INVASION mtg-1

by J. Robert King

  Many Phyrexians had met their ends in the bellies of Kavus or of the leviathans that swam the deep water tubes. Others had been blasted apart by druid spells or torn to ribbons by sprite pike swarms, or blown open by elven arrows. Their remains even now were being scoured from the forest. Elves tended pyres that turned the last of the monsters to ash. Burning brands set fire to the rot that riddled magnigoths. Black coils of smoke bore the stink of Phyrexian oil-blood away from the canopy.

  Yavimaya would not lose all its taste of those creatures. Elves and sprites naturally purged what darkness they could, but the forest had knowingly taken some of the evil into itself. Yavimaya had gained a sort of immunity. She bore the memory of Phyrexia and knew its weaknesses.

  The final battle for the forest had been waged by woodmen, the folk who had once been Phyrexian. They combined the fanatic power of their heritage with the patient strength of the forest. Eternal defenders. Once the battles were done, woodmen clutched themselves against the vast boles of the forest. They lingered there, immobile for days or weeks. They breathed through leafy stomas and were nourished on sun and rain alone. Herds of arboreal goats passed them unknowing. Wood spiders attached webs to their knobby heads. Should another Phyrexian descend into the forest, though, the woodmen would awaken to slay.

  Victory. Multani breathed it in. He had often petitioned Gaea during this war, always receiving a silent but undeniable answer. Now was time for praises, not petitions. Multani spread his mind down into the great tree where he knelt. His consciousness expanded. Individual identity gave way to collective soul, to archetype, to divinity. He took on the body of the forest. Each tree was a single muscle fiber, each vine a neuron in a vast, thankful thought. Before that thought was full-formed, though, an idea intruded.

  A perfect creature walked the land. He did not walk Yavimaya but another ancient forest across the sea- Llanowar. A perfect creature, his spirit had been forged in a great red furnace and was tempered in war.

  Never had Multani sensed such a creature, not in all the billion creeping things of his forest. Here was a man- an elf-with the relentless perfection of a dream, but he was real.

  Gaea, what is this walking vision?

  Multani knew he was to be silent and still, to sense this creature in Llanowar across the sea.

  Among the watchful blackthorns of Verdura, this perfect one had first appeared. A month ago, he came into being out of midair, trailing the stink of Phyrexian spaces.

  Out of corruption, he was born incorruptible. Tall, with long silvery hair in numerous braids, steely eyes, and steely armor, the elf was mantled in glistening-oil and blood. Dust clove to him. He fell to his knees. The escape from his former prison had been desperate.

  Eladamri was his name, called the Korvecdal in Rath- a uniter among his own people.

  Behind him came a woman. She seemed to step around an invisible corner. She was born of the same dark womb as he, but was human. With hair of red flame and muscles corded over a lean frame, she was a child of Phyrexian furnaces. The elf had saved her from the hell where she had dwelt. Her name was Takara, prisoner of Volrath, daughter of Starke.

  To Eladamri's other side stood another woman. As weary as her comrades, she did not drop down. A war woman, she kept her weapon-a chain and blade construct called a toten-vec-ready in the pulsing air. Her eyes and hair were dark, her face intense, her frame a taut coalition of muscle and bone. She, too, was an orphan raised in Rath. Wicked parents make monsters of some and heroes of others. This one was a hero, Liin Sivi by name. She would guard her companions to the death.

  Gaea, these are not perfect folk. These are heroes, true, but not divinities. This Eladamri is no more pure than a Kavu, parented by leaf and flame in equal measure. This Takara is embittered by long imprisonment. This Liin Sivi-chains and blades are myriad already in Dominaria. What makes these three divine?

  He knew he was to keep silent and still and sense them.

  Up from Verdura they marched. They sought forest- Llanowar. Travelers' tales told of them. In every village they entered, folk asked them where they had been, how they had come to Verdura. Eladamri told their story, simple and certain. He warned of the hellish kingdom to come, of demons pouring down out of storm clouds, and of cataclysm tearing Dominaria apart. At first, he seemed but a brain-baked fool, wandering in dust with two other lunatics.

  Then reports came of demons raining from the clouds over Benalia and Yavimaya, over Zhalfir and Shiv and Keld.

