Planeshift

by J. Robert King

A glob of black mana struck the port airfoil and ripped a rattling hole through it.

  “Yes, Squee! Exactly!” Gerrard growled. “The tail gunner’s job is to save our butts.”

  The rapid shots of the tail gun fused into a single, constant, furious discharge. Squee leaped within the traces, spraying beams across their wake. Defensive fire rose from the cruiser but could not anticipate the random blasts. Squee’s shots smacked the fuselage, tore holes through conduits, ripped into inner corridors, and clove engine modules. Smoke belched up, and after smoke came fire. The cruiser jolted, dropped backward, and heeled slowly away.

  “Nice shooting, Squee,” Gerrard called.

  “Dat’s another two hundred butts you owe Squee.”

  Tahngarth interrupted the goblin tail gunner. “What’s Agnate doing down there?” The minotaur stood and gaped over Weatherlight’s rail.

  Gerrard peered through his captain’s glass, but even with it, he could not make out the figures in the forest.

  A metallic voice spoke for all of them—Karn, who could see through the running lamps of the ship. “He marches. He marches with a company of the dead.”

  “What?” Gerrard asked, reeling. “Agnate has turned traitor?”

  Karn’s voice rumbled like distant thunder. “No. They march together against Phyrexians. Agnate allies with evil against evil.”

  Staring over the rail, Gerrard murmured bleakly, “Desperate times…”

  “Desperate, indeed,” Karn replied. “There’s a cruiser dead ahead.”

  Gerrard turned and looked fore. The cruiser seemed only a small black cloud on the horizon, though it swelled outward with alarming speed.

  “Evasive!”

  “Keep your pants on, Commander,” Sisay replied lightly. Weatherlight banked to starboard. Her engines thrummed. She rose on thundering winds.

  The cruiser shifted into an intercept course. It grew even bigger, eclipsing half of the sky. Its ram, a stout block ending in hornlike protrusions, reached for Weatherlight.

  “She’s trying to ram us!” Gerrard called.

  “Yes! Yes!” Sisay replied.

  Weatherlight pitched toward port and climbed again.

  The cruiser shifted its attitude. It loomed, inescapable, before Weatherlight.

  “I can’t break free!” Sisay called. “She’d drawing us in!”

  “She’s going to ram us!” Gerrard warned.

  “No,” Sisay shouted back. “We’re going to ram her!”

  “What!”

  Weatherlight plunged like a cleaver toward the massive ship. Multani coursed into the Gaea figurehead, the stabbing spine beneath, and the serrated keel. It struck first.

  Wood as hard as diamond plowed through the armor of the cruiser’s upper deck and ripped into its fuselage. The spike struck next. It punctured a gun nest and gored the monster at the machine. The beast was wiped away as Weatherlight plunged deeper into the cruiser. Metal parted in black waves before her.

  It was as if more than her own momentum drove her forward, as if something in the cruiser’s heart dragged at her.

  At last, the Gaea figurehead itself breasted the metal wave. Her brow dug in, and Weatherlight ground to a halt.

  “Reverse engines!” Gerrard called. “Pull us out of here!”

  Weatherlight’s engines flared but seemed to wedge the ship only more tightly.

  “Reverse engines, Karn!”

  The ship’s power core went silent. The hatch to the engine room flung back. Steam billowed out above the deck. From that hissing cloud emerged the silver mass of Karn. He climbed laboriously from the hatch and strode with heavy intent toward the forecastle.

  “Karn! What’s happening?”

  “The power cores,” he said, leaping from amidships to the forecastle. His legs drummed the deck. “They’re drawing each other together like a pair of magnets. Every time we fire up our engine, it pulls us deeper. The only way to get out is to shut down their engine.”

  Eyes wide, Gerrard said, “And how do we do that?

  Karn gestured toward the prow. Thick metal curled away from the ship’s hull. “Give me a door.”

  Wordlessly, Gerrard nodded. He swung his cannon toward the armor of the Phyrexian ship and squeezed off two shots. Red rays melted air and then metal. It dripped through the breach, revealing the cross section of a corridor.

