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Chapter Text

The first time, Urabrask bled for days.

The gash in his forelimb wept ichor, each inky drop puddling onto the circular metal plate before him. From the center, his oil flowed into the Phyrexian runes inscribed upon the plate–one line spiraling outward into nine tight loops–before spreading out into a glassy surface that swirled with prismatic colors.

The art of ichor scrying, his cleric Rioxh had told him, is to focus within, then let go. You feel your way toward a truth that already waits within you.

Somewhere within himself, Urabrask fervently hoped, was the secret to securing his people's freedom.

He had to believe it.

Urabrask lowered his beak to the plate and softly exhaled. A plume of fire rolled over the dish of ichor, lingering on its iridescent surface. The oil of a forge-dweller would not ignite; it would simply hold the fire upon itself, and let it draw truth to the fore.

Preparation was easy, methodical, though not without pain. Concentration was the hard part. Urabrask had always been restless, impatient. He had never taken to the magic in his blood like the ichormages did, never understood their ability to focus for days on end as they plumbed the history contained inside themselves. Now, for once, he wished for their stillness. 

Thankfully, flame had always helped Urabrask concentrate. It was something to rivet his wandering mind to, the one thing he always understood.

Beside him, the patient voice of Rioxh instructed, "start slowly. Start with what you know."

Urabrask grunted. "What does that mean?"

"Hmm." Rioxh tapped their claws thoughtfully against their plated thigh before they tried, "what's your earliest memory? We could start there. You must anchor yourself in your own lifetime before you dig deeper, or you risk losing your grasp on yourself."

Like Kraynox, Urabrask thought. He had, of course, never encountered the Deep Thane himself, but all had heard the rumors of Kraynox's ramblings, steeped in oil and dream. People whispered that he had lost himself long ago to the sea of knowledge in his blood, his consciousness scattered amongst the memories of his ancestors.

Urabrask could not let that happen. His people needed him, above all, to be himself. 

He forced himself to sit still, only the tip of his tail twitching, and strained to think back.

"Warmth," he said at last. "Before I could see or hear, the fire was there. I think it was inside me too." He was born in the core, he remembered. The furnace layer, that future home of thousands, rose around him as he grew. How lonely he had been, even then. How much he had hated the drone of scriptures, the watching eyes, the–

"Good. Try and focus on that."

Urabrask planted his haunches solidly against the ground with a thump and stared determinedly into the fire. 

After the warmth had come light, harsh and blinding, and the choking pressure of hands. The constant oppression of eyes. Theirs, especially–the newts who would become the other praetors, the tyrants of New Phyrexia. Elesh had been so small then, still covered in the flesh she so despised, the soft cartilage of her growing crest framing her face–

The ghost of her visage materialized in the flame, drawn from the memory in Urabrask's blood. Her eyes–she'd still had eyes, then–met his gaze. 

That girl has been dead for a long, long time.

Urabrask shuddered. His people had to be spared from her clutches, her relentless machine of consumption. It had to be him. Who else would do it? Who else could he trust?

Images flickered in and out of the fire, fleeting and chaotic. There was young Elesh again, newly compleated this time, her fresh porcelain body gleaming like a star. Sparks flying from an anvil. A screaming Phyrexian centurion thrust by uncaring hands into the mouth of the forge. Sheoldred coyly extending one clawed hand. A foreign figure bursting into Urabrask's home with sword aloft, their skin covered in golden growths–a Mirran.

This, Urabrask remembered, was why he hated letting himself think.

He snarled in frustration, swiping a claw at the scrying plate and sending it spinning across the ground in a spray of ichor. The fire dissipated, and with it the visions that tormented him.

 Suddenly, he became aware that he was profoundly tired. The wound in his arm throbbed with deep, unrelenting pain.

Rioxh sighed. "It's alright. Rest your mind. Later, we can try again."

"There is no time," Urabrask growled under his breath, backing away from the scattered plate. He lashed his tail. "I cannot wait. Norn grows stronger by the day, choking us of breath."

Rioxh looked down, black eyes unreadable. "I know. The oil is fickle. I'm sorry."

Urabrask's wound continued to bleed. For the longest time after, it would not close.

Slowly, at long last, Urabrask's ichor remembered.

