The Fifth Dawn

CHAPTER 7

Since he’d met Glissa, Slobad had been in danger on countless occasions. The goblin had been shot at, stabbed, cut, singed; gained and lost more friends than he wanted to think about; endured leonin threats and shamanic torture; found himself imprisoned by crazy elves and put on trial for a crime he hadn’t even seen, let alone committed; and was once briefly buried under a stump by a giant beetle that had mistaken Slobad for baby food.

The goblin would have rather have gone through all of those experiences, one after another, all over again, than be where he was right now. He wriggled in the iron grip of three strong hands, each big enough to cover the goblin’s head. As if to confirm his assessment, a fourth hand clamped over his mouth, forcing him to take deep breaths through his pointed nose. Held fast, Slobad assessed his predicament as best he could.

The goblin had expected some changes, but was stunned to see what had happened to the interior in the short time since the explosion that created the green lacuna. Things had changed, all right, but not for the better. The interior of Mirrodin had gotten noisy. That was the only word for it, Slobad decided. The clanking and clacking of millions of sets of silver legs reverberated weirdly in the atmosphere, scattered by the spires that grew like stalagmites toward Mother’s Heart-the seething mana core at the world’s center described in the holy Book of Krark. Everywhere Slobad looked, he saw movement, and spotted at least a dozen different varieties of constructs of all shapes and sizes. Millions of living machines climbed up and down the crystalline towers, filling every crack and crevice of the inner surface. It looked to Slobad for all the world like a bug’s nest turned inside out, except the smallest of these bugs was still big enough to swallow the average goblin’s head in one gulp.

Most were built on the arachnoid model Slobad had grown intimately familiar with in the form of levelers, harvesters, and worse. But the variety and specificity he saw in the design of each one was fascinating. The goblin would have given a bag of fire tubes and might even have thrown in a toe for good measure if he could just get his hands on some tools, break into one of the bizarre creatures, and see how it worked.

Or maybe not. Slobad got a good look at one chittering insectoid that dashed in along the edge of the lacuna in front of him, and saw it was not entirely metal. Patches on its back and legs showed where pink flesh had replaced cold metal. Just like Bosh, Slobad thought.

The death of his golem friend had almost shaken Slobad’s faith in his own peculiar luck, which despite his oft-repeated claim to being cursed always seemed to come through. But Slobad had more immediate concerns than his faltering fortunes. He wasn’t in the clutches of a machine-something he might have been able to deal with-but a vedalken warrior. Hundreds of them ringed the edge of the mile-wide hole, standing with what felt to Slobad like palpable anticipation.

There was something very different about the globe-headed villains. For one thing, they had gotten bigger-judging from the one that was holding him aloft in vise-like hands, most were at least fifteen feet tall.

Their increase in size was no more bizarre than their change in appearance. The silvery glass “feesh-boals” the vedalken wore over their natural heads were no longer spheres, but had been replaced by fierce-looking translucent battle helmets topped by a fin-shaped crest. The helmets topped a full suit of armor similarly adorned with sharp fin-blades and unfamiliar runes. The familiar vedalken robes were gone.

They also weren’t saying anything, which in his experience with the vedalken was downright inexplicable. The masters of Lumengrid loved the sounds of their own voices. Yet not one of these vedalken had said a word to him. They stood there, clutching wicked-looking hooked spears, breastplates glittering under Mother’s Heart.

Were these a different kind of vedalken, some warrior caste he hadn’t seen before? Or were these the vedalken he knew, transformed by Memnarch?

And where was Memnarch?

Slobad heard a strange, garbled sound like a goblin maiden singing her wedding vows in a tar pit. The giant vedalken holding Slobad in a visegrip tilted the goblin’s head upward. Huh, so you’re reading minds now, too? the goblin mused.

Of course. Now look, a cold voice sounded inside his skull. Slobad looked. And blinked. He’d been so caught up in the wild variety of machine life he’d missed the enormous, gray-black structure that towered over his head. The Panopticon had seen better days, and looked like it had been welded together by a goblin apprentice-and not a particularly talented one. From his vantage point below, Slobad could really only see the underside of the structure. Four enormous struts, each as tall as the lacuna was wide, supported a ring shape that might have been a platform, but for all the goblin could tell might just be the underside of a huge cylindrical tower. The gaping hole in the center of the ring lined up right over the green lacuna, which had given Slobad and Glissa an unobstructed view of the mana core from inside the tunnel.

