FALL SEVEN TIMES
by Ulquiorra9000
Chapter 10
So far, the natives of Kamigawa seemed convinced that Radiah's Phyrexian minions had come from the darkest depths of the sprawling, smelly Takenuma Swamp.
Why should they be wrong?
Radiah Albazan sat cross-legged on a centipede-like golem's oily, chrome-plated back, her staff laying across her lap. So far, she'd only used it once or twice to zap away odd creatures or stray kami horrors that got too close to her group. Nearby, four hulking golem cyborgs marched along as Radiah's escorts, their eyeless, toothy faces alert for danger. They already had their huge, hyperdermic needle weapons out and at the ready as they trudged through thick swamp water. Clusters of bamboo reeds and cattails were easily knocked aside.
The siege of Minamo Academy could go on without Radiah's presence for a few days. If she claimed the bounty of the Takenuma Swamp for the cause...!
Grimy bamboo reeds rustled and three nezumi, or rat ninjas, emerged, chittering angrily. They wore black robes and straw sandals, and they waved their ball-and-chain weapons and katanas at Radiah's party as a warning.
Radiah pointed her bone-line staff and charged up the purple lightning spell in its glass sphere at the tip. One jagged, snake-like bolt fried the lead nezumi, frying its chest. The nezumi shrieked and scampered off with its clothes and skin smoking, its two fellows scattering.
The golems chuckled as Radiah set her staff back down. Stupid rats.
Soft, eerie orange light glowed up ahead, shining through the tall, leafless swamp trees. Radiah smiled as her party passed by crumbling tombstones, each etched with names in the Kamigawa script. Ornate lanterns hung from short chains on the bone-like tree branches, and Radiah racked her brains. She'd heard that in local history, many samurai had died invading the swamp, and their spirits were calmed only by their names carved in stone and the warm lantern light.
Nice place.
One of the golems grunted something in the bizarre Phyrexian language.
"Don't worry. This means we're getting close," Radiah assured the golem. She idly tapped her fingernails on her staff's porcelain plating. "Any second now -"
The clop of horse hooves brought Radiah's head up. Two samurai in black armor approached on gray horses, each wielding guan-dao weapons (a long rod tipped with a curved blade). Each samurai's helmet had two cruel, pointed horns, and their eyes glowed purple.
"Intruders!" one rasped. "Daimyo Yokuda will not let you leave alive!" He expertly twirled his guan-dao above his head, and the weapon's blade hissed in the humid swamp air.
Radiah shrugged and pointed. "Get 'em."
Two of her golem escorts crouched, then sprang with surprising speed. They tackled the two samurai off their horses and stabbed their needles into the men's hearts.
The samurai wailed as their horses whinnied and bolted. The golems backed away, and the samurai staggered back to their feet, their veins black with oil. Loose oil slopped from their wounds, but the blessings of Phyresis would keep the men alive and functional. The wounds would seal up as the men became compleat, anyway.
"Take me to your daimyo," Radiah said. "He's a powerful lord around here, right?"
"Yes," the other samurai said vaguely, his mind no doubt fuzzy from the Phyrexian oil coursing through it. "He is Seimei no atae-te, the giver of life. Come."
Radiah beamed and got her party moving. The two samurai led them right to a towering, narrow castle nearby, half-hidden by the vine-laden trees. It was almost like a single turret, being much taller than wide and having no side wings. Instead, windows glowed with orange light, and anti-intruder charms hung from the eaves of the ornate roof.
The two samurai waved their hands, a black spell on their palms. "Security override," one explained. "Follow us into the reception hall."
Radiah dismounted and didn't stop until she stood in the tall castle's main hall, where banners hung from the ceiling and more wicked samurai stood guard along the walls. They nodded in deference as Radiah's two samurai escorts brought her to the waiting lord.
"Who is this?" the daimyo roared. He was a large, beefy man with a short black beard and a topknot of hair. He wore dark green robes and a black, sleeveless haori coat and silver necklaces.
"Me? I'm Radiah Albazan, a priestess of the Machine Orthodoxy," the woman said, stridng toward the waiting daimyo, her high-heeled boots loud on the wooden floor. She tossed her blonde hair and raised her staff. "And you're daimyo Yokuda, right? The 'giver of life'?"
The daimyo snarled. "Men! Why have you brought this wench to me? She shows no respect!" He pounded his knee with a fist, and his detainers winced.
