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xantchaslegacy · 1 year

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Compleation Logs Interlude: Where the Hearth Is

Urabrask and Elspeth's meeting at the end of SNC

(Link to story on Ao3)

The Caldaia, New Capenna

Two figures walked the streets. They moved in concert, only a few inches of space between them.

Those who glimpsed the pair thought them a couple headed home after a night on the town; the taller one handsome in dapper green, escorting a dashing young woman in flashy white and gold.

Those who looked closer, passers-by and hopeful pickpockets alike, noticed both looked worse for the wear, as if they’d already fended off a mugging, or fled the authorities.

Or perhaps, like many in the city, they had been in the thick of the riots that had left New Capenna reeling.

Violence had pervaded the streets for days, at every level. Family allegiance was no longer the protection it was on a normal day. And despite rumors of the adversary’s demise that very evening in the midst of the angels’ return, anyone, anyone, was fair game.

So it was saying something that none of the pickpocket hopefuls who glimpsed the pair thought to approach them. The good citizens of the Caldaia shirked trouble on the best of days, but the pair carried themselves with such a fearsome air of purpose that even the most jaded purse-snatchers and leg-breakers of the city’s lower tier gave no more than a fleeting thought to approaching them. When they turned into an alley, none followed. When they descended a staircase marked “Off Limits to Foot Traffic,” no late-night busybodies made any comment.

For their part, the pair sought no trouble as they swept lower and lower into the city. The woman in white strode with an enforcer’s gait, a gloved hand laid protectively on the hilt of her shimmering sword (was that halo?). The woman in green kept her gaze forward, but her eyes took in every nook and cranny of the surrounding streets and alleys as they went, sweeping for danger, and tracking each eye that tracked them.

They had little fear of attack, but could ill-afford to be tailed.

As luck would have it, never in the history of the Caldaia had there been a better night to move unfollowed. There were changes happening above. Grand changes. Big enough to turn most eyes upward, and leave this pair to slip below.

Below the Caldaia.

Below the lowest places known to the citizens of New Capenna.

And lower still.

** ** **

“Are you sure you’re up for this tonight?”

“A little late to ask, isn’t it? We’ve been descending for over an hour.”

Vivien grimaced. “Just wanted to ask before it was too late.”

She stood with Elspeth in a dark passageway far below the city, a few dark feet of space between them and their destination. Vivien’s hand rested on a heavy steel door, the metal hot under her fingers. It was a new addition, discreetly built into the bedrock of New Capenna.

Elspeth’s voice offered the ghost of a smile. “Do I look that bad?”

She did look tired. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her gaze was jittery with the ragged, fading energy of adrenaline. Her hair and makeup, done in the stylish fashion of the city’s upper-crust party-goers, was smeared. Her white garments were torn in a dozen places and stained with grime, blood, and soot.

“You...look like you could rest.”

Elspeth nodded, but her eyes were on the door. “Do you trust him?” The question came out hard. Steely.

“More than I expected to. If he’s deceiving us, he’s a better liar than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“And Tezzeret?”

Vivien snorted. “Would you trust him?”

“Maybe.” Elspeth sighed. “I know Tezzeret wants what’s best for himself, and Phyrexia isn’t good for anyone.” She glanced at Vivien. “But you don’t trust him.”

“I’d be the greatest fool in Dominia if I trusted that man. No, he has his angle, and I think he’d throw every one of us to the dogs to make it.” Vivien grimaced. “But we still have a choice to make. Phyrexia or those who’d oppose it.”

“That’s no choice at all.”

“So I’m told.”

“Tezzeret’s handed over tools to thwart them before. To me and Koth and Venser.” Elspeth licked her lips. They were badly cracked, and there was a spot of blood at the corner of her mouth. “I’m willing to believe he’d do it again.”

“Urabrask is...a bit more than a tool.”

Elspeth’s smile tightened. “I doubt Tezzeret thinks the same.”

Vivien nodded. When Elspeth did not reply further, she jerked her head at the door.

“So-?”

Elspeth drew in a long, whistling breath, and let it out slow.

“Yes.”

The cavern interior was much changed since Vivien’s first visit. Its primary occupant had spent weeks carving out the space to better suit his needs, and Tezzeret had used his local contacts to bring down the materials needed to set up a modest forge. A Riveteer crew, some builder gang out of Beamtown, had proved discreet and fearless enough to install the forge and a secure door.

It had been hard, Tezzeret said, to locate souls bold enough for the work, with a hunger for gold that outweighed their fear of the tunnels below New Capenna.

And any fears they might have had about the cave’s extraplanar occupant.

The occupant in question was equally changed since Vivien had first descended below the city. Once feeble and diminished from the cosmic burn of interplanar travel, Urabrask, praetor of New Phyrexia’s Quiet Furnace, now stood tall. Hulking in profile with a broad beak and stout wings that vented flame, he loomed over an anvil the size of a wagon-cart, striking and hammering at a white-hot slab of steel with his bare claws, shaping the metal with heated blows and showering the space with sparks.

And above him-

Vivien stared. The streets were flooded with rumors from the heights to the Caldaia. Whispers of the angels’ return. Elspeth’s young companion had supposedly been of angelic essence, and been key in releasing her fellow angels, but to see three of them floating here in the cavern, looking down on Urabrask-

“Ah.”

Elspeth was staring up at the angels too. Between the slim part of her companion's lips, Vivien could see Elspeth’s teeth, grit tight.

Vivien paused, then shook her head.

Best to forge ahead.

She cleared her throat. “Urabrask.”

He did not turn or raise his head from his work. Whatever was taking shape under his hands had his full attention, as it did the attention of the angels. A passing glance from one of Urabrask’s assistants, a bare-chested ogre, was all the notice paid to their arrival.

Vivien exchanged a look with Elspeth. The younger woman looked ready to collapse. She’d been moving nonstop for more than a full day by now, and it was a surprise she was standing at all.

And that was before considering she’d lost at least two people close to her in that time.

“Urabrask.” Vivien shouted into the din again. “I’ve brought Elspeth!”

“A moment.” Urabrask’s voice boomed now, when it had merely rasped before. “This is a delicate stage.” He flipped the heated metal with a flick of his claw, and began working the sides with alternating strikes from his left claw, and grinding strokes from his right, forming a sharp, rippling edge to the steel.

Another exchange of glances. When Elspeth broke her gaze, her eyes did not turn to Urabrask, but back to the angels floating over him.

