Planeshift

by J. Robert King

  Urza waved away the invitation.

  Commodore Guff quickly skimmed the instructions for exhausting the pilot capsule and nodded. “Thank you very much, indeed.”

  Flipping a cigar to the commodore, Bo Levar said, “It’s the only thing that cut the stink of Urborg.” He waved over his shoulder to his titan engine. Swamp muck coated the mechanism’s legs. The blue torso of the machine was spattered in mud, and its articulated joints were jammed with strange weeds.

  Urza gaped. “What did you do with it?”

  Bo Levar smiled. “There was a field of wild tobacco—”

  “Oh, you didn’t—”

  “Look who’s here!” Bo Levar said. “It’s Kristina and Taysir. I didn’t think they were still an item.”

  “They aren’t,” Freyalise replied. “Daria is with them.”

  The three new arrivals seemed a family—Taysir the patriarch in white beard and multicolored robes, Kristina the wise and mysterious mother, and Daria the wide-eyed and sassy young woman. Their titan engines were similarly tailored to their personalities. Taysir’s seemed an ancient and solemn statue, Kristina’s a powerful machine built to bear oppressive burdens, and Daria’s an engine so lithe it could dance untouched among lightning bolts.

  Dark haired and grinning, Daria bounded toward Freyalise. “Heard you had to go to Keld. Ugh. Still, it’s better than Urborg. Leeches and liches.”

  “Rutting lich lord bastards,” Freyalise said, hugging her young protégé.

  “I wish I could’ve gone with you,” Daria said.

  Freyalise nodded. “Soon enough we’ll all be heading to a place worse than Urborg or Keld.”

  Daria rolled her eyes. “I know. Phyrexia. Ought to be a blast.”

  “Exactly,” Urza said. “With the mana bombs you have and the implosion devices we will take from the fourth level, it’ll be a blast.”

  The final two planeswalkers arrived.

  The first had long been a resident of much-maligned Urborg, though he was no swamp-water snake. The panther warrior Lord Windgrace had lived on that isle when it had been a jungle mountaintop—before Argoth had sunk it. Though his land had died, Windgrace had remained. Though undead arose, Windgrace fought for the living. He remembered what Urborg had been and hoped to return it to its former state. On feline pads, he stalked into the midst of the company. At times, Windgrace took a humanlike form, or an amalgam between panther and man, but this day he went on all fours. His tawny titan engine was similarly equipped to stalk or stand, according to the will of its master.

  Last of all was the black dragon Szat. His horn-headed engine appeared among the others, and his sinewy bulk paced impatiently.

  “When do we start, Planeswalker?”

  Without standing, Urza sighed. “Momentarily. You all know the objectives. You all know your engines. Stay within them. The caustic environs of Phyrexia can dissolve even us. Now, suit up, and we fight.”

  Next moment, he alone sat at the foot of his titan engine. Then even Urza was gone.

  He materialized within the piloting harness of his titan suit. It was formfitted—with motor gauntlets for hands, battle boots for feet, and a sensor helm for his head. Every fiber of the suit responded to each impulse of his body. Urza felt the machine awakening around him. His senses extended into what had once been numb metal. All around, the other titans powered up.

  In addition to mechanical armaments, each of the nine titans also wielded magic and the arsenals of planeswalkers. Perhaps they should have been called dreadnoughts, for they had nothing to fear.

  Pivoting into formation with the other machines, Urza signaled them. As one, they ’walked.

  The glassy ground of Tolaria vanished. There was no time spent in the Blind Eternities. Planeswalkers could step from world to world as children step stone to stone. Besides, they had plenty of work to do.

  Tolaria was gone. A new, verdant land opened before them. Primeval forests spread thickly to glimmering lakes. Rugged mountains crouched on the horizon beneath a sunless sky. Gray clouds, pregnant with rain, streaked the red heavens. In gleaming waters waded dragon engines. Not scabrous fighting machines, these were living beasts—wild and free.

  It was a beautiful, bountiful world. Urza staggered a bit to look at it. How could Yawgmoth rule such loveliness? Urza had fought in the inner spheres—nightmare landscapes—but he had never stopped to admire the first sphere. It was a dream. His brother had come here and told of its glories….

