Work Text:
Faithful
Author’s Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Magic: The Gathering.
Card Reference: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=607102
Summary:
“At last, I am compleat.”
A whisper wishes to hide.
A whisper wishes to deceive.
A whisper wishes to isolate.
A whisper wishes to welcome.
A whisper wishes to enslave.
“Flay the flesh,” Sheoldred whispers, and the compleated monstrosities submit their paean, before unnatural mechanical harmonics force her stolen face to obtain the next vile verse. “Unite it.”
Rona was faithful.
When Sheoldred denounced Gix’s failure, the Disciple of Gix cursed the dead praetor’s memory and aligned herself with the Whispering One. She embraced the True Scriptures, pledging her scientific faculties and facilities to the Apocalypse.
Her commitment to Sheoldred was absolute. She was prepared to discard every last piece of herself to be what Sheoldred was. And what Sheoldred was, was absolutely everything.
Where faulty flesh cultures saw horror, Rona saw the pinnacle of personhood. A personhood that was so pure, you weren’t a person anymore.
Whispers like viridian-segmented arachnid legs swimming tink-tink-tink across partially buried, inert metal. Sibilating in low and high-pitched grisly sounds; similar, not to trapped steam (as that would be too much like the Heretic’s vents), but to the bowel-like movement of poison gas pushing upward out a black morass.
A thorax squirming independent of the human portion of Sheoldred’s body while rivulets of ichor are cried by the Society of Mishra.
Mind, body, humanity, and soul: It was all scrap to Rona. She needed the cold caress of Phyrexia. While many would fight valiantly to preserve humanity, Rona wished only to strip hers away.
She’d go to the ends of Dominaria and beyond, and achieve her ultimate form and purpose.
“I am weak. Make…me…ideal…”
Compleat.
One whisper of authority rising over the cacophony of grinding machines.
“Starve. Die. Join.”
Mirrodin was merely the first to bow to Phyrexia. Phyrexia’s mandibles were on the throats of all creatures and all races, and in due course, they’d clamp down.
Just as Mirrodin was a uniquely conducive substrate, on Dominaria, Phyrexia always was. The pieces of limitless power were here, in the plane’s history. In the land. Historic objects that sat purposeless yet colossal, awaiting a voice to reactivate them. Armature that’d massacre afresh after the correct positive stimulus was reintroduced.
Those who’d turn down Phyrexia’s rule raced to acquire dusty dishware Urza plunged the world into ice and darkness with. The sylex which released a ruinous blast leaving behind only snow and sorrow, and which could again be relied upon, now to level New Phyrexia. That is, if Teferi and his allies only knew how to use it.
The Phyrexians, on the other hand (or claw, or multiple hands, or multiple claws, or prostheses, etc.), they salvaged whatever they came across – from the impossible corpse of Ertai, to dragon engines, to plague engineers, to dreadnoughts.
To the old, this was a gruesome encore. Echoes in the dark. But they should not have been surprised by the secret spread of the sickness.
It wasn’t just more of that strange oil.
It wasn’t just nothing.
Dominaria, like Mirrodin, was scarred. Its tissue had regrown over the wounds of the invasion, but thanks to Sheoldred, those wounds were virulent anew. The blistering, engorged, muscle-ripping contamination of an uneradicated corruption.
This scorpion, Dominaria unknowingly invited to ride on its back.
“Take everything from them. Lives. Flesh. The very ground they walk on. Only then will your victory be compleat.”
Sleeper agents were everywhere. Plugged into the highest positions responsible for keeping Dominaria out of Phyrexia’s grasp. In the cities. The military. In negotiations, and in skulls the New Coalition wouldn’t realize were spying.
Even if they’re hunting for sleeper agents, who looks twice at a bird?
Wide-ranging espionage and sabotage, happening in real time and in parallel.
Skin shifting. Splitting. Metal tentacles bursting through open mouths and beaks.
Blessed perfection to behold. The beauty of Phyrexia – glistening – implanted into the replaced.
Weak into ideal. Contagion into host.
Aron Capashen, of Clan Capashen. He may look like a leader and a father, but the man his daughter and nation knew and loved was gone.
Ajani Goldmane, declaring it was time for Dominaria to finally become whole, the stewing of technology camouflaged in his leonine grin.
Phyrexia isn’t known to have humour, but it had irony, no question.
“Let those that claim zealousness be blinded so they be marshalled toward the staging ground.”
Rona stood beside the conversion chambers, telling lesser beings screaming to be put out of their misery that they should consider themselves “lucky” because compleation wasn’t a gift granted to everyone.
She hated them for it. Rejecting the one thing she desired above all else.
It was frustrating, to be so weak and ineffectual. Stuck in a vortex of her own failings as a human.
It became all the more vexatious when the invasion got underway.
The improved glistening oil Jin-Gitaxias created was imbued with such viral potency it infected minds almost immediately, and couldn’t be prevented from working its magic, even by Halo or the curative powers of the Mirran healer Melira.
Yes, some planes boasted extraordinary defences Phyrexia should have adapted to. For reasons, great monsters, dinosaurs, and a giant frog spirit could chug the oil with impunity, but New Phyrexia’s approach was simple.
Compleation wasn’t a privileged right anymore. Norn had revised Yawgmoth’s old-fashioned creed, and now everything in the Multiverse was fair game to compleat.
Everything except Rona.
That was the kicker: She suspected Norn delayed compleating her, out of spite toward Sheoldred. Rona believed Norn had her burnt corpse rebuilt as a human and not a Phyrexian, just to “reward” her loyalty to her top rival for the position of Mother of Machines.
Herald of the Invasion, and yet Rona wasn’t compleat!
Why did she beg, while others were drowned in ichor?
Once she gets her wish, Tolaria West will be trampled by the obliterating force of her fully charged frustration.
Rona exists to negate.
She exists to cease.
The world will go out, not with a bang, but with a whisper.
She’ll straighten on the tips of limbs and a snaking tail as Sheoldred did, educating the scholars on her splendid habit of excavating their internal organs.
Isn’t she pretty?
“Behold blessed perfection.”