Destination: Thataway!

by Hawattie

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The first thing I noticed, to the exclusion of all else, when I walked through the door to the Summoning room was the floor. It was made up of a random pattern of grey, red, and white square tiles. Grey was the most common color, followed by white, with red taking up the rear. No two red tiles had fewer than three grey or white tiles between them.

I immediately resolved to only step on the red tiles.

The nearest red tile was a short hop into the room, not too difficult to make, but I nearly overbalanced and fell off onto the grey and white tiles on the other side. Luckily, with much wheeling of forelegs in a windmill fashion, I was able to keep my balance. With all four hooves planted solidly on the tile I was able to actually survey the room I found myself in.

Drab grey walls stretching a few hundred yards to either side. Drab grey ceiling almost too high up to see. Drab grey door leading forward bound shut by magical chains.

I decided the rest of the room, while massive, was boring and went back to looking at the tiles. In my head I planned out several jumps I could make that would take me to the center of the room.

The first jump I had to make was super long, almost three times again as long as I was, so I crouched down like a cat about to pounce to prepare myself. Just for fun I imagined that I was a cat about to pounce. I swished my tail back and forth a couple times. "Meow."

Several seconds passed with me eyeing the tile, waiting for the perfect opportunity to pounce. The tile just sat there, because it was a tile. Eventually I saw my opening and I took it. I exploded into motion, leaping for all I was worth towards my prey. With a clatter, my hooves touched down all at once, directly on target.

"Aww, yeah!" I cheered my success and did a little victory dance.

"What in the blazes are you doing?" Ner'Ghalad asked me.

I may or may not have let out an undignified yelp at the sudden question. I stopped my victory dance abruptly and whipped about in a full circle looking for the source of the noise. Then, when I remembered that Ner' liked to talk remotely, I directed my gaze towards the ceiling.

"I'm having fun and you can't stop me!" I shouted with an angry hoof-shake towards the sky. If there hadn't been a disembodied voice in the room with my I imagine I would look like quite the crazy person.

I then resumed my victory dance, which culminated with my spiking an imaginary football.

Ner'Ghalad waited patiently for me to finish with a mildly amused expression on his face. Or so I assume. For all I know he was actually off talking to my friends as they went through their own challenges. Hay, maybe he was talking to all three of them at the same time! I'm pretty sure it was within his power to do so.

"Are you ready for your challenge yet?" Ner' asked me a couple seconds after my victory dance was over.

I grinned my madpony grin and forced as much bravado into my words as I could. "I was born ready!"

"Good! I like enthusiasm." A glowing blue circle with arcane runes swirling about it appeared in the center of the room. "Allow me to introduce your opponent." Ner's voice took on a certain announcer-like quality. "Weighing in at just over two tons and hailing from the plane of Mirrodin. Only slightly modified to suit my purposes better, I give you; Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon!"

A blinding flash of light erupted from Ner's magical summoning circle temporarily blinding me because I was looking directly at it. When my vision cleared I saw that the summoning circle had been replaced with a fully grown dragon.

And not just any dragon either! This guy looked like he'd been dead for quite some time, his flesh was rotted, scales were falling off in places, and through his ribcage I could see some of his squishy bits moving around. But despite his decrepit state, Skithiryx still looked like he was more than capable of tearing me apart if I let him.

One feature of particular note was some sort of glistening black oil dripping from the dragon's eyes like putrid tears. Where the oil touched the ground it seemed to eat away at the tiles, corroding the stone and slowly expanding. Interestingly enough, while the oil swiftly ate away at the grey and the white tiles, turning them into glistening puddles of oil, the red tiles seemed unaffected. It seemed like my game to only step on the red tiles would soon become a necessity if I didn't want to find out what that oil would do to me if I touched it.

Skithiryx took a moment to look around. His gaze somehow never turned my way and he ended up focusing his gaze on the ceiling, directly where I imagined Ner's voice was actually coming from. Skithiryx spoke in a raspy voice, presumably addressing Ner', "I cannot hear my lady's guiding whispers, planeswalker. You have replaced them. What would you have me do?"

"There is a pony in the room with you that I want dead. Destroy him and I will return you to your master," Ner' commanded.

"Where is this pony?" Skithiryx asked, looking about in every direction except the one I happened to be standing in.

Then, as if Ner'Ghalad pointed and Skithiryx somehow knew which direction he pointed in, Skithiryx slowly turned his head to face me. "Ah," the dragon hissed, "he's thataway."

Author's Note:

Info-dump time:
Tl;Dr - Skithiryx is from the game Magic the Gathering. The black oil is dangerous, you seriously do not want that stuff to touch you.

Skithiryx, the Unspellable (Also sometimes affectionately referred to as "Skittles") is, if you didn't follow the link I put in the story itself, a Magic the Gathering card from the Scars of Mirrodin set. For those of you who don't play magic, Skithiryx is a mid-costing dragon that hits hard, fast, deals lasting damage to creatures, (as opposed to damage that goes away at the end of the turn like most damage does,) and is mildly difficult to kill.
Not much lore can be found on Skithiryx, but what little story he has can be found using a ctrl f search here.
When Skithiryx refers to Ner' as a "planeswalker" that is in reference to his ability to travel between different universes or "planes."
The whispers Skithiryx mentions come from the corrupting influence of the oil he spreads about. The glistening oil, also called Phyrexian oil after the evil Phyrexians that created it and use it, is both a contagion and a means of colonization. It infects whatever it touches and slowly mutates it into a form closer to the Phyrexian idea of "perfection," which generally involves an amalgamation of flesh and metal and which then further spreads the corruption.
Since Ner'Ghalad doesn't want competition for ruling the world, when he summoned Skithiryx he magically tweaked the composition of the oil; the minor changes Ner' mentioned just before the summoning. Instead of spreading the corrupting will of Phyrexia, the oil instead will instead spread the corrupting will of Ner'Ghalad himself.
Basically, if the protagonist touches the oil it will slowly start to mutate him however Ner' wants it to while also eating away at his free will.

Ahem. Expect the (hopefully) epic fight between the narrator and Skithiryx the Blight Dragon soon.

Also, this is chapter 52 of this story. The 29th is this story's 2 year anniversary, which means that, on average, I posted a little faster than one chapter every two weeks.

Stay awesome. Try not to die.

Comments

[Hawattie]

I meant to post this at 4:20, but I was too busy ripping a bong and I forgot to until now.

[Legion222]

Aww, not Skittles! Infect is such a stupid mechanic. I played a guy who has an Infect deck where he literally poisons you by turn three then sits there and counterspells everything while he waits for you to die.

Oh man, imagine if Ner weren't soley a necromancer and he instead summoned Progenitus. I'm actually not sure U. P. Could win that...

Anyway, props for giving the hero a "the floor is lava" game.

Write on,
Legion

[Hawattie]

5887517
I'm super glad that you understand the magic references. There's actually combos out there with Skittles that kill you on turn two with poison counters. It's OP as balls.
Then again, Progenitus's "protection from everything" clause is OP in its own right, since it makes him untargetable and unblockable.

I only decided halfway through the chapter, after I'd already summoned Skittles and realized I had a mechanism to do so, to make the floor is lava game an actual thing, instead of just being a thing that U.P. made up. I am super glad that I did so.