Cory Herndon - The Fifth Dawn

At the same time, Raksha collided with Memnarch’s leg, which buckled and folded under his body. The combination of suddenly losing one corner of his support and the violent downward pull Glissa exerted on the Miracore was too much to take. Memnarch toppled over and fell sideways onto the lift disk that had carried the elf girl into the chamber in the first place. The round metal plate dropped under the Guardian’s weight. As power continued to pour into the web with nowhere to go, Memnarch roared from below as the disk reached the floor of the foyer level. Glissa heard a series of clacks and clangs as he opened the doorway heading out.

The elf let out a battle cry and jumped feet first into the hole, Raksha landing with a clang and a little more grace beside her. They tumbled out onto the occultation disk and scrambled after the Guardian onto the surface into the humming air above the mana core.

Magic surged and made her bones hum. Glissa could barely hear herself think. But she didn’t need to think to get her hands on the Miracore. Glissa and Raksha charged toward Memnarch, side by side. To the millions of watching gemstone eyes that encircled the Ascension Web, they looked like suicidal insects attacking a hungry vorrac.

Memnarch continued to scream and rage, his fury no longer expressable in words. The last-minute breakdown in his plan seemed to have driven the Guardian completely mad. Glissa wasn’t listening anyway. She was stretching her mind out to the Tangle.

“Raksha, stay back,” she said as they barreled toward the Guardian.

“Not a chance,” he replied.

“Sorry, someone’s got to get back to the surface and tell them what’s happened,” Glissa said. “You’re the only one who can do it now.” Before the leonin realized what was happening, Glissa spun and landed a solid punch on the leonin’s muzzle. He dropped in mid run and rolled to a stop, unconscious. Glissa, still running, whirled and continued headlong into Memnarch, who had his fists in the air, imploring the wild energy all around the interior to enter his body.

“You want the spark?” Glissa yelled. “Then you can have it!”

The elf girl vaulted into the air from a dead run, her skin tingling with suppressed spark energy and Tangle magic, and finally released the destructive power into Memnarch’s face. His new metal body writhed under the emerald fire, and the Guardian clawed the air, screeching in agony. Still channeling the destructive energy, Glissa slammed into the Guardian’s chest and dug her claws into his silver skin, which melted under her touch.

Menarch brought up an insectoid leg and swiped at Glissa, who had to release her grip to dodge the blow. She lost her her concentration, and swore as she felt the destructive energy fizzle out. Somehow Memnarch still stood.

The two combatants circled each other warily. Memnarch moved slowly and smoldered, his shiny new form blackened and scorched, but the blast of destruction had only weakened him. The remaining serum tank on his back started to glow and pulse, and he turned to close on Glissa. The elf girl tried to get around him, but she was too near to the edge of the occultation disk.

Memnarch raised his humanoid hands, which began to glow as the Guardian summoned his own destructive spell. This was Glissa’s chance. When the Guardian shouted his incantation, she ducked under his raised arms, seized the Miracore in slippery, bloody hands, and jerked it free, breaking the chain from which it hung. She dove under Memnarch’s torso and through his arachnoid legs, emerging on the other side, and onto her feet in one smooth gymnastic motion. Dizzy, she turned back to face her foe.

Memnarch lumbered around to face her, their positions suddenly reversed. Using every ounce of will she had left, Glissa drew in the power of the Tangle above and felt the spark energy reignite. She raised the Miracore in both hands and slammed it flat against Memnarch’s chest, pouring green destruction through the ancient artifact and into the Guardian, who now had no flesh to resist her power.

Memnarch screamed anew. The Guardian, his spell forgotten, stumbled back … back. Glissa pressed forward, pain beginning to blossom in her forearms as the Miracore melted into the Guardian’s silver skin. The artifact fused with Memnarch’s metal body in the blazing heat.

Glissa still had the Miracore firmly in her grasp when Memnarch’s two rear legs slipped from the edge of the disk. Memnarch didn’t stop screaming until the entangled enemies passed through one of the wide openings in the mesh sphere and plunged headlong into the mana core.

Though his mouth hadn’t spoken a word in years, Slobad screamed when Glissa and her nemesis fell into the mana core. He saw Glissa die from a thousand different angles and points of view, each one causing him to scream anew.

The only friend he’d ever had….

But Slobad didn’t have time to scream any more. The intricately planned Ascension Web was still operating as designed, despite the deaths of the two beings that were supposed to be on the receiving end. Slobad watched from his bug constructs’ eyes as the web sent more and more magical energy into the mana core, which started to glow brighter and brighter until even his remote crystal eyes couldn’t stand the glare.

As the mana core reached its limit-something no being on Mirrodin had the power to change, even Memnarch-the energy boomeranged back into the web and immediately exceeded the carrying capacity of even a plane-sized artifact. Purified, amplified, and devastating, the wash of power was like nothing Slobad had ever felt before, even in the last five years of being connected to the machine.

The magic surged into the goblin’s withered, limbless body through his connection to the rack. Slobad suspected he screamed again, but if he did he couldn’t hear it. Millions of tiny pinpricks of pain stabbed his mind from the inside as the energy of all the soul traps on Mirrodin forced its way in.

Raksha Golden Cub, back broken, legs useless, pulled himself through the small narrow door at the base of the diamond structre in his best attempt to escape the blistering heat of the core. He flopped onto his back in the small room, neither knowing nor caring that his bare feet still protruded from the entrance.

The energy struck the occultation disk like a tidal wave, but the leonin, protected by darksteel, easily survived the initial blast.

The victory was short lived. Rolling on to collide with the reflective silver surface of the interior, the wave shattered a small, square, glowing object, one of thousands within the needle spires that lined the lacunae above.

Raksha Golden Cub was dead before he hit the floor.

In a narrow draw lined with craggy ironstone walls, a wizened old goblin prophet stood between a pair of lumbering megathreshers and a few hundred of the last free people on Mirrodin. Even Vektro’s bomb had not ended the attack, and things looked grim once more. Dwugget had both hands raised, palms out, and they started to glow red. His guilt over his complicity long forgotten, if not forgiven, the goblin was determined to save those he still could.

“Hochocha!” Dwugget cried, and twin spheroids of devastation launched from each hand. The fireball clusters engulfed the mighty constructs in flame, and after a few seconds the fire was no longer magical as the creatures’ delicate innards ignited. Black, oily smoke roiled into the sky.

Dwugget spun around to see who was still with him. He’d been fighting so long, he didn’t even know if the Khanha or Bruenna were alive. They’d left so long ago, and if the battle had reached this far, he suspected they were already dead.

Three seconds later, so was Dwugget. It was a small blessing that the long-suffering goblin didn’t see that the people he had tried to save, leonin and goblin, young and old, dropped dead at the same time. Krark-Home went from refuge to graveyard in a heartbeat.