“Corus,” Jhoira called. She raised her hand high overhead. “Toss me your blade.”
“Ma’am,” Dassene said again, urgently.
“I know what I’m doing,” Jhoira said, and Radha doesn’t, she added to herself. She opened and closed her hand impatiently, urging Corus to comply.
“Incoming,” Corus said.
Jhoira heard a whirling sound. Corus’s Ghitu dagger dropped point-first into the cold, hard ground beside her. Jhoira continued to stare at Radha as she bent and pulled the blade free.
“That’s a good knife,” Radha said, somehow making the casual compliment sound like an ominous threat.
Jhoira nodded. Corus’s curved weapon was as heavy and long as a short sword, so Jhoira cradled it casually so Radha would not see how hard it was to hold up. Still holding Radha’s fierce eyes, Jhoira extended Corus’s weapon, half-presenting it to her and half-threatening her with it. Normally, this much eye contact with a Keldon warrior was suicidal. If you looked away, they took you for a weakling and treated you like one. If you didn’t look away, they took it as a challenge and killed you for it.
But Radha saw Jhoira as a mere young girl with an oversized knife in her hands. It already confused the Keldon elf, having such a laughable opponent show so little fear, so little hostility … so little interest. There wasn’t much that could distract a berserker in mid-confrontation, but the incongruity between the Ghitu’s eyes and the rest of her made Radha hesitate.
Jhoira’s voice rang out before Radha had a chance to regain the initiative. “We are Ghitu from Shiv. We make metal. We seek it out all across the wasteland, we scratch it from the blasted ground, we heat and hammer it in our forges. We work it and hone it into blades like this one.” She rotated Corus’s knife so that it glinted in Radha’s eyes. “I’m glad you appreciate the craftsmanship. Do you forge, Keldon?”
“No,” Radha said, a touch defensively.
“Fire and metal,” Jhoira continued. “Ghitu lives are built on fire and metal, and we also use them to make war. Do you know battle magic, Keldon? Ghitu fire, hot from the desert?”
“No, little girl, I don’t.” Radha’s face had split into a wide-eyed grin. She didn’t understand where this was going, but she was enjoying the ride. “Show me.”
“This is Ghitu magic,” Jhoira said. “This is Ghitu sacrament.” She opened her hands. Wordlessly, Aprem and Dassene each took hold and the gems at their throats shone red.
The cry started with Jhoira, deep in the back of her throat. It quickly spread to her tribe-mates, the sound simultaneously booming and piercing, hard and sharp as Ghitu voices combined and blistered the ears of everyone nearby.
Much like the Gathan’s colos horn had enhanced the raiders, the Ghitu war cry flooded Jhoira, Aprem, and Dassene with power. All three shared a dusty red glow and a predatory gleam in their eyes. They smoked and sparked along the tops of their heads and shoulders as if they were about to burst into flame themselves.
Radha stared, half-hypnotized. Jhoira called out to her.
“That’s an excellent weapon you carry. Did you make it?”
Radha kept staring, but her eyes were starting to waver. “The dagger belonged to my ancestor. The tears I made myself.” She smiled and some of her bluster returned. “Care to see one up close?”
“No. Did you forge them or file down existing blades?”
Radha blinked, now visibly baffled. “I filed them down,” she said. “One Gathan broadsword gets me three, maybe four tears.”
Jhoira smiled, allowing Radha to see she was impressed. “How many have you made?”
“Dozens,” Radha said.
Jhoira spread her arms out, gesturing to Aprem and Dassene. “See,” Jhoira she said, through her distant, heat-distorted voice. “We have much in common, Ghitu and Keldon. An appreciation of fine weaponry, a devotion to fire. We are all creatures of flame, metal, and magic, so I expect you to understand what I’m about to say.”
“I don’t know what you and he agreed to,” Jhoira turned and gestured to Teferi, “but remember this while you travel with us. We are warriors, but we are not Keldons. This is not your warhost. You will not strike us down for looking at you or casually lop off ears and fingers to get our attention. You will not bite our throats out because we bar your path. We are your comrades, Radha. Do not make us your enemies.”
