Apocalypse

by J. Robert King

  Eyes blazing, Gerrard stared at the lieutenant—or just past his shoulder, to the flowstone wall. A hand formed from the malleable stuff, mimicking the motion of Gerrard’s free hand. He shoved, and it shoved, striking the cocky lieutenant in the solar plexus and sending him to his knees.

  “Kneel! All of you! Or must I wrap your necks in flowstone fists!”

  They complied—reluctantly. Each dropped one knee to the floor.

  Gerrard had hoped for more, but this was a start. He hadn’t the power to subdue them all with flowstone. Nor, yet, did it seem he had the power to subdue them with words. This was only token obedience, quickly spent. Still, it was better than open rebellion.

  He gestured toward the riven shell of Crovax. “This man, who had been a terror to you, had been merely a nuisance to me. This man, who had reigned in awful glory aboard the Stronghold skulked below decks on Weatherlight. You’ve learned to obey the madness of Crovax, but his madness was only lunacy. The madness of Gerrard is fury!” He thrust the head of Urza high, and his roar echoed through the black vault. The stalactites resonated, like bells drawing an overtone from the air.

  Then came a deadly pause, a silence where there should have been the sound of faces kissing the ground. The kneeling guards did not lower themselves. They seemed ready to rise and bear forward.

  Words failed Gerrard. He was ready to go down fighting, to kill as many as he could before he himself died.

  Words did not fail Squee. “Ahem!” he began in a high-pitched stage cough that drew all eyes, including Gerrard’s. Squee posed before the throne in an imperious posture he had learned from the goblins of Mercadia.

  “Behold likewise Lord Squee, magic man of dat dere black throne.” He thrust his claws forward in emulation of spell-casting, though he looked more like a cat batting a ball. “Ha-cha-cha!”

  Gerrard’s eyes flared. The soldiers got a glimpse of his real fury.

  Undaunted, Squee strutted in front of the throne and crowed, “Just like Gerrard kilt hisself a Crovax, Squee likewise kilt hisself a Ertai.” He nodded deeply. “Yep. An’ just like Gerrard’s screamin’ at you for bein’ dolts, so youse got Squee mighty pissed too.”

  The lieutenant laughed through stainless steel teeth. “If you’re a mage, show us your best spell.”

  Squee pawed the air again and tried to look fierce.

  Gerrard surreptitiously kicked him in the backside and said, “He doesn’t need to show you a spell. He killed Ertai. He is mightier than Ertai. Disbelieve to your own peril!”

  “I disbelieve,” said the lieutenant as he rose, his battle axe rotating eagerly in his hands, “but to your peril.”

  The others stood as well.

  Before they could advance, Squee shouted, “Squee’s gonna do his best spell. His lovely assist—er—evincar’s gonna swing his blade, and Squee’s head’s gonna shoot off his body an’ plop right down. Then, he’s gonna put his head back on an’ stand up.”

  Whispers of awe leaked from the soldiers.

  “A resurrection spell!”

  “He’s gonna kill the toad.”

  “Wait, let’s see this!”

  Gerrard’s glare had a beseeching edge to it, and he muttered, “It may not work…with Crovax dead.”

  Squee’s eyes grew wide for a moment. His brow rumpled in concentration. He turned toward the warriors.

  “Maybe Squee try a card trick—”

  “Rise from the dead,” demanded the lieutenant, his axe shining, “or descend….It’s your choice.”

  Squee gazed at the soldiers, considering. He turned toward Gerrard and pursed his lips. He threw his arms out to his sides, drew a deep breath, and said, “Watch close. Squee’s got nothing up sleeve.”

  “Soon he’ll have nothing up his collar,” one warrior joked. Squee swallowed once visibly. “Draw blade!” Gerrard complied, lifting the halberd high. He muttered, “Not again.”

  “Swing blade!” cried Squee shrilly, closing his eyes and plugging his ears with long, bony fingers.

  Drawing a ragged breath, Gerrard clenched his teeth and swung. The blade moaned in air, cutting straight and true. It entered the back of Squee’s bony neck, severed bone and muscle, and exited the front, rolling the loose head as it went. There could be no doubting the stroke for the red fountain and the tumbling skull and the crunch as it smacked the floor. The body went over next in a limp, almost disappointed slump. Gerrard finished the follow-through, the halberd only drawing his eye to the head he held in his other hand. At last, he stopped the momentum of the wicked blade. It dripped. He didn’t want to hang it again at his waist. Every thought went to the two hunks of flesh and the pool of red on the floor.

