Invasion

Chapter 33

Weatherlight soared past overhead. She bled fire down onto the Phyrexians. Her cannons glowed. Prow, amidships, stern, and keel, destruction bloomed from her.

Fire raked over a Phyrexian contingent. The flesh beneath chitin flashed away in gray smoke. Scales and bones stood upright a moment longer as bodies fled in sooty ghosts on the wind. Hundreds of monsters fell. Their superheated shells crumbled to white powder. Weatherlight unleashed another firestorm, cratering the battlefield. Glass splashed out to wrap Phyrexians in searing blankets. Halfmelted stones pelted the menagerie. Flesh was scoured from bodies. Other cannon blasts laved acres of sand in flame. Phyrexians marched as far through the holocaust as they could. At last, their cores reached the combustion threshold. They exploded. One blaze ignited a second and third. Where once had marched a whole regiment now lay a highway inward, paved with soot.

Agnate charged onto that highway. He clutched a battle axe in both hands. The vast blade fell with angry vengeance. It clove into the segmented mouth of a Phyrexian footman. The blade bit to the throat, splitting jaw and pallet.

The beast fought on. Its claws rammed beneath Agnate's breastplate, punching holes in his side. Fingers clenched. Organs severed and bled.

Letting go his battle axe, Agnate gripped the impaling claws with one hand and the beast's elbow with the other. Twisting quickly, he rammed the elbow, breaking the joint. It popped loudly, and bone and gristle separated. One more yank, and the arm came off, streaming oil-blood.

Undeterred, the Phyrexian lunged with its good arm.

Agnate drew the dead arm from his side and thrust its gory claws up before him. The Phyrexian grabbed its severed arm, giving Agnate the chance to yank his battle axe free. He swung it in a broad circle and lopped the thing's head off.

The body jigged a moment more, uncertain it was dead, before flopping to ground.

Agnate trod over it. His axe haft felt strange in his hand. It was not just glistening-oil and Phyrexian white matter. Something else was wrong. His fingers felt numb, jangled. His arms were sluggish.

He had been only fighting-not fighting toward something. This Eladamri was his match, was worthy to lead the Metathran, but he was not Thaddeus. Agnate could fight beside this savior of elves but not toward him.

O Thaddeus, in dying, you killed me, thought Agnate bleakly as his axe split the breast of a bloodstock. If you only lived, I could fight.

I do live… Agnate…… I live…

The thought was weak on the wind, but it was there. It entered Agnate like a freshening breeze, breathing life into him.

He lives. I can yet fight. He lives.

Agnate lifted high his axe. It streamed the life of Phyrexians, anointing Agnate and his troops with oil.

"To the caves!" he shouted, as Thaddeus had in the first assault on Koilos. "To the caves!"

That axe fell, harvesting more glistening-oil.

Agnate fought with fury. There was nothing to lose now. Either he would fight to Thaddeus's side, or he would die trying.

Either way, the fight would end in joy.

Tsabo Tavoc paced patiently around the table where Thaddeus was pinioned. The man lay wide open. Any human would have died long ago. Not a Metathran. Their organs visibly regenerated. They had an infinite capacity for pain and no capacity for despair. They had no instinct but to fight Phyrexians. Even in a coma, Thaddeus was fighting Tsabo Tavoc. He was sending his dreams to his comrade.

Cruelly idle, Tsabo Tavoc reached one of her slender hands into the man's open abdomen. She clutched his spleen. She squeezed, cutting the organ into four wedges.

"That will take some time to heal," the spider woman whispered in her cicada voice. She smiled. Plates shifted back from filed teeth. "In the meantime, keep fighting me, Thaddeus. Keep calling your friend. Bring him here. Fill him with mad hope. I will lay him beside you. You will die together. Isn't that what you hope for? There is no better hope for the folk of Dominaria, but that they die with those they love."

