No one had time to answer. The levelers broke through the end of the razor grass and charged across the open plain. In the blink of an eye the killing devices were upon them, and Bruenna’s wizards turned to face the new threat.
Blue energy arced out over the plain, the light reflected in the metallic plates, catching the levelers across their chests, making their steering sails look green and their silver bodies a dull gray.
The white moon had been the first to rise, leaving the world suited in its natural colors. The next up, not more than a few second later, was the blue. It tainted the white, exaggerating the shadows, deepening the contrast between colors, and bathing everything in a harsh, unflattering light. As the black and red moons rose, colors began to mix and fade, turning everything once again to a ruddy brown.
“This light is making casting magic difficult,” said Bruenna.
The elf and the human stood back to back. Glissa fought off the nim, and Bruenna threw spells at the charging levelers. Sandwiched between the two threats, the allies bunched tightly together. For a brief moment there was a separation between the good and the bad. Though they were squashed between levelers and nim, Glissa knew which way to point her sword. Then both groups pushed in, squeezing between the friends, cutting off allies.
Glissa, Bruenna, Slobad, Bosh, Al-Hayat, and all the human wizards were completely overrun.
Levelers rolled over warriors. Their scythe blades cut down the humans like they were long strands of razor grass.
Nim scratched at eyes, sank their teeth into live flesh, and piled on top of anyone they could reach, using their superior numbers as a weapon.
Glissa fought from side to side, parrying scythe blades to her right and rotten flesh to her left. The three distinct forces swirled and mixed together. It looked like a formal ball, everyone dancing and turning and moving in a great undulating mass.
The nim continued climbing over the lip of the hill, swarming over the plain to get into the fight. Six more came after Glissa, joining the four already slashing at her with their plague-infested claws, poisonous gas rising from their backs. From behind she fought off a pair of levelers. One would strike from the left, then the other would strike a moment later from the right. They took turns, creating a sort of scissoring motion with their sharp blades.
She could only watch as the six shambling monstrosities came on, barely able to keep herself alive without having to worry about more nim. As they closed in, Glissa fought off the urge to close her eyes. She had no control over this situation, and she didn’t want to watch the undead beasts tear her apart piece by piece. All the while, as she fought, she knew that sooner or later the sheer numbers would overwhelm her.
That moment had come sooner than she had hoped.
The nim reached out. Glissa dug down deep, trying to make her blade move faster-but she was at her physical limit. Lunging forward, the elf skewered two of them with one blow.
“I’ll take you all with me,” she shouted.
Her sword was lodged on a bone inside one of the two nim. Slime and rotten flesh covered the hilt of her sword. Yanking with all of her might, Glissa leaned back-and she lost her grip. Falling backward from the force of her pulling, the elf landed flat on her back, looking up at eight nim.
A pair of scythe blades closed just over her face, and for a brief moment, Glissa was grateful for having fallen. If she had been standing when those blades closed down, she would have surely lost half of her left leg-if not more. But that moment passed as the nim closed in.
The first of the undead creatures stepped on her stomach, and Glissa tightened her abdomen to avoid being crushed. Then another stepped on her, and another. The nim were surprisingly light, their bodies made up of little more than desiccated bone and rotten flesh, but they were heavy when all eight of them climbed on top of her.
Pulling her arms up to her sides and twisting away, Glissa curled up into a ball. Three of the nim lost their footing, slipping off and landing easily on the ground. But the others continued to trample her. She was pinned, trapped under the onslaught.
What a funny way to go, she thought, crushed to death by a mob of undead.
The crushing footsteps continued. The weight kept her lungs pinned down, and she had a difficult time breathing. The hard ground underneath was unforgiving, and it pushed back where the nims’ feet pushed her down. With each successive attempt, her breath became shallower, and her vision began to narrow. Everything on the periphery dissolved, and a dark circle began closing down.
Glissa could hear the thumping of her heart in her ears as it labored to keep up with the dwindling air supply. She could feel the soft connective tissues in her body begin to separate and pull away from bone. Pushed past their limit, they were giving way-and so was her life-force.
This was it. She would die here. Her lifeless body would be baked to jerky under the convergent moons, and within a few days the only proof of her existence on Mirrodin would be the stain her corpse left on the interlocking metal plates of the plain.
One by one, the undead creatures stepped off of her. The heavy load lifted. Glissa gasped, swallowing air in giant gulp. Even the fetid swamp gas of Mephidross tasted sweet to her starved lungs. The thumping in her ears faded away, and her vision opened again. Lifting herself up to one elbow, Glissa looked up at a still-raging fight.
The nim who had trampled over her were now locked in combat with the levelers. Their bony claws did little to the armored hide of the killing beasts. Still, the wave of putrid flesh surged forward, throwing themselves fearlessly on the invaders.
Getting to her feet, Glissa found her sword and found Bruenna fighting a pair of levelers. The wizard bashed away attacks from all sides with a practiced ease. Except for the look of utter concentration on her face, the woman’s movements were as calm and smooth as if she were doing nothing more taxing than preparing a light spell.
Glissa stepped up beside her friend, engaging one of the levelers.
Bruenna’s staff came around and a huge bolt of energy shot from the end. The magic struck the leveler and spread out. Jagged lines of blue power crackled along the seams in the artifact creature’s armor, and the leveler stopped dead in its tracks. Its scythe blades seized up, and its steering sail went limp.
Then the buzzing lines of energy slipped inside the creature. It was as if they had been sucked up in a giant breath from the leveler’s belly. The device shuddered once, then with a giant clang, things started falling off. Armored plates dropped to the ground. Scythe blades twisted and rolled away, making a satisfying ring as they hit the metal surface of the plain. All the plates and pieces that made up the insides of the leveler suddenly let go. With what seemed a final coughing gasp, the artifact creature splashed to the ground-completely dismantled, now nothing more than a collection of spare parts.
Glissa sidestepped as the shiny bits of the leveler’s insides spread out on the ground before her. Dodging an ill-timed strike by the other killing device, the elf twirled the Sword of Kaldra over her head. Grasping it in both hands as it came around, she brought the sharpened, magical edge of the blade down on the leveler’s head. The legendary sword parted polished metal as easily as it parted rotting nim flesh. Gears strained, and springs groaned, but they couldn’t overcome the might that Glissa had brought to bear.
With the unmistakable sound of metal crashing against metal, the leveler fell facedown onto the ground.
“What happened?” asked Glissa. “Why’d the nim stop attacking us?”
As if in answer, a trio of undead creatures lurched toward the two women.
“They didn’t.” Bruenna twirled her staff.
Glissa was faster. Bringing to mind the verdigris spires and thorny growths of the Tangle, the elf pulled in mana and funneled it into a spell. The ground shook and tiny motes of green light seeped from the cracks between the metal plates on the floor of the plain. The zombies before her, caught within the maelstrom of magic, withered and melted, dropping before they got close enough to strike with a blade.