  There was silence. This time, every eye was on the dead Squee.

  “Nothing’s happening,” said the lieutenant unhelpfully.

  “Shut up,” advised Gerrard, staring. “Give it time.”

  The lieutenant was right, though. The blood did not boil and vault back into emptied vessels. The flesh did not reweave itself, as it had so many times before.

  Blinking, the lieutenant growled, “We’ve given you imposters enough time.” He took a step forward. “You’re going to wish you’d died as quickly as your court mage.”

  Gerrard stared an incredulous moment longer at the green wreck of flesh that had once been his comrade, his friend. Perhaps the halberd had truly slain him—a soul-killing weapon.

  The circle of warriors tightened.

  “Get back!” Gerrard shouted, waving his halberd and brandishing the head of Urza. “Get back, or die.”

  “Who’s going to kill us?” asked the lieutenant. He was almost in range to strike with his axe. “Your wizard?”

  In deadly seriousness, Gerrard growled, “No, I’ll kill you.”

  “Yeah, Evincar,” the lieutenant said, taking a swing that Gerrard had to jump over. “You can’t kill us all.”

  “But I can,” interrupted a new voice—in fact, a very old voice.

  It had not come from Squee or Gerrard, but from the head that Gerrard held aloft—the head of Urza Planeswalker. Red beams rolled from Urza’s gemstone eyes. They splashed over the lieutenant and his nearest troops, bathing them in killing fire.

  The lieutenant’s wired smile melted. His skin cracked. Jerkied flesh curled away from bone. His neck burned through, and his skull fell toward ground but never struck, disintegrated. All around him, soldiers died the same way.

  As Urza’s eyes disgorged their killing gaze, his mouth moved in hoarse instruction. “Sweep the room,” he told Gerrard, who complied. More soldiers turned to skeletons and then to drifting ash. “Kill them all.”

  It was an easy command to obey. Soon, the throne room battle had claimed another three-score victims. Like those who had died before, these left no trace of their existence—nothing but ash.

  For the third time, silence gripped the throne room. In that hush, Gerrard turned the now-darkened eyes of Urza Planeswalker toward himself and stared into their strange black facets.

  “You’re alive,” he breathed, incredulous.

  The ancient face stared back with infinite sadness. “Yes, but only just.”

  Gerrard searched those dead eyes. “If you live, you can build yourself a new body.”

  “I cannot. No common axe could have slain me, for my body was only a convenience to house my soul…but that halberd you wield…it was forged by Yawgmoth himself. It has severed forever the greater part of my soul.”

  “How do you live at all?” Gerrard asked breathlessly.

  The head winced with some inner anguish and said, “There is but one planeswalking organ—the brain. While it, and these two power stones remain in my head, I will live.”

  Gerrard—who had downed dozens of Phyrexian cruisers, had fought in five separate battles on three separate planes, had even stabbed Yawgmoth disguised as his beloved—Gerrard blushed and looked away from the head.

  “Well, uh—sorry for cutting off your—”

  “If you
hadn’t slain me, I would have slain you,” Urza replied. “It is better this way. If I had won, I would have bowed in service to Yawgmoth. You not only escaped him, but you cut away enough of me that I could escape him as well. You cut away the Phyrexian part of me. I had become like Mishra, more machine than man. Now I am neither.”

  “Squee not machine, not man!” interrupted a squeaky voice. “Why you cut his head off?”

  “You’re alive!” Gerrard repeated, shifting his focus from the bodiless Urza to a whole, hale goblin. The severed cranium had regrown. Where there had moments before been only a lifeless body, there was now a squirming, talking goblin. It was as if Squee had never been slain. Gerrard glanced again at Urza. The two of them traded amazed looks. “How is it that you aren’t killed by a soul-killing blade?”

  “Perhaps he has no soul,” whispered Urza.

  “Squee the greatest magic man ever!”

  Furrowing his brow, Gerrard lifted the head of Urza. “Here’s the greatest magic man ever, Squee, and look what happened to him.”

