"Invasion Cycle - 03 - Apocalypse" - читать интересную книгу автора (McGough Scott)

Doubtless, this was Yawgmoth's Inner Circle. Who else
would he admit to this unholy place? These were the most
vicious, murderous, and hateful of his minions. They
slithered and floated, clomped and skittered to seats all
around the amphitheater. The ground shook. Quite soon,
the arena was filled. Hisses, shrieks, bellows, and moans
rioted in the air. The stench of rot and filth, blood and oil,
rolled downward.

For all their savagery, though, not a beast touched
Hanna. Among them she walked, inviolate and
determined, toward a balcony on one end of the arena.

It held a great black dragon, larger than the
planeswalker Szat, larger than the Primeval Crosis. The
beast's mantle bristled with horns. Its manifold wattle
expanded with vile breath. Claws as wide around as a man
clutched the rail of the balcony and seemed to sink into
the stone. Voluminous wings draped robelike down its
hackled back.

Urza lifted his head and stared. On wondering lips, he
spoke the name, "Yawgmoth."

Hanna ascended to the balcony and seated herself
within the ebon shadow of the enthroned dragon. She set
her hand on his foretalon.

In amazed dread, Gerrard said, "She's taken his hand.
She's taken Yawgmoth's hand."

"That dragon alone is not Yawgmoth," Urza replied,
gesturing toward the wicked throng. "They all are
Yawgmoth."

Gerrard understood. These gathered spectators were not
servants of the god. These were avatars. He had filled the
whole arena with fleshly simulacra of himself. He saw

3



Apocalypse

through their eyes and heard through their ears and felt
through their bodies. Though thousands upon thousands of
creatures assembled, this was, in truth, a private audience.