With that, Jhoira opened her hands and ended the connection between she, Dassene, and Aprem. Still holding Radha’s eyes in her own, Jhoira tossed Corus’s dagger back over her head.
“Clear?” she said.
“Thank you,” came Corus’s voice.
A flicker of amusement ran across Radha’s face, but she nodded and said, “Understood.”
“We’re going to Urborg,” Jhoira declared. “One last stop before we reach Shiv. If we’re lucky, we’ll find nothing and won’t stay long. If we aren’t lucky …” she gestured at Radha,
“… we might find another one like her.”
Radha barked out a short, harsh laugh. “In your dreams, little doyenne. I’m one of a kind.”
“Indeed.” Jhoira nodded to her and the Shivans, then she turned and stomped back across the valley to Teferi.
“If we only have a few days,” she said. “We should leave now.”
“Capital,” Teferi said. Jhoira was gratified to see that she’d made her point with Teferi as well as Radha. She had so far allowed him to rush her along because the situation was so urgent and their plans so half-formed … but she was starting to suspect that he had already planned the endgame, and that he hadn’t told her about it yet because she would certainly try to stop it.
“Shivans,” Teferi called grandly, “and Radha. We are leaving.”
He was careful to keep from looking at Jhoira as his face screwed up in concentration. Working carefully against the interference from the Skyshroud rift, Teferi extended his aura around the others and sealed them up with him in a wide, bright ball of eldritch blue.
The Burning Isles were more than seven thousand nautical miles from Keld. With Teferi’s help, Jhoira and the others made it there in a matter of seconds.
Jhoira’s vision went blue-white in transit but quickly cleared as they all materialized. She and Teferi were in front with the warriors fanned out behind them. There was no doubt this time about being in the proper place, as the mountainous Stronghold dominated the horizon. It was a huge wedge of dark rock that pierced the uniform ceiling of blood red clouds and black smoke overhead.
“Welcome to Urborg,” Teferi said.
“Phaugh,” Radha replied. “It reeks of sulfur rot.”
The stench was in fact remarkable, a choking mix of rancid oil, rotten meat, and boiling lye. Jhoira covered her mouth and nose with her robe’s wide collar. Teferi didn’t need to breathe, and the viashino simply closed their nostrils and kept their tongues behind clenched teeth, but soon everyone else had put a hand or a filtering piece of cloth over their face to keep out the choking vapor. Skive and Corus also lowered their thick, translucent inner eyelids, giving them a milky sheen.
Teferi had placed them on a small hillock that rose from the center of a churning lake of tar. The gummy black marsh was choked with the shattered hulls of ships and floating metal debris. Every viscous bubble that rose to the surface and popped let out a waft of greenish-yellow gas, and these fumes blackened and melted any solid thing they touched.
Jhoira looked up at the Stronghold and said to Teferi, “Do you see a rift?”
Teferi nodded. He was also staring up at the jagged black mountain fortress, his eyes glowing white. “It’s there,” he said, “but it’s not the same.”
“Is it affecting Radha? Is she attuned to it, or it to her?”
Teferi frowned. “Can’t say,” he muttered, “but if I had to guess I’d say ‘no.’”
“Show us the rift, please.” Teferi nodded, still fixed on the Stronghold. Jhoira called out to the others, “Look to the mountain.”
The warrio
rs did as she asked. The top of Teferi’s staff glowed and he tapped it on the hillock, producing a metallic clang. As it had above Skyshroud, the Stronghold rift appeared, looming over and around the black mountain.
This phenomenon was not a gentle, flowing canyon of smoke. The Stronghold rift was round, for one, and its insides were a violent, swirling mass of dust and electrical discharge. The flickering light was bright purple, like a half-healed bruise, and often two jags of it would spear out from the edges, meet in the middle, and cancel each other out.
All of the others stared up at the strange vortex, but Jhoira watched Teferi, who was watching Radha. The planeswalker was studying her closely, scanning her for something. Whatever telling detail he sought hadn’t revealed itself yet, for Radha’s reaction to the rift was no different from the rest of the party’s: a touch of confusion, but mostly a warrior’s determination in the face of an unfamiliar threat.
