Ikoria

by Wizards of the Coast

  Lukka glanced over his shoulder. More nightmares were joining the battle—something like a four-armed ape was fighting Vivien’s giant bear, and a black emu with a nest of writhing tentacles for a head was closing in fast. He saw Barrow’s lightning flash, and Zeph reared up, mouth dark with nightmare blood.

  We don’t have much time. He urged the cat forward and she sprang off the stunned bat, heading for the Ozolith’s central nexus. Two powerful leaps took them to the giant crystal’s side. Lukka could hear its droning, chanting voice hammering at his skull and feel the pain and revulsion from the cat as she fought back against the crystal’s power.

  Here goes nothing. Lukka slid down from the cat’s back, rolled, and sprinted the last few yards. The base of the crystal was twisted black stone, and he had to climb up to actually reached the glowing surface. He hauled himself onto a ledge, bleeding from a cut on the hand where the stone had been sharp as a blade. He slapped his bloody palm against the crystal. Come on, whatever you are.

  The voice in his head suddenly grew louder, almost-words rising to a thunderous roar. Lukka had time to suck in one astonished breath before the world around him vanished.

  ***

  “Coming up on the Ozolith now,” Captain Falk said, then looked down at his tracker. “That’s where your boy is, sure enough.”

  “He’s not the only one,” Mzed said. She had a long spyglass in one hand, leaning against Vermilion‘s front rail. “That’s a lot of monsters. Half a dozen at least.”

  “Do you see Lukka’s?” Jirina said. “The winged cat?”

  “I see it,” Mzed said. “Right in the middle of a gang of nightmares.”

  “That’s a lot to take on,” Nightshade said. “We sure about this?”

  The rest of the hunters had gathered on deck, fully armed and ready. Nightshade was counting the clay jars she used in her sling, and Toothcracker leaned on his huge maul. Dogsbreath, his mask down, carefully coiled barbed rope, while Sedra stood beside Mzed at the rail, entranced by what was going on below.

  “Thing is,” Mzed said, “they’re fighting each other. Some of them are, anyway.”

  “Sounds like a good chance to score some bounties,” Dogsbreath said.

  “Captain Jirina is paying the piper,” Falk said. “And thus she calls the tune. What do you say, Captain?”

  Ever since the storm, there’d been a new respect in his face. Jirina felt the eyes of Vermilion‘s crew on her as well, sailors pausing in making the ship ready for battle. Mzed watched her from behind her half-mask, her eyes expressionless.

  We have to get Lukka back. They’d come this far. I’m not going home empty-handed.

  “We’re going in,” she said. “Remember, I must have Captain Lukka unharmed.”

  “We won’t damage your bloody boyfriend,” Nightshade said, with a leer. “Though I’m eager to see what’s worth all this trouble.”

  “What about the monsters?” Falk said.

  “And that archer-mage we fought in the forest?” Toothcracker added.

  “Do what you like with the rest of them,” Jirina said. “Just get me Lukka.”

  ***

  Lukka hung in a sea of orange light.

  The endless chant was all around him, filling the non-space like the roar of an ocean, words that wouldn’t quite resolve but seemed determined to drill into his skull. He tried to find his footing, but he could see nothing but endless glowing orange.

  This isn’t real. He sought for calm. It’s some kind of mental image. The crystal must be projecting it.

  “Very astute, my friend.” A pleasant voice cut through the background drone, apparently right by Lukka’s ear. He tried to turn around and failed. “This is a dreamscape, of sorts, created by your mind to interpret the information coming through your connection to the crystal matrix. And, incidentally, I can hear you thinking. I don’t mean to eavesdrop, I assure you. It’s just a side effect of the manner in which we’re linked.”

  “Who are you?” Lukka struggled move, to catch a glimpse of whomever was speaking. “Where are you?”

  “Please, friend, cease your struggle. I am not ‘here’ any more than you are, and it pains me to watch you thrash like a landed fish without result. As for who I am, my name would mean little to you. Let us say that I am an interested party and leave it at that.”

  “Interested in what?” Lukka said. He stopped trying to move, speaking into the orange absence. “Are you the one who changed the Ozolith?”