Tsabo Tavoc straightened. She breathed, well satisfied with her work. Flicking a look at the vat priests on duty, she thought, Do not let him heal. Then she set out for the portal. That was the spot Gerrard hoped to reach. That was the place her surprise would be waiting.

The spider woman's feet made glad clicking sounds as she left the chamber.

Urza hung within his titan suit. This should have been his heaven. Ensconced in the heart of his greatest invention, surrounded by ten thousand tons of machine and armor and weaponry-Urza should have been thrilled.

His full-body harness was keyed to every fiber of the war suit. His feet moved the feet of the engine; his fingers made the machine grasp and crush. With a thought, he could launch falcon engines from aeries on the suit's back. On a whim, he could fire the ray cannons that ringed the titan's wrists or ignite the plasma bolts imbedded in the titan's eyes. His every running step would slay hundreds. His every fiery breath would ignite thousands. In this suit, he could stomp with impunity up to the Caves of Koilos and tear it apart like a boy ripping up an anthill.

Urza should have been thrilled, but his hands felt numb. He couldn't stop swallowing. It was absurd. His physical body was merely a convenient projection of his mind. He need suffer no physical ailment in the world- unless, of course, it had its root in his mind.

What is wrong with me? Urza wondered as he fitted the last conduits to his brow. Perhaps it is the whole Barrin business.

Could that be? Surely not.

Barrin had been a good man-a good friend. Planeswalkers habitually avoided friendships with mortals due to the inevitability of loss. Through the use of slowtime water, Barrin had become functionally immortal. He had been a fine choice of friend, if a planeswalker allowed himself such things. Barrin's death was a great loss, true, but Urza had expected great losses. War had its casualties. He was willing to lose even himself if it meant defeating Phyrexia.

So, why this melancholia? It could have no physiological basis. Urza had no true physiology. It could only be that he was sad because some rogue part of his mind wished to be sad-a strange and not wholly satisfactory mechanism, the mind.

The battle is raging, Urza, spoke a snide mind into his. It was Tevash Szat. The cockpit of his own titan suit had been specially designed to fit the god-demon form he preferred. When do we get to go a slaying?

Heaving a needless sigh, Urza returned the thought. Is everyone ready?

From the others-Taysir, Daria, Freyalise, Kristina, Lord Windgrace, Bo Levar, and Commodore Guff, each in his or her own specially designed titan suit-came affirmative replies.

Szat thought irritably, It's about time. Your Metathran are already wading waist-deep in their own blood.

Then we should best wade in ourselves. Urza's heart caught in his throat. He had spoken those very words to Barrin at the opening of the war. Let us go.

The canyon that held the nine titans was suddenly loud with the groan of hydraulics and the thrum of engines. Szat's titan suit reached overhead. Its enormous fingers, each tipped in swords as large as plows, clasped the canvas that hung there. He ripped it down, the thick cloth tearing like tissue. Bright sunlight stabbed down into the trench. It splashed across shoulders of Thran metal and bristling armament. The colossi clasped the edge of the trench, digging their fingers deep. They kicked footholds out of solid rock. Massive but agile, they climbed from the crypt that had held them.

Three miles distant, Phyrexians glimpsed this awesome arrival. Where once there had been but silken folds of desert, now appeared gargantuan figures-veritable gods.

They cast shadows as large as villages. They were spangled with the light of the sun. Time stood still as they rose. Every mortal breath hushed. Every heart skipped a beat.

Szat vaulted first from the trench. His titan suit was as black as his soul, so dark that it seemed a living shadow. He landed, shaking the ground, and stared at his glorious figure.

With a deep, demonic laugh, Szat reared his head back and bellowed fire to the skies. From the suit's mouth, flames shot high enough to burn a hole in the clouds. Szat stomped his feet-towers pounding the desert. Wide rings of dust rolled up around him. Szat drummed vast knuckles against his Thran-metal breast. From him came a deep tolling like a dirge bell.

It was enough exultation. Since he had first begun training in the Phyrexian gorge, Szat had wanted to battle in the suit. He wanted blood. Szat charged across the empty desert. His every footfall sent tremors through the ground.

