasures and challenges and hunts beyond my imagination, and nothing remains for me here. Just memories and ash. Be at peace.”
Arrkas took one long look around the chamber that had changed his life so much. Everywhere the ghosts of memory swam before them, coalescing as vaporous shapes that laid out the corpses of those who had fallen here. Sometimes, when he slept at night, he could still see Raz, lying on the floor dying, reaching out a hand to him. Could still see that instant when his friend slipped away.
A single tear slid out of Arrkas’ eye, and slid down his frame to kiss the dry floor. Arrkas shook his head furiously, wiping away the tear’s trail. There was no time for sentiment. His visit was done, it was time to be away from his home. Perhaps a truly challenging hunt would cure this moment of weakness from him. Either way, it was time to move on.
With a crack of his axe’s hilt on the floor, Arrkas Zek vanished from the chamber. It would be some time before the cavern’s spider population dared to peek out from their ambush holes. When they finally did, all they would find to mark the passage of Planeswalker many knew as Arrkas Zek, the Destroyer, was a simple staff planted in the floor, a forest of dragon claws gently clack clacking in the breeze.
The End…
Joshua Olsen
Email: jarraltandaris@hotmail.com
The orange sun blazed lazily in the Jundian sky, bathing the land in a relentless tide of tropical heat. Among other things, its savage and uncaring gaze fell on a Thrash of Viashinos as they slowly trudged their way through the thick jungle and up the side of one of Jund’s hundreds of mountains. The Flame Thrash was on the move. As one of the largest groupings of Viashinos on the whole plane, The Flame Thrash boasted a whole 16 members plus it’s elder. Even so, the assembled members didn’t allow themselves the illusion that they were safe. There was no such thing as true safety in Jund.
“That blade getting a little heavy for you Kas? Or maybe the other one?” spoke one of the Viashino youths, Raz. He held out his hand to hoist his friend up a short ledge, who was unable to climb the ledge due to each of his hands being used to grip the hafts of a jagged stone weapon, one a crude cleaver, the other an even cruder spiked club.
“And let you get your hands on Rip or Tear? You’d like that wouldn’t you? Just keep on walking before I leave you for the Nyxathrids to eat,” replied Kas good-naturedly, allowing Raz to grab the shaft of his axe. With a pull from one Viashino and a jump from the other, Kas easily boosted up the ledge, and kept walking. “C’mon, we’re falling behind. Let’s get a move on.”
Minutes later the duo had followed the path smashed through the dense foliage by others before them, steadily heading geographically up. As they skirted around a huge swath of vines they found Shaman Nixl holding back. As they drew closer he gestured for them to be quiet. “Stay your mouths. A challenge is on the winds. Aka’s blood is up.”
The three Viashino huddled over at the edge of the jungle, where the vegetation started to grudgingly give way to the sheer volcanic rock of the mountainside. Thrash-member Aka stood a short distance from Elder Drassom. Aka was clearly agitated, shaking his lguanar-Skull Mallet with every few words. His voice carried on the wind.
“…we fled, like goblin runts! All because of a few balls of roiling mulch! You should be ashamed.”
By contrast, Drassom’s words were more measured. He had been Elder of the Flame Thrash for a long time, and his life had been a long one, a nearly unheard of 12 years of age that spoke of his experience and desire for survival.
“The Saprolings would have overrun and consumed us if we had stayed. I am no coward, we could have fought them off if it had come to it, but a Mycoloth was following in their path. If we had stayed we would have perished.”
Aka spat a blob of phlegm onto the ground, where it sizzled against the subterranean heat. “An Elder who flees before a piece of roving fungus is no elder at all! We should not have left the valley! Any moment now a Dragon could spot us, exposed like this. You made us move, endangered us all. I say you have no right to lead the Flame Thrash! I, Aka challenge you Drassom!”
The Thrash gathered around Shaman Nixl, excited despite their long day of trekking. A challenge could end only one way. The crowd settled in to watch.
The fight was not outwardly fair; Drassom was physically larger and more experienced than his opponent. Aka for his part, was a dirty fighter, and showed it by launching himself at the Eldar before he even had time to draw his weapon, a great obsidian blade called Slayer. The Mallet lumbered through the air with terrifying force, more than enough to pulverise bone, and Drassom ducked to avoid it. Aka followed through his wild haymaker by twisting into slap of his powerful tail, catching
Drassom on the side of the head and pushing him back a step. Aka continued to attack, reversing his momentum and launching another low attack with his mallet, this time catching Drassom in the gut. The gut strike had almost no power compared to the all-or-nothing of his first attack, but it winded the Elder, who let out a wheeze as the breath was knocked out of him.
On the sidelines, Kas caught his breath too. Was the Elder actually in trouble? Kas had little love for Aka, even aside from the lack of attachment most Thrash members had for each other, (a useful skill on a world where most humanoids were lucky to live to see their 8th birthday) Kas had always found Aka to be arrogant and obnoxious. The thought of him making the decisions for the Thrash was unpleasant to say the least.
And it did seem as though Drassom was in trouble. The Elder was staggering back, clutching his stomach and wheezing. Aka was closing in, roaring his ascension. He raised the mallet back for a killing blow, his opponent never even having had time to draw his blade.