Well, not quite unobstructed. Half a mile over his head, the goblin saw a tiny diamond shape, improbably suspended in the exact center of the ring. No struts or lines supported it; it was just there, and almost impossible to make out against the light of Mother’s Heart.

“Oh, there’s Memnarch,” Slobad muttered.

Glissa’s eyes goggled in surprise as she stared incredulously at the blade that neatly skewered her through the gut. The pain hit, and her makeshift weapon clattered to the floor as she doubled over the blade, flailing at Malil’s twisted, bloody stump.

The metal man slid the blade out of Glissa’s belly as easily as he had inserted it, and the sword disappeared into his wristbone. The elf girl dropped to her knees, coppery green blood pouring from her wound. It felt like he’d definitely hit an organ. She grasped vainly at Malil, but dizziness soon won out, and the elf girl fell over sideways.

“Do not fear, elf,” Malil said calmly. “My master will not allow your death, but you really must stop breaking his playthings.” He picked up his severed hand, which lay inches from Glissa’s face. She struggled to keep drawing breath, and thrust a fist into her gut to staunch the bleeding as she watched the metal man.

Malil pressed the severed end of his hand into his wrist and whisper a few strange phrases that reminded her of the lilting tongue she’d heard among the spires of Lumengrid. Then a bluish-green glow wrapped around his wrist like a bandage for a few seconds, and dissipated just as quickly. When the spell was done, Malil’s hand appeared as good as new.

Glissa knew she was on the verge of passing out, and as soon as she lost enough blood, she would never wake up again. She dragged herself with one hand to Malil’s feet. She tried to raise a hand to grab his shin, but the metal man simply stepped back, depriving her of even that last defiant act.

“She is fading, Orland,” Malil called over his shoulder. “Be a good minion and bandage her up, won’t you?”

Glissa blinked, trying to stay awake. She pushed her fist hard into her gut, amplifying her pain but also her determination to be ready for this Orland when he came for her. She wasn’t going down without a fight, and she wasn’t going to be Memnarch’s tool. It would be better to die here than see the so-called “Guardian” take her spark and use it to spread his madness at will.

Glissa gasped as Orland rose into view at the lip of the lacuna. First, she saw the toe of a black, shiny boot. Then the vedalken swung his bulk over the edge, not unlike a door on a hinge, and he stood towering in front of her. “Vision going fast,” she muttered. “No vedalken’s that big.”

The only answer Glissa got was two vise-like hands that clamped around her shoulders. She couldn’t hold back an anguished scream as the giant vedalken jerked her to her feet. She felt warmth spread over her belly as her fist slipped from her open wound and blood began flowing freely again.

Orland didn’t say a word, but held Glissa firmly in his upper set of hands. She felt the vedalken’s second, lower set of palms press firmly against the entry and exit wounds. Without warning, something flat slithered around her abdomen, binding her wound but not so tightly that the pain made her pass out. She gazed down at her belly and saw wide, silvery cloth encasing her torso. A few spots of blood peppered the cloth, but the bandages seemed to have slowed considerably, if not stopped, the hemorrhaging. The cloth glowed with a faint blue corona.

Glissa’s head rolled back, and she stared up at Orland. The helmet that encased the vedalken’s head looked more martial than before, and a lot bigger. Slobad would have been able to tuck himself completely inside one of the helmets with ease. As her head bobbed like a child’s toy, she mumbled, “Don’t you get dizzy up there?”

The helmet cocked to one side.

No.

What the-? Unlike the voice that had taunted her while they were in the Tangle, this one was cold, mechanical, but without a hint of deception to it. Had the word come from the vedalken?

Yes.

You can hear my thoughts, Glissa projected, still fighting the haze in her brain that threatened to consume her.

Obviously. With that, Orland released his grip on her shoulder, and Glissa dropped to the floor like a rag doll, sending new lances of pain jabbing through her gut. The towering vedalken was already heading back out of the lacuna and into the interior.

“Better?” Malil asked innocuously, and kicked her in the side. Glissa moaned pitiably and rolled onto her stomach, hacking up clots of blood. She needed real medical attention soon, or she really was going to die. Now that she’d seen the giant vedalken, the prospect no longer seemed such a favorable option. What good would it be to stop Memnarch’s ascension through her own death, if it meant everyone on Mirrodin faced enslavement at the hands of magically mutated vedalken?