He needed to dive deep–back past his birth, past the unfurling of a seed that would become New Phyrexia, past an inky droplet on a pristine plane and a silver golem and a heartstone. None of the visions made sense to him, nor had he the luxury to ponder them. Amidst the chaos of memory, he knew only that he must go further back.

For days, with the focus of an artificer pursuing his masterwork, Urabrask did.

Before the heartstone was a heartstone, it had been infused with oil to contain the Phyrexian self that would one day develop within. Urabrask pursued that oil up the stream of its flow through time–from body to body, mortal wound to trailing tear–until he arrived within the eye of a Phyrexian demon crouching in counsel with its peers.

An invasion plan, like many others. They spoke of a plane the inhabitants called Capenna, and its angels whose presence was hazardous to Phyrexians–an inconsequential threat, compared to the scale of Yawgmoth's army.

They were wrong, the oil whispered.

Urabrask implored, show me, and he was transported to a battlefield under a clear blue sky, the ground yielding unsettlingly beneath his feet. Before the Phyrexian army hovered an angel, wings outstretched, eyes ablaze with holy magic. She cried out, releasing a wave of prismatic light from her body. When it struck Urabrask–or rather, the Phyrexian whose eyes he now looked through–a memory of pain surged through him, so visceral he curled his claws into the ground to keep from crying out. All around him, the army crumpled, metal bodies contorted in agony.

He knew, then, that Capenna held his weapon.

The issue was finding his way there.

The key, to Urabrask's chagrin, was a noxious human Planeswalker named Tezzeret, who held a voracious portal within his body–servant to the praetors but beholden to none. Urabrask guessed that the man wanted Norn dead as much as he did, though not for love of freedom. Indeed, Tezzeret was all too eager to help, a predatory glint in his eyes. 

Urabrask fought not to think of the way Tezzeret pulled Vorinclex through the Eternities and burned off his flesh, or how he had surely dragged the bound body of Tamiyo back through his Planar Bridge to be shaped into a weapon of Jin-Gitaxias. He knew that, given half a chance, Tezzeret would do the same to him.

Urabrask simply had to deny him that chance.

There was one other thing.

The whisperings of Urabrask's spies, planted deep within the Fair Basilica, had borne a name to him: Elspeth Tirel. The human had been present during the war for the surface to defend Mirrans from Phyrexian incursion. Her footsteps were quick, her blade merciless. Even the Orthodoxy's elites fell before her conviction. The attack on Norn's coronation ceremony, a spellbomb detonated deep within the basement of the cathedral, had also been her doing. 

She had never been caught, disappearing into thin air before the centurions' very eyes. This fact had driven Norn to obsession as of late.

Why now? None knew, but rumors swirled of misty visions, shadowy figures, nightmares poisoning the Mother's mind. One thing was clear: Norn feared this human, this Planeswalker, who had escaped compleation in Phyrexia's deepest heart. What she seethed and yearned for, more than anything, was to have Elspeth Tirel in her hands, to bind her in ichor and porcelain.

That desire was a tantalizing weakness.

When Urabrask uttered her name to Tezzeret, the human grinned in that way that made Urabrask's hackles rise.

"How convenient. What if I told you she was there?"

Urabrask stiffened. Despite himself, hope lurched in his chest. "Capenna?"

"The very same."

Too good to be true, Urabrask thought, but even the chance of a lie was better than the bleakness of before. Even if he could not have Elspeth, he would have his weapon, and an opportunity. What kind of Phyrexian would he be not to take it?

"Very well. Take me to Capenna, and to her."

"Scared?" Tezzeret sneered. The Planar Bridge yawned behind him. It had expanded out of his chest into a glimmering filigreed portal that danced with cerulean light, iridescent as oil. Urabrask could almost appreciate the craftsmanship. Almost.

He glared at the human, smoke rising between his parted jaws. Tezzeret looked back, unfazed. They both knew that for Urabrask's plan to work, Tezzeret had to live. Urabrask had no choice but to suffer the indignity of his scorn, a fact Tezzeret clearly relished in drawing out.

Even still, Urabrask refused to be cowed. "I am not afraid."

Tezzeret waved dismissively. "Go ahead, then. It'll be over in a count of three. If," he added smugly, "you survive."

Urabrask could not think of dying. He could not consider failure. 

He whirled around with a lash of his tail, catching Tezzeret's metal arm, and the human howled in fury. Without looking back at the swearing Planeswalker, Urabrask drew one last breath of his home plane's air and leapt through the portal. Its roar, its electric radiance, consumed his senses.

