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.
Chapter 34
The Death of a Warrior
"What the hell is that thing?" Sisay shouted to no one. Hanna was gone, Orim tended injuries on deck, and Gerrard and Tahngarth fought in the caves. There was no one to shout to, but some things must be shouted. "What the hell is it?"
Weatherlight banked, soaring swiftly to one side of a rising hummock of bristly spines. It was a creature, a Phyrexian monster as massive as a cloud. Beneath its shaggy white body dangled thousands of long legs. With its legs, the beast plucked the battlefield. Writhing forms- Metathran, elf, and human-struggled in the grips of barbed claws. The limbs hauled them up into mouths beneath the creature.
Sisay cringed away. "Whatever it is, it's about to be dead." She wheeled Weatherlight hard about. The ship's keel skidded on buffeting air, caught hold, and cut a tight, clean semicircle.
The bristly creature swept up before the bow.
Mounting on her new course, Weatherlight blazed to life. Her engines roared.
Squee had moved to the starboard prow ray cannon. It barked. Energy roared in superheated shafts out from the gun. Rays plunged from the bow, struggling to escape the hurtling ship. They crashed into the spiny mass.
White puffs of smoke went up. Quills curled acridly. Pink skin split open to a muscle mass that seemed writhing maggots. Awash in yellow blood, the maggot-muscles ebbed down ragged hunks of bone.
"Die, monster!" Sisay growled through clenched teeth.
It was no good. The yellow tide of blood welled up over bone. White hunks of muscle fused.
"Those maggots are machines," rumbled Karn through the speaking tube. "I see them through the running lights. They fragment to absorb damage and then join together to regenerate flesh."
Weatherlight had not even passed the beast when its pink skin had closed. New spines jutted obscenely from the scar. Tentacles slapped at the stern of the ship,
"Damn it!" Sisay roared. "How're we supposed to kill that thing?"
From the speaking tube came a shout-Orim, on deck with a wounded ensign. "The anchor. We harvested Phyrexians with it before. Hook that beast, and we can drag it."
"Or it can drag us," Sisay replied.
"Do it," Karn said. "The engines will hold. The chain will hold."
Sisay shook her head. "It'll rip the hull in half."
Another presence spoke to Sisay out of a wooden boss in the bridge ceiling. "Do it," Multani echoed. "The hull will hold. It will heal."
There was someone to speak to. Sisay grinned eagerly. "Yeah. Let's do this. Orim, if you've got that gunner stabilized and strapped down, I could use you at the capstan."
"On my way." Beyond the wind screen, Orim picked her way to the prow.
Weatherlight cut a long smooth arc out over the battlefield. In her wake, Phyrexian cannons bled fire into the sky. A few bolts struck, ripping holes in the hull.
Multani worked quickly to regrow the sections. Where energy lashed the engines, Karn healed the spots with Thran metal. All the while, Orim hunkered by the rail.
The ship roared into her new flight path. Ahead, the witch engine rose. Its legs reached out toward Weatherlight.
"We'll have one shot at this," Sisay warned. "We've made it mad enough. This'll make it furious."
"This'll make it dead," Orim called back through the capstan tube. "I learned a little about fly fishing among the Cho-Arrim."
Sisay snorted. "Cast your line."
Orim pulled the pin from the capstan. It spun. Chain paid out loudly. The ship's massive anchor plunged downward through the boiling air. Ten fathoms, fifteen fathoms, twenty fathoms.
"Ratchet that off, Orim!" Sisay called. The healer hauled hard on the capstan's lever, and the rattling chain grumbled to silence. "Karn, I'm going to need your eyes on this one. I want to sink the flukes in that monster's maggot heart. And help me keep the ship trim. That thing could flip us end over end."
Instead of words, Karn answered in a surge of the engines. Weatherlight vaulted higher into the reeling skies.
A cannon blast clipped the starboard gunwale, cutting a trough through it. Another ripped through the port-side airfoil. The ship dipped, heeling to starboard.
