A grotesque goblin clung to the bars and pointed skyward. "Squee love Karn! Squee love Karn!"
Tsabo Tavoc looked up. Drifting above the smoking crater was that damned ship. Someone had remained aboard-someone who could fly the ship and fire the ray cannons by himself.
"Squee love Karn! Squee love Karn!"
Gerrard and his crew clambered out of the cell, over rocks and bodies.
Tsabo Tavoc lashed out with her right legs.
The little monsters were just out of reach. They climbed out of the prison and into the ruined shell of the infirmary. Weatherlight edged out above the wreckage. Its anchor clattered down, smashing through the remnant of a wall. The crew crowded onto that swaying piece of metal. It slowly rose.
He would die, this Gerrard. It mattered little what the master wanted. Here was a man who had grinned his defiance, had spat in her face, and had lived to tell the tale.
Already, Weatherlight slid away.
Tsabo Tavoc gathered the strength in her trapped legs. There was only one that was inextricable. The rest could pull loose, given the chance. Tsabo Tavoc gave them the chance. She yanked free. The metallic interface of the single doomed leg raked out of the meat and bone of her pelvic girdle. Her own blood painted the stone as she drew her good legs forth. It made her angry. Her own pain was not as sweet as others.
For this and other indignities, Gerrard would die.
Chapter 7
How Forests Fight
Multani awoke in dread.
He knew he was dying. He could feel it in his flesh. There was sudden cancer-a numbness that ate away feeling and replaced it with living death.
Last night, he had been well. He had sent his consciousness into every bud in the treetops and every hair root below. The great forest Yavimaya was his body. Magnigoth trees were his endless limbs, elves and pixies his darting thoughts, surging sap his pumping blood. Last night, the forest had been well.
This morning, all was different. Yavimaya was suddenly filled with pockets of darkness-cancer.
It had fallen from the skies. The contagion sifted down through clear air. Minute spores tricked their way into every stoma on every leaf. A tingling numbness followed. It flowed down stems into twigs and branches and trunks. It converted all to living rot. Whole boughs were corrupted.
It was worse than that. An intelligence controlled this cancer. Something called to the rotten limbs-something black and hungry. This was not just a killing plague. It was a resurrecting plague too. It killed in order to revivify the dead wood and control it. Gangrene worked a slow possession on Yavimaya. The forest's life was becoming an alien unlife.
The malign power hovered above. Sensing it, Multani rose through a millennial magnigoth. In moments, he had ascended the three-thousand-foot tree. His presence flooded into healthy leaves. They were retinal structures, attuned to light. Through them Multani could see stars no mortal eye ever guessed at.
Now he did not see stars. He saw an achingly blue sky with three immense rents in it. Out of those holes drifted enormous black carbuncles. They were gnarled like diseased wood. One eclipsed the sun. It cast down a shadow that covered a thousand acres. The sun shone in corona around that great scab. Figures moved there, carapaced figures-Phyrexians.
A millennium ago, Multani had joined Urza's fight against Phyrexia. He granted Urza the Weatherseed- drawn from the center of the forest's most ancient tree, the Heart of Yavimaya. From that seed grew the living hull of Weatherlight. Multani had aided in breeding perfect defenders for Dominaria. He had even trained Gerrard Capashen in maro-sorcery.
All these preparations seemed punily insufficient now. In the face of this onslaught, what good was an army of Metathran and a living airship and a reluctant hero?
Multani's mind darkened. He seeped down through ancient wood and spread his soul in vines and tangled boughs. He wanted to reside in every tree, every pulsing heart. Only when he encompassed the whole of the forest could he glimpse the divine world. It was painful to be stretched so thin, to feel the trembling terror of the forest. Once he touched on every tendril, though, he sensed his mother watching.
Gaea, you have known of this dread hour since before I even was. You knew of it from Argoth and before, from Halcyon of the Ancients. I am a fool. You see how little I am prepared. Save me, Mother. Save your son. I beg of you. Save me.
There came no response from the world-goddess. Never did she speak.
Her silence was terrible. Multani winced back from it. He withdrew, no longer in every strand of cellulose. In withdrawing, he lost sight of the divine principle and saw instead only the circling vortex of ships above the forest.