Radiah pointed her staff at daimyo Yokuda. "No need to hide what I am. What a disgraceful idea, a high priestess like me, cowering behind excuses and disguises! Show me what you can do, daimyo Yokuda. I hear it's impressive."
Daimyo Yokuda bared his teeth. "Men! Kill her!"
The samurai along the walls drew their katanas -
Radiah's four golems burst into the room and joined the two oil-controlled samurai, forming a protective ring around their priestess.
The samurai faltered at the sight of the burly golem cyborgs and their huge needles. "My lord!" one cried. "What are they -"
"Fools!" Daimyo Yokuda sprang to his feet with considerable effort and raised a hand. "I'll do this myself!"
Black mana gathered at his palm and filled the room.
An obisdian-skinned humanoid swelled to full size and towered to the ceiling, nearly forty feet high. Its long, muzzle-like face leered down at Radiah's party, its four red eyes shining with fury. Its fingers ended in long white claws, and chains of paper charms wrapped around its chest like an X. Purple orbs of mana floated around it like flies, hovering in place.
"This is Akuta-Ne, the Iron Skin," daimyo Yokuda boasted. "Do you see, priestess Radiah? I subdued the local ogre clan and assumed control of their demon lord! You think you can bully me?"
Radiah's smile returned. Perfect! This buffoon Yokuda was absurdly easy to rile, and now he dangled the prize right in front of her face! How she coveted that power...
Akuta-Ne roared and threw out an open plam, intending to squish Radiah's party where it stood.
Radiah's machine implants screamed a warning, and the priestess was already moving. She and her fellows easily leaped out of the way, and the whole castle shook as the demon's open palm slammed against the wooden floor, cracking it. The samurai braced themselves and covered their face with their arms.
Radiah, meanwhile, ran up the demon's arm and climbed onto its shoulder, sitting comfortably on its hard, dark skin. "I like you," she told it casually. "How'd you like to work for me?"
Akuta-Ne grunted and reached up to swat the compleat human off its shoulder.
"Now, now." Radiah jabbed her staff's glass orb into one of Akuta-Ne's eyes and channeled its full power.
The demon yowled as streams of purple lightning raced into its brain through the optic nerve. It seized its head and whined, until it suddenly understood.
Obey the Phyrexians!
Radiah removed her staff and pointed. "Do it."
Akuta-Ne threw out its palm and flattened daimyo Yokuda into a bloody pulp.
Giver of life, he was called. The irony!
One by one, the samurai knelt to their new master. They didn't even resist as Radiah's golems jabbed their needles into their hearts to convert them.
Meanwhile, Radiah climbed down Akuta-Ne's arm and landed heavily on her feet. "Deploy the machines," she told her golems. "The swamp water doesn't flow as fast as the streams, but it'll carry the oil just fine. Tomorrow, I'll bring over a tidemaker beast to speed things up."
The golems nodded, grunted directions to each other in the Phyrexian language, and lumbered outside.
Radiah sighed with content and headed upstairs in her new castle. She wasn't one to settle down, but hey, daimyo Yokuda might have all kinds of goodies in his private stores!
Radiah's staff swung this way and that as she knocked out random servants she encountered, her staff's spell converting their minds with each blow. Radiah found her way into the daimyo's wife's room, a lovely bedchamber loaded with expensive silk kimonos, boxes of jewelry, and a cluttered desk.
Not much useful in here. Oh well. Still, Radiah took a second to catch her reflection in a tall vanity mirror, She smiled and toyed with a lock of her blonde hair with her gloved fingers. There was no one on Kamigawa who could resist her for long. No one!
Not even the two planeswalkers she had heard rumors about through her spy network. They promised to be interesting...
*o*o*o*o*
Warm Akoum air whipped Zoira's braided ponytails around as she soared over the rocky terrain, her phoenix's claws snugly holding her shoulders as it flew. Around her, two dozen assorted kor, humans, and even two Gul Draaz vampires glided on their kitesails. The contraptions' wood and leather frames creaked from the wind, their fabric rippling in the rapid air.
Just another scouting mission. No big deal, right?
Creeks of lava lazily flowed about a hundred feet below, and towering rocky hills and cliffs to the west partially blocked the early evening sun. An active volcano oozed its glowing orange contents, and elemental dogs with long snouts scampered along the lava streams, lapping it up like milk.