Vivien sighed. Folded her arms. She almost wished Tezzeret was with them, to smooth out this interaction. She understood the general score of things: the urgency to mount a defense against the phyrexians, but there was so much baggage to the situation that she was beginning to feel overwhelmed nurturing such an important part of that defense.

A sidelong glance. Elspeth was still looking up.

The angels were a sullen-looking trio. Hostile, even though they were just hovering there. They were watching the red praetor like he was a rabid dog dying in the dirt.

Then again, anyone might be cranky after being the unwilling reservoir for the demons’ little playground amidst the apocalypse.

“I’d think an angel might have better things to do than lurk down here,” Vivien ventured, whispering to Elspeth. “Freshly released from imprisonment.”

“Here to keep an eye on that, I’d bet.” Elspeth’s gaze flicked down to Urabrask. The look happened inside of a moment, but in that moment there was a clenching of Elspeth’s jaw. A tensing of her shoulders. A curl of her gloved fingers into fists.

Then she was staring at the angels again, breathing just a little harder than before.

Vivien put a gentle hand on her companion’s shoulder. The younger woman tensed at the touch, but a moment later her muscles relaxed, and her shoulders sank down an inch. Her exhalations were still audible in the din, but she seemed in control.

Vivien patted her shoulder.

KLANG

Urabrask struck the glowing steel one last time, then lifted it from the anvil. Steam vented from his wrists as he did so, enveloping the metal in a thick fog of vapor for several seconds before dissipating.

Held up against the dark, the steel was clearly a shield, circular with a rippled circumference. The edge of the thing reminded Vivien of a shark’s maw.

With a grunt, Urabrask thrust the shield into a trough of shimmering liquid. It hissed and steamed in a way that water did not, and when he pulled the shield free, countless rainbow droplets arced up and spattered on the floor.

Halo

Urabrask’s assistants, a trio of devils, moved to mop up the spilled stuff immediately. There was a wistful look in their eyes, but they also eyed the effect of the liquid on Urabrask’s creation with awe.

The steel radiated light. The color across its surface rippled as if water, but in a muddle of colors. Against the relative darkness of the cavern, it was like viewing sunshine through a hole in a black tarp.

Slowly, like stormy seas returning to rest, the colors resolved into an ordered patchwork of color. Each shape on the steel glowing as if lit by its own light.

Like the halos of the angels.

Urabrask held the shield up to the angels present, face quietly upturned. With equal silence, the angels descended, their wings unmoving as they dropped through the air. When they came within arms’ reach of the shield, their light and the light off the steel seemed to magnify each other, and a rainbow glow touched the edges of the vast cavern.

Urabrask shied away, slightly but noticeably, from this glow. His arm was trembling.

The shortest of the angels took the shield from Urabrask, hefting the massive thing onto one arm with astounding ease. He brandished it in short thrusts and swings. It stayed in place along his arm, as if held by magic, and shifted to the opposite limb with the simplest of gestures.

At the last stroke, the angel paused, holding the shield out in front of his chest. Then he nodded, as if in approval.

“Why are you here?”

Now, as her voice rang out, all eyes turned to Elspeth. Hers hadn’t left the angels. She had one hand on her hip, and the other gripping the pommel of her new sword. The globe at the hilt was swirling with light, and the glow from the blade had extended to envelop her arm and shoulder. The feathers of her cape were standing on end, flickering with that same glow.

Like a lizard raising its frills.

“Giada died to free you,” Elspeth said, an edge in her voice. “What are you doing here in this pit? There’s a city to defend above, but I find you here dealing with-” she mouthed something silently, grimaced, and thrust her chin at Urabrask. “-with that? Aren’t you supposed to be protecting us as from that?”

Urabrask grunted at that. His ogre assistant, who had been sweeping up the ashes around the anvil, turned, growling, and moved to stand alongside the praetor. The angels, for their part, went back to examining the shield, only the tallest one among them having deigned to fully turn her head in Elspeth’s direction.

Vivien winced. Not a great start to introductions.

“We are here in protection of the citizens above,” the tall angel replied, ice in her voice. “Our senses are still keen to the threat of the flesh-desecrators, and we have come to evaluate a threat. The demons may be happy to cavort in the paradise we toiled to build them, but we take our duties seriously.

“Ungratefully though the people of the city have treated us,” the angel added. “Unworthy though every last one of them are of our protection.”

Vivien pursed her lips. The angels had been free for scant hours. If they had already detected Urabrask, hidden so far down in the bedrock of the city…

“But this one...” The short angel regarded Urabrask with a hawk’s eye. “You have the skill to craft weapons against the wicked ones. And you say you intend to annihilate your hideous kin?”

“That is not what I said.” Urabrask did not raise his head while addressing the angels. His gaze was fixed on Elspeth.

The angel took the shield by the rim and held it at arm’s length. “But you intend to fight them? And you possess the skills and the sense of self-sacrifice to make use of the Halo to that end?

Urabrask held out the hand that had held the shield. Vivien noted that is was burnt and smoking where the Halo had spattered it. “That is my intent.”

“Then we will not descend from on high to wipe you from existence.” The taller angel’s gaze swept over Urabrask’s assistants. “Nor will we punish these servants of the demons who have come to aid you. Our brothers and sisters will leave this...cave of yours untroubled, provided you have vacated by month’s end. And provided you use the essence of our siblings that has been brought to you for the end it was intended, to beat back the perverters of flesh.”

“So the angels of Capenna are backroom gangsters?”

All eyes snapped back to Elspeth.

“What is the difference between you and those demons you slander?” Elspeth demanded. “They at least are concerned with keeping phyrexians out, not hiring the convenient ones as mercenaries.”

Vivien’s chest was feeling tight, and she wasn’t even directly in the conversation at hand. She hadn’t expected this hostility from Elspeth. This level of stress, like a wolf whose den had been threatened.

“Child, we owe you nothing.” The tall angel looked down her nose at Elspeth. “Certainly not an explanation of how or why the angels choose to conduct themselves. Not to you, and not to your alien friend there.”

Vivien tensed, hand tightening on the case that held the Arkbow.

Elspeth scowled, but simply shook her head and turned away from the angels.

Urabrask had regarded the exchange in relative quiet. Now he lay a single talon on his ogre helper’s shoulder. The ogre nodded, and went back to the ashes. As his helpers tidied up the space, Urabrask took a rag and began wiping the soot and grease from his claws. Not once did his eyes leave Elspeth.

Even now, after many meetings, Vivien could not read those eyes. Was that a predatory look? One of Caution? Hunger? Hope?

