Apocalypse

by J. Robert King

  Liin Sivi’s eyes spoke volumes: disappointment, amazement, confusion, and even irritation.

  Grizzlegom said, “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to do?”

  “Look, you said it yourself. We can’t ally with rocks. I need hearts. Real, needing hearts. That’s how I united the people of Rath, and of Llanowar, and of Keld. I learned what they longed for, and I gave it to them. Rocks don’t long for anything.”

  The Vec and the minotaur had no answer to that. They shuffled toward Eladamri, joining him as he strode from the crevice.

  “Wait,” came a single, strident, female voice behind them. It was the sort of voice that was accustomed to being obeyed. To his dismay, Eladamri snapped to cringing stillness, like a schoolboy caught sneaking from lessons. The voice said, “We have hearts. Beating, longing hearts.”

  Eladamri and his comrades pivoted slowly about to see the female dwarf who had been channeling the lightning.

  She hadn’t seemed to move, though now she faced them. What once had been shapeless basalt and lava had become definite flesh and blood. She had long hair across her able shoulders, a pragmatic mouth, a prominent nose, and wrinkles where the years had been unkind. None of that mattered, though, for her eyes were bright and blue and piercing.

  “Why else would we delve deep into the mountain?” All around the woman, her companions remained figures in stone.

  Eladamri clasped his hands before him and said, “Why do you delve, great lady, into this mountain?”

  “There is evil here,” she responded. “Evil deeper than any heretofore on Dominaria. Water cannot wash it away. Air cannot clear off its stench. Fire only feeds it. Only the world itself can purge this stain. Only lava.”

  Eagerly, Eladamri replied, “You speak of great evil. We call it the Stronghold. You are digging toward it even now.”

  The dwarf woman seemed only to have heard part of what Eladamri said. “When we reach the volcano’s core, we will invoke an eruption. The world will purify this evil.”

  “We wish to as well, great lady,” Eladamri said. “And what shall I call you?”

  “I am Sister Nadeen Dormet, rock druidess,” she replied levelly.

  Eladamri went to his knees, so that he might stare her straight in the eye. “Ally with us, Nadeen. We will guard you as you dig inward. Once you have reached the center of the volcano, allow us passage. We will destroy the Stronghold.”

  She shrugged. “Only the world can destroy this evil—though you may try. From the time we finish our tunnel inward, only a single day will remain before the purgation of the Stronghold. You will have one day to enact your plan.”

  Shuffling forward on his knees, Eladamri said, “Then, we are allies?”

  Nadeen took the proffered hand and shook it. “On one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “Move yourself and your troops back, so you won’t be slaughtered by flying debris.”

  Eladamri nodded, kissed the back of her diminutive hand, and bowed. “A perfectly sensible suggestion, my ally Nadeen.”

  Despite herself, the dwarf seemed to blush. She dismissed the expression with a wave of her hand, which also awoke the other stone druids in her midst. As Eladamri and his comrades backed away, the chants of the dwarfs rose again.

  Wearing a cocked grin, Eladamri walked with Liin Sivi and Grizzlegom back toward their mounts. “They’re going to be the salvation of this world. You realize that.”

  Grizzlegom seemed to rile at the suggestion, though he only replied, “Let’s give them every chance to be.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Into the Labyrinth

  Urza wished he could be proud of his creation, of this angry young man called Gerrard.

  True, he was a glory of design, a machine that grew stronger for every abuse heaped upon it. He was hellishly strong—the truth of it undeniable as Gerrard bashed back the first golems with his fist—and that hellish strength had come from a hellish life. Battle after impossible battle during the planeshift, and before that the death of Hanna, and before that the crucible of Rath, and before that Vuel and patricide and matricide….Gerrard had been nursed on abuse, and it had made him uncannily strong.

  He was cunning, too. His knuckles smashed the word “Emeth” upon the forehead of the golem, obliterating the first letter and thereby turning truth to death. The sand beast shuddered to a halt. Life visibly drained from it. Limbs cracked and shifted. Another strike of his fist, and the creature caved like a sandcastle. Spinning, Gerrard delivered the same one-two punch to the other beast.

  Gerrard cast a sandy smile at Urza Planeswalker.

