Rwby: The Inter-War: Arc 3: The invasion marches.
Hello and welcome to the next chapter of The Inter-War. And welcome to the prologue of Well you'll just have to find out.
Trigger warning Berserk this should not surprise you.
Key
Grimm-Apostle talk
Angry talk
Ozpin talk
{"Text Chat/ phone call"}
:text chat:
[Black Ink]
(Locations)
flashback/ memory/ dreamscape
"Skull knight talk"
Chapter start:
There is a story.
:Many eons ago there was a great wizard by the name of Urza. So wise was he that all the mages of the Multiverse flocked to him for advice; so powerful was he that only his brother Mishra stood as a potential rival. But Mishra hated him bitterly, and soon a war began.
The war spanned decades and took untold lives. Worse, it allowed evil without compare to blossom. An awful affliction spread through Mishra's armies—a black oil that changed everything in its path.:
Tamiyo knows this story. This is only the way it starts; there is more, much more. Years ago, she memorized every word. Afterward, just as Urza's metal heir had set himself upon the task of creating a plane, she'd set herself the task of recording it. Like the oil, she'd found the story had seeped into her mind, begun to change it into something she did not like. Something dangerous.
She'd sealed it away.
What a foolish thing to have done.
Hovering over the neon skies of Towashi, on Kiwamagami she holds the scroll in hand. Oil seeps from her fingers onto the parchment. Before long it will be impossible to read any of the characters—but that is no worry for someone like her, someone who knows these stories better than she knows her own.
A Phyrexian centurion bashes in the roof of a building. People scatter from it like ants. No—not like ants, whose carapaces lend them strength, who act as one in all things. People could never be so reliable when trapped by flesh and mortal fear. No, as they pour out from the building screaming, it is only the visceral that drives them, the corporeal—the falsest parts of their existence.
There is an iron ring binding the scroll. Tamiyo slips it off. It plummets through the air, landing like so many other hunks of metal upon someone's unsuspecting crown.
The story continues.
:The wizard Urza creates an heir from pure, unvarnished metal. He names him Karn. The same spark of creation that birthed him burns brightly in his breast. Karn, too, must create. As a sculptor chipping at marble, he shapes his world. When it is done—the creatures named and granted boons, the climate carefully crafted, the earth shaped and polished—he appoints his own successor, Memnarch, to oversee it.:
The spirits of Towashi do not take kindly to her intrusion, nor the intrusion of her fellows. Boughs bend, steam sears sinew, leaves slice like razorblades. Other stories serve to protect her. Lesser stories. Stories without purpose, stories that do not extol the glories and virtues she now sees so clearly. Every history, every tale, every fable that exists is either for unity or against it.
She can shed those histories that no longer matter. This one does; she must bring it to its conclusion.
As her eyes scan the scroll, the characters light up—even those now consumed with black oil. Each syllable she reads booms and reverberates, shaking the skyscrapers of Towashi. Trains careen off their crumbling tracks and dive to the ground. The earth tears itself apart, opening crevasses in the city that has space only for itself. Rivers pour in, taking boats and fishers along with them. Streaks of black color the water. Phyrexian symbols etch themselves onto the papers hanging on the buildings yet standing.
It won't be long now. The story continues.
:Memnarch, the heir's heir, is a copy of a copy—a faded image of Urza himself. It longs for the power its grandfather wielded as easily as a poet wields a brush. It longs for its parents' ability to create. It longs to see more. Over years it plucks life from this plane and that, settling them all within this garden, waiting for the flowers to come. And they do, but they aren't the flowers Memnarch expects: these bloom in black oil. Their choking roots wrap around that which is alive and whole. Soon, the whole garden drowns beneath the oil. The heir returns to discover his home has been torn asunder.:
There is more to the story. There are the people driven from their home and trampled underfoot, their souls shucked from their bodies, their bodies altered beyond any recognition. A queen rising from among the muck to rule her people. A glorious, unending oneness—a life without war or conflict. The heir looks on all this with horror.
When Tamiyo wrote the story, she feared all of this. She didn't understand the peace that came with being part of a greater family. This is not the way she'd tell this story now. But it is almost done, and she will continue telling it.
Boseiju, the tree that once held this plane together, bursts apart. Like wine spilling from a cask, oil runs from between the splinters, dripping onto the thirsty earth. An unholy screech pierces the ears of all who will listen: kami, torn from their home, scatter out of the district. Some find their ends at the tip of a lance, some find them torn apart by compleated fishers joined with their catches, but the result is always the same: the kami dissolve into a fine mist. Tendrils of smoke rise from the blackening soil, from the bridges dissolving into nothing, until the whole district is swallowed by the fog of dead kami.
There is a distant part within her that is screaming at the sight of all this. A small voice ringing in her ear, a tingling at her fingertips. But she cannot say she is afraid. This is what is right for Kamigawa. After centuries of war, have they not earned peace? Is this not simply another step to become whole?
The scroll itself becomes oil in Tamiyo's hands, dripping between her fingers.
This is how the story ends, and how it has always ended: with Phyrexia's victory.
Ruby And Guts planeswalked Ruby felt something was wrong
Granted she only did a successful planeswalk once before but this time it felt different.
It felt wrong.
Sure enough her eyesight cleared and indeed she was not in the place she wanted to bring them.
It was not The Caligo Morass is a marshy delta in Benalia on the northern coast of Dominaria. The place they first arrived in.
No it was a Techno Cyberpunk verson of Mistral by the looks of it, bright neon signs burns at her eyes and the air smelt of putrid smoke,
As Ruby felt her head stop spinning and the ringing of her ears die down she realized it wasn't her ears ringing.
But screaming.
Ruby watched in horror as a place that while not for her was indeed ildylic.
Was under attack by the forces of Phyrexia.
"Ruby, where are we?" Guts asked
"Under attack." Ruby said as she heard clicking and ticking behind her
In an instant she spun around and found a massive Phyrexian denizen of the plane behind them it's jaw opened wide at an unnatural rate before splitting into four segments as a mass of Tendrils grew out of anyplace it could.
Guts stumbled back
"What the fuck?!"
Ruby had no such qualms and with one slice beheaded the Pherxian
"Be careful with the black Goo it's how it spreads." Ruby said
Guts drew Dragonslayer and stood back to back with Ruby as more Pherxian's start to surround the two of them.
A scab turns into a scar when you pick at it too much. A wound scars when it doesn't receive proper care.
Kamigawa's bleeding. Ravnica is, too. But Ravnica's got plenty of walkers to keep it safe. That's Teyo's whole thing, to start—and Ral's been dreaming up countermeasures for a while now. Said he had a hunch something big was coming. They can handle things there for a while, at least.
Kaya and Vraska were supposed to hold Ravnica down while Jace coordinated with the other planes. That wasn't going to happen now.
They'd manage without them. Kaito asked her for help stanching the bleeding on Kamigawa, and after what they'd been through, helping is the least she can do.
Even if she's got her own wounds to worry about.
Kaya's not sure how long hers will hang around. Are these the sort of memories that change who you are in the afterlife? If so, she's hopelessly lost. Seeing New Phyrexia was bad enough. But being in the middle of an invasion—watching New Phyrexia tear a plane limb from limb? The only way to keep from hurting is to let herself go numb to the sights.
There's too much going on to save everyone: the ground rattles with the cratering footfalls of centurions. Snarling machine hounds roam the streets, some with people caught inside their lattice of bone. Centuries of history evaporate in an instant—hundreds of potential futures are snuffed out all at once.
There's no time for thinking about it, no time for bitterness over how this all happened or why she's the one who must pull the Gatewatch together, no time for wondering what might go wrong. People are falling. No time to reconcile with the way her stomach twists after a planeswalk either—there's only moving, only doing.
