Priest of Urabrask
Something I did for an MTG contest
(AN: This was supposed to have pictures in it but I don't know how to post them)
She stood perched, aloof yet invested, above the burning Furnace pits. In the distance, a viron was similarly perched, gathering up massive currents of mana that flowed from the bottomless lakes of fire to the ceiling.
They were invisible to human eyes, but to her they were vibrant in ways her mortal senses could have never picked up. Even as a human shaman, she had never felt these intrincacies of pure, raw mana, of personified passion and love and hatred and sadness and joy, mixing and turning in air, rock and fire in violent turbulence, building and building and building until they were released in a storm that rose upwards, keep the furnace charged at all times.
She could do that as well, and much more. That is why Urabrask accepted her as a priest.
She remembered fondly the day. Having been compleated in the closing stages of the war, she came to the Furnace on her own accord, guided by the oil. Never a person of many words, she quietly disappeared from her home clan, finding instead fulfillment in the Furnace's aesthetics and strength.
The factory workers attempted to give her a name - a number -, to which she responded by summoning flames so bright that they bleached their carapaces. This act greatly impressed and amused Urabrask, who allowed for her to retain her clerical status within the Furnace hierarchy, provided she served his cause foremost.
As befitting the outcome of that event, she did not have a name. Words were meaningless to her, only actions mattered, an opnion she was happy to find that her praetor also held. She was known only as a priest, but her identity was unmistakeable to any of the creatures of the Furnace, phyrexian and mirran alike, the silent devotee of the red praetor.
Reliving those memories, she began imitating the viron, gathering up mana, channeling these currents from within. Oil cursed through her veins, but her mortal emotions remained, more intense than ever, and they added to the swirling vortex, flowing forth in all directions. She no longer had a mouth, but currents of air passed in and out through projections on her back, which pumped out black fumes with every exhalation. Soon, her efforts added to the storm initiated by the viron, and the Furnace's ceiling became a violent vortex of bright flames and purple lightning.
Just in time, as Norn's forces arrived, emerging from the lacunae.
Disgust filled her. The Machine Orthodoxy's armies were utterly devoid of a soul, just small dolls stacked up in the pretext of communal strength. There was nothing there, no inkling of dissent or passion, just cold subservience. Not even the choice of compleation; the praetor of unity had that figured out for the rest of all life.
This inflamed the silent priest with violent anger, and she stared at the sky, looking into the eye of the storm. She then shouted, a horrendous eldritch sound that nonetheless sounded extremely familiar, and a torrent of magma bursted forth from the pit, erecting in a column that extended to the sky.
Lava dropped in all directions, meteorites infused with purple lightning, striking at the porcelain armies. This attack was so sudden that they had no way to prepare for it, and entire sectors fell in a matter of seconds. This filled with with a violent joy, and she burst into a maniacal laughter, powering another strike and another still. More so, the storm infused the other Furnace denizens with power, and they stroke, breaking through the white armies by themselves.
The combined efforts of the storm and the other Furnace creatures devastated the invading regiment, almost entirely wiped out in a matter of minutes. With minimal casualities, victory seemed assured for Urabrask's forces.
But Norn's forces kept coming, and coming. The storm wiped the next few waves, either directly or indirectly, but with each wave there were less casualities. The meteorites and lightning, to her horror, were being deflected by shields of light, and the physical power of the Furnace creatures was met by a blockade of sheer numbers. The piles of flesh and porcelain became hard for most Furnace phyrexians to break through, let alone with the added number of mystical protections.
In a last effort, the priest focused the storm downwards, converting it into the same bright flames she had once summoned, raining down a pillar of yellow and red fire against the Orthodoxy's forces. To her satisfaction, it seemed to work, as the whirlpool of flames cut through Norn's forces, allowing passage for several of the Furnace creatures. Once again, the advantage seemed to be on her side, and she felt ecstatic with joy, powering further her attack, focusing entirely on the battlefield and the demonstration of her power.
Only too late did she hear a wing stroke. Just as she turned a brilliant flash blinded her, and in anger she focused the storm unto the attacker, unwittingly burning through many of the Furnace's forces. It was for naught, however, as the light began dimming her senses in a silent white void, until she was eventually rendered unconscious.
***
She awoke to find herself away from the furnace, in Mirrodin's surface, clouds filtering through the light of the white sun in a dim, gray atmosphere. Painful moaning filled her ears, of countless captives - phyrexian and mirran alike - surrounding her in all directions.
She tried to move, but she found herself completely immobile, incapable of feeling any of her limbs. Only her head could shift about, and very flexibly so, allowing her to fully realise what had happened.
She was sewed into a mass of flesh and metal, alongside the millions of other creatures. Her body had been stretched and blurred with that of others in a series of black threads, completely erasing the recognisable contours, rendering her into little more than a shapeless blob, blending unto others. Only her neck remained distinct, a long appendage covered in rings of white porcelain, capable of shifting in all directions like a worm. Her face was now a single sheet of white porcelain, though with light censors underneath it, granting her a disturbingly efficient eyesight.
In horror, she tried to wriggle herself free, when she heard a fluttering of wings. She turned above, and saw a strange creature, that vaguely resembled a bird.
"High Chancellor Izathel sends his compliments" it said, in a strange "voice" akin to frictioning engines, "He displays high regard for your capabilities, which is why he in his highest mercy has granted you freedom from the deplorable state of Not-Whole. Unfortunately, your sins cannot be forgiven, so with his heaviest sorrow he informs that you will have to only enjoy a comparative fraction of the reward of wholesomeness. You are to serve as an example, and as such you will have a distinct identity as to seperate you from the blessed. He has selected the name 'Valasceer', as to remind you of your lowly state in the Orthodoxy's hierarchy."
It then flew away, gliding with unnatural ease on its membranous wings.
Alone and humiliated, Valasceer couldn't help but try to scream, something she could not do. Now she was truly silent.