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(A March of the Machine Aftermath fanfic; please give the story on AO3 a read and leave a comment if you can ;) )
Lyese was gone.
Lyese was gone, and the sky was empty.
And below, Phyrexia reeled.
...
Glissa stood alone. To every side the open sands of the Glorious Facade rolled away in shallow hills, fine grains of pearl-white sand cool and still beneath her heels.
Not even the wind stirred those grains.
And Lyese, that green sun of Phyrexia, and of Mirrodin before it, was gone.
Theyâve all gone.
Every sun thatâs ever graced Phyrexia.
Or Mirrodin before it.
Black reigned above Glissa. Not even the vivid-dark light of Ingle, the black sun, but an empty, blank, unbroken black. Lifeless black. Only the far edges of the sky (if you could call it a sky) were interrupted, by tilted, moldering monuments to Phyrexia and its praetors. Silent sentinels lording over nothing at all.
Glissaâs eyes searched the black.
Searched in vain.
Even without the light of the suns, she could see the plane around her clearly. The sands, the monuments, the wandering figure of the occasional phyrexian pilgrim, one of those pensive, nomadic creatures who graced the facade of late. Everything was thrown into sharp, shadow-less relief, as though illuminated on all sides by a colorless, unseen moon.
Whether this strange, source-less light was the effect of Phyrexiaâs banishment to a pocket space beyond the multiverse, or of some as-of-yet unknown property of the argent shell their new Phyrexia had been built upon, no one yet knew.
Karn had said once, when Glissa was fitting him to be the next father of machines, that Mirrodin was sunless at the time of its creation. He had called it âArgentumâ then, in the eponymous nature of a demigod. Argentum had been empty too, if the silver golemâs ravings were to be believed. Empty but for the blinkmoths. Empty, but beautiful and precise and rich in detail. Mathematical artistry in planar form.
A bitter smile split Glissaâs lips. Urabrask would have loved such a thing, that form-loving fool.
Now the exterior of the plane was an unending uniformity of sand, hex-plates...and these gaudy monuments to the glory of Elesh Nornâs Phyrexia.
Glory . Glissa spat a wad of tarry oil onto the ground. It shivered on the surface for a moment before soaking into the sands. What arrogance drives a conqueror to build monuments before sheâs even triumphed? As if New Phyrexia were ever even hers entirely. As if sheâd won us all over before she planted her ruinous realm-breaking tree and challenged all the multiverse.
She felt the lie in these thoughts as they filtered through her mind. Just out of sight over the horizon, there was a statue to Vorinclex. Further in the other direction, one of Urabrask, heretic and rebel though he had been. Phyrexians of all factions had joined in Nornâs invasion, even if some had dissented, and the monuments would not let her forget.
Glissa had walked as far as she could from those monuments for...for what, really?
An uninterrupted view of the blank, pitch nothing that surrounds us now?
Her eyes twitched; a hunterâs acuity taking in the whole expanse above. Again and again. Moment by moment. Alert for even the smallest movement or disruption to that black uniformity. A secondary set of optic nerves, connected to a lens in her eyes that saw heat signatures, flickered on and off, seeing the same blank field.
Yes, thatâs exactly why I came here. Exactly why I keep returning. Confirmation that the suns have fled our sky.
No.
That theyâve been torn from their place.
White Bringer, red Sky Tyrant, the blue Eye of Doom, black Ingle...the green Ugly Child.
Lyese. Lyese was not an ugly. And she was a woman grown. A child for a time, perhaps, but it was beautiful.
No, not it.
She.
Glissa grimaced. Not at the sentiment itself, but because, no matter how hard she tried to recall, she did not know where the sentiment came from. The Mirran goblins had had a vast mythology prescribed to the suns. She had familiarized herself with that mythology, but she also knew their name for the green sun, âthe ugly childâ was not appropriate. She knew Lyese was a name for the green sun, she also knew it was not their name for her. It was Glissaâs name for her. It had been her name for the green sun for many years, before sheâd known Phyrexiaâs touch.
She was so certain of it, she just couldnât say why.
She moved forward. One step. Two steps. The facade had been as dangerous a place as any in New Phyrexia before the great invasion, but now it lay inert. Swallowing, confounding sands had fallen still. Wandering predators, the outcasts of the layers below, still haunted the corners of the place, but most had fled back into the lower spheres in the time since the plane had been cut off from rest of the multiverse.
Fertile hunting grounds, once. Now it was still and sterile. Prey could see and hear a predator coming miles off. This glorious facade was the furthest thing from the Hunterâs Maze. Even the Quiet Forge had ledges and heights for a predator to pounce from. Even the Jinâs surgical bays had tunnels and chambers to lie in ambush â and prey worth chasing.
