"03.Time Streams" - читать интересную книгу автора (McGough Scott)

J. ROBERT KING
"Time Streams"

(Magic: the Gathering. Artifact cycle. Book III.)


Prologue

Urza says he's sane. Perhaps he is. Measures of sanity
among planeswalkers are hard to come by. He has lived for
over three thousand years. He heals by merely willing it.
With a thought, he steps from world to world to world. His
very appearance is a matter of convenience, clothes and even
features projected by his mind. How can conventional notions
of sanity apply to a planeswalker?
Perhaps they cannot, but his madness began before he was
a planeswalker. Three thousand years ago, a mortal Urza
battled his mortal brother. Their sibling rivalry turned
fratricidal. So began the Brothers' War. In his rage to kill
Mishra, Urza enlisted the armies of the world, sank the isle
of Argoth, gutted the continent of Terisiare, and wiped
whole nations from the globe. He ushered in an ice age. In
repayment for all this madness, he became a planeswalker.
Urza says he regrets the destruction. True regret would
be a good sign.
It wasn't regret that later sent Urza on his own private
invasion of Phyrexia. It was revenge for his brother.
Somehow, Urza convinced himself he hadn't killed Mishra,
that the Phyrexian Gix had done it. True, Gix seduced Mishra
with promises of awesome power and in the end transformed
him into a monstrous amalgam of flesh and artifice. But Urza
was Mishra's slayer. Not in his mind, though.
In the mind of madness, Urza blamed Gix and plotted to
get even. His motive was mad, and his invasion madder still.
Urza attacked Phyrexia-one planeswalker against armies of
demonic monstrosities. He lost, of course. He couldn't
defeat a whole world and was nearly torn to pieces trying.
Tail between his legs, Urza retreated to Serra's Realm,
a place of angels and floating clouds. There he convalesced,
but he never truly recovered. Madness still haunted him, and
so did Phyrexia. Gix followed on his tail. No sooner had
Urza left Serra's Realm, thinking himself whole and hale,
than Gix and his demons arrived. A war began in heaven. That
place, like any other where Urza had chosen to dwell, was
decimated. Centuries later, it is still shrinking in its
long collapse.
When I point out these mad indiscretions, Urza shrugs.
He claims he regained his sanity after all that. He credits
his newfound perspective to Xantcha and Ratepe-"two dear
friends who sacrificed themselves to slay the demon Gix,