They rested on the hands of the man who sat in the third chair—Crovax.
The Evincar of Rath had once been a small man. That was before Yawgmoth had transformed him. Now Crovax had a powerful chest and a torso like a bull’s. Under black scale armor, huge arms flexed, easily able to hurl a man fifty feet upward to die on a stalactite. His legs were equally broad, like coiled springs. Crovax’s head jutted, round and close cropped, from a metallic collar. The worst change of all to him, though, were his teeth—row on row of triangular, jag-edged teeth. Crovax’s jaws could distend, allowing him to remove heads with those teeth. He had eyes to match, the soulless eyes of a shark.
Evincar Crovax did not seem to notice Tsabo Tavoc’s arrival. Instead, he continued his conversation with the skull puppets he held on his hands. Gravely serious, he stared at his tea guests.
“When I was growing up, I thought you’d never understand me. If I’d known all it took was your murder and immolation, I would have done it much sooner.”
His father’s skull boomed a belly laugh. His mother shrieked her merriment.
Tsabo Tavoc interrupted. “Evincar Crovax, the Ineffable has sent me to give report.”
Blinking, Crovax looked up at Tsabo Tavoc. He did not seem to see her. “And you are?”
Red anger showed on her face. “I am Tsabo Tavoc.”
With a nod, Crovax seemed to recall. “Oh, yes. One of the field commanders—”
“I am your second-in-command,” Tsabo Tavoc corrected.
Crovax shook his head, a little jiggling motion. “That cannot be. I do not have a second-in-command.” Setting down the skulls, he stood. “My second-in-command was destroyed at Koilos.”
“Those rumors are false,” Tsabo Tavoc hissed. She was not accustomed to dealing with superiors and hadn’t even now convinced herself she dealt with one. “I am Tsabo Tavoc. I survived Koilos.”
“That cannot be,” he repeated. “Ten thousand scuta, twenty thousand bloodstocks, thirty thousand troopers did not survive—”
“But I did.”
“One hundred ten dragon engines, six witch engines, forty gargantua, twenty trench worms—”
Tsabo Tavoc loomed up before him. “But I did.”
“One hundred heavy ordnance, two hundred field ordnance, five hundred slashers—”
“But I did!” she raged, lunging for him.
Her legs would not move. The floor was not black slate but flowstone. Crovax controlled it. It had latched onto her legs. She could not rip them free.
Crovax continued as though she hadn’t interrupted. “All those troops lost, all those machines…gone. Worse still, the permanent portal, which had joined Phyrexia and Dominaria for nine thousand years—it was lost too. And Gerrard Capashen, whom you were charged to gain for Yawgmoth? All this lost, and yet you survive?”
A shudder of fear moved through Tsabo Tavoc. She was used to fear, to feeling it in others, but it had been decades since she had felt it for herself.
Crovax walked up to stand before her. His head did not even rise to meet her thorax. Despite all the doubt that rumpled his brow, Crovax grinned.
“Still, I can’t deny what my eyes tell me. Here you are. Second-in-command Tsabo Tavoc.”
“Yes,” she replied tersely.
“You are not as grand as tales have said. I heard silken skin.” He gestured at the leather thongs that held together her belly wound. “This looks more like burlap. It’s crude work. We’ll have to fix that.”
He reached up, grasped the wound in a powerful grip, and ripped it out—thongs, laceration, skin, and muscle. His fingers clutched the hunk of flesh. Glistening-oil dribbled onto the floor. Vampire hounds loped up to lick it away.
Shrieking in pain and rage, Tsabo Tavoc struggled to pull her legs free. She would kill this bastard….In a rage, she lunged down to grab Crovax with her human arms.
Crovax casually lifted his bloodied fist and backhanded her face.
The force of the blow was incredible. Tsabo Tavoc would have tumbled across the floor if her legs hadn’t been rooted. She reeled. Glistening-oil coursed down her head.
Crovax meanwhile delicately balanced the meaty gobbet on the nose of one of his vampire hounds. The huge canine dutifully waited, oil sliding into its nostrils, until Crovax nodded. Fangy jaws snapped, and the flesh was gone down the beast’s throat.
