The Fifth Dawn

The Fifth Dawn
Publishing Information
Author(s)	Cory Herndon
First printing	May 2004
ISBN-13	978-0786932054
Mirrodin Cycle
Publication chronology

For other uses, see Fifth Dawn (disambiguation).

The Fifth Dawn is the final novel of the Mirrodin Cycle, concluding the story from The Moons of Mirrodin and The Darksteel Eye. It was written by Cory Herndon and was published in May 2004.

Blurb

An Enemy Beyond Evil.

Whose eye sees into every corner of Mirrodin.

Whose ambition strides across the planes.

Whose foe is a lonely elf and her loyal goblin companion.

The fury of Memnarch is turned against Glissa and Slobad as they make their way across Mirrodin in search of new allies. From the city of the leonin to the dark fortress of Panopticon, their travels range until they come face to face with the creator of Mirrodin himself. And from his lips they will hear the prophecy that can remake their world.

Overview

Main article: Mirrodin Cycle

Title	Author	Publishing date	Set	Setting (plane)	Featuring
The Fifth Dawn	Cory Herndon	May 2004	Fifth Dawn	Mirrodin	Yert, Glissa, Slobad, Banryk, Yulyn, Lyese, Bruenna, Orland, Lendano, Ghonthas, Malil, Raksha Golden Cub, Shonahn, Ushanti (mentioned), Jethrar, Dakan (mentioned), Yshkar, Memnarch, Alderok, Vektro, Geth, Ellasha, Darlosh, Tahk, Maneless One, Dwugget, Zelosh, Karn

Storyline

After the Fifth Dawn

Glissa and Slobad make their way through the changed landscape, where green magic has gone haywire. They’re captured by Viridian elves and taken back to Viridia, where it’s revealed that Glissa’s sister, Lyese, is still alive. And Lyese blames Glissa for the death of their parents and everything that happened since. Glissa and Slobad are held for days before being brought before a tribunal to stand trial. Weirdly, a Sylvok is among those judging her, and the village seems emptier than before. The council quickly decides that Glissa is not guilty, but Lyese takes her acquittal poorly and attacks. She, Glissa, and Slobad fall off the platform.

The new vedalken Republic

Elsewhere (and days earlier), the Neurok have allied themselves with the new Vedalken Republic, but Bruenna doesn’t quite trust them. They’re on the road to freedom, but the vedalken’s fanatical loyalty to Memnarch gives her pause. Her reveries are interrupted by hundreds of Levelers emerging from the Quicksilver Sea.

Reunion with Bruenna

As the elves and the goblin recover from their fall, they realize aerophin have arrived… again. Bruenna charges into the Tangle on a stolen vedalken glider, desperately escaping aerophins chasing her. The Levelers were only the first wave, and her village was completely wiped out. Desperate, she’s turned to Glissa for aid. Glissa has gained a measure of control over her powers and uses her magic to wipe out the aerophin, but it leaves her too exhausted to dodge the burning hail of destroyed machines. Lyese, having woken up and not willing to lose more family, reluctantly saves her sister’s life. In the wake of the aerophin, thousands of Levelers descend on Viridia.

Confrontation with Malil

Bruenna uses her flight-granting magic again, and Glissa realizes the Levelers are following her. She leads them off while the rest go to Taj-Nar for Raksha’s aid, but when Slobad comes back for her, they split and follow him as well. Slobad returns because he realized Glissa intends to go after Memnarch again by herself, and refuses to let her go alone. A helpful slagwurm slows the Levelers down as the friends head back to the green lacuna. Inside the lacuna, Glissa feels her powers replenish and grow, but in the narrow space, Glissa’s shattering magic demolishes her pursuit. At the entrance to the core, Malil blocks their path, and after a quick exchange, Glissa realizes Slobad is gone. Malil taunts her, revealing Memnarch has a new plan that involves the goblin tinkerer - before running Glissa through.

Meeting Raksha

Huge vedalken, standing 15 feet tall with telepathic powers, take Slobad to the haphazardly rebuilt Panopticon. Another of these mutated Vedalken - Orland among them - staunches Glissa’s wounds. She kicks it away and makes a break for Memnarch’s fortress. It doesn’t go well for her. Bruenna blinks in and saves an unconscious Glissa from the vedalken and teleports away. She reappears in Raksha’s camp, and after nearly being killed by protective leonin guards, she gets Glissa to a healer. Bruenna, along with Lyese, convinces Raksha that they’re friends. Raksha himself was wounded by a Nim, and has reluctantly put his cousin Yshkar in charge of the battlefield. The Nim have launched a new assault, more coordinated and aggressive than Geth ever was, leading them to believe someone new is in charge.

