Invasion

Chapter 31

Barrin fought a futile, one-man fight over Urborg.

At first, Urza's coalition had held strong, but the Phyrexians were too many, too vicious. They slew the Keldons and Metathran to a man. They drove Serrans and elves and panther warriors from the isles. When the costs of battle mounted, Urza himself had summoned Darigaaz and the dragon nations away to Koilos, and enlisted Lord Windgrace for his titan corps. In the battle of Urborg, he left a single warrior-"My one-man army." Mage Master Barrin floated high above the rankling central volcano. He surveyed the wreckage of the past month. Helionauts burned on the ground. Longships sank in the brine. Angels lay dead in rainwater swamps and elves in saltwater marshes. Metathran were crucified to cypress trees. Keldons rotted in kelp beds. Muck made them all seem slain pigs. Bugs the size of fish fed on them- worse things too. Phyrexians clambered like roaches over the dead.

There were victories, of course. Two of the Phyrexian cruisers lay in broken heaps. The minions of the lich lord crawled into the fallen hulks like maggots into corpses. Ghouls and scavenger folk tricked away whatever they could and matched claws and teeth with the Phyrexians there. Barrin let them annihilate each other.

A worse battle loomed. This morning, a storm front had formed above the western sea. The clouds approached with slow confidence. All the while, they gathered steam and wrath above the churning ocean. The storm had rolled within a score of miles before Barrin saw what it hid. Along its advancing edge appeared the black prows of seven, eight… twelve Phyrexian cruisers.

"If I fight this fight alone, I will lose the island and myself," Barrin reasoned. "If Urza wants this stink-swamp saved-for whatever unfathomable reason-he will have to grant me more aid."

Closing his eyes, Barrin drew a long, deep breath of the brimstone air. He tapped memories of another island, of blue and beautiful Tolaria. Power surged through him, the azure energies of magical manipulation. Space folded. Barrin leaped from one wrinkle to another. Urborg vanished away beneath him, taking its envelope of steamy heat. Koilos formed, equally hot, but as dry as a furnace.

Barrin hovered above sand dunes and rills of rock. In the sheer distance, Phyrexians filled the world. They drilled and rested, fought for the best food and gobbled it down live, rode trench worms and burned their murdered own. In the near distance, coalition armies camped- Metathran, Benalish, and elf, with dragons sleeping in their midst.

Urza would be just beyond them, under that long line of canvas. The fabric hid a deep trench hewn from bedrock by artifact engines. It was Urza's secret bunker, a thousand feet deep, two thousand feet long, and a hundred feet wide. Within the bunker, he kept his secret weapons-the titan engines.

Drifting slowly down to the canvas, Barrin swept his hand over himself. He turned momentarily insubstantial and slid through the fabric.

Cool darkness filled the bunker. Titan engines stood against one wall, seeming watchers in an ancient tomb. In a few of the cannon-toting machines, planeswalkers fiddled, finalizing the settings of their command pods.

At the base of the trench, Urza worked. He had set up his folding travel table, a massive workspace that compacted into a slim panel of wood. Maps of Koilos lay neatly arrayed before the master artificer. He scribed confident lines across them, projecting angles of attack.

Barrin descended beside his old friend. Charred war cloaks settled about the mage's ankles. As Dominaria resumed its hold on him, Barrin let out an involuntary sigh.

"Hello, Urza."

The planeswalker glanced up, his eyes bright in the gloom. "Is the battle of Urborg concluded?"

Barrin bristled at this greeting. He replied just as curtly. "No. I need reinforcements."

Looking back down at the maps of Koilos, Urza said, "There are none."

Shrugging, Barrin pursed his lips. "Then Urborg is lost."

Urza snorted, "Then it is lost."

"So that's it?" Barrin asked heatedly. "A month ago, Urborg had to be saved at all cost, and now you lose it with a shrug?"

Raising his gaze, Urza said, "It is a strategically important site, second only to Koilos. But it is second to Koilos. If Urborg cannot be held without reinforcements- and we have no reinforcements to spare-then Urborg is lost."

Flinging his hands out in surrender, Barrin said, "Yes, lost." He leaned against the wall of the trench and folded his arms. "I see you have your final chess match worked out here-your armies, your war engines, your airships and dragons and titans. Was that Weatherlight I saw?"

"Yes," Urza replied simply.

"Good," Barrin snapped. "I'm going to go see my daughter-"

"No," Urza interrupted. Something like sadness-or guilt- entered his eyes.

"What do you mean, no?"

"Hanna died two weeks ago."

"What?" Barrin barked, laughing incredulously. "What did you say?"

"The plague overwhelmed her. There was nothing anyone could do."

Shaking his head in disbelief, Barrin said, "Hanna? My Hanna?"

