Metal Gear Rising: Phyrexiance

Elesh Norn hurried down the corridor of the Seedcore, two guards marching with her. As much as she strained to admit it things were going horribly, horribly wrong. Realbreaker was… not listening to her. Nissa was dead. The Mirrans- who had somehow survived all this time- were in the Seedcore. Somehow. The Pyromancer- she was here, too. And there was another figure, but any of her children who saw them died before she could get a good look with the feeling of something impossibly sharp slicing them in half.

Realmbreaker shuddered and the floor lurched, Norn stumbling a little, her arms waving for balance. Humiliating. Then the corridor in front of her collapsed, a massive chitin-clad root crashing in through the ceiling, dripping oil, another closely following it and impacting the first of her guards, the force of the world-tree’s shuddering power turning them to keratin shards and meat pulp. Norn spat in frustration and a four-letter word she had not thought she would ever use silently slipped through her lips as she ran back the way she had come, out of the way of any more roots, ordering the one remaining guard to stick close to her. Absurdly, she worried that they had heard her cursing.

She turned the corner, running through her internal schematic of the Seedcore. It wasn’t ideal but she could cut through the wall of the corridor and climb through the interior of the Seedcore to get to the Mycosynth gardens. As little as she liked it she could easily hide until her would-be conquerors lost the momentum of their little push and the plane itself ground them to pulp like the infections they were. New Phyrexia was a big plane. There were plenty of places to disappear in. All was not lost. The dryad would not last long bonded with the invasion tree.

She stopped and began tearing at the woven floor of the corridor with her hands, ordering the guard to join her. They swung with their sword, the roots parting and spraying black oil. She wedged her fingers into the crack, the roots yielding to her unnatural strength. Norn scowled, glancing furtively around her, the guard helping her to widen the hole. Her visor was impractically large. She had never considered this before.

Elesh Norn had excellent hearing. The guard, who she could hear through, also had excellent hearing. So when she heard the footsteps down the corridor, distant though they were, she could detect, very distinctly, the undeniable element of swagger in them. They were a way away and around the corner. It was possible that whoever it was would not see her before the hole was wide enough and she was out. She could already see the depths of the Seedcore below, the roots writhing wildly. But it wasn’t wide enough.

“The fabled Elesh Norn, here at last. I must say, I didn’t expect… this.”

The guard turned and Norn saw through their eyes. The figure was alone, standing cockily at the bend in the corridor. There was a blade in some kind of oversized sheath on their left hip and their right arm was metal of some kind. Kamigawan, probably. Norn didn’t care. The guard strode forwards, sword drawn.

“Talkative, aren’t we,” said the figure. Norn grimaced. The hole was closing up even as she tore it wider. The safety of the Seedcore beckoned but she could not fit her visor through.

The stranger didn’t react to the guard approaching other than to smirk. “You look like you need some help there,” he said, seeming to find the idea incredibly funny. “Perhaps a pair of gardening shears? A trowel?” The guard reached him and raised their sword for a strike.

“Ah, you’re no fun,” the stranger said, disappointed. The guard swung the sword in a sudden, percussive movement and Norn felt their muscles pushed to their limits as the blow descended fast enough to whistle.

And then their arm was on the floor.

The guard didn’t even flinch. They dropped on the smaller stranger, remaining arm clawing with a ferocity that would have made Vorinclex proud. But through their eyes Norn saw the stranger grin and raise their sword, the blade shimmering red. Then she felt something impossibly sharp pass through the ceramic and flesh of the guard’s torso, almost too fast to feel, let alone see, and then the guard fell down in two different directions. Norn wheeled, and it was only when she saw herself the impossibly sharp blade crackling red, the sarcastic grin, the cockiness of that stance, that she realised.

It was the figure at the end of the dark tunnel she had seen in her dreams.

“Who are you,” she said, hating the how the command wavered.

The figure tilted their head. “Samuel Rodrigues,” he said. “But people call me Jetstream Sam.”

Elesh Norn paused. “That’s a stupid name,” she said. “I can’t die to you.” She felt a strange mix of fear, anger and hilarity, which she pushed straight aside. She reached for the split remains of the guard and the flesh writhed as she pulled from them what she needed, already forming as the corpse flew through the air towards her. By the time it reached her hand the sword had already half-formed, long and white, the edge of the blade undulating as her will compressed the ceramic into something almost as hard as darksteel. The viscera of what remained of the guard continued its trajectory, splattering across her and the wall behind her in a red mist. Norn clenched her free hand and levelled the still-forming point of the blade at ‘Jestream Sam’, the remaining metal of the guard’s body sharpening into knives that hung in the air around her.

“Join us,” she said, but the offer of Phyrexia’s perfection felt very, very forced.

“I’m not a fan,” said Sam. “Too much raw meat. Not enough parties. I’ll pass.”

