Invasion

Chapter 7

Multani awoke in dread.

He knew he was dying. He could feel it in his flesh. There was sudden cancer-a numbness that ate away feeling and replaced it with living death.

Last night, he had been well. He had sent his consciousness into every bud in the treetops and every hair root below. The great forest Yavimaya was his body. Magnigoth trees were his endless limbs, elves and pixies his darting thoughts, surging sap his pumping blood. Last night, the forest had been well.

This morning, all was different. Yavimaya was suddenly filled with pockets of darkness-cancer.

It had fallen from the skies. The contagion sifted down through clear air. Minute spores tricked their way into every stoma on every leaf. A tingling numbness followed. It flowed down stems into twigs and branches and trunks. It converted all to living rot. Whole boughs were corrupted.

It was worse than that. An intelligence controlled this cancer. Something called to the rotten limbs-something black and hungry. This was not just a killing plague. It was a resurrecting plague too. It killed in order to revivify the dead wood and control it. Gangrene worked a slow possession on Yavimaya. The forest's life was becoming an alien unlife.

The malign power hovered above. Sensing it, Multani rose through a millennial magnigoth. In moments, he had ascended the three-thousand-foot tree. His presence flooded into healthy leaves. They were retinal structures, attuned to light. Through them Multani could see stars no mortal eye ever guessed at.

Now he did not see stars. He saw an achingly blue sky with three immense rents in it. Out of those holes drifted enormous black carbuncles. They were gnarled like diseased wood. One eclipsed the sun. It cast down a shadow that covered a thousand acres. The sun shone in corona around that great scab. Figures moved there, carapaced figures-Phyrexians.

A millennium ago, Multani had joined Urza's fight against Phyrexia. He granted Urza the Weatherseed- drawn from the center of the forest's most ancient tree, the Heart of Yavimaya. From that seed grew the living hull of Weatherlight. Multani had aided in breeding perfect defenders for Dominaria. He had even trained Gerrard Capashen in maro-sorcery.

All these preparations seemed punily insufficient now. In the face of this onslaught, what good was an army of Metathran and a living airship and a reluctant hero?

Multani's mind darkened. He seeped down through ancient wood and spread his soul in vines and tangled boughs. He wanted to reside in every tree, every pulsing heart. Only when he encompassed the whole of the forest could he glimpse the divine world. It was painful to be stretched so thin, to feel the trembling terror of the forest. Once he touched on every tendril, though, he sensed his mother watching.

Gaea, you have known of this dread hour since before I even was. You knew of it from Argoth and before, from Halcyon of the Ancients. I am a fool. You see how little I am prepared. Save me, Mother. Save your son. I beg of you. Save me.

There came no response from the world-goddess. Never did she speak.

Her silence was terrible. Multani winced back from it. He withdrew, no longer in every strand of cellulose. In withdrawing, he lost sight of the divine principle and saw instead only the circling vortex of ships above the forest.

Dragon engines, cruisers, troop transports, rams, plague ships- they formed a horrible black whirlpool in the sky. The cyclone widened. Ships descended to attack the shores. Others would overtop the forest in a great killing dome. There would be no escape. There would be no miracle from Gaea. There would be only a long, vicious fight that Multani must lead.

He sent his mind into the elven cities in the canopy. In natural hollows, children played. Across bridges of vine, women worked air nets. In thatched villages, men gossiped. Multani spoke to them all. Fey oracles suddenly saw all he had seen. Fey warriors learned what he knew. Chiefs and kings prepared for all-out war. Multani reached even into the minds of common elves and awoke nightmares.

He gave them a new definition of hate. The angry distrust they felt toward humanity was love compared to this. To kill a Phyrexian was to serve good. To die killing a Phyrexian was to join the eternal forest. Each pixie, each sprite would hate and fight and kill for Yavimaya.

Multani sent his mind into the deep root clusters of the magnigoths. There, in lightless seas, dwelt great serpents and fishes as large as villages. Druids lifted their eyes to the ceilings of their root cells. Multani twisted among their chants and prayers. He whispered terrors into their ears and charged the druids to marshal their might. A fanatic heat entered them. Druids were furious by nature but solitary and sedate in their anger. When one of their gods united their rage, though, woodfolk became warriors.

How could fey and druid stand against Phyrexia? What good were songs and poetry against plague and poison?

Heart despairing, Multani stretched his will once again through the great wood, to every dumb beast. These were not warriors. The fiercest were mere predators. The gentlest were leaf-licking molds. But cornered, wounded, with death inevitable, every creature will attack. Multani infused them with the surety of their doom. They would fight, every last one. Giant ground sloths would rip Phyrexian heads from their shoulders. Green boas would wrap themselves around whole phalanxes and squeeze until glistening-oil jetted from every pore. Apes would emerge from their warrens and pummel the monsters to mush. Sky leeches, great forest hogs, gobbet raptors, fire ants-they all would fight and die in the fighting.

Was this the salvation Gaea offered her mortal folk: to die fighting?

Multani watched in aching dread as the storm of ships deepened over Yavimaya. Plague engines spewed treetoxins. Phyrexian fliers stretched leathery wings. When the canopy was ripe with rot, they would soar down upon the elven kingdoms. Other troop ships neared the shores. They would off-load Phyrexian armies, who would race unopposed among the ancient boles.

Multani took a shuddering breath through manifold stomas.

Perhaps Multani should have made himself Urza's servant. Perhaps he would have gained ships and monster machines of his own.

