The Fifth Dawn

by Cory Herndon

  Glissa hardly knew where to begin. So much had happened since the night the levelers came and turned her world upside down, but soon her story came spilling out in a torrent. She told the tribunal and the assembled elves—and, now that she was looking for them, a few Sylvok as well—everything that had happened to her in the past few weeks, from coming home to find her house in shambles and her family dead, to her first encounter with Slobad in the leveler cave, all the way up to the destruction of Kaldra and the creation of the new green moon. She told them of the strange lands she’d visited outside the Tangle, lands most Viridians had never seen: the Glimmervoid and the noble leonin that lived there; the cancerous Mephidross, filled with creatures undead and worse; the Quicksilver Sea, where dwelt four-armed vedalken who enslaved the local human population; and the Oxidda Mountains, where the goblins of Slobad’s tribe dwelled in tunnels surrounding the Great Furnace.

  She did leave out some details, especially concerning serum. She also skipped over some things she just wasn’t ready to talk about yet—Bosh’s connections to Memnarch, her own vengeance-driven slaughter of the vedalken mage Janus, and her repeated mercy toward Geth, the master of the Mephidross. Some things were better left until after the trial.

  When she was finished, Slobad whistled. “Wow, we sure did a lot, huh?” he whispered.

  Lendano was the first judge to speak. “A very interesting tale, Glissa. Tell me, these soul traps you spoke of…you said they were scattered throughout the inside of the world?” Glissa heard Yulyn snort when the elder elf made reference to Mirrodin being hollow.

  “Yes, elder,” Glissa replied. “I think they … keep us here. In this world. All of us. We don’t belong here. I’ve had visions—”

  “Don’t belong here? What is that supposed to mean?” Yulyn interrupted. “We are the Viridian elves, we live in peace with the Tangle. Where do you suggest ‘we’ belong?”

  “No, everyone. Every person on this world,” Glissa said. She raised one hand and pinched her own forearm. “You see me as you see yourselves. Flesh and metal. Metal and flesh. But the metal came later.”

  “How do you know this?” asked the Sylvok judge.

  Glissa muttered something unintelligible.

  “Please repeat that?” the judge prodded.

  “I said, a troll told me.”

  “That would be this ‘Bosh’ you spoke of?” the judge replied.

  “No, Bosh was a golem. A very old golem. I’m talking about Chunth,” Glissa said. She placed special emphasis on that name of the troll. He was a legend among his own people, and a folk story among elf children. Most elves didn’t believe the so-called “First One” even existed. She didn’t know about the Sylvok.

  But Chunth was dead, betrayed by a fellow troll who was working for Memnarch. She would have given anything to have the wise old shaman at her side right now, explaining everything to this silly tribunal.

  “I have heard enough,” Lendano said. “And I do not believe we will be learning any more about the night in question. I am ready to vote, and as is my right, I urge you both to vote with common sense.”

  “Are you passing judgment already, Lendano?” Yulyn asked, still calm but more threatening than ever in his ice-cold way. “Have you given up all pretense of observing our laws? This trial is—”

  “This trial is a needless distraction, Yulyn. Did you not listen to a word Glissa has said?” Lendano interrupted, sternness creeping into his mellifluous voice. “We have assembled a capital tribunal for the first time in hundreds of years, at a time when our people are disappearing. And this Memnarch may still be a threat. We are wasting valuable time. It is also my opinion that we will be less safe, perhaps even enslaved like the humans, if we do not take Glissa’s words of warning to heart.”

  “Disappearing? Is that why the place is so empty?” Glissa asked, procedure be damned.

  “The accused—”

  “Shut up, Yulyn,” Lendano interjected. “We do not know why, but we believe it is tied to the new moon. Most of the disappearances took place at that exact time.”

  “Most?” Glissa asked, the urgency of the trial fading as her curiosity grew. “How long have people been disappearing?”

  “Since you left,” Lendano replied. “Glissa, Lyese, I have known you and your family for centuries. I know that your sister is not capable of what you accuse, Lyese.”

  “But the goblin—”

  “I have allowed this to go on long enough,” Lendano said.