Suddenly Drassom shot forward like a dragon’s dive bomb, he barrelled in low with arms outstretched and crashed into Aka in a running tackle and held him as he continued to run. Running with his grappled opponent held up close he didn’t seem to be very winded at all. In panic, Aka tried to bring his mallet down on the Elder’s back to break the grab, but Drassom had seized his challenger’s wrist in a grip powerful enough to stress bone to prevent exactly that. A second later Drassom slammed Aka into a nearby boulder. Aka was stunned, slumping down as his world spun violently. Drassom quickly picked the younger challenger with both hands and hurled him bodily away, causing him to crash not far from where the rest of the Thrash was watching. Moaning with pain and nausea Aka could do nothing as Drassom grabbed him by the head and pulled him up to his shaky feet. Drassom withdrew Slayer out of the notch on his vine-made belt.
“I feigned weakness Aka,” the Elder spat to his challenger’s face. Then he rammed Slayer into Aka’s stomach, forcing the blade deep in and twisting. “But you are weak. And we can’t afford to have weakness in this Thrash.”
Aka was fading fast, blood spewing from the mortal wound in his stomach. Even so, he was still alive as Drassom leant in and with lightning speed, tore Aka’s throat out with a powerful wrench of his razor-toothed jaws. Blood spraying everywhere, Aka fell, never to get up again.
Drassom let his challenger fall, Aka’s gore staining his mouth crimson. He raised Slayer up high and roared with bloodlust, beating his chest triumphantly.
“Looks like the source of our next meal’s solved boys! Meat’s on the menu!”
The Flame Thrash went wild for their leader, the Viashinos letting out roars of their own and waving their weapons with gusto. Kas clashed Rip and Tear together, gratified at the sparks cascading off the impacts. He was proud to be Part of the Flame Thrash, proud to be a warrior under Eldar Drassom. Kas looked Raz in the eyes and winked at his friend. This was the life.
And then the roar split Kas’ world open.
In an eyeblink, The Thrash’s mood changed from jovial to terrified.
“…DRAGON!!”
A shadow swiftly passed over the assembled Viashino as something huge blocked out the very sun for a moment. A ear-splitting roar echoed through the air. Instinctively, Kas and the others looked over to Drassom for guidance.
“HELLKITE!! Out of the forest!”
The Viashinos pelted out of the forest as quick as they could run. A moment later the circling dragon made an attack run on their position. With an unearthly hiss a huge patch of forest transformed into blazing pyre. Countless small predators cried out in agony as their bodies were consumed by scorching heat, and the scent of charred meat filled the air. Kas hit the rock as the heatwash knocked him from his feet.
A Hellkite. Just when they weren’t doomed enough as is.
A hand grabbed Kas’ shoulder, hauling him up to his feet, even as he coughed to get the smoke out of his mouth. Next thing Kas knew he was running.
“Move it! Into the cave! We can’t stay here!”
Elder Drassom’s voice cut through the chaos like a knife, gave the Viashinos something to rally behind. Drassom stood at the mouth of a large cave. Viashinos tended not to venture into caves, there was a whole different array of things to eat them in there, but they had no choice: out in the open the Dragon would consume them all, easy as falling off a log and into a Thrinax’s mouth.
As Kas’ legs pumped with desperation, devouring the distance between himself and the cave mouth, he could feel the rush of air that meant the dragon was closing in on them again. If his eyes could shed tears in this volcanic enviroment, Kas would do so. There was nothing he could do as death swooped in for him, but keep running and hope that it wasn’t him that was taken.
As fate would have it, it wasn’t him. As they ran, Kas could hear a scream and a crunch as Zol was wrenching screaming into the sky, born aloft by the Dragon’s maw. And then it came back.
By the time the Flame-Thrash had made it to the cave’s entrance, three of their number had died gruesome deaths. But there was no time to mourn that fact. No time for anything but survival.
Without hesitation the Thrash ran into the depths of the cave, using the small amount of light coming in from outside to guide their way. Behind t hem the Hellkite made to pursue, roaring with rage that its prey would dare to try and escape.
The cave was sharply narrowing the further they went in. At the entrance it had been cavernous, more than enough room for the dragon to move through, but now it was only four or so times their height. If it continued to narrow like this, the dragon would be unable to fit, and they might be able to find another way out, or at least wait the creature out. They were moving slower now as the light became increasingly dim. Behind them the cave vibrated to the sounds of the Hellkite as it pursued them. It was still after them, hungry for their flesh. It took a lot of Viashino meat to sate a hungry dragon.
The cave was narrowing sharply now. Up ahead there was a yellowy glow coming from under a large rock protrusion. The protrusion was narrow so low that they’d have to stoop to get under it. There was no way the Hellkite could get at them there! There night even be a way out of the cave system.
Kas let out a huge sigh of relief as he jogged the last few metres to the crevice. He leapt onto his side, sliding the last few metres under the crevice on his tough scales, and was enveloped in the pale light. As his eyes adjusted from the almost pitch-black of the cave to the yellowy light of the crevice, Kas stood. His chest heaved with the exertion of the past few minutes. He was alive! His blood still flowed in his veins, and his body still had breath in it. He was safe. He was alive! It was going to be okay!
Then his eyes adjusted to the light level and Kas looked around. He let out a frustrated moan. He wasn’t in a crevice. The walls and roof were covered in some kind of mould that glowed in the dark, filling the air with enough light to clearly see in. That yellow glow betrayed the cavernous space that the Flame-Thrash now stood in. It was a huge cavern, big enough to easily fit a Dragon. Like the Dragon that was moments behind them. The cavern was sealed, the only entrance or exit to it the one they had just come through. They were trapped.
Kas swore a long and angry oath, but none of the Thrash heard it as a huge impact rocked the wall they had just moved under. The Dragon was behind them, and it was breaking the rock down to get at them. Another colossal crash and cracks started to appear in the stone. The Hellkite was enraged; it was coming for them no matter what. Their deaths were assured.
