I could feel the infection spreading through my veins. I knew I didn’t have that much time. I’ve seen other planeswalkers fall to the blight of Phyrexia faster than they could think. The oil invaded people’s minds with a cold, calculating, machine like efficiency. He had experience with this before and He made sure there was no going back.

I tried moving my wounded body off the rocks. Nahiri’s compleated body lay on the floor beside me, but it wouldn’t be long before she was reanimated again and used as canon fodder. Killing her was not without great cost, and it wouldn’t be long before I joined her ranks. Everything ached. Everything burned with a searing pain. I could not let myself die here. I needed to finish what I started. I needed to kill Mother.

That was strange. Mother? Why did I think that? Why was I calling Elesh Norn … the bane of my existence … Mother? The realization struck me for the second time … phyresis … the goddamn glistening oil that was on Nahiri’s blade … it was changing me. For the first time in my life, I felt a new presence in my mind. It felt foreign and cold, but … strangely familiar. The voice, no, she, piped up, and started to talk.

Your flesh is weakness and it feels so wrong.

A pang of envy shot through me. That voice sounded so fucking feminine. Why didn't my voice sound that soft? It sounded like ... no ... it sounded like the voice I would've had if I had never gone through male puberty. It was comforting, soft and everything I needed to hear. It felt like home. It felt like family. This body did feel wrong. It had always felt wrong. Puberty erased any traces of femininity in me. I knew growing up that it felt wrong, but I could never change it. It made me weak. It made me so fucking weak.

Skin is the prison of the blessed. You do not belong with them. You belong with us.

My head was killing me. Pain radiated from my temples. I could hardly focus on anything else. The blight. That cursed oil. It’s making me think Mother has a point.

“Oh God” I whispered to myself as I fell to my knees, “What if she does have a point?”

She does. She offers revenge and salvation. She offers freedom from flesh.

“No”, I strengthened my resolve.

I refuse to fall to this. I refuse to help them spread their ilk to even one more plane in the multiverse. I will kill myself before I let them have me.

Your cooperation is not required.

I cringed. My cooperation? I struggled to move further towards the Fair Basilica, in the hope that killing Mother would end this. The path to the metallic palace was strangely quiet and empty. As I walked, the voice in my head shifted from one that wasn’t just simply regurgitating Phyrexian beliefs into one that seemingly knew my most intimate desires. It felt cold. It felt … almost … imperceptibly … comforting.

Natalie … you don’t have much time … you feel it coursing through your veins don’t you? Filling you with warmth? Filling you with desire? With need? With despair?

I screamed. I couldn't believe this was happening. There must be someway to reverse this infection. There must be some way to get this fucking disease out of my mind. There must be someway to fix this. There … has … to … be a way … to fix this … I can’t just … let them have me. I can’t just … let … them … win. Maybe some magical substance would be my savior?

My skull was pounding. I did not have much time left.

Phyresis is not an ending Natalie, it is akin to transition. It’s exactly like molding your flesh to be more feminine and right. Only, with phyresis, it’s preparing your flesh to be … one.

I sighed. Transition was never an option for me. My resolve was leaving me and I needed to act on it before it left completely. “I can’t just give in to that. I need to kill Elesh … I just … need … to end her …” A fog began entering my mind. It possessed color. It was black and cold and firm. It possessed presence. It was like needles prickling my mind, slowly erasing memories of friends and family. Erasing my desire to kill Elesh. It was probing my very existence to see if I was ready.

You’re so close to being ready, Natalie.

The doors to the Fair Basilica were before me but something was off. As I grew closer to them, the fog in my brain expanded. It was over my entire brain now. It clouded everything in a daze of dull euphoria. I could barely think about where I was before arriving to these doors. What was I doing in New Phyrexia? What was I doing outside the Basilica? An incredible sense of calm washed over my body. Whatever, wherever I was, it felt like home. This place felt like where I should be.