Jhoira turned back to the Stronghold. If she concentrated she could almost make out the details of a flickering image inside the rift. It appeared similar to the landscape and horizon surrounding the Stronghold, but this other Urborg was covered in a crackling layer of black machinery. Every tree, every hill, every valley, and every bog was coated with wire, rivets, and tiny clockwork motors.
“The mountain,” Radha said. Her voice was low and tight. “It shines.”
Jhoira looked closer. The twisted mirror image inside the rift had expanded to include the Stronghold itself. Rather than the lifeless rock that was actually there, Jhoira saw a Stronghold aglow from within, spewing a column of silver-white light from its peak. The entire red-black sky seemed to bend itself around this column’s edges, the perpetual cloud cover swirling like an over-stirred bowl.
Teferi tapped his staff on the ground again and the Stronghold rift faded from view. “We should investigate it up close,” he said, “and I swear we will not linger any longer than is necessary.”
“Suits me,” Corus muttered.
Jhoira pulled her view away from the swirling charnel clouds above the black mountain. Teferi’s glowing staff and Dassene’s flaming baton lit up the area around them, so Jhoira had her first clear look at the swamp they now occupied. With it, her stomach went cold.
The debris floating in the tar was not wreckage from the metal ships or random pieces of shrapnel but distinct Phyrexian body parts. There were at least a hundred of the mechanical monstrosities, all broken apart into a charnel mash of skulls, limbs, cutting blades, and crushing pincers.
Most of these metal bones had been picked clean by scavengers or by the caustic bog, but there were enough with visible muscle tissue and gobbets of rotten flesh to make Jhoira extremely uncomfortable. The Phyrexians were regenerative and cannibalistic—if a single living piece found its way to this fetid graveyard, it could conceivably absorb all of the wreckage and reconstitute itself as a gigantic amalgamation of random parts.
Dassene and Aprem seemed to share her concerns. “Are they all dead?” Aprem asked.
“They are,” Teferi said. “I brought us here specifically because it was lifeless, but it won’t be safe indefinitely. We shouldn’t stay.”
Radha looked with disgust upon the muck between where they stood and the Stronghold. “Are we supposed to slog through this stuff all the way there?”
“Not at all. This is as close to the rift as I dare planeswalk, but I have other ways of transporting us.”
He stretched his staff out and a flat panel of blue formed under their feet. It lifted them into the air, and though Jhoira could see it was no thicker than a scrap of parchment, the blue field felt as solid and as stable as a castle’s stone foundation. This strange conveyance gathered speed as it skimmed just inches over the surface of the tar swamp.
Even without having to walk, it promised to be a wearying trip across the smoking bog. Between clusters of toxic fumes dotted with the remains of Phyrexian monstrosities, the unbroken marsh was a fairly monotonous backdrop for the first long leg of their survey. Jhoira saw clusters of trees and other vegetation in the distance, but they were indistinct in the haze.
“What is this place?” Radha asked.
She sat hunched and cross-legged at the forward edge of their platform, moodily resting her elbows on her knees. Jhoira felt an unexpected wave of sympathy for the fierce Keldon elf. Radha was a creature of the forest and a disciple of fire, so for her the pervasive decay and sodden, poisonous ground must be like several hells at once.
Jhoira had been reviewing what she knew about the Burning Isles ever since Teferi mentioned them outside Skyshroud. She had a lot of information to share, but she was quite certain none of it would answer Radha’s question.
Teferi, who had all the information Jhoira had and then some, came to a different conclusion. “The Burning Isles,” he said, in his most engaging lecture tone, “sit above the most volcanically active area in the entire world. Urborg and Bogarden are the two largest and most important islands in the chain.”
“Bogarden.” Radha perked up at the name, recognizing it from Astor’s tomb.
“Yes, I think you’d like Bogarden. There is something of a fetish for Bogarden spells and artifacts among Keldons, or at least, there was in my time. Your own tattoos,” he tapped his own forearm and gestured to the designs snaking up Radha’s arms, “are from Bogarden designs.”
“We’re not going there,” Jhoira added gently, “so don’t ask.”