“Thrash! To me!” Elder Drassom called over the sound of the impacts and the falling rock. The Viashinos gathered around their leader. Drassom drew out Slayer with as much reverence as he could muster. In the dim light the sword looked to be made from pure blackness. Drassom pointed the blade’s jagged edge towards the quaking rock wall. When he spoke it was in a booming voice that seemed to make him stand twice as tall.
“Our doom comes for us! Our doom comes for us now, and I say we be ready for it! We will die with a battle-cry in our throats and a weapon clenched in our fists! Once that wall breaks down, I want to see no Viashino shy away from his fate. We may die today, Flame Thrash. Jund may belong to the Dragons, the accused tyrants of flame. We may be the prey, and they the predators. But I say to you, you who have bled and fought and killed and feasted beside me…. I say that the next time this dragon sees a Thrash to prey on; it will remember us in its scars! It will remember that we, we of the thousands it has conquered, did not submit, did not go down without a fight! And for a moment, it will know fear!”
Another impact rocked the wall, and a chunk of the rock came away. A great reptilian eye swivelled into the hole, its pupil contracting as it bored into them. There was hunger in that eye, terrible hunger. The Hellkite gave a roar, shaking the carven. When it was done, Drassom roared back with all the might he could muster, his roar reverberating off the cavern walls till it sounded as though the dragon had been challenged by another of its kind.
For a second, silence filled the cavern as the Dragon’s eye withdrew. The calm before the storm. The Viashinos drew their weapons, some with nervousness, some with anticipation.
Then, it was over. With a tremendous crash that dwarfed all before it, the Hellkite’s horned, armoured head smashed through the sheer rock, its huge body following it through. The Dragon’s massive armoured body filled the hole it had made. It was easily the biggest creature on Jund, with a huge maw that could almost swallow a Viashino whole. The huge impact stunned it for a second, and it shook its head and snorted in irritation as it regained its senses.
The slight pause gave Drassom the only chance he needed.
“FLAME-THRASH! ATTACK!!!”
As one, the Flame-Thrash did just that. Howling with a combination of rage and hysteria, the Viashinos took the fight to the Dragon, wielding an array of brutal weapons made from stone and bone. It was akin to a colony of ants attacking a scorpion. The Viashino’s spread out to surround and assail the Dragon from multiple angles, and battle was joined. Only one side could emerge alive.
Kas was of course in the thick of it. With Thrash members on either side he swung Rip and Tear as hard as he could. Each blow landed, but failed to penetrate the Dragon’s scales. It was like trying to cut into a boulder. Kas struck again, and again, and again, hacking and chopping with all his strength, but each time the Dragon’s natural armour stopped his weapons from doing any damage. Looking around he could see his Thrash-members were having similar problems. The dragon had recovered now, and had wasted no time in stamping on Rok, crushing his body to bloody pulp. As it withdrew its foreleg it gave a pained snarl and Beh gave a triumphant cry, his speartip covered in Dragon blood as he wrenched it out.
“Aim for its underbelly! The scales are weaker….”
Beh’s scientific revelation was cut short as the Dragon twisted its head and snapped him up, biting him clean in half. Roaring, it turned its head to focus on Shaman Nixl, who was standing before it, and opened its jaws wide, preparing to immolate him where he stood. Shaman Nixl held his staff in both hands, and pointed it at the dragon, chanting his words of power. Desperation must have leant his magic power, as his hands sparked with electricity and Nixl thrust them at the Dragon, unleashing a bolt of lightning. The air sizzled and crackled with static as the lightning arced across the air and struck home, blasting a fist sized chunk of flesh out, and leaving a smoking crater of the surrounding area.
The Dragon howled with pain, thrashing its huge body around. The thrashing intensified as the rest of the Thrash put the departed Beh’s knowledge to use: hacking at the Dragon’s underbelly and weaker areas they started to hurt it. Kas for his part drew both his weapons up and swung both down in a sidewards chop, precise accuracy not required against such a huge target. His club still failed to break the skin, but his cleaver punctured the scales and rewarded Kas with a slight spray of blood. Kas dropped his club, gripping Rip’s handle with both hands and tried to push the head in deeper. They were hurting it! Actually hurting it!
Two of the Thrash had situated themselves near the Dragon’s rear, using spears to jab at the legs. The Hellkite’s tail swung around like a battering ram, sweeping them aside like they were leaves. The force of the blow pitched them across the cavern, where they collided with the walls. They dropped, a pile of shattered bones.
Shaman Nixl, perhaps emboldened by his earlier staring down the Dragon head-on and living, once again unleashed lightning. This time he hit the wing, vaporising a large part of the bat-like membrane. The Dragon responded with its other wing, swinging it around like a scythe. One of the bony spurs that tipped the outer edges of the wing caught Nixl, impaling him through the chest. The Shaman’s staff clattered to the ground as the Shaman, his hands as empty of electricity as his eyes were of life, was lifted into the air.
As another blade pierced its skin, the Dragon had evidently had enough. Bellowing in frustration, it surged forward, stomping ahead like a juggernaut. One of the Thrash was too slow and was trod on, trampled into the floor. The rest of the Viashinos were tossed around by the raw force of the scaly behemoth. The Hellkite wheeled around when it had cleared its attackers, hissing with malice. It was more than hungry now, it was wounded and mad.
“Quickly Thrash! Charge it! Keep in close!” Bellowed Drassom, picking himself up and lurching forward. As deadly as the Hellkite was up close, it was a lot more so if it could get some distance between itself and its prey. The Thrash were on their feet and after him in a heartbeat, closing the distance.