  Crossing arms over his chest, Squee nodded, considering. “Well, dat magic man don’t got his body back, and Squee do. Squee guess Yawgmoth don’t want him dead.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want your company. You’re alive because you’re too irritating to die,” teased Gerrard.

  “Maybe that’ll work for me, too,” Urza interjected.

  “Squee alive because Squee immortal!”

  Gerrard laughed. “If irritation is immortality, yes, you will live forever. And if you can’t die, you’re leading us out of here.”

  The goblin looked suddenly fearful. “Oh, but Squee do die. It just don’t stick.”

  A pensive look crossed the face of Urza, and his gemstone eyes seemed to darken bleakly. “What is it like to die, Squee? I have known every other thing in all the spheres, even the love of a woman.” Gerrard and Squee both lifted eyebrows at this. Urza looked miffed. “Surely you have heard of Kayla bin-Kroog? Author of The History of the Brothers’ War? She was my wife.”

  Gerrard and Squee shrugged.

  “I have known all that a man can know, but I do not know what it is like to die, and I will be doing so soon enough. Tell me. What lies ahead?”

  “A head?” It was more than Squee could bear. He doubled over laughing. “What lies a head?”

  “Yes, ahead,” reiterated Urza, nostrils flaring. “Is there an afterlife, and if so, what is it like?”

  Squee grew wistful. “Yes, dere’s a afterlife. It’s a big bug fest.”

  Urza grunted. “I shall strive to remain alive.”

  An all-too-familiar sound came in the corridor—hundreds of booted feet approaching.

  “Good luck,” Gerrard hissed, wishing suddenly he had made good on their chance to escape. “Urza, do you still have that killing glare?”

  “I’ve had that since I was a lecturer at Tolaria,” the head replied. “Good. Squee, you still have that…immortal irritation?”

  “All set,” was the goblin’s response.

  “Let’s let these bastards know who runs the Stronghold.” Gerrard stepped down from the throne and lifted the head of Urza into the air. With his other hand, he waved his halberd, summoning Squee.

  It was two and a quarter against who-knew-how-many? It sounded like a whole regiment. Some of those concussions came not from feet but from hooves—and worse things. The only hope for Gerrard and his hapless band was to get the jump on whoever was coming.

  The moment the first three figures appeared in the doorway, Gerrard shouted, “Slay them!”

  Running forward, he rammed Urza’s head upward to give it the best possible angle of attack, but no killing beams spewed forth. With the flat of his halberd, Gerrard shoved Squee toward the horn-headed beasts. The goblin only fell to his knees and tittered nervously. Growling, Gerrard swung his halberd at this new threat. The soul-blade keened through the air and crashed against upraised steel, repelled by a resolute and skilled hand. Off balance, Gerrard fell back, crashing to his butt.

  “Quite a welcome for your rescuers,” quipped a familiar, feminine voice.

  Gerrard blinked, and suddenly saw not a horned monster but a minotaur, not a mechanistic killer but a silver golem, and not a Rathi warrior, but Sisay. She panted, and her figure ran with sweat, but it was she.

  “Wh-what are you doing here?” he asked, almost pleading.

  “Warding off deathblows,” Sisay responded lightly. She reached out, taking his hand and hauling him up. “And saving a trio in dire need of saving.”

  Gerrard breathed, allowing himself to be pulled into her strong arms. “You can save me anytime.”

  Urza, whose head bounced ignominiously against Sisay’s shoulder blades as the old friends embraced, said, “Yes, save us.”

  “Tahngarth!” Gerrard said happily, clasping the minotaur’s four-fingered hand. “Thanks.”

  The minotaur nodded. “I remember a similar rescue, from this selfsame place.”

  Last, Gerrard went to the hulking silver man, Karn, whose much-scarred frame bore the telltale marks of Rathi blood and Phyrexian oil. Heedless, Gerrard wrapped the creature in a grateful hug.

  Beyond the three leaders, a strange contingent arrived, tortured folk from every species—elf, human, minotaur, goblin, and other indefinite things. All were emaciate, sculpted by pain.

  “A damned fine army you’ve brought,” Gerrard remarked.

  Sisay smiled proudly. “The damnedest. They’ve got nothing left to lose, and’ve got a few scores to settle.”

