Apocalypse

by J. Robert King

  The minotaur scanned the sleeping and well-tended patients. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive,” she responded, leaning over his bunk to rest one hand on his forehead. The contact sent an overwhelming wave of agony through her. She crumpled to her knees and tightened her grip on the wooden edge of the bunk. Her vision narrowed to a sparking tunnel. “How can you…stand it?”

  Tahngarth reached up and peeled her hand from his forehead. The agony continued unabated. “It’s not me,” he said simply. Then, reaching down, he pulled her other hand away from the bunk. Immediately, the torment diminished. “It’s Weatherlight.”

  Orim’s brow furrowed. “Weatherlight?”

  “She is transforming,” Tahngarth replied, leaning his head back onto the pillow and releasing a long, raking sigh. “Transformation is painful.” The proof of his words was written across his figure—the mottled fur in white and brown, the twisted horns, the bulky muscles. His Rathi transformation had been torturous enough. Now, he had been transformed again—by fire. “Imagine all the growing pangs from childhood to adulthood endured in a single day.”

  Nodding, Orim trailed away across the sickbay to the shelves where she stored healing philters. Her hands passed across the vials there—aloe, camphor, emetine, garlic, iodine, laudanum, mustard, periwinkle, quinine, rye spirits, water….These were her arsenal, as powerful in her healing hands as swords and garrotes in the hands of killers. Still, these compounds had failed her when Hanna lay dying. They failed her again now.

  “There must be something I can give to ease this pain.”

  “You cannot,” replied Tahngarth, “no more than you can transform for the ship.”

  Clutching a vial of opiates, Orim approached Tahngarth. “I provided serum for the plague—gave it to Multani, and he suffused the ship with it.”

  Tahngarth shrugged. “Transformation is supposed to be painful.”

  “I’m going to find him,” Orim said decisively, whirling about. The coins in her hair sent silvery lights racing across the walls. “I’m going to give him this.”

  “Karn said we all must transform,” Tahngarth said as she turned and strode away. “It will be painful for us as well.”

  * * *

  —

  This was what it must have felt like for Urza, Multani realized as he fought his way through the hull of Weatherlight. This is what it must have felt like when I trapped him in the magnigoth tree.

  Multani truly was trapped. Always before, he had coursed through the grains of the hull as easily as a thought through a brain. Now, the brain no longer belonged to him. It had created another mind. Weatherlight was rising to consciousness, and Multani was trapped in her emerging thoughts. No mind wished to be invaded.

  Multani burrowed along the starboard bow, hoping to reach the shattered wood where the ship had run aground. He needed a body to escape the hull. To build a body he needed splinters. With each inch he advanced, though, the heat in the wood intensified and the vascular systems swelled. The ship shifted her life energy toward healing her hull. Cellulose thickened. Green growth flared. Ruined wood regenerated—and more. It amplified what had come before.

  Once, Multani had healed the ship, had reworked her according to his own vision of her destiny. Now she reworked herself.

  The maro-sorcerer turned against the healing tide. He would have to discover another escape. Perhaps he could find some yet-living wood within the carpenter’s walk. Most seagoing vessels of any draft had a carpenter’s walk—a narrow passageway along the waterline, meant to allow carpenters to repair damage caused in ship-to-ship fighting. Urza had not needed one in Weatherlight, since the ship could heal its own wounds, and it rarely sailed on water. The walk had not even appeared on the main ship schematics, but Multani had found it anyway in his journeys through the hull. Never before had he entered it, never before had he needed it, but now Multani headed toward the secret space, hoping it would be his salvation.

  Multani coursed down into the hidden walkway. Life pulsed strongly here too but in a meditative way. Finding a stack of living planks, Multani entered them. Wood warped. Knotholes grew. Edges dovetailed. Grains braided. Multani assembled a body for himself. Angular and huge, the maro-sorcerer rose in the dark space. At last, he was free of the ship. At last he could breathe.

  Multani let out a long sigh. It had been a year since he had felt so trapped—back in Yavimaya, when fiends were falling from the skies. Breath eased from him and plumed out across the inner hull of the ship.

