Magic the gathering time.., p.11
Magic the Gathering: Time Streams (Artifacts Cycle Book 3), page 11
Nearby the glaring section that was Old Tolaria was another district, a place of deep darkness in a literal canyon. It lay in the morning shadow of the Giant's Pate, but its gloom was intensified by the high, leaning walls of the canyon and the vast time shift within it. The floor of the space was indistinguishable, and some of the students whispered it was a crack right through to the underworld.
"It looks like a good place for ghosts," one said.
"If I were dead, I'd choose a home like that," another answered lightly.
"It looks like a scar in the world," ventured a third with awe, "a bad scar, one that tried to close and heal but only festered and grew deeper."
"You are more right than you imagine," Jhoira said. "That is a very deep chasm and a sheer fast-time precipice. But there is a bottom to it, and there are creatures trapped in it."
"Like the tribes in the Hives?"
"No," Jhoira said flatly. "Look there. You may not be able to see it while the Giant's Pate casts its shadowssometimes it can't be seen even at the height of midday, but there is a fortress down there."
Urza's brow furrowed in concern. "A fortress?"
"Perhaps it is only a kind of commune, but what I have seen of it looks savage and braced against attack."
"What have you seen?" Barrin asked.
"Spiked battlements, for one, a causeway of suspension bridges between high guard towers, flying buttresses that look like they are fashioned of dragon bone, windows as black and smooth as onyx, fiendish adornments, and thickcast tiles of clay. I have the notion they would prefer to make everything of steel, if they could make it, but iron is the best they have and not much of it. It has taken many hours of distant observation to piece that much together. I would not suggest close scrutiny: I've seen harpoons fly from that space, spear deer, and drag them in."
Barrin blinked in confusion. "This barbarous culture arose from refugees from the academy? Students of ours?"
"Again, no," Jhoira said. "You remember that man, Kerrick, whom you found with the broken leg, whom you interrogated as a Phyrexian sleeper? The man I had let into the academy? Remember that he escaped an hour before the blast? He must have been trapped in that fast-time gash-he and whatever Phyrexian negators he had summoned to Tolaria."
* * * * * Through a two-story-tall window of polished obsidian, K'rrik watched the new arrivals. They stood atop the gleaming peak at the height of the island, a summit always visible to K'rrik and his retainers here in the depths of the abyss.
Jhoira was among them. She seemed, in fact, to be leading them. She had been a canny foe during the century of his imprisonment in this time-gash. She never entered range of the harpoon crews- and more's the pity. He had much to repay her for. Betrayal to Urza Planeswalker was chief among the offenses. Putting a harpoon through her gut and hauling her across the jagged lip of the chasm to burst like a fistclutched skull-that would have been glad repayment of her debts.
She probably still called him Kerrick. She probably still thought of him as a golden-haired boy, but a hundred years had turned
Kerrick to K'rrik, had made the smooth-skinned Phyrexian sleeper into a hoary warrior.
If there were some way to bring Jhoira over alive, not masticated like the goat and deer carcasses they feasted on, K'rrik would at last consummate their "love." That was her other great offense, her persistent virtue in the face of his advances. It was galling that flimsy chastity should stand against the might of Phyrexia.
Of course, if he could drag her across whole, he himself could have escaped this abyss. It had taken the death of half his negator minions-twelve of the twenty-four-to finally convince K'rrik to suspend his escape attempts. Even so, with each new generation decanted, he sent one in ten out to seek escape-a tithe to his eventual return to Tolaria, to Dominaria.