She must act.
Kaya runs. One leap takes her onto a balcony as it splits off; another sees her landing on the teetering floor beyond. Horror sets in a second later: the houseplants, scattered clothing, and ruined kitchen give breath to her worst fears. This was a residential building. Hopefully most of the inhabitants escaped. A half-finished bowl of noodles at least says the people in this unit did. But there are others, aren't there?
A scream catches her ear, muffled by the ongoing chaos. Kaya phases through the wall, with its knickknacks and mementos, trying not to think about how all those things will be lost after today. A young boy and his dog quiver in the corner on the other side. Fallen supports have trapped the two of them in place. There's space enough for the dog to squeeze through, but the boy would have far more trouble.
Kaya can't leave them here. She doesn't have much of an exit plan, doesn't know exactly how they're all going to make it out, but she can figure it out along the way. After all, it can't be harder than figuring out what to do about this invasion.
Phasing through the fallen supports is easy enough. Normally, phasing the boy out of his position would be hard—but it's easier when he wants out just as much as she wants to help him. She offers him a hand. When he takes it, she pulls him through the fallen beam. The boy grins—and the dog squeezes through after them.
"How're we getting down?" he asks.
A fair question, given the sight in front of him: the whole side of the building's been torn off. Towashi looms—or what remains of it. Floors and furniture tumble to the ground as smoke rises from the earth, an acrid, oily smoke Kaya doesn't want to think about too closely. The streets are packed with those fighting against the invasion and those furthering it. Black oil seeps from the mouths and eyes of the attackers and foul Phyrexian symbols glow on every surface. Worse—every few minutes a thundering boom shakes the plane once more, heralding the attack of Norn's skeletal, glowing branches.
If Kaya was a kid watching all this, she'd ask the same question.
But she's an adult now. Her job is to find answers where there are none.
"We're gonna jump from one place to the next," she says. The boy tucks his dog inside of his shirt. "Are you good at jumping?"
"The best," says the boy.
She hopes he is. She takes his hand, the two of them approaching the lip of the remaining floor. Up ahead there's the swinging remains of a balcony—if they can get onto that, then maybe they can shimmy down a rain pipe to safety.
"On three," she says. He nods.
One, two . . .
Three!
The two of them jump at the same time, Kaya keeping the boy's hand in her own. But just as they should be landing, the balcony falls away.
Kaya, the boy, and the dog plummet.
You have a lot of thoughts when you think you're going to die. Fewer when you're responsible for saving someone else. Kaya thinks fast. She might be able to save the boy if she can slow down their flight. That's got to be the priority. As he starts to scream, she clutches him to her chest.
She closes her eyes.
Impact never comes.
An unseen force pushes back up against them, slowing their fall. Seconds before they hit the ground, they instead hover above it. Whatever's gripping them can't hold much longer; the two of them are trembling in its hold. A Phyrexian?
"Try to be less reckless next time."
Kaito.
Kaya opens her eyes to see him. His telekinesis is barely holding them up; sweat beads on his forehead. Handling a human-size object, let alone three, must be pushing his powers to their limit. Blood, oil, and dirt are spattered across his slick armor. He gives her a nod.
The boy acts first, hopping out onto the ground. A woman nearby shouts for him—he runs without a second look back. A woof from his shirt tells her the dog's okay, too.
Kaya gets up. She flicks the tip of her nose with her thumb. "Thanks," she says. "Would have been lost without you."
He lets that stand without correction, which she supposes is fair enough.
"We have to move fast. The Boseiju district is their prime target. The whole thing, the tree . . ."
Kaito trails off, but Kaya can find her own answers. The tree over Towashi is rent asunder. A foul waterfall pours from its body.
"That's . . . that's awful," Kaya says.
"It is," Kaito nods. "And worse, Tamiyo did it. Opened a scroll. You can see her." Kaito points toward Tamiyo, floating high above the city, near Boseiju's weeping boughs. "She's still reading from them. If no one takes her out, this is only going to get worse."
Hells—they're talking about taking out friends now. Not that Kaya's any stranger to assassination, but there's something different about this. Tamiyo of all people. "We've both got the skills for this. Should I do it, or do you want to handle her?"
"It's personal," Kaito says with a nod. "The kami are going to want to fight this as much as we do—the ones who can fight. See if you can convince them to come."
"Speaking of help—where's the Wanderer?"
Kaya didn't mean it as a jab, but Kaito seems to take it as one. The corner of his lip twitches.
"She's coming," Kaito says.
"You mean she isn't here?"
"She'll be here," he says. "Just have a little faith."
All around them Kamigawa is crumbling. He says have faith. It's like a bad joke, isn't it?
Or a scab they keep picking at.
"Ruby Duck!" Guts roared
Ruby fell flat in an instant as Guts flew over her and Slammed dragonslayer into the Twisted metal Almagmation that was the Phyrexian menace.
Guts used his metal arm to punch the face in repeatedly
The glistening Oil, Ichor, the Life-blood of Phyxeria splattered over the Atlas Arm
And was subsequently burned away as he pushed his aura through it.
Guts grunted "seems like we are immune to this toxic oil." Guts said
"That's good." Ruby said with a smile as she stood up
"Then we can stop holding back." She finished as her eyes glowed bright silver.
Both Guts and Ruby rushed off of course Ruby while fighting was explained To Guts everything she knew
The planeswalker Spark, the Phyrexians. The world tree, Griffiths collapse.
It was speculated that the Phyxerian world tree was the reason for his collapse.
"Clearly the Godhand can wait. These monsters are just as bad if not worse."
Ruby nodded "once we finish with this we will unlock your spark, it should help us later travel." She said
Guts nodded
"Bet I can kill more than you." Ruby said
"Oh and what if you lose?" Guts asked
"Well…you can be ontop tonight." Ruby teased as she vanished
Guts laughed as he ran off now competitive
Tamiyo floats above them. Or something that once was Tamiyo. She doesn't look down on them, doesn't seem to move, doesn't seem to care about what she's doing. Nothing could be further from the woman Kaito met in Otawara.
He sizes up the oil-slick bark of the tree. No matter what he'd thought of her before, this is about more than just him. Kaito sets his foot against the bark. He gets about three steps up before someone calls to him.
"A-are you going up there to fight her?"
The voice is small and timid. And as much as he'd like to ignore it, he knows he can't. Besides, if there's a kid hanging around this place they need to scatter, and fast. "I am. You should get going."
"I can't," says the voice. When he looks down, he catches sight of the kid: a little Nezumi in motley metal armor and a homemade helmet that obscures his face. He must have cobbled it together out of scraps. Wait a second . . . "That's my mom up there."
"Nashi?" he asks.
Sure enough, he nods.
Kaito lets himself down from the tree. "You don't want to be here," he says. "Things are going to get bad."
"But you're not going to hurt her, are you?" Nashi asks, fussing his hands. "She looks different, but that's still her. I think she's forgotten herself—I thought, maybe if I talked to her . . ."
Kaito runs a hand through his hair. "I don't think it's that simple."
"You have to let me try," Nashi says. He draws himself up to his full height—which isn't very tall. "I came all the way out here to help when I heard things were getting bad. Mom said that's what heroes do. If you can bring me up somewhere she can see me, then I'm sure she'll listen. No matter who she is, she'll always love me. She promised."
Kaito's chest goes tight. He doesn't want to do this. But if it was Eiko up there? Kaito doesn't want to think about the possibility, yet he knows he'd do anything he could to get her back. Even if getting her back didn't seem like an option. Tamiyo ended up this way because of him. The least he can do is try this plan.
"All right," Kaito says. "How's your climbing?"
"Okay," Nashi says. "Not good enough when there's all this . . . stuff on the tree. It didn't seem like I should touch it."