It wasn’t fast enough. The dragon opened its great jaws wide, and a thick stream of blistering, searing heat screamed forth from them, sweeping across in a wall of flame. Drassom dived forward with the no-time-to-think-about-it reflexes of one who has lived a life of constant danger, but the others weren’t so lucky. It swept through the ragged line of charging Viashinos, transforming the majority of the remaining Flame-Thrash from bellowing warriors to wailing pyres in a snap. The smell of roasting meat overpowered the stench of blood in the cavern.
Kas had fallen behind the others when the fire struck, having taken a moment to grab both Rip and Tear before moving. Only positioning saved him from a hideous death. Instead the fires roared up mere paces in front of him, the crackle and heat of the flames as terrifying and powerful as the beast that had generated it. The sudden flare of brightness from the fire’s light was intense, and Kas cowered for a second as his retinas tried to compensate. Running on instinct he covered his eyes to block out of some the glare. The wall of fire was thick, impenetrable… he couldn’t see through. Somewhere beyond the barrier was the Hellkite, and the other Thrash-Members. Suddenly something moved and the fire flickered. Kas’ instincts flared again, something was coming at him. He turned to run, and it was probably that which stopped the Dragon’s tail from shattering his body like an old tree trunk.
The Hellkite’s tail slammed into Kas, battering him with the ferocity of a rockslide and knocking Kas off his feet. Laden with momentum the Viashino obeyed gravity and crashed back into the floor at speed, skull meeting rock in a collision that was not good for the former. As he came to a stop Kas’ vision shimmered with trauma. His head ached and all he was assailed with the all-consuming urge to lay down and sleep. Blackness gnawed at the edge of his vision, and he tasted blood, not the invigorating tang of a bite of fresh prey, but the coppery foulness of his own fluids. Kas tried to stand, to get back into the fight, but nausea overwhelmed him and his legs folded, sending him crashing sideways onto the cavern floor. Time seemed to lose its constant pace, winding down slowly like the setting sun. Kas heard the furious roaring of the Dragon, and the equally furious screaming of Drassom, both so full of hate and fear that the difference between the animal and the ally could be found only in their volume. As his vision swam out of focus, he watched detachedly as Raz ran over to him, eyes creased with brotherly concern. He was yelling something, but Kas couldn’t pick it up.
Then, a stream of dragonfre whipped across Kas’ stationary vision, catching Raz across the back. Raz instantly fell to his knees with a muted cry. A second later his head turned back to stare at Kas. One side of his face was a melted mess, the scales cracking open with weeping blood. The eye was gone, buried under a mass of fused tissue. Smoke steamed off his back, but Raz didn’t scream from the pain. As Kas watched, Raz held out a shaking hand. Struggling against his approaching unconsciousness, Kas made his stubborn arm move in reply, forcing it centimetre by centimetre closer to Raz.
It wasn’t a request for help; they both knew their situation was beyond that. It was an urge to reassure a brother-in-arms that when the end came they weren’t alone. Kas didn’t know what lay on the other side of death’s embrace; a life of fighting for life had left little time for introspection about, well anything really. But at least he was going there with his bond-brother, together. Raz spoke, a single word, but Kas couldn’t hear him. He was almost there, brushing the tip of the hand with his own. Then his friend, who Kas had known since he was a youngling, slumped over and died. Cruelly it was only then that the darkness took him.
Joshua Olsen
Email: jarraltandaris@hotmail.com
Quennus turned back to face Tarrin, revealing he was holding the syringe from before.
“What’s it going to do?”
“It will help. Try to hold still, this might sting a little…”
“No! Wait, wait a moment, I don’t want tha- Arrrrgh!”
The syringe effortlessly pieced Tarrin’s coppery skin, depositing a load of unknown liquid straight into the Auriok’s bloodstream. Almost instantly coolness, like ice, spread through Tarrin’s body, causing him to shiver violently for a few moments, rattling the restraints. Just as he began to seriously worry that the coldness would not stop and he would be frozen from the inside out, the cold dimmed down to a bearable chilly feeling in his head and chest, and Tarrin dimly realised his panic had gone, his fear sliding away without protest. He simply felt relaxed and blissfully at ease, even as Quennus reached for him again, holding another syringe filled with liquid.
“What have you done to me?” He asked in a hollow, level voice that echoed how he was feeling.
“I have injected you with a composite drug of my own invention. It affects the higher functions of the subject’s cortex, specifically the frontal hippocampus. In effect it’s quite useful for subjugating and de-prioritizing…….” Quennus noticed at the mildly confused look on his subject’s face. “In simple terms, it numbs your emotions. I myself am usually on a watered-down version while I go about my duties.” Quennus tossed the spent syringe back on to the tray, and grabbed another. Tarrin idly noticed that it had a different coloured band to the first one.
“And we mustn’t forget this one as well.”
Without further comment he administered the contents of the syringe into Tarrin, this time in the wrist.
“And what does that one do?”
“I will demonstrate in a moment,” Mumbled Quennus in a distracted manner as he snatched up a third syringe from his workbench. This time however Quennus injected himself, putting the syringe up to the back of his head, where it seemed to easily slide into a recess on the machinery there. His eyes closed as he pushed the plunger down, well his organic eye did at any rate, and as he withdrew the syringe he trembled violently, as Tarrin himself had done moments earlier. Without explanation he strode forward to Tarrin, and made a quick movement, whipping his hand out and back as though he was a painter dabbing with a brush.
“Do you feel anything?”
Tarrin blinked. “Should I have?”
Quennus raised a hand up to Tarrin’s point of view. He was holding a scalpel with blood on it. Fresh blood on it.
