The Thran

by J. Robert King

The Phyrexian hesitated.

  “Now…or all is lost!”

  The Null Sphere soared suddenly heavenward.

  The old man felt himself black out. He knew he was dying. The others would die too. Their corpses would short out the command seats, and the Null Sphere would be nullified. It would no longer draw off the roiling mana below. Dying, they would trap Yawgmoth in his killing clouds.

  Death was sweeter than he could ever have hoped.

  * * *

  —

  It was beautiful. Halcyon floated high and safe above roiling mana. White clouds. Pure clouds. Scouring, cleansing clouds. The rebellion was over. The Thran Alliance was only a memory. Not even their bodies would remain on the desert. Not even the desert would remain, but scoured bedrock.

  Yawgmoth lifted the wine bottle. He turned the green glass speculatively before him. The last drop of wine wormed along the base of the bottle. It was blood-red, but seemed black within the glass.

  There were nine more bombs aboard Wrath. The crew had orders to drop one in the heart of each city-state that did not surrender unconditionally—one for each city-state and one for Yawgmoth. After the empire was brought to heel, there would be nine more bombs—one for each of the allied races and one for Yawgmoth. Then there would be bombs for the Multiverse—nine and nine times nine and nine to the ninth power. It all began here, in this heavenly city among the purgative clouds.

  Yawgmoth dangled the bottle over the rail and casually let it drop. He watched as it plunged, tumbling, toward the clouds. Wine bled from the neck of the thing. Even before the bottle disappeared, it began to dissolve in the acid air.

  For the first time since the bombing had begun, Yawgmoth rose from his seat beside the rail. The desert was purged, but there were still Thran soldiers overrunning the city above. It would be a fight in the streets and houses and rooms of the city. It would be like the phthitic riots. Vengeance could menace from the skies but do little more than that. Yawgmoth’s place was in the fight, not above it. For the first time since the bombing had begun, Yawgmoth gave an order.

  “Fly over the city. Over the granary.”

  Since the days of the riots, those granaries had harbored rebels. Vengeance topped the bleeding walls and approached the jumble of silos and storehouses. Figures swarmed the white cylinders: cat people, lizard men, dwarves, elves—roaches, silverfish, earwigs, flies. He could fumigate the city—Yawgmoth could slay them all with a thought, and that fact comforted him—but his own folk would die. Phyrexian and Halcyte guards fought the swarming Thran in alleys and doorways.

  “Even if I lose all Halcyon, I still have Phyrexia.”

  Vengeance nosed out above the silos of the granary.

  “Drop bow anchor.”

  The rattle of chain came, and the anchor plunged. Its crown smashed a dwarf too stolid to leap aside. Yawgmoth swung over the rail, climbed down the chain, and stepped from the anchor, his feet gory. The image made him smile. He was stomping a new vintage in blood.

  Yawgmoth drew his sword. The powerstone in its hilt winked conspiratorially toward its master. He flung out the blade and easily cut a charging elf in two.

  “Raise anchor!” he shouted.

  Even as the ring lurched upward on the chain, Yawgmoth seized a lizard man and flung him down, impaling him on the anchor. The fluke jutted through his scaly back. Impaled alive, the Viashino writhed on the rising anchor.

  “Patrol the city!” Yawgmoth ordered Vengeance. He turned, eager to kill again.

  * * *

  —

  “There’s a ship up there!” Rebbec said, peering through the sewer grate. “A war caravel.”

  In the fetid murk of the sewer, six sets of goblin eyes grew wide. The healing capsule they bore between them glimmered beneath the smudges and grime that draped it.

  A goblin muttered, “Phyrexian or Thran?”

  Rebbec said, “What does it matter? The battle is thick here. We can’t emerge safely.”

  Her point was punctuated by a roaring scream. A minotaur tumbled into the culvert and pitched against the grate—or half a minotaur. Gore and innards made a gruesome cascade at Rebbec’s feet.

  “Granary always safe before,” the goblin said.

  “Well, it’s not safe now,” Rebbec replied. “Yawgmoth knows about it. He’s been inside my mind. We’ll have to reach the temple another way. Farther up.”

