by Jeff Grubb
The armies crashed together with a scream of shattering metal. The dragon engines on the ground moved among the triskelions, hammering them with flame and savage blows, but the great fortresses refused to fall. Urza’s war machines were smashed beneath the treads of the dragon engines, slowing them while hordes of avengers and clay statues clung to their flanks seeking to break through their armor to the driving motors within and destroy them.
The dragon engines screamed, and the transmogrants fell upon Urza’s flanks. The remade troops were picking at the clay statues like carnivorous apes, but Urza’s newer shapeshifting automatons were too much for the reanimated forms of men and elves. Old blood and new oil splattered on the combatants as they slammed into each other.
In the air the clockwork avians swooped and dived at the dragon engines, seeking the weakness in their armor that would allow them to penetrate and spread packets of explosives within. Occasionally there was a metallic scream as an ornibomber or dragon engine lost structural integrity and could no longer remain aloft. The huge engines sprawled into the seething madness below, crushing both ally and enemy beneath their sprawling hulks.
On the far right flank, Tawnos led a squad of Yotian soldiers, heavily armored and looking more like beetles than humanoid automatons, looking for a way into the rear echelon of Mishra’s forces. He held aloft the sensory-dampening wand that he had days earlier offered Harbin, and none of the other combatants seemed to notice him or his patrol.
There was motion ahead of him, and Tawnos barked a command. The soldiers formed a wedge behind the old scholar, raising blades made of tempered glass that could cut through steel. Tawnos snapped the attack command, and they lumbered forward, their servos and governing mechanisms clicking as they sought out their targets.
It was a group of priests, Gixians by their robes, and the automated soldiers fell upon them like wolves among sheep. The blades of un-shatterable glass rose and fell like scythes, and the Gixians screamed as they fell beneath their razor-sharp edges.
There was the clatter of glass upon metal, and Tawnos at first assumed that the priests were wearing armor. But when he caught up with his weapons, he saw that the Gixians had replaced parts of their own bodies with machinery—large lumbering, clanking prosthetics that denied them the speed with which to escape.
Tawnos looked down at the fallen bodies and wondered if the alterations were voluntary. It smelled of Ashnod’s work, but she had never modified the living, only tormented them. Was this something new in Mishra’s arsenal?
That was when things started to go wrong.
There was a whirring noise behind him, the familiar whine of one of his own Yotian soldiers approaching. Tawnos half-turned, and in turning realized that the automaton had its blade poised to strike. The Master Scholar stepped back and stumbled over one of the Gixian’s bodies.
The fall saved his life, for the soldier’s blade cut through the air where Tawnos had been moments before. Another of the soldiers stepped up in front of Tawnos to defend him, and the two Yotian automatons began cutting each other to ribbons.
Tawnos rose slowly, the joints in his knees complaining. He looked around. All the Yotian soldiers were fighting among themselves. Their blades of tempered glass cut into each other, peeling away their heavy armor like orange skins. Already some were falling from the assault, but whether they were attackers or defenders Tawnos could not say.
Tawnos shouted a command for the unit to form up, and the machines ignored him. He shouted the command for them to cease fighting, and they ignored that as well. Finally he bellowed the order that would deactivate the units. They paid no attention to this order. The battered survivors of the contests only lurched forward to seek new targets.
Tawnos took a step back, then a second; then he was running for the center of the line. Two soldiers attempted to follow him but soon fell to fighting each other.
As Tawnos moved along the line, the story was the same. The machines on both sides had forgotten their basic orders and were lashing out at random, striking at any target in their path. He found a unit of clay statues in combat with a band of usually allied avengers, the great automatons pulling chunks of primal clay from the statues’ frames. On the horizon, a pair of dragon engines had their necks entwined like mating geese, and each had its jaws wide open, attempting to bite the other’s head off. The triskelions had opened fire on Urza’s battle engines and on each other, and already smoke was billowing from their frames. Overhead the clockwork avians were attacking the ornithopters, and their needle-sharp beaks ripped apart the crafts’ reinforced wings.
Tawnos stumbled across human bodies as well—mechanics, guards, other scholars, and Fallaji warriors. The humans had been the first to be destroyed in the rebellion of the machines.
Tawnos heard someone call his name, and there was a flash of scarlet against a black cloak. Ashnod shouted his name again, and Tawnos waited as the woman scrabbled over the fallen body of a clay statue. She was bearing her ubiquitous staff and still carried the battered backpack she had possessed the previous evening.
“Is this your doing?” shouted Tawnos over the clashing din. A hundred yards away, a headless dragon engine was using its neck as a metallic whip to breach one of the triskelion towers.
Ashnod shook her head emphatically and shouted back, “It’s affecting Mishra’s devices as well. Maybe something in the way the machines are getting their commands?”
Now it was Tawnos’s turn to disagree. “Nothing like this happened before. Maybe the two brothers’ stones—the Mightstone and Weakstone. Could their proximity do this?”
Ashnod shouted, “You tell me. It seems as if everything with a power crystal has a mind of its own.”