“Yes, I thought so,” Malil said, and reached down to grab Glissa’s ankle.

The elf girl put everything she had left into the kick. Her boot caught Malil squarely in the jaw. The metal man was thrown backward and tumbled over the edge of the lacuna, and disappeared.

Glissa winced and coughed as she struggled to her feet and gave chase. She tripped over her own feet when she reached the edge, and felt a fresh wave of nausea as gravity turned sideways again.

The silent vedalken assembly stood waiting. One who she thought was Orland-she hadn’t gotten a good look at him, and frankly they all looked alike to her-broke from the ring of menacing four-armed beings and lunged at Glissa. The elf girl dropped to a crouch when the vedalken was on top of her then came up leading with one shoulder and caught her attacker where his abdomen should be, using Orland’s increased weight against him. The vedalken still didn’t make a sound as he tumbled into the open lacuna.

“It’s a little pointy about halfway down!” she shouted over her shoulder. She didn’t know if it was the healing properties of the bandages, or simple adrenaline, but Glissa felt reinvigorated. She clenched one hand into a fist and extended the other palm upward in invitation. “Anyone else?”

She was met with silence, both inside and outside her head. The milky fluid that filled the helmet of the nearest warrior obscured any hint of emotion or intent. If she had to read anything in their behavior, it would have been confusion. They seemed uncertain.

“Glissaaaaaa!” a familiar voice screamed from directly above. “Heeeelp!”

Glissa searched the dazzling sky above and spotted Slobad and his captor, another huge vedalken. The pair were lazily floating upward toward the center of what looked like a patched-together Panopticon.

“Flare,” she swore, and turned back to the looming vedalken, several of which were closing in slowly, obviously wary of being tossed into the pit behind Glissa. “Sorry boys, no time to play.” Hoping they were as slow as they looked, Glissa charged between two of the towering beings.

Malil finally emerged from the lacuna behind her, and bellowed, “After her!”

Glissa wasn’t sure exactly where she was going. She couldn’t fly-not without help-and even if she could somehow bring Slobad down safely, the goblin would be in even more danger once he hit the ground. She hopped and danced around dozens of small, skittering artifact creatures that had not been here the last time. Why did Memnarch need millions of diminutive constructs? Why now?

The elf girl ducked as a heavy, three-fingered hand swiped overhead. The vedalken were right on her tail. She skidded around the wide base of a mycosynth spire and almost collided head-on with a wall of iron.

No, not a wall … a leg. Her eyes ran up the length of the flat black tower, one of four holding up the massive black ring overhead.

“Oof!” Glissa grunted as a fist connected with the small of her back, where Malil’s blade had skewered her, and she slammed face first into the massive support strut holding up one quarter of the rebuilt Panopticon. Despite the blinding pain, it was exactly where she wanted to be. She dug into the iron surface with the claws at the end of each hand, gaining solid purchase, then kicked back like an angry pack animal. She felt a satisfying crash as one foot shattered a vedalken faceplate. She scrambled hand over hand up the side of the mammoth black support strut.

Every time Glissa pulled herself up another few feet, agony pierced her abdomen, but she kept going, ignoring it. She ignored the warm blood that once again flowed from her wounds, and the greenish copper stains that seeped into her bandages. She ignored the ominous hum of vedalken machinery kicking into gear far below, and growing closer by the second.

She craned her neck and caught sight of Slobad and his vedalken captor once again. They were hard to make out against the dazzling energy output of the core, but they were the only things moving up there. She involuntarily groaned and dug in her claws to continue her ascent when a wide shadow fell over Glissa. Keeping one set of talons firmly embedded in the metal, she slowly turned out, one hand in a fist, to see what she could see.

Malil stood before her astride one of the many varieties of vedalken hovercraft with which Glissa had grown far too familiar over the last few weeks. His arms were crossed, and his cold metal features twisted into a smile. The effort to show amusement looked ridiculously awkward on the metal man, but maybe he just hadn’t had much practice, Glissa thought deliriously. She was fading fast, again. What little blood she’d had left drained into the soaked bandages around her torso. Her grip was slipping.

“Tell Memnarch … he can find his spark somewhere else,” she said, and squinted up at the tiny dot that even now moved through the ring above and disappeared against the bright light of Mother’s Heart. “Sorry, Slobad,” she whispered and let go.