The Fifth Dawn

CHAPTER 26

For the first time in living memory, humans, leonin, goblins, and elves saw the suns of Mirrodin rise at exactly the same time. Each of the five spheres glowed more brightly than Bruenna had ever seen, and five distinct colors light streamed into the sky from all directions. They blended into a blinding white glare over the Krark-Home battlefield.

The Neurok mage had never been so exhausted. She’d just gone to the well too many times, and her system refused to take it anymore. The quicksilver energy that powered Bruenna’s magic felt very far away, and she had been forced to the ground. She wanted to sleep for a week, but drew her sword anyway and joined the retreating ground troops on the mountain.

The last skyhunter had fallen, and with Bruenna’s power sapped the air was enemy territory. Wolfpacks of aerophins and a wide variety of the fierce-looking asymmetrical winged construct beasts-each as large as as a five aerophins put together-blasted the ground behind the defenders. Shriekers swooped and divebombed at odd intervals as the lumbering nim drove the leonin and goblin inexorably back.

Bruenna shielded her eyes as four goblin fighters were vaporized right next to her, peppering her forearms with shards of hot iron and molten blood. She stumbled blindly sideways and by sheer luck avoided a small avalanche of ironstone rubble the constructs’ shots had knocked loose from the cliffs above.

Bruenna raised her sword to deflect a swinging nim claw and jumped back, slamming into something armored that snarled. She swung her sword around blindly, but her blade connected with another.

“Careful, mage,” Yshkar growled. He lowered his longknife and guided Bruenna’s blade tip away from his left eye. “Someone could get hurt.”

“Look out!” Bruenna cried, and shoved the Kha aside as an energy bolt blasted the ground nearby and tore a scorched scar up the cliff wall, igniting a few of the scrub trees that still clung to the high reaches. “My Kha, you’ve got to call a full retreat, or you’re not going to have any subjects left tomorrow. We don’t have the strength to hold them here. We have to close up Krark-Home and save as many lives as we can.”

“Retreat? Tuck our tails, run, and hope Glissa will succeed?” Yshkar roared. “Look around you, Neurok. She has failed. And we will face our death on our-”

The leonin paused in midsentence and stared down at his chest with a look of faint surprise. A thin, blood-coated silver blade emerged from the center of Yshkar’s breastplate and glittered in the glare of the five suns. With a sickening slurp, the blade disappeared back into his chest and the leonin dropped dead at the mage’s feet.

The lithe figure behind him danced back a step and twirled her bloody blade.

“I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted to gut that fool,” Lyese said.

Glissa followed the silver blur as it skimmed the surface of the interior and swooped back up for another pass. Behind her, Raksha bellowed, “Another one-move!” A second silver shape dove straight between them, missing Glissa but apparently striking a glancing blow at Geth’s head, which yelped.

“What are those things?” Glissa shouted over the dull roar of billions of hand-sized metal insects having a collective fit. “They’re too fast!”

“I don’t-”

A third silver blur appeared, and this time Raksha couldn’t dodge in time. “Ooof!” the leonin managed as the flying object carried him away. Glissa didn’t get a chance to follow, because the original flyer was on the way back up. She finally got a good look at the silver blur as it rapidly accelerated toward her. At the last second, she launched herself backward and dodged the ascending hovercraft. The elf girl was so surprised when she finally identified the rider that the second caught her a glancing blow on the boot as it swooped up beside its duplicate.

The identity of the first rider had been unmistakable. So had the second. He had a few more pink blotches of flesh marring his perfect silver skin, but the cruel, angular face had been burned into her mind. It was the face of a dead metal man she’d killed herself.

Without waiting for the first two to come at her another time, Glissa gave chase to the third identical copy of Malil, the one that had grabbed Raksha. She glanced back but didn’t spot either of the other two attackers.

“They’re following, but holding back,” Geth’s head shouted. “They obviously fear my power!”

“Just keep an eye on them and tell me if they change their tactics,” Glissa hollered over one shoulder.

Glissa flirted with the idea of sending a little destructive spark energy into the Malil-clone that had spirited Raksha away, but decided against it. These Malil replicas were partly flesh. The energy only seemed to work against true constructs. Besides, she would probably need it soon. The biggest challenge was still ahead.