Dragon engines, cruisers, troop transports, rams, plague ships- they formed a horrible black whirlpool in the sky. The cyclone widened. Ships descended to attack the shores. Others would overtop the forest in a great killing dome. There would be no escape. There would be no miracle from Gaea. There would be only a long, vicious fight that Multani must lead.
He sent his mind into the elven cities in the canopy. In natural hollows, children played. Across bridges of vine, women worked air nets. In thatched villages, men gossiped. Multani spoke to them all. Fey oracles suddenly saw all he had seen. Fey warriors learned what he knew. Chiefs and kings prepared for all-out war. Multani reached even into the minds of common elves and awoke nightmares.
He gave them a new definition of hate. The angry distrust they felt toward humanity was love compared to this. To kill a Phyrexian was to serve good. To die killing a Phyrexian was to join the eternal forest. Each pixie, each sprite would hate and fight and kill for Yavimaya.
Multani sent his mind into the deep root clusters of the magnigoths. There, in lightless seas, dwelt great serpents and fishes as large as villages. Druids lifted their eyes to the ceilings of their root cells. Multani twisted among their chants and prayers. He whispered terrors into their ears and charged the druids to marshal their might. A fanatic heat entered them. Druids were furious by nature but solitary and sedate in their anger. When one of their gods united their rage, though, woodfolk became warriors.
How could fey and druid stand against Phyrexia? What good were songs and poetry against plague and poison?
Heart despairing, Multani stretched his will once again through the great wood, to every dumb beast. These were not warriors. The fiercest were mere predators. The gentlest were leaf-licking molds. But cornered, wounded, with death inevitable, every creature will attack. Multani infused them with the surety of their doom. They would fight, every last one. Giant ground sloths would rip Phyrexian heads from their shoulders. Green boas would wrap themselves around whole phalanxes and squeeze until glistening-oil jetted from every pore. Apes would emerge from their warrens and pummel the monsters to mush. Sky leeches, great forest hogs, gobbet raptors, fire ants-they all would fight and die in the fighting.
Was this the salvation Gaea offered her mortal folk: to die fighting?
Multani watched in aching dread as the storm of ships deepened over Yavimaya. Plague engines spewed treetoxins. Phyrexian fliers stretched leathery wings. When the canopy was ripe with rot, they would soar down upon the elven kingdoms. Other troop ships neared the shores. They would off-load Phyrexian armies, who would race unopposed among the ancient boles.
Multani took a shuddering breath through manifold stomas.
Perhaps Multani should have made himself Urza's servant. Perhaps he would have gained ships and monster machines of his own.
Troop ships hovered above the wide-flung shores of Yavimaya. They edged up over root tangles that reached into the sea. One by one, great doors opened, swinging down into ramps. Hundreds of thousands of troops appeared. They stared toward Yavimaya with eyes like sockets scooped in meat. The invaders started down the ramps, their claws scraping.
Soon, every creature in Yavimaya would have lightless eyes.
Except that Gaea had heard his prayer. She was silent, yes, but she had heard.
The tangled roots, reaching
far out into the salty sea, moved. They slid across each other with the ease of snakes. Inextricable knots untied themselves. Roots reached out like grasping fingers. All around the island, fibrous hands grasped Phyrexian troop ships. Some roots simply crushed them. Others shot straight through metal, piercing the beasts within. More still struck the craft down like hands slapping flies. Not a single monster reached the safety of the shore. Those who survived the crushing, spindling, shattering attack tumbled into the water. Phyrexians hated water, especially salt water. It destroyed their metal parts. But more than water waited down there for them.
Other Dominarian defenders rose. Fins slapped and froth churned. Sharks fed in plenty, yes, but other creatures too-dolphins and giant squids, stingrays and barracudas. In their midst were merfolk, their tridents spearing Phyrexians. Side by side, the folk of the sea feasted on the flesh thrown to them.
The forces of the sea had never before aided their old foes, the forces of the forest. Why now?
Multani understood. Gaea was not merely a forest goddess. She was the world-goddess. Seas were hers and the creatures therein. As Multani had marshaled the dumb beasts of the forest, she had directed some other mind to gather the beasts of the sea.