"You shouldn't," Kaito says. He takes a repulsor from his belt Nashi couldn't weigh much, right? Kaito clips it to Nashi's sash and turns it on. A soft hum radiates as he starts to float. "Walk in the direction you want to go. It's a little slow, but you'll be able to follow along. If you hit the button one more time, it'll shield you. Don't hit it after that, unless you want to drop."
Nashi nods.
Kaito swallows, shaking away the sense of dread. If worst came to worst, he'd tell Nashi to leave. But maybe he's right, maybe there is a way to break through all this. Stranger things have happened. They need to try.
Boseiju doesn't make itself easy to climb. Between the torrents of oil raining down above them and the chaos behind, there isn't much in the way of mercy. Normally there were branches lower to the ground upon which some of the kami dwelled—but all those have split apart. The first branch that suits them is far higher up, and only half-stable at that. The air is cold and thin when they at last alight upon it; if it weren't for his training, Kaito would be dizzy.
Nashi isn't so lucky. When his paws meet the bark, he sways from one to the other, clutching at his stomach. Kaito sets a hand on his shoulder. He points ahead, to where Tamiyo still hovers. "Take a second if you need it, but she's there. Hasn't noticed us, either."
Nashi takes two steadying breaths. Kaito breathes along with him; sometimes it helped to have company when it came to that sort of thing.
"Okay. I'm ready," Nashi says.
Kaito hopes he is. Just in case things go wrong, he unsheathes his sword. "I've got your back."
Step by unsteady step, Nashi makes his way to the end of the branch. Kaito follows a pace or two behind. His heart hammers in his ears. Something in Tamiyo had to remain. Something in her would remember, right?
"Mom?"
Tamiyo's head swivels all the way around her neck. The eyes that behold them are not the kind, inquisitive eyes Kaito once knew. They're something else entirely—rimmed with black, the tears on her cheeks a testament to what she's become.
Tamiyo says nothing. Around her the scrolls swirl; the light catches the sharp edges of her claws.
"It's me, Nashi. You remember me, right?" he asks. "I-I don't think you want to do any of this. I think you've made a mistake. But I know someone's making you. I just want you t-to remember. Like in the stories about lost princes." Nashi trembles so hard that it is difficult for him to speak.
"Nashi," says Tamiyo. "What are you doing here . . . ?"
Kaito reaches out to steady the small Nezumi.
And it is then that the rest of Tamiyo's body snaps around to match her head, then that her face wrenches into a scowl. A shard of metal shoots toward them, flung from the orbit of scrolls floating around Tamiyo. It is only Kaito's time-honed instincts that save him: he deflects the shards with telekinesis the way he'd deflected all the stones his instructors flung at him. The clang of metal rings in his ears.
"I want nothing more than for you to join me, Nashi," says Tamiyo. Her voice rings wrong to Kaito—like a twisted cicada's cry. "You're only afraid because you don't understand. There is nothing to fear. In the light of New Phyrexia, all are one."
Kaito steps in front of Nashi. "Go back toward the tree."
"I can't leave her—"
"This isn't your mother," Kaito snaps. "Now go!" Kaito gives Nashi a push further back. If things are going to get violent, there's no way he wants Nashi to see it.
No sooner than Kaito shoves Nashi away does Tamiyo descend on him. Tamiyo was someone who did what she could to support others. A storyteller, an investigator, a woman devoted to her family. But now?
Phyrexia changed her. Warped that curious storyteller into a cruel hierophant. There was nothing behind those oil-weeping eyes.
Tamiyo's claws sliced through the air, followed by weaponized scrolls that grab at Kaito's neck and arms, threatening to bind and overwhelm him. Kaito slices through the paper while keeping the metal at bay—but his footing on this slick branch is treacherous. He slips. Tamiyo's claws skitter and spark off Kaito's armor before he manages to recover. The slightest skid of his feet and those claws will find a home across his neck. He manages to recover his balance with only a tear across his armor to show for it.
Kaito holds his sword out before him.
Tamiyo stares back at him unblinking. "This is a pointless fight."
"Maybe for you," Kaito says. "There's no way you're going to win this."
Without even a gesture Tamiyo sends five more shards flying toward him; Kaito blocks four. The fifth slices him across the cheek.
"I pity you," Tamiyo says. "Fighting against peace to maintain your loneliness. You stand in the way of your own enlightenment. Like a child, you fight against the parents who only wish to welcome you."
Hearing her like this tears him up. Kaito hopes Nashi can't hear her. And he hopes, too, that Nashi isn't watching when he throws his weight into a lunge. Tamiyo sways back and counters—a scroll wraps around his leg. He tries to shift his weight and cut himself loose.
Tamiyo pulls.
Kaito flips feet over head before he knows what's happened, dangling far above Towashi. The smoke of the burning city stings at his eyes. Somehow, he keeps hold of his sword.
"I'm giving you one final opportunity to surrender, Kaito. Phyrexia can give you the life you've always wanted. Come home. And let me welcome my family."
Blood's rushing to his head. Think. If he cuts himself down, he's going to fall. Maybe he'll be able to catch himself on something; maybe not. But he doesn't have many better options.
"I like my life the way it is," he says.
Kaito makes the cut.
He falls. Impact never comes. Instead, he feels something cool and soft beneath him. Something . . . familiar. "We're up to three, if you're keeping count."
That voice. A smirk comes to him before his eyes are open—it's the emperor. She lands atop the branch in a hush of cloth, her sword held out at her side. Which means he must have landed on Kyodai—the guardian spirit of Kamigawa whose soul is bound to the emperor.
"Call it even with me?" Kaya's voice tells Kaito he isn't alone. She's right next to him, the two of them riding together.
"For now," Kaito says. "I told you she'd be here."
Kyodai swoops back up toward Tamiyo. They're level with the branch, now. His eyes are trained on the emperor as she confronts Tamiyo. Each step is cautious and graceful—the slickness that troubled Kaito isn't a concern for the emperor. What jocularity there was in her initial greeting is gone when she addresses the monstrosity before her.
"Is this truly the place for a fight, Tamiyo?" the emperor asks.
"You should be asking yourself that," Tamiyo responds.
A flurry of shards fly out toward her, each split in two by a single cut of the emperor's blade. Tamiyo backs away with each step the emperor takes toward her—stopping right beside a frightened Nashi.
Tamiyo's hand settles on Nashi's head.
Kaito's stomach twists. He wonders if he should look away. Instead, he finds the strength to call out. "Nashi, turn around!"
Tamiyo reaches for a scroll at her waist, one bound with an iron band. She slips the band free with a finger. The silken paper unfurls.
"Kyodai!" the emperor shouts.
The great kami beneath them flies to her side. The emperor holds her sword toward her companion and Kyodai breathes upon it. Shining white lines the blade; characters float in the air around her. Kyodai's power flows through the emperor.
Tamiyo's mouth begins to move.
Nashi, at last comprehending what is about to happen, turns away.
A flash of white light, the sound of a blade unsheathing, the whistle of a distant gale.
Tamiyo falls.
Kaito is on his feet in an instant. Nashi is all alone up there now—he's going to need company. By the time Kaito has closed the distance, the Wanderer is there to meet them. Kaito hugs Nashi tight.
"That wasn't her," Nashi repeats. "That wasn't—why was she like—why didn't she . . . ?"
There aren't any easy answers—certainly none Kaito can summon. A stone in his throat keeps him from speaking.
The emperor bows her head with grief. "Your mother will live on in your memory, and the stories you tell of her."
It is wise counsel, but not necessarily comforting to someone in the thick of pain. Nashi's sobs only get louder. Kaito can't blame him.