“Okay, now one of them is-incoming!” Geth’s head shouted. Glissa tucked her chin and dove. The whine of the flyer’s energy fields was almost deafening, but thanks to Geth’s warning the attack just missed her.

“Geth! Keep that up and I’ll get you a body personally!” Glissa shouted.

“How about yours?”

“Don’t push me, head.”

Bruenna backed away from the Yshkar’s fallen body and raised her sword in her good hand. Lyese stepped over the dead leonin and kept her sword tip pointed at the mage’s heart.

The mage cast about desperately with her peripheral vision. The ironstone avalanche had cut them off from the main battle. She was on her own. Maybe that was for the best, the mage mused, since she was about to engage the Tall Queen of the leonin. There was no guarantee the defenders of Krark-Home would come to Bruenna’s aid.

“Lyese,” Bruenna said. “What have you done?”

“What I should have done years ago,” the elf said in a strange voice that sounded like two. “I could have led these primitives on my own, but the master thought it served his purposes better to leave that oaf in charge.”

“He was a good man,” Bruenna said. Then the rest of what Lyese had said sunk in. “Master?”

“You’re even slower than Raksha,” the elf girl said, her voice still resonating weirdly between Lyese’s lilt and something deeper and much darker. “I’m not here to get you up to speed.” Without another word, Lyese danced forward, her blade singing. Bruenna parried clumsily, but the elf girl kept coming. The tackle lifted the mage off her feet, and she landed hard on the iron ground. The murderous elf held her pinned with a forearm and two knees then raised her sword as Bruenna struggled just to draw breath. Her sword arm felt numb.

“Why?” Bruenna managed to cough. She closed her eyes, waiting for the blow. “Your sister-”

A wave of heat washed over the mage and she felt the elf’s weight lifted. She sat upright and saw Lyese flying backward, a small goblin flamerocket embedded in her chest. The elf girl collided with great force against the avalanche debris, and the projectile held Lyese fast against the ironstone. The elf’s eyes flashed red and she dropped her sword, then reached up and grasped the sputtering rocket with both hands, and heaved it aside. The sputtering flamerocket spun out of control and exploded against the cliff wall.

“Back off, huh?” Dwugget growled. He offered Bruenna a hand up and she saw that the goblin held an iron firetube trained on the writhing Khanha.

“Thanks, Dwugget,” Bruenna gasped. “How did you know?”

“Always known,” Dwugget said sadly. “Since that ogre brought Raksha and Lyese to me, huh? I’m sorry. He said he’d destroy Krark-Home. There’s a bomb-”

“No!” The elf-if she was indeed that, which Bruenna was beginning to seriously doubt-roared like an ogre. She climbed like a broken automaton down from the rubble and scooped up her sword. She clutched at the bleeding hole in the center of her chest and coughed up a spray of blood, but remained on her feet. She glared at Bruenna. “This was supposed to be a body that would last, Neurok. Now I’ll have to take yours.”

Dwugget stepped up to her side and she heard a loud click as he slotted another flamerocket into the tube. “Can outrun a rocket, huh?” the goblin asked.

The thing that had taken control of Lyese seethed, but stayed put. “Dwugget, what’s going on?” Bruenna snapped. “What bomb?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Dwugget said. “We are lost anyway, huh? That-that’s no elf. It’s something called Vektro. Thing took her body, she’s not in there anymore. It’s Memnarch’s tool.”

“I’m going to gut you too, goblin,” the bleeding elf snarled.

“But it’s her body, Dwugget!” Bruenna said. “I can’t kill Glissa’s sister.”

“I can,” Dwugget said. “I’m already a murderer, many times over, huh?” The goblin raised the firetube and placed his thumb on the lever that would release another rocket into Lyese’s body.

Bruenna lunged sideways and knocked the flametube aside, sending the rocket spinning uselessly into the sky.

“Stupid!” Dwugget shouted. He stumbled with the impact and went over onto his side, Bruenna following, and they crashed together in a tangle of robes and limbs. Bruenna got to her knees in time to see Lyese’s body convulse violently, then drop like a sack of bones. A blood-red humanoid shape rose from her fallen form, hovered for a moment in the air, then condensed into a glowing ball. Bruenna felt the sphere pulse with mana and energy then accelerate into the ether. It disappeared into the haze of war.