“I’ve brought Elspeth,” she repeated, trying to press the anxiety out of her voice, and simply making it loud instead.

“Yes.” Urabrask began wrapping the cloth around his fingers, where the smoking was worst. “This is good.”

“Good,” Vivien echoed, frowning.

“Elspeth Tirel.” Urabrask moved toward them. He was less stiff now. More graceful and fluid in movement since he’d healed from his searing transit to New Capenna. Still, there was something about how he walked that put Vivien on edge. How he seemed ready to fall onto all fours and lunge forward at a moment’s notice. “Much has happened since we last saw each other.”

“I haven’t had the pleasure, actually,” Elspeth replied, flat. The hand on her sword’s pommel had slid toward the handle.

“Mm.” Urabrask raised a single talon under his beak. “True. When I saw you last, you were with the Hammer, carving a path for the Mirrans through the Thanes and into my furnace.” He made a sound from his throat, like steam through a punctured pipe. “You would not have seen me at that time. I was...hidden.”

Elspeth offered him nothing except to twitch her brow.

Urabrask took another step forward. “Phyrexia needs you.”

Vivien closed her eyes. Tezzeret really would have been a boon to have for this introduction.

“Excuse me?”

Vivien opened her eyes. Elspeth was squinting, her mouth twisted in a scowl.

“Phyrexia needs you.” Urabrask moved a step closer as he said he. “You must help us.”

He thinks she couldn’t hear him.

“...I must?”

Urabrask made another sound. At least Vivien was reasonably sure it was him. No one else in the cavern seemed capable of making a noise like creaking gears grinding to a stop.

“Yes. The work before us is immense, and it cannot be done without you.” He looked to Vivien. “Didn’t you explain to her the immensity of the work ahead?”

A pang of annoyance cut through Vivien’s anxiety. “I explained there might be an alliance here. Against a shared enemy.”

“Norn.” Urabrask nodded. It would have been an amusing motion in any other context. “She dreads you, Elspeth. All Phyrexia knows you have left, and still she orders patrols to search for you. Commands her leaders bound for other worlds to annihilate you on sight.”

“So I’ve heard.” Elspeth was standing upright, but something in how she was holding herself was starting to suggest sudden, imminent forward movement just as much as Urabrask’s posture did. “So? Phyrexia is not a plane of gods. It’s not a place where faith or belief change the raw truth of power. One person won’t turn the tide back against Norn. One person isn’t difference enough to oppose all Phyrexia.”

“It is not all Phyrexia we’ll be fighting,” Urabrask said. “I oppose Norn, as does the Furnace, and as do denizens all across the New Phyrexia’s factions.”

“Not enough of them. Norn controls Phyrexia now, or am I wrong? At least enough of it that you’re so desperate you’d kill yourself crossing the blind eternities to recruit one person.”

“An important person.”

Elspeth’s face flickered between anger and bewilderment.

“I am not planning a revolution against Phyrexia, but for it.” Urabrask extended a claw, holding it outstretched, palm-up. “Our New Phyrexia is full of potential. We have inherited the tools of continuous improvement, and a chance to use those tools free from the elitist trappings of old Phyrexia. There is room for many paths to perfection, but Norn is not interested in ideological diversity, only order. Only control.”

“All Phyrexia desires control,” Elspeth replied. “The Thanes fight over control perpetually. The chrome phyrexians want to control knowledge. Even the Swarm, as much as Glissa and Vorinclex might protest, are trying to corral evolution itself.

“Even you want control over your little corner of the world. You see? I understand Phyrexia pretty damn well myself. Norn’s no different than any of you, she just won.”

“She hasn’t won yet.” Urabrask raised a single talon. “Your view of Phyrexia is reductive.” he put out a second talon. “And,” he added, extending a third, “not all control is made equal. The desire to control is neither good nor bad, but it is not the same to want to control one’s own world as it is to want to control all worlds.”

“Quibbling.”

“I was a dragon in another life, Elspeth Tirel. A dragon does not quibble. A dragon builds.”

“You build on the bodies of the Mirrans. Your raw materials are the corpses of the fallen. Your furnace dwellers, many of them, are mirrans, most compleated unwillingly. Do you dispute that?”

“What would you have us do? Do you think the Mirrans that journeyed down into the depths below Mirrodin’s mountains before the invasion were interested in coexisting with us? It was compleat and kill, or die meekly. Those are the only two options the Mirrans ever offered us in dealing with them, and it is better, I think, to give them a new chance at life than to snuff out their lives.”

Elspeth gave him an icy glare. “I can’t say I agree.”

“And you should not have to; I don’t expect you to join me at the forge, Elspeth Tirel, but I do ask you to help me fight to protect it. Protect the remaining parts of Mirrodin that my forge protects in turn.”

“You helped gut Mirrodin. How can you expect me to fight for you?

“Because you want Norn dead just as much as I do. Perhaps more,” Urabrask replied, automatic. “She threatens the safety of the homes of you and your allies, as long as she is the one who directs Phyrexia. She threatens your homes just as much as she threatens the existence of mine.”

“Maybe I’ll just wait until she’s destroyed your home to intervene.”

Urabrask grunted. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I have no love for your Phyrexia, in any of its forms or factions.”

“You fought for Mirrodin when the mirrans stood to lose their lives and their homes. Those that remain have made a home for themselves in the pockets of the furnace we have been able to keep safe for them. Why stop fighting now?”

“Maybe it’s worth it,” Elspeth said, at a whisper. “Maybe Mirrodin needs to go with what’s left of Phyrexia so the rest of the multiverse can be safe.”

“That would be a waste.”

Elspeth shrugged.

Urabrask cocked his head. “What can I say to convince you?”

She shrugged again. “That’s not for me to figure out.”

Urabrask fell silent, his massive head tilted to one side, and then the other, as if in contemplation.

“I believe in Phyrexia,” He rumbled. “Our New Phyrexia. I made a furnace there, wanting only the freedom to make good works. That is what I wanted it to be. A place that takes what is and makes it all that it could be. So we furnace-dwellers took our corner of the world to do just that. Who could fault us? The inner plane was our birthplace, and so we made it our workshop. When war came, we sided with our siblings of oil and steel. We were all phyrexian, and we did not begrudge our siblings the right to fight for what they thought their portions of Phyrexia should be. It was no more than what we wanted.