Another hand alights on his shoulder, oddly light and cold. Kaya never seemed the type for tearful reunions, but maybe after what they saw on New Phyrexia she's singing a different tune. Any comfort is welcome now. Even Kyodai wraps around them all. For a moment it feels as if they're trying to hold the plane together. Perhaps in the case of this one young boy, they are.
Peace lasts until they hear Nashi's mother calling for him.
Tamiyo's voice does not drift up from the pile of metal the emperor struck down, but from right among them. This wasn't the cold Phyrexian whisper but the warm, familiar tones of her old self.
"Nashi, I'm sorry."
Kaito shields Nashi with his body. Before them is a strange being: densely packed floating characters form a woman's silhouette. They glow and dim as if breathing. When they next hear Tamiyo's voice, a light at the center glows even brighter. Characters wink in and out of existence and change as he studies them. Towashi's projected neons can achieve all sorts of trickery, but this is something different. The way it's moving feels too intentional to be random, too imperfect to be artificial. The light glowing within reminds him more of a kami than any of Towashi's technical wonders.
"I understand you might be wary of me, but I mean you no harm," Tamiyo says.
"What are you?" Kaito asks.
"Not a ghost, that's for sure," Kaya calls—she's at the edge of the branch. "What do you want?"
The silhouette turns toward each of them, then nods. "I am what remains of Tamiyo—her story unending. You may think of me as her memory. Many years ago, she created me in anticipation of her death and sealed me away within a scroll until I was needed, bound with an iron ring." Tamiyo's memory—her story—pauses. "I had hoped I might never be."
"How do we know you aren't—" Kaito starts.
But Nashi is already breaking away from him, toward the odd conglomeration of characters. When he meets them, they swarm, settling into his arms.
Kaito moves toward the boy, but the emperor gestures for him to stop. The emperor turns away—toward the body, toward Kamigawa, toward the ruins of the night. "She's telling the truth."
"How do you know?" Kaito asks. "How do you know this isn't another Phyrexian scheme?"
"Were you watching closely? Before I struck, Tamiyo mouthed something."
"I saw that, but she could have been doing anything. I thought she was preparing a curse."
"She wasn't," the Wanderer says. "All the shards she threw at me went too wide to do any damage—didn't you notice?" She sets a hand on one of Kyodai's many masks, and the kami touches hers in turn. A hard-won moment of tenderness on a battlefield like this. "Tamiyo was making a request, in the only way she could."
Kaito looks back over his shoulder. Nashi is still surrounded by the characters—by the story unending. It isn't a clean victory, or even a very good one. Kaito looks out over the burning city below Boseiju's wounded canopy. So many are dead, so many are dying, so many more that will die.
In the distance he sees shapes moving through the strange smoke—giant mechs lumbering toward the impact barb. Imperial forces gathering to counter the Phyrexian assault.
How much can they do? How many can they save?
Tamiyo fell—but Nashi lived.
Considering the work left to do, he'll take it.
Ruby And Guts stood above the area where the compleated Planeswalker of Tamyo had fallen.
And noticed that with her death the waves of Phyrexians began to slow, not stop completely but slow down
Right in time for the inhabitants of the plane to get there second wind.
"It looks like the others have the defense of the plane under control." Ruby said
"Yeah…so about this Planeswalker spark?" Guts asked her.
There is a story.
Once upon a time there was a great evil, one that threatened to swallow the planes of the Multiverse whole. Unfeeling and uncaring, it infected the hearts of those it encountered.
There was someone who fought against it.
There was a protector in white.
Unless ordered to do otherwise, all denizens of the Fair Basilica moved in predefined paths according to their station. Aspirants circulated among the vertebral towers like blood coursing through arteries, each step an invitation for the apothegms of the Argent Etchings—Elesh Norn's word made metal and flesh—to seize them with spasms of convulsive delirium. High above, angels on mute pilgrimages between mist-bound aeries soared on wings of patchwork cartilage. From their vantage point, the constant motion of the aspirants was not the assemblage of thousands, but the handiwork of a great mover, the crafting of a single divine sigil umbilically writhing into existence. Back down upon the grounds of Elesh Norn's cathedral, chancellors swaddled in oil-soaked pinions and skitterlings possessed by ecstatic frenzy filed in and out of the Grand Annex like lathering maggots proclaiming the wisdom of their beloved Mother of Machines.
Exempt from these endless cycles were those chosen from the armored legions of the Alabaster Host to guard the avenues into and out of the cathedral proper. Their role, unlike all others in the Fair Basilica, was to stand perfectly, inhumanly still, for they were the unblinking gaze of the Mother herself. Woe be to the legionnaire who shirked this distinction to so much as wipe away a blemish on its armor.
So it was no surprise to Tezzeret when the twin centurions standing watch over the front gate didn't flinch when the Planar Bridge fractured, then tore open the hallowed space in front of them. He was once again on the accursed plane of New Phyrexia, the charred endoskeleton of Rona in his arms.
"I must see Mother," he barked to the guards, the energies from the Planar Bridge eating away his flesh like a murder of ravenous carrion birds. Neither moved nor acknowledged his presence. "Is she here or in the core?" Still no response. "Answer me, damn you!"
"Bring him to us," a voice boomed out. Her voice. "Send the other to Jin-Gitaxias for reconditioning." At that, the guards stepped aside, one taking Rona's remains away, and the other accompanying him on the long march through the internal courtyard. A steady hum filled the area, as did the stink of the sickly sweet, slightly acrid incense burning in the central brazier. There was a fervor that Tezzeret hadn't observed before, the thrill-engorged moments before a ritual sacrifice.
Tezzeret's journey ended inside a chamber held up by struts of bone-like porcelain flaring out from the walls, a set of ribs meeting in the center to form a dais of high steps leading up to the throne of Elesh Norn. A pair of gargantuan animarchs stopped their toiling at the back of the cavern to glare at Tezzeret's approach through the intercostal spaces.
"Honored Mother," he said, kneeling.
"We did not call for you," said Elesh Norn, her voice so loud it felt like it was bursting out of his head. "Why have you abandoned Dominaria?"
"Our forces were overwhelmed," Tezzeret began.
"Not possible. Our breadth is all-encompassing."
"So true, Mother. But . . . there was treachery. Rona, the one I arrived with—"
"One of Sheoldred's minions," said Elesh Norn. There was judgment in her voice as she rose from her seat and began to descend the steps. "Sheoldred, who is an apostate in our eyes! Her forces have moved against us in a reckless grasp at power. The flouting of our mercy despite the thanes' past transgressions . . . Such sacrilege pains us."
Tezzeret almost stumbled backward. Sheoldred? After the events on Dominaria, Tezzeret had been convinced that Sheoldred had been brought to heel—a wild, headstrong pet, but a pet nonetheless. He'd already planned to blame Rona for his failures. Sheoldred's betrayal was a delicious detail to add credibility to his cover story.
"Rona played her part in Sheoldred's plan perfectly, fooling even me. We were routed when our own troops turned on us."
"And the Planeswalkers?" Elesh Norn asked.
"Escaped."
"You did not follow?" Elesh Norn's shadow towered over him. Reflexively, his shoulders retreated inward, causing sharp jolts of pain from the Planar Bridge to spike, making him feel lightheaded.
"I would have, Mother," he said through gritted teeth. "But I needed to warn you of the snake in our midst. I was . . . concerned."
Norn was close enough now to lean forward, her arm extended, and tip Tezzeret's chin up with her finger. "You love us, don't you?"
One well-placed thrust of his sharpened arm could impale her head or take it right off. Would the sweetness of that action be worth the hell he'd face afterward? Death? If he was lucky. Torture? Still, preferable to what he suspected would truly unfold—the stretching and warping of his body and mind, the victory of the oil over his own tenacious spirit, the end of him and the beginning of his everlasting servitude. Like Tamiyo. Like Goldmane. Tezzeret closed his eyes and willed his heart to slow, concentrated on the sound of his breathing.