There wasnât much prey worth hunting on New Phyrexia now, and the hunt was no longer about growing strong for the Grand Evolution, but simple, mean survival. The plane could no longer afford to squander its resources pursuing the disparate objectives of every sphere and faction.
Glissa grit her teeth. Stepped faster. Even in the absence of wind, the cold air rushing past felt soothing.
The facade was no place for a hunter, but it was the only place she could get away.
The only place she could breath.
This is as far as any of us can go without leaving, and leaving is no longer an option.
Sheâd felt most comfortable above the surface of the plane for as long as she could remember. Maybe that was why sheâd pushed to unleash the beasts of the vicious swarm on the Mirrans long before any other faction had deigned to emerge. It had been balm to leave the artificial light of the interiorâŚ
...to hunt and bask in the light of Lyese...
Glissa scowled. Rushed forward even faster.
Her responsibilities in the spheres below felt distant here. The facade was a reprieve. A precious rest and intermission from the burdens of being a leader, and a mother to a world thrice-orphaned.
Veins pulsed in the back of Glissaâs skull, beneath copper cables of hair. Each throb a phyrexian, waiting still in its incubating pod somewhere on the spheres below, destined to emerge too late to take any part in the invasion for which theyâd been germinated and crafted. Each throb a child who would emerge instilled with an undeniable purpose they would never be able to fulfill.
And it fell to Glissa and the other remaining nursemaids of this abandoned Phyrexia to find purpose on their behalf.
Her skull pounded. She had attuned herself to the birthing pods of Phyrexia at Nornâs suggestion, but using the means of the Grand Evolution. Sheâd thought it a clever subversion of Nornâs machinations, to incorporate her own innovations, crotus-born organs and enhancements, into the final design of the birthing and conversion pods, but all sheâd done in the end was saddle herself with a responsibility that weighed down like shackles of blightsteel.
Another succession of pulses, bringing her head close to aching.
Glissa did not want to be a mother.
The Glissa she had been before Phyrexia had not wanted to be a mother either. She hadnât even wanted to be a warrior. Not in the way that was expected of the elves of the Tangle, at least. Though she only remembered this life in brief, erratic flashes, or those rare stretches when she dreamed, she was sure of this much. The Glissa-before-Phyrexia had only wanted to be free.
But Mirrodin was not a plane for being free. It had never been such a place, no matter how much the Mirran resistance romanticized the times before New Phyrexiaâs ascendancy.
It had been sterile from the start. This much they knew from Karn. It had been empty. Unintended for any life except for Karnâs guests - the demigods that had been the planeswalkers of old. When life had been brought to its sterile surface, by Karnâs mad steward, Memnarch, that life found a hostile world waiting for it. Grain and game scraped from what cold metal would allow to grow on it. A menagerie of artifact predators that swept across the plane to cull and to kill.
Not a home , but a slaughterhouse. A petri dish for Memnarch to grow a planeswalking spark so he could steal it and leave that world of barren metal behind .
K arn had lamented Memnarch at length in his more lucid moments. He had not meant to be a parent either. The weeping regret he felt in his failure at that role had made Glissa uneasy in a way that even his most frantic ravings had not.
Perhaps because it affected me directly, in another life.
Memnarchâs world produced Glissa. Glissa and a spark that should have made her free, but made her prey instead â the indefinite prey of Memnarch the mad. That world had forced the old Glissa to be the meanest, lowest thing imaginable: a survivor. Prey.
None of that made her any more inclined toward motherhood, and neither her death nor rebirth had changed that inclination. To live as a phyrexian was enough. To hunt as a phyrexian had been sublime.
And yet she had let motherhood be thrust upon her.
Norn had been clever about it. Dressed motherhood in skins (skin...that hateful stuff) that she knew Glissa would find appealing. The role as an alpha not just for the Vicious Swarm, but for all the fledgling cubs of Phyrexia. A mentor for the incubated, the new swarm that would prey upon the every inch of the multiverse that their invasion tree could spread its branches into.
She would have an avenue to ensure the Grand Evolution benefited all factions of Phyrexia. Through the invasion, she would have brought the blessing of strength to countless worlds. Thanks to her, all would have known the freedom to evolve past the limits the incompleat put on themselves and others in compensation for their weakness. Liberation from all the expectations and trappings and manipulations and hypocrisies of âcivilizedâ fools.
Glissa clenched her fists. Copper on copper ground together. Sand ground under her heels as she strode on.
In truth, sheâd been nothing more than a nursery guard. A kept spouse keeping Nornâs house in order, worrying over germs in the womb while the self-proclaimed âMother of Machinesâ stood on her parapet, conducting the actual invasion efforts.