“Then Norn decided she wanted more. She took what was ours. She put her porcelain cronies in charge of our silent, wonderful forge, policing us like we were no better than Sheoldred’s thugs. Now we produce nothing good. Nothing truly great. I appealed to Norn. She was my sister. She was Phyrexian. I thought she could be made to see what she was doing did not advance the work of our people, our culture, in a meaningful way. She appointed me her warden of the furnaces. Her warden. A figurehead on the leash of her eggshell priests. I stood in her annex like a fool while the orthodoxy smiled at me like I was a simple animal begging for scraps. I knew then I could not trust my fellow praetors. I told the furnace dwellers that, for succor, I must go to Elspeth Tirel.”

“Why did you go to Norn?”

Elspeth’s question clearly took Urabrask aback. “What?”

“Why did you go to Norn?” Elspeth’s gaze was steel. “You knew about me then. You knew about Koth. You knew we oppose Phyrexia. Why didn’t you come to us first?”

“I...what can I say? I have come to you now; what more could you I do? What more do you want me to do?” Urabrask spread his hands. “Tell me, Elspeth, what you need from me, but do as I ask.”

“...what is it you ask?” there was a weariness now in Elspeth’s voice. She was starting to sound as tired as she looked. “What specifically?”

“Come with me to New Phyrexia.” Urabrask leaned in close, his own voice as much like a whisper as a creature his size could manage. “You and your planeswalking allies. Let us carve a path into Norn’s inner sanctum and strike her head from her shoulders.”

“This...I cannot do this. I cannot be the killing blade for another. Not again. Not anymore.”

“You can. I will supply you with anything you need to do this. Anything you want at all. Halo. Willing warriors of the furnace.” Urabrask put a claw to his breast. “My own body is yours, but you must do what I ask.”

Elspeth’s lip curled. “We fought each other for many months, your side and mine, but this is this first time you’ve ever offered parlay. I can’t remember a time when your furnace-dwellers came to the resistance bearing anything more than indifference. But don’t pretend – you didn’t want to stick your neck out for us. You only wanted to ignore us and set us in the corner so you could soothe your conscience with a meager peace.”

“The indifference was a gift,” Urabrask protested. “It was all we could offer without making trouble with the other factions. You must understand-”

“And yet trouble found you. I understand well enough-” Elspeth’s voice had gone low, but it went unchallenged in the space. Even Urabrask’s workers were minding the exchange now. “You had your paradise on New Phyrexia. On the bones of Koth’s homeland. You had your forges and your flunkies and you thought you were protected. You never thought you’d need an ally like me. But now, your confederates have turned on you and you come crawling to me. ‘Come and kill my enemy for me,’ you say-”

Urabrask began to object, but Elspeth cut him off.

“But you don’t offer apologies. You don’t have any remorse for what you’ve done. You haven’t even thought to tell me what’s become of my friend, Koth. No. Instead you’ve come here, to my home plane, on a day of great loss for me, and ask me to be your mercenary in exchange for Halo.”

“I ask you to return to finish what you and your planeswalker friend started.”

“This is nothing that I started,” Elspeth snapped. “You and yours started this when your comrades killed the mirrans and drove them from your homes and you did not intervene.”

Urabrask clenched his claw into a fist. “Let us intervene now, then. Let us stop their advance; it is not too late. And if it is not enough for you to fight for the mirrans’ home then tell me what you want, Elspeth, and you will have it. There is nothing I will not give you, on this or any plane.”

“How can you insult me like this?” Elspeth’s voice cracked, and she had to gulp down a sharp, ragged breath before continuing. “Do you think I need to be bribed to do the right thing? If you had acknowledged the evil of your allies...if you had sought me ought when it mattered, then we wouldn’t be here. We could have fought, not as mercenaries, but as comrades. As friends. Do you understand that? Your enemies and mine would have been the same, and if Norn feared me, she would fear you as well. We might have won. We might have-”

Elspeth spun around suddenly. She was breathing hard. Her eyes met Vivien’s.

“I can’t.” She stepped away from the praetor. Urabrask made a stuttering half-motion, as if to reach after her, but his hand faltered. The gear-sound came from his throat again, and to Vivien’s ear it was not unlike the sound a dog made when wounded.

“If I knew what I know now-” His head lowered by inches. “I did not. What use is there in dwelling on what should have been done?” His voice grew quieter with each word. The Beamtown hires turned back to their tasks, letting him stand alone in silence.

“Elspeth.” Vivien took a step toward her companion to intercept her, but paused at the edge of her path. “Elspeth, are we just...are we just leaving? Are...do you need to leave?”

Elspeth halted half a foot from Vivien. “What am I doing here? What are we doing?”

“Easy, easy.” Vivien put her hands on the back of Elspeth’s neck, and brought her face close. “We can come back later, alright?” She glanced at Urabrask. “He’s not going anywhere. At least not right away, I don’t think. I’m sure he...” she trailed of, and sighed “I honestly don’t know if we can walk away from this. I’m sorry Elspeth, but this thing with the phyrexians. I know I don’t have to tell you this is bigger than you and me. We need a plan for this. And allies.”

“Why do I have to be here?”

Vivien started to form a response, looked closer at Elspeth’s haggard face, and decided she wasn’t actually looking for an answer.

“It’s not my war.” Elspeth’s eyes were wet. Her gaze was on the ground. “It’s not my job to fix his fucking fire-pit. His...his...” She grunted. “He made his fucking bed. I’m not his nursemaid.”

Vivien shook her head. “This isn’t about him. You know it isn’t. It’s about you and me. I’s about what’s left of Capenna staying Capenna. It’s about Dominaria and Alara and Theros and everywhere the phyrexians aren’t but could be if we don’t put a stop to them now.”

Elspeth grunted. She half-turned back toward the forge, but couldn’t quite manage it. “Does he deserve to be part of that?”

Vivien grimaced. “I think...I think even if you don’t want to fight for him, we don’t have the luxury of saying ‘no’ to the help he can offer. And my gut tells me he does want our help.”

Elspeth nodded, but looked no more convinced. Her frown was deep, her eyes set on the ground-

“It is my home too,” Urabrask whispered.

Elspeth tore free of Vivien, rounding on the praetor. “What?”

“It is my home too. Mirrodin. I wasn’t born on some far-away plane. I didn’t come to Mirrodin to take it away from anyone else. I was born there. Thrice-born and re-forged. It is my plane...it is our plane as much as it is the mirrans. None of us asked to be there, but there we reside.”

“You killed the others that lived there,” Elspeth spat back. “So what if you were born somewhere? It doesn’t excuse slaughter.”

