“You’re the captain, Sisay. You’ve always been the captain. You have to decide. What do we do?”
Fire roared in a red-hot column from the mouth of Rhammidarigaaz.
“Hang on!” Sisay shouted.
She swung the wheel hard to port and yanked back on it. Weatherlight stood on end.
“Full power!” she called.
Weatherlight’s engines hurled their own fire. On pillars of flame, the ship rocketed away. The Gaea figurehead tore through clouds. Her metal wings spawned cyclones in her wake.
Through swirls of mist, the five dragons ascended. They gained on the shrieking engine. As red as ruby, green as emerald, white as lightning, blue as sky, and black as death—the beasts spat killing blasts. They arced up toward Weatherlight.
Tahngarth yanked his gun about but couldn’t draw a bead past the gleaming wings.
Next moment, those wings were mantled in fire. They would have melted except that the Thran metal was fortified by Karn. Even as flames fell back, voracious spores engulfed the stern. They rooted themselves and grew rampantly. Any other ship would have splintered beneath the parasitic plants, but Weatherlight’s magnigoth wood was strengthened by Multani. A white shaft of light blazed out above Weatherlight. It dropped to cleave the ship in two. There would be no defense against it—except an expert helmsman.
Sisay rammed the helm forward. The ship plunged. Her wings tucked. She slipped from beneath the killing beam. Engines drove her down toward Urborg.
The hurtling dragons overshot her. They turned in the sky above and folded their wings. Snarling and snapping, they dived.
“Tahngarth, get to stern,” Sisay called. “We won’t need forward guns while we’re running.”
Tahngarth nodded his approval and unlaced his gunnery traces. “Let’s just hope I can fill Squee’s shoes.”
* * *
—
How glorious it was to cross Dominaria in the Golden Argosy. No hunger, no thirst, no weariness, no wounds—but these were only the beginning of the marvel. The ship sailed with impossible speed. She cut through water as though it were air, and through air as though it were nothing at all.
From the moment that Warlord Astor had debarked, the ship’s sails had filled with an otherworldly gale. She had coursed like a comet across the world. Her path was straight and incorruptible. Where islands loomed up before her, she only breasted through them. Her prow clove into sandy beaches, soil, and solid rock. She cut through mountains as though they were but shadows and sailed out the other side.
Never did her company fear. Eladamri and Liin Sivi, the Steel Leaf and Skyshroud elves, and ten thousand Keldon warriors—none of them feared the ship would wreck. They were well aware of the world beyond her rails but knew their role in that world lay far ahead, at Urborg.
Days and nights scrolled away until at last the black island chain opened before them.
Eladamri stood at the prow, clasping Liin Sivi’s hand. “The heroes of Keld will fight the final battle of Twilight on that island. There we will turn back the darkness.”
Liin Sivi nodded. Her eyes were bright and stern, focused on the island. “That central volcano hides the source of all this evil.”
“The Stronghold,” Eladamri said, completing the thought. The two had lived all their lives in the shadow of that horrid fortress. They had fought against it, had even invaded it. Now, two worlds away, they rushed toward it again. “We will capture the land and plumb the fiery depths and destroy the Stronghold once and for all.”
The Golden Argosy surged toward Urborgan shores. She crossed reefs that would have wrecked any normal vessel. She plunged through shallows that should have forbidden her massive draft. The beach swept up. Sand parted before her hull. The Golden Argosy clove through palms and swamps. Nothing could halt her.
“What will we do when at last the ship stops?” Liin Sivi wondered aloud.
“We will leap from her and fight,” replied Eladamri.
Liin Sivi glimpsed a Metathran guard high in a cypress. He stared down incredulously. “Will we remember this—the ship, the journey, any of it?”
Eladamri gazed at the drowned forest through which they plunged. “No. We will not remember, or remember only as sleepers remember the waking world.” He clutched her hand tighter. “But some things even sleepers do not forget.”
Without slowing, the Golden Argosy suddenly stopped. Volcanic foothills rose ahead of her.
Eladamri peered up the mountainside. “Here is our battleground. Here we must depart immortal realms for mortal ones.”
