The Thran

by J. Robert King

  Thran soldiers along the garrison wall sounded an alert. They withdrew behind thick ramparts of stone. To either side of the staging ground, a pair of antiquated bombards pivoted in their embrasures.

  “Target those bombards!” Yawgmoth shouted. “Fire!”

  Twin beams of red radiation surged out from the ray cannons of the war caravel. They roared across the staging ground. Air boiled in their wake.

  One bolt smashed into the right-hand bombard. Gunners’ flesh melted from their bones. Rock sloughed. The bombard liquefied like a candle. The stones it had been firing shot outward in a hail of lava. Fires woke on anything that would burn.

  The other ray cannon bolt went wide. It crashed like a battering ram against the wall of the garrison. The rampart shuddered and caved. A brittle sound came—cracking glass—and the smell of lightning. Stone shattered into white-hot sand and sloughed away. The cave-space beyond was dark. Eyes glared out in terror.

  A cheer rose from the war caravel—though Yawgmoth did not join it.

  One bombard remained. It gave a whistling sound—a thousand rocks shrieking up its barrel—and barked. A storm of stone belched outward, followed by white smoke. Antiquated, yes, but deadly all the same.

  The ship wheeled. It was no good. Ray cannons fired at the vaulting stone. It was no good.

  Rock smashed the hull of the war caravel. The ship bounded and listed as if staved by a whale. Gunwales a foot thick blasted open. Stone raked across the engine. Steam hissed. A violent whine came from countless cracks in its fuselage. The caravel lurched, plummeting. It struggled to stay aloft. The scream of the engine told what was to come. There were only moments.

  “Gunners, blast that bombard!” Yawgmoth shouted. “Rappelling crews, to the lifeboats. The rest of you, abandon ship!”

  The Phyrexian commander and her guards leaped as if they were spiders over the sagging rail. The ship’s keel smacked ground as they sprinted for cover. Swiftly, they scuttled across the staging ground, heading toward the breached wall and the Thran soldiers holed up within.

  The Halcyte commander and his troops dropped from the listing hull. They turned their backs on the garrison, rushing instead for the Null Sphere.

  Yawgmoth meanwhile loaded his team into a pair of aerial lifeboats on the high side of the keeling ship. In moments, the craft were full—ten crew in each. Yawgmoth stood at the prow of the first boat. He had gingerly placed the stone-charger within the hold. Once it was secure, he was anything but ginger. He hacked through the bowline. The lifeboat’s engine purred to life. It nosed away from the caravel. Its companion ship followed.

  A swarm of stone tore the air over their heads.

  Yawgmoth hissed, glaring at the bombard as though his ire could destroy it.

  A final blast jagged from the caravel’s sideways ray cannon. It surged across the staging ground and smashed into the bombard. The gun erupted in fire and lava. It shattered. Gunners burned to nothing. The embrasure evaporated. The blast continued on, ripping a second hole in the garrison wall.

  Yawgmoth’s voice joined the cheer of his troops. He glanced toward the ray cannon and smiled at the gunner. She began to wave back. The caravel’s core went critical. The woman disappeared in a sun-bright explosion that engulfed the whole ship. Coronas of flame leaped up from the inferno. They looped the rising lifeboats, fiery arms reaching to snatch them from the sky.

  “Full aloft!” Yawgmoth commanded, standing in the prow.

  With the shriek of over-hot engines, the vessels launched out of the fireball. They dragged long fingers of flame and smoke as they vaulted above the garrison and stabbed out toward the sphere.

  “Beautiful,” Yawgmoth murmured appreciatively.

  Most of the caravel had been consumed in the initial blast. Its fiery skeleton settled. Beyond it, the garrison boiled. Smoke poured out above. Bodies poured out below.

  “Beautiful.”

  * * *

  —

  The initial attack shattered the main lamps. The garrison was plunged into darkness. As if to compensate, new windows and doors were blown through the wall. Daylight and firelight flooded in. Eight Thran soldiers were pulverized by shrapnel. The rest staggered into the weird glow and beheld a horrific sight—

  A war caravel? A Halcyte war caravel? How could Yawgmoth spare a caravel to make war on a remote artificer outpost?

