by Jess Lebow
Pushing deeper into the forest, Glissa nearly lost her balance as she tried to avoid stepping on a squirming critter beneath her feet.
“What the …?” Glissa slipped back, but Bosh managed to catch her in his meaty palm. She looked over her shoulder at the golem. “Thanks.”
Bosh nodded, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a grin.
“Bosh,” she shouted, spinning around and grabbing hold of one of his fingers. “You smiled.”
“I did?”
“Uh huh. Here, kneel down.”
Glissa reached up, and the golem bent down. Her hand touched his face. It was soft and squishy. Though it retained its metallic look, there was no doubt, the golem’s face had turned to flesh.
“When did this happen?”
Bosh shrugged. “Just now.”
Glissa ran her hand along his cheek. “Your face is almost all flesh.”
The golem sighed. “Yes.”
“Well,” said the elf, “at least now you won’t always look so dour and serious.”
“Is that good?”
The elf smiled at him. “Yes. Very.”
At this the corners of Bosh’s mouth bent up again.
Another of the creatures that had tripped Glissa brushed against her leg. The animal was rectangular with very angular edges—no curves or organic irregularities at all. It had two skinny arms with three opposable digits attached to each, and its movements were smooth and swift, as if it traveled on wheels.
The creature moved back and forth between diamond-shaped objects embedded in (or perhaps overgrown by) the glowing mossy ground cover. Each time it reached one of this things, it fondled it with its fingers, then moved on to another, as if it were adjusting something or tending a plant.
Glissa reached down and grabbed the beast off the ground. It was the same metallic color as Bosh, but it too was soft and pliable. On its underside, as Glissa had guessed, there were three little wheels, and they spun now, trying to get free of the elf’s grip. Its arms too reached back and began pinching at her skin.
“Ow.” Glissa put the creature down. “What is that thing?”
“It is a grendle,” replied Bosh.
“A grendle?”
The golem nodded.
“What do they do?”
Bosh shook his head. “I do not know. I have only vague memories of them.” He looked down on the little creature. “They were made by Memnarch.”
From all around, more grendles came out from behind the towering mycosynth monoliths. They moved in a pack, touching and prodding the diamond-shaped boxes on the ground then moving on. They didn’t seem to mind Glissa or the others, simply moving around the obstructions where they stood.
“If Memnarch made them,” asked Glissa, “how did they become fleshy? Can he create organic creatures?”
Bosh shook his head. “No. They began as metal constructs.” He pushed a finger into his own skin. “They are like me, made from metal turned to flesh.”
Slobad knelt down to get a closer look. He poked at one, pulling his finger out of the way when it snapped its little hands at him. “These all flesh, huh? You only part flesh.”
Glissa scratched her head, then she looked up at the mana core. “Maybe something here in the interior causes metal to turn to flesh.” She scanned the mycosynth. “If this is the source, then it would make sense that these creatures would transform faster.” She shrugged. “Maybe they’ve been like this for a long time.”
“Look at this.” Bruenna was several steps away, standing at the base of a monolith. She poked at something on the ground with her toe.
Glissa walked over. Bruenna was looking at a grendle. Only this one was unmoving, and it looked pale and stiff.
“It’s dead,” said the wizard.
“From what?”
Bruenna looked up into Glissa’s eyes, then glanced up at Bosh. “Old age, presumably.”
Glissa understood immediately. “We need to go.” She grabbed Bosh by the hand. “We need to get you out of here as fast as we can—before you end up like them.”
Malil had never experienced desire such as he felt just now. Every pore of his body hated him and rebelled. His vision blurred. His arms were weak. His thoughts were scattered and incoherent, punctuated periodically by lucid moments of understanding and hatred.
This was one of those moments.
Leaping down from his leveler, he crossed the threshold and entered Panopticon. He had not waited even a moment for Pontifex. Who knew what that fool was after. Right now, Malil didn’t care. All he could focus on was getting to the top of the tower and acquiring some serum. Once inside the staging area at the base of Panopticon, the metal man hurried up the stairs and into the lift.
