Jess Lebow: The Darksteel Eye

Holding onto its steering sail, the goblin pulled a narrow crowbar from his pouch. Jamming it between interlocking plates, he pried the device’s outer shell free, opening a hole large enough for him to stick his fist inside. Reaching in, the goblin tinkered with the leveler’s innards.

Glissa watched it come, the goblin on its back. Seeing him dig into that artifact creature brought a smile to Glissa’s face. When it counted, Slobad was the bravest goblin on Mirrodin.

A whistling sound brought Glissa from her reverie. Diving forward, she managed to duck and tumble away from a second leveler’s blades as they came down where her head used to be. Coming to her feet, Glissa pulled her sword. It seemed silly to try to dismantle a device with a sword. She wished she could turn that pointy blade into a pounding hammer.

But this was no ordinary sword. She didn’t know where it had come from, only that she had found it inside the Tree of Tales in Chunth’s chamber. It was more powerful than any weapon she’d ever wielded, and for that, at this moment, she was grateful.

The blade rang as she bashed back the new leveler’s attacks. Sparing a glance to her left, she saw the leveler with Slobad on its back was almost on her. Looking back and leaning in, she lunged for the artifact’s glowing yellow eye. Her blade struck the seam, lodging between the housing and the lens. Twisting her sword, Glissa popped the creature’s eye from its socket, and the device swung side to side, grasping with its arm blades like a blind man trying to catch a thief.

Glissa turned to the leveler with Slobad on its back. The construct brought its arms together, scissoring down on the elf with its razor-sharp grasp. The artifact was close, closer than Glissa had thought. She rolled backward, falling onto her behind and ducking away from the blades. The creature missed her but just barely, and it opened its arms, ready for a second deadly embrace.

Glissa scooted back with little room to move. The leveler behind her still flailed blindly. The one before her leaned down, ready to take her head from her body. The killing device brought its blades together, right down on her. Pushed back against a flailing, blinded leveler, she had no room to move. Glissa cringed, bracing for the impact-but it never came.

The artifact creature veered to its right, turning away from Glissa and lunging at the flailing leveler behind her.

“Kill it,” shouted Slobad from the creature’s back. “Cut it up.” The device followed his orders.

Glissa rolled away and got to her feet. The two levelers cut into each other. Sparks flew as Slobad’s fighter slashed through the blinded monster’s torso. The goblin leaped onto the back of another device, his crowbar gripped in his three-fingered hand.

Bosh smashed devices with both fists. Bruenna froze the oncoming monsters in their tracks or blasted them away with gusts of wind. Slobad turned them against each other or dismantled them as fast as his little fingers could pry them apart. Glissa battled them back with her sword and her magic.

Still, the mass of sharpened creatures came on, endless and unrelenting. The flood of levelers swarmed over Bosh. Their spiked wheels pushed them up his body. Their scythe blades struck him, and his body rang out like a tolling bell. In a matter of seconds, the giant metal man disappeared under a pile of killing devices.

A high-pitched squeal filled Glissa’s ears. Slobad had jumped from one device, and he now rode on the back of another. His arm was buried to his elbow inside the creature’s metal frame, and his face was held tight in a pinched, pained expression. With the fist of his other hand he beat on the leveler’s hide, pushing, pulling, and squirming to get his hand free. Something had gone wrong. Slobad was caught.

The leveler he rode reached its arms back and swiped at the goblin. Slobad ducked, but the tip of the creature’s scythe blade caught the side of the goblin’s head. A chunk of Slobad’s scalp sliced away, and blood spurted down his neck.

Glissa’s heart sank. Her stomach felt as if she’d swallowed a bottomless pit, and the hairs along her back and neck stood at attention. She watched as the beast took another swipe at Slobad. The goblin disappeared from sight.

The creatures swarmed in, climbing on each other’s back to reach into the sky and pluck Bruenna from where she flew. Glissa heard the human wizard scream as she was brought back down to earth. The horde of metallic monsters closed in on the elf, blocking out the reflected blue-white light from the mana core.

Thrashing about with her blade held high, the elf fought off one leveler after another. Scythe blades fell to the ground. Eye sockets went flying. Spiked wheels were cut in two. Still, the circle closed down, and there were too many to fight on her own.

Slipping her blade into the crease between two metal plates, Glissa lunged to kill another leveler. As she stretched out, a sharpened claw tore into her side, then a spiked wheel collided with her leg, and the elf fell backward onto the ground.

In seconds she could feel her arms pinned and her legs immobilized. Someone pulled the sword from her grip, and the tip of another blade touched her exposed belly. Spreadeagled, limbs held firm, a deadly weapon pressed against her gut, Glissa thought about her family-and Kane. She was going to die, and with any luck, she’d see them again in whatever place elves went to after they left the horrors of this world.

Even the thought of seeing her parents again couldn’t quell the fear inside her. Life on Mirrodin had been no picnic, but she didn’t want to die-especially not at the hands of a leveler. Over the past few rotations she had come to believe, really believe , that she had a destiny, a greater purpose, but her quest had become a monumental failure. She had traveled to bring her parents’ killer to justice, only to be slaughtered in the same fashion. It seemed tragic.

She wasn’t the only one here. She had friends now, friends who had followed her to this place. Though she couldn’t see them, their faces flashed in her mind: Slobad, Bosh, even Bruenna whom she’d only recently met. They were all going to die.

Glissa’s fear once again gave way to anger, and she screamed. Not a shriek of terror or the startled scream of a little girl, but a feral, predatory screech that dripped of power. She took in a deep breath. The pounding of her heart filled her head, and the grinding wheels of the levelers filled her ears. She looked up at the metal beasts holding her down, and she hated them. She wanted to smash each and every one into greasy bits of scrap metal.

Then something inside snapped. Glissa felt as if a door had been opened deep within. Power flowed out over her body, and all her muscles tensed. A wave of green energy exploded over the battlefield, filling the interior of Mirrodin with a bright flash of light-followed by silence. Nothing could be heard, not the grinding of levelers, not the buzzing hum of the mana core.

All was quiet.

The light subsided. Levelers were flung back. As if a switch had been flipped reversing gravity for a brief moment, the killing devices were launched into the air. Their blades flailed. Their steering sails flapped side to side without result. Just as suddenly, the switch was re-engaged, and the constructs fell back to earth, smashing into other levelers and crashing into a tangled heap.

Glissa was free.

Beside her, Bruenna hovered. The artifact monsters that had pulled her from the sky were thrown away, and the wizard launched herself back into the air-no longer a captive.

The pile of killing devices completely covering Bosh were torn off, tossed to the metal ground like discarded children’s toys. Their heavy carapaces had cracked on impact, sending metallic sinews and glass lenses flying in all directions. Metal torsos collapsed in on themselves, smashing the mechanisms inside. The glowing yellow lights in their eyes went out.