Efforts that failed. Efforts that set back everything their New Phyrexia had worked towards.
And just like Nornâs incompetence had stolen the future of the Swarm, just as Nornâs cunning (and the interference of that worm, Tezzeret) had stolen Karn and Glissaâs place at the helm of Phyrexia years ago.
More pounding. Glissa touched the wind-cooled copper of her palm to her forehead, to ease the sensation.
If Norn was wrong to seize control, and to force herself on all the burgeoning beliefs of New Phyrexia, was I truly any better?
Hadnât she been acting the mother to Karn then? Hadnât she betrayed the swarmâs disdain for individuality by taking on that role? Hadnât they excised Yawgmoth from their dogma of predators and prey for his failures? Didnât making any one phyrexian the father or mother of machines run contrary to what she aspired to?
No. It was not the same. I sought to install leadership to oversee that nature was left alone to run its course. It was not for the glory or honor that came with such a role, but for the functionality. The practicality of it.
A rationale as fragile as the facade, but it would do for now.
That Glissa had believed Norn would ever hand her back any fraction of that power in earnest was laughable. She should have been suspicious when so many of the caretakers of the incubating and converted proved to be members of Nornâs Alabaster Host.
But she had persisted in her role, down in the depths of the spheres. A better caretaker than most of the Orthodoxy's host, at least. Even now, she had to move mountains to gather the hands needed to tend to the remaining pods. She had been so subservient to those ends during the invasion that she had not even been present on the surface to say a final farewell to Lyese, before the Zhalfirins stole her away.
Not been present for a final farewell.
Maybe it was justice, for her folly.
Glissa halted, inspecting the sands around her. She might as well have not moved, for all the change in scenery her strides had brought.
Her muscles tensed, and for a single, thrilling moment, Glissa warred with the impulse to attack the ground with her claws, and tear a new hole through the facade to Mirrex below. It would be a delicious catharsis , but she had to be a builder now, and tearing the facade down would only be denying Phyrexia space that it would badly need in the days ahead.
W aste not, want not.
Slobad was at work on a scheme to reinforce this outermost sphere into a surface they could actually build something meaningful upon. The facade had been made at first out of little but scrap metal and malice. A structure as mean as the spite that had motivated it, and just as flimsy. Nornâs mouthpieces had claimed constructing the Facade was a strategic decision. One to expedite the task of defeating the Mirran rebels by demoralizing them. Any fool could have guessed it would only aggravate. Solidify the Mirran resolve and spur them to fight all the fiercer. Norn had to have known that, but she was, in the end, a spiteful creature. A cruel creature.
It was by malice the mirrans had their suns taken from them. Had their suns blotted out.
And now those suns were lost to Phyrexia.
Maybe that was justice.
Glissa shuddered. That was not a phyrexian thought. Strength was the only justice in the multiverse. Triumph was the only vindication that held any value in the world.
And yet, Glissa could not help but feel Lyese would have found a justice in what had happened. She had always had a strong sense of justice, especially when it came to punishing the guilty. Especially after her parents had died.
Glissa blinked.
Parents? The only parent the suns of Mirrodin had was the core. And she was certain none of the goblin myths had mentioned any parent other than the great mother. Certainly not a mother and father, as Glissa felt certain Lyese had had.
Lyese is a sun, not a daughter.
Or was she a moon?
Again, Glissa tilted her eyes to where the sky was not. Lyese continued to be nowhere in sight.
Lyese had wanted to be a wife. A mother. Glissa could never empathize with that, but she wanted it for Lyese. She wanted Lyese to be happy.
Glissa scowled. Why did she know that? Where did it come from? The notion had vexed her for years, and not a single comple a ted mirran goblin had ever corroborated these notions of Lyese. They did not even know the name.
And why did she miss Lyese?
Because Lyese was strong and bright and beautiful.
She is a sun.
It is a sun.
A strong, beautiful sun.
But strong as it was, if Glissa didnât know where Lyese was, then how could she protect it when it needed protecting? How could Glissa embrace her when she cried? How could-
Glissa grabbed at her shoulder with metal-shod fingers and gripped it tightly.
Where is this coming from?
The pain was just inconvenience for her body, but it centered her.
It was all the losing that was causing her to lose focus. Losing Karn. Losing authority to Norn and the machinations of that shit-licker Tezzeret. Losing the invasion. Losing Benzir. Losing Lukka, and so many of the Swarmâs other beautiful predators.