  Dipping his head, Karn vaulted over the prow rail and in through the red-hot hole. His feet struck a floor of metal grate. The sound echoed both ways down the long corridor and was answered by more feet—Phyrexian feet. Gibbering hungrily, monsters scampered down the passage toward the intruder. They loped on all fours like wolves, though their bodies were scaly and their mouths could have swallowed a wolf whole. The monsters converged on Karn and leaped, howling.

  Rearing his fist back, Karn hurled a roundhouse at the first beast. Silvery knuckles cracked through rows of teeth. Enamel tumbled in the creature’s mouth. Karn’s hand rammed down the monster’s throat. It closed its bite on him, hoping to sever his arm.

  Karn whirled, bashing the second attacker down with the writhing body of the first. He withdrew his arm from the creature’s throat, bringing with it a handful of innards. A third hound died beneath a stomping foot, and a fourth with a broken back. The last beast leaped on Karn and bit his head, trying to take it off. Sliding hands into the chewing jaws, Karn opened them wider than they ever should have opened.

  He took a moment to make sure all the beasts lay destroyed and then shouted toward Weatherlight, “A door for me is a door for them. Defend this breach until I return.”

  Gerrard’s sardonic face shone above the smoking barrel of his cannon. “Aye aye, Engineer!”

  Karn looked down, considering the dead. At one time, he would not fight, would not harm a soul. Now, Karn had just torn five creatures apart. Perhaps these were mere beasts, but smarter foes would lurk ahead. They would realize what he was trying to do and would fight—and would die.

  “Better them than my friends,” Karn thought aloud.

  Without another word, he headed down the passage toward the ship’s power core. He could sense its emanations. There was an uncanny kinship between Karn’s body and the cruiser. Even the runes carved in the ships inner halls resembled the characters scribed on Karn’s chest. Living metal surrounded him, half designed, half grown. The dark corridor had an organic logic, more like a vein than a hallway. Each footfall seemed a heartbeat.

  For a moment, the passage dissolved, replaced by another from long ago. It was a white hallway. He walked beside a young man, a boy really, though a genius. Beneath his bald forehead lurked impish eyes and a slightly cruel smile. It was no Gerrard. His skin was too dark. It was another friend, Karn’s first friend. He struggled to remember a name. Ladlepate? Arty Shovelhead? No, those weren’t names for the boy, but for Karn. The boy’s name was…Teferi?

  Karn surfaced from his waking dream in the midst of a fierce fight. Phyrexian shock troops—more machine than creature—swarmed him. Their human heads and torsos were deeply ensconced within a framework of artifact mechanisms. On draconic legs, they ran. With scythelike arms, they fought. Their horns could impale three men abreast, but they could not impale Karn.

  Karn patiently grabbed their arms and ripped them loose. It was the treatment he had given Tsabo Tavoc and now to her children.

  The beasts fought on. They couldn’t destroy him, but they could halt his advance until more troops arrived. That would be enough to doom everyone aboard Weatherlight.

  Growling, Karn knocked down a trooper blocking his path. It landed on its back. Karn stomped on the thing’s chest. Metal failed. Flesh oozed out like paste from a tube. This was worse than killing the hounds. These creatures had once been human.

  Karn finished the wretched work. Glistening-oil coated him from feet to hips. It poured in a regular rain through
the grating. Trying to shut the sound out of his mind, Karn strode deeper. The engine core called him.

  Again, the tunnel closed to a single point. It opened in another place and time, but the circumstances were the same. He was killing Phyrexians to defend a friend.

  This was a true friend, not like Teferi. This was Karn’s first true friend. Her name came ringing back through his body like the toll of a bell. Jhoira. She had saved him from loneliness, and he had failed to save her from Phyrexians. She lay, bloodstained and broken, on the floor of her cell there at the academy (the academy?), and Karn fought in rage against the negator that had slain her. He was not really defending Jhoira, for she was already dead. He was avenging her, bloodily, with a sense of righteous rage.

  The killing strokes of that bygone day—how long ago?—elided with the killing strokes Karn would swing in mere moments.