Drawing her toten-vec, Liin Sivi said, “I am ready.”
“No,” replied Eladamri, reaching across to her. He took her jaw in his hand, leaned slowly in, and kissed her. The heat of mortal desire passed through that kiss. They parted, and Eladamri stared into her eyes. “Now, we’re both ready.” He drew his own sword, set his foot on the rail, and leaped from the Golden Argosy.
* * *
—
One moment, Eladamri had lain half-submerged in an icy sea. The next, he landed on a gnarl of cooled lava. It was black and rough and hot beneath his hands. He couldn’t quite catch himself. He tucked his head and rolled around his sword. Rock rasped his neck and elbows. He came up on his feet, his knuckles bleeding.
Liin Sivi rose beside him. Her toten-vec swept before her. “Where are we? What’s happened?”
“I don’t know,” Eladamri responded, edging toward her.
There was sudden motion behind them. They whirled.
From the shrouded forest at the base of the volcano poured elves and Keldons. They weren’t wet or bedraggled. All seemed to appear in midair, as if leaping from the trees. Their armor was polished, their skin clean and healthy. Steel Leaf and Skyshroud elves appeared beside Keldon warriors. They stumbled and rose in wary confusion.
“I dreamed of a golden ship….” Liin Sivi ventured uncertainly. “I dreamed we were to fight the final battle of Twilight here….”
“Yes,” Eladamri said, taking Liin Sivi’s hand. He nodded up the volcano behind them. “This mountain is familiar. Do you remember it?”
A bitter smile lit her face. “This is a Rathi mountain. This is the mountain that holds the Stronghold.” She shook her head. “There is no battle I’d rather fight.”
Brandishing his sword, Eladamri shouted, “Forward!” With Liin Sivi beside him, he climbed the volcano. Elves and Keldons in their thousands followed.
It was good to march again beneath the sun.
* * *
—
A hundred miles from Urborg, in seas a mile deep, something enormous moved. It might have been a school of whales, though even a hundred thousand leviathans could not have mounded the waters so violently. Whatever coursed beneath the surface was as massive as a mountain and faster than a falcon. In its long trek across the globe, it pushed before it a tidal wave that traveled at awesome speed. It drove toward distant Urborg.
The thing was only seventy-five miles out now. The basin of the sea sloped upward. Just behind the rushing wave, kelpy masses surfaced. They seemed Sargasso. Leaves rattled as the foliage lifted above the waves. Twigs jutted forth, then branches, then boughs. Water cascaded from the widespread crowns of the submerged trees.
These were not just trees. Each was the size of an isle, each the height of a mountain, and they moved. Enormous boughs hurled away water. Vast knotholes glared over the flood. Hollows that could only be described as mouths disgorged the brackish depths. Enormous roots strode along the sea floor at impossible speeds.
The magnigoth treefolk had come all the way from Yavimaya. They were drawn not straight to Urborg but on a twisted path, following their stolen captive: Rith.
In ancient days, the green Primeval had been entrusted to them. For epochs, these treefolk had faithfully guarded their prisoner. Even before the forest of Yavima
ya grew, they had kept Rith captive. The Thran-Phyrexian War could not shake her loose, nor the Argoth event, nor even the great Ice Age. Now, though, after ten thousand years, Rith was free. It was a small thing to march across the oceans of the world, seeking her.
At last, they had cornered her at Urborg. She would not escape again.
The treefolk had brought help. All across their bark clustered thousands of Kavu. The gigantic lizards blinked brine from their nictitating membranes but otherwise remained motionless. The cold depths had sent them into hibernation. Now in the sunlight, they slowly awoke. One by one, Kavu opened their nostrils and stretched. Steam rose from armored hides. Blood began to run again. Scaly necks craned for sight of Urborg. Kavu lords—six-legged lizards that easily weighed ten tons—filled their wattles with long-calls. To these eerie battle songs were added the drone of Kavu stomachs. The beasts had awakened hungry and soon would fill their bellies with Phyrexians.