“The vulshok and the goblins treated us no better,” Urabrask said. “When they first found us, doing our quiet work in the dark below their mountains, in the low tunnels of the lacuna. They killed us, and we killed them in return. I don’t think either of us were right to do so,” he added, when Elspeth seemed ready to interject. “Killing is useless and wasteful. But we did it to each other, out of fear of the other. Because as pointless as killing is, dying is worse.”

“Well congratulations. You chose killing, and did plenty of it.” Elspeth turned away again. Vivien made a move to follow her.

“Please.”

Vivien blinked it was the last word she expected to hear from Urabrask.

“Please.” This time there was a sound of metal on stone, and Vivien turned to face the praetor.

Urabrask was on his knees, head bowed low to the ground, hands outstretched beneath his beak, which scratched the cavern floor. His breath was shuddering now, labored, though he was long since healed. “We did not ask to be born of the furnace, but it is the home that I and mine know, It is the home we love. Alone or by the side of the mirrans that remain, all I ask is for that home.”

Elspeth pulled away from Vivien.

“What about my home?” She moved toward Urabrask, her voice rising. “What about my childhood ripped out from under me by the same sort of fiends that have taken Mirrodin? What about my friends and my family and my...and everyone dear to me taken away by you, or those like you, or by dragons and demons and gods? Explain to me why I owe even one of you anything more than my fucking sword caving in your miserable, treacherous skulls?”

“That is why.” Urabrask pressed his head further down, and Vivien could her the stone grind beneath the tip of his metal beak. “You have fought and searched for a home. You have defended homes that were not yours. Norn fears you, yes, but more than that, Phyrexia needs champions who understand what it is to need a home.

“Tezzeret told me this about you,” he added, when Elspeth’s face showed clear confusion.

“It was not his place.”

“Nevertheless,” Urabrask continued. “You have fought and sought and now you have reclaimed your home-”

“This is not my home!”

The shout was so violent, so sudden, that even the angels above started in surprise.

“I was told it was-”

“I don’t know this place! I never grew up in that city up there! That place full of noise and greed where the only loyalty is whatever material gain the person standing next to you can offer. I don’t have a home here, and I don’t have family. The closest thing I found to a father here is dead. The closest thing I could have had to a sister is gone and I-”

She gasped, and breathed hard.

“-I haven’t had a home since the time I was born. All I’ve done...all I‘ve ever done, is run from plane to plane trying to make a home for myself. I thought I’d found it so many times but...I can’t keep fighting just to have a home. I...I’m tired like you could not possibly understand.”

Urabrask was breathing hard as well, Vivien realized, belatedly. Almost in tune with Elspeth. When he spoke, his voice was similarly hoarse.

“Explain it to me.”

“What?”

“Please.” Urabrask’s voice was insistent. “You think I do not understand. Give me a chance to understand.”

Silence. The ogre and devils cleaning the forge cast glances at the three of them. Even the angels, silent and aloof though they were, seemed to lean in, if almost imperceptibly.

Elspeth sucked in a sharp breath through her nostrils, and for a moment Vivien felt certain her companion was about to strike Urabrask down. Instead, she squared her shoulders.

“There was...there was Alara. The first real home.”

She stopped short, gave a short jerk of her head, and continued.

“I was happy there. Actually happy. I felt hollow sometimes, and there were nightmares, but there were always going to be nightmares, and as hard as it could be to sleep, I had friends and comrades and a beautiful homeland to call my own in my waking hours. When the shards converged...when Esper and Grixis attacked us...I could have stayed there, maybe, if it had always been a fight for Bant. A fight to...to keep the other shards from destroying Bant. But the Bant I knew went away slowly. Quietly. The fighting faded away and there were sojourns from the other shards. Alliances. Exchanges of culture and I knew the Bant I loved would not remain so.”

Elspeth’s shoulders sagged. Her head inclined to look upon the floor.

“And besides, Bant had seen me for what I was. Not of them. Not of their world. I could not pretend to belong there any longer. I myself was a sojourner, and they would not have had me as one of them.”

“That can’t be true,” Urabrask said. “They would not have rejected you. You fought for them. They would have been fools not to keep and want you.”

“You have too much faith in the gratitude given to outsiders.” Elspeth’s tone was sharp, but her hands, which had been balled into fists, untensed and unfurled slowly as she continued to speak. “But I will explain in a moment how homes can be ungrateful.”

She turned away from him, and stared into the shadows.

“There was Dominaria next. I pretended it was a home, but I didn’t pretend very hard. It was a crossroads. A place to be because I had no place to be. I could go through the motions of being a knight in the pits, without the danger of disappointing anyone. Until Koth found me and brought obligations back into my life.”

She inclined her head toward the forge. The devils were heaping coals onto the pile to keep the heat steady.

“Koth couldn’t bring me a home. He was barely holding onto his own home then. But he found me a cause. He invited Venser and I into his home to fight for it. He gave me a cause, and he gave me my childhood nightmares to slay for that cause.

“I will always love my friend Koth for that,” she said, low, loud only enough for Vivien and Urabrask to hear. “And for the hopelessness of that fight he brought us to, I will hate him, always. But not as much as I hate myself for leaving that fight. Hopeless though it was. Hopeless though it is”

“It is not,” Urabrask replied. His voice too was a whisper now, though no-one had to strain to hear it. “It is not hopeless.”

“I still had hope though,” she said, paying him no apparent mind. “I had to have hope for me, at least, or I would have never left Mirrodin. I still hoped for something for myself, I guess. Hope to still find a place to live and just be until I died. Before the devils of my childhood found that place too, like they find everywhere, in the end.”

“Mirrodin.”

“What?” Elspeth looked back to Urabrask, at last.

“You called it Mirrodin, Elspeth. You still have hope for it.”

Elspeth snorted. “You’re just a person in the end, aren’t you?” Her voice was cracking worse now, and high. “Just a foolish person who believed in something that didn’t turn out to be what you hoped it to be. We’re just a multiverse of fools. Me with my gods and hope for homes. You and your Phyrexia.”

“Fools,” Urabrask sounded even lower than he had that first night, when he had still been half-dead from the scorching touch of eternity. “What next? What happened after you...after you were not on Phyrexia any longer?”

Another pause. Then, Elspeth knelt by Urabrask’s head. Her own face was turned down such that Vivien could not tell if it was angled at Urabrask or the floor.

“Theros. Theros, which needed heroes. The straightforward kind of heroes who killed monsters and protected the weak. Heroes who did not have to consider the motivations and intentions of the beasts they slew. Theros, where I could have the approval of the gods themselves, and I could have had love and happiness and...” She shook her head. “Theros was another empty promise, in the end. Another planeswalker stole my love, and my valor. He turned the whole plane upside down, and though I emptied myself out to fix the world again, I found that the gods were just as petty and ungrateful as anyone, and I-”

She coughed. Or did she sob?