He had failed in his task, but he could go no further. Certainly Memnarch would understand this. Certainly he would give Malil another dose, something to aid him in his quest to capture the elf girl.
The lift rose.
If he’d only had more serum in Mephidross, reasoned Malil, he would have her by now. He tapped his fingers on his leg in anticipation.
He’d tell Memnarch about his newfound understanding. Explain to him that in order to accomplish his goals, he’d need more serum. He’d relate the tales of his long days and nights on the plain, waiting for the elf, no serum to be had—the tremors and shakes, the delusions and aching. He’d tell Memnarch of his suffering, and surely the creator would give him what he wanted.
He rose through the floor of the observation deck and climbed the spiraling walkway to the laboratory.
If that didn’t work, he thought, gripping the hilt of his sword in his weary, aching hand, he’d do whatever would be necessary.
The door to the laboratory slide open, and Malil stepped inside. The place was ruined. Shards of glass covered the floor—inches deep. Bits of broken metal lay in bent heaps. The windows were broken out. The tables were turned over, and all of the experiments were smashed on the floor, their liquids mixing with each others, their results lost.
Memnarch lay on the floor near his ruined serum-infusion device. His body heaved and shook, and he did not look up at the sound of the door opening then closing again.
Scanning the room, Malil looked for serum. The opalescent liquid was impossible to mistake. There was nothing else like it on the entire planet. The whole lab had been full of it. Big tanks and tubes were constantly pumping the stuff from one place to another—or into Memnarch. Certainly there would be some left.
Malil dropped to his knees. He pushed the shards of glass away, uncovering what lay beneath. The more he looked, the less he found. Getting back to his feet, he began kicking aside the debris on the floor, shuffling through the piles faster and faster.
“Where is it? Enlightenment! I must have it!” he shouted. Metal bent and a still-whole beaker, apparently saved from whatever had hit this room, spun across the floor.
Malil’s eyes lit up. The bottle came to a stop, rotating in place. Its sides were painted with the opalescent color of serum. The viscous liquid clung to the edges, slowly falling back to the bottom of the beaker—but only reluctantly.
The metal man lifted the vial to his lips. The sticky liquid rolled over his tongue and down his throat.
It was as if his eyes had been covered over with grease. His vision cleared, and he could see the world for how it really was. Suddenly, everything was right in Mirrodin. It did not matter that he hadn’t caught the elf. He had time, and now he had an increased mental and physical capacity.
“She’s mine,” he said.
Standing up, Malil wiped the last of the serum from his lips with the back of his hand. But when he pulled it away, he didn’t see the pure shimmering color of blinkmoth serum. His hand was covered in a thin red liquid—like elf blood. He touched his lip again, and more of the substance came away. The flask as well had traces of the stuff on its broken edge.
Now that he thought about it, the strange sensation he had felt while searching the floor was still bo
thering him. Turning over his hand, he examined his palm.
It too was covered in this red liquid. A piece of glass protruded from just under his index finger, and the liquid seemed to be pumping from a scratch in his hide.
Malil dropped the beaker and grabbed hold of the shard of glass. Pulling it out, he touched his palm. A small patch of it had become soft. Where the glass had been, there was an incision, and it wept fluid.
The metal man touched his lip. It too felt soft, and a small wound just like the one on his hand was leaking.
He was bleeding.
Memnarch stirred.
“Master.” Malil shook the prone frame. “Master, are you all right?”
Memnarch stared at him with unseeing eyes. “Serum. We must have serum. We must … know.”
“Yes, Master,” replied Malil. “Where do I find it?”
Memnarch pointed to the ruined infusion device.
Malil nodded. “It’s broken.”
Memnarch shook his head, pointing emphatically to something beside him. There, lying on the ground, was a large hose. On one end was a sharp-tipped needle.