  “Indeed I am. It has proven to be a most efficacious tool, as you can see. The crystals are nodes in the natural energy network of your plane, and the larger the crystal the more powerful the node and its draw, so it was natural to try my little gambit where it would have the broadest possible impact.” The speaker sounded abundantly pleased with himself. “And so it has!”

  “Impact?” Lukka shook his head. “Your monsters are killing people. They’re trying to destroy my city.”

  “Describing them as my monsters is a bit of a stretch, don’t you think? They are, after all, native to this plane, so if anything, I would call them your monsters. And I haven’t done anything they wouldn’t have done on their own, eventually. I just accelerated their natural tendencies ever so slightly. Just a little push, you might say, and if it produces just the tiniest spike in aggression then what of it?”

  “We’re going to put a stop to it,” Lukka growled. “Whatever you’re planning.”

  “I knew someone would come along to try that eventually, which is why I left this little bell here, to ring-a-ding me when it happened, so we could have a chat. Because I want you to tell me something, Captain Lukka of Drannith. What is it that you want?”

  “I want an end to this,” Lukka said. “What you’re doing with the monsters. I want to keep my city safe.”

  “Of course, my friend, of course. And suppose you achieve all that? Where will it leave you? Will you be happy?”

  “My city will be safe,” Lukka said. He put as much conviction into the words as he could muster, but he could feel something in his traitor mind undercutting him.

  Will Kudro take me back? Unlikely. What proof will I have, after all, that I ended the threat? He’ll still be convinced I’m a traitor. Either I’ll end up in a cell or have my head lopped off or stay in the wilds with Brin and the others.

  Jirina…

  “Exactly,” the voice said, as though he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. “So I ask you again, Lukka. What do you want?”

  Vivien’s face, the pain in her eyes. I still have no home to return to.

  “I want to go home,” Lukka said. “I want things to be the way they were.”

  “A wish many of us have expressed, from time to time. And you certainly have led a charmed life. Respected, praised, engaged to the General’s daughter. What more could one ask for?”

  “And I lost it all, thanks to you,” Lukka said. “If I ever get my hands on you–”

  “No doubt most tedious vengeance would ensue. The story of my existence, that, even though all I want to do is help. In the spirit of helping, would this be the appropriate time to point out that your lady-love has arrived?”

  “Arrived?” Lukka tried to look around again. “She’s here? At the Ozolith?”

  “She is. Would you like to see?”

  “Show me!”

  The orange world vanished. Lukka found himself hovering high above the Ozolith, looking down on its crystal whorls and the battle still in progress.

  A skyship hovered above the fray, fins furled, sailors cranking frantically to aim its twin ballistae. Lukka saw Jirina by its rail, looking through a spyglass while a short man in a ridiculous hat shouted orders. The sight of his fiancée’s face made Lukka’s heart stutter; her brow was creased, in fierce concentration, and she carried a number of bruises and bandages. Where has she been? And what is she looking
for?

  “She’s looking for you, of course,” the voice said. “Here, have a gander.”

  The point of view spun, descending. A smaller vessel, a longboat with a small gasbag, had descended from the skyship and carried a half-dozen people down to the fray below. Lukka recognized the hunters who’d tried to ambush him in the forest and watched them throw themselves into the fight between the bonders and the Ozolith’s nightmare guardians, turning it into a three-sided melee.

  The plain in front of the Ozolith was a wild brew of flying dust and struggling, grappling monsters and humans. The giant flea was down, scrabbling in the dirt with broken legs, and Zeph still struggled with the great black snake. The black ape had a ballista bolt in its side and was taking heavy blows from a hunter with an enormous maul, while Barrow hurled electrical energy at another hunter who deflected it with an arcane shield. Brin was fighting a man with a dog’s-head mask, who dodged Rol’s bouncing attacks before retreating under a barrage of stones. Abda ran to help her, then stumbled as Rigi gave a screech when a clay bomb exploded against the side of her head.