Petting the creature, Crovax turned his attention back to the dizzy spider woman. He gazed gravely at her thorax.
“And shoddy workmanship, these legs. We’ll have to fix that as well.”
He gripped the first of her new legs and hauled against the joint. Metal cracked. Wires snapped. Sparks flew. A ball sucked free from a fleshy socket. The leg fell to ground.
Tsabo Tavoc tried to grab him again.
Crovax merely caught her arms and ripped them off.
The pain was exquisite. She had forgotten what her own agony felt like.
One by one, he broke her other legs free, all eight of them. With a crash, she fell to the floor. She writhed amid her own limbs. Oil covered her.
Vampire hounds converged. Their eager tongues lapped at her.
“So that’s it then?” she screamed. “You’ll feed me to your dogs?”
Crovax called off the hounds, speaking a single command in a violent language. They ducked their heads and licked their jowls before loping away.
Stepping across the mess of legs, Crovax towered above her. “No. I will not feed you to them. Despite all your failures, you were a great warrior. It would be foolish of me to let a hound gain the courage of your heart, or the knowledge of your brain, or the wisdom of your liver. Those are delicacies suited for conquerors. And, whatever you once were, my dear, I am now your conqueror.”
He set his boot on her throat and stepped down, crushing windpipe and spine.
* * *
—
Crovax retired late that evening, after a perfectly prepared meal. The organ meats were, of course, the main treat, but there were also some fine steaks—sirloin, flank, shank, and chuck. The ribs would make a good lunch tomorrow, and he would have roast brisket for dinner. The rest was being stewed for later.
Crovax felt full and satisfied but not yet good. There was only one thing that made him feel good these days.
Retiring to his private chambers, Crovax dismissed the servants and locked the doors. He strode to center of the room and fell to his knees on the slate-black floor. Hands that had torn apart the spider woman now clenched in prayer.
“Great Yawgmoth, I have served you today. Tsabo Tavoc has been disciplined. My troops have locked down the central island. The battles in Keld and Hurloon progress perfectly. Ertai and Greven stand ready to destroy Weatherlight and bring her commander to me. Preparations for the final implementation are underway. I am paving your return to Dominaria, Lord.”
He paused, breath hissing in his teeth.
“I beg one favor, only, and you know what it is.” He stared up into the dark vault of his room. “You have her. She is yours. I wish only to see her a moment.”
Shark eyes studied the emptiness above. Seeing nothing, Crovax bowed his face to the floor.
“Please, Lord Yawgmoth. Please, send her to me.”
He lay there, not daring to look up, not daring to see the creature who descended, lest his eyes drive her away again. He did not need to see. In his mind’s eye, he knew how she looked—broad-swept wings and willowy arms, slender form and graceful legs, alabaster skin, wan face, sad eyes…Oh, it was always her eyes that destroyed him. Those eyes that had pleaded to be released, that had torn at him when she was stolen away by Yawgmoth, her true master, that had stared hatred at Crovax when he had slain her. Those sad, angel eyes.
She belonged to Yawgmoth now. She always had but especially now, when she was no more than a ghost.
Crovax felt
her gentle hand upon his shoulder. It was warm. It had weight. It was real.
He lifted his head and opened his eyes. Through jagged teeth, he breathed a simple, sweet sound. “Selenia.”
CHAPTER 4
The Uniter of Keld
As the overlay began, Eladamri and Liin Sivi stood at the head of a small but fierce host of Steel Leaf elves. In front, pikes tilted and swords jutted. In back, longbows were lifted, trained on the skies. The dust of Koilos slid across the goggles of the elves and settled in their savage shocks of hair. More dust rose ahead of them, flung into the sky by hundreds of thousands of Phyrexian feet.
Eladamri stared at the oncoming foes. His eyes were steely, the same color as his armor and hair. He should shout something, some battle cry. This was the moment of death. Elves always shouted defiance in the face of death. He could think of nothing. His tongue was a thick lump in his mouth.
