Paul Thompson - Nemesis

"A waste of a good arm," Kireno said. He knelt by Shamus and patted his face roughly to revive him.

Eladamri leaned on the rail, looking intently at Takara. "That was cold."

"I learned from an early age, if someone gets in your way, put them aside," said Takara.

They cleaned up the bridge of all traces of trouble and hurried to the map tower. The door was locked, but Takara claimed she knew how to circumvent the mechanism. She fearlessly thrust her hand into the flowbot jaws and manipulated the lock inside. Eladamri and the rebels waited to see if the jaws would bite off her slender arm.

"My father taught me this," she said. "Good for sneaking in where you're not allowed… I hope Volrath hasn't changed the locks since he threw me in prison."

With a loud clank, the doors spread apart. Takara carefully withdrew her arm from the lock.

"After you," said Eladamri.

The interior of the map tower was suffused with wavering green light, which fostered the odd sensation of being underwater. It came from the tower cone, glazed entirely with heavy, irregular panes of jade-green glass. The upper half of the map tower was taken up by some kind of complex machinery, all gears and cams and glowing powerstones. Takara led Eladamri and the rebels into an amphitheater, which filled the bottom quarter of the structure. This single room was over three hundred feet wide and featured two concentric seating platforms, focused on a central column of intricate design. A set of wide steps descended to this column, and overhead, a segmented gantry curled above the central pillar like the tail of a huge metallic scorpion. As they entered the vast, empty chamber, their footsteps rang hollowly off the green glass walls.

"Welcome to the Map Room," Takara said. Her voice was still weak from privation, yet the acoustics of the map room enabled her voice to be heard easily.

"I don't see any maps," said Shamus, still groggy from his fight on the bridge.

"I'll show you."

She descended a staircase to the inner ring of seats. At the foot of the steps was a panel, covered with strange glyphs and symbols. Takara stood before this arcane altar, hands poised. Then, as if playing a musical instrument, her fingers flew over the controls, touching the symbols in a complex sequence.

With a deep hum, the enormous machine awoke. The broad descending column, covered with brazen cog wheels and bundles of tubing, retracted ponderously into the ceiling. It left behind a thick stump, serrated with large angular flaps. These flaps folded outward and stopped. When the column was about thirty feet up, it locked in place.

"Now what?" Eladamri asked in a hushed voice. "Here." She stroked a single glyph.

The air between the column and the serrated base shimmered. A swirl of gray and green fog formed, whirling on both axes. It darkened, became opaque, and assumed the shape of an oval spinning globe. More definition developed, and the rapid rotation slowed. In seconds, the globe settled into a mottled gray egg, turning slowly on its vertical axis. "Rath," Takara said.

Eladamri looked on, fascinated. "This is Rath?" Takara nodded. "For years I've heard philosophers debate priests about the shape of the world. Most of the holy ones taught the world is flat, surrounded by a void, like a stone lying in a stream. Some philosophers claimed it was round, like an egg." "Which did you believe?"

"I always considered it unimportant. Since no one can see the whole world at once, what difference does it make what shape it is?"

"It's with knowledge like this that the evincar can locate and strike his enemies."

"Show me the Skyshroud Forest," he said. Takara toyed with the controls, and the gray globe was instantly replaced by a flattened half-sphere. Centered in the portion facing Eladamri was a broad, irregular patch of dark green.

"This is Skyshroud as seen from a height of 100,000 feet," she said. Punching a button made the green patch treble in size. "From 20,000 feet." Takara touched the panel once more, and the image swelled to cover the entire hemisphere.

"From 10,000 feet," she said. "This is how it looks from Predator."

Eladamri looked for the Eye of Korai, his village, and other features he knew. None were discernible. There was texture to the image, made up of taller and shorter trees, but the canopy was as featureless as the sea.

"Now I know why Volrath and Greven have had such trouble catching us," the elf said. "Even with this great artifact, the Skyshroud is still our shield and sanctuary."

Intrigued by the maps, Kireno and Shamus came down and joined them. For several minutes, the rebels were lost in the bird's eye view of Rath.

"Here's something none of you have ever seen." Takara played the panel expertly, and the hemispherical view of Rath was replaced by a brilliantly colored globe.

Compared to Rath, which was made up of shades of gray, green, and brown, this world was a blinding array of colors- bright blue oceans, yellow and red deserts, smoky purple mountains. Feathery clouds filled the atmosphere, softening the contrasts between the sharper colors. The whole thing was like a jewel, a bauble fit for an empress's brow.

Something about the colorful world moved Eladamri deeply. "What is that, Takara?"

"Dominaria."

He knew the name. Weatherlight had come from there, with its motley crew of heroes-and so had Crovax. Dominaria. The name tripped from his tongue as pleasingly as the rainbow sphere delighted his eye.

"Tell me about Dominaria," he said.

"It's the original home of our kind, yours and mine," Takara replied. "The ancestors of every soul on Rath came from there. Some ancient sages say even the overlords came from there, long ago. There's a prophecy that says the demon world will one day tear apart the clouds and rain destruction on the Bright World. I think the seers knew what we're only beginning to realize-the purpose of Rath is to destroy Dominaria."

"How can that be? They're separate worlds. I know people and machines fly between them, but how can Rath destroy another world?"

Weary, Takara braced herself against the control panel. "I was never educated about such high things. What I can tell you is, Rath is a shadow, created by the overlords of Phyrexia as a gateway to Dominaria. Just as sleeping mortals serve as bridges to the terrors of the night, so is Rath the nightmare bridge to Dominaria. For hundreds of years, Rath has been growing, coming closer to the old home world. The Stronghold is the key point, the focus of the overlords' grand design. This dark fortress is where nightmares are made flesh, the sword-point against Dominaria's throat."

"Gods preserve us!" Shamus muttered.

"You said your father served Volrath-where is he now?" the elf asked.

"Gone. Away." She shuffled backward from the panel. "I don't know where."

"Why didn't Volrath kill you? Does he know of your work with the rebellion?"

She laughed dryly. "Volrath cared nothing about my work with the Dal resistance. He locked me up to make certain my father wouldn't betray him-"

Takara's eyes rolled back in her head. Kireno sprang to her side and caught her in his arms. Without her hands on the controls, the map apparatus shut down. The double sphere of Rath-Dominaria rapidly lost color and definition, finally winking out like a vanishing soap bubble.

Ertai had to give Crovax credit. The man was a remorseless killer, but he did have a certain amount of cold-blooded style. Ertai was feeling generous as he waited to die.

He was imbedded up to his neck in a cube of flowstone eight feet wide. At the rear of the cube a thin pipe stretched back to one of the main flowstone conduits. Little by little, the cube was growing larger, and therein lay Crovax's wicked genius: the cube was balanced atop the flowstone furnace. An endless blue torrent of energy plunged into the crucible, meeting the raw lava rock brought up from below the Citadel. When Crovax and his minions placed him here, Ertai had been at least twelve inches from the edge of the furnace cone. In the past four hours the cube had grown at least eight inches per side. In another six or seven hours the cube would be so large the narrow ledge could not support it. He would topple forward into the works and be disintegrated by the furious energy beam.