  They’re in trouble. Lukka couldn’t see Vivien, though her bear was still fighting, trying to pin down another hunter in a steel mask. The bat-nightmare was back on its feet, harassed by her hawk but still making its way toward the rest of the fighting. And more nightmares were coming, circling around from the other side of the Ozolith, flying or slithering or sprinting on many-jointed legs. The bonders were trapped between the hunters and the nightmare guardians. I have to do something.

  “Oh, I’m sure you do,” the voice said. “So let me ask you once again, my friend. What do you want? What is it you need in order to help your friends, return to your home, rejoin your lover? What would mean no one could take that away from you ever again?”

  And Lukka saw. He felt the deep, droning chant of the Ozolith, the way it wanted in, pushing at the edges of his mind. The way it had impressed itself on the monsters, driving them toward Drannith, holding the nightmares as guardians against their every natural instinct. If it can do that…

  “What I want,” Lukka said, “is the strength to take what I want.”

  “Of course you do,” the voice said in his ear. “And that is precisely what I can provide.”

  Lukka grimaced. “How can I trust you?”

  His point of view slipped further downward, toward the battle. Brin was on the defensive, falling back from the dog-masked man’s nimble sword. Rol bounced forward again, but the hunter dodged, leaving in his wake a wire snare that caught the raccoon-monster’s leg and trapped it. With Rol pinned, Brin had only her sling to defend herself—a rock glanced off the dog mask, but the hunter kept coming.

  “Out of the way, runt!” Abda, who’d been tending her injured monster, broke away and ran to meet the attacker with her two-pronged spear. She parried the hunter’s blade with the shaft, then spun it to sweep his feet out from under him. He rolled in the dirt, but she brought the spear down hard, catching him around the neck and pinning him in place. Abda gave him a satisfied smirk.

  Brin had rushed forward to release Rol. The monster must have sent her an image through their link, because she suddenly looked up, then shouted a warning.

  “Spiky, down!”

  One of the ballistae on the skyship fired with a crack. Abda half-turned, eyes going wide, and the bolt caught her high in the chest, a weapon designed to kill giant monsters punching through armor and bone to pin her to the turf like a butterfly in a collector’s box.

  “Abda!” Brin screamed, at the same time as Rigi gave a high, piercing shriek.

  “I would say,” the voice whispered to Lukka, “that you have no choice.”

  ***

  “Got her!” Falk crowed. “Good shot, Johannes.”

  Vermilion hovered over the battle, barely high enough to be out of reach, angling to give her twin ballistae a good field of fire. Several of the monsters below had been hit, and now Falk’s gunners had picked off one of the savage-looking women fighting Dogsbreath. Jirina, watching through her spyglass, saw the younger girl fall to her knees at her companion’s side and felt a twinge of guilt.

  We have to get Lukka back. Whatever it takes. She wasn’t sure what they’d walked into here, with a ragged band of humans and monsters fighting a pack of nightmares. Whatever it is, Lukka’s caught in the middle of it.

  She no longer had any idea what he thought he was doing. Not just running away, that’s for certain. If the others with him had the same strange bond with a monster that he did, it was possible they’d somehow brought him over to their side. But why would he work with them? It made her chest tight, thinking that after all this her father might have been right. That Lukka really was a traitor to humanity. No. Whatever he’s gotten himself into, I’ll get him out of it.

  But now people were going to die.

  “Bring us ‘round again,” Falk said. “Get both bolts loaded and see if we can put them in that snake.”

  “Aye, sir!” a sailor responded.

  Jirina turned her attention to the spiked badger, which had been badly burnt by one of Nightshade’s acid bombs. It had shrieked madly when the spearwoman had died, then collapsed, as though struck dead on the spot. Now it was clambering to its feet, slowly, its single remaining eye looking up at her.

  And then–

  The Ozolith pulsed, a subsonic thump of noise that rippled over the battlefield like a wave. All the monsters froze, just for a moment. The great white cat and the pink raccoon both shook themselves free of the immobility, but the nightmares remained still, as though transformed into statues.

  A bolt of orange energy, forked and crackling, leapt out from the center of the crystal formation and connected it with the spiked badger. As Jirina watched, an orange glow spread over the creature, outlining it in a faerie-fire aura that flared and faded.