  Gerrard’s smile was dazzling. “My kind of people. What’s the quickest way out of here?”

  Sisay shrugged. “Weatherlight awaits. Whatever way is free of guards is quickest.”

  As if the phrase had been a summons, the roar of soldiers came at another door.

  Gerrard glanced apologetically toward the archway. “This is a busy place.”

  Sisay smiled, responding not to his words, but to the host that appeared in the doorway beyond—a certain minotaur, elf, and Vec.

  Gerrard threw his arms wide in welcome—jiggling Urza brutally. “Grizzlegom, Eladamri, Liin Sivi! What a homecoming!”

  The minotaur rolled his eyes toward the stalactites. “What a home!”

  Behind the three commanders came another army, Metathran, minotaur, Keldon, and elf. They were as multifarious as Sisay’s dungeon brigade, and no less thirsty for glistening oil. The two groups, trained warriors and tortured prisoners, melded into a single unit. All were folk who would face down hell to get out of this place.

  Urza muttered, “This has suddenly turned from tragedy to comedy.”

  Ignoring him, Gerrard vigorously shook the hands of the arriving commanders. “The situation is grim. What am I saying? The situation is glad. We—” he estimated the gathering—”two hundred face off against two thousand Stronghold warriors. Our object—the ship Weatherlight. Let’s go!”

  CHAPTER 24

  Yawgmoth

  I stand upon the heights of bright Halcyon. My warships float crownlike above my head and cast down giant shadows upon the desert. I breathe the crisp air. My eyes are gemstone—not like the eyes of the stripling child Urza, shaped with the rough strokes of a chisel. My eyes reflect the ubiquitous facets of a city. No shadow shows itself to those eyes, for I am the city’s sun and moon and morning star. I am her every lamp. Even my own shadow hides from me, turned traitor by the ache of darkness for light.

  I am Yawgmoth.

  That was nine thousand years ago that I stood thus, in human figure, upon the heights of Halcyon. Nine thousand years, but time means nothing to me. I live in all times and no time. I have done all things and nothing. Every action I begin is one already done. Every hunger that arises in me has already been sated. No mere mortal can oppose me. Before they act, I know what they have done. Before the battle, I know I have triumphed.

  Mishra stands upon the leafy verge of that hot forest, amid metallic foliage. He stares out upon the dragon engine,
and he lusts for such power. I know he comes, and I know in coming he desires, and I know in desiring he is mine. As he crouches in a different world—my world, my Phyrexia—I see his life roll out like a long carpet, the warp and weft bristling with metal filaments. I see it all, and I know Mishra is mine forevermore. Even, four thousand years hence, I see Mishra beneath the grinders, struggling to keep his face out of them and pleading with his brother for release. I see Urza walk away.

  This is not a game of chance. I know every rule, every exception. I know how you think you will win, and I know how you will lose. I know the inexorable mathematics of our duel, and I see your death.

  So it is with Mishra. Even as he and his brother stumble unawares into the Caves of the Damned, my cables already crawl beneath his skin. So it is with Urza, damned to be as Phyrexian as his brother. Yes, he takes four thousand years to do it, cannot apprentice himself to a higher power as did Mishra. In the end, though, Urza is my machine. I see his creation, his elaboration, his destruction.

  Yes, as he and his brother stalk into the Cave of the Damned, two hearty boys seeking adventure, I see Mishra enmeshed in mechanism and Urza with his head sliced from his shoulders.

  I see the slicer too—Gerrard. He comes into being because of Urza. He is fostered to another family and loses them to Vuel’s hate. He denies the death sentence his creator lays upon him, fights it angrily, bargains to reverse it, and finally accepts it—and cuts off the head of the creator. I see him hold that head high in exultation. I see him approach the balcony where I stand.

  But who could have foreseen him stabbing the one he loves? There is something wrong with this Gerrard. He doesn’t see the pretty pictures and hear the lovely lines. He sees the mathematics of the game and fights as his whims drive him. He is like me.

  It doesn’t matter what Gerrard will do. I have already seen his end. He will die in the final conflagration, as I spread across the world. He and Urza too.

  It is enough. I know what they have done to Phyrexia. I know what I must do to Dominaria.

  Watch my claw. I twist it thus. It is an easy, simple gesture, the beckoning of a father to his children. Come to me.