“Lyese,” Bruenna gasped and crawled on all fours to the elf girl’s side. She pressed an ear to Lyese’s chest. “She’s alive. Barely.”

Dwugget scrambled to her side, and the mage held him back with her artifact hand. “You’ve done enough, don’t you think?” Bruenna said.

“I had no choice,” Dwugget began but fell silent at a look from the mage that threatened to burn through his skull.

The elf’s eyes fluttered open as Bruenna tore strips from her robe and pressed them against Lyese’s chest wound. “Lyese, can you hear me?” Bruenna said softly, thankful that the nearby fighting had not yet spilled over the rubble.

Lyese stared hard at Bruenna for a moment, then her eyes went wide. “Bruenna,” she said softly. “He’s gone.” The elf girl smiled. “He’s gone. The things he did … made me do. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Against Bruenna’s protestations, the elf girl sat up.

“Wasn’t you,” Dwugget said. “He’s gone.”

“Lyese, you’re badly hurt,” Bruenna broke in. She fished at her belt for nearly empty medical kit. She pulled out a small, transparent gem and held it over the elf’s wound. She whispered a few words in leonin, and the healing stone spread soft golden light over Lyese’s chest. The light grew in intensity until it was nearly blinding then faded. When it was gone, the hole in Lyese’s armor remained, but the blood had turned black and no longer flowed from her chest. The wound had closed, leaving a star-shaped scar on the exposed green skin.

Bruenna wiped beads of sweat from her forehead and sat back on the ground. “If that didn’t do it-”

The elf girl pulled herself to her feet. “Mana bomb…it’s in the Great Furnace,” Lyese said breathlessly. “I-he-Vektro put it there. It will take out this entire mountain.”

Dwugget gasped. “You know where it is? Then we can stop it?”

“No,” Lyese said. “There’s no time. It’s set to go off one hour after the fifth dawn.”

Bruenna stood and spun Lyese around by the shoulders. “The people in Krark-Home are not warriors. You have to get them out of there,” the mage said.

“Me?” Lyese said. “But I-”

“You’re the Khanha,” Bruenna said.

“That was a sham!” Lyese said. “I mean, I remember everything, but it wasn’t me doing it. Vektro was in control. I’m not a leader.”

“You’re the only leader they’ve got,” the mage said. “We’ll be with you, but you are the Tall Queen. I know you didn’t ask for this, but they need you.”

Without waiting for a response, Bruenna reached out to the energies of the Quicksilver Sea and felt the lines of power burn with her desperation. Within seconds the trio was airborne. The familiar flight magic took hold, and the trio floated upward. Lyese’s mouth opened in shock when she saw the carnage on the other side of the iron rubble that had shielded them from the battlefield.

“Flare!” Lyese said. “Let’s go. We have half an hour.”

Glissa could only watch as the elusive Malil-clone disappeared over the edge of the Panopticon disk. The second Malil continued to buzz her as she followed the first and third but hadn’t actually done her any harm, yet. They seemed more interested in annoying Glissa, keeping her distracted. It was working. She had the uncomfortable feeling she was being herded again.

Glissa passed the edge of the disk, noting that though it looked thin relative to the five massive support struts holding up that strange mesh sphere, it was at least four times as thick as she was tall. She rose over the surface, scanning for Raksha, but could spot neither the leonin nor his captor.

She cast a quick glance over her shoulder and saw two identical silver faces peeking over the edge of the disk. They grinned simultaneously and nodded, silently urging her onward. That was one difference between the copies and the original-these Malils seemed to have no affection for their own voices. If they even had voices.

Glissa flew cautiously toward the rebuilt Panopticon, where a bronze access door hung wide open. Next to the door, a flyer hovered a few inches off the ground, riderless. She walked with a calm she didn’t feel across the wide platform, reaching up to scratch her neck with her right claw. In the process, she tapped the ever-present pack slung over her shoulder.

“Geth,” Glissa whispered. There was no answer, though she could tell by the weight that he was still there. She pulled the strap and shook the bag.