* * * * *
Glissa stepped out around an unusually wide monolith, and suddenly she was outside of the mycosynth forest. Directly before her, a short hill dropped softly down into a valley, and beyond that, a wide, rolling expanse opened up underneath the humming mana core. In the far distance, just below the point where the ground curved up, disappearing from view, she could just make out the base of Panopticon.
“It’s still a long way,” said Bruenna, stepping up behind her.
Glissa nodded. “Perhaps we should rest here. Something tells me the opportunities will grow fewer the closer we get to the tower.”
Bruenna nodded. “A wise decision,” she said. “What about the golem? The longer we linger, the more he turns to flesh.”
Glissa looked up at Bosh. He still appeared much the same as he had when she first met him. Now, though, he was far more expressive. His stoic, unmoving jaw smiled or frowned, depending on his mood—and his mood, Glissa found, changed quickly.
Right now, he was happy. The edges of his lips curled up, and his eyes seemed more open. Maybe all the things she had been telling him about being flesh were true. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad after all to become like her, live a life that was more frail but more enjoyable because of that vulnerability.
“You’re right,” replied Glissa finally. “We should keep moving.”
The elf headed down the hill, moving slowly closer to the far distant Panopticon. The others followed close behind. When they reached the bottom of the valley and headed back up, Glissa heard a strange noise.
“What’s that?”
Bruenna turned her head to listen. “I do not know.”
Slobad recognized the sound. “Threshers.”
As if the goblin’s words summoned a pack of hungry beasts, a line of buzzing threshers rolled over the hill and descended on them. Similar in design to levelers, threshers were smaller, faster, hunched-backed killing devices. In place of the scissoring scythe blades, these creatures had a rotating cylinder of interlocking, curved cutting devices.
Glissa had seen them before on the plains, roaming around when the razor grass fields had grown too long to see over. They dug deep, mazelike pathways into the growing blades.
What purpose their ritual served, Glissa was uncertain. She’d seen the leonin use the cut grass to built weapons, but they were not responsible for these killing devices. Memnarch was.
The threshers rolled down the hill, their spinning blades chewing up the mossy ground covering. Glissa drew her sword. The wizards had already drawn mana, and their spells flew. The long blue tracers of their arcane magics lit up the sky. Glissa flashed back to the many fights she’d faced with these human spellcasters. They were fast. Their spells always struck first, taking a heavy toll on whatever was coming at them.
The wizards’ spells splashed against the advancing line of threshers, and for a moment a few of their number were lost in a cloud of mystical energy. Bruenna let out a whoop, but she fell silent when those same devices rolled out of the cloud, unharmed.
“What happened?” asked Glissa.
Bruenna shook her head. “They are either immune to magic or—” she turned to look Glissa in the eye—“they are no longer made of metal.”
That was all the conversation they had time for, as the rolling devices crashed into them.
Bosh was the first to encounter the foe. Kicking out, he smashed the first in line in the side, expertly avoiding the spinning blades, aiming for a spot right beside the creature’s eye. A well-placed blow here could incapacitate it, shaking loose the constructs that made it run, leaving it an empty shell that could be ignored on the battlefield.
The golem’s foot landed squarely where he aimed, but instead of the pounding boom of hollow metal, Bosh’s foot sank deep into soft, pliable skin. The creature let out a squeal and skittered back, as if it had felt pain. It shuddered and jolted from side to side. Bosh’s blow hadn’t incapacitated it, but it seemed to have confused the creature. He didn’t have time to worry about it, as the next thresher fell on him, its blades spinning.
Glissa too was engaged in a fierce fight. She cut down, sending her blade into the spinning teeth of her opponent. She had yet to really test her new weapon. The Sword of Kaldra would have cut through anything, bone, metal, flesh, it didn’t matter. She had grown accustomed to its power, and she fought now as if she still wielded it.
The steel blade slashed across the leveler’s mowing cylinder, and it cut deep, but it wasn’t metal it bit into; it was flesh. Blood spurt from a tremendous gash, washing over Glissa and covering her in the sticky red fluid. The wounded thresher shied back, and two more took its place.