'Ii

It burned. 

Yawgmoth below, it burned like nothing ever had before. 

Urabrask and all his lineage were impervious to fire, but this was how he imagined it must feel to be immolated alive. It was like acid, mercilessly scouring his body. Urabrask parted his jaws in a cry of agony, but no sound emerged. The Eternities were sound, and light, and pain. They were everything and nothing at once.

Ķu

Urabrask could feel his joints unraveling, the tender ligaments that held his plates to his body disintegrating before the impossible light of the Eternities. In his every vein, his ichor blazed incandescent. It, like him, clawed against the aetheric currents to stay alive.

He had no other choice.

Dying was not an option.

Ķi

And all at once, just as Tezzeret had promised, it was over.

The scream of the Eternities withdrew abruptly from his mind, and Urabrask was hurled, head over tail, into a dark and dusty place.

Every impact against the ground sent agony rattling through his body. A plate tore free from his arm and clattered a distance away, leaving behind a patch of seared, melted synthetic flesh. His head hit the ground with a crack, and he scraped out a groan, his jaws dripping magma.

His blurry, returning vision caught fragments of pipes, rickety workbenches, mountains of rubble. And the air–  

It, too, burned ever so slightly as he gasped. He could feel it closing in, suffocating him from the inside, drawing yet more pain from his wounds. He retched, and oily globules of flesh splattered across the dusty ground.

Where was he? Would he, after all this pain, die anyway, his weakness irresistible to any foe that might appear?

It was an unbearable thought.

What remained of the ichor within him screamed at him to get up, even as his twisted limbs throbbed in pain beneath his body, certainly broken. He had no time to waste. His people, his revolution–

Darkness crowded out his thoughts, seizing his consciousness at once. 

His body still aching from the touch of eternity, Urabrask succumbed to a black, dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

Urabrask awoke to a rough kick to his shattered beak.

Abruptly he snapped back to consciousness, roaring his pain. He whirled to incinerate his attacker, the motion tearing at his shredded throat. His fire would not ignite in his throat, the air was closing in and extinguishing him–

He looked up.

It was Tezzeret.

The Planeswalker had covered himself in thick, dark layers of cloth and a wide-brimmed hat. It was more clothing than Urabrask had ever seen on a human. His eyes glittered disdainfully under the shadow of his hat, and the tip of his leather boot was now smeared in oil.

Of course.

How long had it been? Hours? Days? 

Faintly, Urabrask became aware that more of his plates had fallen from his body, coming loose from the necrotized flesh. He lay in a pool of his own congealed oil soaking into the dirt. He was more vulnerable than he had ever been since his compleation, small and bare as a newt. He tried to snarl, but the sound came out as a rusty wheeze. 

"Don't overexert yourself," Tezzeret said, voice dripping with mock concern. "The Eternities are so hostile to those without a spark."

"I am aware," Urabrask spat. "Why are you here? Just to mock me?" His voice rose. "Where have you taken me?"

"We agreed, did we not? Capenna."

"There's nothing in this cave but rubble! The air is poison!"

"Only to you." Tezzeret's grin made Urabrask wish he could knock out all his teeth. "It's the weapon you wanted. The people here call it Halo. They've built an entire city up around it to keep the Phyrexians out. They'd tear each other's throats out for a single drop."

Urabrask froze. "There are living Phyrexians?"

"Yes, and others too. Humans, elves, leonin. Outside the city walls." To Urabrask's stare, Tezzeret added, "you want to see them? In your state? They would slaughter you. For your weakness, or your heresy, or both."

"Do they have a Father of Machines?"

"Yawgmoth."

"Still?"

"Your people love their dead gods, don't they?"

Urabrask growled under his breath. "Where is the Halo, then? How will I find it?"

"Luckily for you, I have some right here." Tezzeret reached into one of his pockets and withdrew a vial the size of his palm, tossing it in Urabrask's direction. Inside it swirled a liquid aglow with rainbowed colors. The vial bounced and rolled across the ground, and as it neared, Urabrask recoiled. The acrid sensation that had grown inside him with every breath radiated from the container. This, doubtlessly, was the distilled angelic essence Urabrask had witnessed in the ichor.

In his pain was victory and relief–he had not been chasing a mirage after all. His weapon was here, and it was real. If Halo had this effect on him, that was all the more reason to unleash it upon the Orthodoxy.