  More fire surged from the caravel’s guns. It pounded the garrison wall like hammers on a war drum. Soldiers stared a moment longer in loose-kneed disbelief. Rock shards whipped about them. Sand sifted down from the cracking ceiling. Even these assaults did not penetrate the soldiers’ malaise.

  A Thran bombard barked. It vomited smoke. The white stuff formed a momentary curtain in the air before being torn away by an angry wind. A crippled caravel appeared beyond. A vast hole had been punched in the ship’s side. Feverish light came from its engine. The caravel listed sloppily.

  Thran soldiers roared in hope. Yes, hope. Yawgmoth could be brought down. His ship already was doomed!

  The malaise was broken. Soldiers rushed to crossbow racks and snatched up the deadly things. Powerstones imbedded in the handles assisted with loading, aiming, and firing. One of those quarrels could pierce a tree. Scrambling to the breach in the wall, soldiers knelt, trained bows, and fired. Shafts vaulted across the staging ground. They would have hailed down upon the deck of the war caravel had it not slipped that moment from the air and crashed to ground.

  Quarrels were needless. These Phyrexians would fold up like paper. One bombard blast had destroyed them all. They were fleeing their ship.

  Thran soldiers laughed angrily.

  Not fleeing, these Phyrexians—they were advancing! Twenty-some dark shapes. They seemed like giant spiders, so quick, so craven.

  More quarrels bounded free. They soared past dodging Phyrexians. Damn, they were agile! What was that on their shoulders? Armor? Spikes? Horns? What kind of helmets were those? They seemed almost made of bone and skin….

  Not helmets—heads. What were these monsters?

  “Fire!” the garrison commander shouted. His words broke through a new hesitation. “Fire!”

  Bolts tore across the staging ground.

  One struck a Phyrexian in the gut. The metal tore straight through him. The gray-muscled warrior did not fall, did not even slow. He came on.

  They looked even more like giant spiders as they approached. Inhuman skulls, sagittal crests, horns, fangs, cords of gray muscle—yes, these were monsters not men.

  The Phyrexians breached the garrison’s outpost. They did not fight with swords. They needed no weapons. They were the weapons. Claws, teeth, horns, stingers, poison sacs—

  Thran died like meat in a grinder. The bunker was slick with their dismembered bodies. There was no knowing what part belonged to whom.

  Phyrexians turned them all into bits of flesh on the killing floor. They exulted in their work. It was clear in their ebullient laughter, in their fangy grins.

  * * *

  —

  Spiderlike, Phyrexians slid on silken cords down around the Null Sphere.

  Yawgmoth and his rappelling corps had landed atop the vast orb. They had spread from the pole outward, their positions separated exactly by eighteen degrees of arc. Once the slope required it, they had attached lines and rappelled down. In mere minutes, each had reached the equator of the sphere. Here they would complete their first task.

  Bracing his feet against a girder, Yawgmoth reached to his belt where implosion devices and large powerstones dangled. Cupping one of the gleaming crystals, he lifted it from its sheath and held it up before his face.

  The stone glowed with inner might. Its myriad facets were windows into perfect power.

  “When Glacian looks at these stones, he sees machines,” Yawgmoth mused to himself. “When Rebbec looks at them, she sees temples in the s
ky. When I look at them, I see a world made mine.”

  With slow reverence, he pressed the stone against the massive girder where he stood. Enchanted crystal touched rusting steel and affixed itself. No mortal could have pulled it free—not even Yawgmoth, not even a god. Moving in either direction along the sphere’s equator, he set eight more stones.

  It was a simple thing to drop downward into the crater. He and his team would place their implosion devices on the support pylons there before joining the others in the control core.

  As he slid downward on a weblike cord, Yawgmoth smiled appreciatively. From a distance, the Null Sphere seemed a pearl. Up close, it was more like his beloved Phyrexia.