  Villagers flocked to Eladamri. If this man had known of the coming monsters, surely he would know how to fight them. Eladamri did know. He told them what to do, how to make arrows that would pierce carapace skulls, how to mix glistening-oil poisons, how to stab all the hearts of a vampire hound. The people listened to every word. When he said he could not linger on the road to Llanowar, they heard that he had a messianic mission there. They followed him. They preceded him. Runners went ahead to the forest kingdoms, telling the glories of the elf who was coming, who had raised an army on the road and who would fight the monsters that came to destroy Llanowar.

  Fhedusil, King of Staprion, sent Steel Leaf warriors to intercept this man and his army. Savage-shorn and tattooed, elves crouched at the forest eaves. Past Freyalisean eye-patches, archers watched the man approach.

  Eladamri strode sternly. Sweat glinted on his brow. Eyes sparked beneath. Takara lingered at his right hand, allowing petitioners one by one to approach the man. Liin Sivi lingered at his left, keeping back the rest of the crowd.

  The Steel Leaf elves emerged from the forest to bar the way. They were immediately surrounded by the believing throng. That is enough to sway most men, but these were elves. In the name of King Fhedusil, they demanded that

  Eladamri halt his human army and turn them back to Verdura. His followers took great exception.

  Eladamri himself did not. He said only this: "May you survive the coming plague." He turned to go.

  The Steel Leaf did not allow it. They demanded in the name of the Staprion Elfhame that Eladamri accompany them to see King Fhedusil but that he turn back his human army. Again, Eladamri's followers took exception.

  Again, Eladamri did not. He told his followers, "Go to defend your homes. I have an army of my own awaiting here." He gestured into the trees, where Steel Leaf warriors crowded in their multitude, peering through their stylized goggles.

  Just now, Multani's senses traveled in the midst of the elf throng. They strode among colonnades of stately trees. They ascended spiral stairways that wound around trunks. Overhead, just beneath proud crowns of green, spread villages and cities of wood, with conic towers and widecurving plazas, lookout posts and cozy huts. At their center stood the exalted palace of the Staprion Chief.

  I must go too, Gaea. I must see this savior of the elves.

  Moving across the world was more difficult than moving through Yavimaya. At every edge of the forest, an ocean covered the land.

  Multani leaped above the sparkling waves, riding on currents of pollen. The rarefied life of those tiny spores could barely hold him. It was a long leap to the nearest landfall.

  Below appeared a great jungle of kelp. Multani swept down out of the pollen, skipping across the plants. Their leaves crowded atop the waves, ten miles of salty respite before he surged again into pollens on the trade winds.

  Land appeared ahead, a black line too still to be water. Where there was land, there was green. In a mere thought, Multani reached it. He plunging into cliff-top woodlands as a child into a pile of leaves.

  This was not Llanowar. These woods were but scrub on the edge of fanned fields, windbreaks and no more. Still, Llanowar was not far. A patchwork of hickory and sumac led across the undulating fields. Multani leaped through them. He moved with the quick surging motion of water. Beyond were redbud and alder, which led in turn to juniper and fir. Llanowar loomed on the horizon. Multani was there in a moment.

  He breathed again. To be among these great trees-this root tangle and colonnade and cro
wn-it was almost like his own Yavimaya. Magnigoth was replaced by quosumic, Gaea by Freyalise, the volcanic Mori Tumulus by the Dreaming Caves, but otherwise, this might have been Yavimaya.

  Except that Llanowar had a spirit of its own. Reserved, refined, reticent, the soul of Llanowar stared at Multani through the leaves.

  Forgive me this intrusion, honored Molimo- Why come you here, Multani of Yavimaya? – came a thought that was as much accusation as question.

  Circling through the bark of one great forest giant, Multani could sense the angry heat in the heartwood. I come to see this man, this Eladamri.

  As with all outsiders, he is nothing, came the reply.

  He is nothing, but Gaea makes something of him, said Multani. I come at her bidding. It was only a slight exaggeration.

  At the name of Gaea, a troubled rumble came to the great mind of Molimo. Freyalise rules Llanowar, not Gaea

  – Gaea rules all Dominaria, even if your elves do not know it, Multani replied. Freyalise is no goddess. She is but a planes

  – Be quick, then, Multani! See what you must. Do what you must, and leave.