"There was nothing anyone could do."

The mage master's face became a sickly white. He steadied himself on Urza's table, crumpling the maps there. He gazed blankly at those ruined plans. Color suddenly flooded back into his features-blood.

He spoke in a quiet, trembling voice. "There was something I could have done, Urza. I could have held her hand. I could have stroked her hair…" His voice failed, but his welling eyes stared imploringly at Urza. "Why didn't you summon me?"

"Urborg had to be saved."

"Don't say that! Don't for one moment say that!" Barrin replied, dashing the tears from his eyes. He lashed out, flinging the maps from Urza's table. They rattled in an angry flock of paper and landed in the dust. "Of course you didn't call me. Your work was always the most important thing. Of course I wasn't there when my daughter died. I wasn't there when she lived. You stole her from me, and that's not the worst of it-I let you steal her from me! Yawgmoth of the Nine Hells!"

"Don't say that name-" Urza said urgently, lifting his hands toward the titans-"not here,"

"Where is she?" Barrin demanded. "Where is she?"

"Gerrard buried her. She lies in the sands of Koilos."

"She wouldn't have wanted that. This desert was nothing to her. Tolaria was always her home. I'm taking her to Tolaria, to be buried beside her mother."

"No," Urza said, plucking the maps from the dust. "Tolaria, too, is lost. The gathering of planeswalkers drew Phyrexians. They attacked ferociously. We escaped with the titan engines and every useful device, and detonated the others. Even now, the Phyrexians solidify their hold on the island."

"Solidify their hold?" Barrin asked in angry amazement. "So some of the students and scholars remain?"

"Every battle has casualties-"

"And I have become one, Urza," Barrin said. All the anger had gone from his voice. Only dread clarity remained. "I have spent my life fighting battles I did not believe in because I believed in you. No more. The cost is too high. Belief is too rare. I've been a fool. I fought for things I did not love and let what I loved slip away- first my wife, and then my daughter, and now myself. I'm done. I'm taking Hanna back to Tolaria. I'm fighting for my home and her home and my wife's grave. I'm finally going to fight a battle I believe in-I'm going to fight a final battle I believe in."

Brow furrowing, Urza said simply, "You cannot."

"Good-bye, my friend," Barrin replied, and he was gone.

He had never teleported himself into solid matter before. It was ill-advised, of course. Barrin was through with advice-he was through with nearly everything. The Mage Master of Tolaria materialized beneath the sand of a nearby hill. He took form, his arms wrapped around the buried body of his daughter. When she was first born, Barrin had held her thus, had placed on her a beacon enchantment. It let him find her wherever she was. It had led him to her here, in her grave.

Why didn't I use the enchantment a month ago? Why not a year ago? Why not all those days of childhood when she was building box kites and damming the creeks of Tolaria?

"Hanna," Barrin whispered with his last breath, brought cold within him from Urza's bunker.

The single, quiet word emerged with the force of a blue gale. It blasted away sand, shooting it up through the press of soil. Grains spat from the grave. The wind redoubled. A vortex stripped away particle after particle. Sunlight stabbed down through the thick ground. The spinning shaft widened, carving out the grave. It scoured Barrin's face and mutton chops. It filled his bloodied cloak and cleansed the white cerements that wrapped his daughter. Barrin gasped in sadness. Hurloon myrrh had been used on the cloths, and it exuded the scent of sorrow.

"Hanna," the old mage cried.

The whirlwind tore away the last of the entombing sand. Without its weight pressing on him, Barrin marveled at how light she was. This had been no sudden death but the long agony that comes from chronic neglect.

How could I have been worlds away while she slowly died? "Hanna!"

Through the angry storm, Barrin rose. He bore his child in his arms. Beyond the circling curtain of dust, he saw the crew of Weatherlight. They had rushed to the grave site when they saw the sandstorm begin. Tahngarth stood nearest, his axe lifted to slay any beast that might emerge. Sisay and Orim stared in disbelief at the violated grave of their friend. Dust pasted tears to their faces. Only Gerrard, beyond them all, understood. He saw not the storm but the man in the storm. He saw Barrin's eyes and the guilt there.

Gerrard understood. He shared that guilt. Hanna had died while the two men she most loved were busy fighting Phyrexians.

It was more than Barrin could bear. With a nod to Gerrard, he took Hanna away from that sandy place.

The roar of the cyclone was replaced by the roar of the oceans. The sands of Koilos reshaped into the stony cliffs of Tolaria. It was the simplest teleport Barrin had ever cast. He knew the spot intimately-the unmarked grave of his wife, near the sea. Here, a young Jhoira once escaped the rigors of the academy. The teleport was as simple as returning home.