  * * *

  —

  “We demand to know what is happening!” the lead artificer said. Young and blonde, she was the only one with the courage to speak. The rest cowered in the control core, half hiding themselves among crystal arrays, consoles, and speaking tubes. The Halcyte warriors who had brought them here had hurt none of them—yet. Neither had the artificers answered any of the questions put to them. Gradually, their leader had gone from compliance to defiance. She said, “Yawgmoth has no right—”

  “Yawgmoth has every right,” interrupted a new voice. A towering man strode in past cascades of wire. His approach on the mile-long causeway had been utterly silent, as though he were a stalking wolf. He brought a chill presence to the chamber. Even those who did not know this man knew of him—knew who he must be. Yawgmoth smiled humorlessly at them all. “I have taken the Null Sphere. It is mine.”

  Though she had winced away from the infamous Phyrexian lord, the lead artificer quickly rallied.

  “Perhaps you have taken it, but you cannot hold it. The empire will march an army here within the week.”

  “The sphere will not be here within the week,” Yawgmoth said.

  A question formed on her lips but never emerged.

  A profound rumble came from below—multiple explosions. The sound was amplified by the crater. Destructive force rattled through every beam and spar of the sphere.

  The woman’s eyes stood wide beneath blonde brows. “You’re destroying it? You’re destroying the sphere?”

  “No,” Yawgmoth said with a smile. “No, I am taking it.”

  His words were followed by the unmistakable rush of upward motion.

  * * *

  —

  The Null Sphere lifted with slow magnificence from its crater. It was borne heavenward in the grip of a powerstone equator. The orb was beautiful, caught in the evening light.

  It was a shame no one—neither Thran nor Phyrexian—had survived the garrison battle. Someone should have witnessed that moment. Someone should have seen the Null Sphere rise, a new moon over Dominaria.

  Six Years Before the Thran-Phyrexian War…

  A week after the riots, the city that had been shattered now gathered.

  Citizens climbed to the eighth terrace and overran Council Boulevard. They filled the stairs on every side of the Council Hall and swarmed the rooftop, the dome, and the half-completed temple. Everyone knew who had stopped the riots. Everyone wanted to be as close as possible to the city’s savior.

  This was his day of ascension. Today, the council seat vacated by the ailing Glacian would be filled by the city’s new genius—the healer Yawgmoth.

  The Parade of Elders strode down Council Boulevard. Polite applause ushered them forward. Then Yawgmoth appeared. This man was greeted with invocations, supplications, adorations. He was greeted as a god. The ravaged corps of the Halcyte guard could barely hold the people back. Guards made a fence of their leveled polearms and shoved against the pressing multitude. The mob disdained those weapons—the useless things that had been unable to stop the rioting Untouchables. What kept the crowd back was not polearms but swords—the five blades that hung from Yawgmoth’s belt as he strode up the street. Those weapons—in the hands of Yawgmoth and his brave healer-soldiers—had saved the city. Swords and Yawgmoth’s new type of healing.

  Rebbec waited within the Council Hall. She had marched among the other leaders and had taken her seat within. Though outwardly composed, inwardly she was besieged. Every base impulse, every lower desire welled up in her at the simple sight of him. Her heart beat with impenetrable want. Her lungs struggled to taste a breath of him. Her arms ached to enfold him, her fingers to twine through his hair. Where could this rebel ache come from? Why had it risen just when there was a treatment for her husband’s illness? Rebbec had told herself it was all merely overwrought gratitude for that saving cure, but she knew these wants were less pure.

  The cure…While Glacian had wasted away, Rebbec could not have abandoned him. If he became whole again…But what was all this absurdity? No, Rebbec would never leave her husband, ill or well. She had made a vow, and a vow was not to be broken, even for the right reasons. This…this carnal liberation could not be right. Yawgmoth roused the lower impulses of the whole city. She had to resist him—they all had to.

  Yawgmoth entered the Council Hall. He progressed among standing and cheering elders.

  Rebbec stood, weak-kneed. Yawgmoth seemed to emit an enervating aura.

