“Aye, Commander,” Sisay said.
Weatherlight dived through the clouds. Vapor rolled from her gunwales.
The isle appeared below. Phyrexian cannon fire clawed the treetops away. One blast snatched a helionaut from the air. Another grazed a jump ship. Though outgunned, the smaller craft sent exploding quarrels down into the Phyrexian armies. It would not be enough. Phyrexians swarmed the land.
“Get the helionauts out of there,” Gerrard ordered. “Signal them to hover high and watch for airships. They’re no good against ground troops.”
“Aye, Commander,” came the voice of the communications ensign.
“So, that leaves just us and the jump ships?” Sisay asked.
“Not just us,” Gerrard reported, jabbing a finger toward the rapidly approaching shoreline. “Urza’s made landfall.”
Taller than the treetops, Urza’s titan engine marched into the swamp. The hulking mechanism still streamed water and seaweed but looked all the more sinister for it. Rockets jumped away from his wrists and corkscrewed through deadwood forests. They plowed through earthwork trenches and exploded in the bunkers beyond. Hunks of bug flesh rained outward.
Gerrard shook his head in grudging amazement. He lifted a captain’s glass to his eye to watch the carnage.
Urza’s titan engine strode onward. A huge fireball formed before the planeswalker and swooped down to drive Phyrexians into a shallow marsh. Lightning leaped from the fork above the pilot bulb and jagged through the water. Monsters thrashed and sizzled. Urza strode atop them, paying no heed. He drove straight across the ground, making toward some goal only he knew.
Weatherlight reached the shore and roared out over the treetops.
“There’s another titan engine,” Tahngarth shouted.
“Another what?” Gerrard asked in amazement.
“Another titan engine—three more!”
Gerrard paused in his attacks to stare at the spectacle. Above the mossy treetops on the far sides of the isle moved gleaming pilot domes. These engines had fought at Koilos and now had come here.
“And ground troops!” Tahngarth called, “Metathran ground troops.”
Between the flashing boles of trees, Gerrard saw them. Agnate and his Metathran army of forty thousand had been brought here, too. They swept across the land in a purging blue tide, destroying the Phyrexians in their path.
“Watch your fire, friends,” Sisay advised. “Our own troops are down there.”
“Yeah,” Gerrard confirmed, nodding blankly. “It looks like the old man brought help after all.” He folded the captain’s glass. “We’re useless back here. We can’t fire with our own forces on the ground. Sisay, take us to the center of the Phyrexian encampment.”
“Where would that be?” she asked
“Where Urza is heading,” Gerrard said.
“Aye, Commander.”
Weatherlight slid into the wake of destruction behind Urza.
Below, Metathran troops ran. Their battle axes glinted. Their war cry rose above even the thunder of Weatherlight’s engines.
She soared out directly above Urza.
Falcon engines launched from his shoulders. They gleamed beside Weatherlight’s bow. The silvery birds shrieked as they stooped on their prey—Phyrexians.
Just ahead, a fresh wave of the beasts charged into battle. Some had once been human, their figures stretched on metallic frameworks, their muscles augmented with machines. Others were not remotely human. They had been grown in vats of glistening-oil, sculpted by priests of Phyrexia. Massive legs, crested heads, dagger fangs, scimitar claws—they were creatures created to kill.
Whatever their origins, the beasts of Phyrexia met Urza’s deadly machines. Silver falcons shrieked down upon them. Razor-sharp beaks rammed Phyrexian bellies. Shredding mechanisms tore them apart. The front lines crumbled and bled even as Weatherlight hurtled by overhead.
“Stay the course,” called Gerrard.
He and Tahngarth unleashed a fresh volley of fire. The bolts disintegrated lichens, stripped trees to their heartwood, and boiled marshes. Fire flooded mana bombards. It melted armor and burned fiend flesh from bone. Fore, aft, and amidships, Weatherlight’s cannons blazed.
Urza and his three planeswalker comrades meanwhile marched their titan engines inward. They cut converging lines through Phyrexian troops. Wave upon wave of Metathran mopped up behind. The blue-skinned warriors had taken Koilos. Now they would take Urborg.
But why? Gerrard wondered. Why is this fight so important?