New and old enemies

After her recovery, Glissa and Lyese have time to reconcile. They’re worried about Slobad, whom the Bruenna couldn’t recover, and Raksha warns them not to count the goblin out. They also argue over whether the newly emerged ball of green mana is a sun or a moon. The reinvigorated group gets their pick of Raksha’s armory, while Bruenna goes to find Geth, the elves set out on Zauk (the Leonin's ostrich-like mounts) for the Oxidda Chain. Their goal is to recruit Dwugget and the Krark-Clan as allies for the Leonin and for the coming fight with Memnarch. Glissa and Lyese are ambushed by a Vulshok who names himself Vektro. Vektro insists he’s there on behalf of Dwugget, who is now the leader of all goblins, but neither elf can bring themselves to trust him.

Deep in the core, Slobad is mutilated by Malil. Memnarch sends Malil to recover Glissa again, and reveals that he wants Slobad’s canny tinkerer mind to help him construct a new means of taking Glissa’s spark. Then Memnarch takes over Slobad’s torture.

Geth's head

Glissa and Lyese follow Vektro for hours as his pseudo-prisoners, when they spot Leonin darting among the rocks. The Leonin ambush the goblin party, and even Vektro’s battle magic isn’t enough against the elite warriors. All the goblins and Vektro himself are knocked unconscious. They remove Vektro’s Gauntlets, which severely weaken the mage. The lead leonin reveals himself to be Raksha, who flew with a skyhunter patrol posthaste to meet up with the elves. He’s brought along Geth’s severed head, which was left for Raksha shortly after the elves departed. Geth isn’t dead, though, and so his animate head delivers a message from Yert, demanding Glissa in exchange for Bruenna’s life and calling off the Nim horde. Glissa agrees to the exchange, and so Raksha and Lyese go to treat with Dwugget, with Glissa (and Geth’s head) set out with the skyhunters for the Vault of Whispers.

The mission quickly goes bad, and most of the skyhunters are slaughtered by Nim. Glissa and the sole survivor, Ellasha, vow revenge upon entering the vault. They’re captured by Yert, who has been turned into a vampire. When Glissa left Yert behind, Geth fed him to the wounded vampire. The vampire was too weak to finish the job, however, and so Yert turned into one himself. Together with more vampires he’s created, they’ve overtaken control of the Vault. When he tries to feed on Glissa, though, he’s wracked by a splitting headache. It’s clear he’s working for Memnarch, and Memnarch doesn’t want Glissa killed. Glissa and Ellasha escape in the chaos to find Bruenna. Elassha sacrifices herself to help Glissa escape, with the promise that she and Bruenna will help the Kha. With the help of Geth’s head, Glissa finds Bruenna surrounded by weird, glowing cables. It’s a trap, but she decides she has no time and springs it, cutting the cables away from Bruenna. She’s surrounded by a bright blue flash, and Bruenna disappears.

Five years Later

Glissa reappears in the middle of the Glimmervoid, along with Geth’s head and an older and more battle-scarred Bruenna. Bruenna solemnly informs her that she’s been missing for five years, and that the blue light she saw was a time stop spell that froze Glissa. She and Geth were taken to the interior, but Ellasha had survived her last stand and fought her way through to Bruenna, only to die for real in their escape. She catches Glissa up on current events, that Taj-Nar is lost, now a melted wreck, and the Mephidross has spread aggressively across Mirrodin. The vedalken and Yert’s vampires have an uneasy alliance, warring with those who remain. Mysterious silver spires have appeared all over the surface, and they have only just learned where Glissa was being kept. Bruenna teleported in and rescued Glissa, bringing her back to the surface and unfreezing her.

Slobad's work

Deep beneath them, still trapped in the core, Slobad is putting the finishing touches on a plane-wide network for spark transference. He has hooked into a machine that gives him control of constructs all across Mirrodin, but he’s been tortured to the point where he only wishes to conduct Memnarch’s will. He has had all his limbs amputated to avoid infection, and he’s sustained entirely by a steady serum injection. A small part of his mind that is still himself, realizing what he’s about to complete, begins attempting to reassert itself.

