Bloodlines

by Loren L. Coleman

  Fingers wrapped into the iron bars of the crypt door, the cold metal sticking to his warm skin, Kreig ground his teeth in fury. One hundred fifty years of experience promised him that the enemy would come for him soon—for Gatha and he both. His warrior instinct drove him to fight, and he would, at the head of the largest combined warhost the Keldon nation had ever known. An event which would survive centuries of retelling, it would be known in the oral histories until the day when The Call to Return finally sounded.

  His muscles bunched and strained, his mortal limits set against metal and stone. Coarse-threaded screws set into a mortared jamb wrenched free. He yelled his anger and defiance in a guttural shout. The iron gate twisted and came away in his hands. He held it overhead and with another savage cry pitched it from the lip of the Necropolis out into the thin, frozen air. He heard it whistle away, fade, and be lost. It fell down far enough that he never heard it hit, and that sat well with Kreig. Let it be lost.

  If he was ever to be laid to rest here, it would not be within confines which could be built by man—not even Keldon man.

  * * *

  Rough blankets draped most of the equipment in Gatha’s labs, gray shrouds rank with colos sweat having been used as saddle blankets in the past. Gatha hated that scent, even after three centuries in Keld where the musk of that mountain animal seemed to permeate every facet of life. He wondered if the Keldons hated the large beasts as much.

  He shrugged and shook his head, dispelling his speculation along with any lingering aversion to the scent. It did not matter anymore. Kreig had been to see him at the first of the week, carefully talking around the very point the witch king had come to make. It was something that couldn’t be put into words. What Gatha had feared for fifty years—the Phyrexians were coming, and this time there would be no stopping them.

  Standing still and silent, Gatha strained his hearing to catch the sounds of the battle being fought on the plateau below his laboratory. No fire crackled in competition. No slaves moved about doing his bidding, where their footsteps might have drowned out that distant ringing of metal against metal. There were only he and two guards who waited like motionless statues outside his main workspace while he prepared it. The fighting sounded as if it had moved closer. Gatha could hear the shrill cry of a wounded colos warbeast echoing up the mountainside, but it was drowned out immediately by the grating roar of a massive Phyrexian dragon engine.

  It was the sound of death knocking upon the gates, an Argivian saying which Gatha remembered from long before Keld or Tolaria. Strange, that deep down he had actually believed death would come politely, requesting admission rather than kicking down the barriers and falling upon its victim in a fury of fire and grinding metal.

  Well, Gatha did not intend to quit without a fight. Where he had been forced to flee Tolaria, betrayed by those he had called colleagues even when they did not deserve such praise, here he knew strong allies and the strength of his own powers. Kreig had never failed him, never failed the Keldon nation, and Gatha knew that any chance for victory would revolve around them both: warlord and tutor. Witch king and wizard. Gatha remembered much of the Tolarian histories, of the battles waged with the dark forces. He knew many of their weaknesses. He could help turn the tide of battle, perhaps. In case he could not, the lab required preparation.

  Moving around the room, Gatha continued to cover each piece of equipment with the rough, strong-smelling blankets as he wrapped them with magical energies drawn from the mountains of Keld. He pulled the mana from the land, feeling its raw power and knowing the destructive force such energies could bring about. Warmth flushed his skin pink, warding him against the room’s severe chill, as he layered the magic into every device, every table, into each wall surrounding him. It pulsed at his temples, straining for release, but he held each strand tied into a simple knot at the center of his mind. He buried it down deep, and there he held it with an afterthought. So long as he lived his labs were safe, but at any moment he could bring them down. He would not allow his work to fall into the hands of such an enemy. Better that it go to Urza, who had appreciated Gatha’s efforts for many years. He wondered at what Urza might be able to accomplish with the culmination of Gatha’s three centuries of research—great things, certainly.