Beside him stood Liin Sivi—no elf, but a Vec. Her eyes too were the color of her hair—black. They gazed with an altogether different emotion. Liin Sivi was not ready to die. Humans never were. She was ready to kill. Her wicked-bladed toten-vec was eager to swing out on its chain and harvest heads.
Bowstrings thrummed behind them. Arrows flocked into the sky. They shrieked over the elves and out past the two titan engines. One, a green machine composed in part of living wood, held the planeswalker Freyalise. She was a god to these elves. Glimpsing her engine amid the hailing arrows brought the war cry to Eladamri’s lips.
“Freyalise!”
The Steel Leaf elves took up the cry. It roared out among the Phyrexian horde even as the arrows pelted into them. Shafts cracked carapace and lodged in eye orbits and sank into the folds of throats.
“Freyalise!” Eladamri called again. This time Liin Sivi shouted it too, as did all the elves.
The third shout of that name seemed an invocation. Power swelled out from the insectoid engine. It blossomed from each line of armor, each spiracle and gun port. Like an opening flower, Freyalise’s might spread to cover them all. In moments, Eladamri, Liin Sivi, the Steel Leaf elves, and even the other titan engine were subsumed into the body of Freyalise.
Koilos disintegrated around them, a sand painting on the wind.
Planeshift, Eladamri realized. She is taking us away from certain death.
The contingent hung unmoving in emptiness. It was not as if the ground had dissolved beneath their feet but as if the air itself had become solid. Within the planeswalker’s envelop, all was still. Beyond it, all was chaos. This was the world between worlds.
Soon rampant energies spiraled into patterns and they into solids.
Trees took shape—tall, spiny, and ice choked. Ground formed. The rocky soil was carpeted with snow. The stinging heat of Koilos gave way to the stinging cold of a northern clime under frozen skies.
Eladamri breathed the air. It was wickedly cold. It jabbed chill fingers beneath his armor and tricked away the last of Koilos’s heat. He sheathed his sword and wrapped his arms around himself.
Liin Sivi did likewise. “Where are we?” Her breath ghosted in the air.
Casting a glance around, Eladamri saw that the Steel Leaf elves had arrived in this algid wood as well. The two titan engines stood just ahead of him.
“I don’t know, but I know who does.”
“Freyalise,” supplied Liin Sivi.
In silent accord, Eladamri and Liin Sivi strode up the snowy ridge toward the titan engines. Uncertain what else to do, his warriors followed.
Eladamri shoved his way through the prickly pines, alien and harsh to his fingers. He unwittingly triggered an avalanche of snow from the boughs. The white stuff slumped atop him and slipped into his collar. Growling, he shrugged it off. Behind him came snickers, which turned to snorts beneath more frosty assaults.
Jangled, the heroes of Koilos reached the ridge where the titan engines stood.
Eladamri set hands on his hips and looked up at the strange machines.
The titans’ feet deeply compacted the snow. Wind moaned in their massive armor. Frost formed geometric designs on observation ports. The dome where Freyalise resided was silhouetted black against the aching blue of the sky.
Cupping hands to his mouth, Eladamri shouted, “Great Freyalise, Lady of Llanowar, where have you brought us?”
In answer, the titan lifted a massive arm and pointed to the forest that spread out below.
Eladamri turned to look. His eyes opened wide, and his jaw dropped.
Intermingled among the aggressive evergreens were tall, twisted trees from another world. The Skyshroud Forest. It was not there in entirety, but large portions mixed with the native foliage. Among pointed peaks of fir, the vast gray boles of cerema trees stood. Wintry sun dappled the waters that stood among their roots. Boreal winds moved veils of moss.
“The overlay,” Eladamri realized. “It has brought the Skyshroud Forest here.”
Squinting against the snow glare, Eladamri made out walkways curving along prodigious trunks, and aerial bridges joining tree to tree, and knobby dwellings in the hollows of boughs. Worse yet, he made out figures moving….
“The overlay has brought my people here. It has brought our nation to this frigid death.”
Without a thought to the Steel Leaf elves in his command, Eladamri ran down the ice-choked slope. His leather boots, excellent for battles in treetops and sand, were treacherous on the snow. He slipped and fell. In a cascade of rock and ice, he rolled to the base of the incline. Scratched and bruised, Eladamri climbed to his feet and ran through a brake of pine.