"I will need more of this."

Occasionally, Tezzeret returned to Urabrask's hiding place to deposit more of the glowing vials, which he stacked in a crate that Urabrask did his best to avoid. In the Planeswalker's absences, the praetor ground his teeth and struggled to heal. Dragging his broken body along the ground, he retrieved metal scrap from one of the ruined workbenches and used his fiery breath to slowly, painstakingly begin welding himself back together. 

But even that action drained him of energy, leaving long, agonizing stretches of time when Urabrask had nothing to do but rest and think.

He missed the Furnace.

For a Phyrexian, to be alone was next to death.

What remained of his metal body trembled. Urabrask had never been one to socialize, but he had taken comfort in being surrounded by his people of oil and flame. The fire in their hearts had taught him volumes more about being Phyrexian than all the enforcers of his lonely newthood. 

"We thank the souleaters for inscribing our souls with subservience, to reinforce the sacred order." Even in his youth, the words of that hymn had burned his throat and traitorous tongue like acid. "We thank the souleaters for melting the sinful that we may be reminded of our own insignificance." Did they know what he was? Could they know?

To be Phyrexian, back then, was to be well-behaved. To hold his tongue, to assimilate. To find joy only in the enslaving of minds and the cries of the unwillingly compleated as they were bound to the same, dismal fate. Some of Urabrask's own oil, he was sure, had been used to convert their bodies, after it was pulled from his veins by an enforcer's hand. If Urabrask was left to his own thoughts for too long, he could still feel the unyielding claws holding him down, and the sharp, biting pain of each cut.

The slow drip of ichor from the wounds they'd opened, the rough hands all over his body, the violation, the violation, the violation –was that the glory of Phyrexia?

The days ran together like molten slurry, Urabrask's grasp on time long stolen by the Halo and the pain. He could not tell how many days it had been before he heard two sets of footsteps entering the cave, and Tezzeret showed himself again.

Beside him was a human clothed all in green–not the one he was looking for. She was tall and bronze-skinned, taut with muscle, holding a humming weapon at her side. Unnervingly, not a shard of metal was visible on her body. Had Urabrask been on all four feet, she would only come up to his shoulder in height. In his injured state she towered over him. She, like Tezzeret, made the air throb with mana as she passed. A Planeswalker as well if he had to guess.

Perhaps she would kill him in a single shot.

Somewhere in his Halo-hazed mind, Urabrask felt the impulse to do what he had always done, and flee–but he could no longer run, not here, not when his very legs refused to carry him. All he managed instead was a faint, ragged gasp, swinging his cloudy gaze over to Tezzeret. 

Had the Planeswalker truly sold him out this early?

"You betrayed me."

"Calm down, Urabrask," Tezzeret replied placatingly, shaking his head as if chiding a newt. Urabrask had the sense that had he not been debilitated so, the fire of indignation would have ignited in his chest as Tezzeret looked down at him. He had a way of raking his gaze over Urabrask's body as if he were a pile of scrap, or an animal, that made Urabrask's plates crawl. Tezzeret paid his discomfort no heed as he continued, "Quite the opposite. I've brought us a new ally."

"I've promised nothing of the like," the human protested, her green eyes flicking between the two of them as if planning an escape of her own. When Urabrask caught her gaze, her face shifted microscopically, the corner of her mouth turning down.

By now, Urabrask had observed humans long enough to understand. She pities me. He couldn't tell if he welcomed or despised the thought.

"You consider New Phyrexia your enemy, do you not?" Tezzeret asked the strange human. Urabrask shook himself, slumping back into the fog of his mind as the two conversed over his pounding head. He was abruptly shocked out of his reverie by the newcomer looking straight at him again, pinning him against the ground with those piercing green eyes.

"Why would you," she demanded, "be working against New Phyrexia?"

That's always the question, isn't it?

Urabrask hated this part.

He coughed, drawing himself up by his shaking forelimbs as much as he was able. How could he convince her of something so important when he struggled even to speak it aloud? He had never fully learned to form his mouth around the humans' language, and now the few words he knew slipped out of his grasp when he reached for them.

Start slowly. Start with what you know.  

What did Urabrask know? 

He knew terror. Screams. The arc of porcelain blades through the air before they cleaved the fiery chests of his people. Something deep within him twisted. He struggled to focus.