“I just severed your Primary Tendon muscle. If the drug had not worked you would be been in considerable pain. Do not be concerned.”
And he bent over Tarrin’s chest, bloody scalpel still in hand.
“Please do not move. It will make my work difficult.”
Tarrin felt a strange sensation, as though something blunt was being slowly being dragged down his chest. It didn’t hurt at all; it was just a sensation of something being there. And it was then, unhindered by emotion, with only the logic remaining, that he understood. He spoke, with the tone one might use for discussing the weather.
“I’m not going to make it out of here alive, am I Quennus?”
Quennus’ metal eye swivelled to look up at him, while his original one continued to keep track of the incision he was making. He sighed.
“No. I am afraid not.”
Tarrin’s mind knew he should have been afraid at this revelation, or angry, or perhaps wracked with sobbing, but the drug blanked his feelings, kept them out of reach. But intellectual curiosity remained.
“Can you tell me why? I’d like to know.”
Without looking up from his vivisection, Quennus continued to talk, but Tarrin noticed his voice too was a little bit flatter than it had been prior to the injection.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of the concept of ‘The Greater Good’, Tarrin. For example, taking one life to save ten is better than merely saving one, and so forth. But what…..”
A squirt of blood arched through the air as Quennus sawed through layers of muscle and skin using the scalpel. Tarrin lay his head back, continued to listen idly.
“….if we were talking not about individual lives, but entire worlds? I’ve seen them, been to them. The multiverse is vast Tarrin…..so vast. There are more worlds out there than I can count; certainly I haven’t been to them all in over 20 years of Planeswalking. You have no idea; it would blow your mind to know how just how small everything you know is.”
The scalpel danced in Quennus’ experienced hands.
“I told you Phyrexia has left its mark on me, and I told the truth. A long time ago, Phyrexia attacked my home plane, much how it is now doing the same to Mirrodin.”
“Really? What happened, was Phyrexia stopped?”
“At the end of a long and gruelling campaign, the people of my home plane thought we had eradicated Phyrexia from existence, though it left our world scarred and damaged for long afterwards. But evidently we were wrong, for somehow the infection has survived to take hold here, and Mirrodin has not been as fortunate. I would be fascinated to know how it happened; from what I’ve seen it would take only a small piece of Phyrexia to start the cycle again, perhaps as little as a goblet-full of the oil could….”
There was a crack, and suddenly Tarrin felt humid air where he had never felt it before. The sensation was unusual, but not entirely unpleasant.
“You might be interested to know you are in excellent shape for an Auriok, your heart is strong and I’m seeing a very healthy set of lungs here. You could probably have lived to an above average age if not for…..”
Quennus locked eyes with Tarrin for a moment, but the bird-man looked away from Tarrin’s blank stare almost straight away. He didn’t seem to be able to finish the sentence. Tarrin decided to break the awkward silence sooner rather than later, he was on a time limit after all.
“Please, continue your story. I want to hear it all.”
After a moment’s silence Quennus extracted his hand, holding something soft and squishy in it. As he put the harvested specimen in a preserving jar he continued to talk, and all Tarrin could do was continue to remain still and let Quennus’ words wash over him.
“I understand that Mirrodin’s people’s joined forces in the face of the Phyrexian invasion, as the people of my home plane did, but you were too late. I understand the hesitancy; no man, woman or child is ready to accept the reality of what Phyrexia means, even when it has started to spread like a cancer. But I think even at the height of the war that the Mirrans still underestimated what they were up against. Again, understandable, but fatal.”
“Phyrexia? It’s some kind of abhorrent civilisation, is it not?”
Quennus shook his head.
“No, it is more than that. You and the Mirrans see it as an invading army, seeking your lands and people’s for subjugation. But Phyrexia is far more than that Tarrin. Phyrexia is an entire ecosystem all itself, a kind of super-organism that aims only to grow and consume until there is nothing left but Phyrexia. It doesn’t exist to defeat armies or isolated villages, it exists to destroy entire civilisations, wipe out entire ecosystems. Every non-Phyrexian thing in existence is at risk, there is nothing Phyrexia will not do to assimilate everything in its path. And here is where the greater good comes in. What do you do with someone sick with an incurable disease, to prevent them from passing the sickness onto others?”
“Well, I suppose the only thing to do is to kill the person, or failing that put them somewhere separate from others, keep them isolated….”
“Exactly! Quarantine is the only solution! Mirrodin is lost, with the exception of the few remaining Mirrans, there is nothing left to save here. Phyrexia has won. But it must not be allowed to get off this world. If Phyrexia knew that other worlds exist out there they…. would find a way to get to them. They would sweep through the whole multiverse. That cannot happen. The only remaining way to deal with Phyrexia is to make it think there is no-where else to spread to. Make sure that Mirrodin is the prison that keeps Phyrexia contained. Forever.”
“And is that why you have come here? You mentioned a mission.” The words came harder now, as though he was fighting against a heavy wind to say to say them. Tarrin’s breathing rate had picked up, but he still felt no discomfort.
“Yes. I was captured by Phyrexia early into my plane’s war with it, and turned into what you see before you. Phyrexia recognises me as its own, I bear its marks and technologies, but it fails to realise that I have my own thoughts and emotions. So I came here, posed as just another cog in the machine, a drone amongst millions of others. No other could have hoped to infiltrate Phyrexia like this. By doing Phyrexia’s grotesque work well, I have worked my up through the hierarchy of the Progress Engine. Now, I am a respected scientist, my words and scientific theorems carry much influence and I regularly have the ear of none other than the Praetor itself.
Tarrin noticed a slight tone of pride in Quennus’ words, mixed with regret.