"What child does not love his mother?" he said, looking back up.
"Tell us then child. Tell us of the enemy."
"We encountered the Planeswalkers' new leader. She struck Rona with her terrifying weapon." Tezzeret watched Elesh Norn's ire fade, replaced with apprehension. "The leader's name is Elspeth Tirel." Tezzeret let the name linger. In other circumstances, witnessing the Mother of Machines genuinely fearful would have been a rare treat to savor. But the Planar Bridge was sapping away any pleasure he would have felt.
"The weapon—"
"A blade of gleaming white," said Tezzeret. "Like a shard of a star. We had no answer, just like we will have no answer when she arrives on New Phyrexia. You must agree that this is now an inevitability."
"We will be ready," Norn growled.
"None of us is ready. However, she has given up the advantage of surprise. We must take the opportunity—" Another wave of pain swept over Tezzeret, forcing him back onto his knees in faux-penitence. "The boon that was promised to me," he said, clutching his chest. "With a body of darksteel, I can be your invincible shield. Believe in me as I believe in you, Mother, and together, even the enemy's mighty general cannot conquer us."
Tezzeret's vision dimmed. He'd gone too long without his treatments in Kuldotha, and now he was wavering on the knife edge between life and death, dependent upon the mercy—and the gullibility—of the one being he hated most in the Multiverse. How fitting that he'd found himself again in this situation. How infuriating, as well. He fell onto the floor, onto his back, unable to focus past the invisible electric fire overtaking his body.
"You've carried such a burden for us," said Elesh Norn, caressing Tezzeret's cheek with her claw. "It is time to reward your faith. A promise is a promise." Elesh Norn's sickeningly haughty smile was the last thing he saw before he lost consciousness.
The air was cold and wet and smelled of oil. Tezzeret's eyes shot open. Tentacle-like cables were coiled around his legs and arms, locking him into place. Looming over his head was an iridescent orb, pincers of hardened quicksilver jutting out from its sides like the legs of a mechanical spider.
"Stabilization procedures have been successful. Subject is regaining consciousness."
Jin-Gitaxias. Tezzeret strained to take in as much of his surroundings as he could. He recognized the minutia of Jin-Gitaxias's dimly lit laboratory, a panoply of stasis tanks preserving slices of the plane's history. A metallic suit routinely worn by Neurok agents. A fist-sized, five-sided prism, dim yellow light oozing from its center like a darkened sun. The remains of a small black cube floating in suspension, dissected as if it were an animal to study.
"How long have I been asleep?" Tezzeret asked. His voice was hoarse, his throat dry.
"Long enough to prepare for the task delegated to me," said Jin-Gitaxias, stepping into view. He paused for a moment to study a tablet in his hand, a device he used to monitor the integrity of his lab apparatuses, then undulated his neck to look square at Tezzeret. "Embarking upon projects on short notice is imprudent. And at such a sensitive time. Elesh Norn's discretion is several percentiles less than acceptable."
So it was happening. His reward, finally here. Tezzeret would have felt more elated were he not bound in the seat where Tamiyo was cut open and flayed like an overripe fruit, her organs removed and replaced with glands that swam in oily ichor, an acid liver, bones of black metal. Beholding her rebirth as a Phyrexian, Tezzeret vowed that no such fate would befall him, that he'd die before he subjected himself to Jin-Gitaxias's mad experiments. But musing about death was not the same as facing it head on.
The door at the far end of the laboratory slid open with an almost imperceptible swish. In scuttled several tentacled skitterlings tugging a floating platform similar to the one Tezzeret had used to escort Karn's dismembered body to Elesh Norn's garden. Only, this platform bore something of much greater importance to him—the prize he'd long sought, streaks of gold swirling across and around its otherwise jet-black surface.
A body of darksteel. Cold. Indestructible. Invincible. Something welled in Tezzeret's chest, overcoming even the constant burn of the Planar Bridge against his flesh. Was it hope? Not at all. Such a delusion was fine for simpletons; Tezzeret had no use for it. What he had was clarity. There was nothing like desperation to renew one's conviction, to harden one's resolve.
"There are costs to working with darksteel," Jin-Gitaxias lectured in his characteristic monotone. "Once the metal has been forged, it must be shaped into its desired configuration immediately. The haste with which this is done inevitably requires lax standards in other areas. Urabrask condones such waste, but I do not."
"I am well aware," Tezzeret said, inwardly sneering at Jin-Gitaxias pretending to understand something he clearly did not. Tezzeret had seen enough in Urabrask's domain to know that the metal was not mined or shaped in any way remotely traditional. Forging darksteel lay in forging the reality around where the metal would be, presaging it so that it could be willed into shape. Tezzeret conjectured that the exact magical mechanism was a chance collision of rituals assembled over countless cycles—perhaps in part cribbed from Vulshok technique and in part from knowledge gained outside the plane long ago. Despite his insight, all his attempts at replicating it had failed. Tezzeret did not like it, was not comfortable with his own inability to grasp darksteel's secrets. But he'd learned to accept it.
"A lesson in efficiency," said Jin-Gitaxias, beckoning a pair of slug-like assistance drones to approach. "The etherium extracted from your husk will be shaped and charged to create a bonding force stabilizing your new form." The drones leaned forward, and from apertures on the tops of their heads came concentrated beams of energy directed at Tezzeret's metal arm.
At first, he felt nothing, but soon the sensation of slowly rising warmth gave way to searing heat where his arm met his organic shoulder. Tezzeret watched as the embodiment of his own exceptionalism melted into slag. Jin-Gitaxias collected it in a bowl and poured the superheated etherium into a narrow channel cut into the back of the darksteel body.
"This will remain a weakness in an otherwise impregnable form, but adequate precautions can mitigate the danger to yourself."
Ingenious, Tezzeret thought. A lesser artificer would have tried to invent a more complex way to create the bond. All the better to impress an academy of simpering colleagues. Not Jin-Gitaxias. He understood that the elementary attraction of elements—of like clinging to like—was pure, inviolate, and unparalleled.
"Now," said Jin-Gitaxias. "Commence with the procedure."
The operator orb descended onto Tezzeret, a ring of pincers closing around his neck. Then the orb began its work, first by implanting microfilaments into his skin, each puncture like a dagger stroke. Surgical needles embedded in his seat did the same, knitting a weave of etherium strands around his spinal column. Tezzeret flexed his fingers, curled them into fists. A numbing thrum of energy began to course through the metal threads, causing a sudden bout of dizziness to wash over him.
Then his head and spine were separated from his body, now little more than a mass of scarred meat and scorched metal surrounding the Planar Bridge. The pain was magnitudes beyond any other he'd ever felt, so much so that visions began to flood his mind—pieces of a familiar fever dream he'd experienced when Bolas saved him from the brink of death. An ocean cloaked in cerulean haze. An island of metal, grasses of burnished pewter and tree leaves like age-tarnished razor blades. Mournful contrabasso chords growing into earsplitting peals—the chimes of a titanic clock.
Then . . . blackness. Silence.
Tezzeret opened his eyes to the glare of the lights overhead on the speckled marble slab. Did it work? Was he alive or dead? He wasn't sure. He focused on his fingertip upon the slab and marveled when it moved on command. Yes, he felt the muscles—if they could be called that—in his limbs bursting with a raw, physical strength he'd never known. More importantly, the burning of the Planar Bridge was gone, and his mind felt keener than it had in months, as if a diseased piece had been excised.
"You have outdone yourself," said Tezzeret.
"Negative," said Jin-Gitaxias, "This advancement was well within my abilities."
