Planeshift

by J. Robert King

  Black bearded and bold, Gerrard stood now on the forecastle deck beside Multani and Karn. He lifted his sword, drawing a shout from the gathered throng. They were ready to fight. They were ready to die.

  “Do not fear,” Urza continued. “You will not die here today. You will live to fight across this globe. This is the new war, the true war. I knew this day was coming, and I have prepared. Now go, fight for Dominaria!”

  The shout that answered was at last unified, at last fierce and warlike. The coalition forces braced to receive the charge. Their war cry was drowned out by the omnipresent shriek of their foes.

  Beyond the ring of titan engines, a million Phyrexians crested the hills. Like swarming roaches, they filled the land. Barbed legs bore black-armored bodies over the rills. Skull-white faces appeared above, with blood-red mouths and grave-black eyes. They were undead, many of them. The rest were Death personified. Claws like sickles, fangs like daggers, horns and proboscises, venom sacs and sagittal crests—there would be no defeating them. No mortal can defeat Death.

  There were more than mortals at Koilos.

  The first wave of Phyrexians swept down the hillside as fast as horses at a gallop. Dust rose in thick clouds from their feet. They charged Agnate and his Metathran vanguard.

  The defenders braced their pikes and—disappeared. Forty thousand warriors, rank on rank, they disappeared. The five titan engines that had guarded them were gone as well. Where they had been was only trampled ground and sagging tents.

  Blinking in disbelief, Multani whispered, “What’s happening?”

  Phyrexians rushed in a tidal wave across the open ground.

  Gerrard blurted, “The elves will be cut down from behind!” He spun toward them.

  The elves too vanished. Eladamri and his Steel Leaf warriors were gone in an eye blink, along with two more of the titan engines.

  “What’s happening?” Karn echoed, glaring at the empty field where they had been.

  It was not empty for long. In a black tide, Phyrexians closed the gap.

  “Drop the gangplanks!” Gerrard ordered. He raced along the rail of Weatherlight, hurling lines overboard. “Everyone, climb on. We fight from the skies!”

  As quick as rats, the Benalish irregulars climbed. They had all ridden to this battle aboard Weatherlight, and their numbers had been greatly reduced in the fights. Even so, they were too slow.

  Karn dropped overboard, grabbed armfuls of warriors, and hurled them to the decks.

  Multani made brilliant use of his woven hemp hands to pull others up.

  As he hauled the desperate soldiers aboard, Multani said calmly to Gerrard, “It is Urza who is doing this. See—he charges up his titan engine. He remains to fight along with us.”

  Gerrard yanked a young woman up over the rail and shook his head ruefully. “He’s got to be out of his mind.”

  “A common theory.”

  “At least he left us the dragons—” A sudden intuition sent Gerrard’s glance skyward, where the dragons had been. There was only the preternatural dawn. The eighth titan engine was gone too, leaving only Weatherlight, her Benalish irregulars, the ragged fleet of airships, and Urza’s lone titan engine. “Damn him.” Gerrard nodded sarcastically, growling under his breath, “This seems about right for Urza. A couple hundred against a couple million. Did I tell you I hated him?”

  “You even told him,” Multani pointed out as he pulled the last of the stragglers onto the deck.

  One by one, Tolarian helionauts and Metathran jump-ships buzzed into the air around Weatherlight. Soldiers lifted her gang planks.

  Phyrexians closed on the ship.

  Gerrard shouted to Karn, “Get up here, bucket head! Get us out of here!”

  The silver golem solemnly clambered up the gunwale. His feet had no sooner left the sand than a surge of Phyrexians crashed against Weatherlight’s hull. Horns and claws tore into the wood.

  “I’m needed,” Multani said simply, slumping into the deck. He fled from splinters and hemp, leaving them empty. His spirit surged down through the planks to fortify the hull.

  Gerrard hardly acknowledged the departure of the nature spirit. He was too busy running along the rail to chop away the lines before Phyrexians could climb them. He knocked aside Benalish warriors who blocked the forecastle stairs and stabbed a climbing Phyrexian in its fangy mouth. It fell back atop its comrades, but two more monsters rose in its place.

  There were too many. They were too quick. Claws fastened around the stanchions and seized the rail.