This ten percent attrition was no great loss. He still commanded a mighty nation of two hundred Phyrexians. They filled every corner of the chasm. Generations of them worked in the deep dank of the waters at the base of the canyon. They hatched, netted, and gutted the various species of blind scavenger fish that were their major diet. Other Phyrexians, for generations, drilled deep into the chasm walls in search of buried veins of obsidian and the basalt stones the palace was built of. Scant resources had been the only real limit to K'rrik's inventive genius. If he could make steel or powerstones, his artifact creatures would have overrun the isle eighty years ago. As it was, what little iron the miners found was more precious than gold. It was constantly oiled with Phyrexian blood to prevent rust. An iron sword like K'rrik's was a kingmaker. It made him unopposable in the arena and maintained his power. Thus the miners who found scant veins of iron were essential to his power base, the figurative foot soldiers of his regime. By carefully distributing these slivers of iron among real foot soldiers, K'rrik controlled a private army engineered to be loyal only to him. These killers used draconian measures to ensure the compliance of all the others. K'rrik presided over the army and the nation because he had created both and was the smartest, strongest, and most vicious of them all.
To these native talents, the Phyrexian sleeper had added enhancements to himself of bone and steel and, eventually, even spawned tissue implants. He was indomitable in the arena. His once-smooth shoulders were now adorned with tusks hollowed out to inject scorpion-fish poison in anyone he fought. Similar spikes jutted from his elbows and knees. The spikes were back-barbed like arrows so that once they sunk into flesh, they ripped it out in great chunks. His torso was braced by a black-steel frame that prevented his spine from being broken and allowed him to break the spines of others. He himself had wielded the cleaver that removed his outer two fingers of each hand, making room for more venom spikes. The century of imprisonment in the abyss had done much to perfect his form.
Now, gazing through the thick, dark glass of his upper throne room, K'rrik saw the means by which he would at last escape his prison-the power of his old foe, Urza Planeswalker.
* * * * * It was a bitter pill for Master Malzra, Jhoira could tell. The man stood there, gazing into that black jag in the ground. His eyes saw more than most eyes did-they gleamed with an acute, penetrating judgment. Surely they saw past the shrouding murk to the Phyrexian colony that lay within it. Surely Malzra peered into that black pile of basalt and obsidian to the wretched creature at the heart of itmalicious and brooding, growing a year in strength for every month outside.
Kerrick was the man. Even without preternatural sight, Jhoira knew that. Of course, he was no man, but a monster wearing the skin of a man. She knew he was at the nexus of that vast infection and that he would be powerful now, perhaps the equal of Malzra himself, perhaps his superior.
Karn's eyes, too, saw more than most. He drew Malzra, Barrin, and Jhoira aside from the others.
"It is no secret to any of you what I was made for-to travel down the throat of time. Perhaps I have found my new purpose here, to enter that place and destroy them." The suggestion was made with a mild, matter-of-fact tone, but in a voice like the myriad whisper of trees before a summer storm.
A knowing glance passed between Malzra and Barrin. The mage said through a grim smile, "I seem to remember just such a journey, from my study of arcane lore. There was once upon a time a planeswalker who went into Phyrexia to destroy it. He was armored much as you are, Karn, but was nearly destroyed in the attempt."
Malzra nodded. "It is a good analogy. What we have here is a pocket Phyrexia. And in Tolaria." His all-seeing eyes were suddenly hooded beneath angry brows. "Jhoira, you spoke last night of the children of fury I have left in my wakethe orphaned mistakes that have, in my absence, grown up to defy me, to hate me, to harry me and slay me if they can. I see now just how true your words are." He blinked and drew a deep breath, two actions that signaled a powerful shift in the mind of the man. "Better not to create such foes than to be forever fighting them."
Barrin looked with admiration at him.
The sun glinted from Malzra's lifted eyes as he marked its march across the sky. "Already the sun begins its descent. Come, take us to Old Tolaria, to a place where we can safely make camp. Somewhere outside the slow-time slough in the center of the blast. Preferably on high ground nearby, where time follows its normal courses." A solemn look crossed Jhoira's face. "I know just the place." She turned, heading for a path down from the Giant's Pate toward the decimated academy below. Squinting in tired amazement, the students and scholars on the hilltop watched her go. Many of them were worn out from staring into the impenetrable blackness of the Phyrexian rift and exhausted from the nettling worry that the cleft awoke in them. They had unpacked meals of press-bread and jerky. When Jhoira marched on, they glanced a question at Master Malzra and Barrin. The two men took their last survey of the spot and started after her. Flashing on the brow of the hill, Karn also set his feet to the path. With angry sighs, the students jammed their half-eaten lunches back into their packs, hauled the parcels to their shoulders, and stomped onward down the trail.