“And so I have been hiding, erasing or discrediting all evidence of the existence of other plane’s existence. Sometimes I am able to simply wipe the memory of an Exarch, other times I must dispose of them completely before they can spread word of any dangerous discoveries. It has been hard work, always so close to discovery, always covering my tracks so that The Core Augur suspects nothing is afoot. The things I’ve had to do to play the part, Tarrin, you have no idea. I don’t think I can ever forget my sins. I hate that it has to be this way, I hate that the burden falls to me and me alone to do this abominable work…..”
Tarrin gave a wet cough suddenly, his pinned frame wracked with spasms once, twice, three times. When the cough subsided he could feel blood leaking out of his face and gliding down his chin. The feel of it pooling in his nose produced a vaguely ticklish feeling.
“You don’t have long left Tarrin.”
“I guessed. But I’m not afraid.”
“I know. I am glad to know I am able to stop your suffering. Consider it the only gift I can give you.”
Quennus deftly pulled a scrap of cloth from some recess and dabbed the blood up.
“You must understand, I have been saving as many Mirrans as I can. I stage “escapes” and help the Mirran Resistance to launch rescue raids every now and again, and when I am not occupied by my cover duties I visit the Resistances’ base and Planeswalk groups of Mirrans to other words where they can live new lives, but I can’t save them all. It would be too suspicious if too many prisoners went missing, I must not draw attention to myself and my activities. The Core Augar is smart, I must be above suspicion. I couldn’t save you Tarrin, your vivisection had already been approved when I met you, it would have raised far too many questions to have you escape on my watch. I’m deeply sorry. But I will not let your death be in vain. It’s all part….”
“….Of the greater good,” finished Tarrin. He nodded in understanding. It all made sense, in a calculating sort of way. The stakes were unimaginable; casualties of war had to be expended.
Quennus leaned over Tarrin, looming in close. He spoke rapidly now, hurrying his words.
“But I can save your wife and child. They are assigned to be subjected to Phyrisis later on in the cycle; I can easily assign myself as their surgeon.”
Tarrin had started to hyperventilate now, his chest heaving rapidly as his body struggled to cope with what was happening to it. He was beginning to feel cold all over, even though his forehead was slick with sweat. His limbs felt heavy, not the heaviness after a long day of work, but unnaturally heavy, like they had been replaced with lead. Black spots began to appear in his vision, fading in and out. But Quennus was still there, looking back at him. He didn’t seem so scary now, ugly yes, but not scary, like a scarred old ancestor watching over you with advice. There was even a shadow of concern in the surgeon’s avian face, he was sure of it. With his organic hand Quennus cradled Tarrin’s head, trying to settle the shaking.
“You’re going into cardiac arrest. No no no,” he said quietly as Tarrin opened his mouth to try and speak. “Just listen. I swear to you I will save your family, Tarrin of the Auriok, and I will tell them how much you love them when I do so. I will tell them you were brave to the very last.”
“Th…..tha……Thank……you” he managed to choke out.
Quennus’ metal hand tightly clasped Tarrin’s violently shaking, vein-stricken flesh one, even though he knew the patient he had killed wouldn’t be able to feel the gesture.
“Promise….me…..one m-more thing, Q-Q-Quennus.” Tarrin’s voice had died down to a whisper, a rattle evident in it.
“I will try.”
Tarrin seemed to find some strength from within his cracked-open, partly dissected body, and he spoke clearly, one last time. Each word was an effort.
“They…. may have made you in their image on the outside, you may have to act like them, but don’t….. don’t become like them on the inside…. You have to save as many as you can….”
And he fell still, the bronze light of life that flickered in his eyes faded away with that thousand-mile stare that Quennus had seen countless times on his operating slab. The hand that had gripped Quennus so tightly a moment ago fell still, slackly releasing the chrome fingers. Quennus knew beyond a shadow of a doubt there was no point checking for a pulse, it was his own hands that had effectively taken the man’s life.
Quennus staggered back, spattered with blood and bodily fluids. He leant back against a wall, head in hands. He didn’t weep, didn’t scream in guilt or smash the fine instruments in a fit of rage. The only evidence that the emotion-suppressing drug he was on wasn’t totally working was a single tear that slid from the corner of his hazel eye. Quickly Quennus wiped the tear up, holding it up to the light of the lab. Even without his mechanical eye’s zoom function he could see the single droplet was clouded with black, filled with toxic Phyrexian oil. Phyrexia had even taken everything from him, everything, even something as simple as the purity of grief. Quennus quickly squished the droplet between two fingers as if by doing so he could crush the whole of New Phyrexia, take his revenge with just that one act.
Then, with that little private moment over, Quennus wiped off his instruments, removed his surgical attire, and strode from the room, not once looking back at the body that lay strapped and opened up on the slab.
Joshua Olsen
Email: jarraltandaris@hotmail.com
Tarrin was straining against his bonds when he heard the sound. As soon as he had awoken, strapped to an operating slab deep in some biomechanical hell, he had been feverishly working to free his arms. At first he had tried to tug the clamps free, but they were made from some type of organic cable that gave in against his pulls, and then elastically snapped back. Giving up on that, Tarrin had tried to use the metallic growths sprouting from his left shoulder blade to cut through the cords, but he could hardly reach them to get a good cut, and it was tiring work. He had just cracked the metal outer casing of the bonds on his right hand, revealing weaker sinew beneath and causing bubbling black ichor to slowly leak out when he heard someone, or more likely something approaching. The irregular clanking of the figure was closing in; the isolation of the surgery/slaughterhouse Tarrin found himself meant that the figure could only be coming this way to see him.