  Gerrard hacked viciously at the beasts. His sword clove the horned shoulder of a Phyrexian trooper. He skewered the scabrous mouth of a bloodstock. He split the skull shield of a scuta.

  “How about a little help!” he shouted over his shoulder.

  Red energy burst into being before him. Sudden flames mantled hackles and poured down throats. Plasma shattered thoraxes and flashed flesh to ash. Where once there had been hundreds of Phyrexians, now there was only fire. Bones and armor dropped in a grisly hail.

  Gerrard reeled back from the rail and blinked the red spots from his eyes. His sword had melted beyond the hilt. Tossing the thing overboard, he glared to the forecastle deck and the smoking gun.

  Behind the starboard ray cannon, a familiar minotaur hunched in the gunnery traces.

  Tahngarth shrugged. “You needed a hand.”

  Gerrard flashed him a smile and climbed toward the port-side gun.

  As he went, the ship’s engines suddenly surged. The deck pitched. Weatherlight lurched from the ground. Most of the warriors went to their knees on the planks, but Gerrard kept his feet. He’d ridden this ship to Rath and back, and he had his sky legs.

  On his way up the forecastle stairs, he decked a Phyrexian in the jaw. The bone shattered, and dagger teeth drove into the beast’s pallet. Its eyes went dark, and it slumped on the rail. Gerrard shoved it off and crossed to his gun. He charged up the cannon even as he strapped himself into the gunnery harness.

  “Grab a gun or get below,” he shouted to the Benalish irregulars still crowding the deck.

  Gerrard spit on the plasma manifold. The saliva boiled away instantly. With a grim smile, he pivoted the gun about to shoot along the hull. Rays struck the air and turned it plasmatic. Crimson energy spattered across the beasts that still hung there. It ripped them loose and dissolved them on their way to ground.

  On the starboard side, Tahngarth’s cannon blasted. The fireball plunged to impact Phyrexians. Where it rolled, the sphere of energy obliterated monsters. The blaze spent itself eating through the invading troops.

  “They’re everywhere,” Tahngarth snorted. “How do we defend Koilos against this?”

  Gerrard hissed, “Kill Phyrexians.”

  A charge shrieked from his cannon. It arced down toward the moiling army. The energy column twisted like a cyclone. It touched ground and hurled blackened bodies in its wake.

  “There’s got to be more to it than that,” Tahngarth replied even as his cannon spoke again.

  “Not for me there isn’t,” Gerrard said, firing. “Not after what they did to Hanna.”

  Beyond Weatherlight, Urza’s titan engine strode patiently across the crowded battlefield. Each footfall crushed hundreds of Phyrexians. Fireball spells from the pilot bulb paved his way. Rockets sprang from the suit’s wrists and punched into monsters, exploding on impact. Lightning blasts jagged from an energy fork above and lanced Phyrexians. Monsters struggled to cling to the metallic legs of the titan, but periodic surges of magical energy fried them where they climbed. Flocks of falcon engines launched in silvery waves from the back of the battle suit. Urza killed with grim dispatch.

  “There isn’t more to it for Urza either,” Gerrard muttered. “Not after what they did to Barrin.”

  New fire woke from the edges of the world. Phyrexian cannons sent scarlet rays st
abbing across the sky. The beams sought Weatherlight.

  “They’re bringing up their mana bombards!” Gerrard shouted into the speaking tube beside him. “Stay sharp, Sisay.”

  Through the tube came the captain’s reply. “I’m never dull.”

  Sisay spun the ship aside, just in time. Raw power ripped the air along her stern.

  “How about some help back there, Squee?” Gerrard called.

  The tail gun came to life. Its goblin gunner shrieked over the roar of the weapon. Plasma belched from the end. Like a claw, it ripped the rest of the enemy flack from the sky.

  Worse was coming. A ball of black mana hurtled over the hills. It welled up behind the massive head of Urza’s titan engine. The goo struck, spattering across the metal. It hissed, seeking to crack through seams.

  Pausing in midstride, Urza flung off the clinging stuff. It fell across Phyrexians below and ate them away. Urza’s engine took another step, and more black-mana shots filled the sky.

