The Darksteel Eye Read Online Free Page A

the goblin on its back. Seeing him dig into that artifact creature brought a smile to Glissa’s face. When it counted, Slobad was the bravest goblin on Mirrodin.
    A whistling sound brought Glissa from her reverie. Diving forward, she managed to duck and tumble away from a second leveler’s blades as they came down where her head used to be. Coming to her feet, Glissa pulled her sword. It seemed silly to try to dismantle a device with a sword. She wished she could turn that pointy blade into a pounding hammer.
    But this was no ordinary sword. She didn’t know where it had come from, only that she had found it inside the Tree of Tales in Chunth’s chamber. It was more powerful than anyweapon she’d ever wielded, and for that, at this moment, she was grateful.
    The blade rang as she bashed back the new leveler’s attacks. Sparing a glance to her left, she saw the leveler with Slobad on its back was almost on her. Looking back and leaning in, she lunged for the artifact’s glowing yellow eye. Her blade struck the seam, lodging between the housing and the lens. Twisting her sword, Glissa popped the creature’s eye from its socket, and the device swung side to side, grasping with its arm blades like a blind man trying to catch a thief.
    Glissa turned to the leveler with Slobad on its back. The construct brought its arms together, scissoring down on the elf with its razor-sharp grasp. The artifact was close, closer than Glissa had thought. She rolled backward, falling onto her behind and ducking away from the blades. The creature missed her but just barely, and it opened its arms, ready for a second deadly embrace.
    Glissa scooted back with little room to move. The leveler behind her still flailed blindly. The one before her leaned down, ready to take her head from her body. The killing device brought its blades together, right down on her. Pushed back against a flailing, blinded leveler, she had no room to move. Glissa cringed, bracing for the impact—but it never came.
    The artifact creature veered to its right, turning away from Glissa and lunging at the flailing leveler behind her.
    “Kill it,” shouted Slobad from the creature’s back. “Cut it up.” The device followed his orders.
    Glissa rolled away and got to her feet. The two levelers cut into each other. Sparks flew as Slobad’s fighter slashed through the blinded monster’s torso. The goblin leaped onto the back of another device, his crowbar gripped in his three-fingered hand.
    Bosh smashed devices with both fists. Bruenna froze theoncoming monsters in their tracks or blasted them away with gusts of wind. Slobad turned them against each other or dismantled them as fast as his little fingers could pry them apart. Glissa battled them back with her sword and her magic.
    Still, the mass of sharpened creatures came on, endless and unrelenting. The flood of levelers swarmed over Bosh. Their spiked wheels pushed them up his body. Their scythe blades struck him, and his body rang out like a tolling bell. In a matter of seconds, the giant metal man disappeared under a pile of killing devices.
    A high-pitched squeal filled Glissa’s ears. Slobad had jumped from one device, and he now rode on the back of another. His arm was buried to his elbow inside the creature’s metal frame, and his face was held tight in a pinched, pained expression. With the fist of his other hand he beat on the leveler’s hide, pushing, pulling, and squirming to get his hand free. Something had gone wrong. Slobad was caught.
    The leveler he rode reached its arms back and swiped at the goblin. Slobad ducked, but the tip of the creature’s scythe blade caught the side of the goblin’s head. A chunk of Slobad’s scalp sliced away, and blood spurted down his neck.
    Glissa’s heart sank. Her stomach felt as if she’d swallowed a bottomless pit, and the hairs along her back and neck stood at attention. She watched as the beast took another swipe at Slobad. The goblin disappeared from