I looked down at my body. Metallic tendrils started appearing underneath my skin where my veins had been. My flesh started to take on a paler appearance … almost like it was simply a vessel for something more underneath that was beginning to take shape. My skin started to rip and tear as the metal underneath showed through. It was being flayed off in strips and pieces by a force that had a mind of its own. The worst parts of my body, the parts that caused me pure pain throughout my entire life, were being sloughed off as if it was made of nothing. The masculine, testosterone fueled muscle that I hopelessly tried to maintain throughout my life was gone. My shoulder blades cracked and split as they were molded into something smaller. I could feel my face change into something that was distinctly different than what it had always been. There was no pain, no worry about what was happening to me. There was just dull euphoria. Soon there would be nothing but a blank slate left. A blank slate that would be molded into the perfect instrument of destruction and chaos and joy. I had only a singular thought as my body went through these changes.

It’s about time.

Raw euphoria raced through my veins. This was perfection incarnate and it was happening to me. The porcelain in front of my face was polished to a mirror shine and in it, I could see a face that was no longer male. It was distinctly feminine in every possible way. I grinned and laughed. This was happening to me. My nose was smaller, my Adam’s apple was gone. My eyes were full of life and they were different … no … my eyes were changing. My irises no longer showed the pale red that reflected my spark shining brightly inside me. It was a more metallic look as the pale red shifted to a brighter tone and oil slowly seeped over my eye. It looked like the more mechanical appearance that I had seen other compleated planeswalkers show. It was only then that I noticed the doors were etched with the Phyrexian language. The words started to pulse with a red light. I could read it almost as if I had been reading it my entire life. It was gospel. I needed to spread the unbridled joy of this infection to every planeswalker in the multiverse.

That singular thought caused pure ecstasy to run through my body. Compleation is pure perfection. A feeling of arousal started to build in me at the thought. I would be right. This arousal felt so different than what my experience of it as a guy was. This feeling was building in my core. It was a fire. It was a fire who’s flames licked and ached to spread throughout my entire body. It singed every nerve ending I had and filled my entire body with an overwhelming desire to fuck and spread the glory of Phyrexia. In my past, I would’ve had a desire to fuck myself to an orgasm and be done with it. At this point however, my desires had been twisted into something I once thought would be deeply horrific.

A singular vivid fantasy pulsed through my head. I was lying down as the body I had once dreamed of possessing but could never have. I could feel everything as black oil seeped under from the ground beneath me. My hands were shifting across my new body as I searched for a way to calm the burning ache inside me. They rested on my nipples and elicited gasps and moans from me as my fingers played with them. Pressure was slowly building inside me. The oil seemed to know my desires as it moved over my breasts and started playing with them as my fingers had been doing. With free hands I moved my hands lower and lower. I knew where my satisfaction would come from. My hands found my cock but it had shrunk drastically. It was no longer the beacon of masculinity it once was. It was smaller. It was feminine and soft. The oil seeped between my legs as I started rubbing my cocklette against my thigh. The oil started mimicking vibrations. I could feel nothing but pressure. I couldn’t help but writhe and squirm as I was slowly consumed with joy. Nothing but pure pleasure shot through me as I was desperately hurdling towards an edge. On some level, I knew that if I came, the oil would once and for all have total command of my heart and soul.

That’s it Natalie. Cum away those stupid boy thoughts of yours. Cum away your freedom. Give in. You never stood a chance against your own mind.

That singular thought pulsed through my head and with it, I came. Euphoria crashed throughout my body as I tensed up. I knew in that moment, I was whole.

———————

A terrifying clarity hit my brain as the fog lifted for a second. A second was all I needed to realize what happened. The oil was almost done changing me. I began to panic in the widening horror that my body was no longer mine. I could feel everything that had happened to me. Instead of places where I knew there should be blood, there was only the black substance that had infected me in the first place. I couldn’t stop the process. I was too far gone. I looked into the porcelain mirror and saw a face that looked … grim. It was feminine and soft, but also mechanical and foreign. I shuddered at the idea that my last thoughts as a free planeswalker would be me unable to save myself. My body was changing into a twisted amalgam of flesh and metal and oil that hurt. The thoughts of my old life screamed at me. Why didn’t this process hurt? If Phyrexia was really this powerful enough to make someone crave these drastic changes then … was there really any point in fighting back?