"In any case, my admiration for your skill is sincere," said Tezzeret. As sincere as my contempt for your loathsome plane and everything on it. At that, he willed himself to enter the Blind Eternities, this time as a man reforged. He relished the thought of visiting restitution upon all who had wronged him, then amassing power to attain his proper place in the pantheon of the Multiverse.
Except, he didn't move. There was no characteristic snap of the universal edges parting, no bout of momentary queasiness that routinely accompanied his planeswalking. Tezzeret flexed his limbs, but the clamps around his wrists and ankles were made of the same unbreakable darksteel that now composed his body. It was then that he noticed a thin inlay of rippling silver metal fed into shallow crevices stretching across the marble slab he lay on. He cursed, recalling how Karn had been prevented from saving himself. Tezzeret had fallen into the same trap.
"Release me at once!" Tezzeret attempted to planeswalk away again, and again he failed. "Do you hear me?"
"Darksteel has another drawback," said Jin-Gitaxias, paying no heed to Tezzeret's cries. "The conversion to blightsteel requires weeks, if not months, of exposure to the glistening oil." With a click of his claws, the praetor called the operator orb back down to hover near his shoulder. He tapped the orb, causing a slithery tentacle to emerge from within its nest of appendages. "Fortunately, advancements have been made to minimize this issue as it pertains to the task at hand." The tentacle unfolded, revealing a small module at its tip.
The Reality Chip, a new version dripping with glistening oil.
"This was not part of my agreement with our Mother!" screamed Tezzeret. "Her wrath will rain down upon your head!"
"There is no violating an agreement already broken." Jin-Gitaxias gestured toward the far wall, which slid open to reveal a tank of blue liquid. Suspended inside was the body of one of Urabrask's chief lieutenants, a scrapchief, its arms stretched away from its body like a spider being pulled apart. He knew. Jin-Gitaxias knew about it all—Urabrask, the Mirrans, the impending attacks. Everything. "Such developments do not displease me. They introduce possibilities intriguing enough to let them unfold as they will."
His own play for the throne, thought Tezzeret.
"Nevertheless, I regret not feeding your tissues to my larvae upon our first encounter. But, as oversights can be corrected, so too can the treasonous be . . . What is Elesh Norn's nomenclature? Ah. Forgiven."
Tezzeret tried again to break his bonds, casting spells in every direction he could. But with each incantation, the metal inlay on the slab would flare, changing color from silver to a bright opalescence, siphoning away the energy he needed to escape. Still, he kept casting, desperate for anything that could penetrate the dampening field.
Something did. Planeswalker, he heard a presence speak, a voice that boiled with the rage of Phyrexia's forges, albeit one nearly extinguished from exhaustion. How do you reach into my mind?
It had been so long since Tezzeret had initiated contact with a telemin that he had almost forgotten how. Less a true spell than an Esper mentalist's trick, establishing a mental bond in this way allowed the caster to assume total control of another individual, provided full permission had been granted. Useless against an enemy. But in a situation such as the present one, it was exactly the improvised weapon he needed.
Give me control, Phyrexian, thought Tezzeret. I am your only means of salvation, and you mine. Otherwise, we both end here. There was an initial resistance by the scrapchief—a natural reflex—which quickly gave way to Tezzeret's psyche melding into his new host. He could feel the creature's flagging rage, like a smoldering furnace, and stoked it with his own.
Beholding Jin-Gitaxias standing over his body through the transparent wall of the scrapchief's prison, Tezzeret aimed a single hit onto the glass with the creature's sharpened upper jaw. He struck it again and again, each time widening the fracture until the tank exploded in a hail of shrapnel.
Tezzeret drove the scrapchief forward, ramming Jin-Gitaxias onto the ground, knocking the Reality Chip from his grip. Given different circumstances, Tezzeret's next step would have been to beat Jin-Gitaxias mercilessly. To break him. Instead, he commanded the scrapchief to charge past and bring the full weight of its heavy, metal-capped arm onto the marble slab, punching a hole straight through. Again and again. The more damage to the slab—and to the lattice on its surface—the stronger Tezzeret's connection to magic. He raised the scrapchief's arms overhead for one final smash when pain ripped through his—or rather, the scrapchief's—back. Looking down, he saw the claw of Jin-Gitaxias protruding through the scrapchief's chest.
Tezzeret's mind snapped back into his own body in time to see Jin-Gitaxias throw the scrapchief's corpse down to the ground, a lifeless pile in front of him. No words came out of the praetor's mouth. The time had passed for intellectual cogitations; both praetor and Planeswalker understood this. One moved—Jin-Gitaxias lunged forward, armed with the Reality Chip—and so did the other.
Tezzeret planeswalked away.
Filth. Darkness. Desolation. Many words have been said of Tidehollow, the forsaken underground where the Esper elite relegated the dregs who reminded them of their sins. Tidehollow the heartless! Tidehollow the unmerciful! The longer you lived there, the longer and more complex the phrasing. Tidehollow, who impales the skulls of the forgotten with spikes of machined perfection! Tidehollow, whose plumes of trash fire soot gag the toxic hopes of the young, the acidic pleas of the old! Tidehollow with teeth like window shards, sarcophagus bones hollowed of marrow and force-fed to infants!
Tezzeret, on his knees, dug between hunks of broken pavement and scraped up the dirt underneath. He brought the soot and soil up to his face, smelled the blood, the sick, the hopelessness. Then he leaned back and howled with laughter. The poets could choke on their verses. For Tezzeret, there was only one word associated with Tidehollow that truly resonated.
Home.
"Oy!" he heard a voice say behind him. It echoed off the walls of the condemned buildings lining the grimy alleyway. "Looks like someone's had too much of the piss. Probably don't have a lot left in your pockets, but we'll take what you got!"
Tezzeret turned his head to see a gang of cave brats, the tallest and oldest out front armed with a knife. He had the steely look of someone who'd been on his end of a weapon before, who'd carried out forced transactions like those up in Vectis enjoyed their afternoon tea. Long ago, before planeswalking dragons, plane-churning confluxes, and biomechanical scourges, Tezzeret dressed in the same tatters, bore the same scowl on his face that these youths now wore on theirs.
"I am at a moment of weakness," Tezzeret said, calmly. "I will permit you to leave."
"I think we'll stay, thank you very much!" said a girl, the lead boy's second-in-command, Tezzeret guessed. "What are those things floating around him?"
The lead boy smirked. "Magic. Decorations rich folks spend a fortune on." He jabbed his knife in Tezzeret's direction. "C'mon. Give us your stuff, and you won't get hurt."
"I have nothing for you."
"I'll be the judge of that," said the lead boy.
"You would judge me? What makes you think you're worthy?"
"Got a knife in my hand, see?"
"Yes," said Tezzeret. Then, in one movement, he turned, stood, and cast a spell to animate the knife in the leader's hand. It wrested itself from the boy's grip and then plunged into his palm, nearly severing his fingers entirely. "I see."
"Aether lich!" the girl screamed, sparking a stampede, the lead boy holding his wrist as he scampered away. The gang scattered, its bigger members trampling over the smaller ones who made up the back ranks, leaving behind a lone, blond child, pushed down into the gutter by his erstwhile fellows. The boy huddled against a nearby building—one that Tezzeret recognized. He'd brought himself to the threshold of his childhood home, the abysmal station he'd been born into.
"Why is this building boarded up?" Tezzeret asked the boy. "And what of the man who lived here?"
"No one's ever lived here, far as I know."