  Yes, Molimo. As you bid.

  Smiling inwardly, Multani continued on his way. Molimo would suffer his presence now because he had no other choice. He would suffer it later when fiends started falling from the sky.

  In the time it had taken Multani to skip across the ocean, Eladamri and his entourage had nearly reached the treetops. There was no missing the path he had taken. Every fox shied from the trail of the throng; every coney poked its wondering head out at them. Eladamri marched forward in the company of Steel Leaf warriors and their sleek, shouldering hounds.

  Even now, they ascended to the palace of King Fhedusil.

  Multani coiled up through vast vines, some as fat as trees elsewhere. He surged to the high court of the Staprion Elfhame.

  It was a glorious palace of white wood, grown through complex magics out of the crown of a quosumic tree. The tree's boughs spread wide, an enormous hand holding aloft the palace. Foliage rioted across woodland murals and up tall towers with roofs of living thatch. Green pennants snapped among the leaves. Wide courtyards, hanging gardens, blooming bowers-it was a beautiful court in the treetops. Yavimaya had no such magically constructed halls. An elf from Multani's homeland might have thought it all pretentious, though today it seemed only wonderful.

  Multani seeped out into the quosumic's leaves and saw it all.

  Eladamri stepped beneath a gate of twining vines and out into the main courtyard. To his right hand walked Takara. Her eyes were hard beneath her shock of red hair.

  To his left hand strode Liin Sivi, gripping the toten-vec at her waist. All around them marched tattooed warriors. They walked with him as though they were his bodyguards. Their bright-dyed hair made savage gardens around Eladamri. He progressed up the winding way toward the high court.

  The doors of the high hall swung wide. More guards, King Fhedusil's elite, stood aside to let the visitors through.

  Multani withdrew from the leaves, slid into the living thatch on the roof of the grand palace, and peered down.

  The high court within was opulent in shaped wood, inset with gold and silver. At its far end, atop a red rug and backed by a wall of glass, stood a huge black throne. There sat King Fhedusil. Ancient but powerful, the chief had white hair that spiked within his crown. His limbs were thin and long, with the same sinewy strength of tree roots. Across one gnarled knuckle he wore a ring of Staprion nobility.

  King Fhedusil gazed, patiently amused, at the man who had been called the Seed of Freyalise.

  Eladamri entered the throne room. Takara and Liin Sivi accompanied him, as did a score of Steel Leaf warriors. The rest kept the throng back behind a wall of pikes.

  Eladamri approached the king's dais. He motioned for Takara and Liin Sivi to remain behind. They complied, in their own turn holding back their elf escorts. Alone, Eladamri strode to a dense rug of red and blue before the throne. He knelt there in front of Fhedusil.

  "I have come to serve you, Majesty."

  A querulous look filled the face of the Staprion king. "From all I have heard, I thought you would expect me to bow to you."

  Eladamri raised his eyes and stared levelly at the ruler. "I expect nothing of any of you except that you fight when the fiends fall from the sky."

  Smiling ironically, the ancient elf sighed. "Ah, yes, the prophecies-"

  "They are not prophecies. They are only reports. I am not a prophet, only a man who has seen the armies that are coming. In my former world, I united three tribes and led them in revolt against these Phyrexian killers. Here, I do not wish to lead anyone, only to provide what help I may against a common foe."

  "Really?" the king responded. "And what sort of help could you be?"

  "I can tell you how they will fight. I can tell you that only warriors must remain above. The rest must abandon this palace. It and all other great structures in the canopy will be attacked first."

  Multani was impressed. Perhaps Eladamri was not as pure as the elves dreamed him to be, but he was honest and bold.

  "Abandon the palace?" echoed the king incredulously. "All go below?"

  "Yes. I will stay here with your warriors, but you and the others must go below to survive," Eladamri responded.

  King Fhedusil nodded once last. Then he stood. With a simple gesture, he sent his own guard from beside his chair to lay hold of Eladamri. Simultaneously, guards seized Liin Sivi and Takara. The throng beyond the high court fell to a shocked silence.