On a low hill ahead lay the core of Phyrexian command—Crovax’s noble estate. It was in ruins. Smoke blackened everything. Domes lay cracked like eggshells. Columns pointed accusing fingers at the sky. Phyrexian armies were marshaled across the fields. Once the angel Selenia had kept evil from this place. That was before Crovax stole her away. Now, the angel, the plantation, and Crovax himself belonged to Yawgmoth. The plantation had become a Phyrexian staging ground.
“Target the guns first!” Gerrard ordered, folding his captain’s glass and bringing his cannon to bear, “then the ammunitions depot, then the command center, then the individual soldiers.”
“Aye,” answered Tahngarth and the other gunners.
“Sisay, bring us in at the treetops, fast and low. Strafe the damned bugs.”
“I think you enjoy this too much,” Sisay replied, adding a belated, “Commander.”
Weatherlight flew down a marshy hollow. Fronds slapped the belly of the ship. Weatherlight’s roar bounced from water and wood.
“Even with bats’ ears and flies’ eyes, they won’t be able to tell where we are,” Gerrard assured himself.
His hands were sweaty on the fire controls. Fear prickled the hairs on the back of his neck. There was something not right about this. He’d made a miscalculation—was thinking too much like a human, not a monster. Gerrard flicked a glance over one shoulder to Tahngarth. The bull-man returned his gaze, eyes rimmed with uncertainty. He sensed it too.
Clenching his jaw, Gerrard faced forward. “All right, just watch for the guns. Take out the guns, and we’ll be fine.”
Weatherlight flew from the wetlands and up the rising fields where Crovax’s family had once planted their crops. A darker crop rose now—countless Phyrexians encamped for war. They were arrayed in orderly file, toy soldiers on a brown carpet. In the center of the army, a column of beasts marched—not toward battle but toward the plantation house.
“Hold your fire!” Gerrard called. “Watch for the guns!”
Though Weatherlight roared above the Phyrexians, none looked upward.
The ship topped the long rise and reached the broad tablelands where the ruins rested. Rampant vines draped palm and cypress—plenty of cover to hide bombards. No guns fired, though. In the central lane leading to the plantation house, Phyrexians marched in an orderly column.
“What is this?” Tahngarth asked.
Gerrard only shook his head.
At last the ship flew over the shattered mansion itself. Every room lay open to the sky. The ghosts of past grandeur lingered among burned beams and ruined furnishings. The Phyrexian parade entered the plantation house and snaked its way to a specific room—a small room. It was untouched by the ravages that had destroyed the rest, or it had been reconstructed—the room of a young man. There, in that doorway, Phyrexians one by one bowed to the floor in homage.
There was no time to see more. Weatherlight shot past the roofless home. Gerrard and the other gunners still watched for ground-to-air fire, but none rose.
In dread realization, Gerrard murmured, “It’s not a command center. It’s a holy place, a temple to the boy who grew up there. It’s a temple to Crovax.” A drop of sweat rolled chillingly down Gerrard’s spine.
How high had Crovax risen in the Phyrexian hierarchy?
“That’s why we’re in Urbor
g,” Gerrard said to himself. “Crovax is here.” Into the speaking tube, he said, “Bring us around, Sisay. Let’s go in with guns blazing. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel. We’ll kill every last bug. We’ll capture this isle. It’ll become our beachhead for rousting the Phyrexians from all of Urborg.”
Even as he spoke, Sisay brought the ship around in a tight arc. All along the rails, cannons hummed hotly, ready for annihilation. The jitters were gone from gunners’ hands. There was only the grim set of jaws and the lightless eyes of men who knew they were about to commit slaughter.
Gerrard’s gun spoke first. It lashed out a red hand that burned away a whole platoon of Phyrexians. Tahngarth’s cannon ripped through fifty more. Death stabbed down on the bowed heads and shuffling claws. Phyrexians died like roaches.
Above the roar of his gun, Tahngarth shouted, “Why don’t they even run?”
Gerrard shook his head. “They cannot run. Crovax has commanded their worship.”
CHAPTER 3
He Has Commanded Their Worship
Tsabo Tavoc, conqueror of Benalia and queen of Koilos, stood on a volcano in Rath. In moments, she would return to Dominaria. She had almost owned that world. By right, it would have been hers—except for one warty, green-skinned wretch.