"Elesh Norn has dominated all of New Phyrexia," he finally began. What a word to remember, dominated.

The human stood still, waiting for him to continue.

What else did he know? "Jin-Gitaxias, Vorinclex, and many of the Black Thanes have pledged themselves and their spheres to her grand vision."

Still the human stared back levelly. Her gaze asked, but who are you?

Urabrask's entire body prickled under her scrutiny. Involuntarily, his claws curled into the all-too-soft earth. "I serve no one, and those I lead wish to be left alone," he choked out. "Norn wants the Multiverse to be one singularity, for all life to be Phyrexian, and all Phyrexians to be under Norn." The very thought made his ichor run hot, and he found himself straightening, his anger ever so temporarily beating back the Halo that encroached upon his mind. 

He, too, had once been so deluded. Never again.

"We do not consider that progress. I will not give her the Quiet Furnace."

Slowly, the human's hand left her quiver to rest at her side, even as her body stayed taut and alert. Urabrask watched her in anticipation. Finally, she asked, "Do you really think you can stop Norn?"

Did he? 

There is no other option.

"Yes." The human arched her eyebrow, but Urabrask pressed on, suppressing the shaking of his limbs. "I will lead a…" The word, the important word, fled his mind just as he reached for it. Urabrask bit down a growl of frustration. "...Necessary challenge to Norn's control."

"How will you win?"

Again Urabrask stopped himself from saying, I have to. Instead, he squared his rattling shoulders, struggling to gain back any semblance of control. "Perhaps I will tell you when I know you can be trusted."

For one tense moment, the human watched him–then she sighed. "Very well. How can I prove myself?"

Urabrask opened his beak to talk, but before the words could emerge, Tezzeret interrupted, "you'll do a favor for us, of course." Urabrask bristled– "us?" –but could only stay silent as Tezzeret barrelled on, speaking words that Urabrask did not fully understand. "I am limited in where I can go and what I can do without arousing suspicion. Moreover, Norn is still demanding I ferry Phyrexian troops and praetors; I can't risk being away for too long. Thus, I cannot stay with Urabrask throughout recovery from the tolls of the journey here."

And thank the suns for that, Urabrask thought. The idea of spending a moment more with Tezzeret nauseated him, even if his absence meant he was aiding the tyrants. The Planeswalker's condescending gaze made Urabrask sicker than Halo ever could.

Once again, the green-clothed human looked at him. Again that downturn of the mouth and that trace of concern glinting in her eyes. Urabrask decided that her pity, however humiliating, was at least better than what Tezzeret had to offer him. "What do you need?" she asked.

Somehow, the human still surprised Urabrask every time she spoke to him directly. He thought for a moment. "Time to heal and Halo. The latter is a magic substance of this plane that I need to study. Bring me Halo, be patient, and I will tell you how we will bring Norn down from the throne."

"You have a deal."

Urabrask's body sagged with relief. As the human turned to leave, however, he remembered his other objective, and cried, "one more thing."

The human turned slowly, training her gaze on him again. Urabrask shivered. Would one extra request tip the tenuous balance against him? Was he asking for too much?

He would have to gamble on it.

"While you hunt for Halo, there's someone else I need. Even if I had the strength to look for her, I can't move freely on this plane without suspicion."

"Who?"

That name. "Elspeth, one of your kind. A planeswalker. Tezzeret spotted her on the surface but wouldn't risk approaching her due to their history." A rift, Urabrask guessed, caused by their opposing positions on the Mirran-Phyrexian war. Even then, Tezzeret had belonged to Jin-Gitaxias. Always helping whoever's convenient.

The human tipped her head. "Elspeth," she murmured, as if memorizing the shape of the name on her tongue. "What do you want with her?"

How could Urabrask communicate Norn's obsessions, her ichor-soaked dreams, her delirious yearnings? None of it mattered. Humans already think us covetous monsters, driven by the urge to compleat. They do not need to know of the Mother's madness. "Norn fears her. That is all I know," he lied.

The human nodded sharply.

Even as she disappeared into the dark, up into the streets that Urabrask could never walk, he could still feel the imprint of her green gaze locked with his.

Chapter Text

This time, when Urabrask's new ally returned, she was not alone. Again two sets of footsteps echoed through his lair; again the rustling of clothing against two humanoid frames. Urabrask raised his head from where he lay in the back of the cave, keenly listening.