  “We’re not going to last long up here!” Sisay called through the speaking tube.

  Gerrard answered with his gun. A pulse of plasma smashed aside another black-mana bomb heading for the ship. “Take us to Urza! See if he’s got any great ideas.”

  Weatherlight banked and surged toward the titan engine. Rays darted out on all sides of the ship. Beams crisscrossed in a deadly net. As the warship neared Urza, Gerrard stood in the traces.

  He saw too late. Scores of Phyrexian cannons had drawn a bead on them. The energy that surged suddenly through the dark sky was inescapable.

  “Damn him,” Gerrard cursed.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Urborgan Beachhead

  Urza’s titan engine extended a massive metallic arm around Weatherlight’s amidships. Thran metal clamped on living wood. The ship lurched to a halt above clambering armies of Phyrexians.

  “What the—!” Gerrard growled, slinging sideways in his gunnery traces. He slammed against the red-hot chassis of the gun. Gritting his teeth, he managed to squeeze off two more rounds. The rays stabbed from the cannon barrel and turned the air into a pair of red fists. They soared down in a one-two punch that sizzled Phyrexians to nothing and cratered the sand into glass bowls.

  New power surged. Along every rivet and seam of Urza’s titan engine, blue energy glowed. It swelled out to envelop the titan, the skyship, and its fleet. Through a glass dome, Urza was just visible in his pilot’s harness. His form shimmered—the start of a planeswalk. Rings of disturbance spread out rapidly from him. The piloting mechanisms dissolved into fuzz. The armor shell went next.

  Weatherlight’s hull glowed too. Even Gerrard at his gun, even Tahngarth, turned insubstantial.

  The mad world folded up around Weatherlight, her scrappy fleet, and Urza’s titan engine. Koilos and its cockroach armies slid away into sudden creases in reality. The false dawn faded. The false world disintegrated.

  In their place swirled the Blind Eternities. It was a cloudy chaos, a space of shapeless energies and potentialities.

  Gerrard gripped the fire controls of his cannon and gritted his teeth. He had soared through this nowhere place before, in Weatherlight’s own planeshifts, but he’d never been dragged through.

  Urza Planeswalker and his creations hung for a moment in the void. Then chaos took form. Potentiality became actuality.

  True dawn broke over the ship. For a moment, all seemed blue—the robin’s-egg sky above and the sloshing sea below. The scene was marred by one black knot of swamp and moss and tree. It was an island, a rather small island, though growing larger all the while.

  Weatherlight and her titan stowaway were plunging down toward it.

  Gerrard growled. Into the prow speaking tube, he shouted, “Sisay, evasive!”

  Her voice echoed back, “Hang on!”

  Weatherlight’s engines flared. She yawed suddenly, jiggling the titan’s arm. With angry insistence, the ship rolled. Sea replaced sky.

  Urza half-flipped. Nerveless, his metallic arm lost hold of the ship.

  Weatherlight’s airfoils slapped together. Fire flared behind. Like a cork from a bottle, Weatherlight shot from Urza’s grasp. The ship surged up into azure heavens.

  Urza’s titan engine meanwhile plunged toward azure seas.

  Gerrard peered over the rail and watched Urza fall, open-mouthed and panicky in his pilot’s capsule. The planeswalker’s shock could not have been more profound. He tumbled to splash magnificently just beyond the island’s shelf. His impact sent a plume of white water five hundred feet into the air. Limbs sank in sand and muck. The pilot bulb glared like an angry eye as it went under.

  Gerrard whooped. Standing in the traces, he shouted over the rail, “How do you like getting shoved around, planeswalker?”

  From black churning waters, the titan engine’s crown emerged. Foam draped the proud dome, and liquid streamed from power conduits. Urza doggedly marched toward the shore of the island.

  Gerrard shook his head. “Why did the old bastard bring us here?” He glanced toward the island, and his breath caught in his throat.

  Weatherlight had been here before, perhaps a year ago. This isle had once been the home of Crovax.

  “Sisay, take us low over the isle.”

  “Aye.”

  When last Weatherlight was here, the woods were overrun by Phyrexians and the plantation house was destroyed by fire. Crovax lost his home and his family on that day. He lost even more than that. He lost his angel Selenia too. It had been that loss that had turned him to evil.