  Impressive, yes, this young man—strong and cunning—but Urza could not be proud of him. Gerrard was a keen-edged blade with a deep blood groove, a fine thing, but in the end, a thing of hate.

  Gerrard approached. Urza withdrew. He needed time to think. Thinking would win this day. If Urza could build golems out of mind and sand, what greater things could he create?

  He took another step backward. A labyrinth rose around him. Its walls consisted of whim and sand. Passages rankled through an endless iteration. Whim became resolve. Sand became sandstone and then marble. The stone was resolute, forty feet tall and one foot thick. There was no way in for Gerrard.

  “He will try to ram it,” Urza mused to himself, still stepping lightly backward.

  His thought was rewarded by a thud and grunt from the young man. The crowd—the Ineffable shouting through a hundred thousand mouths—shrieked its delight.

  Urza added his chuckle. It was pure poetry to lock Gerrard outside the labyrinth. Gerrard had been conceived in desperate error, the living manifestation of Urza’s ancient and misplaced fear of—indeed, hatred of—Yawgmoth. How wrong Urza had been. To kill Gerrard would set things right. It would be the symbolic destruction of all Urza’s mislaid plans.

  The bastard boy renewed his assault. The ring of steel told that he had fashioned a rock pick. With a rhythmic chink and crackle, he carved a hole in the marble wall. Clapping began in the crowd, timed with each strike. Some of Yawgmoth’s manifestations began a fervid count to see how many strokes it would take to breach the wall.

  Urza turned his back on the commotion and strode deeper into his labyrinth. It was just like Gerrard—all sweat and fury. Urza was cold calculation. He touched the walls here and there, planting deadly thoughts. The maze grew darker ahead, turning through tight circles. Urza followed.

  I must remember, Gerrard is no true rival, but only the straw villain set up to teach me my errors. He does not truly duel me, but merely punishes me by Yawgmoth’s whim. By living and fighting, he reminds me of millennia of failure. By dying—and he will most certainly die—he demonstrates my victory over my wretched past.

  A great rumble of falling stone brought an approving roar from the crowd. Gerrard had battered his way into the labyrinth. He would now transform the pickax into a short sword, dagger, throwing darts—the sort of small weapons that could slay in tight confines.

  How transparent is the young man’s mind.

  As if in reply, Yawgmoth suddenly turned the labyrinth clear. Foot-thick granite was replaced by foot-thick glass—equally resilient, but allowing the crowd to see everything.

  Urza paused a moment, considering his mental maze. It need not merely be window glass. Let it indeed be lens after lens, magnifying the figures within. The wall sections of the maze warped and bulged. Each pane became a prism and aligned itself with all the others about. The arrays had two foci—the brilliant old man who had created them, and the angry young man who charged stupidly among them. The labyrinth picked up both images and sent them to stride among the crowd.

  The chorus of delighted oohs that followed told Urza his master was pleased. What use was brute strength in the face of such mental subtlety?

  Urza, too, saw the image of his attacker. Gerrard loped like a wolf among the panels of glass. His eyes darted between Urza and the path ahead. He made his rapid way inward, following footprints.
<
br />   And why only prisms in this light-box? Urza wondered. Why not mirrors?

  One such silvered pane grew at a forty-five degree angle across a ninety degree turn. The mirror showed Gerrard a straight passageway, with footprints receding into the near distance. Gerrard bolted forward and slammed into the looking glass. He lurched to the ground and spilled his swords out in the sand.

  The audience hailed his fall with the thunderous stomp of feet. Urza smiled. Ah, yes. Let Gerrard follow his creator deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of mind. Let him try to survive against a millennial genius.

  The ovation continued as Gerrard picked himself up from the sand, snatched up his fallen weapons, and turned down the side corridor. He took only four steps forward before slowing to a halt. He was cunning. A lesser man would have allowed fury and humiliation to cast his whole world in a red haze, would have walked into the trap Urza had prepared in the wall. It was a simple enough trigger—a hair-thin filament stretched from one side to the other. Lightest of cords, the hair was connected to the heaviest of objects—a two-hundred-ton stone block hidden in the murk of the sky. Still, Gerrard saw the thing.

