“I don’t-I don’t know,” Glissa said. “I don’t understand this power I’ve got, Bruenna, and I don’t know where it comes from.” Not the entire truth, but it was as much as Glissa wanted to share right now.
“You see, lady,” Lyese said, “She doesn’t understand anything. Death just follows wherever she goes, and the rest of us have to follow or get out of the way.”
“Seven hells, Lyese!” Glissa exploded “I didn’t ask for this!”
“Yeah?” Lyese barked back, stepping close enough to get into her sister’s face. “No one did. No one ever expects anything, and no one’s at fault, right? You’re just a hunter. You don’t want to defend our home, you just wanted to run through the woods playing games with Kane.”
Glissa drew a sharp intake of breath at the mention of her dead friend.
“Oh, sorry, he’s dead too, isn’t he?” Lyese asked innocuously. “Well, I didn’t ask to lose an eye, Glissa. I didn’t ask to see half the village disappear into thin air when you called up that damned moon. And I didn’t ask to find pieces of Mother and Father in the garden. But at least you’re alive. So why don’t you crawl back inside the world and stop bringing death down on everyone around you?”
Glissa opened her mouth to speak, but she’d forgotten how.
“Child, shut up,” Bruenna interrupted. “You’re not the only one who’s suffering. And she’s right. She’s not the cause of this, she’s the focal-”
Lyese’s sword was in her hand and within an inch of Bruenna’s windpipe in the blink of an eye. “Call me a child again, human. You’re not much better than Glissa. I never saw you before today. How do I know you’re not as guilty as she is?”
“EVERYBODY QUIET!” Slobad screamed at the top of his lungs. The three women froze, staring at the furious goblin. “You,” he said, pointing at Lyese, “Don’t know what Glissa’s been through, huh? Glissa, sister was scared. Now she suspicious. Got every right to be, huh? But sister will learn she’s wrong.” Slobad’s eyes narrowed. “You both family. Slobad got no family, huh? Get over it, elves are both alive. That’s family. Be happy for that, huh?”
“Goblin, I couldn’t have said it better-”
“And you!” Slobad said, cutting Bruenna off and jabbing a stubby claw up at her chin. “Uh … actually, you okay,” The goblin said once Bruenna’s words had made the perilous journey through his ears and into his brain. “Uh, thanks. For support, huh? Sorry about your tribe. That’s rotten, huh?”
“That’s a good word for it,” Bruenna agreed. She turned to the one-eyed elf girl and bowed slightly. “You are Glissa’s sister? It’s an honor to meet you.”
Lyese, surprised, took the Neurok woman’s offered hand.
“Bruenna, meet my sister Lyese. Lyese, meet Bruenna of the Neurok,” Glissa said.
Bruenna appraised Lyese. “The family resemblance is uncanny.”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,” Lyese said with a scowl.
“We’re-uh, it’s a long story,” Glissa said. “Lyese, Bruenna is not your enemy. Any more than I am. If you’d really earned that armor, you’d speak with more respect.”
“Don’t tell me what I earned, Glissa!” Lyese snapped, “I’ll make my own judgments.”
“Bruenna, what happened?” Glissa asked with a sigh. “I need details.”
“They attacked us, intentionally,” the Neurok woman replied. “Hunted down every last one of us.”
“Except you, huh?” Slobad said.
“It started with levelers,” Bruenna said.
“Levelers?” Glissa, Slobad, and Lyese asked at once.
“They came ashore from Lumengrid. The vedalken said they wanted peace, but … We fought back, but it was late. Most of the villagers were cut down in their beds.” Bruenna coughed awkwardly, and Glissa could tell she was on the verge of breaking down. “I fought them, with everything I had. But then the ’phin swarm came across the sea from that cursed vedalken city, and they hit a tower I was using for cover. It toppled and pinned me underneath.”
“Lucky,” Lyese remarked. Her good eye was still examining the human with suspicion.
“Yes,” Bruenna nodded. “Very lucky. I was standing over an underground food storage area. The tower fell and knocked out the roof of the warehouse cave the same time it came down on me.”
“You fall through ground and land in a cave, huh?” Slobad said. “That happens to Slobad all the time.”
“We’ll have to swap cave-in survival tips sometime, goblin,” Bruenna said. “When I came to, everyone was … it was a slaughter. I can only imagine what happened to the poor folk that lived in Lumengrid itself. So I borrowed a flyer from a vedalken.”
“Didn’t see you coming, huh?” Slobad asked.
“No, he didn’t,” Bruenna said with a grim smile. “Bastard was picking through the bodies, checking for wounded, I guess, but wasn’t finding any. Caught him with a bolt of lightning right in the fishbowl. Then I hopped on the flyer, which must have woken up the ’phins and levelers, because took off after me.” Bruenna shrugged wearily.
“What’s a fishbowl?” Slobad asked.
“Later,” Glissa interrupted, and swung Bruenna around by the shoulders. “There are levelers coming too?” Even as she asked the question, Glissa’s sharp ears picked up the clacking of the leveler hordes, still many miles away but closing. And between the elf girl and the sounds of metallic death was her home.
“Flare,” Glissa swore. “This is not good.”
“Can you stop them?” Lyese demanded. “Can you do to them what you did to these?” She waved an arm to indicate the shattered aerophins.
“I’ve got to try,” Glissa said. “Otherwise, Viridia’s going to be destroyed.” Privately, she didn’t think she had it in her, but she was Viridia’s only chance.
“Let me help,” Bruenna said, brushing flecks of copper and oil from her robes. “Together, maybe we can-”
“No, I’ve got to do this myself,” Glissa insisted. “You three need to get someplace safe. Someplace where there might be an army big enough to take on Memnarch.” She turned to the goblin. “Slobad, you’ve go to lead them to Taj Nar. Raksha might be able to help. At the very least, he deserves to know what’s happening. And I can’t think of any safer place on Mirrodin right now.”
Slobad shook his head. “Oh, no. Where you go, Slobad goes.”
“Viridia’s my home, too, Glissa,” Lyese interrupted. “If you’re going back there to fight them, I am too.”
“Both of you are being foolish,” Bruenna said softly. “Glissa is right-she must go alone. I’ve seen how many there are, and we wouldn’t last five minutes. But if Glissa’s magic can do it all at once …”
Lyese looked from Bruenna to Glissa then back the way they had come. She placed her hands on her hips and stared a dagger at her older sister. “Okay, go. But if I find out you’re just going back to help them finish the job, I’ll kill you.”
Glissa grimaced, but nodded. “If I don’t succeed, you probably won’t get the chance. But I’ll try and save you a piece. Now please, go with Bruenna and Slobad. You can trust them, even if you still don’t trust me.”
“Glissa,” Lyese said, “just go.”
Glissa turned from her sister to Bruenna and spread her arms wide. “So, think you can get me airborne?”
Bruenna grinned. “I can do better than that, now that my feet are back on solid metal.” The Neurok woman closed her eyes and began summoning the magical power of flight.
Glissa caught up to the levelers a few hundred yards before they would have swarmed over Viridia. They were well over a thousand strong, each one bristling with blades, claws, teeth, and armor, gleaming green in the moonglow. The constructs flattened most of the smaller trees in their path, skirting the larger trunks that even levelers would be hard pressed to bring down. But Glissa wasn’t concerned with the plant life, destructive as Memnarch’s creatures were. The unsuspecting people of Viridia were hers to protect now, for better or worse.