  Now, more than ever, Gerrard understood such loss.

  Weatherlight plummeted from the skies, followed by her fleet. She shot low over the waves. Her keel tore past the toiling titan engine. She mounted up to soar above the palms.

  Gazing down between the tossing heads of the trees, Gerrard saw an all-too-familiar scene.

  Phyrexians filled the island. They slew men and beasts and feasted on them. They gnawed trees and burned thorn brakes. They piled ash into swamps and built redoubts. They set ray cannons and mana bombards in their embrasures. By the end of the day, this island would be a Phyrexian stronghold from which they could control the seas and the outer isles of Urborg.

  “Not if I can help it,” Gerrard said beneath his breath. “Battle stations!” he called through the tube. “Signal the fleet. We’re taking back the island.”

  Tahngarth stood in the gunnery traces and peered down at the swamps rattling past below. “We’d better take out their artillery before it gets running—”

  His words were cut short by a black stream of energy that erupted through the cypresses. It vaulted up toward Weatherlight, growing all the while.

  “Evasive!” Gerrard called.

  Weatherlight folded her airfoils and knifed down laterally above the trees. The black-mana bolt slid away to one side. Weatherlight’s wings spread to grab the air, and her engines blazed. Her serrated keel sliced the uppermost boughs as she shot out above the island.

  “Too late!” Tahngarth growled. “They’ve got their guns.”

  “And we’ve got ours,” Gerrard replied through gritted teeth.

  His cannon howled as it unleashed its round. The charge whirled a moment among white boles and crashed into a black-mana bombard. Plasma laved the gun chassis. It penetrated the energy stores. The bombard burst. It dissolved into a swelling sphere of fire. Energy pulverized the Phyrexian gunners. It destroyed trees nearby and cracked the very air.

  “That’s the way!” Gerrard whooped. “Keep us low and fast, Sisay—at the treetops. They won’t know where we are until we’re on top of them.”

  Sisay didn’t answer except by steering the ship along a low ridge above the swamps.

  Atop the ridge, Phyrexian cannons turned a bead on Weatherlight.

  Tahngarth’s gun cackled. The shot struck the first cannon. It melted li
ke a candle. Red metal spattered Phyrexian crews and destroyed the second gun. The third got off a shot. Crimson force rose from the steaming barrel.

  Growling, Tahngarth swept the air with answering fire. It caught the other blast like a net catching fish.

  Weatherlight roared out over the gun.

  Tahngarth pivoted to bring his cannon to bear, but the target slid to stern. Another bolt rose after the ship.

  “Look sharp, Squee!” Tahngarth shouted into the speaking tube.

  His voice spilled out beside the aft gun. There, a much smaller figure clutched the fire controls. Squee was an unlikely tail gunner—green and warty, with long, pointed ears, a crooked-toothed grin, and a reputation for cowardice. Still, he had downed Volrath’s own gunship and had assisted in countless cruiser kills during the opening war. At the tail gun, Squee fought with fury.

  This occasion was no exception. Squee loosed a triple blast. The first shot smashed aside the Phyrexian beam. The second ripped a clear way through the treetops. The third soared down the enemy barrel and peeled it back as if it were a banana.

  “Nice shooting, Squee!” yelled Gerrard. “That’s four guns down! How many do you think they’ve got?”

  As if in answer, a wall of scarlet energy jutted skyward ahead of them. Helionauts and jump ships hurtled away to either side of the red wall. Weatherlight was too big for such quick maneuvers. She soared toward destruction.

  Sisay dragged the helm hard to port. Weatherlight banked sharply away from the raking fire. Her keel cut a deep groove through the air. She rose on angry engines.

  The Phyrexian cannons followed her with fire.

  Sisay braced her legs and hauled hard on the wheel. The ship climbed almost straight up. Engines belched blue flame. Weatherlight rocketed heavenward, enwrapped in killing rays. She rose up past the curtain of fire and skipped away among shielding clouds. The light rays dissipated among drops of water.

  “It’d be nice to have a little help!” Sisay shouted.

  “I’ve given up expecting it,” Gerrard answered. “At least we’ve got our fleet. Take us back down to them, Captain.”