“-I died.”

Urabrask shifted. “But you are here now.”

“Death is not much of anything, sometimes.” Elspeth laughed. It hurt Vivien to hear that laugh. “My body is here. My mind is here. My soul, technically, is here now. But I do not know if my hope is here. And without hope...”

She trailed off.

She looked up at Urabrask.

“...tell me something about yourself.”

“What?”

Elspeth placed her hands on her thighs. “I’m telling you who I am. I want to know who you are. You said you were a dragon, that you were born...many times? Tell me about that.”

Urabrask did not respond immediately. He remained kneeling, the bellows of his inhalation and exhalations like the working of some great coal machine in the distance.

When he spoke, it was like a rush of venting steam.

“I was born a dragon, first. My sire laid my egg carelessly in the bowels of Kuldotha, and then left me, as is the dragon’s way. I remained there in a deep place where traces of phyrexian oil pooled and soaked into the membrane of my egg. I was born stunted. Weak of limb and lacking entirely of wing. My siblings and sire scorned me, but Phyrexia did not. I crawled through levels of the Oxidda chain and the furnaces below the surface of Mirrodin that no flying dragon would deign to know. I found the foundlings of Phyrexia there. Creatures who the growing phyrexian culture had rejected out of weakness of design, or maybe because they sensed, somehow, that burgeoning fire within our souls that the remnant echoes of old Phyrexia did not recognize as truly phyrexian. We were all of the oil, and in the oil I heard the whispers of our progenitors. The secret techniques of taking what is and making it strong by modification. How to add to myself and become more.

I made a place for myself down in the bowels of Mirrodin, and I hoarded metal there. This is a dragon’s prerogative. But dragon’s hoard on Mirrodin is not like a dragon’s hoard on other planes. Metal lives on Mirrodin. Metal thinks. The hoard I gathered was not just a pile of trinkets, it was a catalog of life and history and form. A record of what was that could be used to explore what could be. What the metal could be. What we who live our lives with metal in our being could become.

“And so, wanting to be more, I added the metal to myself. I was reborn by my own will. I used the secrets of our progenitors, those techniques the oil had bled into my brain, to add the metal to myself, and I began to see. Memory of the metal bled into me. I threw away the flesh that had betrayed me and made a from for myself I could be truly proud of. And now the metal whispered to me as well, and, wanting to her the whispers, I let the memories of the metal become my own. I was an ogre. A Vulshok. A goblin. All metal in Phyrexia is cycled, and the metal of Mirrodin recalls the lives it has led. I hoarded those memory as I hoarded metal. Armored myself in it. Consumed it. Shaped it. Smashed and melted it. I have appreciated metal from every angle. Its flavor, its substance and form...the very essence of the stuff. Metal has nourished my body and my soul, and now comprises much of my body. Without metal, I would be nothing.

“The shape and the form of metal delights me, but form is fluid, and I learned that, so long as metal is kept flexible and able to move from form to form, it is eternal, and there is a beauty to that flexibility of form and function. Nothing ever need be broken. Nothing ever need be called useless, so long as it can be made anew into something.

“Phyrexia has given me paradise in this way. Myself and those who love metal. Who love creation, and the fiery conception of the new from what others would consider trash. Consider me.” Urabrask smacked the ground with the back of his knuckles. “Despised as and ogre. Feared as a dragon. And not much changed in either regard in compleation, as far as the mirrans are concerned. But I have found me and mine. Goblins and vulshok and ogres and dragons alike who do not fear re-creation. Who delight as I do in taking what has been discarded and giving it purpose, that nothing need ever be discarded again. It tears at our souls, Elspeth Tirel, to see anything discarded as useless or reviled. So me melt and we forge anew, until every molecule is made good and worthy. Waste not. Want not.

“This is what I mean when I say I can build for a new Phyrexia. I see potential in every piece of our world. Potential undreamed of by our siblings of oil and steel. I am not being boastful when I say this, even I do not know what that potential will look like five cycles, a hundred cycles from now. I only know we could be more than what Norn would have us be. More than a weapon. More than a virus that spreads for spreading’s sake.

“But I cannot build for New Phyrexia and Mirrodin both. I need someone who understands what it is to lose a home, and who can speak to the not-phyrexian perspective. I need you, Elspeth Tirel.”

Elspeth nodded, though from the way she swayed it might simply have been her weariness clutching at her. “And what would I be helping you build, exactly? What is your Phyrexia’s relationship with the world?”

“I don’t know yet.” Urabrask shook his head, the tip of his beak clipping the floor twice. “I have ideas. I thought I knew what we would look at when I only had the furnace to worry over. But I realize Phyrexia cannot just be left to grown in silos. We must work as one, but we must truly work together as one, as equals in a shared space. And as for expansion into other worlds...there are so many on Mirrodin who have not found their place in the Great Work. If we spread ourselves thin across the multiverse, too many will be forgotten in the expansion.

“Very egalitarian,” Elspeth said. Vivien imagined she almost saw a smile at the corner of her companion’s lips.

“There could be room for all, if we make it,” Urabrask continued. “I cannot communicate this to my followers of the furnace yet, but we have much to learn before we think of offering change to other planes, let alone forcing it upon them.”

“That’s quite the change of heart,” Elspeth replied. Her tone was soft, but something in it put Vivien ill at ease. “‘Tend the forges or feed the forges,’ wasn’t it? You were just as ruthless as the others when I was fighting for Mirrodin. Just as cruel to anyone who did not fit your vision. Why should I believe that’s changed?”

“I...I am learning. Phyrexia is learning. We are all still young, compared to the multiverse. The oil of our progenitors taught me much, but I do not accept all of it. Old Phyrexia at its core, at its heart and beginning, was built on elitism. A belief that some would rise above, and all others were only good for parts. An elitism of form that did not allow for all to share in the glory of the machine. I reject this. The imperfect should never be discarded, only reforged. Those who don’t wish to be reforged can themselves re-forge.

“And yes, I am learning” he added, softer, “that some do not want to or cannot tend the forge. Maybe they also deserve life. Deserve freedom. I do not know yet how they will exist alongside the Great Work, but as I see it, the best the path of the Quiet Furnace can offer is to not impede the paths of others. The freedom of others to pursue perfection how they want to, so long as that pursuit does not block the pursuit of others, is paramount. Do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

"Phyrexia should offer opportunity to all, not force it upon them," he added, when Elspeth did not respond.