  He strode with stately decorum down the aisle and rose up the steps of the main podium. The swords at his belt clacked against polished wood and left little scars. His ceremonial robes draped across each step. Around his neck, he wore a powerstone stole that would send his voice out to the whole throng.

  He spoke. His voice rolled out, silencing the throng.

  “One week ago, our city was inundated. It was flooded by its past. The folk who overran our streets and burned our homes and killed our brothers and daughters—these were not creatures from some far-off world. They were Thran. They were who we all were a thousand years ago. We, like they, lived in brutal darkness. We were ravaged by hunger and want, by mortal terror and disease, by violence and warfare. In a thousand years, we have slowly won free of these things. We have ascended.

  “A week ago, the folk below ascended too. They climbed up from dark want, hunger, and depravity to enter our city. They came most of all because of the disease that ravages them. The very phthisis that has laid low our Glacian runs rampant through the caves. They crawled up their ratways into our midst. They had nothing—not even health, not even hope. They came, hating us for all we have, for ascending. They would have killed us all.

  “What of the Halcyte guard, that atrophied appendage that once was the proud arm of Halcyon? What of the fighting force that wrested this land from the dwarves and elves and goblins that infested it? Centuries of peace in our city have softened them so that they could not even stand against the sickly and starved rabble beneath our feet. Were the matter left to them, the damned would have damned us all.

  “But one weapon saved us….” Yawgmoth paused and reached into his cloak.

  The elders leaned just perceptibly forward, straining to glimpse the now-famous sword Yawgmoth had wielded in battle, but he did not hold up a blade. Instead, he lifted a vial of liquid.

  “Hope. This is our greatest weapon against the terrors of the past. Hope is what brought us out of darkness and hunger, violence and war. Hope now brings us out of disease. This vial holds the serum that reverses the powerstone phthisis. It will save Glacian and any other citizen infected. It will save our Thran Temple and our glorious city. It will save even the damned, give them the hope that will keep them from crawling up their ratways and slaying us.”

  A great ovation answered these words, and cheers of “Yawgmoth! Yawgmoth!” punctuated the applause.

  “And this vial.” Yawgmoth pointed to his own skull. “This vial contains the hope of a final cure. I will find it. I will find a cure not only to powerstone phthisis but to every ailment that plagues us. I will find a cure not only for illness but also for weakness, for madness, for old age, for depravity, for every failing of mortal flesh. All of these dis
eases and dysfunctions are mere remnants of the darkness where once we dwelt. The medicine I bring to you will heal not only your bodies, minds, and souls but even your mortality. I promise you no less than that.”

  His voice echoed away in shocked silence. No one had ever heard such promises, yet the light that gleamed down through that vial made it seem a miniature Thran Temple. Every hope of the people, every dream, was manifest in that vial and the man who held it aloft. He could cure the incurable. He could single-handedly end a riot, a war. It seemed he could do anything he strove to do.

  The people cheered. The sound of it swelled out to fill the hall, deafeningly, to fill the streets, the city, and even the deserts all around. Only Yawgmoth himself could quiet them. He reached out a hand, preparing to speak again.

  “In the meantime, I will, by vial and sword, assure the safety of our city, our empire. As well as overseeing the creation of hope, I shall aid in the bolstering of fear, fear that will keep the phthitics below—fear of the Thran army and imperial guard. They too shall return. I have been assigned by this council to serve on a committee to restructure the guard and army. I will remove those generals who have never fought in true battle, elevate those young soldiers who have, and train all troops in the modern arts of war. Put simply, I will return our fighting forces to their previous splendor. If hope is not enough to keep the damned below, fear will keep them there.”

  The ovation shook the foundations of the ancient hall.

  “Now, good folk of Halcyon—I have made my promises to you, and I want each of you to hold me to them. As the newest member of the council, I will marshal forces both political and medical to realize our destiny.

  “Just now, I must go. I have made another promise to another people in dire need of hope. I have promised to bring to the Caves of the Damned enough hope for every last one infected. I go now to do so. I descend among them that they will not ascend among you.”