This is why he had not allied with Urza. This was the way the forest fought. Exultation replaced dread.
Overhead, aerial troops leaped from their skyships. Wings of skin barked on the wind. Down soared Phyrexians in thick swarms. They swirled down toward the elven kingdoms in the treetops.
Multani gathered himself from the island's perimeter like lightning gathering itself from the sky. He vaulted up the hollow core of an ancient magnigoth tree. In the crown above, the largest of the elven kingdoms spread.
Multani emerged. He took his shape from a shaggy vine, bringing with it blankets of moss, a number of parasitic plants, and a section of loose bark. All these, Multani assembled into a vast, shambling form. He had no body aside from this forest, but in its flesh he had flesh. Multani climbed to the elven kingdom. En route, he dragged a venom-vine into his being. It spread through him, its poisonous thorns positioning themselves as fangs, horns, and claws.
Already, the elf warriors gathered in thorn brakes and atop lookout spires. They trooped like ants across the footworn branches. Some crucial bough-bridges had already succumbed to rot. They had taken on a wicked life of their own, lashing out at nearby troops. Crews busily doused rotten sections with pine spirits and set them ablaze. It was a horrible sight-elves torching trees.
Multani dug one foot into a sap channel and sent a signal to the heights of the magnigoth. There, vast seed pods opened prematurely. Soap-down, as white as snow and as slippery as ice, spewed upward. The stuff rose to envelope Phyrexian wing-troops. Oily fibers dragged across batwings and talons. The soap-down filled air holes and blinded eyes. Everything it touched grew slick.
Hissing and spitting, Phyrexians dived out of the choking cloud. They soared down to the leafy crowns and converged on the lookout aeries.
Elf sentries loosed slim shafts.
The arrows ripped wings and thudded into Phyrexian chests and skulls. A few fell from the sky. They cracked against branches in their long descent. Others reached the aeries, shrieking their attack. Wings folded. Talons gripped branches. They slipped, overbalancing. Elven swords were there to catch them. Impaled, Phyrexians writhed like bugs on pins. The wiser elves hurled their fouled swords from the aeries. Those who kept their blades lost their lives. Phyrexian fangs bit through skulls. Phyrexian claws ripped through chests and heads. It was impossible to tell the slayer from the slain.
Below, the main mass of the aerial troops landed in the kingdom's center. Those that came down atop elves got spears and arrows in their bellies. Those that landed on footpaths slipped to spill from the boughs. Elves crowded in tight companies and flung beasts off birch shields.
A massive Phyrexian, a seeming gargoyle, lunged into a group of elves. It bit an elf in half and lifted its head back to swallow the torso. Swords jabbed the Phyrexian's neck, unintentionally pinning the corpse within. The gargoyle gasped, choking.
Elsewhere, another winged monster found itself swarmed with vines. The living wood drew stinging thorns across its hide, cutting to muscle. Moss crowded into the thing's mouth and air holes. Thistles raked wings to bloody rags. Vines constricted, strangling the beast. It fell on the bough and hissed to stillness.
Multani withdrew from the corpse. He pulled his bloodied vines off the shapeless figure and reassembled himself. The twin thistle blossoms that made up his eyes glimpsed a new atrocity.
Elf children fled backward over a sheer drop. They clung to rough bark and vines to escape a Phyrexian mob.
Multani ran for the mass of the creatures. He could kill one at a time, perhaps two at once. Still the monsters would slay the children.
A thought came to him. He dived into the wood. His vine-body sloughed from him into a pile on the surface. Multani sped inward along sap lines. Up through a fat bole and a twisted girdle he went. Spreading through a meaty branch, he possessed it. The thing swung downward, the arm of a colossus.
It struck the Phyrexian mob and hurled them from the tree.
Multani took no time to admire his work. Phyrexians filled the treetops. He lifted the bough again and brought it down to mash them. Leaves became blades. Tendrils became scourges. Branches became staves. Boughs became rams. All dripped with glistening-oil-blood.
This was how the forest fought.