"You're late in realizing this."

"Yes."

"And what does that look like exactly? After the dust settles? When you have your quiet world again and your enemies are gone?"

"I do not know." Urabrask paused, turning his head up to the roof. Vivien was reminded briefly of a dog sniffing the air. "We have never had the chance to grow into what we could be, without the virus of tyranny directing us. If I could, I would tell you with certainty we will coexist in peace. That a Phyrexia without Norn and the grasping expansionists among us would fit neatly into the multiverse as you wish it to be, but I cannot say this, and you know I cannot."

“No. No you can’t.” Elspeth straightened her back. She was looking down at Urabrask now, from on her knees; down on the gleaming metal curve of his beak. “There isn’t a single thing you can say to me that will change the fact that Phyrexia has, as a culture new and old, chosen the path of invasion and assimilation at every turn. So what do you have, Urabrask? What else do you have to tell me that I should make any move to not wipe you and your furnace from the face of Phyrexia along with every other faction of your cruel culture?”

Urabrask bristled, and raised his head. "We were born on the silver world, Elspeth Tirel. I told you. I was born there. That is my home. The Mirrans had no interest in sharing it with us. But I am telling you now I understand that we must share, if we are to exist on anything resembling our own terms."

When Elspeth did not respond, Urabrask slackened his muscles. “I do not know what to say to you.”

Elspeth pursed her lips. Nodded. “What am I to you?”

"You are a champion of those bereft of a home. All Phyrexia knows this." He lowered his head to the floor. His head was not of a proportion to touch his forehead to the ground, so instead the tip of his beak click-ed against the stone. "Please. Be our champion...”

Elspeth tilted her head. She was looking into Urabrask’s eye, Vivien realized, and he into hers.

“...be my friend.”

Elspeth blinked. “Friend?”

Urabrask nodded. “Yes. If you would have us.”

“Do you even know what that means?”

“I am not a beast, Elspeth Tirel. Compleation has not put the concepts of camaraderie and trust beyond me. The limits father of machines put on our ancestors to keep these concepts from them do not bind to our new Phyrexia. Norn would see those limits on our imaginations put back in place. I would see these concepts made available to all Phyrexia.”

Elspeth leaned in from her kneeling position to put her face by Urabrask’s head. Just beyond her arm’s reach.

“You know what it means. But do you mean it?”

Urabrask blinked. A sudden shiver ran down Vivien’s spine, as she realized she had never seen the praetor blink before.

“I want to mean it. I want allies for our new Phyrexia. I need allies. There is an untapped value in alliance with those not compleat like we are. There will be advantages.”

Elspeth closed her eyes.

“You want a mercenary.”

“I want an ally.”

Elspeth shook her head. “You want a sword to sink in Norn’s throat.”

“Do you not want that?” Urabrask returned.

“Is that all I am to you?”

“I think more of you than that, Elspeth Tirel. I know also you are weary in mind and in flesh.”

“I am.” Elspeth slouched down on her knees. For the first time since they’d entered, her hand slid from the hilt of her sword to rest in her lap. “As you...as you must understand...you burned your own flesh away to come here?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Elspeth blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Isn’t home important to you? The concept of a home? A home itself? Wouldn’t you leap through danger and pain for the sake of a home?”

“Yes.” Elspeth’s voice had a renewed energy as she said it.

“Can you believe that a Phyrexian would do the same?”

“I’ve seen what you call a home.” Elspeth shook her head. “I want to believe you, but I don’t see what you see as worth fighting for.”

She stood, and drew her sword.

The workers reacted first, The ogre drew a thick wrench from his belt and took a step forward, growling. The devils dropped their brooms and rags and similarly advanced in Elspeth's direction. By then, Vivien had her bow out of its case and had it trained on the closest devil. The sudden glow of her weapons made them pause in their tracks.

"Stop," Urabrask commanded, his muscles tensing visibly. "Let her be."

“And you,” He pointed to Vivien. “Do not threaten my workers.”

Vivien frowned, but lowered her bow to aim at the ground. Above, the angels’ faces had darkened.

Through all of it, Elspeth never took her eyes off of Urabrask.

"Do you know who this is?"

"I do not." Urabrask's breathing was heavy, almost laboured, and steam was wafting out of his joints and wing-stubs.

"This was Giada. This world, this city, offered her very little, and wanted to take and take and take from her. To drink her up. She was a tool to them. A resource. She was useful, and that was all that those who called themselves her guardians cared about. And yet still. Still. She gave her life willingly for New Capenna, for the safety of those dear to her, for the chance that this place might be...something more. Something better. She did not need to be infected or coerced or bribed to do what was right.”

Above, the angels moved there heads towards one another, but remained silent.

“This was…this was admirable,” Urabrask said. “A sacrifice worthy of emulation. But I do not mean to use you up, Elspeth. I meant it when I said I would give you anything for your help. Fight for us, and there is nothing I will not give you to help you find a home of your own.”

Elspeth shook her head. A quick jerk. “I am not as strong as her. I am not as devoted as you.” She paused, then continued in a hushed rasp. “I do not want to die. Not for anything. And I am afraid to die, if I must face Phyrexia again.”

"Then I will die before I let them kill you.

"You would die for me?"

"I would die for freedom. For the furnace, if I must. And I know that you are the key to freedom for the furnace. It would be better, though, if we could both live through the violence that must happen. We should both try to live, if we can."

Elspeth's arm dropped. Luxior left a brief, many-colored distortion in the air behind it as it moved. She stared at Urabrask, then tucked the sword back into the sash at her waist.

Then she looked back at the praetor kneeling before her.

“It’s all words,” she said after a moment. “It’s all just words back and forth and they don’t mean anything unless there’s action to back them up.” She grimaced, a look of misery that wrinkled her mouth and her eyes. “I want to believe you. I do. But...I don’t know if anything you’ve said is enough to make me go back there. Back to that place”

“What could I say?” Urabrask lifted his beak and inch from the floor. “What good are my words? Words are empty and prove nothing. The father of machines had many fine words. Great speeches and lies he used to sway the Thran. Psalms and scriptures to bend old Phyrexia to his will. He had priests with no function except to spread his words...his lies. Norn, Sheoldred, Jin – they could offer you very convincing words in favor of their visions of Phyrexia, but those words would not make them right. No. If you were the sort of person who could be convinced by words...I don’t think you would be the right person to fight for us, if that was so.

“I can only ask that you feel.”

Elspeth sniffed. “Feel?”