Norn wondered why she was putting up with this bizarre exchange. “I can raise you above the muck,” she said, striding forwards, sword raised. “I can make you whole. I can show you just how alone you all are. Join Phyrexia.”

“Alone? You think that this is how you deal with loneliness?” Sam shook his head, tutting. “You need to get out more. How many titles do you have again? Grand Cenobyte, Praetor, Mother of Machines, Grand Praetor… You might be compensating for something.”

Norn was done. “Then die alone,” she spat, baring her pointed teeth. She gestured with a clawed fist and the knives flew towards the samurai in a flurry of grey steel, but the red blade moved fast enough to be a blur even to Norn’s perfect senses and they embedded themselves harmlessly in the walls.

“You’re a bit tall to tango,” said Sam. “But we can it work.” He grinned up at the advancing Praetor with a disgustingly smarmy smile. “Let’s dance!” he said,

and the fight for New Phyrexia began.

Norn had access to the memories of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and knowledge of almost every fighting style in the multiverse from the legions of compleat New Phyrexia had added to their ranks. Her first blow, a powerful two-handed slash aided by her iron-willed telekinetic grip on the sword, was about as perfect a blow as was possible and was strong enough to cleave the average human in two with enough speed to leave the edges of the wound smouldering. When Sam raised his sword to parry Norn was not surprised. What surprised her was that her blade went ricocheting backwards. She furiously adjusted her stance and wrenched the blade into a defensive position as the man with the red blade launched a flurry of rapid attacks which she just barely managed to block. The praetor made a lightning-fast bid for some ground with a furious horizontal swing she turned into a stab but the samurai dodged sideways with a flip and bounced off the wall, diving behind Norn, lunging for her back. Norn wrenched her arm back at an unnatural angle and parried the blow, spinning and meeting the attack with a storm of wild thrusts, screaming at the infuriating newt in her way. But he avoided every thrust, and worse he was laughing at her.

“Now that’s it,” he said, grinning. “That’s the spirit, Norn. Come and take it!”

“YOU INFURIATING FUCK!” sceeched Norn. “YOU WILL BE FORGOTTEN! I WILL GRIND YOU INTO FUCKING PASTE! I WILL SMEAR THE SEEDCORE WITH YOUR FILTH! YOU WILL DIE ALONE!” The sword churned and changed, the metal of the blades embedded in the walls suddering themselves free and slamming into the changing substance as the blade thickened, internal mechanisms forming and flesh growing in the inner structure. “ALONE!” Then, with an impulse of will, the chain mechanism started up a screech of keratin on keratin, incisor-shaped teeth spinning frenetically around the longsword chainsaw, droplets of freshly transmuted blood spraying outwards from within it. “ALL, ALONE!”

Sam rubbed his chin, amused. “Oh, are you projecting, Praetor?”

Norn didn’t have a coherent answer to that. Instead, she resumed her frenzy of blows. She couldn’t retreat, not with how fast the samurai was. But he was backed into a corner. The only way for him to retreat was past her, and Elesh Norn would not let the man who had haunted her nightmares escape.

“Why are you here?” she snarled, the samurai’s blade flashing as they fought. “You aren’t part of that insufferable Gatewatch. I know them. You’re something else.” Their blades locked and Norn pushed, Sam resisting against her strength.

“I’m just here for the fun,” said Sam. “See the scenery, chat with the locals…” he grunted at his blade gave way an inch, spewing sparks where Norn’s chainsword met it. He took a small, stumbling step back. Elesh Norn grinned, baring her needle-point teeth.

“Your lair’s tongue spits nothings,” Norn said, advancing a hard-won halfstep. “The flesh knows only deception. Our glorious metal has cauterised that weakness. We know true love, freed from uncertainty. True unity, freed from difference of purpose. True truth.”

“Haven’t three of your Praetor friends tried to kill you?” said Sam, gasping as he strained against Norn. “Is that your unity? Squabbling like children while you play gods and knock things down?”

“And they are dead,” spat Norn. “Their minds were ill-fit for the bodily perfection of their compleation. Their deaths are proof of the purity of our purpose. Reality itself conspired to weed them out.”

Sam didn’t respond, instead making a sudden lunge sideways to get out of the deadlock. But Norn was fast too, and the chainsword swung down with the force of a forge hammer, catching the samurai low on the ground. He barely managed to parry, tumbling back as Norn held an open palm over the churning teeth of her weapon, energy glowing white as she forced the blade down.

“I misjudged you, flesh-thing,” said Elesh Norn. “Your arm will make a fitting addition to my throne.” As if in response, Sam’s arm sparked and jolted back. “Or perhaps not,” Norn sneered, leaning her full weight onto the churning chainsword. “Perhaps I will just have you melted down, Jetstream Sam.”