Radha shrugged, unconcerned.
“Bogarden is rich in potent fire mana, but Urborg is notorious for swamp magic. In the time leading up to the Phyrexian Invasion, the swamps here were home to a ghastly array of zombies, nightgaunts, and other fell creatures. Urborg’s magic fueled the schemes of necromancers and lich lords for centuries, earning it a dark and terrible reputation throughout the world.
“Everything changed during the Invasion, of course. Urborg was subject to a series of staggering arcane forces that altered its very nature. Phyrexia transplanted an entire mountain, complete with a conquering army and some of the most powerful magical machinery every built. They tried to establish a stranglehold on Urborg’s mana, but one of nature’s greatest champions conjured a lush, green forest. He balanced the consumptive energy of the swamp with the restorative force of the forest. Dominaria’s defenders eventually destroyed the invaders, but the transplanted mountain Stronghold remained, a baleful monument to one of the darkest trials of the war.”
Teferi fell silent. Radha sat for a few moments, the wind blowing her hair back from her face. She turned to Jhoira with a puzzled, impatient look on her face.
“What is this place?” she said again.
“These days,” Jhoira said, “it’s a war zone. The forest battles the swamp, the swamp battles the forest, and Phyrexian corpses poison it all. It’s dangerous no matter what we find. Urborg was full of horrors before the war. I can’t even guess what it’s full of now.”
Radha nodded. She hunched back over her knees and somberly watched the black sludge below them.
Teferi folded his arms around his staff and looked at Jhoira from the corner of his eye. “My answer was a lot more factually accurate,” he said.
“But it didn’t actually answer her question.” Jhoira stepped closer to Teferi. He was watching the Stronghold as it grew closer and Jhoira gestured to it. “Do you see anything we can use?”
Teferi shook his head. “Not yet.” He blinked and turned to face his friend. “There is something, a minor ripple, a small fluctuation. Someone is using Phyrexian powerstones between here and our destination.”
“Remnant from the Phyrexian Invasion?” Jhoira knew all about powerstones, the durable crystals that could be infused with an almost limitless supply of mana. She used to make them herself, back when she was still attached to the Tolarian Academy. Phyrexians used their version in all of their living war machines, so a functioning powerstone in Urborg could mean that the invaders were not all dead and gone.
“Possibly,” Teferi said,
“but it’s a small stone. Whatever is running on it won’t be too hard to shut down.”
Jhoira relaxed. “Good. I’d rather not have to re-fight the battle of Urborg.”
“I would,” Radha said. “I’d like to kill one of those Phyrexians.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” Jhoira shook her head. “Believe me, you really wouldn’t.”
Radha glowered. “I say I would.”
“You don’t even know what a Phyrexian is.”
Radha cocked her head quizzically. “So?”
This is why I prefer to talk to you this way, Teferi’s thoughts said. He was smiling, though, his tone light and his face relaxed, almost amused.
Jhoira allowed herself to return the smile. Teferi’s shifting appearance and secretive behavior were still concerns … as were the real reasons for Radha’s presence and the entire suspect detour to Urborg … but at least they were one step closer to Shiv. It was also encouraging that Teferi had planeswalked from one rift to another without incident and that no one had attacked them yet. Jhoira didn’t know the size, shape, or character of modern Urborg’s denizens, but she knew a group of strange warriors on a blue carpet of light would be a tempting target for all sorts of creatures.
Teferi started as if he’s heard a sharp noise. “Trouble,” he said.
Jhoira peered out into the darkness. “Phyrexians?”
“Maybe. There was a surge of powerstone energy, but it died out. Now there seem to be a large number of … violent-minded things converging on the site of the surge.”
“Things.” Jhoira frowned. “Can you be more specific?”
“Not yet.” Teferi turned and faced the right side of the platform. It slowly corrected its course until it was going where he was looking. “Live things, anyway, not machines.” He turned. “Cheer up, Radha. We’re leaving Urborg’s swamps behind.”
Jhoira looked ahead to their new destination. With a growing sense of unease she added, “Headed for Urborg’s forests.”
Time Spiral Page 16