Chapter 8
Battles Above Benalia
Engineer Karn had made good use of his time alone aboard the wounded ship. Outwardly, he crouched down, impersonating an inert engine module. The trick fooled Phyrexian crews. Inwardly, Karn activated the ship's healing routines. Once Weatherlight was skyworthy again, a jolting takeoff ripped her mooring lines from the ground. Karn rolled the ship to fling Phyrexians from her deck. He ignited her ray cannons and blasted his way into the brig. Together, he and Weatherlight had rescued the crew.
Now, aloft, Karn proved more powerful still. In flight, the ship was his body. In it, he charged across the heavens like a thoroughbred. A pack of Phyrexian ships howled in his wake, but none could even approach him.
Weatherlight ruled the skies beyond Benalia City. In a series of lightning attacks, she strafed troop transport ships and cruisers, pinning them in their deployment arc. None could get off the ground. The cruisers' heavy batteries hurled flack into the sky, too slow to strike the shrieking vessel. Phyrexians scrambled from damaged engines and melted cannonades. They were no match for Weatherlight's crew.
Sisay worked her own magic at the helm. She soared down the throat of Phyrexian cannonades, hopping Weatherlight away before plasma split the air. The incandescent stuff narrowly missed the ship, instead blanketing pursuers. Flinging off hunks of magma,
Phyrexian fighters collapsed and plunged from the sky. They impacted cruisers docked below or troops off-loading from them.
Hanna, meanwhile, pinpointed the Phyrexian vessels' critical sectors-fire controls, fuel tanks, power conduits, flying bridges… She plotted strafing runs that cut straight across numerous engine cores. In a steady stream, she barked out heading directions and blast coordinates.
"Target thirty degrees to port, the red 'midships manifolds. You're warm! You're hot! Bull's-eye!"
As flames engulfed the vast structure, Tahngarth shouted from the starboard prow cannon, "Stop calling them bull's-eyes!"
"Yeah," rejoined Gerrard at port. "That was my shot!"
"Get ready for another," Sisay warned. "A cruiser's lifting off."
Hanna growled out hasty instructions. "Three degrees left, vault over this next ship, and bring us in low."
"Low?" Gerrard called back. "It's lifting off."
"She's plotting a course beneath it," Sisay guessed.
Hanna worked out the vectors.
"Beneath it?" Gerrard echoed.
"The engines are exposed on the underside. The hull guns won't be operation
al yet," Hanna explained. "It's the safest route and the surest kill."
"What if we shoot it so well it falls on us?"
"Have a little faith in Karn," Hanna replied, smiling wryly at Sisay. "Three degrees to port, and dive, Captain."
The ship plunged above the smoldering heap of a grounded cruiser. Weatherlight raced over black mountains of mechanism, past splayed Phyrexian corpses, past shattered cannonades and batteries spewing corruption into the air. Weatherlight's plunging keel sliced through a cloud of plague spores, which rose in white canyon walls around the ship. The ship rocketed out of the killing tunnel.
Dead ahead, a cruiser labored into the air. It was a mountainous ship. Tangled grass and clods of dirt rained beneath it.
"Take us below," Hanna called.
With a gut-wrenching drop, Weatherlight plummeted. Her own keel sliced grasses. She left a wide-boiling wake of stalks behind her. A surge from her engines sent the ship screaming beneath the enormous cruiser.
Dust pelted down from convoluted pipework. It stung the gunners and anyone else on deck. Weatherlight arrowed beneath the huge black shelf and above the trammeled ground. Her spars cracked occasionally against the cruiser's belly. Her keel gouged lines in the dirt.
"Where's this exposed engine you promised?" Gerrard shouted through the tube.
"You'll feel it," Hanna said.
They did. Sudden, incredible heat tore across the deck. It radiated from a network of huge black cylinders, each bristling with thermal fins.
"Fire!" Gerrard ordered even as he squeezed off a few blasts.
The rays looked vermilion against the ship's dark underbelly. They tore outward, striking column after column. The huge cylinders cracked open, their hulls seeming as brittle as eggshells. Pure energy oozed from the engine cores. Tahngarth's own blasts mixed red power with black, blood and rot commingled.
INVASION mtg-1 Page 6