Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [70]
“Mardis!” shouted Elspeth, to her nearby knight friend.
“Elspeth, are you all right?” he shouted back.
“Mardis, listen to me! When I tell you, you attack that mage, do you understand?”
He looked up. Skepticism. “That mage?” Elspeth was casting. “Ready?”
Mardis showed alarm, but gathered his wits and readied his sword and shield. The storm’s cylinder passed over him, and began to push him off his feet.
“Go!”
A helix of light erupted from around Mardis’s body, lifting him into the air. He shot like an arrow at the vedalken mage. Mardis’s astonishment turned to determination, and his body became one graceful attack motion, like a warrior angel delivering the stroke of vengeance. The vedalken mage looked down, saw him flying toward her, and gasped.
Just before Elspeth could see what happened, the rhox knight Mubin rode through the lines on a huge leotau, his eyes aglow like haunted sapphires—and brained her with his mace.
GRIXIS
Report,” said Bolas.
“The Esper obelisk has been freed and activated,” said Sarkhan. “As the planes have converged, the forces of Esper have begun to invade Bant. A force of about two thousand massed on the shores of Jhess this morning.”
“Casualties?”
“Mostly on Bant’s part. They were woefully under-prepared for the mage assault. Bant’s warriors are brave and strong, but they seem … naïve.”
Bolas bared rows of teeth. “Naïve, you say?”
“They never advanced. They seemed to wait for the army from Esper to crash into them. Some of the soldiers hadn’t even strapped on their armor fully. It was like they never expected to have to fight at all.”
Bolas rolled his tongue across his teeth. “What magic did you see?”
“Esper laid into them with storms, countermagic, control of the mind, and some spells of death. And their army was almost entirely composed of creatures that were summoned from Esper. Only a few mages led the entire offensive. I saw some healing on Bant’s side, and what looked like a protective enhancement on some of the soldiers, but that was all. The Bant army barely seemed to cast anything at all.”
Bolas reflected on that. “Mixed,” he said. “What about the obelisks?”
“As the shards go to war, the obelisks have been channeling mana, as you desired,” said Sarkhan. “But the flow is weak at this point. There’s just not enough of a conflict yet. And the Bant obelisk, the one from the ruined castle—it seems to be resisting. It’s possible that the spell didn’t activate it properly, or that some force is preventing it from channeling Bant’s mana.”
Bolas uttered a string of garbled syllables that Sarkhan presumed formed a curse in some extraplanar language. “If the Bant obelisk isn’t channeling mana, then the reaction cannot start.”
“Do you want me to return to Bant? Draw out some mages? Encourage more magic?”
“No. I need you elsewhere. The mages of Bant should awaken now that their knights are dying; the battles on their Esper front will scare them, and they’ll get over their principles and begin to throw better magics. Besides, you wouldn’t be much of a negotiator. You don’t look much like a Bant human.”
Sarkhan shrugged. “I passed well enough on Esper.”
“I’m sure you stuck out horribly. But no, I have a different mission for you. Pick out your favorite machete. You’re going into the jungle.”
“Naya? But the planes have merged now. I can’t planeswalk from one part of Alara to another any longer,” said Sarkhan.
“You’ll not be planeswalking. Come with me down to the necropolis dungeon,” said Bolas. “I have a surprise for you.”
BANT ESPER FRONTIER
Knight-General Rafiq watched the scene in slow motion. His friend Mubin clutched his head as the Esper mage’s spell came down on him. Then the mighty rhox blinked, took up his mace and his mount’s reins, and hastened into the fray. The surprise of the betrayal carried