"Urabrask," the now-familiar human, whose name he had since learned was Vivien, called out to him. She was still turning a bend on her way in, unseen. "I found her."

Urabrask's breath caught in his throat. "Elspeth?"

"Yes. I told her of your situation. She is willing to speak with you."

Finally Vivien emerged, looking much worse for wear–her hair unraveling from its ordered braids, fresh cuts criscrossing her beaten face. She walked with a limp, and the hand that clutched her bow shook ever so slightly. Urabrask couldn't help but wonder what could have brought a Planeswalker so low.

Then the second person stepped in behind Vivien, and Urabrask got his first good look at Elspeth Tirel.

Though she, like Vivien, was bleeding and blotched with grime, her features shone clearly beneath as if they housed their own radiance. The brown hair, the piercing eyes, the square jaw and above all the pale, soft, overwhelming skin –she, the subject of Norn's obsession, was here in the flesh. She was draped in glittering white and gold, a feathered cape slung over her shoulder like the limp husk of an angel. A bundle of worn papers and what looked like an orb of Halo hung at her waist.

And now, she looked down at him with a scorn so deep and absolute that Urabrask felt it in his bones.

"Speak," she spat. Her low, husky voice broke on the word, and only then did Urabrask notice the heavy shadows beneath her eyes. 

He drew in a labored breath, and his chest rattled with pain. Elspeth, he realized, radiated an even stronger aura than that of the air around him, sapping the strength from his body. It was exactly what he had hoped for.

Now, what could he say to her, the deepest fear of Elesh Norn, his people's final hope?

Shining Elspeth had no idea how she consumed the tyrant's mind.

She also, Urabrask knew, hated them all–Norn, Urabrask, and every one of his people. His savior boiled with disgust for the metal body he had so diligently forged, her gaze hardening at the sight of him where Vivien's had softened with pity. The only thing between her shining sword and his neck was whatever Vivien had told her about him.

Something about it all made Urabrask ache. Exactly when he needed them, it had become harder than ever to find the words. 

He coughed weakly. "The Phyrexians and Mirrans need you."

Elspeth stared back hollowly. "Not a pairing I hear of every day."

"There are Phyrexians as unhappy with Norn as the Mirrans are. There always have been. There is no choice but to unite."

"Is that so? The Mirrans have an alliance with conquerors now?"

"No Phyrexian is born a–" Had Elspeth not seen the Furnace with her own eyes, the priests and menials and ingot slaves turning away from the Mirran encampments? Or had she only witnessed those Phyrexians who killed with impunity and betrayed themselves by fueling the outsiders' hatred of them? It was true, Urabrask conceded to himself, that inaction was no promise of mercy–and no human could know the stirrings of Phyrexian hearts. 

Getting through to Elspeth would be difficult and he had already begun dangerously, by disagreeing with her. A rash move. He had to start again. He shook himself.

"Many opposed even the taking of the surface," Urabrask tried. His chest twisted when he remembered he had not been one of them. "All will be one" indeed, he thought bitterly. I was played for the greatest of fools. 

With a vocabulary so small, what words could possibly convey his storm of thoughts–the incandescent spirits of the Phyrexians, the choking grasp of Norn's rule, the yearning of his people to be known, and the apologies that would never, ever suffice?

What was the humans' word for desperation? Anguish? Defiance? Conscription? Childhood?

Urabrask did not realize that his silence had stretched on until Elspeth folded her arms in exasperation. 

"Enough," the human snapped. "You're struggling. Lay it on me; I know Phyrexian." To Urabrask's visible surprise, she barked a mirthless laugh. "What, you think I spent my childhood deaf? What else did I have to listen to? My family's screams?"

Urabrask said nothing to that– what could there be to say? –but dipped his head in acknowledgement.

How to begin?

"The Phyrexian people do not have happy stories to tell either, Elspeth Tirel."

Elspeth glared. In her own language, she shot back, "Really? All the planes you've devastated are no victory to you? All the homes you've taken? Mirrodin–" Her lip curled at the name– "was not enough to make you happy?"

Vivien, understanding only Elspeth's side of the conversation, began to reach for her bow. Elspeth signaled for her to stand back–for now.