  “You allowed? The law allowed!” Yulyn objected.

  “No!” Lyese screamed. Without a word, she hauled off and slapped Glissa in the face. The older elf girl was so surprised that she stumbled over backwards and landed on her rump. Glissa placed one hand where Lyese had struck her. Without warning, Lyese leaped on Glissa again, hands now balled into fists that pounded Glissa’s chest. The accused felt herself starting to lose consciousness, but she couldn’t strike Lyese.

  “Get off her!” Slobad wailed. Lyese’s weight left Glissa’s chest as the goblin caught Glissa’s sister in a flying tackle. Slobad had gotten free on his own and blown the element of surprise. But Glissa wasn’t complaining.

  She looked for an opening, some way off the terrace. Then a rolling ball of elf and goblin slammed into her legs, sending all three of them tumbling to the forest floor.

  Glissa sat up, rubbing her temple. A knot of scrub brush had broken their fall. Above, she could still hear confusion reigning at the disrupted trial.

  “Slobad, where’s Lyese? Is she okay?” She crawled over to where the goblin was hunched over her sister’s unmoving form.

  “Breathing okay. Not dead,” Slobad assured her. “But we’re gonna be if we stay here, huh?”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” said a familiar voice, and Glissa felt a pair of meaty hands clamp onto her arms.

  “Banryk?” Glissa said.

  “Going to beg me for your life? Make it worth my while,” Banryk growled.

  Glissa snapped her head back and heard a sickening crunch followed by the sound of Banryk crumpling to the ground, unconscious.

  “Wish I could do that,” Slobad said.

  “I wish I could stop,” Glissa said, clutching the back of her aching skull. “He’ll be all right.”

  “Gonna need a new nose though, huh?”

  “I hope he does,” Glissa said. She returned to Lyese.

  Glissa saw the outlines of a youth she knew, and the eyepatch and cropped haircut of an adult she’d just met. Her sister was breathing softly, and was probably safer than Glissa was for now.

  “Okay, Slobad. Let’s get out of here before the rest of them make it down the tree.”

  “I would, but there’s one problem, huh?”

  “What? Is it Yulyn? I don’t see anyth—” Glissa stopped when she heard the sound of hundreds of flapping metal wings, buzzing like giant flies and growing louder by the second. The last time she’d heard that sound had been on the ramparts of Taj Nar.

  “Nope. We got company. Not just elves, huh?” Slobad said. “Have to talk to sister elf later. Ol’ crab-legs not want to stay dead.”

  FRIENDS LIKE THESE

  Bruenna spared a glance over one shoulder. The aerophins were gaining on her, in seconds they’d be close enough not to miss. She pulled hard on the steering controls of her stolen vedalken combat flyer and forced the limber, lightweight vehicle into a steep dive as another bolt of blue fire lanced overhead.

  She couldn’t keep this up. Eventually, the aerophins would land a shot, and she wasn’t sure if she could still summon the energy for flying magic. That’s why she’d taken this craft in the first place. She had to reach the Tangle soon, or she was doomed. If the ’phins didn’t get her, the fall would.

  Or the crash, if she didn’t pull out of this dive. Bruenna’s golden tresses whipped back into her face as she leaned hard on the stick, turning the dive into a roll and leveling off much closer to the ground. She was at the edge of the Tangle. If she coul
d get below the tree canopy she’d have cover from the energy blasts, but sacrifice speed. With luck, any aerophins that followed would have the same difficulty. Bruenna poured on as much power as she dared and entered the forest.

  Even with the wind whipping past her ears, she heard the swarm of aerophins enter the Tangle behind her. It sounded like all of them had given chase. “Very well,” Bruenna muttered. “Have it your way.”

  The magical energies of the Tangle felt strange and wild to the mage from the Quicksilver Sea, and she had trouble shaping the power to her purposes, to say nothing of the fact that she had to control the flyer at the same time.

  The flyer had not been easy to come by. The levelers that attacked her village had been only the first wave. The vedalkens personally led the second, riding flyers like this one and, at the rear, this fleet of damnable aerophins.