Barrin stood above the slab of rock where his wife lay. He ached to lay his daughter to rest beside her. He ached to die with them. Tears streaming down his face, Barrin dropped his head back. The sky above was dark, not with storm clouds but with Phyrexian ships. There were a score of cruisers and as many more plague ships. Smaller vessels peeled away from the main fleet to pursue Tolarian refugees in tiny boats. Beneath the crowded fleet, columns of black smoke rose from the ruined academy. Perhaps the Phyrexians had bombed the buildings to oblivion. Perhaps it had been Urza. Their works were often indistinguishable. "I have been a fool," Barrin told himself.

Without laying his daughter down, Barrin cast a simple water spell.

Beside his wife's grave lay another natural crypt in the stone. Barrin had always believed he would lie there when his time had come. He had never imagined his daughter's death. Beneath the stone lid of the crypt, the spell took shape. Tiny jets of water bubbled up, lifting the lid and sliding it slowly aside. Water wept down the stony walls of the tomb. By the time the lid had glided to one side, a small clear pool lay beside the stones.

Drawing a deep breath, Barrin hugged his daughter's body. "The last time I saw you, you were heading into Rath. We fought, I remember. I'm sorry. We also said goodbye. I didn't think that good-bye would be our last. I was wrong about everything. Everything." Gently lowering her into the grave, he sighed deeply. "Good-bye, my angel."

He stood, watching solemnly as the lid slid back over the crypt. Darkness slowly swallowed up his daughter. The last of the water dripped from the edges of the lid. It grated quietly into place.

"Sarcophagus." Barrin whispered the old Thran word as he stared at the spot. "Flesh eater."

He would find his own sarcophagus in the sky.

Barrin rose into the air for the last time in his life.

In ancient days, Urza lost his brother to Phyrexia. In his rage, he had unleashed a blast from an artifact called the sylex. That blast had sunk continents and reshaped Dominaria. It had also made Urza a veritable god.

Barrin was no god. He did not have a sylex. He did not wish to sink continents, but he knew the spell Urza had cast. It would be enough.

Above him, massive ships floated like leviathans. Barrin made no move to hide. A single man rising through a smoky sky was hard enough to see, and those mountainous machines were oblivious to so small a threat. Barrin ascended in their midst. Black killing things. They would not know what hit them.

Closing his eyes, Barrin drew upon the power of his fury. Lava. Brimstone. Fire. He thought of Shiv and Rhammidarigaaz. He thought of the mana rig pumping redhot stone like a giant heart. Rage welled in him. He was its vessel. Hatred shaped the spell, but he needed more power.

Barrin drew mana from Tolaria beneath him. He remembered Karn's birth in the first Tolaria. He remembered the war with K'rrik in the second Tolaria. He remembered Jhoira and Teferi, Weatherlight and the Metathran, Rayne and Hanna. As blue mana coursed into him, Barrin tapped other lands as well-verdant Yavimaya, militant Benalia, undead Urborg. He drew all the power into himself and became a living sylex.

His insides boiled. Beams shot from his eyes and his fingertips. Power sought escape in every extremity. It crept its way up legs and arms, across face and chest. Hair stood on end and hurled energy from its tips. Pores opened and beamed. Every wound ever struck on his body burst open and shone. His flesh could not contain the radiance. Soon, Barrin glared like a second sun.

Those were not light rays, though, but power rays. They roared out red from him. The air sizzled with them. Beams struck the ships. They cut metal as though it were water. They turned Phyrexian armor to pudding and Phyrexian flesh to ash. They pierced to engine cores and cracked powerstones.

Cruisers and plague ships spewed smoke through a thousand sudden holes. Engines went critical. One machine blazed apart. Its own shrapnel melted in the energy it unleashed. Four adjacent cruisers lurched and exploded. They tilted on end. Daylight sieved through their riddled hulls. Ship to ship, destruction spread.

Not a cannon was fired, not a plasma burst unleashed, but there was holocaustal fire in the heavens. Below, it was the same. Oceans boiled. Trees flash-burned. Rocks melted.

Whatever creatures had stood on Tolaria were blinded by the flash, and deafened by the concussion, and dismantled by the raw power. Phyrexians, scholars, students, hinds, fleas-all died in that moment. Their struggles were done. Their bodies were gone. Even the ground on which they stood turned to wax and ran.

Only Rayne and Hanna were safe, sealed into their sarcophagi.

How like Urza had Barrin become.

At last the blast spent itself. It left a hole in the sky. No ships remained. No clouds either. The beaming sun seemed dim and gray.

Cold waves crashed into boiling seas. Whirlpools laid the ocean depths bare. Water churned silt as red as blood.

Where once had been a verdant island was now a molten slab of rock, hissing into the sea. Tolaria was gone forevermore.

So too was her onetime lord, Mage Master Barrin.