  His previous casting completed, the mage stepped over to a large ironbound trunk. The dark ebony paneling had been carved with scenes out of classic literature, each one depicting the gift or acquiring of knowledge from the gods or through man’s own effort. Gatha had been known for both in his years in Keld. Inside the trunk was every scrap of information he had collected: early theories and experiments, two hundred years of refinements, his book of questions, as he called it, new paths of exploration suggested by his work, and many problems he had run up against or simply considered but had never possessed the time to pursue. Always time, his hated enemy, working against him. What he might have accomplished, eventually. Gatha smiled in the face of that consideration. What he had accomplished, today.

  Thinking back on his time in Tolaria, Gatha felt for the magic inherent to the island and drew it for his use. It came in a cool, salt-laden breeze. He attached tendrils of the power to the trunk, and with a simple twist of his mind he transported the entire collection into a fissure deep within the ground. There it would await Urza, the only person Gatha knew who could possibly retrieve it and figure out how to unlock its contents without engaging the protective wards that would incinerate the research.

  The lab dead and warded, the trunk hidden away with only a tether held in his mental grasp, Gatha picked up his staff from its resting place by the main door. Made of dark ebony, as the trunk had been, its headpiece a pair of crescent-shaped iron blades stained a deep crimson, it was no longer the simple walking staff he had used to enter Keld. A magical device he had imbued with powers over his long stay, it would aid him today in defending his home.

  Passing through the door, he gathered his guards by glance alone and then added that final magical tendril, connecting his boon of knowledge to the knot of magical threads already tied within his mind. It was readied to search out and whisper a message to Urza Planeswalker. It would bring Urza here, eventually. What happened after, in the future, was not Gatha’s concern.

  It never was.

  * * *

  Kreig commanded his warhost from the left flank, near the edge of the plateau where the fighting was the most concentrated. Here there could be no quarter, no fallback—the opposing forces always aware of the precipice they could so easily be swept over. Already a number of Keldon warriors had plummeted to their deaths, dashed to crimson stains on the sharp rocks below. Kreig had led an assault which toppled a dragon engine to join them. His greatsword sliced apart treads while a white scar of lightning cast out from Gatha’s fingertips slammed into the engine’s enraged head.

  The stench of oil and blood, scorched ground and burnt flesh, assailed the normally chill mountain air now warm with Phyrexian fires. Kreig registered the pain of his healing right leg. The witch king’s armor had been burned away from a gout of a burning jellylike substance belched from one of the larger black creatures, that creature now destroyed and left in his wake. Armor-clad warriors, those stunted growths with their mechanical arms and legs, he left shattered by the dozens. They annoyed him, so small and insignificant compared to his expanded boundaries. His was the personal strength of a thousand men, borrowed piecemeal from the legion of warriors under his direct control. When he swung his gore-streaked greatsword, it struck with force enough to rip through armor plating and shatter metal supports. Flesh and bone where he found it among the dark soldiers, he cleft with ease.

  How much more might he have become if he had brought the entire Keldon warhost under his banner? This was not the only battle being fought today. It was one of several, in fact, and the witch king never forgot his responsibilities. He was more than Kreig—immortal or not, the greatest of the witch kings or not—he was Keld. Even in the frenzy of battle the witch king
never forgot his priorities. His nation would survive. The Phyrexians were here for him, testing themselves against the greatest warrior Dominaria had ever known. He and Gatha, they were the objectives. So long as Kreig did not put the whole of Keld in between the enemy and themselves, some—many—would survive.

  The warlord was able to easily recognize the Phyrexians battle philosophy. They had apparently little use for subterfuge with what seemed to be inexhaustible resources to draw upon, and they had their god of pale flesh and black eyes that could place them for battle or withdraw them as necessary. They wanted to rip out the strength—what they perceived to be the strength—of his nation. They would learn that the Keldon strength was inexhaustible as well. It didn’t matter whether the Phyrexians won today or next year. They could take all of Dominaria, in fact. One day the Necropolis would be full, and then nothing would stand before his nation and him.

  A skeletal figure walked the battlefield toward him. Kreig knew of it immediately, sensing the approaching danger in the waning lifeforce of his warriors. It appeared only slightly more impressive than the spindle-limbed warriors in black armor—the only visible differences being its cleft skull and burning red eyes that sat back within hollow sockets. It carried a staff which looked to be a thin, twisted piece of wood, and it wore no more protection than a robe of tattered cloth bands, or so it seemed.