There was an explosion nearby. Too close. Both man and woman crouched as a fireball bloomed skyward, shaking the ground with its eruption.
“One of Mishra’s war machines,” yelled Ashnod.
“I’m going to get back to Urza’s camp,” shouted Tawnos. “Come along?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” replied Ashnod.
The two headed away from the line as a great dragon engine, perhaps one of the originals Mishra had brought to Korlinda, rose over the hillock. It regarded the two beings before it as if they were insects.
“You have a command word to control that thing?” asked Tawnos.
“You think it would listen?” replied Ashnod.
The dragon engine hesitated, then turned away, moving back into the heart of the battle.
“Something you did?” said Tawnos, but Ashnod only shook her head. Then a third voice spoke up.
“No, that was me.”
He stepped into view, and Tawnos saw a creature of nightmares. He was as tall as Tawnos, with long coils that sprang from the back of his skull-like head and twitched of their own volition. His body was constructed entirely of struts and cables held together by sinews of flesh, which twisted like muscles as it moved. He was the ultimate automaton.
“Demon!” shouted Ashnod.
The creature laughed, and it was a harsh, clicking sound. “Is that what you call one who just saved you from your master’s devices? Yes, I can control it, even if you masters can’t. I can control most of these creatures now, and when they are done slaying each other, I will take the strongest ones back with me to Phyrexia.”
Ashnod dropped the pack and hoisted her staff with both hands. “Get back!” she said.
The demon laughed again. “Now is the time to pack up the toys and go home. Urza and Mishra will die today, and with them fail their hopes and their legacy.” He paused for a moment, then added, “And their students.”
The demon crouched to leap, but Ashnod was faster. She brought up the end of her skull-tipped wand, and multicolored energies surged forth from the tip.
The creature staggered under the force of the blow but did not fall. “You’ve grown more powerful,” he snarled, but his words were forced.
“I’ve been practicing,” said Ashnod. Tawnos noti
ced that her teeth were gritted as well. “Tawnos,” she shouted, “take the backpack.”
Tawnos did not move immediately, instead drawing his own weapon.
“No!” shouted Ashnod, “This one is mine. Take the backpack. In it there’s a bowl. Tell Urza to fill it with memories of the land. Got it? Memories of the land.”
Tawnos did not move, and Ashnod cursed. “Urza’s going to need it, if this thing is here!”
Already the demon had risen to his feet and was staggering forward, struggling against the beam of Ashnod’s staff. As Tawnos watched, his arms grew longer and his fingers sharpened into talons. Sweat was streaming down Ashnod’s face.
“Go, Baby Duck!” she shouted, and redoubled her effort. The demon staggered back a few paces but then resumed his slow progress forward.
Tawnos grabbed the pack and turned, running for the base camp. Behind him the demon screamed and Ashnod cursed. Then their voices were lost in the clanging din of the mechanized battlefield.
Urza was alone at his camp. The aides and apprentices had fled or had rushed elsewhere as reinforcements or had been killed in combat. Below him, across the haze-filled valley, was a sea of mechanized ruin. Most of the smaller automatons had been smashed now, and only the great behemoths were thundering against each other. An oily smoke covered most of the land, and he could not see the opposite side of the valley any longer.
Urza removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. So much effort, he thought, for so little result.
Tawnos was out there, he knew, but Tawnos had fought before and always returned home. Harbin was at least safe from this battle, en route back to Penregon. Urza realized he should leave now, should pull back.
But pull back to what? The forts had been emptied to bring troops to this battle. There was nothing left in the combined kingdoms to send, even if the boatyards were still functional. There was nothing left of the land with which to build anew.
Urza looked out over the vale and shook his head. He thought of Loran’s notes, and he thought of Harbin. The boy had seen what the natives of this land could do and had come to believe there were more powerful forces than just artifice and machinery. Perhaps he was right. But it was too late for that.
Perhaps it was always too late, thought Urza.
There was movement to Urza’s right, and he turned, expecting to see Tawnos stepping out of the gathering smoke. Instead it was another figure, this one muscular and young, and dressed in the robes of the desert.
“Hello, Brother,” said Mishra.
Urza blinked. Mishra looked unchanged from when they had last met face-to-face, at Kroog. Indeed, if anything, he looked younger, stronger, and more confident. Instinctively Urza’s hand went to the Mightstone hanging from around his neck.
“You’re looking unwell,” said Mishra, a cold smile on his face. “Your machines have sucked the life out of you. That is your error. One of many.”
Mishra took a step forward, and Urza’s stone began to glow. The pouch around Mishra’s neck began to shine in response. Mishra opened it with his left hand and pulled the fist-sized rock from it.
“Two of a kind,” said the younger brother. “How long have we fought? And for what, Brother? For trinkets such as these?” He pulled out the ankh with his other hand. “For rulership of nations and people?”
“I just wanted to learn,” said Urza, softly. “I just wanted to build my devices.”
Mishra took another step forward, and Urza tried to push the younger brother back, forcing his will through the stone as he had at Kroog. As he had back in Tocasia’s camp at the beginning of his life.