Jhoira took a path that had been carved out by her own feet during her rambles. It passed a number of other time rifts, these small and severe, some as narrow as an arm's breadth but a mile in length. Jhoira called these the Curtains of Eternity because anyone who ventured into them would be instantly torn to pieces. There was no need to instruct the party to stay strictly to the path.
Beyond loomed the labyrinth of riven buildings that had once been the Tolarian Academy. The march line stilled to silence as they approached the necropolis. The older members of the company had lived in these gutted hulks, had had friends who died in the cross-sectioned towers and lay even now, skeletal, beneath the piles of cut stone. To the natural dread that came upon them all in descending into that dead place, there was added the drag of slow time on their hearts and lungs. To step onto those ravaged and rubble-strewn streets was to sink into a nightmare made real in stone and bone and ash. Eerily, the sun shone bright and merciless in that flagging place. Those who glanced up toward it saw the fiery ball fleeing visibly toward the horizon.
During their tour of the old town, Jhoira led the group to a particularly disturbing sight. It was the statue of a young man running. Both feet hovered impossibly above the ground. His mouth was wide in despair. His eyes were clenched tight. His hands groped out madly. His white robes were lit with a diffuse orange glow that enwrapped him and rose into an onion-shaped dome over his head. The young man was ensconced in a pillar that shone with fiery light. Just ahead of him, floating still in air, was a heavy cloak, caught in the moment before descending to enfold him.
Jhoira watched the faces of Malzra, Barrin, Karn, and the older students and scholars, looking for recognition. They stared bleakly for some time, their minds unraveling the mystery before them.
At last, Karn breathed the name: "Teferi."
"Yes. He was caught in flames when the blast occurred. Only a moment of time has passed for him in these ten years. When I discovered him here seven years ago, I fetched a heavy cloak, soaked it in water, and flung it into the air to engulf him. In another few years-a split second of his time-he will be wrapped in it, his burning robes extinguished. Perhaps a few years later, he will tumble to the ground. Perhaps in ten years, he will see the New Tolaria and strive to reach it. Then, of course, he will be torn to pieces." Her face hardened. She gnawed at one lip. "That damned cloak is all I can do for him. I've studied the time fissure, performed experiments, tried everything I could imagine, but he's caught and cannot be saved."
Stunned silence followed this revelation. Fifty sets of eyes traced out the doomed figure, frozen in fire, unreachable, but only an arm's length away.
At last, Malzra spoke words that comforted them all. "The first area of study for our new academy will be techniques to rescue this young man."
Jhoira wore a grim expression as she turned away. She led onward at a stern pace. The young students, some only children of twelve or thirteen, followed close behind. Older marchers paused at Teferi's Shrine, as some were already calling it. Master Malzra, Barrin, and Karn themselves brought up the rear of the procession.
The marchers felt their sunken spirits and slowed hearts rise again as they climbed the headlands on the southern verge of the ruins. Beyond lay a wide, level place covered with tall, dry grass. The parched blades made a familiar and soothing noise in the warm afternoon winds.
Despite Jhoira's steady pace, evening deepened across the hilltop by the time Malzra, Barrin, and Karn reached the summit. There the master looked about with his piercing eyes. He marked the closeness of Old Tolaria, of the Curtains of Eternity, and beyond it the Phyrexian canyon where his foes, even then, multiplied.
"You were right, Jhoira," he said simply. "This is just the place." He walked to the pack of one of his young, tired hikers, drew a tent spike from the gear stowed there, and, with the sheer force of his hand, drove it deep in the dry ground. "Just here, we will build our new academy." Monologue
I was bone-weary and soul-weary that first night when, by lantern light, we erected our tent city. We cleared fire circles, set stones to hem them in, gathered firewood and water for the evening, and sat down to dried meat, pressbread, and a little hot broth. I had been the one all along telling Urza he must return to Tolaria, must rectify his past mistakes and embrace the children of fury. But in glimpsing those children for the first time-whether the tribal folk of the Hive, the unseeable Phyrexian hordes in the gorge, or the ghosts of the dead that almost palpably haunt the ruins of the academy-I fear I was perhaps wrong.
