The Darksteel Eye (33 page)

The steel blade slashed across the leveler’s mowing cylinder,
and it cut deep, but it wasn’t metal it bit into; it was flesh. Blood spurt from a tremendous gash, washing over Glissa and covering her in the sticky red fluid. The wounded thresher shied back, and two more took its place.

Glissa fought off the two devices. Though they had become flesh, their blades were still sharp. They left long gashes in the metallic floor of the interior, and the elf knew enough to keep herself away.

Fighting these part-flesh, part-metal artifacts was like fighting a forest beast in the Tangle. That thought reminded her of something her father had told her as a young elf going out on her first hunting party. “Some bits are metal, other bits flesh, but you always want to stay away from the teeth.”

Glissa pulled her blade back, coming across with both hands and swiping at a thresher in a flat slice. The tip of her sword cut into the creature’s eyes, and she took a step back. Her swift attack bought her enough time to spare a glance over her shoulder. What she saw didn’t make her happy.

The Kaldra Champion floated over a pack of threshers. The smaller creations were fast and more agile than their leveler counterparts. The Champion smashed his fist to the ground, but the devices darted away unscathed. Against bigger, slower targets, he was a superb fighter. Against these little creatures, the Kaldra Champion was nearly useless.

Turning her attention back to the thresher, Glissa barely managed to fend off its blow, as the quick device darted in. Her sword hit the creature’s sharp teeth. Lodging it into the spinning cylinder, she put all of her weight on the blade and shoved off.

Lifting from the ground, the elf’s body lurched. The forward movement of the thresher forced her back, and she balanced her lithe frame against the hilt of her sword. The
creature began spurting blood, and it stopped its charge, letting Glissa fall back to the ground. It moved back, trying to pull the elf’s weapon from its belly. Its own bladed cylinder clamped down on the sword, and it jerked, pulling the handle free of Glissa’s grasp.

A cold chill ran down the elf’s spine as she watched the agile device dart back up the hill, her blade stuck inside. All around, the valley was flooded with these threshers, and the others fought for their lives. Slobad rode on top of a device, holding on for dear life. It looked as if he was trying to pry the thing open, but judging from the bloodstains on his chest, he was more a butcher than a mechanic. Bosh had his hands full, fighting off a half-dozen of the monsters.

Glissa wouldn’t be much help if she didn’t have her sword. Sidestepping a charging thresher, she went after the wounded device that had stolen her blade. As she turned, she clearly saw Bruenna battling with a pair of devices. Her shins bled. She was isolated—and she was losing. The other wizard from her tribe had fallen into hand to hand combat with the threshers as well. He was tied up, unable to get to her.

Parrying the attacks of one device, Bruenna turned too late to catch the attack of the other, and the creature gave her a nasty slash across the back. The human wizard fell to the ground, clutching at her wound.

Glissa jolted at the sight, forgetting her sword in the flurry of battle. She ran toward her downed friend as fast as she could. A thresher jumped out in front of her, its spinning blades turned to tear her apart.

Pushing the ground with her back leg, the elf leaped into the air, her front leg outstretched. The thresher reared back, but it was too slow, Glissa had already cleared its teeth, and she landed on top of its head. Its top was soft, and it caved in under her
weight. She slipped, and her knee gave way. Tilting to the side, Glissa pushed off again.

Her off-center jump sent her flying to the ground. She tucked into a ball, curling her shoulder under as she hit. The world spun once, and Glissa popped back to her feet.

Before her, the threshers closed in on Bruenna. One of them seemed to open, lifting its head and cutting blades up off the ground. Behind those spinning teeth, the creature revealed a hollow chamber. Bruenna looked up, her eyes wide, and she lifted her hands in the air, hopelessly trying to hold off the advancing creature.

Darting forward, it scooped up the injured mage and closed down, swallowing her whole.

Glissa couldn’t believe her eyes. Bruenna was gone. Threshers weren’t supposed to be able to do that.

Anger and grief welled up inside her, the same feelings that had driven her powerful spell in the past. She thought of Al-Hayat, the trolls, and all the wizards who had died on this quest. Then she thought of Bruenna, trapped inside the gut of that thresher, and her blood began to boil. She could feel power course through her, as it had many times before. Her control was getting greater, and she focused her rage on the threshers, willing them to disintegrate into tiny piles of dust.

Nothing happened.

Glissa felt the same release she had each time before when the spell had worked. For some reason the creatures she had focused on were unaffected.

It hit her. “They’re no longer metal.”

Each time before, when she had used this mysterious power, she had only been able to destroy levelers or weapons—never flesh. Standing there, empty handed, watching the thresher with Bruenna inside dart away, Glissa felt numb. Her head buzzed,
and her limbs felt heavy. She hadn’t realized before how draining that experience had been.

A thresher hit her from behind, knocking the elf face first on the ground. She had time to turn over and see the creature open wide, before she too was swallowed whole.

Memnarch opened the door to the Eye and waved Malil over. “Come. Memnarch wishes to see the elf girl.”

Malil crossed the laboratory and climbed into the Eye with Memnarch. The guardian touched the appropriate controls, and all of the screens lit up. Each of them showed a different scene, each giving a different view of Mirrodin. The plains, swamp, mountains, oceans, and forest of the metal planet were all represented.

Memnarch turned another knob, and five of the six screens changed to a picture of the interior. They were all the same, but each from a different angle. In the center of all five screens, a lone thresher rolled across the open ground.

On the sixth screen was a view of the inside of the Eye—the view from Malil’s point of view. The metal man looked into that screen, and it reproduced what he saw a billion times—like two mirrors facing each other. Malil looked at what Memnarch saw when Memnarch looked through his eyes, and that image layered itself upon itself into infinity, making an endless hallway, surrounded by the interior of the Eye.