  Then it charged, and every one of the nightmares charged with it.

  “What in all the hells–” Falk breathed.

  The white cat and the raccoon stood aside, taken aback, as the black-scaled tide flew, jumped, and slithered toward the hunters. Mzed’s team fell back, coming together. Mzed herself abandoned her fight with the glowing green bear to join them, waiting with her sword poised, part of a taut trap of steel and magic ready to savage the first monster that came into range.

  Most monsters Jirina knew were smart enough to hesitate, faced with these hardened killers. But the nightmares didn’t even pause. The first to reach the line, a four-armed ape with a broken ballista shaft in its side, went for Mzed with all four claws. Toothcracker slammed his maul into its head, sending it reeling away, but a bat-like thing swooped in after it, and a monstrous flea hauling itself on broken limbs. They came on with no thought for their own safety, accepting the blows of the hunters’ weapons to close with their targets.

  Toothcracker went down first. He’d stepped forward of the line in one of his titanic swings, and the huge black snake came after him. His maul hammered its head, pulping one pair of eyes, but even in its twitching agony its tail came around and drove its long stinger into his stomach. The big hunter screamed and a moment later started to smoke, his flesh literally dissolving as the snake’s poison burned through him.

  Sedra, who’d been holding off the electrical bolts of the enemy arcanist, sent a wave of glittering fire into the oncoming monsters. A wolf-like thing with a dozen eyes charged right through the blast, coming out the other side burning fiercely. In spite of the flames, it lashed out with a long, razor-sharp tongue, catching the arcanist at the waist and carving her neatly in half. Sedra fell in two pieces, her expression one of wide-eyed astonishment.

  At the sight, Nightshade gave a scream of rage, hurling clay bombs with her bare hands at the wolf-thing. A cloud of acrid smoke blossomed around it, but she missed the approach of the crippled flea, which threw itself at her, complicated mouthparts working hungrily.
They went down together, falling on the hunter’s bag of ammunition, and both were consumed in a plume of pale green fire.

  “Pull out!” Mzed’s voice was loud enough to be heard aboard Vermilion. “We’re pulling out now!”

  She and Dogsbreath broke and ran, heading for the longboat hovering only a few feet above the ground. The spiked badger was right behind them, half its face a burned ruin, its one eye aglow with orange light. Dogsbreath turned, tossing a trap, and the monster ran right over it, tearing bloody chunks out of its flank. It kept coming anyway, trampling the masked hunter underfoot and throwing itself at the longboat just as Mzed pulled herself aboard. The craft lurched under the badger’s weight, straining for a moment; then the badger’s extended spines tore the gasbag to pieces, liftgas escaping with a hiss as the craft sank downward. Mzed gave a scream of rage and despair, swinging her greatsword into the side of the monster’s throat just as its jaws closed around hers.

  Falk and Jirina watched all this, the battle turning against them in a matter of a few seconds, both frozen in wide-eyed surprise. The collapse of the longboat seemed to break the spell, though, and Falk turned away from the rail, shouting at his crew.

  “Up! Take us up! Get the hells out of here!”

  “The snake!” a sailor shouted. “Look out for the gods-damned snake!”

  Vermilion was ascending, but slowly, too slowly, and the huge snake was rearing up, reaching for them. The bat thing was gripping it, wings beating hard. Is it…helping it get to us? Jirina gasped. But that was impossible, monsters didn’t work together, didn’t know how.

  The head of the nightmare snake, half-staved in from Toothcracker’s maul, crashed over Vermilion‘s rail. The rest of its body coiled up, wrapping around the skyship like a tightening knot.

  “Open all the liftgas tanks!” Falk screamed, as the ship lurched downward. “Keep us in the air! Somebody shoot that bloody thing!”

  One of the ballistae cracked. The bolt hit the snake at close range, punching sideways through its throat and sticking there, black blood gouting to the deck. The monster struck, jaws closing around the turret-mounted weapon, wood snapping and metal screaming. The end of its tail, with that deadly stinger, slashed down into the crew, spewing flesh-searing poison.