  Smiling, he stepped back and swung his sword through the trigger line. It severed the hair easily, releasing the springs beyond and turning cogs. With a near-silent snick, the stone plunged from the sky. It slid in perfect precision down the walls and struck sand. The blow sent dust fleeing to either side and shook the ground profoundly.

  Gerrard stood just beside the spot. A cloud of sand swirled around him.

  The crowd loved it. Again, style over substance. Somehow, Gerrard’s cocky smile counted more than Urza’s two-hundred-ton trap.

  With a bow and a flourish, the young man sheathed his sword and bounced on the sand. He had made it a sort of trampoline. It hurled him up into the air, letting him land light-footed on the heavy stone. Once again he bowed to the roar of Yawgmoth and strolled nonchalantly between the maze’s walls toward the edge of the stone.

  Urza smiled humorlessly. Perhaps Gerrard had not allowed humiliation to send him headlong into a deadly trap, but he would allow pride to do so.

  Reaching the end of the deadfall, Gerrard leaped downward. His mind stretched out to make the sand elastic, but a stronger mind had already laid hold of those particles.

  Gerrard came to ground and fell straight through, into a black pit. It swallowed him swiftly and surely.

  Urza had him. Clenching his fist, he brought the sands of the pit into tight constriction around the mortal hero. Gerrard was trapped. Inescapably. Though he lay encased in sand a hundred feet away through multiple panes of glass, it was as if he were clutched in Urza’s own hand. One squeeze of that hand, and Gerrard would be dead.

  Urza had expected mad adoration from the crowd. Instead, there was only a judging silence. Into it intruded words in Urza’s own head, spoken from myriad mouths: Is this the victory you wish against your own creation, Urza?

  The planeswalker paused, his hand half-closed in a sweaty grip. “Victory is victory, is it not? Survival is survival. Dominance is dominance.”

  It is not, came the unequivocal reply. You could have had as certain a victory by simply outliving this man. He is mortal, and you are immortal. Survival and dominance mean nothing if they come about through such trifling things. You do not fight him, but send golems and pits to do it.

  Pure puzzlement filled Urza. “You cannot fault me for this. I have outsmarted him. I have used my native weapons.”

  At no risk to yourself, Yawgmoth replied. I could have simply destroyed Dominaria. Plague is a powerful thing. I could simply have sent my endless legions into her to ravage her and bring me the spoils. It is not enough. These battles fought so far are but prelude. I will not conquer Dominaria through proxy. The plague engines, the shock troops, the Stronghold are but harbingers of true victory. I will take Dominaria myself. I will risk all and enter her and suffuse her—every living thing. You must beat Gerrard the same way. You must risk all and slay his very heart.

  Urza’s hand opened. Grains of grit fell away from the folds in his flesh. It felt dirty, pointless, what he had done. To kill from afar, to spin a web like a spider and wait until prey has exhausted itself—yes, it was fine for survival, but it was scurvy and petty.

  With a single grandiose wave, Urza released Gerrard. The motion hurled the angry young man up out of the pit and dissolved the walls between them. The labyrinth was gone. In its place was only trammeled sand.

  Now Urza would fight. He would risk all and conquer.

  Hands that a moment before had held only cascading sand now held a great battle axe, a weapon without peer. Its broad, double-sided head had the weight of a maul and the edge of a razor. The metal haft bristled with killing spikes. An identical, double-sided blade jutted from its butt. Grasping the center of the metal haft, Urza spun the blade easily. In moments, it had reached the velocity of a rotor on a Tolarian helionaut.

  Urza advanced. Hand over hand, he whirled the blade above his head. To its spinning song, he added his voice, a staccato recitative, “Gerrard. I created you. I preserved you. I will destroy you. You are the offspring of a thought—an errant and hopeless thought. Thought cannot best the thinker.”

  Gerrard smiled only the more strongly. “Thought can best a mad thinker.” His swords grew to other implements—a great shield in his left hand and a great sword in his right. He planted his feet, unwilling to give the old man an inch. “I’ve been waiting for this all my life.”

  “So have I,” replied Urza. “All four thousand years.”

  Two strides brought the heads of his axe into lethal range. The spinning weapon clove the air. It reached for Gerrard. Despite himself, Gerrard withdrew another step. He lifted the shield. It was a massive thing. It would have stopped a bull at full charge, bending the horns back.