The resistance

For Glissa, it’s as if no time has passed at all, and she struggles to take it all in. They’re attacked by much more powerful aerophins, but Glissa has learned to control her power well at this point and easily dispatches them. Bruenna casts a spell to fly them to safety at Krark-home. There, she’s taken to the leaders of the Mirran alliance: Dwugget, Yshkar, and Lyese. She’s stunned to see her sister on the throne, and learns Lyese is Khanha, wife of the Kha. Raksha was presumed dead (and a traitor) years before, and so Yshkar took the throne. Over dinner, they explain the events of the last few years.

When the fifth sun dawned, it put a lie to the goblin establishment’s religion. The old shaman were quickly overthrown (and thrown into lava), and Dwugget and the Krark-Clan were brought in to lead. But Vektro and his thugs took advantage of the goblins, so when Lyese and Raksha arrived, Dwugget was eager to ally with the leonin to free himself of the Vulshok. She also learns that Raksha was exiled three years earlier. They say he believed Taj-Nar was lost, and so detonated a mana bomb to force the leonin to flee the city. He was exiled to the Tangle, where he hasn’t been heard from since. Bruenna had broken into Lumengrid to steal a map of the interior, only to stumble across plans to move previous cargo being transferred from the Vault - Glissa. The vedalken, for their part, have all been transformed into those huge telepathic creatures, and have brought the blinkmoth population down to the edge of extinction. That brings Glissa up to date, and throughout the dinner, Glissa realizes she’s developing a begrudging respect for Geth’s head - the only other person to be new to this time.

The topic turns to Yert, who is controlling the nim through the use of a device called the Miracore. He’s no wizard, so if they can just steal it, half of their enemy forces - the nim - will suddenly become allies. Memnarch hasn’t been seen since Glissa disappeared. He’s cleansing himself of the Mycosynth infection, and when he’s done, he will be pure metal again… and another artifact that Glissa can destroy. He’ll be done in five days. Just as they’re done strategizing, Yert’s army invades Krark's home. Bruenna hands Glissa a magic bracelet she’s devised before the fight. It will give Glissa unlimited powers of flight, and two single-use teleports (one to anywhere she wants, another that returns her to Krark-home).

They run through the goblin warrens, dodging nim and vampire alike, tracking down Yert. They find him in the nursery, where he holds children of many species hostage. There’s a tense exchange before Glissa spots the Miracore on Yert’s neck. She uses her ‘teleport anywhere’ spell to teleport into Yert, saving the children and exploding Yert messily. With the Miracore in her possession, she sends all the nim back to the Vault. With a goodbye to her sister and Bruenna, Glissa leaves to take on Memnarch.

The Leveler War

Despite the nim retreat, the defenses of Krark-home are still overwhelmed by vedalken, levelers, and pretty much every construct left on Mirrodin. The goblins fire off their huge cannon, a charbelcher, but giant earthquake machines are threatening to bring down the whole mountain. Glissa uses her magic to destroy the earthquake machines, but once her guard is down, Malil swoops in on a vedalken glider and steals the Miracore. Glissa follows him to the green lacunae, but can’t quite catch up. A mysterious figure ambushes the golem in the tunnel - Raksha! Glissa is relieved to see her friend, but he’s so bedraggled that Glissa fears the stories she heard of him going mad are true. They dispatch Malil, now more flesh than metal, and return to Raksha’s hideout in the lacunae.

Raksha warns Glissa that her sister is dead, and all their friends were duped by an impostor. They led Vektro to Krark's home, but the man fell dead suddenly. Soon after, they were both attacked and knocked unconscious by an ogre. When Raksha awoke, Lyese had already worked out an agreement with Dwugget. He didn’t realize until years later, the day Taj-Nar was destroyed, that Lyese was already dead. During the battle for Taj-Nar, he stumbled upon Lyese planting the mana bomb below the city, and the two fought. Lyese revealed herself to be Vektro, having transferred minds into the elf girl. Lyese/Vektro had initiated a romance with Yshkar, and so when the leonin second-in-command discovers their fight, he believes Lyese over Raksha. Raksha only confirmed the truth from chancing upon a Sylvok during his exile - the same Sylvok on Glissa’s tribunal, the loudest voice for her acquittal. It was Vektro controlling him, wanting to ensure Glissa lived for Memnarch’s plan to come to fruition. Glissa wants to go rescue her sister, but Raksha warns it might not be possible until she is dead. They need to take out Memnarch to succeed at anything. Instead, they wait and marshal their strength for their shot at Memnarch.