Squee was his name. Squee had given Gerrard a sword. With it, Gerrard had wounded Tsabo Tavoc and destroyed the portal at Koilos and escaped. Her prize had escaped, and Tsabo Tavoc had limped back to Phyrexia.
It had been a long road back, a road paved with torment and humiliation.
First, Tsabo Tavoc had gone to the fourth sphere of Phyrexia for the none-too-tender ministrations of the vat priests. They stitched closed the laceration in her gut. She commanded them to use silk, but they used leather thongs instead. Even vat priests could ignore her orders.
Sewn together like an old sack, Tsabo Tavoc went to the second sphere. There Phyrexian cogwrights replaced the five legs ripped from her thorax. The replacements were crude things, rusty and inelegant. As to the injuries to her spider abdomen, the cogwrights merely sawed away the infected half and welded a steel plate over it. Even cogwrights had dominion over her.
Yawgmoth was displeased.
Next, Tsabo Tavoc received an ominous assignment: Report to Envincar Crovax in the Stronghold, and give account of your failings.
On grating legs, Tsabo Tavoc ambled across the sooty wastes of the second sphere. She reached a portal to Rath. The gate guards—a pair of mogg goblins—dared to mock her shorn abdomen. One of her good legs thrust into the mouth of the first mogg, impaling him from tooth to tail. The other beast leaped on her—a miscalculation. With human hands, she gripped his neck and drove her nails through skin and muscle and windpipe until the flesh seemed only wet rope.
She was still Tsabo Tavoc. She would not be mocked by weevils. This was only a setback. Tsabo Tavoc would report to Crovax, would bear his wrath, and would rise again, one day to kill him.
She was still Tsabo Tavoc.
Painted in mogg blood, Tsabo Tavoc had passed through the portal to a volcanic hillside on Rath.
The ground beneath her feet was red and rolling. It was not lava but flowstone. Each speck of it was a minute machine clinging to those around it. As a whole, flowstone responded to the mental suggestions of the Evincar of Rath—Crovax. He shaped the world. The hills and plains around her bore the mad geography of his mind. They changed always, sometimes slowly, sometimes violently, but always Rath changed—until now.
Even as she stood there, Rath overlaid itself on Dominaria. The flowstone world phased into being atop the real one. It brought with it the races of Rath, the Phyrexian armies arrayed across its surface, and even Tsabo Tavoc herself. She arrived on Dominaria by riding the Rathi overlay, freight on a barge.
Tsabo Tavoc breathed the air of Urborg. It stank of death—not clean, metallic death but the fetor of decaying bodies.
“Of course Crovax brought his Stronghold here,” she told herself. “Necrophile.” She shuddered with distaste. How much more fun it was to torture the living than to play with the dead.
Nearby on the volcano’s side lay a violent crack. Brimstone steam wafted from that space. Dominarians would have thought this a passage into hell. They would have been right. Crovax and his Stronghold lay in the heart of the dormant volcano.
Tsabo Tavoc ambled to the rough crack and climbed within. Through slanting shafts and narrow corners she went. The tortuous route would have killed a lesser creature, but Tsabo Tavoc had the grace of all arachnids. Even light abandoned her, but she could see in absolute dark. The spider woman clambered for miles into deep rock. At last, a new, red glow began ahead. It lit the sulfuric crack, and hot winds rolled up around Tsabo Tavoc.
She emerged in an enormous hollow, perhaps a dozen miles in diameter. When this volcano had been active, the cavern would have been filled with a mountain of lava. Now the vast subterranean chamber held only the Stronghold.
Despite herself, Tsabo Tavoc paused to stare in awe.
The Stronghold was massive—a mile tall and three miles in diameter. It floated in the center of the volcanic cavern and seemed the elaborate pelvis of some titanic predatory beast. It had been grown more than built. Walls and windows and floors all were formed of flowstone, which aped the properties of countless materials. In the superstructure of the city, the flowstone had the consistency of bone. Ivory buttresses and arches connected processes and concavities. Horns jutted from each tower and rail. Slender ribs extended in walkways. Within the complex, the flowstone took the form of metal. Stacked tiers of balconies and inner chambers rose into the high vault above the city. Armored mechanisms dangled beneath.