Tarrin fought down rising fear: he had no illusions about what was going to happen to him now. Back in the refugee camps, he’d heard the tales from traumatized Neurok spies: how captured Mirrins were taken to Phyrexian laboratories like the one he was in and subjected to tortuous experiments so vile and debased as to be practically indescribable. Dissections conducted while the subject was still alive, forced organ removal and graftings, biological weapons testing: these were just some of the options facing Tarrin, and at the end of it all, Phyresis, turning him into one of them. Tarrin thrashed wildly on the slab, pulled at the damaged clamp with all his strength, but it didn’t work, he needed to damage the clamp more, needed more time. Time he didn’t have.
As the door to the surgery slid open he abruptly laid corpse-still, trying to avoid attracting the attention of whatever Phyrexian had entered. He heard as two figures entered the lab, the insidious scuttle of something multi-legged, presumably an insectoid menial drone of some kind, and the heavy irregular steps of something humanoid, no doubt its master. For all their vat-grown horrors and shock troops, the leaders of Phyrexia were always humanoid, if only in the vaguest, barest sense of the word.
Unable to see what was going on because the slab was facing away from the entrance; Tarrin could only listen as the drone chittered in its obscene indecipherable dialect, while its master rummaged around placing metallic instruments on a tray. A moment later, and the master was moving towards Tarrin. This was it then: he was going to be experimented on. Blind terror rose in Tarrin’s chest, but he forcibly quelled it. He didn’t know if Sadra and Varil had escaped the Phyrexian’s raid, but he had to cling to that hope. He wouldn’t beg, wouldn’t give the Phyrexians the pleasure of breaking him. Wherever they were, he could do that much for them. Breathing deeply to try and master his emotions, Tarrin braced himself for the disturbing sight that would be his captor.
A hand gripped the operating slab, shifting it down from its angled position to an almost horizontal one, and as the slab descended, Tarrin caught an eyeful of the Phyrexian Surgeon. He gasped. “Bladewardens preserve us all…..” He’d been prepared for something disturbing, something out of a child’s nightmare, but not for this. Tarrin’s brain tried to supply further words, to perhaps beg for mercy, or even just scream, but the surgeon’s appearance had shocked him beyond words.
The figure that loomed over him possessed an aesthetic common to all Phyrexians: a form that was partly organic and partly mechanical combined seamlessly in some places and crudely in others. While some Phyrexians were unrecognisable from their original forms, others were simply modified versions of what they had been pre-phyresis, and this creature clearly took after the latter. It was no Leonin or Loxodon though, nor an elf, goblin or ogre, or any species Tarrin had ever seen or heard of, but some kind of bird-hybrid.
The surgeon had the body shape of a man, with the head, hands and feet of a great bird, a hawk perhaps. Two currently folded-in wings sprouted from its back, and feathers coated about half its body, wherever metal didn’t intrude. Steam hissed from various hidden parts of the bird-thing, and Tarrin could pick out the slow sound of pistons moving back and forth somewhere around the chest, as well as crackling electricity. One hand had been completely replaced with an abnormally long-fingered metallic graft, each of the 8 multi-jointed fingers tipped with an assortment of sharp instruments not out of place in a torturer’s rack. Countless plates of polished chrome glinted brightly from where they have been grafted, bolted, and fused onto the Phyrexian’s flesh, and blood mixed with black oozed with treacle-like slowness from around them to slowly spatter the floor. The beak appeared to be the best crafted of these plates, the top half of the beak was a solid and finely fitted piece of what looked to be pure silver. It looked a bit out of place, as though put in by a different artificer to the rest of the Surgeon’s “improvements”. The surgeon turned to look at Tarrin in better detail, revealing that one of the creature’s original eyes had been removed, replaced with an implant. The forbidding neon-red light stared back at him from the cavity. Unblinking. Alien. Merciless.
A moment later it appeared to have seen enough, and it turned away from Tarrin. As it set its tray of surgical instruments down and sorted them, Tarrin saw that the eye wasn’t the only area that had been extensively worked on around the head, the back of the cranium had been encased by machinery, no doubt to allow for greater processing power, or, as Tarrin realised with horror, to allow easy access to the surgeon’s brain. Similarly, though partially concealed beneath liquid-spattered surgical garments, the surgeon’s shoulders and upper back around the spine were a lot bulkier than its natural form would suggest it should be, with steel cables entwined through the natural sinew of the wing’s pinions.
This observation of his captor’s anatomy, though distressing in its own way, was a welcome relief from Tarrin’s dire situation. But when the surgeon turned back to face him, now clutching a huge medical syringe, his temporary stunned calm shattered. Breathing kicked into overdrive, Tarrin felt all the fight-or-flight terror of a cornered animal, but without either of the options. The surgeon barked something harshly to the drone, an order perhaps, and then moved towards Tarrin with the syringe, test squirting a few spurts of some rust-coloured viscous liquid.
Tarrin’s resolve collapsed in a moment. “GET BACK! DON’T YOU COME ANY CLOSER MONSTER!!” he bellowed, half in fear, half in anger.
At the word “monster”, the Surgeon, who had the syringe mere centimetres from Tarrin’s neck, stopped abruptly. It looked Tarrin in the eye, as though looking for meaning there. For a long moment Tarrin looked into his captor’s mismatched eyes, before turning away, unable to bear seeing his own fearful reflection in the Surgeon’s half crimson, half hazel gaze. Out of the corner of his eyes, Tarrin could sense the Surgeon cock its head to one side in an owl-like manner, as though puzzled by what it had heard. A second later it abruptly stepped aside, out of Tarrin’s field of vision altogether. He heard the insectoid drone give a confused chittering as the surgeon approached it. Then there was an almighty flash of blue, like a solar flare off the blue sun. It filled the room for a moment, then faded away without explanation. A few seconds later, the Bird-Surgeon was back, uncomfortably filling Tarrin’s field of vision. Its beak opened, as it grasped the syringe once more. To Tarrin’s astonishment, it spoke in perfectly pronounced Aurian, though it had a mechanical inflection to its words.