Back at the battle for Krark-home, the battle has raged for days, and the defenders are not winning. A blinding white glare cloaks the battlefield as the races of Mirrodin gaze upon all five suns dawning at the same time. They've lost air support, and Bruenna is too exhausted to even fly. She rendezvous with Yshkar and urges him to retreat... but Lyese/Vektro runs him through with a sword. Lyese/Vektro takes a rocket to the chest from Dwugget, who has found his courage. Dwugget knew from the beginning what Lyese was, but had been coerced into helping because Vektro planted a mana bomb in Krark-home. Now he helps Bruenna fight the imposter, and as Lyese is badly wounded, Vektro flees her body. Bruenna taps into healing magic and repairs Lyese’s wounds. Lyese recounts that the mana bomb is set to go off in under an hour, and they set about evacuating the civilians. Some goblin engineers find the bomb, and with Dwugget and Lyese’s help, Bruenna teleports it into the middle of the nim army.

On day five, during the alignment of all five suns, Raksha and Glissa sneak into the core. Inside, they’re surprised that all the Mycosynth have been cleared out, and towers like those on the surface litter the landscape now, with lines running between them and to the Panopticon. The dawn of all five suns is rising. They're noticed, but weirdly, no constructs make any aggressive moves at first. When it is too late for them to retreat, they're herded into the Panopticon by Malil clones.

The Vanishing

Inside the Panopticon, a memnite greets Glissa and indicates it’s being controlled by Slobad. They’re interrupted by a Malil clone, possessed by Vektro, taking the Miracore from Glissa again. He attempts to use it himself, just as Memnarch emerges from the cocoon. With his flesh cleansed, he radiates power, but hasn’t regained his sanity. Judging Vektro a failed experiment, he destroys Vektro and takes the Miracore. He reveals that this is exactly his endgame, knowing Glissa would come back made his job easy, and thanks to Slobad, he now has his Ascension web: a planet-sized artifact. Glissa is shackled to await Memnarch’s ascension.

Just as the ascension web is powering up, Slobad releases Glissa from where she is shackled. Glissa and Raksha engage Memnarch, but the guardian is too powerful at first. Geth’s head summons a flying nim from the black lacunae to distract the guardian, and Raksha takes out a leg while Glissa goes back after the Miracore. In a rage at his plans going awry, Memnarch charges outside, onto a platform that’s part of the ascension web. Glissa knocks out Raksha, not wanting her friend to die for her, and instead tells everyone what happened. She uses her spark-powered magic on Memnarch, but he’s only wounded, and the two tussle until they fall off the platform and into the mana core.

Slobad mourns his lost friend, but the ascension web is still powering up. It has nowhere to channel its power, so instead it's channeled into Slobad. Raksha is killed as the mana core reacts more and more violently. Back at Krark-Home, everyone they know dies one by one. All the souls captured in the soul traps, all the mana collected by the ascension web, and Glissa’s spark all enter Slobad at once, nearly killing him. Slobad ascends, and his body is restored. He wonders why the magic restored his body, but it didn't bring back his friend Glissa.

The return of Karn

Karn appears to Slobad, finally able to enter the plane once more. Memnarch, in his madness, was keeping Karn from manifesting. The two discuss what happened, and how the mana backlash wiped out the soul traps, and that everyone on the surface is dead. Slobad remains because the spark chose him. Karn informs him that he's got millions of souls inside him, and that there might still be time to save his friends. But it would cost both Slobad and Glissa the spark. Slobad surprises him by stating he doesn't care about the multiverse, he just wants his friends back. Karn tells him that those who have died will finally die, and those who still live will be returned home. Slobad would only dimly remember that anything had happened at all. Slobad agrees. In the aftermath, Glissa, Slobad, and Geth’s head venture toward the surface, now curiously empty. Slobad doesn't quite remember what happened, but Geth mentions that Karn gave him a message for them. They can go home by breaking their soul traps (which Memnarch hid), or remain and await the golem’s return. Glissa and Slobad decide to wait.

Aftermath

Somewhere else, at the seaside village of Lume, under a golden sun, Bruenna and her apprentice Lyese await Kha Raksha Golden Cub for the formal signing of a peace agreement between all the races of their world. They remember nothing of their lives on Mirrodin.