  From that living wood came a voice in Multani’s mind, a feminine voice. It is you, Master. You have returned.

  Multani cocked his head. Splintery locks jutted above knothole eyes.

  Is Phyrexia destroyed, then?

  “What?” Multani blurted.

  You are not the Master. You are not the Creator.

  Suddenly understanding, Multani replied, “No. I am not the Creator. I am not Urza Planeswalker.”

  A fearful quality entered the chamber. No one but the Creator may enter here. It is an extradimensional pocket. There is no passageway from my main decks. No one but the Creator knows it exists.

  “Not only he. I know.”

  Who are you?

  “I am Multani…a friend. Perhaps a mentor. I have been healing you and shaping you toward—” he broke off, wondering just what he had been shaping her toward—”toward this moment. Toward your coming of age.”

  How did you learn of the carpenter’s walk?

  “I know everything about you. Or once I did. It is the way with all living things. There is always someone—a parent, a mentor, a friend—who knows you better than you know yourself. Then comes a time when you surpass that knowledge and know yourself best of all. That’s the day when you have come of age. That is today.”

  They both were silent for a time. Multani felt a sudden tenderness toward this vessel, which he had nurtured from a single seed. In a sense, Weatherlight had been his ship that whole time. Today she would never be his again.

  What is to become of me, then, Mentor Multani? What am I becoming?

  He shrugged splintery shoulders. Knothole eyes glinted with resin. “I don’t know. This is the day when I stop knowing you best. What becomes of you is what you make of yourself.”

  This young ship—old in her chronology but utterly new in her every design, in her awakening mind—thought much. It is good to have not only a creator but also a mentor.

  “You have had much more than that, great Weatherlight,” answered Multani. “You belong to Gerrard Capashen, who has plotted your future, and have been steered by Captain Sisay, who has helmed you, and have been empowered by Karn, who has lived through you, and have been defended by Tahngarth, who has fought for you. You have had many mentors, many friends. You are surrounded by a crowd of them.”

  Is it this way for all living things?

  “It is meant to be this way for all of us.”

  How may I thank them? What may I offer them in return?

  “To become what you were meant to be.”

  A considering silence followed. It seems to me that the Creator is more powerful than you, Multani, but that you are wiser.

  The nature spirit could not help laughing. “As regards my lack of power, I would ask a single boon of you, Weatherlight.”

  I will grant it, if I can.

  “Conduct me out of this extradimensional walk, and out of your transforming hull, and grant me some living wood from which I might have a separate body. Then I will wish you well and take my leave.”

  There were only a final few words. It is a lonely thing to come of age.

  The ship’s life-force took hold of him. His spirit was drawn swiftly but gently out of the living planks where he had resided. The body fell to pieces and scraps on the carpenter’s walk. Multani entered the hull of Weatherlight.

  He moved through welcoming rings of wood. The sap that once had shoved against him bore him along on its friendly tide. The grains where once he had roame
d as mentor and friend now conducted him outward. He knew this was the last time he would move so through the great ship Weatherlight. Every cell of her being seemed to sing his passage, the glad, sad parade of a departing hero.

  Then, it was done. He suddenly stood beyond her prow. A new body of fresh, strong fiber embraced his spirit. He was tall, his head spiked with foliage like the purple petals of a thistle. His broad shoulders had a beamy power to them, and his torso was mantled in a robe as white as loomed cotton. On pithy legs, he stepped back to steady himself, and feet like ancient roots clutched the volcanic hillside. His hand came away from Weatherlight, and the last link between them was broken.

  Not the last. There before him, gloriously restored, hung the Gaea figurehead that he had formed at the prow of the ship. From a broad cascade of twining hair shone the face of Hanna—strong, proud, clear eyed, and gently smiling. Weatherlight would know her way. Even without him, without Karn and all the others, she would know her way. She had come of age.

  “It is a lonely but glorious thing,” he whispered fondly.

  Only then did he notice the rest of the command crew—Sisay, Tahngarth, Karn, and Orim—standing on a nearby fist of basalt. They stared in awe at the transfigured ship. Multani’s feet crunched across the stony mountain as he made his way toward them. Then, he too saw.

