Jeska vomited on the floor when she entered the First's presence. He stood there, arms open wide. There was no escape. She stepped into the killing embrace.
An algid breeze tapped Phage's shoulder, and she knew the First had emerged. With hand servants on either side and skull servants behind, the First descended the gangplank. Out beneath the sickle moon, the man's multiple robes and towering miter made him seem huge.
He was huge. He was the black sun around which they all revolved, whether they knew it or not. Shortly, they would know.
As the First made his way past rot holes in the plank, Phage went to her knees. None of her folk had seen her that way before.
Zagorka returned. She bounced on Chester's back and poured out a harangue. "Watch Phage! Turn your eyes upon the shore. Watch Phage or die!"
In her wake came a motley collection of dwarves and goblins, gigantipithicus and shorn rhino, all driven forward by the lashing scourge of the demon Gorgoth. They winced away from their taskmaster and hurried toward their kneeling mistress.
None of this helped Phage. It only proved the First's suspicions.
Zagorka rode to one side, clearing the way for the work crew to spread out before Phage. They did, and went to their knees, and to their faces. Gorgoth lashed them until they were facedown and still. Then he, too, knelt To Phage. Every last one bowed to her.
"Tell them they are not to kneel to me," Phage growled, "but to the First."
Zagorka cupped an old hand to her lips and shouted. "Kneel to the First!"
Unsure what to do, the dwarves and goblins squinted where they lay.
"AH of them must bow to the First. The whole camp."
"Bow! All of you! Bow to the First!"
With a rumble like thunder, hundreds of creatures knelt.
"We serve him unto death," Phage said.
"Serve him to the death!" shouted Zagorka.
They bowed their heads, but Phage could feel their hot glares on her back, as surely as the cold glare of the First on her face. She rose. It was time to prove her loyalties and those of her workers. She strode before the work crew. All lay prostrate. None had shifted toward the First.
Phage shouted, "Not to me! To the First!"
Looks of terror filled their features. Dwarfs and goblins shuffled on their faces, reorienting. They touched their foreheads to the ground and clenched their eyes.
"You are my best work team. Quickest. Most efficient. Most skilled. You are my best. You must be the First's best." She strode on, stopping to stand on the back of the first dwarf.
Cotton burned away. Skin peeled back, muscle sloughed to rot, and bone went to chalk. Vital power rose ghostlike from the corpse and twined around Phage. She drew her hands to one side. Webs of life force rolled from her fingertips to stretch across the darkness and wrap the First. He seemed to breathe in the power. Soon his figure glowed, and Phage stood in the burned-out midst of the body.
With a shriek, the goblin lying beside the dwarf tried to scuttle up and away.
Phage stepped again, pinning the creature to the ground.
While the goblin died, the other workers tried to rise, but Gorgoth dutifully lashed them. Black coils of magic struck and stung, enervating them.
Phage's words lashed them as well. "I am faithful to the First unto death. Now so are you."
Despite the barbed thongs that opened wounds just ahead of her, she advanced. The scourge brought agony. Phage brought death. One by one, she slew the workers of her best team.
Every eye on the island watched these summary executions, and every mind understood. Pay homage to the First or die. Phage was not their ultimate leader. She was only a knife in the hand of the First.
Gorgoth watch more closely than any other. Though the demon's scourge roared mercilessly, his eyes held sick pity. He had turned these workers around, and now they all were dying. Still, Gorgoth knew about survival. This was what he must do to survive.
"Man… woman… child… beast…" called Phage. She grappled the rhino's head and rotted it away to a skull. The vacated body gave a groan and crumpled. "AH must serve the First unto death." Almost tenderly, she wrapped her arms around the gigantipithicus. It tried to fight back but dissolved to gray slime wherever she touched. In her embrace, it ceased to be. The gang's most powerful workers lay in heaps. Phage shifted to stand before the taskmaster.
Gorgoth went to its knees. "I-I have whipped them. I-I have been faithful to you to the death."
"Faithful to me" Phage said, shaking her head sadly. She grasped his goat head and kissed it-the kiss of death. Her hand slid to his neck and squeezed. The skull came off in her grip. While wings shivered, the body fell over. Phage carried the fragile bones to the First. She laid them at his feet, and laid herself there as well.
The First stared down at her, then at the skull, then at the whole island, covered with prostrate figures. Even the crone knelt deeply, her mule beside her. "You have done well, my servants." He spoke quietly, but magic carried his words to all those who knelt. "The Cabal is here."
From thousands of throats, the answer came. "The Cabal is everywhere."
"I am especially pleased with my daughter Phage. She wisely builds my coliseum. She wisely speaks through the old crone there. She will speak also through another." The First's smile glimmered in the darkness. "Phage, I have brought the one who gave birth to you, who once ruled you. Now you will rule her. As this crone is your voice to the workers, this one will be your voice to the world." He gestured behind him.
The curtains on the barge parted. From them emerged Braids, a smile stitching across her face. "Hello, big sister!"
"I am honored," Phage said, still in her deep bow.
"Stand, Phage, Zagorka, and Braids. Approach."
While Phage rose, Braids skipped down the gangplank and came up alongside her. Zagorka left her mule, hobbling up with the others.
The First's smile deepened, and he lifted his hands to the starry heavens. "You three will make this coliseum into the center of Otaria, the center of Dominaria."
In that killing embrace, Jeska lived. In trembling agony, she became Phage.
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE GODS LOOKED UP
In the midst of endless sands lay a tiny spot of green. Were any gods looking down, they might not have noticed that solitary acre of brush amid millions of millions of acres of nothing. No gods looked down, though.
It was left to Ixidor to look up.
He knelt on a little sandbar in the midst of the stream. Sand caked his arms and legs. Mud hung in dry scales from his face. Blood painted his three-fingered hand. He was creating. Feverishly. Already, his oasis teemed with life.
While fingers scooped and shaped clay, fish schooled to either side of the sandbar. With unblinking eyes, they watched Ixidor work. He paused and stared back, and the fish flitted away to wavering depths. Something else flitted, and Ixidor's focus shifted to the gleaming surface. It reflected his birds, flocking through an eggshell sky. Bright plumes and brighter calls filled the oasis.
Ixidor had set them there-birds in the heavens and fish in the stream-before he had thought of feeding them. At first he had made fish-eating birds-cranes, kingfishers, gulls-and bird-eating fish-creatures that had never been before. Some fish flew. Some birds swam. It was impractical, though, an endless solipsism. At last, Ixidor had relented, created harmless but prolific bugs-water striders, bottle flies, mayflies, gnats. Even now, they swarmed, plaguing their creator.
Growling, he turned his mind back toward the thing in his hands. Water had eaten at it. He rose, working the resistant material. This glob of nothing was soon to be a monkey. He had already created mice, moles, bats, hares, foxes, goats, and pigs. He only half understood what any of them ate and suspected some would eat each other. Such practical matters would work themselves out. After all, he was only their creator-an artist, not a husbandman. As long as he kept creating, there would always be abundance, and in their abundance, the creatures would work it all out. How more responsible could a creator be?