  Mishra. He had always been the dreamer, the man who loved tales around the campfire. If Urza had seen this place too, had been with Mishra that day, maybe there would never have been a war. Maybe Mishra would live on.

  Mishra…Barrin…Xantcha…

  Hey, Urza, take a breath, there, came the voice of Bo Levar in his mind. Are we going to do this or not?

  Within his titan suit, Urza blinked. He breathed. His thoughts slowly cleared. Yes, of course. Beyond that brake of forest is the city of Gamalgoth, first metropolis of Phyrexia. In it lie conduits that reach throughout the first sphere. There, we begin.

  The joints of his titan engine felt stiff as he stepped toward the city. His foot struck the world like a mallet on a drum. Dust rolled up in clouds from that impact. In the dust were bits of metal. It was the ubiquitous component of this world. Metal in the soil, metal in the water, metal in the air. Another step and Urza began to run.

  The other nine engines thundered after him.

  Five more enormous strides brought Urza to the trees. Powerstone arrays imbedded in his helm optically enhanced the leaves, showing them to be living metal—veins like inlay and flesh like foil. That realization made the world only more beautiful. It was the dream of artificers to build a machine that lived. It was the dream of bioengineers to grow a creature out of metal. Here, on the first sphere of his world, Yawgmoth had again and again fulfilled the dream of ages. To destroy this world would be like burning a library. Urza ached to stop and stare and study.

  This damned blasted exhaust system! It’s filling my suit with oil stench! complained Commodore Guff.

  Light up, friend, Bo Levar suggested. It’ll clear the stench and remind you of Dominaria and all the things we fight for.

  Urza clutched that thought to himself. Yes. Once the stench of Phyrexian blood made him ill. Now, he had not even noticed it. Urza had even gotten to like the smell. He wished he had one of Bo Levar’s smokes.

  Ancient trees snapped like twigs before Urza’s titan engine. He cracked his way through the brake and stared down at Gamalgoth.

  The city spread across the whole of a vast plateau. Gray mountains hemmed it in on one side and a forested rift on the other. Between them shone a gleaming city in bone-white stone. The tight-packed buildings seemed enormous fungi—irregular domes, hanging plazas, conic buttresses, weird roof lines, mounded stories, citadels growing up out of the larger city. It was a grown city, an ancient city, perfectly suited to this primeval world.

  Urza would not pause. He would not show weakness. He must lead the nine down to that glorious city and tear it up and set bombs and activate them….

  Roaring a sound of deep dread, Urza ran toward Gamalgoth.

  Rockets shot in spiraling paths from his wrists. Falcons shrieked in manifold fury from his back. Lightning leaped from his brow.

  Smoke billowed in explosion across the walls of the city. Rock vaulted outward, leaving large breaches. Urza ran toward the gaps. Above the city, falcon engines dropped like silver meteors. They sought oil-blood and the organs that pumped it. With ramrod heads and razor beaks, they punched into the abdominal cavities of countless beasts. Whirling blades sliced the organs to ribbons.

  The rockets and the falcons and lightning only softened the outer defenses. At full stride, Urza reached the city. His titanic foot crashed down atop a gatehouse and smashed it flat. A second stride, and a phalanx of Phyr
exian troopers died. The buildings seemed as fragile as a wasps’ nest. The beasts within burned as easily, buzzed as angrily, stung as impotently.

  Bo Levar surged up alongside Urza. A blue wave of energy fanned out from him, macerating Phyrexians.

  Szat poured magical fire across the swarming monsters. Their heads flared like jackstraws.

  Commodore Guff knelt and clawed within a shattered building as though he sought his monocle.

  Freyalise planted rampant growth with each footfall. Vines jagged out to strangle the city.

  Even Daria and Taysir and Windgrace cast spells with sanguine glee.

  Only Urza killed with numb hands and a numb heart.

  CHAPTER 9

  Among the Dead, Friends

  For five days, Agnate and his Metathran legions had driven inward across fens and bogs. Beneath the blazing sun, they ground forward. Beneath the Glimmer Moon, they camped on whatever terrain they had gained and defended it against an endless assault of nocturnal beasts.