  Into that hush, the king spoke. "It is a black hour for our world, yes, Eladamri. But blacker still when a man who has a sliver of foreknowledge uses it to rise to the top of a nation. To use a piece of gossip to become a false prophet-"

  "I have never claimed to be a prophet," objected Eladamri as he struggled against his captors.

  "Perhaps not a prophet, but a war-profiteer," snapped the chief. "You are not the Seed of Freyalise, as has been said of you."

  "I dispute none of this," Eladamri pleaded. "I am a warrior, pure and simple. I have been dreamed by these people into something I am not."

  Suddenly, Multani understood. The people of Llanowar needed a leader, and King Fhedusil, for all his age and wisdom, would not be sufficient to the task. Gaea had found a man, a sufficient man, and was dreaming him into divinity.

  "We are done dreaming," the king insisted. "We are done listening to idle foolery. We will not abandon our palaces in the sky. ‘The kingdom of Hell is at hand!’ you say. We will not follow you!"

  Multani saw it before anyone else. He saw it in the multitudinous vision of the living thatch. Portals opened above Llanowar. Thousands of small portals. Through them dropped tens of thousands of plague bombs.

  Sliding down from the thatch into a great branch in one corner of the high court, Multani took form. Leafy brows and bristly lips, twiggy hair and spore-filled eyes- Multani charged into the midst of the assemblage.

  "I am Multani of Yavimaya. Listen to this man! Even now, portals open overhead. Fiends are falling from the skies!"

  "Guards! Arrest this apparition!" the chief shouted, finger jutting out toward Multani. "Take them to the stockade!"

  "We must go below," Eladamri and Multani chorused. Guards dragged at them.

  Something tore through the thatch above. Glimpsed in a flurry of straw, it seemed a small meteor, though it was a constructed thing-a spherical machine. The plague bomb smashed down. It cracked the hardwood floor as though it were an eggshell. The bomb struck King Fhedusil, slaying him instantly. It hit the far wall and bashed its way into the king's chambers. A moment of silent terror followed. Then from the hole in the wall, white clouds of plague spores spewed outward.

  "Down to the roots! Down from the crown! We must go below!"

  Chapter 17

  The Metathran Pincer

  Thaddeus stood at the head of his Metathran army and gazed across the desert of Koilos.

  Koilos. This was holy grou
nd. Here the Phyrexians had first been driven out of Dominaria. Here, Urza and his brother allowed them back in. These two events were father and mother to the Metathran-the only parents they would ever have. When Phyrexian bloodlust mixed with Dominarian terror, the Metathran were gestated. Over the last thousand years, they had one by one been born-as strong as rhinos, as tireless as fire ants, as loyal as hunting hounds, as sterile as mules. The Metathran were raised to maturity, trained in weapons natural and otherwise, and stored away like stockpiled arms. In slowtime caverns, temporal loops, and cryo-chambers, they were kept. Chill cradles, these had been, made less so by dreams of this hot desert and the battle over this holy place, Koilos.

  Here, the Phyrexians would be driven from Dominaria.

  Thaddeus breathed deeply. The dust of Koilos entered his lungs and, from there, his blood. The scent of Phyrexian glistening-oil filled that breath.

  In well-ordered companies, the Phyrexian army filled the vast desert below. Scuta, bloodstocks, and troopers stood arrayed on the outskirts, ready for an all-out charge. Behind them lay the main encampments, fortified with miles of trench work. The ditches had been dug by giant

  Phyrexian worms. Beyond it all was Koilos-a broad, dark plateau of stone above a wide cave. That throat descended into the belly of the world. From it issued a constant tide of monsters. Beautiful monsters.

  Thaddeus ached to slay them. He understood and appreciated these foes. Their bodies were as huge and superbly twisted as his own. Thaddeus's own sagittal crest and brow-ridge were designs Urza had modeled after Phyrexian craniums. These modifications made the head a ramming weapon and allowed for powerful jaw muscles that could deliver a severing bite. Thaddeus's face was augmented with stronger bones, leaping muscles, and fangy teeth. His chest and arms bore the powerful benefits of bruin architecture. Equine implants bulged his legs. Thaddeus and his army were as unnatural beasts as the Phyrexians they had been designed to kill. There was but one difference. The Metathran fought for good. The Phyrexians fought for evil. Otherwise, they might have been brothers.