Glissa fought off the two devices. Though they had become flesh, their blades were still sharp. They left long gashes in the metallic floor of the interior, and the elf knew enough to keep herself away.
Fighting these part-flesh, part-metal artifacts was like fighting a forest beast in the Tangle. That thought reminded her of something her father had told her as a young elf going out on her first hunting party. “Some bits are metal, other bits flesh, but you always want to stay away from the teeth.”
Glissa pulled her blade back, coming across with both hands and swiping at a thresher in a flat slice. The tip of her sword cut into the creature’s eyes, and she took a step back. Her swift attack bought her enough time to spare a glance over her shoulder. What she saw didn’t make her happy.
The Kaldra Champion floated over a pack of threshers. The smaller creations were fast and more agile than their leveler counterparts. The Champion smashed his fist to the ground, but the devices darted away unscathed. Against bigger, slower targets, he was a superb fighter. Against these little creatures, the Kaldra Champion was nearly useless.
Turning her attention back to the thresher, Glissa barely managed to fend off its blow, as the quick device darted in. Her sword hit the creature’s sharp teeth. Lodging it into the spinning cylinder, she put all of her weight on the blade and shoved off.
Lifting from the ground, the elf’s body lurched. The forward movement of the thresher forced her back, and she balanced her lithe frame against the hilt of her sword. The creature began spurting blood, and it stopped its charge, letting Glissa fall back to the ground. It moved back, trying to pull the elf’s weapon from its belly. Its own bladed cylinder clamped down on the sword, and it jerked, pulling the handle free of Glissa’s grasp.
A cold chill ran down the elf’s spine as she watched the agile device dart back up the hill, her blade stuck inside. All around, the valley was flooded with these threshers, and the others fought for their lives. Slobad rode on top of a device, holding on for dear life. It looked as if he was trying to pry the thing open, but judging from the bloodstains on his chest, he was more a butcher than a mechanic. Bosh had his hands full, fighting off a half-dozen of the monsters.
Glissa wo
uldn’t be much help if she didn’t have her sword. Sidestepping a charging thresher, she went after the wounded device that had stolen her blade. As she turned, she clearly saw Bruenna battling with a pair of devices. Her shins bled. She was isolated—and she was losing. The other wizard from her tribe had fallen into hand to hand combat with the threshers as well. He was tied up, unable to get to her.
Parrying the attacks of one device, Bruenna turned too late to catch the attack of the other, and the creature gave her a nasty slash across the back. The human wizard fell to the ground, clutching at her wound.
Glissa jolted at the sight, forgetting her sword in the flurry of battle. She ran toward her downed friend as fast as she could. A thresher jumped out in front of her, its spinning blades turned to tear her apart.
Pushing the ground with her back leg, the elf leaped into the air, her front leg outstretched. The thresher reared back, but it was too slow, Glissa had already cleared its teeth, and she landed on top of its head. Its top was soft, and it caved in under her weight. She slipped, and her knee gave way. Tilting to the side, Glissa pushed off again.
Her off-center jump sent her flying to the ground. She tucked into a ball, curling her shoulder under as she hit. The world spun once, and Glissa popped back to her feet.
Before her, the threshers closed in on Bruenna. One of them seemed to open, lifting its head and cutting blades up off the ground. Behind those spinning teeth, the creature revealed a hollow chamber. Bruenna looked up, her eyes wide, and she lifted her hands in the air, hopelessly trying to hold off the advancing creature.
Darting forward, it scooped up the injured mage and closed down, swallowing her whole.
Glissa couldn’t believe her eyes. Bruenna was gone. Threshers weren’t supposed to be able to do that.
Anger and grief welled up inside her, the same feelings that had driven her powerful spell in the past. She thought of Al-Hayat, the trolls, and all the wizards who had died on this quest. Then she thought of Bruenna, trapped inside the gut of that thresher, and her blood began to boil. She could feel power course through her, as it had many times before. Her control was getting greater, and she focused her rage on the threshers, willing them to disintegrate into tiny piles of dust.