"It was not," Urabrask answered simply. "Conquest is victory to our tyrants and no one else. Whose ichor, Elspeth, greases the gears of the great machine? Whose children do you suppose are marched into those wars, grafted to those weapons?"

Some of the hardness left Elspeth's eyes. "Children," she translated softly, almost to herself. Vivien tilted her head, eyeing her companion quizzically.

"Elspeth, I will not deny the crimes of my people against yours, not least my own. But what I need you to understand is that Phyrexians are not people to those who rule us any more than the rest of you."

"At least you have the right to exist under Phyrexia," Elspeth pointed out bitterly. "The Mirrans were butchered."

This, Urabrask conceded, was true. "Yes. We have the right to exist and be used, bled as dry as the land. To Norn, the compleation of Mirrans merely changes them from useless non-people to useful ones."

Elspeth said nothing to that, but Urabrask detected the trembling of her lip. Finally she said, gruff and abrupt, "I lost a child. She was bled dry by her own people, too."

Urabrask tipped his head in surprise. "You have a child?"

"Not born of my body."

"But yours, nonetheless."

Elspeth stared. "I didn't think you could possibly understand."

"Phyrexians understand many things that humans do not expect."

Elspeth watched Urabrask for a long time. "Her name was Giada. Giada. None of her 'family,' the Cabaretti, ever called her that. She became something else, in the end–or maybe that's what she was all along. She called the angels her true family, their cathedral her home. That demon nearly killed me, and the last thing Giada left me was–" Elspeth unsheathed her sword, the Caldaia's dim firelight glinting off its narrow blade. Urabrask cringed–he could feel its Halo worsening his wounds. "This. The sword, Luxior. For all I know, the Halo inside is all that's left of her." She choked on her words.

"Do you think her dead?"

Elspeth's dark eyes glistened with tears. "I don't know."

Urabrask inclined his beak toward Luxior. "It seems to me that she has merely reforged herself."

Strangely, his statement did not appear to bring Elspeth any relief. A chaos of emotions flickered across her face. Finally, with only a trace of scorn left in her voice, she said, "you'd sure know about that, wouldn't you?"

"I have learned to try."

Elspeth took in a long breath and let it out between her teeth, a low hiss. "But you're not here for my sob story. Speak what you demand of me. Everyone always needs me for something, don't they?"

Everyone always needs me. Perhaps Elspeth was like a Phyrexian, too, unable to live on her own terms. Having realized this, Urabrask found his request slightly regrettable–but it was still necessary. "You, more than any Mirran or Phyrexian, are needed for the fight against Elesh Norn. She has crowned herself Mother of Machines and believes herself infallible, but you strike fear into her heart like none other. You are the key to her weakness, and the way we will bring her down."

Elspeth squinted. "'Like none other'? What's unusual about me? I haven't been to Mirrodin in years, not since it got so deeply tainted." A strange pang shot through Urabrask's chest at that. He suppressed it. "I've never even spoken to that monster–thank the suns."

Urabrask tried to approximate a shrug. "No one knows. Sometimes the people whisper of nightmares."

"Nightmares." Oddly enough, Elspeth seemed to react with recognition. Urabrask opted not to push it. "Very well. What are Norn's future plans? How exactly do you plan to strike?"

"Despite the best combined efforts of my people and the Mirran Resistance–" Elspeth arched an eyebrow in surprise, but Urabrask pressed on–"we do not know nearly as much as we wish."

"What, you can't scry that oil to find out what she'll do?"

Urabrask thought back to what Rioxh and his other clerics had told him. "The oil cannot divine a certain future. It is dangerous to assume so. It can only extrapolate from the past. What I do know for sure is that the Machine Orthodoxy has been associating closely with the Progress Engine as of late. Sometimes they raid the other spheres for conscripts–most notably, powerful ichormages who can channel through many bodies at once. They are clearly preparing for a large-scale expansion of Norn's domain."

"An expansion?"

"Yes. An invasion of the Multiverse."

Elspeth blanched. Eyes wide, she whispered the name of a god Urabrask knew not of, and Vivien touched her arm in concern. When Elspeth translated for the other human, Vivien too went rigid with fear, turning to Urabrask.

"How long have you known of this plan?" Vivien demanded.

Urabrask switched back into the humans' language. "Not very long."

"Meaning?"

"Months." Which Urabrask realized too late might be a long time, to a human.

