“You would be proud of these, Master Karn,” he said, reaching down to examine one of the boxes. “These devices are Memnarch’s own creation. His own creation. We call them soul traps, and they keep Mirrodin populated.” Gently brushing aside several of the furry little creatures, the Guardian probed the sides of the diamond. It was soft, fleshy to his touch.
“This too,” he said poking the soft sides of the contraption. “This is a symptom. If only Memnarch knew what caused the symptoms, we could study it. Understand it. Cure it.”
Memnarch looked down at his own arm. The flesh there was soft and supple, just like the sides of the trap and the furry beasts running around on the floor of Mirrodin.
“It infects us all. It corrupts perfection.” Memnarch gritted his teeth, squeezing his fists together until this arms turned bright red. “It makes a mockery of all that the Creator built.”
Memnarch’s body began to shake. “This is not how Memnarch is supposed to be. You created Memnarch in your image, and now Memnarch is … is.” He held his arms up, opening his whole body to the rays of the mana core.
“This!”
The bright blue-white light seared into Memnarch’s eyes, and tears ran down his face. Except for the electrical hiss the mana core gave off, the rest of the interior of Mirrodin was silent.
Finally the Guardian let his hands fall to his sides. A floating patch of orange filled his vision. For a moment Memnarch lost his connection to the solid world. Vertigo filled his head, and the Guardian lost his balance. He stepped back to catch himself, and his foot landed on something soft. He heard a popping noise and slipped.
Memnarch fell. All four of his legs folded underneath him, and his serum tank made a tremendous clang as it hit the ground.
“Why is Memnarch being punished so?” he moaned.
The Guardian rested on his side, not moving. The burning orange sphere obscuring his sight slowly drifted away, and Memnarch looked out at a puddle of red fluid covering the ground around him.
“Blood? Do we see blood?”
Lifting himself to his feet, he examined his body. His entire side was slick with blood, but he felt no pain. Poking and prodding his partially fleshy limbs, Memnarch searched for wounds, but found none.
On the ground, near his feet, the furry little creatures scuttled around, avoiding the bloody mess as best they could.
“Our grendles? Have our grendles turned completely to flesh?”
Memnarch bent down and picked up one of the crushed, furry creatures. A feeling of overwhelming sadness crept over him, and he shook his head as he looked down at the dead creature in his hands.
“Is this what will happen to Memnarch?”
* * * * *
Drooge held up a finger. “By itself, the helm will aid you in battle. Your blows will strike harder. Your moves will be faster. In concert with the Sword of Kaldra and the Shield of Kaldra, it will do much more.”
“The Sword of Kaldra? What’s that?”
Drooge lifted his massive hand and pointed to Glissa’s hip. “The blade you took from Chunth.”
Glissa pulled her hand back. “You mean it’s part of a set?”
“Yes. More appropriately, it is part of a key.”
Slobad’s ears perked up. “What does this key open?”
“It is not so much a key to open something as a key to activate a powerful being.”
Slobad’s ears picked up. “Artifact, huh? Where we find this powerful artifact?”
“Not an artifact.”
Slobad slumped, disappointed.
“You must travel to the swamps of the Mephidross,” Drooge continued. “There you will find the Shield of Kaldra.” The troll held out his hand. “May I see your sword?”
Glissa looked hesitantly at Slobad then at Bosh. The golem stood silently behind her, as he had during the entire interview, ready for anything. The sight of her hulking friend calmed Glissa’s nerves, and she pulled her sword from its sheath, handing it to the troll.
Drooge ran his fingers over the blade’s hilt, examining the etchings and runes inscribed there. “You see this,” he said after a moment, turning the handle toward the trio and indicating a circular groove. At the center of the groove, the same circular rune broken into five parts had been inscribed. “This is where the sword’s hilt will attach to the shield when you find the last part of the Kaldra Guardian.”
“The Kaldra Guardian?” asked Slobad.
“Yes,” replied the troll. “The guardian is an avatar, a very powerful one. Once you have all three pieces, you must assemble them, and the guardian will come to life.”
“Wait,” said Glissa. “If the trolls knew about this being before, why didn’t Chunth just tell me about it?”
Drooge pawed his crutch. “You were not ready.”
“Not ready?”
“You did not believe Master Chunth. Now that you know your destiny, you are ready.”
“I still don’t understand what it is I’m destined to do.”
The troll smiled. “One step at a time,” he said. “Your journey will be long. Do not try to do it all in one day.”
A loud boom echoed through the Tree of Tales, and for the first time since they’d arrived, the trolls in the bleacher seats stirred. Lumbering up from where they were seated, the entire troll clan separated into four groups, filing from the room in an orderly fashion.
“What is that? What’s happening?” asked Glissa.
Drooge placed the casket back inside the cabinet and shut the door. “The Tree of Tales is under attack.”
* * * * *
Malil stood atop his personal leveler. The power of the serum still held him tightly in its grasp. The world had coalesced, and he had come back to Mirrodin just as Memnarch had told him he would. But the world to which he returned was different now. He understood better the way things worked, but that wasn’t what had changed.
Before him, arrayed and ready for battle, were nearly a hundred other levelers, each of them under his command. He looked out on them with a measure of pride. It was odd, this sensation. Many times before Malil had stood in just this place, but never once had he felt … anything.
Now his mind raced. They had tracked the elf to the Tangle, to this very tree. The leveler army had surrounded it. Malil had had the foresight to bring along two crushers-mammoths with curved horns on their heads and a single huge cylindrical wheel in front, capable of rolling over nearly anything and squashing it completely flat. In the past, he’d used these creations mostly to level human villages or flatten patches of razor grass. Now these behemoths were both assaulting the tree. Each of the artifact creatures took turns backing up and rolling forward, smashing headlong into the base of the tree. The pounding noise they made sounded musical to Malil.
The first crusher clanged into the tree again as the other pulled back for another run. The vibrating note of the last attack had almost fallen to silence when a flood of green oozed from the tree.
At first Malil thought it might be some sort of organic fluid. He had seen Memnarch bleed before, had even seen the humans and elves bleed when they were caught between the scythe blades of a leveler. Maybe this tree was bleeding.
The green fluid began to strike the levelers and the crushers, and Malil knew this was no fluid after all.
“Trolls.”
Levelers were hurled away from the advancing green tide. The crushers stopped their attack, covered by a host of trolls.
“Kill them,” shouted Malil, and the rest of the leveler army moved in, tightening the noose around the tree and the trolls.
“What we do?” shouted Slobad. “Levelers have us trapped, huh?”
“We’re going to fight,” said Glissa. She gripped the hilt of the Sword of Kaldra and took a step forward, but Drooge’s crutch bared her way.
“Your path does not lead out this door,” said the troll chieftain, indicating the arched front entrance to the tree. “It leads to the center of Mirrodin.”
“Wherever I’m supposed to go, I can’t get there if I don’t get out of this damned tree. We have to fight. We have no choice. Besides, your trolls could use the help.”