Had his father died? It wouldn't have been surprising. When he wasn't cursing other scrappers for "stealing his rightful claim" or screaming at his son to allay his frustrations, he was in his cups babbling to the phantom of his dead wife—Tezzeret's mother—before passing out in a pool of his own vomit. Before he knew better, a young Tezzeret would wait until his father was asleep, then wipe the table dry and lay his father down upon his cot with blanket drawn. Imbecile. He'd merely enabled his father's cruelty toward him. Only when Tezzeret was older, after he'd learned about the power of mages, did he see the role he played in his own suffering.
"What is your name, boy?"
"Estel," the young man stammered out.
"Come."
Tezzeret tried to reshape his arm into a bent edge to pry off the wooden panels nailed across the doorway, only for his body to ignore his command. He grunted, realizing that for all the strengths of his new form, there were tradeoffs. With time, he thought as he tore the panels down as if they were scraps of paper.
Inside didn't look much different from what he remembered. Two rooms, one a kitchen area with a shallow fireplace and a table and the other used as sleeping quarters. Both were stripped of anything of value. The only things visible implying his father's existence were bits of twisted metal—all cheap alloys—scattered across the floor and a heavy cloak that smelled of mold and sawdust.
But what of things invisible? Tezzeret pushed the table aside and, counting three tiles from the back wall, he inserted a finger into the crack between the third and fourth. Underneath was a small metal door locked with a heavy deadbolt.
Tezzeret ripped the door off its hinges, reached in, and pulled out a small wooden box with floral patterns carved onto its lid. This was his mother's handiwork, the last remnant of the hobby that gave her solace amid the squalor. He remembered hugging the box on the journey up to Lower Vectis to collect his mother's corpse, how his fingernail fit perfectly into the shallow grooves of the carving. He remembered her promise that morning to return with supper—a promise, he supposed, she'd intended to keep.
Witnesses told a familiar tale. She'd been begging for alms when a wealthy guildmaster's wagon hit her and didn't stop. Of course, the authorities did nothing. Humiliation and death were common enough occurrences for downslopers like her. Long after and armed with his Seeker training, Tezzeret searched out his mother's killer, only to find that he'd died years before, peacefully, surrounded by his loving family.
Tidehollow, whose claws of rags and misery drag dreams to ash!
"Do you know what this is?" Tezzeret asked Estel after cracking open the box for the boy to see. Inside were metallic scraps of all shapes—nuggets, shavings, irregular threads.
"Etherium," Estel answered, shriveling under the Planeswalker's gaze.
"This paltry amount is worth more than all the denizens of Tidehollow combined, anything that you are now or will be in the future." Tezzeret began to shape a spell, murmuring words he'd learned long ago as a member of the Seekers. "Its value is derived from its extreme rarity, its inability to be reproduced. At least, that's what you're told." He let his hand drop, the etherium suspended in the air, and watched as the liquid metal reformed itself into a thin square. "Those in Tidehollow need little motivation to fight among ourselves for the scraps we're allowed to have. All the better for those above. It keeps us out of their way." Letters began to raise themselves onto its surface, Tezzeret's mind pressing the metal into a message.
Tezzeret took the etherium, curled it into a tight tube, and placed it back into the box. He looked to Estel and intended to place it in his hands when thunder tore through the air, the sound of steel doors being wrenched apart.
Tezzeret ducked outside to see an angular crack, flaring with bright crackles of energy, breaking the cave ceiling. Tearing through it was a column of white material that he at first thought was a building falling through from the city above. But upon closer inspection, he spotted creatures moving across the column's surface, scampering down like insects to street level. Then he realized what he was looking at.
Bone-white metal. The Phyrexians had arrived.
"Too soon," Tezzeret snarled. He clutched Estel's arm and dragged him inside the hovel. He forced the boy to take the box, then spotted the small dagger strapped to the boy's belt. "Give me your knife."
With a shaking hand, Estel drew the knife from its sheath. Tezzeret grabbed it and looked it over. Cheap make. Loose handle. Chipped tip. Still, it would suffice for Tezzeret's ends. A beginner's spell solidified the knife's handle; another filed the edge down until it was sharp and tapered. One last enchantment made it quasi-ethereal such that its cutting edge could cleave through a well-forged sword.
"The cistern at Bellow's End," he said. "Do you know of it? There is a passage leading to a forgotten house in Upper Vectis."
"Aye. We use it to watch the parades."
As did I in my youth. "Go there—stick to the Shadow Way, the narrowed passages."
"How do you know—"
"Be quiet and listen. You are to leave the city, taking supplies as you come across them. Do not stop moving. If something gets in your way, use this." Tezzeret placed Estel's refashioned knife back into its sheath. "Make your way to Bant."
"Bant?"
"Follow the shoreline northward, keeping the silver wind at your back to guide you to Valeron. Approach the first outpost you see and find the knight decorated with the most sigils. Request an audience with Knight-General Rafiq and give him the box. Am I clear?"
The boy nodded, but his expression was one of worry and confusion, exacerbated by the shouts and screams—not to mention the inhuman roars—from outside. "What is happening? What were those things? Who are you?"
"I am the one giving you a chance to live," he said. "When you see Rafiq, tell him that an ally of Elspeth Tirel sent you."
Tezzeret pushed Estel away, and the boy turned to leave. But before exiting, he looked back, nodded, and said, "Thank you."
"Wasted words," he spat, heat rising behind his eyes.
"But sir—"
"Just go!" he screamed, prompting Estel to run out the door. Tezzeret stood, his body trembling. I have not fully recovered from the grafting, he told himself as he regained his composure. If the boy dies, he dies. Death would have been Estel's destiny anyway had he stayed in Tidehollow. But if he managed to live, if he got word to the Knights of Bant that they alone possessed a way to defend themselves—a legion of angelic warriors, just as New Capenna once boasted—then Alara could become a quagmire slowing the Phyrexians' spread. All the more time to re-establish his networks, gain resources, and enact his plans.
Tezzeret donned his father's cloak—a menial disguise, but it sufficed—and then, for the briefest of moments, stared back at the dingy hole where he was born and raised. Flecks of rotten wood and plaster rained down from the ceiling as the air filled with noises of slaughter and mayhem. A fitting goodbye, he thought as he entered the Blind Eternities.
Tezzeret's travels took him to plane after plane transformed, ripped apart by invading hordes of Phyrexians. Sabers snapping upon iron-clad carapaces, monstrous incisors grinding bone, and near-constant weeping seemed to bridge planes, blending into an uninterrupted symphony of suffering.
Elesh Norn's "great work" was unfolding faster than Tezzeret could have imagined. Aranzhur. Ilcae. Obsidias. All planes that contained safehouses set up by Baltrice, his second-in-command in the Infinite Consortium. Their existence—and hers, for that matter—was one of the few shreds of specific knowledge Beleren had left behind when he scraped out Tezzeret's mind in the Nezumi swamps. But there was nothing safe about these planes anymore. They'd become mere extensions of New Phyrexia, fresh blossoms on Elesh Norn's debased World Tree. Other planes—Mirrankkar, Cabralin—were in the process of being subsumed. Their inhabitants would fight back, only to fail and become one with the Machine Legion.
Tezzeret had no choice but to keep moving. One more plane held a safehouse he could use as a refuge, though it was a place he was hesitant to return to. But he'd run out of alternatives. To his relief, there was no sign of invasion—at least an overt one—among the bustle at dusk of Towashi's narrow streets. Gone was the tension fueled by the recent Upriser aggression, leaving the people to resume their normal, dismal lives.
Unaware. Cattle fit for slaughtering.
No matter. Tezzeret's concern was finding the safehouse, resting, and claiming what materials Baltrice had stashed there. Unfortunately, the snaking layers of gridwork that marked the Towashi Undercity had proven as formidable a barrier to his reprieve as a Phyrexian horde.