Losing Geth, even, had stung. Grasping, treacherous buffoon though he was, Geth had been familiar, even when New Phyrexia was not, and Glissa was quickly running out of familiar things to anchor herself when everything became heavy. She would work with Ixhel to keep this new, reduced Phyrexia intact, but she would never forgive Atraxaâs little maggot of a child for re-purposing Geth.
Everything familiar is falling away.
Glissa drove her claws deeper into her shoulder.
The pain centered her.
...
The pain helped her focus.
âŚ
âŚ
Glissaâs eyes snapped open.
Someone was coming.
She did not move, or make any further outward indication she noticed that the ground was vibrating, just slightly. That there was a shifting in the grains of sand in the distance behind her. A predator did not scare so easily, andâŚ
...
...and besides, she recognized the tread of the creatures approaching her.
They were welcome.
So she waited, breathing steady. She tilted back her head, eyes scanning the sky.
Just in case.
âGlissa?â
âIs something wrong, Slobad?â She kept her back turned, but she could picture the two figures behind her. One made of solid-forged steel, guided by the keenest mind left on the plane. One huddled and bristling, but bulging with muscle that put the steel body of the other to shame. Smaller creatures bustled and skittered at this second figureâs feet.
âJust came to see you, huh? Everything alright?â
S he didnât answer. D idnât know what to say to that. So she let them approach, turning only when they were within five paces.
Vorinclex was still technically shorter than Slobad, even though heâd been eating and growing at a voracious pace since the Zhalfirins had separated his head from his body. It was a w ound that would normally have been trivial for him to regenerate from , but the Zhalfiri nsâ cursed time mage had cast an enchantment on Vorinclex that slowed his normally prodigious healing to less than a crawl. The spell had persisted beyond Phyrexiaâs banishment to this void, and the nominal praetor of the Vicious Swarm was still no larger than a juvenile vorrac.
But he was growing, at least. Growing, and more than a match for most any creature left in, above, or below the Hunterâs Maze.
S curr y ing about Vorinclexâs legs were small, hunched, raptor-like creatures of chrome, poking at the sands and sniffing the air. T wo of them were perched on Vorinclexâ back.
Glissa gave a tight smile as one of the little chrome raptors trotted up to her, and examined her legs with small tilts of its head. Norn hadnât tried to make a parent of Vorinclex, but he had insisted no one else was suited to raise Jinâs cannibal larvae into proper phyrexians.
Slobad coughed. âGlissa? How are you?â
âDid you smell me all the way up here?â Glissa did not like ignoring Slobad, but she still didnât have an answer for him. Instead she ran a hand along Vorinclexâs snout. He growled appreciatively, though she knew, and he knew that she knew, that he had no tactile feeling in his steel bone carapace. âStronger and sharper with every day. I knew that meddling mage couldnât suppress your prowess for long.â
S lobad shook his head. â Not Vorey. Myrabrask saw you, huh? Sent a message down to the other myr in the F urnace.â
Glissa spun around, grinding the sand beneath her heels and glaring at the nearest monument. It was in bad repair, even by the standard of the facade, sitting crooked in the sand like some titanic tree, a broad mask in the shape of Elesh Nornâs own face crumbling atop it.
And there, in the upper reaches of the porcelain metal, a dark-red form skulked, perched on the mask like a bird, half hidden with a single beady eye fixed on Glissa from atop a curved, beak-like head.
âFrom master of the forge to a skulking snitch,â Glissa hissed. âI wish you hadnât put him back together, Slobad.â
Glissa grunted, and turned away from the monument. She didnât trust anything sneaky enough to get so close without her notice.
Still, she didnât begrudge Slobad finding a use of Urabraskâs parts. He remained as good at skulking in the periphery as heâd been in his previous life, and honest to a fault. The information heâd gathered on the still-power-hungry portions of the Thane and Orthodoxy factions around the core kept their outer layers one step ahead of any scheming.
âSo thereâs nothing wrong?â She looked up from Vorinclex.
âNothing you donât already know about, huh?â
âRight.â
Glissa raised her gaze further, back to the sky above Slobad. On top of the utter upheaval among what was left of the Thanes and the basilica phyrexians, t here were growing concerns about how many of their offloaded resources were forever lost across the multiverse to the nigh-countless planes that Realmbreaker had linked together. Phyrexia had, in effect, gutted itself to empty out armies across every world in reach, banking on the prediction that what they spent would be replenished by the worlds they claimed. Very little had been brought back, relative to what Phyrexia sent out by the time the invasion tree had been hijacked, and the enemy had swapped P hyrexiaâs place in the multiverse with this pocket of nothing where Zhalfir sat for centuries in stasis.
