Cory Herndon - The Fifth Dawn

“Better do this if we’re gonna do it, huh?” Slobad said, tucking his improvised dagger into his belt and marching off toward the far end of the tunnel. The goblin was going to waste no time getting clear of the remaining leveler wreckage. Glissa set off after him before another of her fallen enemies could get posthumous revenge.

They made good time down the long, cavernous lacuna, though the walk was long. Unlike the older tunnel under Lumengrid, this one was fresh and free of moisture and muck. Glissa was surprised to see wiry mosses and flaky copper lichens growing bountifully on the lacuna walls, and patches of soft Tangle grass sprang up every few feet.

“Glissa?”

“Yeah?”

“How you going to kill Memnarch, huh?”

Such a simple question, and one she was going to have to answer soon. For now, she replied, “The way I’d kill anyone else that was trying to wipe out everything I know and love.”

“That not an answer,” Slobad said.

“All right. I don’t know. Is that what you want to hear?” Glissa said. “I can try magic, or this ‘sword.’ Maybe I’ll just talk him into taking a flying leap into the Great Furnace. But we’ve got to do something. I don’t know what doing that-” she jerked her thumb in the direction of the clattering wreckage that still unhung suspended in midair behind them-“takes out of me.”

“Slobad can see,” Slobad said. “You still on fire, huh?”

Glissa looked down at her clothes. A few wisps of persistent greenish smoke still clung to them, and she batted at it with one hand.

Glissa suddenly felt very weary. “I can’t keep doing this. I feel so drained,” she confessed. Her voice echoed down the tunnel, rebounding around the tube and coming back to her strange and altered. Drained. Drained. Drained …

That wasn’t her voice. The slippery tones rang ominously in her head, a stranger who hadn’t been invited. The words slithered through her consciousness, whispering, pleading, threatening and inviting. Drained …

Glissa shook her head, and the sound faded. Odd. She rubbed her ear with one thumb and jogged to catch up with the goblin.

“Did you hear something?” She asked.

“No, but echo crazy in here,” Slobad replied. “Hey, something making no sense, huh?”

“What’s that?”

“The levelers, the aerophins, all of it,” Slobad explained. “Why attack you on the surface, when this tunnel is wide open? Why not send levelers up the other way, too? Slobad no general, but even I can see that just bad strategy. No need to attack from so far away when good tunnel right here.”

“Flare, that hadn’t even occurred to me,” the elf said. She wished she had an answer.

“Hold up,” Glissa said, eyeing the distant end of the lacuna. She could see the swirling anti-color of the mana core crackling at the center of Mirrodin, but nothing else. She had no way of knowing what might be on the other side. The lacuna appeared empty, but Glissa was a hunter. Appearances could deceive.

“What you think, huh?” Slobad asked.

“Flare!” Glissa swore and clenched her fists in frustration. “That’s it. So, so stupid.” She slapped a hand to her forehead. “They weren’t chasing us. They were herding us. He wants me to find him.”

“Why? You wanna kill him, huh?” Slobad said. “Why he want you to find him?”

“Because I think it’s a trap, and we dropped right into it.”

“So why chase Slobad, huh?”

“I don’t know,” Glissa confessed. “Maybe because you’re important to me.”

Slobad blushed, blood flushing his greenish face a rusty crimson.

“But he played with us either way,” Glissa continued. “He couldn’t lose. The levelers-and the aerophins-were sent to either chase me back here, or kill me. Damn Yulyn! If he hadn’t taken us in, we could have made sure Memnarch was dead. This might all be over now. We gave Memnarch time to regroup, and he took it.”

“But crab-legs blew it, huh?” Slobad said in a transparent attempt to brighten her spirits that failed miserably. “No way to get the spark. The moon was the only way, right? Right?”

“Yeah, sure,” Glissa replied, but she wasn’t. “Now he just wants me dead. I hope.” She slapped a hand on Slobad’s shoulder. “Well, what do you say? Should we go check out this track, or try to get back up through that floating deathtrap?”

Slobad cinched up his belt, puffed his chest, and grimaced. “One second,” he said, then reared back and released a long, lingering belch that echoed through the lacuna. “Sorry. Ate too much elf food,” he said when he saw Glissa’s incredulous look. “Onward, huh? Don’t want to stick around here.”

“Slobad, I can’t imagine why you lived alone when I met you.”

“That nothing, huh? You stop by the Feast of Krark sometime-you see the real talent.”

The lower half of the lacuna took a while longer to traverse than the upper half, but then again, Glissa and Slobad were no longer plummeting. The elf girl was surprised to see small animals dashing and hiding amongst the brill moss and razor grass. She wondered if they’d been spontaneously summoned by the magic that still hung thick in the air, or if the little creatures had overcome fear of the unknown to colonize this strange new home. Some she recognized immediately, but a few were peculiar. Denizens of the interior, perhaps.

Odd to think of the ground she had walked and hunted for so many years was only a silver eggshell surrounding a very large yolk, and she was reminded of the flare-vision that had struck her when they first arrived at Viridia.

“You know,” Glissa said, “I think we might be paranoid after all. We’re almost through. If he doesn’t try something soon, we won’t be cornered anymore.”

“What, you trying to get us killed?” Slobad hissed just ahead of her. “Don’t crazy elves know anything about bad luck, huh? Jinxes?”

“Sorry,” Glissa said. “Just thinking out-”

She froze in mid-sentence when a tall, humanoid figure materialized from thin air at the edge of the lacuna, maybe twenty feet in front of them. The glare from the mana core-what Slobad’s people, especially his friends in the Krark cult, referred to as “Mother’s Heart”-obscured the figure’s features and face, but a corona of silver outlined the shape. Slobad skidded to a halt and had his mandible-dagger drawn before Glissa could say a word.

“It’s him, Glissa!” Slobad hissed.

Glissa brandished her makeshift scimitar. “What do you want, Malil? You’re in my way, and you don’t want to be, trust me.” She hoped the stolen leveler’s scythe blade looked menacing as she added, “I’m here for Memnarch.”

The metal man’s response was unexpected as it was perplexing. He tossed his head back and laughed. The sound was tinny, and betrayed something that bordered on mania.

“Oh, you’re ‘here for Memnarch,’ is it?” Malil sneered, and stepped a few feet into the lacuna toward Glissa and Slobad. “You are right. Just not the way you think.” Memnarch’s lieutenant raised his right arm with a clenched fist, and flicked his silver hand at the wrist. In less than a second, a blade that rivaled Glissa’s stolen weapon slid into place, extending from the metal man’s forearm. The quicksilver blade glowed faintly in the dim light of the lacuna.

It seemed like ages since someone had challenged her to a fair fight, and Glissa was sick of battling armies, judges, and mindless machines. She twirled her weapon and grinned. “Well, why don’t you correct me, then?” With her empty hand she threw a subtle wave to Slobad, hoping he would get the message: Stand clear.

Artificial being though he might have been, Malil was easily goaded. With a metallic roar, he charged, the blade that his right arm had become raised high.