“I am no monster. I may have been….. marked by Phyrexia, Auriok, but it is NOT my master.”
Tarrin goggled. “You…… you can talk!?”
The Surgeon snorted, causing a burst of steam to emerge from somewhere on its body, ruffling his surgical attire.
“We have precious little time, let’s not waste what we have with obvious questions. My name is Quennus.”
A thousand questions seemed to clamour for first place in Tarrin’s mind, jostling for prime position.
“I’m Tarrin, of the Glint Hawk tribe. Look, if you’re not with the Phyrexian’s, what are you doing here? And why are you able to stand here and talk to me? You…. you were about to cut me open, like one of them! How could you?”
Quennus leaned in. “As I said, there is little time, so you need to listen closely and be prepared to understand a great deal of information swiftly. I am assisting the Mirran resistance, particularly the Neurok agents Vy Covalt and Kara Vrist.”
Hope flared in Tarrin’s chest, maybe there was a way out of this after all! “You’re with the resistance! That’s great news! Are you here to free me? Have you seen my wife and son? Are they safe? Are they…..” But a moment later Tarrin realised that something was wrong with the situation. He jerked his head over his shoulder repeatedly, trying to convey a message without words. Upon seeing Quennus’ look of confusion he sharply whispered.
“You’re blowing your cover, the drone! The thing that came in with you! It’s heard everything we’ve said! You’ve got to cut me free, we have to get out of here right now, before it raises the alarm!”
Understanding filled Quennus’ organic eye, and then he slowly shook his head, one measured movement, left, and then right.
“Do not worry. My transcriber-drone has unexpectedly suffered a most unfortunate malfunction, and has been totally and utterly focused on looking at a blank space of wall since we started talking. It is not of concern to us.”
“Did…..you did something to it?”
“That is correct.”
Tarrin smiled. Everything was going to be okay now, he knew it. “So, you’re in the resistance? I have so much I wish to know! Are you here to get me free? How did you infiltrate into this place? And, forgive me, but I have to ask, what ARE you? You don’t look Mirran, I mean I know you’ve been…. worked on, but I can’t even figure out what you are.”
Quennus looked at himself for a moment, an expression something like regret writ over his features. Was it regret? Or maybe just concentration. It was hard to identify subtle emotions off him, his face and body had been so disfigured by the Phyrexian “augmentations”. Then the moment was gone, and his face was once more impassive.
“Listen closely Tarrin. I am not ‘with’ the resistance as such; I am simply sympathetic to their cause. My presence, and my work here, is more anti-Phyrexian than pro-Mirran. But yes, I help them out when it is feasible to do so. The reason you do not recognise my species’ genus, is because I am not native to your world. To put it in simple terms, I have come to Mirrodin from another plane of existence.”
What does one say to a statement like that? Where do you even begin… thought Tarrin, his disbelief stretched so far it was about to snap. “If that’s true, then how are you….”
“I am a mage of rare, extraordinary power. I have the skill to be able to travel between worlds. It is known as Planeswalking.
“That’s….. incredible. Amazing.”
“That is the standard reaction.”
Suddenly Tarrin recalled the blue flash he had witnessed earlier. “And you used this magic of yours to hoodwink the drone before?”
Quennus nodded. “Very astute. It will not realise what has happened, and later, I will submit it to my superiors as having malfunctioned, losing all my information. It will probably be broken down into its constituent parts and used for other purposes. Now, you mentioned before your wife and child. Were they with you when you were captured?”
“Yes, well not quite. I told them to run when the raiders came, I have no idea if they managed to get away. But we were in the same camp at the time. Sadra and Varil, have you seen them? Please, tell me they’re not here. Tell me they’re not….”
He couldn’t finish the sentence.
Quennus nodded, seemed to understand. “One moment.” He took a step back from the operating slab, deftly tapping his metallic temple with a hand. His artificial eye whirred clicked and sparked for a few seconds, rotating madly this way and that, zooming in and out. Eventually it came to a stop, the chrome iris retracting to reveal more of the crimson light. Suddenly light shot out of the eye, forming a projection a few centimetres from Quennus. The projection shifted, it seemed to be some kind of moving pictures. Tarrin squinted, tried to make them out, but they were back to front and the wrong way up from where he was, the images flashing by at lightning speed: corridors and hallways, shapeless things that filled the projection and disappeared, racks of strange and disturbing devices, and last, a row of what looked like faces with collars around their necks….
Quennus tapped his temple again, and the projection vanished, his artificial eye returning to its prior state. He looked Tarrin straight on. “I think I have seen them. Your son, he has your eyes?”
“Yes! Yes! That’s Varil! Can you save him? Is he okay?”
Quennus raised a hand abruptly.
“Hush, calm yourself.” He walked over to his tray of implements, facing away from Tarrin. He spoke without looking back, his tone less mechanical, but more serious than anything he’d said so far.
“Tarrin, would you do anything to save your family?”
“Of course, of course, but what are you talking…..”
“Anything, Auriok?”
“Yes, of course. Please, please. Save them.”
“Very well. Then you’ll need to take this.”
To Be Continued…
Joshua Olsen
Email: jarraltandaris@hotmail.com
