milliways_bar | (no subject)

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(no subject)

The clock is really whizzing forward today. After the large sacrifice last night, it's got a lot of ground to make up if it's going to reach the 10 by the time the quake is happening.

The note asking for sacrifices is still up, as is the note asking for signups for the ground assault.

And beside the clock, Urza himself still sits. Planeswalkers do not actually require sleep, or food, or any of those mortal trappings, so he hasn't moved, and has no plans to until the final possible moment.

[ooc: multi"pup" post! You can interact with the clock, talk to Urza, or just sign up on the note. All in one convienient, easy-to-use entrance post.]

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"The sacrifices, you mean?" he asks, taking a wild guess. "They will return after the place is decimated, retrieve the Clock, and siphon off the power and memories offered to it. Then, using magic, they will be converted into mana and used to power the factories and breeding pits."

"So it doesn't matter at all what it was that people lost?" Khayman asked, aggrieved. Claudia's sacrifice had been very personal, as far as he was concerned.

He shakes his head, sadly.

"Not to the Phyrexians. The dearness of the sacrifice only adds to the strength of the emotion extracted, which just means more power to be used. Emotion is a weakness to the Phyrexians, and they delight in using it as a weapon against those they consider inferior -- which is everyone."

"I am sure they would taste very bad," Khayman said, intending it as an expression of disapproval.

...

"I'm fairly sure I don't know anyone who has tried to eat one," he says carefully. "Many of them are designed as plague carriers, so that even if the detachment is defeated, they leave behind the disease and let it finish the work for them."

"I am a vampire," Khayman laughed. "Their disease doesn't concern me. I would like to drink the blood of one."

With his messy feeding habits, that would mean tearing the Pyrexian apart at the same time, but who'd mind? Nobody would expect a neat corpse for a burial.

Urza laughs, loudly.

"Oh, my friend. I do not think that even Baron Sengir himself, in his darkest moments, would ever consider the vile blood of a Phyrexian over the prospect of slow starvation!"

"Do they taste worse than rats?" Khayman asked. "I will really have to try now - in the worst case, I can still spit the blood out again."

"It is hardly blood at all! The Phyrexians are constructs of flesh and metal, sometimes more machine than animal. Their blood is filled with oil and lubricants and other such things to prevent damage to those machine parts. Having cut open my share on the battlefield, I can safely say you can never predict the color of what will flow out of any of them."

"That," Khayman admitted, "does not sound appetising at all."

He shakes his head.

"Indeed not. Better to leave such vileness to spill upon the ground."

"What are the plants like that grown in such a ground, afterwards?" Khayman asked, curious. "Humans have a word on the world where I live - pollution."

"Without magic to cleanse and purify the land, where a Phyrexian falls, nothing will ever grow again."

"That is a very serious sort of pollution, then," Khayman nodded. "Far from being digestible, their blood is noxious. These people are good for exactly nothing."

"In that, you speak the truth," Urza replies. "They are a blight across the multiverse, caring for nothing but their own existence."

"It's high time somebody put paid to them," Khayman said. "What will happen when that clock is stopped?"

Urza looks over to the device for a long moment, then back to Khayman.

"I'm rather interested in that, myself."

"I suppose it will no longer count down the time to total destruction," Khayman guessed. "And this place is saved. But shall we do with the things it has stored? Are those unlocked as well, or are they all shapeless, what did you call it? Mana, by now?"

"Truly, I know not. Perhaps they will be released back to their owners. Or perhaps they will discharge in a single explosive blast as a final failsafe."

"Explosive blast doesn't sound good," Khayman said. "How about making a wall of sand bags before unlocking that thing?"

Urza nods.

"I will heavily shield the area before I attempt to disarm it."

"Perhaps with a few of those useless people inside so the blast has something to blast?" Khayman wondered.

He chuckles.

"I would not wish the Phyrexians onto this place, not even for the brief moment of their destruction."

"They must be especially inimical enemies," Khayman said.

Without emotion: "They are the reason for my brother's death."