Mightstone 1

Then she noticed that the power stone was not gone. It had been split in two, and each of the brothers held half in his left hand.

More of the lights came on in the cavern, and she heard the tramp of metal feet against stone.

This is what Urza saw.

He was reaching out to stop Mishra but was too late.

There was a brilliant flash that consumed them both. His last clear vision was of his brother's face, his expression surprised, his beard surrounding an open mouth. Shouting a curse or a warning? Urza could not hear him, and suddenly he was surrounded by the whiteness of the blast.

Then he was somewhere else.

He was floating; flying over a landscape that he had never seen before. The earth beneath him was made of cables of corroded metal, crossed and recrossed against themselves until they formed a thick woven mat. Huge gears broke through the metal landscape, turning slowly and straining against the surrounding cables. Copper-colored snakes moved among the mat, but Urza saw that they were instead more cables, blindly seeking their path through the morass of woven wires. There were other great circular plates, gears turned sideways, as thick as Urza was tall and coated with a thick patina of corrosion.

Urza noticed that the entire landscape was undulating slightly, like a living thing, from the motion of cogs and wheels beneath. Hills formed around him, moving slowly, pushing the corroded gears relentlessly to his right. In that direction—west he thought, though in this shifting world it was difficult to be sure—there was a reddish glow.

***

For the first time Urza became aware that he was dreaming. He should be in a cavern with his brother and Mistress Tocasia, he realized. He held out his hands and counted his fingers. He had always heard that one should do this to determine if one was dreaming. He got the right number of fingers (at least what he thought was the right number), but his flesh was translucent. He judged the experiment inconclusive.

***

The Brother's War, Chapter 4