Troop ships hovered above the wide-flung shores of Yavimaya. They edged up over root tangles that reached into the sea. One by one, great doors opened, swinging down into ramps. Hundreds of thousands of troops appeared. They stared toward Yavimaya with eyes like sockets scooped in meat. The invaders started down the ramps, their claws scraping.

Soon, every creature in Yavimaya would have lightless eyes.

Except that Gaea had heard his prayer. She was silent, yes, but she had heard.

The tangled roots, reaching far out into the salty sea, moved. They slid across each other with the ease of snakes. Inextricable knots untied themselves. Roots reached out like grasping fingers. All around the island, fibrous hands grasped Phyrexian troop ships. Some roots simply crushed them. Others shot straight through metal, piercing the beasts within. More still struck the craft down like hands slapping flies. Not a single monster reached the safety of the shore. Those who survived the crushing, spindling, shattering attack tumbled into the water. Phyrexians hated water, especially salt water. It destroyed their metal parts. But more than water waited down there for them.

Other Dominarian defenders rose. Fins slapped and froth churned. Sharks fed in plenty, yes, but other creatures too-dolphins and giant squids, stingrays and barracudas. In their midst were merfolk, their tridents spearing Phyrexians. Side by side, the folk of the sea feasted on the flesh thrown to them.

The forces of the sea had never before aided their old foes, the forces of the forest. Why now?

Multani understood. Gaea was not merely a forest goddess. She was the world-goddess. Seas were hers and the creatures therein. As Multani had marshaled the dumb beasts of the forest, she had directed some other mind to gather the beasts of the sea.

This is why he had not allied with Urza. This was the way the forest fought. Exultation replaced dread.

Overhead, aerial troops leaped from their skyships. Wings of skin barked on the wind. Down soared Phyrexians in thick swarms. They swirled down toward the elven kingdoms in the treetops.

Multani gathered himself from the island's perimeter like lightning gathering itself from the sky. He vaulted up the hollow core of an ancient magnigoth tree. In the crown above, the largest of the elven kingdoms spread.

Multani emerged. He took his shape from a shaggy vine, bringing with it blankets of moss, a number of parasitic plants, and a section of loose bark. All these, Multani assembled into a vast, shambling form. He had no body aside from this forest, but in its flesh he had flesh. Multani climbed to the elven kingdom. En route, he dragged a venom-vine into his being. It spread through him, its poisonous thorns positioning themselves as fangs, horns, and claws.

Already, the elf warriors gathered in thorn brakes and atop lookout spires. They trooped like ants across the footworn branches. Some crucial bough-bridges had already succumbed to rot. They had taken on a wicked life of their own, lashing out at nearby troops. Crews busily doused rotten sections with pine spirits and set them ablaze. It was a horrible sight-elves torching trees.

Multani dug one foot into a sap channel and sent a signal to the heights of the magnigoth. There, vast seed pods opened prematurely. Soap-down, as white as snow and as slippery as ice, spewed upward. The stuff rose to envelope Phyrexian wing-troops. Oily fibers dragged across batwings and talons. The soap-down filled air holes and blinded eyes. Everything it touched grew slick.

Hissing and spitting, Phyrexians dived out of the choking cloud. They soared down to the leafy crowns and converged on the lookout aeries.

Elf sentries loosed slim shafts.

The arrows ripped wings and thudded into Phyrexian chests and skulls. A few fell from the sky. They cracked against branches in their long descent. Others reached the aeries, shrieking their attack. Wings folded. Talons gripped branches. They slipped, overbalancing. Elven swords were there to catch them. Impaled, Phyrexians writhed like bugs on pins. The wiser elves hurled their fouled swords from the aeries. Those who kept their blades lost their lives. Phyrexian fangs bit through skulls. Phyrexian claws ripped through chests and heads. It was impossible to tell the slayer from the slain.

Below, the main mass of the aerial troops landed in the kingdom's center. Those that came down atop elves got spears and arrows in their bellies. Those that landed on footpaths slipped to spill from the boughs. Elves crowded in tight companies and flung beasts off birch shields.

A massive Phyrexian, a seeming gargoyle, lunged into a group of elves. It bit an elf in half and lifted its head back to swallow the torso. Swords jabbed the Phyrexian's neck, unintentionally pinning the corpse within. The gargoyle gasped, choking.

Elsewhere, another winged monster found itself swarmed with vines. The living wood drew stinging thorns across its hide, cutting to muscle. Moss crowded into the thing's mouth and air holes. Thistles raked wings to bloody rags. Vines constricted, strangling the beast. It fell on the bough and hissed to stillness.

Multani withdrew from the corpse. He pulled his bloodied vines off the shapeless figure and reassembled himself. The twin thistle blossoms that made up his eyes glimpsed a new atrocity.

Elf children fled backward over a sheer drop. They clung to rough bark and vines to escape a Phyrexian mob.

Multani ran for the mass of the creatures. He could kill one at a time, perhaps two at once. Still the monsters would slay the children.

A thought came to him. He dived into the wood. His vine-body sloughed from him into a pile on the surface. Multani sped inward along sap lines. Up through a fat bole and a twisted girdle he went. Spreading through a meaty branch, he possessed it. The thing swung downward, the arm of a colossus.

It struck the Phyrexian mob and hurled them from the tree.

Multani took no time to admire his work. Phyrexians filled the treetops. He lifted the bough again and brought it down to mash them. Leaves became blades. Tendrils became scourges. Branches became staves. Boughs became rams. All dripped with glistening-oil-blood.

This was how the forest fought.