  He had reached the engine room—a huge arched chamber. At its center was an enormous engine, ten times the size of Weatherlight’s. Buttresses of Thran metal braced a sloping manifold in foot-thick steel. Within that framework surged energies that glowed red-hot. Power coursed from the main engine into countless arteries. Auxiliary powerhouses crouched on the floor around the mother machine. The air throbbed with noise. The engineers were utterly unaware of Karn’s approach.

  They were almost human—tall, thin, with weighty brains and narrow digits. Their bodies bore slender metal implants. No doubt these were compleated Phyrexians, but they had not been much modified from the human stock whence they had been drawn.

  Without pause, Karn strode to them. They died like birds in his grip. How could he do this? Karn, who had stood by while Tahngarth was tortured in the Stronghold? Karn, who had allowed Vuel to make off with Gerrard’s Legacy? Karn, who had failed Jhoira in her hour of greatest need?

  No, he had not failed. In fact, he had turned back the hour, had turned back even the day. He’d gone back in a time machine—strange memories!—to kill her killer, to save her and the whole academy of Tolaria.

  Tolaria! But Tolaria was a myth, less real even than its master Urza.

  If Tolaria was a myth, why did Karn remember its destruction? To save the academy—no, to save Jhoira—he had pushed the time machine to its limits and destroyed it all.

  To save his one true friend…

  The Phyrexian engineers were dead. Gerrard and the others would be dead too unless Karn shut down the engine. There were countless ways, but as Karn read the configuration of power cells, he knew the main core would always restart itself. There was only one way to shut it down permanently.

  Striding along the oil-stained flank of the engine, Karn shoved levers upward. Power mounted. One cell began to whine and then the next. Mana superfluids boiled violently. The rumble crescendoed to an angry wail, then a deafening shriek.

  It was enough. Karn turned. He ran back the way he had descended. It was an easy trail, marked with bodies. Seventeen engineers beside the power core, twelve shock troops in the passageway, and there, ahead, where clear sky shown through a hull breach, five vampire hounds.

  Behind Karn, the core went critical. White-hot fire engulfed the engine room. It burst the walls outward. It flung the doors from their hinges. Pure energy bounded up the corridor behind Karn.

  He ran. His feet clanged on the grating. From heat alone, the vampire hound bodies burst into flame. Their glistening-oil blood made a wall of fire before him. White power behind and red flame before, Karn hurled himself through the hull breech. He roared. His bloodied hands burned as he hurtled through the air.

  Perhaps, in destroying it all—even himself—he had saved his only true friends.

  Then, like a memory solidifying, Karn felt something in his hands. He held on and was drawn away from the incendiary cloud. Black metal retreated beneath his dangling feet. Urborg appeared below.

  Karn clung to the forecastle rail of Weatherlight. Fires snapped and burned around his hands and feet, but he held on.

  Above the rail, eyes worried within a shock of black hair. Gerrard smiled.

  “Karn, you did it. You made it back. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The Dragon of Yavimaya

  Throughout their flight across the ocean, Rhammidarigaaz had wondered how he would find the second Primeval. Now, as his dragon nations circled above tumbled Yavimaya, he knew.

  The Primeval drew him. She lay imprisoned below. Elves had entombed her in the heart of a great tree. For ages of ages, the ancient forest serpent had been a captive to the wood. Magnigoth sap had pasted down her scales. It had permeated her flesh and coursed into her blood and leeched every rebellious impulse from her mind. This dragon, who had breathed forests into being and had flown in a world where mortals were caged birds, this beast was a prisoner of the trees.

  But not forever.

  Bending his fangy mouth down toward the forest canopy, Darigaaz began a long, spiraling dive. His people followed.

  The wet heat of Yavimaya streamed across his leathery wings. Beneath the sun and above the treetops, Darigaaz soared. In this time of war and dark revelations, there was too little quiet and beauty. He watched his own lithe shadow as it surged over the canopy. Tree to tree, the image leaped. In its wake came the shadows of the dragon nations. They seemed fish schooling above a reef. Down to Yavimaya they plunged.