  Bruenna hadn’t even had time to mourn the dead. She had to survive long enough to find Glissa and warn her of the vedalken resurgence. She decided to risk slowing down a bit, and concentrated on her home, feeling the distant lines of power sending her what she needed. The familiar mana let her tame the wild magic of the forest.

  Directly behind Bruenna, the ground erupted. Jagged silver spires packed tightly together like predator’s teeth shot upward through the forest floor, rising to a height that rivaled the tallest Tangle tree.

  The results were better than the Neurok leader had hoped. She heard a series of tinny explosions reverberate through her temporary magical wall as several waves of flying constructs found the sudden appearance of a silver wall too much information to take in at once. Bruenna risked another look back.

  The aerophins were still coming. Her trick, while impressive, had not appreciably decreased their numbers.

  The wall had been the last major spell she had in her. Bruenna was running out of options. She also realized with some dismay that she had no idea where specifically in this vast forest she had to go. All she had to go on was a name: “Viridia.”

  Bruenna broke through the thick woods and emerged on a narrow trail that was just open enough to give her room to maneuver and concentrate on magic at the same time. Behind her, the buzz of ’phin wings grew to a roar, and again she was forced to waste time and energy dodging a barrage of energistic flame that shattered the copper tree trunks and tore up the soft metallic duff that covered the trail floor.

  Viridia. Bruenna might still have enough for a magical trace. Glissa was in Viridia—that much she knew from the scrying spell she’d invoked before everything went to hell. Now Bruenna didn’t know where else to turn.

  Centering herself on the trail and praying no ’phin would get off an accurate shot before she finished, Bruenna cast her mind out to the Tangle, sensing every living thing in the forest.

  Okay, too much. Focus.

  A blast from a closing aerophin clipped Bruenna’s robe. A tree took the second shot and exploded in a hail of jagged copper shards just in front of her. Splitting her concentration, she dodged most of the shrapnel, but felt a few tiny knife-like blades pepper her face, arms, and chest.

  The spell was done. It wasn’t flashy. Bruenna simply became aware of where the elf girl currently was, as if it was the road to her own home.

  Not that Bruenna had a home anymore.

  Bruenna wrenched on the flight controls and tore off through the Tangle in search of her last hope. She saw the clearing in the trees that had to be Glissa’s village, and angled in for what she hoped would be a soft landing.

  Bruenna shouldn’t have bothered—a pair of aerophins scored direct hits on her tail. The control crystals exploded, temporarily blinding her with sparks and oily smoke. She pulled mightily on the steering yoke, but shouldn’t have bothered. As soon as she did, the magical engine that drove the flyer sputtered and died. Bruenna’s stomach lurched as the sky dropped out from under her, and the flyer’s nose dipped toward Mirrodin.

  Glissa had hoped she’d seen the last of the vedalken aerophins. The sound of the winged artifacts was umistakeable.

  But Pontifex was dead. If the vedalken artifacts were attacking now, someone else was behind it. It had to be Memnarch.

  “Why you stand there, huh?” Slobad said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her away from Viridia.

  Glissa watched the sky, but also listened with sharp ears. The flapping wings were drawing closer, and amid the hum Glissa could also hear elves descending the Trial Terrace. Below it all, something strange, but also familiar, coming in ahead of the aerophins. Then she heard a small explosive popping noise and the familiar sound cut out.

  “Slobad, did you hear that?”

  “I see it! Duck!” Slobad slammed into Glissa’s side, knocking the elf girl flat as a sleek silver object moving impossibly fast narrowly missed a perfect opportunity to deprive Glissa of her head. The whoosh of displaced air was followed by the grating screech as the speeding, smoking thing collided with a tree.

  “What was that?” the elf girl gasped.

  “Don’t know, but the ’phins were chasing it,” Slobad observed. “And here they come!”

  “Wait!” Glissa cried. “Lyese! Slobad, I can’t leave her lying here.” The elf heaved her sister over her shoulders. “Okay, lead the way. I’ll keep up.”

  Slobad jogged ahead of her and away from the encroaching roar of flying constructs. A barrage of sliver-blue fire struck a few feet away, shattering the ground. Glissa stumbled after Slobad as best she could with the weight on her shoulders, for once thankful that goblins had such short legs.