  The goblins nodded in the murk. They preferred underground passages anyway. Not that they were without their dangers—inescapable cesspools, deadfalls, rats, disease, but better these dangers than swords through the back. Goblin feet pattered through trickling sludge.

  Rebbec followed. “I shouldn’t lead us any longer. Yawgmoth knows everything I know. He knows everything I would do, would try. One of you should take over. How close can you get us to the temple?”

  A fangy grin shone in the murk. “I know way. I bring you up Council Hall dungas.”

  Rebbec laughed. “Good. You do that. Bring us up beside the Council Hall. We’ll have to fight our way to the top of the dome.”

  “We not fight. We fly. We take flying chair.”

  She was about to object. Yawgmoth would expect her to object. “Yes. You are right. We will take a sedan chair. When we are all in the temple, we will fly away from here. We’ll fly away from the war and the horror of it all. We’ll fly into the heavens. You lead on.”

  “Up the dungas! Into heaven!”

  * * *

  —

  The temple was crammed with refugees—two thousand of them. More arrived every moment. They clustered thickly on the Council Hall dome. They leapt to the packed portico. They pressed shoulder to shoulder in the main hall, children perched on shoulders to keep from being crushed. Every balcony was full, every spiral stair. Folk sat atop any flat spot. Even the altar was piled high. Only the control stone itself was empty. They all knew that to climb atop it could send the whole temple crashing down.

  When refugees first arrived a day ago, they had been furtive, struggling to hide in prismatic walls. As the night wore on, more came, and more. The floors filled up. Silence gave way to whispers. When morning dawned, the once-gleaming temple was opaque with packed bodies. There was no hiding now. There was only a fearful question—who would arrive first, Rebbec or Gix?

  Gix.

  The river of refugees came to an abrupt end. Only a hundred or so remained, pushing to reach the pinnacle of the dome. Those leapt who could, though the entry portico was already too crowded. Folk in the temple shouted them back. Still, they jumped. Some gained the temple. Others fell. Their broken bodies joined the red slick on that side of the dome.

  The stairs turned into a crimson cascade. At the rear of the line, Phyrexian guards flung down those ahead of them. Their scarlet claws hewed the backs of the folk. Bodies and blood made a gory wake behind them. They marched upward with an even and ruthless tread. All the while, their grim figures grew clearer—wide eyes, gray skin, barbed whiskers, tortured muscle, horns, talons, fangs….

  Terror swept through the temple, borne on a single word. “Phyrexians!”

  At the head of the company was Gix himself. “Take the temple!”

  “Don’t let them across!” shouted refugees. “Don’t let them across!”

  The first taloned horror easily vaulted from the dome. It clutched a trio of women. Its claws sank in. It scrabbled to climb over their bleeding forms and into the temple. Shrieking in terror, the refugees behind kicked the three women off the temple. Phyrexian and women fell.

  A second Phyrexian leapt into the vacated space. It slew five refugees before someone stabbed it and dumped its body. Weapons were passed to the front. The next monsters who hurled themselves toward the temple plunged, swords sticking from stomachs and throats. More weapons came, but they would not be enough. The monsters were too violent, too voracious.

 
“Shift the temple. Shift it away from the pinnacle!” someone shouted.

  The idea swept back through the throng. Refugees on the altar clambered up beside the control stone. They set their hands on it and pushed. With a slow but implacable motion, the great temple drifted away from the pinnacle. It moved smoothly, with no more sound than a sedan chair.

  Gix shouted for the rest of his guards to jump. Four more Phyrexians tried. They fell and broke apart on the dome below. Gix was left to shake a bloody fist at the retreating refugees.

  A rabid cheer went up from the temple, a sound of vengeance. The temple drifted to a halt, safely removed from the pinnacle. They would shift it back for no one except Rebbec herself.

  A black blot smudged out the sun. Vengeance. The war caravel slid lazily into place above the temple.

  Shouts of adulation died away. Surely Yawgmoth would not bomb his own people in their temple?

  Nine long ropes dropped over the rails. They had not snapped straight before nine black figures descended—more Phyrexians. They dropped hungrily on the heads of the crowd.