Forgetting the past, fleeing the death it holds, shrugging off die wounds-this is the way mortals live. Yesterdays are supposed to remain dead. It is the gift of time. Each new generation is supposed to be born ignorant of the horrors that came before. How else can any of us live?
And, yet, perhaps I was right after all. Urza is not mortal. He cannot afford to forget, any more than time can afford to forget. The world is not large enough to let him go from mistake to mistake, leaving destruction in his path. He has to clean up after himself. In a way, his mania to return in time was a desire to remember, to own up to the past. He likely would have come to this conclusion with or without me. Of course, now that Urza has decided, we might as well assist his every endeavor, for he won't change his mind for another millennium or so.
I only hope, after all this temporal fiddling, I have the blessing of dying after a normal human span-not before and certainly not after.
- Barrin, Mage Master of Tolaria
Chapter 9 The heavy wooden case Malzra had borne on his back turned out to be an elaborate desk. He unfolded it next morning to the surprise and delight of the breakfasting students. The surface of the thing was smooth ebony composed of various panels. Each black wood panel slid out of the main compartments on hidden joints and fused seamlessly with its counterparts. The end result was an extensive, smooth tabletop, as wide as Malzra's arm span and twice as long. The work surface rested on cabinets with many small drawers and compartments. By some ingenious trick, the whole thingcabinets and drawers and all-had collapsed easily into a compact box. More marvelous than even these capacities: no sooner than the desk was fully set up, Malzra drew open drawer after drawer, producing styluses, spanners, rule rods, compasses, protractors, a set of angle edges, and roll after roll of plans. He smoothed the last down atop the workspace, struggling to get them to lie flat until Barrin set a stone on each corner of the sheets.
Barrin and Malzra stepped back, allowing the gathering crowd of students to look on grand vistas in lead and ink. There was a soaring central hall, with room to seat four hundred students and scholars, a series of balconies overlooking the grand space, and an empyrean vault open on one side to show the dense forest canopy. There were fanciful towers, rounded and lean like exotic gourds, some topped with guard stations, others with fire towers, and others still with observatories that bristled with optical paraphernalia. The outer wall was an enormous bulwark of earth and stone, with a notable absence of sewage grates and duct work. Long, curved corridors, great banks of jeweledglass windows, an aviary, aerial docks, a gymnasium, a large, rock-lined pond, gardens and groves. The dormitories provided private rooms that were bright and open-no longer the cells of the previous prison. Every aspect of the design was marked with imaginative ornamentation-octopodal figures, fantastical sea prawns, Tolarian drake-head appointments, four-winds motifs, devices drawn from the naval architecture of New Tolaria, gulls and kingfishers, anvil-headed storm clouds, tridents and coral and nautilus shells.
This was not the stern infirmary of the previous Tolaria. This was not a prison. Asceticism had given way to aestheticism, strict artifice to fanciful art.
"Of course," Malzra said to no one and everyone at once, "we will have to move the eastern gate from there-" he pointed to a place on the plans, and the corresponding location on the topography before them, "-to there, allowing easier access to the safe path and Angelwood beyond."
Barrin assessed his friend. "I'm glad to see you've not turned the school into a fortification after seeing the Phyrexian rift."
Malzra smiled tightly, drawing a new plan to the fore. "They are the ones to be imprisoned, not us. Look, here. This is the first building. It will be everything to us to start with-great hall and sleeping quarters and tutorial space. In time it will be my private lab." He indicated a large lodge with walls of stone rubble and a peaked roof held up by tree boles felled and lashed together. According to the schematics, the initial roof would be thatch, but in time it could be converted to shake and eventually to slate. "It will stand there, on that rocky ridge at the edge of the tent city. We start building it today."