It wouldn’t be long now. At fifty miles out, the magnigoth treefolk waded in fifteen hundred feet of water. Boughs dripped their last drops into the turbid ocean. Leaves rustled in sea winds. At twenty-five miles out, roots splashed through the shallows. In mere minutes, they clambered over reefs and up the shore. Treefolk rose to their full height. They were as tall as the volcanoes themselves.
The treefolk strode inward across marshy lands. Saltwater sloughed from their bark. Roots that had traversed half a world tore up the ground of Urborg. They sank in the wet soil and ripped holes through to underground caverns. Seawater poured down these shafts, flooding the caves below. The bubbling channels of water soon were full. Decaying corpses in their thousands drifted from the inundated underworld.
Kavu cared nothing for corpses, but ahead, on the foothills of the central volcano, Phyrexians massed. Battle cries ceased as lizards scrambled down the trunks of the striding trees. They bounded to ground. Claws designed to sink into wood gripped cold lava just as well. Kavu hurled themselves along the mountain side. With mouths gaping, they galloped into the Phyrexian troops. The crunch of the first few only whetted their appetites. This was not battle, but feast.
Heedless, the treefolk strode on. They pursued another foe. Above the volcano flew a great ship, pursued by five roaring Primevals. One of those serpents was Rith.
Striding up the hardened lava, treefolk clawed amid the clouds. Boughs raked the teeming sky. Ships and dragons were but gnats to magnigoth treefolk. They hauled down branches draped with dead serpents. None was Rith. It was easy to kill countless gnats, but difficult to catch a specific one.
The treefolk lord that had held Rith captive all these millennia bellowed with fury. Wind ripped through its core. The exhalation hurled dragons from the sky. The inhalation afterward dragged more serpents in, wedging them in hollows and impaling them on slivers. None was Rith. The Primeval flitted away, along with her pantheon of dragon gods. The treefolk lord pursued its elusive quarry across the sky.
* * *
—
“What in the Nine Hells!” shouted Tahngarth. His barrage of cannon fire ceased as he gabbled at the huge trees that circled the volcano. They lashed out at Weatherlight. “Even the flora has turned against us!”
From the speaking tube came Multani’s voice. “Sisay, fly closer to them.”
“Closer?” she echoed in a near shriek.
“Yes,” Multani replied. “They’ve come not for us but for the green dragon.”
Tahngarth shook his head in dubiety. A massive bough swept violently past Weatherlight.
“We thought Rhammidarigaaz was on our side too. What’s to say these trees don’t want their wood back?”
“I’m to say,” replied Multani. “I am, after all, their spirit. Take us close. Close enough to make contact. I’ll coordinate the attack.”
“You’re not leaving us,” Sisay insisted.
“Only long enough to marshal the treefolk. Then I’ll be back. This is a fight I wouldn’t miss.”
Tahngarth felt his stomachs churn as Weatherlight plunged away beneath him. He held on tight to Squee’s ray cannon. To port came lofty leaves, thrashing violently along the wing. To starboard was empty sky plunging down to a boiling sea. Directly before him, gaining on the ship’s stern, were four angry dragon gods.
Ever since Gerrard disappeared, things had gotten crazy.
CHAPTER 34
In Waving Fields of Grass
Urza Planeswalker wandered through waving fields of grass. The stuff made a shushing noise under his titanic feet. A wind bore past him, eager to cross the hill. On the horizon ranged gray mountains. The sky was a shell in solid white.
It was a serene place, the sixth sphere of Phyrexia. To Urza, it felt like home.
True, it was not grass but twisted wire. Its barbs would rip a person apart before he moved ten paces. Its electrical impulses would cook his flesh instantly. The winds were equally unnatural, spawned in mile-high turbines among the mountains. They would pluck up a person like dandelion down and chop her to pieces and hurl her parts endlessly around the sphere. This was no place for humans, but for an artificer in a titan engine, it was a heaven.
Urza stopped walking. He wished he could crouch here and harvest wires and weave them into a wreath and charge it with the land’s own currents. Power was everywhere, but more than power drew him. Beauty did. This place was beautiful.