  Weatherlight was larger than ever before but also sleeker. Her prow, which recently had bristled with spines, was now a single broad, keen edge. No longer was she meant to battle dragon engines and jump ships. Now she would battle gods. Clad in silver and gleaming mirror bright, her hull swept back to long, broad wings of metal. Her air intakes had streamlined to a series of trim channels leading to the ship’s pulsing heart.

  And what a heart. Even from without, the power of the new engine was manifest in the hum she set in the air and the fine cloud of dust that danced behind her. The former Weatherlight had screamed defiantly into the sky. The new Weatherlight would struggle to stay on the ground.

  She was vast, powerful, beautiful. She belonged to no one, not now—no one but the ages.

  CHAPTER 6

  Four Gods in Nine Spheres

  In a wide field of twisted wire crouched the titan engine of Lord Windgrace. His titanium gauntlets clutched a soul bomb. The device was meant to destroy this corner of Phyrexia, but he paused before installing it. Something was wrong.

  The panther warrior lifted the muzzle of his titan engine as if sniffing the wind. The windscreens of his pilot bulb grew silvery beneath the glaring sky. Dread thickened around him. He’d felt this sensation twice before—first when Tevash Szat had slain Daria, and then when Urza had slain Tevash Szat. This time the sensation came from the opposite side of the sixth sphere.

  Windgrace caught his breath. Another planeswalker slain….

  Ever efficient, the panther warrior slid the bomb into the well of rock he had hollowed out. He jabbed the activation console, expecting it to attune to the master bomb. Powerstone arrays flickered fitfully, failing to synchronize. Windgrace checked the device. It was fully functional.

  Another planeswalker dead, and the master bomb destroyed.

  Clenching the claws of his titan suit, Windgrace gathered himself to leap. Exoskeletal plates shifted. Hydraulic extensors whined. The massive feline engine vaulted skyward. No sooner had its pads cleared the tangled wires than the planeswalker was gone. He slid through the folds of reality, leaving one stretch of the sixth sphere and arriving in another.

  Wires lay like matted hair across the ground. Sparks bled from their tips, sometimes making cables thrash. Above them towered Urza—or rather the vacant cicada-shell of his engine. The empty pilot bulb stared blankly at another engine. It lay destroyed amid the wires. The powerstones in its breastplate were dark. Greenish fluid draped its lower limbs. Within the pilot bulb hung the desiccated husk of a murdered planeswalker.

  “Taysir,” breathed Windgrace.

  To one side of the ruined engine lay the master bomb. Its workings had been torn out, another handful of wires. Urza had destroyed the bomb and the planeswalker the same way—by tearing out their innards.

  Windgrace backed away and seated his titan engine in vigil beside his dead friend.

  The others would come. They would sense the death, and they would come.

  First to arrive was Freyalise. Her titan engine was lithe and leafy, composed of at least as much botany as machinery. Bipedal and powerful, the figure appeared between Windgrace and the fallen planeswalker. In person, Freyalise preferred to hover just off the ground, and her light-footed titan suit gave the same impression. She glared at Taysir’s engine, and then at the bomb, and finally turned around to stare at Windgrace. Even through the glass of her cockpit, the woman’s anger was apparent. Her mind sent a single word that was both accusation and condemnation: Urza.

  Yes, replied the panther warrior.

  He slew Szat, and now Taysir! With Kristina and Daria, that’s four of us lost.

  Five, said Windgrace. Urza himself is lost.

  He was always lost. It’s just taken him four millennia to go missing. She stooped. The gauntlets of her titan engine grasped twin handfuls of wire and ripped them out. Sparks hissed along the ground. She hurled the fibers away.

  Two new arrivals appeared in the path of those hurled objects. Bo Levar’s titan engine ducked easily, letting the twisted metal scrape by over the falcon coops on his back. Commodore Guff was not as agile or attentive. The bundle lodged, sparking, in the collar piece of his engine. It seemed an unkempt mustache beneath the planeswalker’s great eye.

  Bo Levar glanced at the scene and quickly deduced its import. I knew this was going to happen. Damn it!

