Robert Wintermute - Zendikar - In the Teeth of Akoum

Why are you here? Nissa said. To finish the job?

The goblin frowned. It was not you I was trying to knock off the mountain. It was the vampire. The one who wants to put the ancient ones deeper into their mountain. My mistress decreed it.

Then why are you here?

I want you to take the true path. Your days are few if you do not.

Why?

These mountains contain a protector. You have not seen it yet, but it has detected you. It stalks you.

And you have evaded detection?

Once again the goblin bowed slightly. Nissa wished he would stop doing that.

What is the nature of this enemy?

They are children of the ancient ones.

Brood lineage? Nissa said. We have handled them before.

Here in the Teeth they are the goblin wet his cracked and purple lips wilder.

Why have they not attacked us then?

I have been watching them for many days. They do not act as I thought they would. They seem to consider things more than I had thought.

Nissa looked at the goblin queerly.

So you want us to travel a different path to avoid the brood?

Yes, please.

I will tell you what I think, Nissa said.

I think you are trying to direct us down an incorrect trail by telling me that the brood are tracking us. I have not smelled brood or seen any sign in the dust.

The goblin sighed. On the morrow you will come to a split in the trail, he said. See if you do not. Take the right trail. It is the smallest trail.

And it ends at a sheer cliff?

No, the goblin said. It ends at the Eye of Ugin.

Assuming this trail does lead to the Eye, Nissa said. You know that Sorin will fortify the prison of the Eldrazi, correct?

The wind picked up suddenly and howled past Nissa s long ears at the mention of the ancient ones.

I know the Mortifier intends to do that. But you and the reading vampire have decided to release the gift in the loam, Mudheel said. My mistress will do the same thing. But

But what? Why should we come along if that is what she is doing?

I am unsure she can control whatever comes out of that hole.

Nissa thought for a quick moment.

And you want us there if the Eldrazi do not do what she says if they decide that Zendikar is as good a place as any to dwell?

The goblin nodded slowly before bowing and stepping back into the shadows.

Nissa slept that night on the hard rock. The next day she and the others ascended higher and higher into the mountains. The clouds flicked by so close overhead that Nissa felt she could reach out and touch them.

The trail entered into a series of switchbacks that took them until the sun was past its zenith in the sky to complete. Then the trail split. The main trail continued forward, but two small offshoots extended right and left and disappeared behind the rock. Of the two splits, the right one was the smallest path by far, composed of gravel and dust that had not been disturbed in days. How had the trail not been disturbed?

Let us take this smaller trail, Nissa said.

Why would we do that? Sorin said. It does not lead anywhere.

And this large trail does? Nissa said.

It looks more like a trail that leads somewhere than the small one.

Nissa paused. What could she say to convince them? I m telling you we should take this one, Nissa said.

Anowon stopped and cocked his head at Nissa.

At that moment Sorin pointed, and two mass-of-tentacles brood floated into view ahead. Each of them was different and larger than any the group had seen before. They had very large and thick looking obsidian-like rock mantles that floated around their writhing bodies.

At the same time, three brood with large bone heads and no faces scrawled their ways onto the large trail, pulling themselves on thick tentacles.

Both groups advanced on the party.

Sorin immediately began to sing. His voice boomed forth, knocking both of the large brood on the ground into heaps of blood. The wind blew the smell of putrefaction toward them. Nissa fanned out to the right to get away from it. The flying brood drifted closer. They seemed ponderously large to Nissa, incapable of quickness. But her thoughts were shattered moments later when one of the flying brood shot out a tentacle and caught Sorin around the neck.

Nissa twisted her staff and snapped her stem sword out, severing the creature s tentacle and freeing Sorin. Sorin pulled off the severed tentacle and flung it aside. He spoke two words and raised his right hand to the creature. The air around them went icy cold, and motes of power bloomed around Sorin s hand. The brood missing one tentacle trembled. The next moment a piece popped free from the brood s body and fell beating to the ground. The creature had no face that Nissa could see, but she had the distinct feeling that the brood was looking down at the beating thing on the ground, which could only have been its heart. In the next moment it crumpled and fell to the ground and lay like an empty wineskin on the red rocks.

The last creature flew at her.

Nissa put her staff on the rock of the mountain. When she took a deep breath her deepest fears were confirmed: only trickles of power were reaching her from the various mana tributaries she depended on. Nissa closed her eyes and took another deep breath. She seemed to be unable to catch her mana bonds. It was Zendikar herself that was hindering her, almost as if she wanted Nissa to fall here on this rocky spot. It had happened to Nissa before, of course it was part of the unpredictably of Zendikar but never at such a vital time. There was mana here, gouts of it. But it seemed to flutter around her, like a mothling around a lantern.

To make matters worse, two more brood appeared at that instant. One was the bone-headed variety the other, floating. As Nissa watched they both began moving toward her at an alarming speed. The floating brood tucked its tentacles close to its body, and charged.

Nissa had only a moment. She channeled what little mana she could and formed an image in her mind of an eeka bird a large, pest bird with a long beak. Nissa brought the bird to her and sent it hurling, beak-first at the brood.

The eeka flew straight and buried its beak deep in the brood s mass of concentrated tentacles. The brood stopped its charge and used one tentacle to find the bird and throw it aside. By that time Nissa had drawn her stem sword as rigid as a spike and was charging forward. She pushed off from a boulder and jumped high into the air where she executed a flip and hurled downwards. She plunged the spike into the center of the mass of squirming tentacles, burying it all the way to her fists. Nissa knew that once inside a body, the stem would put out rhizomes and use the blood vessels and arteries to travel through the body. Eventually the roots would fill it.

But that did not happen to the brood beneath her. Instead it found her and began winding tentacles around her neck and body, squeezing until she could not breathe. Nissa clawed at the tentacles and pulled, but the brood s tentacles wrapped around her wrists and ankles and squeezed. She struggled, and the brood s grip tightened. Soon the red rocks and blue sky went black and white, and spots began to appear before her eyes. Nissa felt the strength pass from her.

Anowon ran to the brood and swiped a swath out of its tentacles. Another tentacle swept down at him, and he caught it and bit out a sizable chunk before flinging it aside. But before he could climb any closer to Nissa, another tentacle seized his ankle and threw him back and away.

The blackness was taking over Nissa s view when she felt something on her hands and ankles and neck the tickle of the rhizomes peeking out from the tentacles. An instant later the brood s hold loosened, and Nissa fell to the rock, gasping.

She looked up to see Sorin and Anowon fighting the last two brood. As she watched, Sorin touched the blade of his sword. It pulsed black, and the Mortifier swung and swiped off one of the bifurcated arms reaching for him. The rot from the cut spread like a blue shadow through the rest of the brood s body. The creature s bony head, void of any semblance of a face, inclined sideways at an inquisitive angle as its body suddenly withered to the texture of an autumn leaf and fell to the ground with a dry crack.