Then seize and break it, Nissa said.
She could gain us paths we cannot know, Sorin said. She could allow us entry to the Eye.
The kor s screaming was hurting Nissa s ears. Something about the kor, perhaps her acidic smell, made Nissa extremely wary. That is assuming she is telling the truth and not raving at the moon, Nissa said.
Sorin s eyes never left the kor as she screamed out her words. Rather. But I do not think this one is fabricating
That crystal seems familiar somehow.
The goblins had been whispering among themselves. When Sorin mentioned the crystal, one of the goblins stepped forward. He was dressed in a much-used robe of thick worsted fabric, dyed red.
Crystal of the Ancients held by Smara, Chosen of the Ancients, it said.
And that is Smara? Nissa said, pointing at the kor.
The goblin bowed its head.
And are you all allowed to speak?
The goblin shook its head.
Only now, me, the goblin said. And I stop speaking now. Here I am stopping. I have stopped.
Nissa watched the goblin purse its gray lips together, trying not to speak. The other goblins watched with clear admiration on their faces. Did they admire his discipline or his ability to speak many times a challenge for a goblin? she wondered. The goblin stood before her with his chin up a bit. His discipline, Nissa decided. They all want to speak but are terrified by something.
I have stopped speaking, the goblin whispered.
Now.
Smara suddenly lurched forward, kicking the sand as she jerked a step. She was repeating words as she turned and began stumbling forward in the darkness with the chants on her lips. The goblins were on her in a second. But instead of bringing her to the fire, as Nissa expected, they led her forward, continuing down the trench and away into the darkness.
Sorin watched them go, as did Anowon. The vampire s face told a tale of loss and sorrow that Nissa could not help but chuckle at.
We must follow, Sorin said. He began walking after Smara. Anowon almost tripped in his haste to follow.
Why must we follow? Nissa said.
That one is somehow channeling an Eldrazi ancient, Sorin said, over his shoulder. We have in a strange way gained access to the enemy s camp.
Nissa looked up at the early evening as sling-tail nighthawks swept the skies clear of lion flies.
They trailed behind the goblins all that night and into the morning. It didn t matter if they wanted the kor and the goblins to travel with them or not. Smara was walking in the same direction they were; and the goblins, having no food that Nissa could see no provisions of any sort in fact kept close. They looked so forlorn that Nissa gave them hard tack biscuits.
But neither Anowon nor Sorin would eat her dry tack. They looked drawn in the early morning light. Nissa watched Anowon as he followed the goblins, who looked over their shoulders nervously at him.
They walked for the rest of the morning and stopped for a rest next to a spring. The sun was shining, and above the canyon large, dark birds circled. Then a roar split the air, and the attack was launched.
Robert B. Wintermute
Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum
One moment they were sitting on rocks around the spring, and the next moment the creature was upon them. It rushed forward with great simian lopes that shook the ground and knocked Nissa and Sorin back with the sweep of a powerful hand.
Nissa spun in the air and was up the moment she hit the ground, but Sorin had not been so quick he landed and lay motionless, slumped against the canyon wall.
The goblins drew their few remaining stone swords and looked at the head goblin, who looked back at them and frowned. He raised his sword for a charge and then lowered it again.
The trench giant rose up to its full height. Not quite as large as a proper giant, it reached the span of five human men and the width of a sizable cave. Its skin was the exact hue of the rock and the same roughness. The skin around its eyes and on its eyelids looked exactly like gravel. As she watched, the giant seized a goblin in its boulder-sized fist and snapped its head off with a deft nip. The blood spurted for a moment, and the giant waved the spurt in a merry pantomime. Then it chewed calmly on the head. Nissa could hear the goblin s cranium crunching in the giant s mouth.
It was surely the ugliest trench giant Nissa had ever seen. Stunted trees grew out of the crags that ran along its back. There were petroglyphs carved in its thigh. And even from where she stood, its breath was a foul miasma. But giants left scat, and that meant they had yeast in their stomachs and other small life. Nissa knew what she could do.
She planted her staff in the sand and whispered into the knot of carved wood on the top of it. And with the words of power, the staff started to hum in her hand as tendrils of mana wove up its shaft.
The giant tossed the body of the goblin aside and settled its gaze on Nissa. The ground shook when it took its first step toward her, and then the next; and then it was running full speed.
Nissa yanked up the tip of her staff and drew it level with the charging giant. The giant stooped down as it ran and brought its hand sweeping in from the right in a wide arc. Nissa stepped forward, bent her knees, and hopped straight up, and the giant s hand rushed under her feet. Unbalanced with the lunge, it tripped and tumbled forward with a tremendous crash that brought down a small landslide at the edge of the canyon wall.
The speed with which the giant regained its feet surprised her. It hopped up, turned, and charged again. Nissa ran at the giant and leapt. She planted the tip of her staff on the giant s forehead and vaulted over the top of it. The tremendous creature stopped and stood. From where Nissa landed some feet away, she could see from the cast of its eyes that something was wrong with the giant. The spot where she had planted her staff glowed slightly. Once she saw the glow, Nissa concentrated the mana in her fingertips and reached toward the giant s stomach. She felt the millions of tiny creatures living there move at her suggestion. In her mind she sang them into excitement, and in a moment the giant s eyes went wide. Nissa tickled the flora in its stomach further, and the giant s eyes screwed down in pain as its hands went to its belly.
As she concentrated, a drop of sweat ran down Nissa s nose. She incited the small creatures in the giant s stomach and intestines into higher and higher states of animation, and the giant fell to its knees. When she felt the giant had had enough, she severed her connection to the wildlife in the creature s gut.
The giant slowly fell over with a tremendous thump.
Nissa turned, and was hit so hard that the world went suddenly black.
Then the colors filtered back into her eyes, the tips of her fingers and toes were tingling. She could not move her limbs. When the tingling receded and she felt in control of her body again, she sat up slowly. There was a bump on the back of her head the size of her fist.
Across the canyon Anowon was standing opposite a second giant, His hands still bound. As she watched, Sorin stumbled up from where he had been thrown. Nissa turned, looking for her staff. The first giant was still on the sand behind her holding its stomach.
Her staff was nowhere to be found.
Then she saw it pinched between the second giant s thumb and forefinger. She stood and took a step and didn t fall, so she took another. Soon she was ambling toward the giant. But Sorin was there first. He paused and took a deep breath and began to hum. The he started to chant the strange words she d heard before, in the language with inflections like a wet fish flapping on a stream bank.
Nissa could see the effort tense Sorin s body, but the effect was almost instantaneous. The giant s body shuddered once, but did not fall. Sorin kept chanting, but the expression on his face told her that he was surprised by the giant s resilience.