  Yes, damn it! echoed Commodore Guff vigorously. Damn it all down to hell! He paused, only then noticing his wire mustache. Huge gauntlets pawed at it, struggling to break it loose, but seeming only to groom the strands. What…precisely…happened?

  Bo Levar pointed an emphatic finger at Taysir. This is the way it always ends up with Urza. People say, “Hey, he’s just trying to help the world.” What a pile of crap!

  A pile of baboon crap! A pile of runny baboon crap topped with a thick layer of goat vomit! elaborated Commodore Guff. Then, with less bluster, he asked, What exactly are we discussing?

  Freyalise replied, We’re talking about the murder of another planeswalker, the destruction of the master bomb that was meant to set off all the others, and the defection of our leader to the side of Yawgmoth.

  Commodore Guff’s pilot module pivoted toward Bo Levar. Gone over to Yawgmoth, have you? Not him, interrupted Freyalise. Urza!

  Oh, yes, Urza. Of course. Yes, he’s finally gone over. Commodore Guff seemed pleased. To the blank stares leveled at him, he replied, I read the history of that six months ago. I wondered when he would get around to it. It’s only to be expected.

  Even Bo Levar seemed exasperated with his longtime friend. If you knew what he was going to do, why didn’t you stop him?

  The commodore waggled a Thran-metal finger at the man. I’d already approved it. No point in stopping something that was already approved.

  Freyalise strode up before the man. So, if you’ve read all this before, what are we supposed to do now?

  Guff shook his head. Sorry. I signed a strict nondisclosure agreement.

  Bo Levar paced before his comrades. Only Urza knows how the master bomb was constructed. Only he could rebuild it.

  Urza is gone. There is no hope of finding him, Freyalise said.

  Bo Levar nodded. Then it is up to us to detonate the bombs. One by one. Otherwise, our journey here has been pointless. Otherwise Kristina, Daria, Szat, and Taysir…and yes, even Urza, have died in vain. We go in reverse order, back to the bombs we each planted. We go in twos. One will be a pathfinder, locating each bomb and signaling the other to approach. The other will be the detonator, who will finalize the blast sequence before planeswalking away. Both jobs are perilous, the latter from the bombs and the former from whatever wel
coming parties Yawgmoth has sent out for us.

  The commodore gaped with the sudden realization. Yawgmoth knows what we are planning!

  We have to assume he knows everything about us. Even the kill rubrics in our suits.

  Kill rubrics, in our suits? Freyalise blurted, only then putting the pieces together.

  It’s why we’ll have to go without the suits, Bo Levar said.

  Freyalise took a deep breath. In these toxic environments?

  Look, you’re the one who hates machines, and one of the ones who hates Urza. Better to trust your own magic, your own innate abilities, than these knife collections. Do as we all did on the third sphere. Conjure war-robes and protections for yourself. It’ll take more energy, more concentration, yes, but it’ll be safer. Let foliage and green mana wreathe you.

  “Let a smile be your umbrella,” advised Commodore Guff, suddenly standing outside his titan engine. His feet set on the ground amid live wires. A spastic dance followed. The old planeswalker leaped with sparking energy. As he danced, a thick white coating oozed out to encase his skin. In moments, he was protected. His monocle had grown large enough to front his whole face, like a diver’s mask. “But better wear your rubbers.”

  It took only a glance at the desiccated figure of Taysir to inspire all the others to vacate their titan engines. The machines slumped visibly as their masters left. Joints settled and locked. Points of light slowed and ceased. Pilot bulbs became dull globes.

  Bo Levar appeared first. His rakish pirate’s waistcoat and breeches extended outward to enfold any bare flesh. The thick canvas hurled back spitting snakes of wire. His sandy-brown hair sported a sudden, broad-brimmed hat with earflaps. The feathery thing at its crown crackled with tiny lightnings.

  Beside him stood—or, rather, hovered—Freyalise. Shocks of orange-and red-dyed hair topped her wan, almond-shaped face. Tattoos in floral motif twined across her cheeks and brow. Her body was as lithe as a flower stem, and her feet drifted above the serpentine ground. All this was visible in a flash just before a riot of vines swept across her body and enveloped her. Steel tendrils were nothing against those vines. Spraying sparks were extinguished by spraying sap.