"J. Robert King - Invasion Cycle 03 - Apocalypse" - читать интересную книгу автора (King Robert J)

 Apocalypse

dais stole each breath as it panted from the two men. It felt
their homage in splayed and sweating hands. Beyond their
fingertips lay more pieces of Yawgmoth's mind—cudgels,
axes, swords, maces, whips, flails, branding irons, and every
other death conceivable by the Lord of Death. These
fantastical weapons, ored and smithed and sharpened by
the One Mind, glowed avidly. Yawgmoth was in the dais
and the weapons, in the black sands that filled the wide
arena and in the black stands that circled them and the
black sky that overarced it all. The arena and its weapons
were no more or less than the dream of a god.
In all this irreality, only one thing was real.
Gerrard lifted his head and gazed toward the stands.
A solitary figure stood there. Hanna. Hair of gold, eyes
of blue, skin of silk, lips of rose—only she was solid and
true. Hanna had become all the world to Gerrard. He no
longer cared to save Dominaria or even himself. He cared
only to save her. To do so he had damned his own soul.
That was why Gerrard bowed here.
But what bent the knee of the Planeswalker? Surely he
did not bow for true love. Who, out of all eternity, had ever
deserved Urza's love? Who but Yawgmoth himself?
Suddenly, Hanna was not alone in the stands. From
dark corridors, creatures emerged.
The first were tall and gaunt, with skeletal faces and
bodies draped in black robes. They moved like puppets on
strings, weightless and jittery. Behind them loped hulking
creatures.
Enormous eyes rolled fitfully in their rumpled faces.
Clawed hands knuckle-walked down stairs. Then came
spidery monsters that ambled on clicking legs. Beasts
arrived in multitude—goat-headed warriors and cicada
men, clockwork horrors and gibbering imps, creatures with
mucous-skin and brains on arthropodal legs, monsters


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 J. Robert King

covered in jag-edged knives, bald albinos with serpent
tongues, onyx-eyed angels, blood-lipped devils, vampire
hounds, skeletal vipers. Phyrexians all.
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