Beyond, the Skyshroud Forest began. Eladamri staggered to a stop, his feet on warm soil. The forest had arrived here only moments ago, with the rest of the overlay, and it still held the heat of Rath, the smells of home. Eladamri breathed the air. Already it was cold, but the scents of humus and moss filled it. Tendrils of steam rose from the watery sea beneath the trees. A flash of scales shone where a merfolk fled from his gaze.
With sudden realization, Eladamri stooped, putting his hands on his knees. The water would freeze in this climate. The merfolk would die, so would the cerema trees, and every vine, every food crop, every elf….
Eladamri was moving again. He knew this terrain, these very trees. He leaped from the embankment and grabbed a dangling vine. Pulling his legs up beneath him, he swung above a palisade of huge thorns. Landing on the platform of vines beyond, he rushed to an ancient cerema tree. A walkway spiraled up the huge bole. He climbed. Generations of elves had climbed this very tree. Their feet had worn dark wells in the flesh of the vine. Eladamri’s own feet had helped carve out these steps.
Oh, he had hoped one day to return home to the Skyshroud but not this way, not on its last day. By evening, the forest would be dead, the sea beneath it frozen.
Eladamri reached the spreading crown of the trees. Pathways led out along the boughs and into numerous bulb dwellings. Eladamri knew the families who lived there—the sons of Dalwryri, the royal line of Gemath, the storytelling clan of Dalepoc. He could hear them in their homes, adult voices fearful and querulous, children complaining of the cold, infants crying. He would go to them, yes. He must go to them but not yet.
He ran across a vine-work bridge that led to a nexus of other paths. Elves filled the trails, some of them struggling toward their homes and families, others standing and staring at the clear, cold blue overhead. A few recognized Eladamri, their long-lost Uniter, and they called out to him. He passed them in a blur. There would be time for them. He would be the Korvecdal again in moments, but just now he was a grieving man.
Another set of paths led to the most familiar tree of all. Its shape was etched on his mind. The green ivy that clung to the bark, the bulb houses clustered to one side of the main stalk, the arching canopy above. His steps slowed, and his hands trembled as he grabbed the walkway rail. The hammering of his heart seemed to shake t
he bridge.
He entered. The dwelling was exactly as he remembered it the day he left to attack the Stronghold. No one had ventured here. Wooden cups yet sat upon the table. The covers across his pallet were drawn up and ready for him to sleep. The battle plans he had made for the assault still lay in coils of bark on his desk.
“Home,” Eladamri said.
Somehow it had not been real until now. This displaced forest, dying under daggers of cold, might have been some weird apparition, someone else’s nightmare. Seeing his own home and all the things he alone knew made the nightmare real.
Eladamri sucked a breath. He staggered from the hollow out into the broad lap of the tree. He meant to catch his breath, but then his gaze slid across the cruelest sight of all.
His daughter’s bulb opened just before him. The wind muscled through the door and rifled her clothes, hanging on pegs along one wall. Frosted leaves tumbled through the window and onto her bed. She had been abducted from that very spot. An agent of Volrath’s had abducted her, and Volrath himself had made her a monster. The Phyrexians had abducted Avila and killed her, and now they had abducted the whole of the Skyshroud and killed it.
Going to his knees on the foot-worn bark, Eladamri clutched his face. “Why did you bring me here, Freyalise? Why do you torment me?”
Footsteps came along the vine bridge. “Great Lord Eladamri, you have returned to us! We knew you would come. We knew that, in our moment of greatest catastrophe, you would come.”
Eladamri lifted teary eyes to see who spoke to him. “Allisor.” He breathed raggedly, unable to say more.
“We thought you were dead,” the young lieutenant said. The skin was drawn tight across his jutting chin and prominent cheekbones, an expression that mix terror and elation. He knelt beside Eladamri and bowed his head. “That is, the others thought you were dead. No one who was trapped in the Stronghold made it out alive. But I didn’t think you were dead. I knew you would survive, somehow.”
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