  One Keldon warrior charged the thing, and it moved with blinding speed to eviscerate the man with one swipe of its thin, taloned hands. Another met an end with searing bolts from the creature’s eyes. The one blow Kreig saw the creature take was shrugged aside as easily as the witch king himself might have done, hardly scratching through the tattered robes that writhed with their own life.

  Rage gripped Kreig, watching his warriors so easily cast aside as if they barely merited a warrior’s death. He kicked an impaled creature off his sword. The warlord shouldered his way past or through several skirmishes, trailing the smoke from smoldering colos horn back from his shoulder vents. A Phyrexian’s clawed hand took off the bladed antler that guarded part of his helm’s eye slit. He shrugged it aside, raking his armor’s elbow spikes into the creature’s midsection and tearing through several hoses acting as veins for thin, glistening oil.

  The other creature finally noticed his advance and paused to meet him. It screeched out an attack of tormenting sound. Waves of preternatural sound assailed Kreig with stunning force, as if he had hit an invisible wall which then toppled back over him. His armor shook, and small stabs of pain worked through his gut. He shouted his war cry, cursing his own muscles for their treasonous behavior, and then he was past the wall and set upon the Phyrexian.

  His greatsword rose and fell three times in rapid strikes. The first two glanced off the bands of metal that rustled and rasped over the creature like living snakes, but the last connected solidly to the side of the Phyrexian’s head. A few metal bands fell to the ground, writhing a moment before falling still. The vicious slash to the creature’s face caused it to stumble and opened up a large cut in the taught, glistening-gray skin. Kreig moved to make a disabling blow but found his sword deflected by a flick of the creature’s hand. A stiff-armed stabbing motion followed from the Phyrexian, allowing a pair of talons to pierce his armor and dig into his ribs.

  Kreig backed off immediately, knowing to not press an attack after being taken unaware, and he watched the cut on the Phyrexian’s face heal. Strands of fiber spun out from one side of the wound to the other, pulling the flesh tight again. Small spinning devices, fused right into the skull it seemed, spun and stitched the skin back together flawlessly. His own wounds burned painfully. He noticed a sludgelike black fluid dripping from the creature’s two talons that had found his skin. Growling defiance, Kreig swung again. Another lightning flash of motion and the Phyrexian’s poisoned claws scored again along his right shoulder.

  Burning, the substance continued to eat away at him regardless of how much strength his warriors lent him. Kreig stumbled, going down on one knee, his swordpoint stabbed into the earth for balance. He hated the Phyrexian for humbling him in such a manner. He couldn’t draw a breath, the burning now in his lungs. Kreig wrenched his helm away, drawing in deeply the steaming, smoky air.

  Chattering a cacophony of squeals and hisses, the creature moved in to deal a death blow. A crackling, snapping arc of energy scored the air over Kreig. Gatha’s lightning caught the Phyrexian in the shoulder, driving it back a step as two more warriors fell on it. One arm apparently fused into place, the beast clawed the throat out of one footsoldier and then threw him into his partner, driving them both over the cliff edge. It then worked at its shoulder, twisting it back into a full range of motion within seconds.

  With a struggle to control his pain, Kreig levered himself back to his feet and brought his greatsword back up in challenge. He could feel his own blood trickling down his side, the wounds failing to close as that burning sludge worked deeper into his body. The Phyrexian advanced, striking out with long, skeletal arms that moved with blazing speed. Kreig countered, giving back a step under each blow but holding off the deadly embrace. More of his warriors leapt in to the fray—only to be thrown back dead or dying—and then the creature advanced again. Kreig knew that the space behind him was limited. There would be Gatha and then open air as the plateau fell away to the lower valleys. He would have to act soon.

  The Phyrexian never gave him that chance. As if tired of the game, it simply grabbed his sword on a parrying stroke and wrested it from his grip. A razored claw shot out, piercing his armor and digging claws into his midsection. It lifted Kreig from the ground, its hollow sockets only inches from the witch king’s tortured gaze, as it pumped more liquid fire into him, then it tossed both Keldon warlord and sword aside as if broken toys. Kreig slammed into the ground, and there he lay in wordless agony. So easily discarded, the greatest witch king ever known rolled over enough to see the face of his destroyer. He stared into the skull’s lifeless expression.