The lingering unrest between the spheres and the factions therein was almost trivial next to these logistical issues. The orthodoxy and the thanes did not have enough military might to exert the kind of authority they coveted. The former had spent themselves more completely than any other faction in the invasion, and the latter where as divided by in- f ighting as ever, the deaths of multiple thanes having done nothing to make their sphere more united.
The introduction of several not-fully-compleated, or even completely incompleat creatures from other planes was another issue. Branches that led out to the multiverse led right back to Phyrexia, and not every creature from the planes beyond that currently inhabited their isolated world had been brought their by their invasion forces. Ezuri, of all creatures, had allied with Vishgraz to gather these disparate planar orphans into a loose group that remained incompleat and as-of-yet unaffiliated with either the thanes, the orthodoxy, or Glissaâs even more tenuous coalition of Forge, Swarm, and Engine.
Slobad tapped a steely finger against his arm. The sound rang like a bell, soft and clear over the silent dunes. âAnother council soon, yeah? See if we canât talk our way to peace?â
Unlikely.
âPeace is a fever dream of the flesh,â Glissa answered. âIâll settle for antagonistic coexistence at this point, so long as those fools donât rip whatâs left of Phyrexia to pieces.â
âYou gotta talk to Ixhel at some point, huh?â Slobad tapped a nervous finger against his side. âGethâs gone.â
âGethâs gone,â Glissa echoed. She scooped up the Jin-raptor closest to her and set it in Slobadâs hand. The little creature tapped its snout against the goblinâs forearm, and started to climb its way up to the shoulder. âAnd a child holds the key to controlling the Thanes and the Orthodoxy both.â
âIâll take Ixhel over the Alabaster Host worshiping some scarecrow made out of Nornâs guts, huh?â Slobad was flexing his arm up and down, making an obstacle course of the limb for the Jin-raptor. The goblin heads adorning Slobadâs shoulder moaned petulantly as the chrome creature clambered closer.
âA low-hanging fruit,â Glissa replied with a tight smile.
They hadnât even found Nornâs pieces, in the end. Glissa had hoped, in small part, that she might at least be able to take out her frustrations on the Grand Cenobiteâs corpse, but not a trace remained. She would have put a bounty out on the pieces, but the remainder of the Orthodoxy had put that exact call out already, and as far as anyone could tell from the wailing that still pervaded that inner sphere, no one had delivered.
âThree out of five spheres is more than we could have hoped for already,â Slobad remarked with a shrug, leaving the little raptor dangling from the lower lip of one of his shoulder-heads. The little thing squeaked and rasped as it pulled itself up, and started pecking the heads on the nose.
âMore than we could have hoped for, and yet not enough.â
âWhen did you become the pessimist?â Slobad asked.
âIâm ever-evolving.â
âStill, well done so far, huh?â
Glissa nodded. She had thankfully engaged in plentiful diplomacy with the Progress Engine, even before Nornâs ascendancy over the other factions. Vorinclexâs constant and vitriolic spats with Jin-Gitaxias had made it necessary to pay that faction especial attention to ensure the sniping across territory had not unduly slowed the Grand Evolution. That groundwork had paid off in the past few months in securing gitaxian cooperation in negotiations with the inner spheres.
Slobad, in turn, had been vital to securing the cooperation of the fickle Furnace host. He and his newer, even more hidden Myrabrask.
Still, difficulties abounded. The gitaxians couldn't decide whether they loved or hated councils to discuss the way forward. One day they would be clamoring for an audience with every faction to proclaim they had divined some great advancement that would bring Phyrexia back to a state of flourishing. The next someone would press them on their research and the shrimp-spined fools would slink away to their labs and hiss that they did not wish to be disturbed.Â
The Furnace layer remained taciturn and sullen. Preoccupied with their craft to the point of obsession. With Norn gone the personalities with the...loudest sway seemed content to treat Urabraskâs remains as figurehead and Slobad as a tolerant (meaning ignorable when it suited them) leader, following the hidden praetor's final dictates to persist in their quiet building and development.Â
âWe all have so much to offer,â Glissa said, half to herself. âIf only we could act in harmony. If only we could converge naturally.â
Slobad tilted his head, quizzically. The raptor at his shoulder echoed this movement.
âNorn was wrong to partition New Phyrexia,â Glissa said, louder. âShe was wrong for this desperate, sad attempt to ape the glory of the nine spheres. What has it benefited the Grand Evolution? Or the Great Synthesis, or the Great Work, for that matter? It was all for her vanity and the vanity of the Orthodoxy to be placed at the physical center, to keep Phyrexia divided into its singular colors, rather than letting them mix and make each other stronger. Divide us and lord over us, thatâs what she did. We were meant to grind up against each other. To come together as a strong whole.â
Slobad nodded, though his lips were tight. âIs that what Phyrexia is?â
âItâs what it should be.â
âBut is it what we are?â
It was Glissaâs turn to purse her lips. Old P hyrexia had been a parasite, ultimately, thriving only where it was able to steal and invade to claim the resources of others. What were the first phyrexians, after all, except for weak, arrogant, xenophobic, aristocratic flesh that had stolen the stronger flesh of other cultures, other bodies, to prop themselves up?