Zoira hadn't seen a thing all day, which was certainly a good thing! The Eldrazi broods were still to be found here and there, but the Zendikar coalition had done a fine job mopping up after the fall of Kozilek and Ulamog. Sea Gate was still a lost cause, but other settlements and refugee camps were holding out. Excellent. Good news was like a healing balm for these people.
From a secure pouch on her utility belt, Zoira drew a bracelet and slipped it onto her left wrist. Its thin, ornately carved body was refined chrome, but it had a round sapphire built into its body, surrounded by gold and vein-like Etherium filaments.
Not for the first time, Zoira felt tears burn in the corner of her eyes as she ran her fingers along the bracelet's cool surface. After returning Veldor's body to Esper, his cousin, Olivia, had unearthed this particular bracelet in a workshop in Cae'Xan University. That particular evening, after the funeral, Olivia had tearfully given it to Zoira for safekeeping. It was a protective charm.
Actually, it was supposed to be. But Veldor had never gotten around to installing an enchantment matrix, as Olivia had explained, and he alone would know the formula and incantation. It was just a mundane bracelet from another world, nothing more. An unfinished project.
But just wearing it made Zoira feel safer. And watched over.
Damn, it was tough fighting for the planeswalker Code without him...
A projectile hissed through the air like a dart.
The kitesailers shouted a warning that snapped Zoira back to the present.
Down on the ground, near a lava creek, a huge Kozilek-brood Eldrazi steadily fired missiles from its eyeless head, projectiles like oversized spearheads. The kitesailers worked the levers and ropes of their equipment and banked and rolled to evade the missiles, but a kor was too slow and took a missile to the chest. It went straight through him in a blast of blood and bone.
"Get down there! We're exposed up here!" Zoira roared. On her command, the kitesailers dived at the anti-air Eldrazi in formation, some charging up spells and others drawing their weapons.
Zoira soared down on her phoenix, preparing to roast the Eldrazi... but lesser Eldrazi emerged from the ground, goblin-like bipeds with tentacles on their bodies and skull-like heads.
Ulamog and Kozilek brood drones working together. This wasn't a first.
Zoira pointed, and her phoenix issued a long, thin jet of flame that roved over the lesser drones. Several of them vanished in grimy puffs of flesh and vapor, but the survivors spat out smaller darts, too rapidly to dodge. Another kitesailer went down, and another.
"Stay together! Take out the big one!" Zoira finally got close, and she landed on the ground as her phoenix continued its course. The bird swatted the big Eldrazi's head with a flaming wing, searing its flesh and knocking it off-balance for a few precious seconds.
Three kor threw oversized hooks on long chains, and these weapons pinned the huge Eldrazi in place, preventing escape. This gave the two vampires enough time to land, extend their arms, and channel their dark magic.
Mingled red and black mana shot from the vampires' palms in a grim vortex, and the huge Eldrazi wailed as the spells drained its life force. The drone scuffed the rocky ground with its clawed feet, but it was helpless; the vampires hissed in satisfaction as they absorbed the last of the drone's life essence. The drone's withered husk collapsed and fell into the nearby lava stream.
The human warriors sliced apart the lesser drones one by one with their swords and pole-axes, and the few survivors drew back, cornered by a lava stream. They chittered angrily among themselves.
Zoira made a grim smile as she raised her hand, recalling her phoenix to her position. "Finish 'em off," she told her bird, "and we can be back in time for dinner." Her fellows chuckled with satisfaction.
The very earth quaked, and in a blast of rocks and dirt, two massive Ulamog drones emerged, easily twenty feet tall. Their brawny, pale purple arms flexed their sinewy muscles, and their many tentacles wriggled across the ground. Their blank, skull-like heads leered at Zoira's party with impunity (or so it seemed. They had no real faces to read).
One of them whipped out a long tentacle that grew in length with surprising speed. The flailing tendril knocked half of Zoira's party to the ground, and the small drones converged on them, hoping to feast on them.
"NO!" Zoira sent out her phoenix, and with a flap of its flaming wings, it conjured a wave of searing air that knocked the drones into the lava stream. The little drones were vaporized in an eyeblink.
Zoira growled as the two Ulamog mega-drones towered over her. These were going to be some tough sons of bitches to handle!
Mizuki, Azrael, forgive me. Looks like I'm not done here yet... just hang on.