  * * *

  —

  This had been even more fun than his journey aboard Vengeance. Killing hundreds of thousands with white scouring clouds was beautiful, but this one-on-one dance of steel and blood—this had been fun.

  Yawgmoth had lost count of his kills. They had come very rapidly at the beginning—killing like breathing. Now the Halcyte guard had locked down most of the granary and were cleaning out the last hidey-holes. One was above, the top of a grain silo packed with half a dozen Thran. A silo ladder rose up a dark shaft overhead, and blood dripped from a fresh hand print on the lowest rung. It would be death to climb that ladder. A knife dropped down the shaft could sink through an eye or even a skull. There was no point in it.

  Yawgmoth stepped away from the silo, glancing up at the peak of it. A pair of Halcyte guards stood nearby. Yawgmoth motioned them over. The white-armored soldiers rushed to their lord. They went to one knee before him and bowed their heads.

  “How may we serve, Lord Yawgmoth?” one of them asked.

  “Chop down this silo,” Yawgmoth said simply.

  The one who had been silent now looked up at the cement structure. “Chop it down, Lord?”

  “Chop it down as you would chop down a tree,” Yawgmoth said simply.

  “Yes, Lord Yawgmoth,” the first said.

  “With what,” the other asked, quickly adding, “Lord?”

  “Your powerstone swords will cut stone. Cut into this silo until it falls.”

  They both nodded at that. Rising, they hurried to the silo, checked for a clear spot where the building could fall, and began chopping.

  “Business concluded,” Yawgmoth said, walking away from the spot.

  He reached the street beside the granary. All along the thoroughfare, silver-armored Halcyte guards patrolled. Red masses of meat lay in heaps on the road. Phyrexian troops crossed the street at their half-jog, eyes and claws eager for some new prey. They had run short of cat and bull and lizard flesh. Occasionally defenders would enter a smashed doorway and Thran corpses would fly from windows and crash down in the street. On the whole, the buzz of battle was now an idle, hungry sound.

  The city was well in hand. The Thran soldiers below were washed away. All that remained were the traitors in the Thran Temple.

  Yawgmoth stared up at the dangling gem, its heart black with treason. It was his one great mistake, that building—his last great mistake. The temple was Rebbec’s gleaming vision of heaven, which would forever war in his people’s mind with the true heaven of Phyrexia. Rebbec had even equipped the thing to fly away. The only reason it had not was that the traitors waited for Rebbec, their savior.

  Yawgmoth allowed himself a small smile. Their savior was now his.

  The crackle and groan of shifting stone drew his attention away from the temple. The silo was falling. The guards had hewn out a wide gash near the foundation. The leaning weight of the tower shattered the wall. With slow majesty, the silo toppled. Its lower edge pulverized and disintegrated. The cylinder of rock cracked like an egg as it went over. The top, where Thran soldiers hid, hit last and hardest. With a thunderous crash, it fell to rubble. Amid the grinding and bouncing hunks of stone were human figures, visible for a moment before being pounded to mush.

  “Six dead,” Yawgmoth said dispassionately as he turned back toward the crowded temple. “Two thousand on the verge of death.”

  Even then, Vengeance circled toward the gemstone building, a fresh company of Phyrexians ready at the ropes. It came about over the city wall. Suddenly, it was gone. A dense cloud, as white as milk, ghosted up from beyond the wall. It enveloped the war caravel in its curdling mass and continued upward.

  It was a killing, scouring, purifying cloud. It would turn granite to sand and sand to ash. It would obliterate flesh utterly. It would leech the charge from any powerstone it contacted.

  Vengeance was visible once last in vague shadow, already half eaten away and rolling over. It struck the disintegrating wall and then plunged from sight down the cliff face.

  “No,” Yawgmoth said in disbelief.

  Silent and patient, the killing clouds rose on all sides of the city. Their white heads curled and edged out over Halcyon. They converged in a closing dome above them all. The whole of Halcyon would be destroyed.

  “No,” Yawgmoth gasped again.

  Worst of all, the Thran Temple and its cargo of traitors and corpses rose with sudden, terrific motion up and out of the white dome. Tongues of cloud licked the edges of the temple as it shot upward, but then it was beyond them.