T he pounding in her head was back. Throbbing. Searing.
That was an incompleat way of looking at things, of course. The strength to steal for oneâs own benefit was, after all, strength. Doesnât the predator steal the life and vitality from the prey it consumes? Would anyone ever suggest that a predator apologize for taking that which it is strong enough to take?
Something nudged Glissaâs shoulder, nearly bowling her over and breaking her train of thought. Vorinclex had lunged at her, and was pouncing again, jaws wide.
She laughed and threw her body into a spin. Her foot landed along the side of Vorinclexâs face, and sent him sprawling sideways in the sand. The jin-raptors scurried all around them, flailing their arms and chirping shrilly.
Vorinclex swiped at her with one paw, then another. She dodged both, and when he swiped again, she knocked it aside with a savage counter-blow.
She hooted. âSuch soft blows, cub!â
Vorinclex lunged again, but she seized him around the neck and threw herself onto the ground, dragging him to the sand with a heavy THUD.
They lay there entangled for a long minute, Glissaâs arms locked firm around Vorinclexâs neck.
âBetter to â hrk â act than to stew in useless thoughts,â Vorinclex grunted.
âBetter be strong if you wish to act against me,â Glissa grunted in return.
Vorinclex laughed at that. Most creatures would not know his laugh from the other fierce vocalizations of beasts, but he was Glissaâs own beating heart, and she knew.
The raptors knew too, and they swarmed the both of them, chirping and pecking.
The two disengaged and rose to their feet. Glissa gathered two of the raptors as she rose, and tossed them onto Vorinclexâ back, where they clung.
âA gathering then, soon.â
âYeah.â Slobad dropped his shoulder-riding raptor onto Vorinclexâ back as well. âWith Forge and Engine leadership, plus Ixhel and Ezuri. Weâll need to make sure the gitaxians behave this time, huh?â
Glissa nodded. â The progress engine can posture all they want, but we have resources, and weâre the only factions willing to work with him and not above him. Unctus is too proud to acknowledge equals, but Malcator isnât as fool-headedâ heâll wrangle the m into line.â
âAnd we trust Malcator to get the others in line?â
âI trust Malcator to know the value of having his house in order,â Glissa flexed her wrists. Both her arms looked the same now, for the first time in a long time. Her sickle lacked practicality on this new front, and she suspected, would antagonize those she wished to bring into the fold.
âMalcatorâs not the only loud voice in the Progress Engine.â
âYes, but he is the most stubborn by leagues. Unctus doesnât have the pull to displace him, and he knows it. Threx just wants to get back to his work. Weâll have the surgical bays on our side.â
Vorinclex growled, just low enough for Glissa to detect, at Threxâs name. The chrome butcher had been all too keen to get his own claws on Jinâs children.
âOptimistic,â Slobad said.
âItâs that or defeatist. I thought you believed in New Phyrexia.â
âIâve got brains enough to know Phyrexiaâs the only thing that can save any of us. Not so sure Phyrexia can be saved though.â
âWhat choice do we have but to try?â
âYouâre right, Glissa. You know I know thatâs right, huh?â
Glissa smiled. âI know. Go back, Slobad. Iâll find you both when I return.â She tapped her forehead against Vorinclexâs. âGo. Eat and grow. I need you strong again soon, and thereâs nothing worth consuming up here.â
âNo.â Vorinclex nudged back against her head. âNothing but memories. Those wonât sustain you, either.â
âNo, but Iâll linger here a little longer all the same.â
Vorinclex grunted, but turned trudged away.
âStay closeâ
The little chrome creatures clustered near to his sides, running at a pitter-patter jog to keep up with his longer strides. In the spheres below, Vorinclex left the larvae to hunt and forage on their own, but around the surface, or the remains of the Basilica, he kept them nearby. Nornâs ruinous interference into the Swarmâs evolutionary aspirations had made him protective, arguably to the point of detriment, in the production of new predators.