“Feel and believe that what we are fighting for is something we can fight for together. That we can overcome the worst parts of old Phyrexia’s culture and the most toxic parts of New Phyrexia’s to be something...something more. And that, even in Norn’s Phyrexia there are those who deserve a chance at life. A chance at an existence not under her tyranny.”

Elspeth’s head inclined forward, her face pointed at an angle towards the ground. From her vantage point, Vivien could see her companion’s shoulders fall.

“It is hard, Elspeth. Urabrask touched his beak back to the ground. “I know it is hard, when you have no guarantees in life. Nothing certain or solid to stand on and reassure you that your choices are the right ones. I do not know what lies ahead for you or for me, but I know this: together, we have a stronger say in what our futures will bring than we would on our own. We would-”

But here Urabrask fell silent, as Elspeth crossed her arms across her chest, and her hands hugged at her upper arms.

He ground his head further into the floor, and silence reigned in the space.

Elspeth stood there amidst all of it. The angels watched, unsmilingly curious. The Beamtown crew were clearly listening intently, though their eyes were averted. Vivien stood a few feet from her companion, wanting to say something. Something. But finding nothing worth vocalizing, she simply stood and added to the silence.

Elspeth simply stood, arms folded, ignoring them all.

Finally she covered her mouth with a single gloved hand. With the other arm, she hugged herself, fingers tight around her own upper arm. Tears fell freely and silently from her face, the glow of the forge bright in the wetness of her cheeks.

All the while Urabrask knelt, bowed and unmoving.

Vivien ached for something to shoot at. To have her bow in hand, and a physical danger in front of them. Something attacking her friend that she could actually help with.

But instead she stood, tired and aching and feeling close to joining Elspeth in her tears.

When Elspeth did finally raise her head and look to Urabrask, it was a tremendous relief.

“One day, Urabrask of Phyrexia...and I hope for both of our sakes that we live to see such a day, you will repay me. Somehow, you will repay me. For now...”

Elspeth paused, mouth half-open. She closed it, gave the chamber a sweeping look, and re-fixed Urabrask in her sights.

“...for now, even if we cannot live in peace together, we will fight alongside one another. So long as a greater evil requires our cooperation….”

She went silent again, for the space of several seconds.

“...until we have both made safe homes for ourselves and those in our care.”

“That is good. And it is wise.” Urabrask’s beak scrapped against the stone floor, and Vivien realized after a moment he was trying to nod.

“...and...” He raised his head, and shifted back onto one knee. “...and thank you For what you’ve done and what you will do yet, for Mirran and Phyrexian both.”

Elspeth nodded once, staring at Urabrask with unblinking eyes.

“And if it is agreeable to you-” He held a claw up, and plucked the shield from the small angel with such a swiftness the he was left blinking and staring at his now-empty hands. “I offer this gift, even if you think it a bribe. Throw it aside when this is all over.” Urabrask proffered the iridescent weapon to Elspeth. “I have work to do yet to complete it, but when we are together again on New...on Mirrodin, I will have it ready for you. Between my own skill, and the infusion of Halo, it will be a formidable tool against Norn and her lackeys.”

Elspeth’s eyes scanned the shield. The light from the metal cast rainbow colors across her face.

“That is too cumbersome for me.” She drew her sword. “I fight light on my feet these days. And I am done taking weapons as gifts for mercenary service.”

“That is not a problem.” Urabrask put a hand on each side of the shield. Smoke trailed from the places where it touched his body. He pressed, and the shield compressed, swirling inward, the surface blurring like a whirlpool. Vivien could not tell if the hiss that accompanied the transformation was coming from the shield, or if it was the praetor’s own exhalation of pain.

A moment later and he held a small circle of clean, uncolored steel, about the length of half a forearm. A buckler, suited to the fencing sword in Elspeth’s grip.

“Metal’s greatest trait is that it can always change.” Urabrask’s voice was shaky, but he held out the shield with a steady arm. “Change and adapt. Adapt and improve. With this, no oil shall touch you. With this, you will fly on the power of your world, and the craft of mine.”

Elspeth stared at the shield, wary and tensed, like a fox or a wolf come upon a cabin suddenly built in its hunting ground. Every eye in the space was on her, the angels looking on with aloof intent, the workers with an eager curiosity, and Urabrask with…

...Vivien didn’t know quite with what.

Finally, Elspeth nodded, though not to anyone in particular. Her shoes clicked softly on the stone as she strode to the armor, ripping the last of her cape from her shoulder.

When she was within a foot of the shield, she stopped. Urabrask knelt by her side, unmoving except for the minute quiver of his eyes. Neither moved for several long seconds.

She took the buckler from him, and turned it over in her hand. Her reflection in its surface was so crisp it might have been a second Elspeth, locked away in the metal. Urabrask watched her intently, his claws held close to one another.

Like a schoolgirl waiting to get an answer to her confession, Vivien thought.

At last, Elspeth looked up at Urabrask. The fire from the forge glinted off the wet trails on her cheeks.

“I shouldn’t trust you,” was all she said, in the end.

"In your place, I might not trust me either,” was all Urabrask offered in return.

She did not spare him another look as she took the shield and placed it against her arm. It flashed with rainbow energy and the light spread out from the metal in lines of light. The light echoed in the glow from her sword, and the lines shot up her arms, then bloomed from her shoulders in two wings of light.

Elspeth’s gaze swept her arms, her chest, and the armor of light illuminating her. Slowly, she raised her arms, and she ascended. The glow enveloped her fully, and she rose up through the air. The wings did not beat, did not flutter an inch, but still she ascended, turning slowly as she cast her head from one side to another, face unreadable.

“It will keep her safe,” Urabrask muttered.

Vivien was not certain anyone besides her heard it. The workers had paused in their cleaning to stare up at Elspeth, and even the angels’ disapproving scowls had faded as they beheld Elspeth. Was it a heresy to them, Vivien wondered, for a human to bear themselves like an angel? If it were, they gave no indication as she lifted higher than they in the great vaulted cavern, still examining the shield.

“It will keep her safe,” Urabrask said again. “She will be an untouchable bastion, and lead us to freedom.”

With all eyes on Elspeth, radiant like a mantled sun, Vivien felt sure she was the only one that noticed, but some of the grease streaking Urabrask’s face was fresh oil, streaming in minute trails across his armored cheeks.

Pouring from his fiery eyes.

“Where the Hearth Is” is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.

#mtg #mtg fan fiction #elspeth tirel #urabrask #vivien reid #elesh norn #tezzeret

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