Karn - Kills a Phyrexian

The creature in the wardrobe flung back the bone-inlaid doors, ripping them from their hinges, and emerged.

It was a huge thing, in general configuration human, though with its armor implants, protruding bone spikes, and barb-edged legs, it seemed almost an insect. A pair of steel struts extended its lower jaw, which was tipped with glimmering metal tusks that dripped Jhoira’s blood. Its nose had been replaced with another spike, the task of breathing being accomplished through a series of holes bored through the creature’s sternum and directly into its bronchia. Its eyes seemed to glow, bedded deep in mirrored sockets, and its horn-studded brow ridge rose into a sagittal crest that also ran with blood. Sharpened tips of bone protruded from shoulders, elbows, fingertips, knees, and toes.

***

Gathering together his shattered will, Karn caught up the Thran-metal trinket, broke the silver chain that bound it, and impelled the bauble into the Phyrexian’s skull. A gush of hot oil-blood streamed over him.

Screaming, the creature fell back. Karn managed to knock closed his skull-piece and felt his power, his will, reassembling from fragments on the floor. In the next instant, he rose above the crouching killer, the Viashino trinket half-sunk in its frontal lobe. He flung the beast to the ground, and with one stomp of his massive foot, reduced the thing’s head into an oily mass of slumped skin, brain ooze, and bone meal. The body trembled for a few moments afterward, but Karn kicked the sloppy corpse aside and knelt beside his fallen friend.

***

Time Streams, Chapter 6