Glissa grit her teeth. Vorinclex resented as much as she did the way Norn had wasted Lukka. A fine predator, and a grand addition to the swarm. So much potential for evolution, and Norn had thrown him away to die in a pointless exercise against a whole world of beasts. Of course even an apex predator would die if pitted against a whole world. Norn had done it just to spite them. So she would have an example to point to when she needed to set the other factions against the Grand Evolution. âSee how this planewalker who chose the path of the swarm fared,â she would have said. âSee how their path pales besides the glory of the orthodoxy.â
Well Norn had gotten what she deserved in the end. All her plotting and bluster and now she was pieces and parts â porcelain rubble on who-knows-what world that would do no more conquering.
Glissa wondered if her pieces were on Zhalfir, rotting under the light of...
âSlobad?â
The goblin stopped short, and turned about to face her. Heâd waited a few seconds longer than Vorinclex had, but was turning to leave when she called out. Vorinclex kept his pace, stalking away with a muted urgency.
âYeah?â
âWho was Lyese?â
Slobad shifted. His unease was not phyrexian. Not really. But he was a greater help and reassurance than anything else on this plane, and Glissa would take that, even if it came with the unease of the flesh. Even if he cried at times, when he thought no-one was watching him .
It was rare to see a phyrexian cry, but the bodily structures that allowed the process were left in place for most compleated sapients who had the capacity originally. Jin-Gitaxias, during a long-ago convening of the praetors, had explained it thusly to Vorinclex, in his usual haughty way:
"We've found it sensible to allow this biological release for imperfect emotions that might otherwise build up to tear one of the compleat apart on a psychological level. While it might do us good to remove the capacity for such a buildup entirely, eventually, at present it is too much a liability to have a large portion of our population susceptible to."
"Not that you would concern yourselves with such complexities," He had added unnecessarily, as was his habit. "Working as you do with beasts."
âIâd tell you if I could, huh? Geth knew...but I donât know if Vishgaz still has those memories. And besides...â Slobad grimaced. âGeth said they would break your heart. He was very happy about that, actually.â
âMy heart is too strong for that.â
âMaybe.â
They stared at each other. Slobad. Vorinclex. Glissa would never let any harm come to these two. She had lost more than she could remember, but as long as she had them, she would persevere.
âNot today then,â She whispered, barely loud enough for Slobad to hear.
âLyese is safe, though,â Slobad said. âAt least...Geth told me sheâd been sent away, and away from here must be some bit of safe, huh?
âEven after the invasion?â Glissa asked.
Slobad only lowered his head.
âRight. It is not in our nature to hope. Only to do.â
âWe do what we can,â Slobad said. âWaste not, want not.â
Then he was off, following the prints Vorinclex had left in the sand. The onetime-praetor was gone already, disappeared into a hole at the base of a many-armed monument in the distance. Glissa turned away. She could tell by Slobadâs heavy, halting tread that he was stopping every few paces to glance back at her.
To make sure she was alright.
Alright was debatable, and beside the point. She was, at least, not without a pack. This was good. The scriptures, so far as she understood the interpretations of factions outside the Swarm, had little to say on the concept of being alone. The compleat were sufficient in all things, it was true, but outside the cowardly work of sleeper agents, it was pre-supposed in most texts that phyrexians worked among and besides phyrexians, and that in their inevitable spread across the multiverse, phyrexians would all be, always, among their peers.
All will be one.
It was good to not be alone. To have others. To have a pack.
A cluster of mites scuttled across the sands, some distance away. The creatures were slowly learning how to mold the sands of the facade into burrows and nests.
Glissa let out a slow breath.
I am not alone, but this new life is lonely, all the same.Â
Sheâd come out here in the past, after Norn had erected the facade. There had been something comforting about the suns. The artificial light of the Hunterâs Maze had been a great achievement for the Swarm, but it was not the same as the moons...as the suns...as that daughter and child andâŚ
...and what?
At times Glissa even missed the blue and the red and the white suns. She had come up here to the surface before to ponder them too, on rarer occasions. And their namesâŚ
Bruenna? Bosh? Raksha?
These were not the goblin names for those suns either, but Glissa was less sure that they had ever been the names of the suns, though something in her crotus-enhanced brain connected them nonetheless.Â
A wave of nausea gripped Glissa, and she hugged herself closer, half by reflex to steady herself, and half consciously, copper claws pinching her arms.Â
These spells had come in waves, nigh-paralyzing lows that she couldn't control, punctuating the longer, more stable periods. Standing there on as solid a surface as the facade could offer, she felt as if the ground beneath her had given away entirely.Â
By the spheres, but I miss Lyese!
Glissa breathed, and spread her arms. Slowly, she flexed each hand, then her arms, then her shoulders. She was strong. She had her pack. All was not lost for her or for Phyrexia.Â
So why do I care so much about a sun?
Glissa brought her hands back to her side.