Urza gazed down at his hand. It held the single ugly thing in the windblown place—an armored device with a riot of its own wires, bound around a powerstone incendiary device. A bomb, but not just any bomb. This was the master. Its blast would trigger all the others. It would set off the destruction of all Phyrexia.
The destruction of all Phyrexia. Urza could little bear the thought.
The place he would plant the bomb lay just ahead. It seemed a termite mound but was the size of a mountain. Irregular towers reached into the beaming sky. Windows glowed with red radiance. The light came from no torch or lantern but from the very inhabitants of the otherworldly city. Yawgmoth’s Inner Circle.
While most Phyrexians were creatures of flesh and machine, Yawgmoth’s Inner Circle belonged to another phylum entirely. The pneumagogs dwelt between the physical and metaphysical worlds. They had bodies, yes—red-shelled bodies of living metal. Their insectoid legs could gallop across ground, and their rasping wings could slice through air. But these mechanisms were only the loci of their beings, rooting them in time and space. Pneumagog bodies were wrapped in layer upon layer of scintillating spirit. This was the true essence of pneumagogs—brilliant, glowing, empathic souls.
Nowhere else in all the Nine Spheres did pneumagogs exist fully. When they ascended to higher spheres, only their living-metal bodies went. When they descended to lower spheres, only their spirits went. It was here, on the sixth sphere, that they were a glorious amalgam of physic and metaphysic.
Urza strode toward the city of the pneumagogs. They would attack him, of course. He would slay them, as before. Rockets would blast apart their metal bodies. Spells would liberate their fettered souls. Urza and his comrades would extinct them. Even now, the five other titans slew the inhabitants of similar cities and planted charges to exterminate them.
As Urza’s feet chuffed through wire, the first pneumagog sentries emerged from the hive. They swarmed toward him.
In reflex, Urza energized his ray cannons. He lifted one arm toward the approaching pneumagogs. They seemed angels in red. Their wings strummed the air. With a single volley, Urza could have cut the figures from the sky, but he hesitated.
In moments, they surrounded him. They did not attack. Instead, the swarm enclosed the titan in a scarlet sphere. Their wings made an assonant drone. Compound eyes stared with sad confusion at Urza.
He marched onward, toward their city.
A few of the creatures darted down to the bomb. With antennae and proboscises, they sensed the device and its function.
Urza lifted it in their midst. He felt their fear. Surely they felt his regret.
Any moment, they would attack. They would rip apart his bomb, his titan engine, and himself. Urza had no will to stop them.
Neither did the pneumagogs will to stop him. They knew what he bore—not only the bomb but also the tremendous reluctance to use it. Instead of impeding his way, the pneumagogs buzzed up alongside him, escorting him. He took another deliberate step. They paced him.
Gentle creatures, why don’t you fight this doom? sent Urza to the flock of beasts.
Their answer came in a thousand voices speaking as one in his head. You are one of us, Urza Planeswalker. You are a creature of flesh and metal and spirit.
Indeed, they were right. The only difference was that Urza wore his metal body on the outside and carried his metaphysical body within.
But I am going to destroy you. I have devised this bomb for the very purpose.
You would not destroy us, Urza. We know that you see the beauty of this place. We know that your soul is aligned with ours.
Urza sighed in resignation. It was a glorious freedom to be understood. Barrin had understood Urza, but he had not approved of the planeswalker’s true self. Always, he had nagged. These creatures, though, they knew Urza and understood him and approved.
How have I been so deluded? I have spent my life defending a world that I hate and that hates me. All the while, I have made war on my true home, my true people.
He knelt in the midst of wires and pneumagogs. Urza lifted the bomb in one clawed hand. With the other, he ripped back the smooth metal casing. The wires within formed an obscene brain filled with an obscene thought—the destruction of Phyrexia. Urza slid the pincers of his free hand in among the circuits. Without these fragile metal filaments, none of the bombs would ignite. Without them, Phyrexia would live.
Urza’s claws closed. He yanked. Conduits popped. Sparks showered. White smoke puffed from the case. Urza dragged the ruined ignition device from the master bomb. The powerstone grew dark. He dropped it on the grass at his feet. It lay there disarmed, impotent to slay.
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