  No human would have survived the campaign. Humans were born for other things—for laughing and falling in love and bearing young. They had to give up such things to fight a war. Metathran were different, bioengineered and therefore asexual. There was no falling in love and no bearing young, and the only laughing they did came with victory.

  Metathran ate while they fought. Their teeth clenched rock-solid biscuits that contained all the nutrients they needed. They drank while they fought. Enzymes in their throats purified even rank swamp water. Like oxen in the traces, they bulled forward over new ground. They could battle in their sleep. For Metathran, fighting was as breathing, as dreaming.

  It had been a glorious five days for Agnate. This was not trench warfare like Koilos, with suicide charges across empty ground. This was guerrilla warfare. Secrecy and cunning and courage were key. Tactics and wilderness skills meant life. Here Phyrexians in their mindless hordes could not combat Metathran in their mindful legions. It was a vindication of the creature that Agnate was. It was also revenge for Thaddeus.

  Agnate could still see his counterpart dissected alive—every tissue flayed away, his body dismantled bone by bone to his ribcage, even a stone laid against his diaphragm to help him breathe. Phyrexians had torn him apart to learn how Metathran fought.

  This is how we fight, Agnate thought as his battle-axe cracked the skull of a Phyrexian trooper. It clove through the neck and into the beast’s sternum. This is how we fight.

  “Advance!” shouted Agnate to his troops.

  Agnate lifted his axe. The cleft monster came up with it. He brought the Phyrexian down on one of its compatriots. The horn-studded trooper made a weighty mace. Spikes drove through the second monster’s torso. Internal organs showed in their slimy complexity as the two beasts fell.

  Careful not to slip in the mess, Agnate set his powerstone pike to receive the next charge. A monster obliged. Its face was little more than gray skin stretched over a human skull. Its torso was a bundle of tormented muscle over twisted bone. It fell on the pike, which tore its way inward. Still the creature fought.

  Holding his pike with one hand, Agnate dislodge the axe with the other. He swung it. The blade sliced through one of the beast’s arms, clove the ribs laterally, and emerged from the torso. The top half of the creature toppled from its legs. Agnate shoved the rest of the polearm through the monster. He picked up the weapon and strode onward.

  Shoulder to shoulder with him ran a tight pack of Metathran. They were bloodied from that last charge but unbowed. The shouts of warriors and screams of beasts resounded on the flanks of the advance. Agnate and his corps had punched through the center.

  They charged up a slimy bank, past arms of forest, and out onto a wide, sandy plain. Beyond the sand flats stood a scattered army of Phyrexians. They drew back, uncertain, as Agnate and his forces appeared.

  Agnate halted. All around him, Metathran formed up on their commander. More of the blue-skinned fighters arrived every moment. One hundred troops. Two hundred troops. Five hundred troops.

  The Phyrexians beyond the sand flats began an all-out retreat.

  “Charge!” Agnate shouted, his axe lifted high.

  His voice was joined by five hundred others. Battle cries shook the air. A thousand boots shook the ground. In ten steps, the Metathran reached the speed of hunting hounds, in twenty, that of hunting cats. It felt good to be running full-out after battling for inches.

  The ground suddenly stole his feet. Agnate plunged waist deep into quicksand. All around him, his folk did the same. There was no stopping the charge. They bore forward and were swallowed by the deceptive world.

  He had led his forces into a trap. The Phyrexians had gotten him just as they had gotten Thaddeus—lured into a fatal charge. There was no time for shame, not on a battlefield, and this shifting, sinking stuff was the current battlefield.

  Metathran were too brawny to float. It wouldn’t work to lie flat upon the sand and hope to be buoyed up. Even with lungs full of air, Metathran sank like stones. Already the wet sand lapped at Agnate’s ribs. It was preternaturally cold and slick like rot. A current dragged him downward and to the right.

  Others warriors sank more quickly than he. A line of them were already submerged to their shoulders. Their necks craned above the sand. They must have been situated over a crevice in the basin. Whatever underground river fed the quicksand, the water drained there. The current dragged them down. Those warriors were doomed. Sand made little wells in their ears. They would never escape. The current would drag them down and through the crevice and tumble their dead bodies in underworld rivers. Soon the whole army would bump through the arteries of Dominaria.

