A spear-wielding elf appeared at the near end of the bridge. The agent dropped his prize and sprang at his new foe. Before the elf could raise his weapon, the wraithlike agent was on him, bearing him down to the plank floor of the bridge. They grappled, and the agent used his steelclad head to bludgeon his enemy into submission. Blood streamed down the agent's face, mixing with the mimetic ointment. He rolled the dead elf's body off the bridge and let it splash in the dark waters below. He picked up the fallen warrior's spear.
More torch-bearing elves filled the landings at both ends of the bridge. They were carrying whatever weapons came to hand-snake-fang maces, flails, tree-limb knobkerries-but luckily no bows. He slung the blanket-wrapped body over his shoulder. Elves filed onto the bridge.
"There he is!"
"What is it? A demon?"
"No demon-see, it bleeds!"
That brought forth calls for more of the agent's blood. He calmly positioned himself on the bridge and raised his captured spear. A thrown mace hurtled past him. He faced his nearest pursuers and bared his teeth in a snarl. Torchlight gleamed off his steel fangs. A refinement, his masters called it, pulling his natural teeth and giving him these metal spikes. Now the angry elves hesitated, transfixed by the weird apparition between them.
The spear was useless, so he flung it at his pursuers. He grabbed one of the bridge's supporting vines and clamped down on it with his metal teeth. The cable parted with a crack. The left side of the bridge sagged. Elves began to scramble back to the platforms. The agent turned and just as efficiently bit through another cable.
The broken bridge fell. He'd judged his place perfectly. His portion of the bridge was just long enough to drag the surface of the water and stop before slamming into a tree trunk.
Clasping his burden, the agent plunged into the murky water. His shroud and body paint took on the deep color of night, and he was soon lost in darkness.
He knew it wasn't over. The elves were master hunters and trackers. By daylight they would be after him in force, and his escape portal was far enough away that day would be well underway by the time he reached it.
Failure is not an option. You will complete your mission whatever the cost.
Clasping the dead girl's waist, he swam faster.
Light dispels darkness-a fundamental principle, a law of nature, on every known world. But on the plane of Phyrexia, nature does not exist. On Phyrexia, light serves the dark, it does not rule it.
The Fourth Level of this unnatural plane was the realm of great furnaces. Here were forged many of the components of Phyrexia's living machines. Around the clock (for there is no night or day), gangs of slave gremlins fed the scrap of redundant mechanisms into the mile-high furnaces. Molten metal was drawn off, alloyed and tempered in greater automatic rolling mills, and the resulting mixtures poured, pressed, or stamped into parts for new Phyrexian machines. If the gremlins faltered, they too were recycled, their ranks constantly renewed with more expendable laborers.
Strange, then, was the mission of the gremlin Dabir. A minor gremlin of trifling wits, he was best known for his reliability and his utter subservience to his masters. His immediate overseer, the vat priest Paax, had given him an unusual task. Dabir stood for hours before a shimmering portal to another plane, impatiently awaiting the arrival of
… what was it again he was waiting for?
"A sample," Paax said.
"What sample?"
The hulking Paax extended an oiled, acid-etched arm until his black fingers were half an inch from Dabir's beaked nose. A blue spark arced from the demon's hand, and the gremlin collapsed on the greasy metal floor of the Fourth Sphere in agony.
"Ask not the will of your betters," said Paax, his voice punctuated by tinny clicks. He was bothered by a sticky breathing regulator. "Only obey."
Dabir picked himself up, fingering his throbbing nose. The smell of scorched flesh made even his feculent stomach churn.
"Dabir always obey great, wise Paax," he whined.
Paax swiveled his slender undercarriage and started away on four delicate, articulated legs. His rear mouth warned, "Be at the portal at the appointed time. Receive the sample, and deliver it to Monitor 8391 at Processing Mill 44. You know the penalty if you fail."
The vat priest maneuvered his bulky upper body around a steaming flue and was soon lost in the maze of heat exchangers and lubricant chases.
And so Dabir waited by the open portal-a glowing pane twelve inches square-for the sample. He could see through the dimensional doorway glimpses of a world far removed from the inferno he'd always known. The surface of that distant place was soil and stone, not oily metal, and living plants waved in the wind. If the gremlin got too close, the portal would shimmer, like the air near the mouths of the great furnaces. Fearful of damaging the ethereal portal, Dabir kept his distance.
He waited through an entire shift of work, rubbing his haunches when they numbed from sitting so long. He turned his back on the portal and laced his taloned fingers through his yellow-nailed toes, bored as only a vapid gremlin can be bored.
Suddenly there was a flash of blue light behind him. He spun and saw the portal had enlarged itself four times. A hooded figure was running across a plain of tall, dry grass toward the portal, pursued by a dozen flesh beings. Their mouths worked, but Dabir could not make out what they were saying. Sound did not traverse the portal.
Several of the tall beings, clad in painted hides and feathers, nocked arrows and loosed them at the fleeing figure. Three arrows struck and bounced off. A fourth found a chink in the agent's armor and buried half its length in his back. He staggered, and for the first time Dabir recognized the hooded figure bore a weighty bundle over his left shoulder.
"Hurry! Come!" Dabir shouted uselessly. He cared nothing about the wounded agent, fearing instead his own punishment if the agent failed to reach the portal. More arrows flashed. A second broadhead found its mark, and the shrouded figure fell, pitching his burden to the ground.
Dabir wet himself in terror. He thrust his long arms into the vibrant portal. A teasing sensation, not unpleasant, played over his oily skin. The precious sample was just beyond his grasping claws. Galvanized by visions of his own lengthy and painful death, Dabir shoved his head through the dimensional window.
He felt cool air, free of oil or soot. Then came the shouts of the hunters. An indefinite light from above dazzled the gremlin's eyes. He reached out for the clothwrapped bundle. His movements seemed slow, as if he were swimming through thick oil instead of fresh, open air.
His fingers felt oddly numb, and the sensation was spreading up his arms. Desperately, the gremlin snagged the edge of the wrapping. With a tremendous heave of his long legs, Dabir pulled himself and the bundle back through the portal. Both landed with a thump on the gritty metal plates of the Fourth Sphere.
The portal began to dwindle. The wounded agent raised a hand, either in a final plea or in final salute. Dabir watched six tall beings surround the fallen figure. They had spears. Shafts rose and fell in pitiless repetition as the portal shrank to a few inches, then winked out.
Dabir bobbed up on his knees. He sat in the shadows cast by the eternal glare of the furnaces, biting his own hands to restore feeling to them. His normally glossy black skin had turned ash gray on those parts of his body he'd stuck through the portal. The numbness slowly faded, but his color did not return.
A whiff of something delectable teased his formidable nose. Inserting it in a hole in the tattered blanket, he sniffed. The ugly white thing inside smelled like the air on the other side of the portal. No oil, no soot, no tang of acid aerosols… he replaced his nose with his tongue and gave the sample a quick lick. Flesh, newly dead and still sweet. The Phyrexian agent had died to deliver a corpse.