He was less effective this time. Mishra took another step forward, slower this time, and his smile was fixed and brittle. “You’ve let yourself grow old, and your light is dimming,” he said. “Shall we talk one last time, or must I slay you now?”
“You still want my stone,” said Urza, but it was exhausting to speak. He felt age resting on his shoulders, and the stone was a great weight around his neck.
Mishra took another step, and both brothers were bathed in the light now, the multicolored light from their own stones. The two men were only a foot apart. “You think this is only about a mere fractured gem? You think that is where the power is?” Mishra said, and there was effort in his smile. “You still covet my stone, Brother? Here, take it!”
Mishra lashed out with the stone gripped tightly in his hand. Urza dodged to one side but knew as he dodged that Mishra’s attack was merely a feint. The ankh in Mishra’s other hand came up suddenly, and Urza twisted and stumbled backward, trying to get out of the way of the blade. The light of his stone died as the razor-sharp edge of the ankh streaked across his forehead. Urza’s face exploded in pain as he fell back.
Mishra laughed, and Urza reached up to his face. The ankh had carved a deep furrow across his forehead, which already welled with blood. The thick, sticky fluid ran down the sides of Urza’s face and stained his glasses a sanguine hue.
“You never realized true power, Brother,” taunted Mishra. “You never had to fight for your life. You were always safe in your world of devices and calculations. Now you see you went down the wrong path. You’ll die old and alone, and I will take your lands and peoples and inventions and bend them to my will.” Mishra leaned forward to deliver a killing blow with his ankh.
Urza felt anger, hot and fresh; and with that anger came action. Were he thinking rationally, he might have tried to retreat, to talk, to plan another assault at a later day. But he was in pain, and anger welled from that pain. He moved instinctively and impulsively.
He dropped the defenses he had erected around him, defenses that had blossomed when the two fought. Instead, he used the energy of the stone to launch a direct assault against his brother.
He used the Mightstone as a focus for his assault, but poured into it his anger at Mishra. He poured all his rage, and all his other emotions as well: how he loved his brother and how he hated him, how their war had wrecked their lives and their world. All this he poured through the stone in one blast of energy.
And as he did so, he felt something give within him. It was as when a muscle suddenly pulled from strain, or a gear changed within a device. Suddenly the mental walls around him fell away, and he realized his brother had been right.
He had never realized true power.
Until now.
Urza knew the power came from within him, not from any device or crystal. He fed that power through the stone and into a single bolt against his brother.
Mishra’s chest exploded in a ball of crimson fire, and the younger man screamed and fell. The fire spread through his robes and he flailed his arms as the flames engulfed him. His body blazed brightly for a moment; then he was gone, fleeing back into the smoke that filled the valley.
Urza watched him flee and now realized what had made Mishra so powerful. For Mishra’s robes had burned in Urza’s assault, and with the robes the flesh beneath them had peeled away from the heat.
Beneath the flesh had been metal. Urza had seen it for only a moment but that was enough. There were plates where Mishra’s ribs should have been, and pulleys and coiled knots of steel rope where his muscles should have operated.
His brother had been consumed by his own machines. He had become one himself.
Urza felt the effects of his own assault. Something had changed within him, and once the door was open it could not be closed. He could sense the world around him by more than sight and feeling. He could feel the power within himself and the power within the land that surrounded him.
The land was in pain. No, not just in Argoth, but in all of Terisiare. He and his brother had plundered the earth for its riches, and damaged it almost beyond repair. Now it cried out to him, in a maddening chorus, crying for respite. Crying for release.
There was another flicker of motion to his left, and he raised the Mightstone against a new assault. But this time it was Tawnos staggering out of the smoky fog, coughing and clutching a
backpack. The student looked ancient as he staggered forward.
“Urza,” said the former apprentice. “The machines no longer obey.”
Urza looked over the battlefield and saw it with new eyes. Where before there was the confusion, he now saw another puppeteer pulling the strings. Pulling the strings of the artifact creatures. The strings of his brother. His own strings.
“There was a demon, a creature from Phyrexia,” continued Tawnos. “He ambushed me and Ashnod. Ashnod said I should bring you this.” He pulled a bowl-shaped sylex from the pack. “Urza, are you listening?”
Urza looked at the bowl and heard the cries of the land around them. “I hear,” he said. “More than you realize, now, I hear.”
“We should retreat,” said Tawnos, “get away from here. If your brother finds us…”
“My brother has been here once,” said Urza, “and he will be coming back.” He took the bowl from Tawnos’s hands, and as he touched the sylex, the cries of the land became more intense in his ears. They rose in a deafening cacophony of pain that only he could hear.
“Ashnod says you are supposed to fill it with memories of the land,” said Tawnos. The scholar’s mouth worked a moment, then he added, “I don’t know what that means.”
“I know,” said Urza, and he did know. The moment he took the bowl from Tawnos he knew what its purpose was and how he was to use it. The understanding flowed through him like an electric jolt.
“We should go,” said Tawnos.
“No,” said Urza, softly.
“Urza, you’re hurt—” began Tawnos, but Urza cut him off.