Phyrexians and Metathran, who had paused in their battle, fell now to their knees. The concussions yanked the ground from under them. Phyrexian ray cannons wheeled madly about to bring this new menace into the crosshairs. Red rays leaped out at the thundering titan. Most cut wide and leaped onward to slash through clouds a hundred miles away. A few beams cracked against the giant's armor and were deflected away. They slid off as if he were made of mirrors.

Szat returned fire. His wrist guns blazed to life. Beams blossomed into the air before him. They tore into trenches, pulverizing those within. Rays ripped through readouts and carved out cannonades. Dead husks of Phyrexians bounded through the air.

Szat ran up behind the Metathran lines. It seemed he would crush his allies. At the last, he leaped. His enormous figure hurtled overhead with all the silent weight of a meteor. Clearing the front, he crashed to ground in the midst of Phyrexian troops. His boots struck first, slaying hundreds. His knees struck next, crushing hundreds more. Szat's hands rammed into a cannon embrasure. Claws plowed through dirt. They sank deep, cracking rock foundations, and flexed around the hot guns. Yanking, he hauled the guns loose. He flung them away to crash, burning and blasting, among enemy troops.

Laughing, Szat spat another gout of flame heavenward.

This is not as I had planned, Urza sent to the other seven titans. He rushed toward the other side of the battlefield. They, too, were running but not directly into the fray. Each planeswalker had been assigned a wedge of the battlefield in forty degrees of arc. Each was to reach his or her position before the whole titan squadron advanced. The point was to create an inescapable noose, and to unnerve the beasts before attacking. This is not as I had planned.

Freyalise, whose suit was green tinged from the living components implanted in the metal, answered for all the rest-You should have planned for Szat to be Szat.

From his own snow-white titan suit, Urza responded, This changes nothing. The rest of you, attack as planned. Eladamri and his troops can cut through whatever creatures Szat allows to flood past.

Taysir reached his designated spot. Mechanical feet pounded to a halt. Dust rolled up around the enormous, hunched figure. Powerstones of every color winked through the clouds. I am ready.

As am I, answered Kristina.

Looks like all of us, Bo Levar replied.

I've lost a cannon! Commodore Guff broke in. Blast! As if in answer, a bolt leaped suddenly across his frame, cutting fifty feet into the rock where he stood. Nope, there it is.

Charge! Urza shouted.

As one, the eight titans leaned into their strides and broke into a tectonic run.

Koilos rumbled like a drum struck by countless mallets.

Urza unleashed a volley of ray cannon fire and vaulted the Metathran troops. As he flew, he shot, and as he shot, he shouted-Charge!

These titans are a pleasant surprise, Tsabo Tavoc thought. The massacre of her folk moved through her. Deaths mounted up in great crashing waves that battered her heart. It was a thrilling sensation, the sort that, if indulged too long, would leave her without an army. The Ineffable had millions more, of course, but Crovax frowned on excessive massacre of his troops-unless, of course, he was the one doing it. No, as delicious as these titans were, they had to be stopped.

Awake, my children. The time has come to feed.

Urza was not the only one to have a few tricks hidden in reserve.

Tsabo Tavoc felt the vast, ancient creatures rise from the dusty barrows where they had slept.

Witch engines. They were engines, yes, but as alive, as fleshly, as any biologic beings. Headless, featureless, the enormous creatures consisted merely of a gigantic central body that bristled with quills. From their hunched and shaggy backs fell storms of sand.

They rose on impossibly thin limbs, white and thousands like the tentacles of a jellyfish. They did not use those legs to stand on- the hoary monsters could float or fly-but instead to tear ships from the skies and lift whole platoons to their fangy mouths. Best of all, the beasts could regenerate as quickly as a wound was struck.

Yes, my children. Welcome to the feast.

Through the compound eyes of her collective mind, she saw the arcane guardians loom high and soar toward Urza's titans.