Anti-Oil Weapon

Urza left her and Ratepe standing in the middle of the room while he fussed with a tattered basket. His eagerness and delight would have been contagious, if Xantcha hadn't watched too many times before. She'd exchanged a worried hopeful glance with Ratepe when the world erupted into chaos.

The chaos was a sound like Xantcha had never experienced, sound more piercing than the howling winds between-worlds. She tried to draw breath to yawn out her armor, but the sound had taken possession of her body. It shook her as a dog shook its fur after the rain and threw her to the floor. Her bones had turned to jelly before it reached into her skull and shook her mind out of her brain.

Control and reason returned as suddenly as they had departed. Except for a few bruises and a badly bitten tongue, Xantcha was no worse than dazed. She knew her name and where she was, but the rest was muddled. Ratepe stood a little distance away. Xantcha realized he hadn't been affected by the attack, but before she could consider the implications, Urza was beside her, cupping her chin in his hands, taking the pain away.

"It worked!" he exalted before she could stand. "I'm sorry, but there was no other way, and I had to be sure."

"You? You did that to me?" She propped herself up on one elbow.

"Wind, words, they're both the same. Sound is merely air in motion, like the sea. You said the priest collapsed because of the whistling shot. I have made a new artifact, Xantcha, a potent new weapon. It has no edge, no weight, no fire. It is sound."

Urza opened his hand, revealing a lump roughly the size and shape of a ceiling spider. Xantcha couldn't accept that something so simple had laid her low.

"It's too small," she complained. "Nothing so small could hurt so much."

"You gave me the idea when you said the oil was inside the sleeprs. Sound, if it is the right sound, can move things, break things. The sound this artifact makes is one that shakes glistening oil until it breaks apart."

Xantcha would have said oil could not be broken if she had not just endured a sound that had proven otherwise.

***

"Ah, the Glimmer Moon, brother. A strange thing, the Glimmer Moon. It has virtually no effect on tides, but on sorcery- white-mana sorcery-it is like a magnet, pulling the mana toward itself, sometimes strong, sometimes not so strong, but strongest when the Glimmer Moon reaches its zenith. So, very simple, I make a spindly crystal and charge one end with white mana. I put the crystal inside the spider, in a drop of water where it floats on its side. When the Glimmer Moon goes high, it tugs the charged end of the crystal, which stands up in the drop of water, and my little spider makes the noise that affected Xantcha, but not you or I. It is as good as an arrow!"

***

Planeswalker, Chapter 17