“Pick one,” Sam grunted. “It’s all the same to me.” The floor suddenly lurched downwards, both of them stumbling but not breaking their stances. But the vital second of disturbance had reduced the pressure on Sam’s sword and he pressed the offensive. His blade rose an inch, then another, and before Norn could react she was forced back, slamming a foot into the ground to counteract her slide down the corridor as Jetstream Sam shot after her, her sword forced outwards. She saw him sheath his sword. Why would he… her weapon felt like it was moving through oil.

Then Sam was inside her guard, and sword shot out in an arc of searing red. Time was slowed in her perception as it sliced through the unarmoured flesh of her elbow and up, up through the porcelain of her visor. Norn could not feel pain but the sudden numbness as she watched half her right arm, still clutching the chainsword, slowly continue its trajectory as it arced towards the floor, feel the imbalanced lightness of her head, see the crackling red of the sword’s arc as it drifted past her eyeless gaze, all in a split second of protracted time, was worse. The fear Norn had felt since that first vision, that, that first ‘nightmare’, felt distant, her death strangely realised in the sudden numbness of her dismemberment. A fact to be accepted. To come to terms with.

And the Mother of Machines knew true horror. And although she could feel her legions spread throughout the planes, blunted though the connection was by Relmbreaker’s insubordination, she felt very, very alone.

“No!” she screeched, and in a furious instant her left hand grabbed Jetstream Sam by the head and threw him against the wall, the samurai skidding down the corridor and landing, agile, on his feet. Norn seethed, distantly aware of a froth of black spittle forming on her lips. “Not here!” she screamed. “You will not get in the way of my ascension! I will not die here!”

“Oh, that’s fighting words, Norn,” said Sam, standing up and swinging his sword, which still crackled with red energy, testing the extent of his cybernetic arm’s damage. “But your style… it lacks something.”

“My style lacks nothing,” Norn spat. A fleck of ichor-laden phlegm dribbled down her chin. “Phyrexia is perfection. Phyrexia is everything you lack, that you do not even know you lack.”

Sam raised his free hand to shade his eyes, pantomiming peering down the corridor at Norn. “Well that’s funny,” he said. “I thought I could see you missing an arm.”

Something in Norn’s oil-soaked mind snapped. “I am missing nothing that cannot be replaced,” she said, distantly. She reached up to the remaining half-crescent of her visor and focused. The ceramic snapped off in her hand, leaving only the uneven edge. The tendrils of flesh behind it stretched and snapped, leaking black ichor, as she pulled it down to the stump of her arm, which was already cauterising itself. The metal bent to her will and it fused and reshaped, glowing brightly until shards of the white ceramic exploded outwards, revealing beneath them a long, serrated blade fused crudely to the stump. Norn picked up the chainsword in her left hand, though her motions seemed hazy and dreamlike.

“Come, Kamigawan,” she said. “Kill me. Kill my dream of something better. Replace it with your violence for a cause you cannot even name. Let my home rot from within as you turn its very heart against itself.” As if to punctuate her words, the corridor lurched again, then began to tilt downwards, Jetstream Sam trapped against the sealed end of the tunnel, Norn at the top of the rapidly inclining slope.

“Ka- Kamigawan? No, no,” said Sam. “Brazil.” He dropped into a crouching stance against the blockage, blade held at the ready.

“I don’t care,” said Norn, jabbing her blade-arm into the root-woven wall to stabilise herself. “You’ll never see either place again. Anywhere outside of this corridor, again. Anyone but me, again.” The twisting and distorting corridor was almost vertical, Sam below, Norn above.

Sam lept the same moment that Norn dropped.

The teeth of Norn’s chainsword span. Sam’s blade glowed and was reflected in his eyes.

And then it was all over.

Norn lay on the ground. She was aware of the fact that the lower portion of her body was missing. No, not missing. There it was, laying in a heap against the wall. It was her that was missing it. Beside her she heard the muted thump of feet impacting Realmbreaker’s root beside her.

“What a show,” said Jetstream Sam. “I must say, I cut in at the end of this but it has been… interesting.”

“You…” said Norn, the word carried out on her last whisper of breath. “Do not… understand.”

Sam stepped over her head and crouched down, meeting her gaze. “How to be a gracious winner?” he said. “No.”

“That you have lost… something… greater…” Elesh Norn’s voice trailed off, becoming almost imperceptible. Sam made a display of putting a hand over his ear to hear.

“That you… will never… truly… know another…” Norn reached up and gripped Sam’s arm with her talonlike fingers, digging into the metal with her last drop of strength. “And in the… black grip… of death,” she said, perfected senses going numb, “you will be… alone… and I… am… not.”

And the Mother of Machines went slack with a smile on her face. Her lips silently formed five last words.

My children… die with… me.

Sam felt the shudder of Realmbreaker and decided that it was time to leave. He wiped at the metal of his cybernetic arm with a sign of disgust. Some of that strange, dark oil had got into the cuts the Praetor had made in her last moments.

He jumped up, making his way back out of the shuddering Seedcore. It was probably nothing.