  “Two thousand traitors, escaped,” Yawgmoth breathed.

  Then the dome was complete. Pale death closed over Halcyon.

  * * *

  —

  “The temple’s gone,” Rebbec hissed within the culvert. They had just reached the upper city, just glimpsed the embattled temple above. Goblins had begun prying at a grate on Council Boulevard, but now the temple was gone. “And something worse.”

  “Something worse?” echoed fearful voices behind her.

  “A mana cloud. A killing cloud. It’s enveloped the city.”

  Goblins stopped prying. They craned to see past the iron bars.

  An eerie silence came to the sewer and the streets beyond. Into that silence intruded a horrible sound. Wind moaned through a vast structure. Tiny bells sounded—not bells but crystals ringing against each other. The tintinnabulation quickly became cacophony. Atop that high jangle came a chorus of two thousand throats screaming.

  The Thran Temple came down through the descending ceiling of cloud. It was canted on its side. The faces of refugees flashed in spectrum over the city—massive and beautiful and doomed. The temple struck. It broke in a million pieces. Crystal shot out in razor shards. Implosions rocking the city.

  “Down!” Rebbec yelled. “Down. Descend! It’s our only hope. Away from the light! Away from the white cloud! Down to the Caves of the Damned!”

  The white clouds descended. Thick as milk, they descended. Whatever they touched turned to powder or ooze. Limestone sloughed down in runnels of ash. Basalt crumbled like soggy cake. Clay rooftops melted. Brick walls slumped in yellow dust. Wood simply evaporated. People—running, shrieking, scrambling people—became skeletons that ran on a few steps before the bones lost volition and the joints separated and all tumbled toward ground but dissolved before they could strike cobbles that, too, dissolved. People died. They died in Halcyon as certainly as they had died on the desert plains below. They would die in Losanon too, when Wrath did not receive the unconditional surrender it demanded, and in Wington and Seaton and all the others. Within a week, the whole empire would turn to white memory.

  Halcytes fled down toward Phyrexia. They went like rats scurrying away from a sudden, bright light. Panting and shrieking, they flun
g themselves down any hole that presented itself. Some were deathtraps—wells and cisterns. Clouds billowed into them and ate away whomever hid within and brought walls and ceilings slumping after. Other holes—the ones that stank of sewage or sulfur—they led down into a fetid, welcoming darkness. The putrid air was redolent with life or at least the leavings of life—a glad smell when one is pursued by white, cleansing death.

  Rats headed downward as well. Rats and dwarves, toads and lizard men, alley cats and cat people, vermin, phthitics, goblins, and elves, thick-browed barbarians and minotaurs, they all knew to run down into darkness. Foes who would have slit each others’ throats in the gleaming city now ran side by side through the murk. They followed each others’ makeshift torches, climbed down the ways that others had proved safe, skirted the pits where folk had fallen. They did not slay each other, but neither did they save each other. They would happily follow a surefooted minotaur down a slick channel and just as happily climb over his corpse wedged in a ruined sluice. The divisions of nation and city-state, of race and gender, dissolved. It was not a mad throng, but tens of thousands of mad individuals flooding away from light and down into darkness.

  In time, all those winding channels led to the great cesspits. Those had doors to further descents, which led inexorably to the mana rig. Gargantuan furnaces, enormous crystals, inexplicable machines, but no doors—only coal chutes into blazing ovens. The refugees arrived and moiled and flooded, water desperate to find a path downward. Perhaps there was no path downward. Perhaps they would all be crushed against the furnaces, and the air would be breathed up, and the white death would blanket them all.

  Then a voice spoke. It came from everywhere and nowhere at once. It echoed in unseeable heights and in the chambers of terrified hearts. The voice of Yawgmoth.

  “People of Halcyon, people of the allied foes, hear me. Even now, a wave of death settles over all we have built. It draws the power from every crystal that held our nation aloft. Towers fall. Walls crumble. The dream of Halcyon is over. We have seen the Thran Temple fall. We have seen the walls of our city turn to ash and sift away. This cloud will course down the channels that have brought us here. It will reach even this deep spot and supercharge the eighty-one crystal spheres here. They will explode with a force that will level the whole extrusion.”