"Fold them!" Sisay ordered Karn. She pointed the prow at the midsection of the beast and held her course. "Fold the airfoils. We're going in full speed."
With a loud clap, the wings folded. The ship's engines thundered. Weatherlight leaped out ahead of a volley of plasma bursts. She clove the air like an axe head, outrunning even ray fire. The anchor swung up beneath the keel.
"Bring us in low!" Sisay ordered. The ship plunged.
Below, the witch engine swelled out grotesquely. It had reared up. Its countless mouths gnashed the bodies of its latest victims. White arms groped toward Weatherlight.
Squee fired a series of bursts. They cut a swath through the forest of lashing legs. The ship soared down that avenue. More fire blazed from Squee's gun. Hunks of severed white leg pelted across the deck. Toothy mouths hissed fetid fumes at the fleeing craft. The anchor swung down, cracking across the hard jaws.
"Got a nibble!" Orim shouted.
Sisay hauled back on the helm. Weatherlight jagged upward. The anchor swung down, digging itself deep in one of the monster's mouths. It sank away.
"Make that a bite!"
Links slashed through the thing's wet white flesh. In the maggot storm of the beast's innards, the anchor at last lodged on something solid.
The prow deck bulged upward beneath the straining bolthead. Green mana flowed through the wood, strengthening it to steel hardness.
"Let's flip it!" Sisay growled.
Weatherlight vaulted just above the hairy, horrible beast. Chains whipped tight against the monster's bulk. Metal burst flesh and sawed deeper. The witch engine roared from its myriad mouths. Weatherlight nosed toward ground. Her anchor chain cut brutally deep, spreading the walls of the laceration widely apart. The ship's keel shot forward, just above the maggoty canyon it carved. She roared down.
Legs flapping into the heavens, the witch engine slowly toppled. Its spiny back flipped down to the battlefield.
Cannon fire meant for Weatherlight smashed instead into the riven monster.
Spotting Phyrexian armies beyond, Sisay shoved the helm all the way forward. The ship dived sharply, dragging its captive down behind it.
"Let's see how you regenerate this," Sisay growled. Weatherlight avalanched down the skies. She seemed about to impact the battlefield when she drew sharply level. Her keel smashed the heads of Phyrexians. Landing spines jutted, slicing more of the beasts. Those hewn in half by the rushing skyship were lucky. The rest stood in the path of a great bristly ball.
In its first revolution, the witch engine's legs were shredded. Sections of muscle smashed down atop Phyrexians, crushing them. In its second revolution, the engine pounded its folk into paste. In its third, the anchor chain sawed through it.
Equal halves of the monster split from each other and rolled away across the battlefield, spewing destruction. Maggot-machines flung free. They pelted the monsters into the ground. The torn halves of its skin emptied themselves. The last of the witch engine's essence pattered away uselessly.
Sisay hauled back on the helm. Weatherlight climbed into the heavens. "That's the way to cut 'em! Good work, Orim!"
The healer smiled grimly. "I could use a hand reeling in the anchor."
"Leave it be," Sisay said. "I'm not done fishing."
* * * * *
Did you see that? Bo Levar sent to the other planeswalkers. He was busily ripping legs from another witch engine. The giant monster grew replacements faster than he could pull them loose. It climbed his multicolored titan suit. Did you see what Weatherlight did?
Indeed! Commodore Guff replied. A witch engine straddled the shoulders of his titan suit. Hundreds of mouths gnawed at the power conduits. Bother these buggers!
We cannot expect Weatherlight to save us, Urza replied. Three of the vast beasts swarmed him. Cannon blasts from his wrist rockets tore into them. The wounds closed as quickly.
Impatient, Bo Levar growled, Rip 'em open. They can regenerate as long as the maggot machines are together. Rip 'em open and dig away the machines. These beasts are like cigars-without their wrappers, they come to pieces.
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