Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [87]
Levac had never told his wife that Vali was still moving, still calling to him, when he ran away. The worst part was that he couldn’t tell her that he knew that Vali had become one of the undead.
“I’ll get us out of here. Things will be better. Tomorrow we make for the glow on the horizon, or the next day.”
Grixis’s sky had always been a tangle of electrical storms. But after a series of tremors in the earth, the far horizon had glimmered with an eerie blue light. The clouds in that direction were bright white and regular in shape, sliced evenly along invisible lines. It looked like a doorway into paradise, a promise of something better than their desperate lives, a promise of something better than Grixis itself. The thought that Levac’s world might have an exit had forestalled his despair as they waited underground.
“You keep saying that. ‘Things will be better. Tomorrow we’ll escape.’ Why the hell haven’t we gotten out of this place? Tomorrow I’m leaving, with or without you.”
It’s what it feels like when a marriage is fraying, thought Levac. Back when Grixis was the only life they knew, back when they were certain that humanity would become extinct by the rotten hand of the undead, he and his wife were as close as two desperate people could be. Things had changed, and with the chance that they could get out of Grixis entirely, everything ignited a bitter argument. Even the rumor that other living humans—thousands of them—lived in the worlds beyond wasn’t enough to bring hope to their days.
But in truth, it wasn’t the strife of the colliding worlds that had come between them. Levac was sick with guilt about Vali; he had earned as much blame as Salay put on him.
Once, as the two of them had traveled across Grixis, Levac had seen his son. It was his son’s same tunic, same hat, and the same leather short sword scabbard he had carved—but it was a Valishaped monster wearing them. He didn’t dare tell Salay—it would destroy her. Instead he stalled, every day coming up with any reason he could think of not to make for that glow on the horizon, hoping against hope that there might be some way to reach his son, and somehow get him back.
There was the sound of wings outside the wooden shack. Another one of the sickly-feathered kathari, probably. Levac looked out through a crack in the roof. Strangely, the kathari didn’t have the characteristic bent neck and black feathers—its feathers were a vibrant mottled white and brown, and it wore shining metal armor across its breast. The bird-man circled once, cocking an eye down at their hiding place, and then flew off out of sight.
“What was it?” asked Salay.
Levac picked up his sword. “I’m not sure. Something … new is happening,” he said.
JUND
Kresh put the point of his sword through one of the undead, directly through its ribcage, a little to the side of its sternum. It was just another foe, right? At least it fell just like one, perhaps a little sloppier as it fell off the blade. And the gray ichor that came out of them stung the skin, but that was no different than the spit of a common thrinax that came from his own world. If the undead were the extent of the invasion into Jund, he felt he could probably handle it.
The truly upsetting thing about them was that, despite being dead, lying down seemed difficult for them.
“Kresh, behind you!” yelled the white-furred cat-man.
Kresh whirled blade-first, trusting the white cat implicitly, and sure enough, one of the walking corpses had stood back up after being gutted. The thing had been about to drag its claws down Kresh’s back, and instead got four inches of heavy steel buried in its face. It fell—with the blade still in it. Kresh didn’t bother retrieving his sword, but instead pivoted and elbowed another one of the things in the return motion, breaking its jaw. It didn’t faze the thing. So he charged right into it, catching it in the chest and forcing it back onto the spiny growths of a nearby tukatongue tree. It didn’t stop the undead creature from writhing or moaning,