  Another volley of crackling firebolts exploded in the canopy above them. Glissa yelped as bits of shattered copper peppered her hind quarters, sending her stumbling over an exposed root. Glissa tumbled face-first to the ground. Lyese fell limp and rolled a ways ahead. Slobad stopped, scooped up Lyese on his own back, and kept running.

  “Slobad! Run! I’ll catch up,” Glissa said, turning to face the ’phins. She’d had enough.

  “Are you cra—never mind, stupid question,” Slobad shouted back.

  “I can handle them. You have to get Lyese out of here. Please,” Glissa said.

  “Don’t get killed, huh?” Slobad said.

  “’Course not. Just get to whatever crashed up there. If it’s the vedalken who’s behind this, and it’s still alive, try to keep it there until I’m finished. And don’t drop my sister,” Glissa said. “Go, they’re almost here.”

  Slobad nodded and charged ahead as best he could. The elf girl returned to the problem at hand.

  “Great,” Glissa muttered. “No weapon, no goblin. No problem.” Despite their bizarre vedalken design and deadly energy blasts, the accursed things were still just constructs, after all. Glissa had a way with such constructs. She felt a familiar tingle in her spine as they drew closer.

  Looking inward, she called forth the jade fire. Glissa’s copper skin began to crackle with energy, and her eyes glowed with eerie light. Glissa pulled her hands toward her chest then flung them outward. A wave of green fire slammed into the forefront of the aerophin formation then split in a fractal pattern that resembled a pane of shattered crystal in the sky.

  Glissa poured death into the killing machines, and they died in droves. Tendrils of swirling, smoky energy snaked around each individual artifact. Glissa felt each one as the energy slammed into their magical power sources, causing some to shut down immediately, making others attack allies, but causing most to simply explode like a goblin cannon.

  Glissa felt quite peaceful, and very strong. Was this what it felt like to be a planeswalker, to touch that power?

  The aerophins’ formation crumbled. With the mental equivalent of a snapping lute string, Glissa felt the last aerophin die, and the spark energy dissipated as rapidly as it had coalesced. She opened her eyes, which she realized she had held clenched shut the entire time. She’d somehow seen the aerophins anyway.

  The aerophins were dead, but their corpses hadn’t simply vanished. They’d built up considerable momentum, and now
thousands of burning, twisted hunks of jagged metal rained down. Glissa raised her hands again, hoping to stop the tumbling wreckage somehow, but the power had either been spent or left her entirely. She tried to run, but her legs refused to move, and her vision began to blur.

  Heavy, booted footsteps crashed through the foliage behind, and Glissa slowly tried to turn. Whoever approached was running into their doom. “Slobad? Stay back!” Glissa called, “They’re going to hit any second!”

  “I’ve lost enough family recently,” a distinctly ungoblinish voice replied, scooping Glissa up and slinging her over steady, armored shoulders.

  “Lyese!” Glissa coughed as the rough movement knocked the wind out of her.

  “Just shut up,” her younger sister replied. “Before I change my mind.” Without another word, Lyese bolted away from the hail of burning wreckage.

  CRASH AND BURN

  “Ha!” Slobad said, trying to clap Glissa and the new arrival on the shoulders but succeeding only in smacking both on the small of the back. “Told you you could do it, huh? Slobad have faith! Strength in numbers, huh? Ha!”

  Bruenna had survived the crash of her stolen flyer with only a few scratches and bruises marring her bluish skin. Glissa had been relieved to see the mage, about whose fate she’d feared the worst. The small group was now gathered amid the smoking aerophin wreckage.

  Glissa stood on unsteady legs and gazed at the new hell she’d brought to the Tangle. Slobad offered her an arm, but she waved him away.

  The rain of burning constructs had crashed with thousands of fiery impacts into the Tangle, knocking some trees down and causing them to burst into oily flame, turning others to glowing slag in explosive collisions. The ground was covered in twisted hunks of vedalken artifacts and a viscous, sticky substance that leaked from the wrecked artifact creatures and burned with thick black smoke.