Okay, too much. Focus.
A blast from a closing aerophin clipped Bruenna’s robe. A tree took the second shot and exploded in a hail of jagged copper shards just in front of her. Splitting her concentration, she dodged most of the shrapnel, but felt a few tiny knife-like blades pepper her face, arms, and chest.
The spell was done. It wasn’t flashy. Bruenna simply became aware of where the elf girl currently was, as if it was the road to her own home.
Not that Bruenna had a home anymore.
Bruenna wrenched on the flight controls and tore off through the Tangle in search of her last hope. She saw the clearing in the trees that had to be Glissa’s village, and angled in for what she hoped would be a soft landing.
Bruenna shouldn’t have bothered-a pair of aerophins scored direct hits on her tail. The control crystals exploded, temporarily blinding her with sparks and oily smoke. She pulled mightily on the steering yoke, but shouldn’t have bothered. As soon as she did, the magical engine that drove the flyer sputtered and died. Bruenna’s stomach lurched as the sky dropped out from under her, and the flyer’s nose dipped toward Mirrodin.
Glissa had hoped she’d seen the last of the vedalken aerophins. The sound of the winged artifacts was umistakeable.
But Pontifex was dead. If the vedalken artifacts were attacking now, someone else was behind it. It had to be Memnarch.
“Why you stand there, huh?” Slobad said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her away from Viridia.
Glissa watched the sky, but also listened with sharp ears. The flapping wings were drawing closer, and amid the hum Glissa could also hear elves descending the Trial Terrace. Below it all, something strange, but also familiar, coming in ahead of the aerophins. Then she heard a small explosive popping noise and the familiar sound cut out.
“Slobad, did you hear that?”
“I see it! Duck!” Slobad slammed into Glissa’s side, knocking the elf girl flat as a sleek silver object moving impossibly fast narrowly missed a perfect opportunity to deprive Glissa of her head. The whoosh of displaced air was followed by the grating screech as the speeding, smoking thing collided with a tree.
“What was that?” the elf girl gasped.
“Don’t know, but the ’phins were chasing it,” Slobad observed. “And here they come!”
“Wait!” Glissa cried. “Lyese! Slobad, I can’t leave her lying here.” The elf heaved her sister over her shoulders. “Okay, lead the way. I’ll keep up.”
Slobad jogged ahead of her and away from the encroaching roar of flying constructs. A barrage of sliver-blue fire struck a few feet away, shattering the ground. Glissa stumbled after Slobad as best she could with the weight on her shoulders, for once thankful that goblins had such short legs.
Another volley of crackling firebolts exploded in the canopy above them. Glissa yelped as bits of shattered copper peppered her hind quarters, sending her stumbling over an exposed root. Glissa tumbled face-first to the ground. Lyese fell limp and rolled a ways ahead. Slobad stopped, scooped up Lyese on his own back, and kept running.
“Slobad! Run! I’ll catch up,” Glissa said, turning to face the ’phins. She’d had enough.
“Are you cra-never mind, stupid question,” Slobad shouted back.
“I can handle them. You have to get Lyese out of here. Please,” Glissa said.
“Don’t get killed, huh?” Slobad said.
“’Course not. Just get to whatever crashed up there. If it’s the vedalken who’s behind this, and it’s still alive, try to keep it there until I’m finished. And don’t drop my sister,” Glissa said. “Go, they’re almost here.”
Slobad nodded and charged ahead as best he could. The elf girl returned to the problem at hand.
“Great,” Glissa muttered. “No weapon, no goblin. No problem.” Despite their bizarre vedalken design and deadly energy blasts, the accursed things were still just constructs, after all. Glissa had a way with such constructs. She felt a familiar tingle in her spine as they drew closer.
Looking inward, she called forth the jade fire. Glissa’s copper skin began to crackle with energy, and her eyes glowed with eerie light. Glissa pulled her hands toward her chest then flung them outward. A wave of green fire slammed into the forefront of the aerophin formation then split in a fractal pattern that resembled a pane of shattered crystal in the sky.
Glissa poured death into the killing machines, and they died in droves. Tendrils of swirling, smoky energy snaked around each individual artifact. Glissa felt each one as the energy slammed into their magical power sources, causing some to shut down immediately, making others attack allies, but causing most to simply explode like a goblin cannon.
Glissa felt quite peaceful, and very strong. Was this what it felt like to be a planeswalker, to touch that power?
The aerophins’ formation crumbled. With the mental equivalent of a snapping lute string, Glissa felt the last aerophin die, and the spark energy dissipated as rapidly as it had coalesced. She opened her eyes, which she realized she had held clenched shut the entire time. She’d somehow seen the aerophins anyway.
The aerophins were dead, but their corpses hadn’t simply vanished. They’d built up considerable momentum, and now thousands of burning, twisted hunks of jagged metal rained down. Glissa raised her hands again, hoping to stop the tumbling wreckage somehow, but the power had either been spent or left her entirely. She tried to run, but her legs refused to move, and her vision began to blur.
Heavy, booted footsteps crashed through the foliage behind, and Glissa slowly tried to turn. Whoever approached was running into their doom. “Slobad? Stay back!” Glissa called, “They’re going to hit any second!”
“I’ve lost enough family recently,” a distinctly ungoblinish voice replied, scooping Glissa up and slinging her over steady, armored shoulders.
“Lyese!” Glissa coughed as the rough movement knocked the wind out of her.
“Just shut up,” her younger sister replied. “Before I change my mind.” Without another word, Lyese bolted away from the hail of burning wreckage.
CHAPTER 5
“Ha!” Slobad said, trying to clap Glissa and the new arrival on the shoulders but succeeding only in smacking both on the small of the back. “Told you you could do it, huh? Slobad have faith! Strength in numbers, huh? Ha!”
Bruenna had survived the crash of her stolen flyer with only a few scratches and bruises marring her bluish skin. Glissa had been relieved to see the mage, about whose fate she’d feared the worst. The small group was now gathered amid the smoking aerophin wreckage.
Glissa stood on unsteady legs and gazed at the new hell she’d brought to the Tangle. Slobad offered her an arm, but she waved him away.
The rain of burning constructs had crashed with thousands of fiery impacts into the Tangle, knocking some trees down and causing them to burst into oily flame, turning others to glowing slag in explosive collisions. The ground was covered in twisted hunks of vedalken artifacts and a viscous, sticky substance that leaked from the wrecked artifact creatures and burned with thick black smoke.
Of Yulyn or any of the other Viridian elves, there was no sign. “I hope those all cleared the village,” Glissa said softly when her jaw would work again. “The Tangle can’t take much more of this.”
“What happened, huh?” Slobad asked.
“Memnarch’s not dead,” Bruenna said.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Glissa replied.
“All right, something you don’t know. My people are,” Bruenna said. “My village, at least. I can only guess what might have happened to the workers in Lumengrid.”
“Your people are what?” Glissa asked.
“Dead.”
“Oh, Bruenna,” Glissa whispered, raising her claws to her lips. “I’m …”
“Sorry?” Bruenna shot back. “Don’t be. They died fighting. Fighting those.” The mage waved a hand at the mess of wreckage and shattered forest. “Too bad I didn’t ask you to come back with me. You could have stopped them at any time, couldn’t you? You could have stopped them all with that green fire.”