For all its size and elaboration, the Stronghold performed one simple function: converting volcanic and planar energy into flowstone. The Stronghold had created flowstone and channeled it out the side of the volcano, creating Rath. Now that the plane was complete, the ancient flow of power was stilled. The Stronghold awaited its ultimate task.
Tsabo Tavoc nimbly picked her way around the interior of the cavern. There was only one bridge onto the Stronghold, and even a spider woman could not spin another way across. To reach the bridge, Tsabo Tavoc had to climb atop the mogg goblin warrens that lined the inner walls of the cavern. It was yet another indignity. The beasts emptied their slops out the windows of their warrens, leaving long slick trails.
They would pay, these goblins—they and everyone else.
Tsabo Tavoc crawled from stony sills down onto the main bridge. Her metallic legs chimed quietly on the rocky expanse. More moggs lined the structure. Brutish and mindless, they stood at what amounted to attention for a hunchbacked species. Tsabo Tavoc strode down the gauntlet of them. Her legs itched to knock them over the rail to their deaths. The beasts let her be. They could smell the blood of comrades on her.
Besides, Tsabo Tavoc was expected.
She reached the main gate, called simply Portcullis. It had once borne the stylized emblem of Volrath’s face. Crovax hadn’t removed his predecessor’s likeness. He only added to it a set of grinning shark’s teeth. At Tsabo Tavoc’s approach, the great gears began to roll, and the gargantuan gate swung slowly upward. This was more like the reception she had expected.
She knew the way to the evincar’s throne room. Tsabo Tavoc had memorized the route, intending to ascend to the throne. Through corridors that seemed vesicles in a giant’s heart, Tsabo Tavoc wound inward. Windows gave views into the hydroponics gardens beyond. Pits dropped to laboratories and dungeons. Il-Vec and il-Dal humans moved through the passages. Some were guards in scale mail. Others were slaves in leather coveralls. None sought to impede the march of the spider woman.
She arrived. The throne room was huge. Once it had been the convocation hall in the center of the structure, but Volrath had claimed the site for himself. Crovax had then added his own distinct flavor.
The columns
that lined either wall had been twisted by Crovax’s mind. Above, the vault dripped stalactites, some of which held impaled bodies. Tsabo Tavoc pursed her lips, calculating how much muscle it would take to hurl a body that high. A few were relatively fresh, sending down a pattering red rain. Around these gory puddles crowded dogs the size of ponies. Hackled and muscled, the vampire hounds lapped blood past enormous fangs. They kept the slate-black floor clean and protected the huge throne, which was fashioned of obsidian, its back carved with blindly staring faces and motifs of death.
All about the room, il-Vec guards stood like hypertrophied statues. Among them was the court mage, Ertai. Spine-implanted and metal-trussed, the man had become a whipping boy. Constant desperation rimmed his red eyes. He stood there, statue still, even though his master was nowhere to be seen.
Tsabo Tavoc paused, expecting to be announced. The guards paid her no heed. Even Ertai averted his eyes. This was the most galling of all. Tsabo Tavoc strode toward the nearest guard, intent on slaying him. She was stopped short by a sound from behind the throne—words and laughter.
“—nice to know you have finally noticed, Father,” came a mellifluous voice.
Another speaker replied, “No, indeed, Son. It is nice of you to forgive our long ignorance of your greatness.”
“Don’t even start to apologize, Father. I would not expect imperfect creatures such as you and Mother to understand perfection.”
A shrill, false laugh answered, the mocking sound of a man pretending to be a woman. “Well said, Son! We should have made your room a shrine much sooner.”
“Yes, you should have.” More laughing shrieks. “You’ve seen how popular it is. Tens of thousands of troops line up to do homage.”
Tsabo Tavoc edged out around the throne. Beyond, on a small dais, sat a dainty table spread with a white-lace tablecloth. A silver kettle sent tea-scented steam into the air. Three cups and saucers sat decorously before three chairs of carved ebony. Two of those chairs held human skeletons, crudely wired together. The bones were smoke blackened, some half-burned away, some missing altogether. The skulls were the most obvious absentees.
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