"Where is it?" he muttered, emerging from yet another alleyway back onto the street. Tezzeret stiffened the hood of his cloak and kept his face low. Surveillance was everywhere. He'd long been unwelcome in most parts of Kamigawa, and he had no doubt that his enemies had renewed their hunt for him after his most recent stint on the plane.
He continued walking until he found himself in Dragon's Well, one of the lowest sections of the Undercity, an area forever shielded from the sunlight by a matrix of bridges that serviced those who worked and lived in Towashi's skyscrapers. It was a logical place for the safehouse's location. Out of sight. Buried. Forgotten by all but the Undercity's biker gangs that eke out a meager existence in petty crime. Somewhere Tezzeret would have chosen—perhaps a location he did choose but could no longer remember. He placed his hands on the support column of a bridge and murmured a rhabdomantic spell, sending his mind sizzling through the metal in search of a doorway with the Consortium's magical imprint.
"It is you . . ." he heard someone say, a split second before feeling a surge of electricity overtake him. Tezzeret suddenly felt helpless to gravity, the weight of his body toppling him over like a tipped statue. It took all his strength to reach backward, where he felt a blade piercing the threadbare cloth of his father's cloak, penetrating the soft etherium in the middle of his back. Lucky shot—or unlucky, as it were. A bright light then burst out of the darkness, shining down upon him from atop a hovering surveillance drone, its cannon still smoking from a recently fired shot. Stepping out from the periphery was a Nezumi, young from his stature, with gray-spotted, white fur unlike most of his brethren.
"Where is she?"
Tezzeret groaned and attempted to planeswalk away. But his mind was too scrambled to escape or to cast spells. He reached back again, this time tapping the shaft of the blade with his fingertips.
"Tamiyo," the Nezumi continued. "Tell me where she is." He raised a control rod, using it to command the drone to lower. "Is she . . . dead?" With a click, the cannon chamber loaded with another shot trained on Tezzeret's head. "Tell me now!"
"What is she to you, rat whelp?" Tezzeret said, with a dry grunt. "You're her champion? Her hero swooping in to save her from the darkness?"
"My mother." Mother. Of course. Tamiyo's "family," as she would endlessly drone about. It was never quiet with her around—her inane singing, a broken music box stuck in an endless loop. Genku, my love, I will come back for you. Hiroku, my love, I will see you again. Rumiyo, my love, we shall embrace. Nashi, my love, not of my blood, but of my heart . . . Yes, Nashi. That was his name. "I saw you die once for burning my village to the ground," he said, his arm wavering, fingers positioned on the buttons of the control rod. "Tell me where she is, or you'll die again."
Full circle. Tezzeret looked up and stared into the boy's eyes. "Then do it."
Nashi's hand shook. "I swear . . ."
"Do it! What are you waiting for, you coward?!" A dam broke inside Tezzeret. He reached backward one more time, feeling his fingers elongate and wrap around the blade lodged in his back. He wrenched the blade out and threw it at Nashi's drone, knocking it askew enough that the cannon shot far wide of its target. Shadows danced. Nashi tried to bolt away, but Tezzeret was faster, snatching him by the collar of his leather jacket and dragging him to the ground. "You pathetic weakling!" Tezzeret, in control of his faculties once more, lifted Nashi with one arm and threw him against the bridge support. "Fate handed vengeance to you, and you squandered it! Few ever get that chance!" Tezzeret picked Nashi up again and pinned him to the wall. The boy was battered, red patches sunk into his fur like blood on snow. "In this life, you take what you deserve! Others will try to stop you, so you stop them first! You kill them first!"
The rumble of engines erupted all around Tezzeret. He turned just as light flooded the area from more than a dozen motorbikes forming a semicircle around him. No exit.
"Let him go," ordered the leader, a female Nezumi atop a bike styled like a dragon.
"This is no concern of yours."
"Yes, it is—he's one of ours," the leader said. "You're outnumbered. Let him go, or else."
Tezzeret dropped Nashi in front of his feet. More threats. Always threats that tasked him for a response. Very well. Metal would be his answer, brutal and precise. For hate's sake. With that thought, he expanded his magic out past himself in all directions—into the bridges that spanned the iron firmament above his head, into the ground to contact deposits of ore deep underneath them. Perhaps detecting something amiss, the leader ordered three of her henchmen to dismount from their bikes and approach.
Too late. Tezzeret twitched, making the short blades in the henchmen's hands move of their own accord, impaling their wielders and dragging them away from the light. The rest of the Nezumi mounted their bikes again and revved the engines to ready for a charge. Another futile effort. Each of their mechanical steeds was a magnificent work, an artifact in its own right, gleaming and powerful and metal. Raising his hand in front of his face, palm up, Tezzeret slowly squeezed his fingers together.
Realization hit the gang members seconds after, as their bikes began to shake. Some tried to jump off, only to find that the metal on their persons—weapons, buckles, and pins on their clothing—had fused to their bikes, shackling them in place. They could do nothing when, all at once, Tezzeret clenched his fingers into a tight fist, lifting the bikes into the air and then slamming them together with a gruesome crunch. He gazed at the mass of metal and flesh, used his magic to rotate it in the scant light of Nashi's grounded drone. Shrieks of incredible pain. Fractured limbs skewered by chrome shafts glittering in the darkness like a jewel.
A false jewel. A curse masked as treasure. No, true power was not in either of these—in amassing armies or gathering weapons. It was in surviving, in thriving, in outliving all those who had ever come after him. With a shred of his will, Tezzeret sent the mass of crushed metal and bodies careening into the dark, where it collided with a far wall.
Then all was quiet. He looked down where Nashi lay, crouched down, and cradled the boy's head in his hand. Nashi wrapped his fingers around Tezzeret's wrist, the half-congealed blood on his palms leaving a residue, black and viscous upon Tezzeret's darksteel skin.
"Your mother still lives."
"Alive," Nashi gasped, the smallest sliver of a smile flashing across his face.
Tezzeret nodded. "She will come for you soon enough." He leaned in closer. "And when she does, you will wish I had killed her." Gently, he placed Nashi's head onto the ground, stood up, and walked away.
The safehouse was located behind a false wall in a gaming parlor, bright and raucous, where people from the lower strata of Kamigawan society sunk their money into machines promising riches but delivering little more than flashing lights and clanking sounds. It shouldn't have surprised Tezzeret. Baltrice always had a penchant for such frivolities.
Inside, he found exactly what he was looking for. A private place to rest. To strategize. To ruminate. The supplies were also most welcome: a new suit of light armor, the spine and neck area of which he magically reinforced; several denominations of currency from many different planes; a manablade—one of the very few not in the possession of the Church of the Incarnate Soul; and last, a small crystal that, when held, projected a pattern of pinpoint lights onto the wall, an esoteric telemetry that rekindled a memory long snuffed out.
Tezzeret planeswalked from Kamigawa to a plane so forlorn that even he did not know its name. The journey—the flexing of a neglected muscle still retaining the imprint of endless practice—found him standing amid an ocean of sand. In the distance rose a shallow hill made of seamless metal, and emerging from its top was a single spiked tower. Once, this was his tower, the base of operations from which he steered the fortunes of other planes as the shadowy leader of the Infinite Consortium.
"Smart, Beleren, to keep this from me," Tezzeret mused. "But no longer."
As Tezzeret began his trek forward, he pondered the battle happening across other planes—Beleren and his cohort against Elesh Norn. They would reach the end soon, the stage when both opponents would unleash their final salvos against each other. This was always the most important part of the game—one he was glad to sit out. Eventually, one of them would be victorious but weakened. Then—and only then—would he make his move.
In the meantime, there was much rebuilding to do.
(Eoc)
More dense lore. Oh boy this is an epic in and of itself. And would you believe me if I haven't even added most of my own stuff to this story yet?
Keep reading. Bankerrtx01