  There was only one hope—to sink to the bottom and walk themselves out.

  “Submerge,” Agnate commanded, “and stride for shore!”

  For some, it was too late. Their heads were covered.

  Agnate drew his last breath, closed his eyes, and drove himself into the sucking ground. Hands sculled against the thick grains. His feet plunged deeper. Cold and slick, the sands closed over him. Black ground gripped him and pulled him down.

  Any moment now there would be solid rock, or mud thick enough to shove against, or something other than this cold, entombing stuff.

  Any moment.

  Agnate sank in silence and chill. He wondered if this was what it felt like to die. Most mortals believed their souls rose to some airy otherworld, but Metathran had no souls. Their bodies were their all, and their bodies sank. Perhaps this was what Thaddeus had felt in the moment of death. Perhaps Agnate even now was dying.

  The air in his chest was hot. It swelled in his lungs as though they would burst.

  Agnate’s foot caught on something hard. It seemed a stick, or club—long and slippery. Kicking, Agnate felt more of them—not sticks but bones.

  This quicksand had eaten armies before, countless times. Agnate and his troops were only the latest additions to a warrior’s graveyard.

  Agnate caught a foothold and pushed. The bones shifted. He slipped. His other boot drove against a skull. It was no good. The sand was too thick, the current too strong.

  Agnate felt shame for having led his people here to die. Shame meant he had given up.

  A hand grasped his leg. There was no flesh on that grip, only bone—powerful, implacable bone.

  This was some lich lord’s bone yard, his recruiting ground for an undead army. Agnate had not only slain his fellow warriors but had enlisted them to fight for evil.

  Another hand grasped his leg, and another. They were all around him, these skeletal creatures. He struggled to break free, but bone and sand were allied. They clutched his arms, his sides, his neck, his skull. Agnate was dead. There was no point struggling. Death had won. Its literal hands would drag him down.

  Agnate released the hot breath he had held. It slid away in blind bubbles through
the thick sand. Yes. He was dead.

  Except that the skeletal hands lifted him through the flood. They bore him upward in the wake of his own fleeing breath. Sand streamed away. In moments, he broke the boiling surface.

  Through lips limned in his own blood, Agnate raked in a grateful breath.

  Everywhere his army emerged, lifted on undead hands. Some Metathran were borne aloft by skeletal warriors. Others were clutched in the grip of ghouls. Still more were lifted by empty-eyed zombies, or insubstantial specters, or shambling mounds of rotting flesh. These strange benefactors shoved Metathran heads above the sand and bore blue warriors toward the far shore.

  Agnate was numb. He had already given up life. He should have been dead. Normally a Metathran would shrink from the corrupting touch of these monsters, but who shrinks from the touch of salvation?

  Metathran and undead, the army surged toward shore. There, the Phyrexians waited.

  “Prepare for battle!” Agnate croaked hoarsely.

  He had lost his powerstone pike in the struggle, but he still carried his battle-axe. Lifting it from the quicksand, he hefted it overhead. His command had been purposely ambiguous. Agnate himself was uncertain whether to use his axe on undead or Phyrexians.

  Sand fell in wet clumps from Agnate. It clung a moment longer within the ribs and pelvises of the skeletons. Bony feet splashed through ankle-deep quicksand.

  With a roar, Agnate twisted out of their grip. Cold bones slid from hot flesh. Landing on his feet, the Metathran commander flung a pair of skeletons away. They lost hold of his sodden armor and fell sideways. He swung his axe high to drive them back.

  He needn’t have. The skeletons had not paused in their clattering march. They ran out of the quicksand and leaped with savage fury on the Phyrexians. Finger bones gouged out compound eyes. Rusted swords cracked against sagittal crests. The warriors of old fought fiercely in defense of their island, of their world.

  Agnate could only stare after them in stupefied amazement. All around, his soldiers stood in the shallows and watched as zombies ripped apart Phyrexians. Blinking sand from his eyes, Agnate swallowed hard.