  She was here, just here, in the massive magnigoth around which they circled. It was a mountain of a tree, three thousand feet tall. Its crown could hold aloft an elven city. Large white blooms spread across the peak and showered gleaming pollen through the air. Gigantic Kavu basked among its branches, letting the sun warm their reptilian blood. Below, foliage spread in four more levels down the huge trunk. Each had its own climate, its own fauna and flora. The base of the tree was a swollen knob of wood that bristled with spikes.

  Even glimmering pollen and acrid sap could not cover the sweet, sharp scent of dragon flesh. The magnigoth was powerful and ancient, yes, but less so than its captive.

  Darigaaz tucked his wings and plunged through the upper canopy. It was like diving through the algae of a deep pool. Sunlight failed. Wind gave way to stillness. Airy creatures were replaced by giant spiders, staring Kavu, and every skulking thing.

  His people descended in a ribbon behind him.

  Darigaaz circled the magnigoth trunk. Heat seeped from his skin. Talons dragged through moist murk. Wings brushed the spikes that jutted from the root bulb. There was no true soil here except the humus that ran in a black network among the trees. On that spongy ground, Darigaaz landed. His claws dug in the dirt, and he tucked his wings. With a final flap of leather and a series of soft thuds, the dragon nations of Dominaria landed. They formed a thick ring of flesh around the prison of their ancient lord.

  Darigaaz took a deep breath and eyed the tree. It was indeed a mountain. How could he bring this creature out? How could he hope to free a Primeval?

  You know how, spoke a voice in Darigaaz’s mind. It was a purring voice, feminine and powerful.

  Abstracted, the elder dragon reached up to the talismans at his wattle.

  No, the answer does not lie there. That is new magic, a distillation of colors. We lived before all that. We lived when power was raw and elemental. You must tap the primeval power, Rhammidarigaaz.

  Tap the primeval power? How?

  You have been a servant to mortals too long. You have forgotten what it means to be a dragon. To be a king.

  Darigaaz bristled. He was the elder dragon of Shiv. He was the lord of the dragon nations. He had not forgotten what it was to be a dragon king.

  You’re no king. You’re a diplomat, a negotiator. You must rule yourself before you can rule these folk. What of volcanic desire? What of volcanic power?

  “Have you brought us here merely to stand and stare?” asked the lord of the black dragons.

 
Darigaaz shook off his reverie. Only then did he notice that Lord Rokun coiled before him.

  Rokun was a coal-black beast cast in the very likeness of Tevash Szat, the dragon god who had begun this whole escapade. Rokun’s tongue was also the equal of Szat’s.

  “Did we fly across the ocean only to land here without plan or purpose?”

  Yes? Did you?

  The fire kindled in Darigaaz’s belly grew only hotter. “Our purpose is to raise the second Primeval before the Phyrexians can destroy her. Our plan is to join the strength of the dragon nations to tap ancient power.”

  Feigning credulity, Rokun said, “Oh, yes. Let’s all join in a circle and hold hands—”

  Don’t coddle him. He is not your child. He is your subject.

  “Would you be silent?” Darigaaz snapped, uncertain whether he addressed Rokun or the voice in his head.

  “No, I will not,” snarled Rokun. His tail lashed. His claws gripped the black soil as he circled the dragon elder. “I kept my silence while many of us were slaughtered at Koilos—and for what, a hunk of sand that is now in Phyrexian hands?”

  You fight for men, not for dragons.

  “The permanent portal was destroyed. That was the purpose of the Battle of Koilos—”

  “I kept my silence as you led us to what little remained of your homeland, to fight for nose-picking goblins and runty Viashino. I kept my silence even as you led us across the world to find this oversized scratching post, but I will keep silent no longer.”

  Lash out. If you let him speak that way to you, he will rebel.

  Darigaaz lifted claws to his ears. “I’m through listening to you.”

  “No, you aren’t. I’m taking control of the dragon nations. We will follow you no longer!”

  Lash out! Are you too docile to save your own people?

  Darigaaz’s claws raked down from his ears and seized the black, hackled throat of the upstart. “You will not take command of this army. Not while I live.” He hurled Rokun away from him, into a crowd of black dragons that eagerly watched the confrontation. They reeled back, clearing the way.