Why does its absence feel like part of myself is lost?
Oil ran freely from her eyes, streaming harder than ever.
Why my worry for the sun's safety, its health, its...happiness? Glissa hardly fretted as much over these things for her own comrades, the closest of her pack excepted.Â
A tremor hit Glissaâs knees. She would not fall. She would not kneel here. Still, she brought her hand to her mouth and gripped her jaw with talons of copper.
So why?
The flow of oil splashed down onto the white sands. Dark shapes formed in the pools and soaked into the grains.
Why do I miss Lyese?
"Lyese" is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ŠWizards of the Coast LLC.
To Glissa: have you gotten to see Slobad much since his compleation? If not, would you like to?
I can't say that I have. Our duties pull us in different directions. He must have been a weak creature even in life, of course, but a part of me misses him anyway.
Of course he would shield himself in artifice. Maybe the goblins were right. He thinks too much for his own good.
Most likely mine are nonsense feelings. The Tangle has no place for sentiment.
So far, we have no information on Slobadâs fate except for his new card. Iâve seen some people fear that Slobad has been turned into a pawn of fascist Phyrexia. My interpretation--fueled by some hopeful thinking but also extrapolation from the story thus far--is a little different.
My hope is that Slobad was reanimated not by the loyalists, but by the rebellion. Heâs fully kitted out in furnace gear, and his flavor text could go either way but implies to me that heâs working to take the plane back from the praetors. Itâs not exactly the same as âsavingâ, as the old Mirrodin is gone whether anyone likes it or not, but he can do what he does best as an artificer: resculpt. Craft the plane into a better place.
...And as much as it hurts, itâs not that the old Mirrodin ever loved him. From his birth he was ostracized by his people, the goblins, even though they value community, religion, and ancestry more than anything else. He was enslaved by the leonin and ultimately met his demise at the hands of his own kind. After a death that awful, this may very well be a blessing (if done by the right people). And heâd be an asset to the rebellion, as someone who was around during Memnarchâs time and witnessed Mirrodinâs history in person.
Perhaps the Furnace could be a new home that values Slobadâs talent and intellect, those traits that he was so despised for in his mortal life. A new family to take him in when his biological one abandoned him. Why restore the old world that pained him, when he could usher in a new one to welcome him?
And of course thereâs the matter of his new body itself. From the name and ability, itâs quite clear that Slobad was reanimated with the broken pieces of Bosh, one of his closest companions. I like to think that, beyond poetic coincidence, Slobad requested the usage of Boshâs parts. Two reasons--
1) When they first met, Slobad restored Bosh to life through his artifice. Here, Bosh returns the favor. I like to think itâs what he would have wanted.
2) In goblin culture, reverence is shown to honored predecessors by smithing items from their recycled metal parts. By incorporating Bosh into his very body, Slobad bestows the greatest honor he can.
Iâm not willing to give up hope for Slobad quite yet. Thereâs still a significant chance this isnât a tragedy, but the greatest thing to happen to him yet, and Iâm excited to see where it goes.
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The only monocolored Legendary (New) Phyrexians that aren't Praetors. Geth and Skithiryx appeared in 'Scars of Mirrodin'. Keskit and Ich-Tekik appeared in 'Commander Legends'. The Phyrexian Slobad will be appearing in 'Phyrexia: All Will Be One', though the character first appeared in 'Darksteel'.
which is a kind of generic look for mtg goblins, right? just sort of like a dominarian goblin with metal bits. so wotc changed the design for goblins when they did scars of mirrodin block to this:
which i assumed was just an art update, like how the art for dragon engine from antiquities is different from the art in the reprint theyre doing in dominaria remastered. but then today wotc spoiled a new slobad card and he still looks like this:
he still clearly has the build and head shape of an old mirran goblin, which i guess means that the old mirran goblins and the new mirran goblins are two distinct types of goblin? like i know slobad sucked all the elders back to their home planes after memnarch died which is the pseudocanon reason for why they look different but their children would still be around and not orange and the orange ones wouldve lost their elders too? in canon theres only like 110 years between these blocks so its not like they all evolved to look like this or something. if its a glistening oil thing how come the other sentient races of the plane arent this noticeably different after the same amount of time? were the orange ones just hiding this whole time and then all the green ones died and they took over? why did that happen?
This one is all @sarpadianempiresvol-viii âs fault. He started Dacktober, an event where you dress your favorite planeswalker as Dack Fayden. Why you ask? I dunno, but Iâm game. I got the itch to do my favorite shortest lived walker, Slobad of Mirrodin. Heâs looking stylish for sure, gotta respect the Karn belt buckle. There might be another one of these this month, i hope.