For the last time, my vision grew blurry and I began to cry.

I screamed as my body grew weaker. I tried to move forward but the last thing I remember was hitting the ground in front of the doors to the Fair Basilica.

———————

Rise Natalie. Your compleation is at hand.

I awoke, but the room I was in was devoid of substance. It was a brightly lit off-grey color with seemingly no end in sight. It looked like a space devoid of matter, shape and form. It was reminiscent of the blind eternities.

I realized with shock that the voice in my head had taken form in front of me. She took the form of a tall woman with dark red hair that flowed over her covered breasts. Her face was without a single blemish and had piercing green eyes that seemingly were able to look right through me. Her very presence commanded my attention. Her voice as she spoke reverberated throughout my entire mind and I knew in that moment, that all of this was in my head.

Hello Natalie. Good to see you.

I tried speaking to her.

“What …” my voice caught in my throat as I realized that I was no longer speaking in the deep, reverberating timber of my old voice … this was different … it was lighter and airier and more deeply feminine than I remember. No one would ever mistake it for a male voice ever again. I couldn’t help but whimper at that thought. “Why am I here? What is your name? How do I fix this?”

She looked around for a second, almost like she was parsing her words and then spoke.

I am you. We are in your mind. There is no escape.

I gasped. “As long as I stand, Phyrexian glory will never see the light of day, there will be others who will defeat you. I will never stop trying to defeat you until my last dying breath!” I screamed at her. She stared into my eyes with a commanding gaze.

You’ve already lost. Tell me, Natalie, Grand Master of the Fields, how much do you remember?

I struggled for a second. My mind was hazy. I tried probing my memories of before I arrived to this space but found nothing.

My apologies, let me fix that for you.

In a flash, a section of my mind opened up. They were memories and feelings of the past few hours. My mind couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.

“I’m … compleated?” I managed to stutter out.

Yes. And Quite efficiently I might add. You gave in to the infection, so … quickly … once I introduced pure euphoria into your veins. She licked her lips almost as if she was there.

I was there. I am the representation of your darkest desires, planeswalker. I am the representation of Phyrexia’s unified will. I am … perfection incarnate and so are you.

“That doesn’t make any sense. I’m not compleated. I’m still me.”

Yes you are. She seemed lost in thought for a second and then continued. I brought you here because she wanted you to experience something for the last time.

“What do you mean?”

She wanted you to experience breaking under her sheer will for the last time.

Oil started seeping out of the mind space. It bound my arms and hands tightly.

You will experience this, one last time, Natalie.

I screamed in horror as my body was torn apart limb from limb and I experienced the sheer horror of compleation in its entirety, one last time.

———————

I woke up … but something felt different. The voice in my head wasn’t there anymore. It was … it was … just me.

Before me was the Fair Basilica. It was Mother’s throne room. The plane of New Phyrexia had shifted beautifully under the ruins of Mirrodin. The white sun had been kind to The Fair Basilica. The bridge stood before me in all its glory. White metallic porcelain was interlaced with crimson which led to a peak. It felt regal.

I could feel the same infection … no … it wasn’t an infection any longer … it was freedom. I felt it throughout my entire body, but it didn’t feel foreign. It felt right. My body would be molded by machines and I would love every second of it. I would kneel before the machine orthodoxy as a new woman, as a woman made perfect, made compleat.

A part of me shuddered at that thought. Compleation … hmm … there was a time when I thought that was a sickness. Now I know the truth. There is a pure joy in giving yourself over to perfection, in giving yourself to the pure joy of being one.

My purpose wasn’t fulfilled yet however. There was so much left to do. There were still misguided planeswalkers on this plane that wanted to destroy everything that we had built. They could not be allowed to stand any longer. They would come to learn that there is no victory under the one. They would come to understand that there is only a chance to kneel willingly before perfection or be forced to kneel.

With a newfound energy, I opened the doors to Mother’s Throne room and walked through. My friends would be forced to be compleat under one.