“They’re not following,” Geth replied. “Just hovering there, smiling. I know creepy smiles, and sister, I could take lessons from those two.”

“Go, go, go!” Bruenna shouted. Five years of endless war had prepared the denizens of Krark-Home for the worst, and the mage was impressed with how well the evacuation had gone so far. She charged down the flame-lit tunnel behind a mass of chattering, screaming children and their nurses then glanced back to check on Lyese’s progress. The girl who had never wanted to be the Khanha had slipped into the role with ease and now held open a heavy iron door, urging the mass of terrified leonin and goblins onward. Dwugget had gone back down to the Great Furnace over the objections of Lyese and Bruenna to search for any lingering goblin engineers who had not heard the evacuation alarm, but had not yet returned.

Bruenna waded through the crowd and drew up next to Lyese. She would have rather flown, but wanted to conserve her strength. “You’re doing it,” she said loudly enough for only Lyese to hear.

“I just hope it’s in time,” Lyese said. “Where’s Dwugget? We’ve only got a few minutes!”

“Coming!” a gravelly voice shouted from the tunnel below. Dwugget led a band of some twenty goblin engineers, their dark green skin blackened with soot and oil. The old goblin stumbled over the uneven floor and rolled to a stop at Bruenna’s feet. He had both arms wrapped around a delicately engraved silver ball that leaked hot red light through thousands of tiny slits on its surface.

“Dwugget, is that-?”

“Yup,” the goblin said. “Turned out the engineers were looking for it already, huh? They thought it was just debris blocking some vent, but when I told them about the big bomb …” He shrugged. “Can tell you more later. What do I do with it?”

“Bruenna, you can do it,” Lyese said. “Teleport it out into the middle of the nim.”

“I’m exhausted,” Bruenna said. “And a mana field that’s so compressed-”

The glowing ball began to emit a keening buzz. Dwugget jumped back and collided with the wall of the tunnel. Bruenna and Lyese stepped back, and the mage went over the formulae for such a spell. The mana in the bomb was the problem. It would require more power than one mage could safely channel.

“All right, but I’ll need a boost,” Bruenna said. “From both of you. Give me your hands.”

Dwugget nodded and placed his hand in hers. “Disappearing magic not my specialty, huh? But fire, Dwugget knows. You worry about moving it, Dwugget’ll make sure it not blow up in our faces.”

Lyese took another step back from the bomb. “Bruenna, I’m not a mage. I don’t have Glissa’s … whatever that is.”

“You will do fine, my Khanha,” Bruenna said. “Just give me your hand.”

Bruenna gripped the elf’s hand and closed her eyes. She felt anger, fear, exhilaration, and crushing guilt. That would be Dwugget. The power that she drew through the goblin was fierce and destructive, like the explosive artifact on the ground. Bruenna then sought out Lyese, who was wracked with uncertainty, but also righteous determination. There was also great hatred there. The elf girl’s five years imprisoned in her own mind had not been pleasant ones.

Wild Tangle magic surged into Bruenna, who felt her feet leave the floor as the power lifted her physically from the ground. Equations and formulae raced through her mind as a rapidfire Neurok incantation flew from her lips. The mana bomb’s persistent red glow disappeared within a quicksilver cocoon that faded into existence around the ovoid shape. The bomb screamed, and Bruenna felt a warm trickle of blood run down her right earlobe. As the power reached a fever pitch, she threw her fists forward. A translucent wave washed over the artifact and knocked the three of them off their feet.

The quicksilver encasing the bomb imploded with a sound like shattered glass as the object within was pulled forcibly into an invisible conduit that ended miles away. Bruenna visualized the bomb appearing in the center of the enemy armies and was rewarded with an almost simultaneous explosion in the distance. She smiled.

“Good job,” Bruenna gasped. “Both of you.”

“S’nothin’,” Dwugget croaked.

“I … you … ow,” Lyese added, which Bruenna thought summed up the situation nicely.

“What now, huh?” Dwugget said.

Lyese pulled herself to her feet. “Now we get those people back in here. We might have a chance to win this after all. And they’re going to need a leader.” The elf girl straightened and placed a hand on her sword hilt. “Bruenna, when you think you’re ready, can you spare the Khanha a pair of wings?”