  The Phyrexian turned, no longer concerned with the broken Keldon, and its ember eyes found Gatha.

  * * *

  Hellfire scents of burning flesh and scorched ground rose to choke Gatha. Metal clattered against other metal. The grinding of gears at times threatened to drown out the orders passed among minor warlords and their witch king masters. A haze hung over the plateau, smoky and wraithlike, and from that haze the Phyrexians kept advancing. Warriors went down beneath physical weapons and blazes of energies, and some simply fell sick as if by sudden disease.

  Kreig fell to the Phyrexian champion, and the shock value itself drove the Keldon army back several precious yards.

  Gatha could not wonder if he hadn’t somehow been responsible. The more magic he expended, it seemed, the greater the opposition brought forward by the Phyrexians. His cast of lightning helping to topple a dragon engine, and then two more of the juggernauts rolled forward. He’d summoned a giant at one point, which had been quickly overwhelmed under a surge of black-armored warriors. Then came the particularly draining cast, drawing upon his entire store of mana to summon a rock hydra to block the lower pass, trying to limit the influx of more enemy soldiers.

  The Phyrexians countered with their god.

  The mage had glimpsed him in between castings while trying to marshal the energies at his control for another lightning strike. The image fit Kreig’s description too well—pasty corpselike flesh and wide-set eyes of steel gray within black. The thin, hard line of his mouth grimaced under strain. Gatha did not believe the figure to actually be a god, no more so than he himself was, though the Keldons had for decades considered him and Kreig both as near-divine. He sensed the bridge form between worlds, saw briefly the dull tan landscape overlaid onto Dominaria. Planeswalker! The word shouted out in his mind from his earlier association with Urza. It was the closest he could come to naming the powers he saw demonstrated. From across the bridge stepped a new group of Phyrexian nightmares, the skeletal figure among them, bypassing the hydra.
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  Urza help us, was Gatha’s first thought at witnessing the crossover. If he could have hoped to shout for the planeswalker’s attention, right then he would have done so, but he had spent too much of his stamina already, manipulating heavy magics as well as maintaining his hold on the wards that protected his labs. Now he could only try and recover, witnessing the horrible passage of the new Phyrexian as it slaughtered its way quickly and effortlessly across the battlefield to put down Kreig. Even a solid strike of lightning failed to do more than slow it—and draw its attention. Right then as it looked to him, before its final confrontation with Kreig, Gatha sensed the hatred it felt. It froze the mage in his place for a moment—long enough for Kreig to fall—and then the dark creature was past the dethroned witch king and facing Gatha himself.

  Backed against the plateau’s precipice, his magical strength waning, Gatha began a sacrificial casting that would expend his own life in one final attack against the Phyrexian. One of the most powerful and dangerous spells he’d brought away from Tolaria, he held it in reserve for just such an occasion. With Kreig vanquished and the army poised at its breaking point, there was little else he could accomplish with his life. He could only hope to accomplish something more by his death.

  Time betrayed him. The creature’s red eyes darkened, becoming twin orbs of dark power within cavernous sockets. The black mana swept from it in a mind-rending wave—a banshee wail that drove the mage quickly to his knees. The spell he had held in readiness was lost to the chaos, torn from him in a painful struggle. It left him weak and defenseless. He rose back to his feet on shaky legs, his mind numb. He stared into the orbs, and they froze him to his spot. The Phyrexian reached its hands out toward Gatha’s head—razor-sharp fingers on hands of metal framework and cable. One finger on each hand opened up to allow a short length of braided wire to escape. The ends probing the air in front of his eyes, searching. Gatha realized then that all his preparations to keep his research from Phyrexian hands were for naught, and worse, he was about to give up Urza’s best-kept secrets—Tolaria, the Weatherlight, the Legacy and the bloodlines. He understood now. The Phyrexian was here for his mind.