Pulling Teeth
Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Magic: The Gathering.
Summary:
Say "AHHH!"
Song. Dance. Hunting.
Stale hobbies one might find among the peasants of Innistrad.
Pulling teeth. Plucking them out of the gums of fearful villagers, wild animals, and fiendish monsters. Cataloguing them. That was his pastime.
Innistrad had a myriad of races to pull from.
The poorly kept teeth of a beloved human beggar.
The rotted molars inside an unhallowed's sagging jaw.
The eternally sharp fangs of a vampire aristrocrat.
The crushing chompers of a cornered werewolf.
Oh, what wisdom wisdom teeth held!
By his count, he'd collected every variety of tooth there was to collect. But in the delirium triggered upon Emrakul's arrival, teeth foreign to him flashed before his eyes. His body was permanently contorted due to the Eldrazi Titan's passing, but that insidious growth of tentacles beginning from the itchy, patchy skin on his wrist ignited his latent spark.
Suddenly, there was a Multiverse of teeth to collect. His first walk introduced him to lazotep, material within which he could transport his trophies across planar boundaries in small quantities at a time.
At the stadium above Cloudspire City on Kylem, he set his maniacally giddy sights on the thick tusks of the imaginary pet aptly named Toothy.
In the ruins of Oran-Rief on Zendikar, he picked samples of the enamel-like residue left by Ulamog's brood lineage after they drained the mana and life from the plane and its natives.
On Tarkir, he stole the tooth of a dragon who lost it in an epic confrontation with Surrak, Hunt Caller of Atarka.
The tooth collector's hobby spirited him to New Phyrexia next (and last). There, the mites, birds, and clerics of the white-controlled sphere and the ferocious beasts of the green-controlled sphere sported ancillary sets of teeth!
The Phyrexians had giant rooms filled with spare body parts he could plumb, but especially in the Surgical Bays, they surveilled everything.
When he identified the incisor glider sailing towards him, he was gripped with fascination.
A flying machine made with teeth? ASTOUNDING! ABSOLUTELY ASTOUN –!
The object of his fascination was gripping him.
He was so used to pulling teeth, he forgot teeth are for pulling and tearing.
The aerodynamic teeth-lined wings folded over the tooth-collecting planeswalker, burrowing root canals into his soft, fleshy pulp.
"You think it's creepy now? You should see how it eats," Melira would later remark to the rebels under her protection.