  Urza Planeswalker was no bull. His mind strengthened the axe blades to adamantine and gave them the weight of an avalanche. He made Gerrard’s shield as soft as wax.

  The axe sliced deeply through the shield. Metal bloomed from either side of the blade. The axe cleft Gerrard’s left hand. Nerveless, he dropped his shield. It tumbled, riven, to the ground.

  Gerrard fell back a second step. He certainly had not planned on that. He brought his sword up in sudden hopelessness.

  The second axe blade struck. It caught Gerrard’s great sword just above the crosspiece and clove through. A six-foot blade was shorn to six inches. In its follow-through, the axe came about again. The head that had cleft Gerrard’s shield struck the pommel and hurled it away from his grasp. He took a third step back, bleeding hands flung out to his sides.

  The fourth and final stroke came violently. The axe hit Gerrard’s chest. Razor steel chopped through the leather tunic he wore, through the cloth beneath it and the skin beneath that. It cleft the sternum as if it were the wishbone of a game hen. The blade continued on, bisecting the left lung and the heart ensconced there. At last, the edge lodged itself in the young man’s spine.

  Gerrard hung for an incredulous moment on the blade. Then, tipping off his heels, he fell to his back. Urza’s weapon went with him, stuck in vertebrae.

  Urza towered above his offspring.

  It all had come to this: the death of Gerrard. In him, Urza had slain every false impulse, every chronic mistake that had pitted him against Yawgmoth. The axe remained in Gerrard’s chest even as blood poured in twin rivers down his sides.

  Releasing the metallic haft, Urza knelt beside the fallen man. He lifted Gerrard’s head from the sand. He cradled him, uncertain whether this was the posture of a hunter with a prized kill or a father with a long-lost son.

  “You have won,” Gerrard said weakly through blood-limned lips. “You were right all along, and in the end you won.”

  Urza shook his head bitterly. “No. I was wrong all along. I was most wrong when I made you. You are the antithesis of all I now know as true.”

  Eyes rolling in agony, Gerrard replied, “It was my job to conv
ince you otherwise. I have failed.”

  “You did not fail, Gerrard. Yours was an impossible task. You were to save me, and Yawgmoth to damn me. But I have never wanted to be saved.”

  “And now…in killing me…you are damned,” Gerrard gasped out even as his flesh grew deathly white. The last breath hissed from his lungs. He shuddered once and was gone.

  Releasing his hold on the fallen man, Urza stood. He lifted his eyes imploringly toward the stands, toward the raised balcony where sat the great, black dragon.

  “This is true victory, Lord Yawgmoth. I have slain my past. I have slain the hero of Dominaria. Grant my boon. Let me ascend beside you, learn from you, worship you for all eternity.”

  You have shown too much compassion for this young destroyer. We had not wanted you to slay him from afar. Neither did we expect you to cradle him in your arms and cry, “Yawgmoth have mercy!” This is no more a victory than all that you did before. This is reluctant ascension, not victory.

  For that, I shall give you each one last chance. The fight is to the death—no quarter, no mercy.

  Nodding abjectly, Urza turned toward the body of Gerrard. He was not surprised to discover that his axe had been removed, and Gerrard’s breath had returned.

  The young man sat up, knitted together by the hand of Yawgmoth. An appetite for death glinted in his eyes….

  CHAPTER 9

  Out of the Frying Pan

  Multani felt like the first nature spirit in the first green stalk of a new world. Small and fragile, he felt unutterably glad to bask in the light of a new sun: Weatherlight.

  She was transfigured. Without his aid, without Karn’s, without Orim’s or Sisay’s or the crew’s—all of whom stood on this basalt knob and stared—Weatherlight had transformed herself. Every previous plank had joined with its neighbors into one smooth and seamless whole. No longer did rope and tar fill the gaps. There were no gaps. No longer did peg join beam to joist. All was apiece. Weatherlight’s hull had ceased to be a synchronous connection of millions of finely grown and crafted parts and had become a single, simple, perfect thing. The metal components too had melded with each other and even with the wood, conforming completely and sharing their strengths. Wood became as strong as metal, and metal as vital as wood. Weatherlight was a miracle. Never had such a thing been under the heavens, and once her role was done, never would such a thing be in the world again.