The beast bounded toward her. It was huge and black- a dragon engine. Its hackled back scraped the pipes. A barbed tail lashed behind it. A fangy mouth gaped before it. Corruption welled up between the creature's teeth.
There was something familiar about that face. Before she could make it out, a ball of acid hurtled from the toothy maw.
Daria raised her shield. It grew to cover her whole front. Acid splashed across it, striking the pipes above and below. The inky stuff dissolve them. Steam hissed from the pipe overhead and oil gushed from the pipe underfoot.
Daria fell back, lest she plunge through the ceramic and into the open channel. Her shield was gone, but it had saved her life-for a moment.
With a thunder of talons, the dragon was upon her.
Daria swung her sword out. Its hilt became a haft, which she rooted on the pipe. Its blade jagged into a huge pike. The edge struck the dragon's breast and cut through scale and meat and bone to organs beneath. This was no dragon engine, but an actual dragon. Ducking under the soaring belly, Daria wrenched her pike sideways. It macerated the monster's liver. Bile sprayed out over her. The beast's momentum carried it overhead. It crashed atop a tangle of pipes. Daria's pike jutted from its heart.
It wasn't dead. That blow would have killed any normal dragon, even a dragon engine, but this was something more. It yanked the pike from its breast. Sinew and scale closed over the wound. The creature sat up. When its head lifted, at last Daria knew who hunted her.
"Tevash Szat," she growled, her eyes narrowing. "What are you doing here?"
Climbing to his feet, the planeswalker stalked forward. His tail lashed fitfully. "I should think that utterly obvious. I'm doing to you what I did to Kristina."
Shaking her head ruefully, she said through gritted teeth, "I should have known." She leaped backward over the break in the oil pipe. Her hand lashed out, hurling a spell. There was very little mana in this sphere-it was the reason she had not cast a spell before-but this effect needed only the mildest of power. Fire rushed down into the pipe. It ignited the oil, hurling up a wall of flame. Daria turned and ran. The flames burst the pipe behind her, introducing more air. The fire redoubled. It would be racing the other direction as well, toward Szat. Flame would force him back toward the power column, would trap him there until Daria could escape its aura and planeswalk to the others.
She ran. There was no other escape. Pipes burst behind her. Fire lashed her feet and blasted against her hauberk. The narrow passage was just ahead. If she could reach it, if she could dive through…
Mantled in flame and hoary with wounds, Tevash Szat surged up suddenly behind her. His jaws spread wide. His teeth clamped down. They pierced her through the head and throat and chest. They went straight through her and met. Claws scooped up the severed lower half. Wings surged once more.
Then Szat was gone. He had planeswalked away with his meal. He would take time to eat it, to heal the burns across his body before returning to the others.
Then he would reappear within his titan engine and wait for his next victim.
Urza had chosen this section of the fourth sphere because it was intensely black. There was no better place to hide eight titan engines. The blackness also meant that most beasts avoided the spot. Only stupid things approached. Urza had been visited by twenty-some scuttling gremlins-dog-sized creatures with white claws and red eyes. They crushed just fine underfoot…
Urza's engine stepped on two more. He scraped the tripod sole on metallic ground.
How long before they raise an alarm? asked Taysir. He stood guard with Urza but had allowed his comrade all the stomping duties. Doesn't the lord of this junk pile know the mind of all his creatures?
So legends say. But these beasts are nothing to him. They are toe-nails. Toenails split all the time without their owners noticing.
Lightning cracked out across the sky. It showed up the underbelly of the third sphere-pipes knotted in tight convolutions. Jagged energy probed an enormous flywheel.
It illuminated a complex of gears and spindles before disappearing across the sky.
He knows we are here, Taysir said. Why doesn't he do more to stop us?
He cannot, Urza replied. All his forces are committed to the invasion. In his arrogance, he never believed we could assail him.
You're wrong, Taysir said. He and Urza had never been friends, and since Kristina's death, Taysir made no attempt to hide his animosity. He is smarter than that. He knows something we don't know. He's luring us in.
And you accuse me of paranoia, Urza said. No, Taysir. You are the one who is wrong, about this, and about a great many things.
One of the vacant titan engines powered up. A bluster of thoughts intruded on the conversation. Can't believe we have to muck about in pipes and sepsis, putrefying our hands and burning our beards and scratching our-my monocle! How in hell did that damned creeper scratch my best monocle?
How did your mission go, Commodore Guff? Urza asked.
Huhh? came the thought, flustered at the presence of the other two planeswalkers. Oh, peachy, my man. Not a hitch. Textbook.
Textbook? Urza ribbed. So, you are writing fiction these days?
The commodore gave a confident chuckle. That's the beauty. A man in my position writes fiction, and it becomes reality.
Two more titan engines powered up. Their piloting bulbs glowed faintly in the darkness. Within one sat Bo Levar, happily puffing on a cigar. Blue smoke curled up around him and drew away through fans at the rear of the suit. He waved a greeting to his comrades.
Within the other was Freyalise, settling into the command harness. Grime and oil and soot. Really, Urza, I don't know what you see in machines. Filthy, loud, vicious things.
Look at it this way, Bo Levar commented amiably, you're setting bombs to blow up the biggest damned machine in the multiverse.
Freyalise dipped her head in acknowledgment. That's the whole reason I agreed to come. I couldn't blow up all Urza's machines at once, but I could blow up all of Yawgmoth's.
Do not say that name, Urza warned. Do not even think it.
Urza thinks Yawgmoth doesn't know we're here, Taysir explained.
Freyalise gave a snort. Yeah, that's likely.
Don't say that name! Urza insisted.
The panther warrior's quadrupedal machine powered up. So too did the draconic machine of Tevash Szat.
Ah, so the animals are the last ones back, quipped Bo Levar, sending a great puff of smoke up into his piloting dome. I'd think on four legs you could have done the job in half the time.
Ever laconic, Lord Windgrace spoke only a few purring words. I ran into some… rats.
Did you plant the bombs? Urza asked.
Yes. They are set.
Mine too, offered Szat quietly.
That leaves only my daughter, Taysir said.
Oh, she won't be coming, said Urza casually. She's dead.
What? chorused Taysir and Freyalise.
Urza's titan engine began to pace with the same demeanor the man had used in Tolarian lecture halls. There has been a lot of talk lately about who has underestimated whom.