An unexpected discovery, thought the Guardian, something he’d have to explore later, when the elf girl was firmly within his grasp.

Malil turned his attention to one of the other five screens, and the view through his eyes too showed the lone device on the interior of Mirrodin.

“Why are we looking at a thresher, master?”

“Because, Malil, the elf girl is inside.”

Memnarch squinted, spotting something heading toward his prize. One of the screens shifted its view, narrowing in on another lone creature, speeding toward the thresher atop a hoverer.

“What is
he
doing here?”

*  *  *  *  *

The inside of the thresher’s body was very dark. It reminded Glissa of the time Bosh had placed her in his chest cavity. Only this time, the world wasn’t spinning. Considering the circumstances, it was a comfortable ride. The chamber was spacious enough for her to sit cross-legged and not have to duck her head, and the sides of the creature were soft.

After having hit the thresher with her fists—and even kicking until she became winded—Glissa concluded that it didn’t feel any pain, at least not from the inside. So she sat waiting.

What a predicament. Swallowed whole by a thresher after having lost her sword. It was a wonder she’d made it this far at all. She laughed at that thought. Slobad had been so worried about what she would use for a weapon once they’d put the Kaldra Champion together. Evidently, it didn’t matter.

She thought about what awaited her at the end of this ride. Was Bruenna being taken to the same place? Would she finally meet Memnarch? This wasn’t exactly the way she had envisioned it.

Glissa felt the thresher slow down. Her heart raced, and she
prepared to draw mana. The creature came to an abrupt stop. It jerked backward, then the sharp tip of a short blade cut through the creature’s exterior, nearly punching straight into Glissa’s forehead.

The blade slid sideways, and the thresher shook. Blood poured into the hollow cavity, and light seeped in through the wound. Glissa could only make out the hand and forearm attached to the blade—blue skin.

Another blade struck the beast and punched through. Glissa pushed herself back in the chamber, staying as far from the weapons as possible, then she drew as much mana as she could.

The arcane energies flowed to her, and she cast a spell, growing to nearly twice her size in the blink of an eye. Her body quickly filled the confined space, and her arms were pinned to her sides by the thresher’s flesh. She had known this would happen and avoided just this situation earlier in the ride. Kicking with all of her might, her engorged legs connected with the front of the thresher—right beneath where the blade had cut into its hide.

Flesh tore, and light flooded in. Glissa was free.

Getting to her feet, the giant elf pulled the remaining bits of the thresher’s corpse from her head and looked down on a vedalken.

“Pontifex.”

The four-armed lord glared back at her. “You have taken from me my god. You have taken from me my kingdom.” He lifted a bloody sword in each hand. “Now I am going to take your life.”

The vedalken lunged at the elf, cutting two long gashes in her thigh before she could react. The wounds would have been much worse had Glissa not been so big, but they were still painful, and the elf gave ground.

Lifting off into the air on his hoverer, the vedalken brandished a pair of matched short swords. Pontifex shot forward, swooping around the giant elf, charging right at her head.

Glissa ducked, shuffling forward and putting her hand to the ground to keep from falling. The hoverer just missed her, tussling her hair as it shot past. Catching her balance, Glissa stood up and turned, keeping the vedalken where she could see him.

Pontifex stopped dead and with a thought twisted the hoverer in mid-air. Its nose pointed at Glissa, he rode at her again. This time Glissa sidestepped to her right, swatting at the vedalken as if he were a buzzing fly. Pontifex anticipated her move and swung the hoverer to his left, bringing the sharp edge of his blade across her shoulder.

The elf hissed at the wound and jerked away from the attack, bringing her other hand up in defense. Pontifex’s mind urged his vehicle away, but he was too close. The elf’s hand swung by him, swirling the air around his hoverer.

Pontifex bounced through the windstream, then the hoverer flipped over and spun, tossing the rider from his mount. The vedalken dropped to the ground.

Glissa lifted her foot in the air, prepared to step on her foe. “I’m going to squash you like a bug.” She lowered her foot, casting a great shadow.

Pontifex got to his knees. One of his left arms had been wounded in the fall, and he held it tight against his body. “I have nothing left to live for,” he said. He shouted a one-syllable spell, extending his two good arms out at the big elf.

A whirlwind of swirling blue energies enwrapped Glissa, whipping her hair about her head and draining from her the magics that had enlarged her to giant size. The elf shrank. The world around her grew larger, and the powers that had made her bigger and stronger were sucked away.

When she reached normal size, the whipping wind released her. The swirling storm glided over the ground, pushing the mossy covering this way and that, headed straight for the wounded vedalken.

Once again the storm enclosed its victim. Pontifex disappeared from view, surrounded entirely in the swirling energy. Then, just as quickly as it had started, the wind died, and the storm stopped, dropping away to reveal the vedalken beneath. Pontifex was fully healed, and he began to grow. His arms stretched and his legs lifted him high in the air. His head, already big for a vedalken, became larger than a troll’s.

The blue-skinned vedalken grew to titanic proportions, towering over the elf.

Glissa put her foot down. “Can we talk about this?”

Pontifex took a giant step forward, and Glissa had to jump to one side to avoid being squashed.

The elf darted away. Spotting a cluster of four or five small mycosynth monoliths, she made for the cover they provided. When she reached the growths, she fell in behind them, putting her back up against a monolith, trying to catch her breath. At least they were sharp, so Pontifex would have to think twice about trying to step on her.

“You cannot hide forever,” shouted the giant vedalken.

“Don’t count on it,” said Glissa under her breath.

Pontifex began pacing around the cluster. “Come out and face me.”