Vivien's voice rose. "Months!? You still could have–"

Urabrask looked back at her, frustration burning in his chest. "I could have what? Come for help sooner? It took time for the ichor to point me here. Sent my own troops? The Furnace has battled the Orthodoxy for as long as either has existed. Informed the Mirrans? I did–as soon as they decided a Phyrexian, even with no desire to conquer them, was person enough to speak with. Which took years."

Even that was an understatement. 

Registering the humans' wary looks, Urabrask immediately regretted his small outburst. He shrank back into himself and lowered his head in a servile bow. "But I will do what you ask of me from now," he finished quietly. This seemed to satisfy Elspeth and Vivien a bit, and he shuddered in relief, even as his plates crawled with the indignity.

Elspeth looked down at him. "And your plan?"

"Yes. My plan." At last, in his own language, Urabrask uttered the word.

Elspeth stared back blankly. "Jɒ’gx’uφənx," she attempted repeating, her soft tongue stumbling against the syllables. "I have never heard anyone say that. Not once. What does it mean?"

"Machine-breaking. A word my people invented for ourselves, for neither Yawgmoth nor Norn dare to speak of such a thing. We destroy to forge anew."

"Ah." Elspeth looked over to Vivien, realization dawning on her face. "The word for that, in our language, is 'revolution.'"

Revolution. Urabrask committed the word to his memory. Never again could he afford to forget it.

"How do you know you can win?" Elspeth pressed.

With Elspeth, Urabrask knew, he could not afford falsehoods. "I do not," he admitted, "but I know how to greatly increase our chances. That is why I came here for Halo, and why I need you."

"I see." Elspeth's eyes glinted hollowly, as if someone had split open the core of her and dug everything out. "All my life, Phyrexia has been an inevitability. The Mirrans have fought for years, but–sometimes I ask myself if I ever truly believed ending Phyrexia was a possibility. Now, it is something I must believe."

Urabrask's heart sank.

Ending Phyrexia?

He had anticipated this, but no amount of preparation could have made it sting less. He could open his mouth to speak–to protest, to tell this human of the merits of his Great Work, to convince her of the joy he and his had found in compleation–but what would that make him, to them?

Just another Phyrexian monster. An evangel wearing a rebel's face.

Neither Planeswalker needed to know that Phyrexia would never– could never–die. The Great Work would go on, with or without them. Urabrask would make sure of it.

So he tamped down his fiery impulse and nodded mutely. "With you on the side of freedom, Norn will fall."

"Vivien and I will recruit other Planeswalkers for help. We will assemble a team and strike at Phyrexia's core. What about you?"

"I will recuperate here until I can return to New Phyrexia with this Halo. With access to my forge, healing will be easier, but it may still be several cycles before I am in combat condition."

"How convenient," Vivien muttered to herself. 

Urabrask pretended not to hear her. "We have a deal, then?"

"We will carry the Halo," Elspeth said. "Our team will need it to ward off phyresis. It weakens your body, anyway."

Urabrask stared. The Halo? The weapon he had leapt across eternity to find, on his people's behalf, to guard them from the onslaught of porcelain? "I must have some of it," he protested. "For–" when Elspeth's frown deepened, he swallowed his words and finished, "the Mirrans."

"Is that so?" Elspeth asked, an edge in her tone. "You will distribute your share of the Halo supply to the Mirran Resistance?"

"...Yes."

Elspeth nodded stiffly. "Very well. That is a deal."

"Deal." Urabrask let out a long breath. Against all odds, he had secured the key to Norn's demise–though none of it tasted like victory. Nevertheless, a tantalizing new light swelled in Urabrask's chest.

"Good. We must act quickly then. Vivien?"

"I'm ready," the green-clothed woman replied. "We've stayed here too long, Elspeth. We talked about this. This was an important visit to make, but now it's really time to go."

Elspeth closed her eyes, then slowly opened them again. "You're right. I will return to this plane later."

"So where did you say we should go? Dominaria, was it?"

"Yes, Dominaria. I have old friends there."

"Say no more."

Urabrask could already feel the mana coalescing around Elspeth before abruptly she remembered him, turning briefly away from her companion. "We will see you in New Phyrexia, then. To Norn's downfall."

Urabrask inclined his head toward her. "To freedom."

Then with a screaming gale of aether and two flashes of light that made Urabrask flinch away, the Planeswalkers disappeared, leaving him alone once again in the yawning silence.