Invasion

Chapter 25

"Come away from Keld," Urza said, appearing suddenly out of nowhere.

Barrin did not even startle. He didn't care enough anymore to startle. He'd been crouching here beside the fjord, watching frigid water mound up with the rising tide. Foam stole tentatively across the sand bars and kissed the keels of Keldon longships. In less than an hour, the warships would stand in twenty feet of water. Then Barrin and his erstwhile foes, the Keldons-gray and massive and impatient on the docks- would ship together for more wars in Western Keld. "Come away from Keld," Urza repeated.

Barrin squinted up at him. "How dare you? You told me this battle was everything. You told me I'd just have to forget what these… what these beasts did to Rayne. So I did. I did just like you said. And now you so blithely call me away?"

Urza stared back, his eyes like twin candles. He stood on a black fist of basalt beside the fjord and seemed just another stony extrusion. Beneath woolen skies, his warrobes were dark except where snowflakes pasted themselves.

"This battle is no longer everything."

"Damn you, Urza," Barrin said bitterly.

Sea spray vaulted up behind the planeswalker. "It's the army, not the battle. That's why you had to forget about your wife. I needed this army. I need them for a better fight."

"What better fight?" Barrin asked wearily.

"Urborg."

Barrin barked a laugh. He couldn't have imagined a more ludicrous response. "Urborg? A cesspool of liches and ghosts and zombies, brimstone and malaria? Yes, oh, yes, that's a better fight."

"Urborg is key to the next phase of the Phyrexians' plan. They cannot be allowed to gain it."

Shaking his head dispiritedly, Barrin said, "Why not? Urborg deserves them. They'd probably be at home there."

"That's the reason, exactly. They would be at home," Urza replied evenly. "Koilos and Urborg. If Yawgmoth gains footholds there, he can straddle the world."

"All the better to punch him in the groin," Barrin growled. He flung a shard of basalt out to skip across the foaming flood.

"You sound angry, my friend," Urza said. He stepped down from the rock and approached. "These northern climes are wearing on you."

Barrin stood. He gazed at a gray wave that struck the pebble bank and sent rocks tumbling toward the shore.

"Benalia is lost. Zhalfir and Shiv are gone. Now Keld is falling too. I thought I could forget Rayne in war but not when war screams-'Loss! Loss! Loss!' "

The planeswalker shook his head. Icy wind tore at his ash-blond hair. "It is not all loss. Yavimaya has won. Llanowar has won-"

"Llanowar!"

"Yes. I understand that your daughter was instrumental in the victory."

"Hanna," Barrin breathed. He closed his eyes, imagining her bright smile. The face he saw, though, was that of Rayne. "I should go congratulate her."

A strange shadow passed across Urza's gemstone eyes. "Soon, my friend, but not yet. Urborg awaits us. I want you to convince the Keldons to sail to Urborg at best time and rendezvous with you there. Meanwhile, you'll be mustering the Serrans who survived the fall of Benalia. We will need their angel armies."

"Serrans and Keldons?" Barrin looked sick. "Strange alliances."

"Stranger and stranger," Urza agreed. "Dominaria will not be saved unless all Dominarians fight. I am arranging a great coalition among the many nations of the globe. Those who stand alone will fall. Those who unite will conquer."

Barrin stared appreciatively at his friend. "I never thought I'd hear Urza Planeswalker admit needing help from anyone."

Urza shrugged away the comment. "Of course, Lord Windgrace and his panther warriors will join us. I'll be bringing elf warriors from Yavimaya and helionauts from Tolaria-"

"Helionauts," Barrin interrupted. "Tolaria will be vulnerable without them."

"We all must make sacrifices," Urza said.

Barrin shrugged, staring across the rising tide. Already, two of the Keldon longships bobbed levelly on the flood. Up stout gangplanks marched Keldon warriors, crates loaded on their backs.

"All right. I'll do what you ask. The Keldons and Serrans will be there at best time. We'll fight your battle for you. We'll drive out the Phyrexians and leave the place to the liches."

"Good," Urza said simply as he began to disappear. "I'll look for you there."

Barrin flew in the midst of an angelic host. Their wings gleamed white above a pitching sea. Wind whistled from perfect pinions and set songs in the air.

This was how Serrans flew-enmeshed in music. It was why their attack squadrons were called choirs. Each creature knew her part. Each flew in precise pitch with the others. Like fish in a school, who sense the movement of the whole in pressure points along their sides, angels knew by harmonies and dissonances where they flew, how they fought, and whom they slew.

Barrin was at home among these inhuman glories. He rode ahead of them, aback a winged horse conjured from thin air. The creature seemed a thing of cloud-white and gleaming, halfway between solidity and mist. Still, it was powerful. Wings spread wide on the wind. With each surging stroke, the beast's neck bent. Its hooves churned the air as though it leaped steeples.

Of course, Barrin did not need a winged steed. He could fly with a mere thought, but he had been inspired by Teferi's phoenix flocks. There was something appealing about riding into battle on a creature of pure imagination. This horse would not tire. It would not bleed. It would not foam or spit or die-all the filthy things that true flesh had done over and over the last long weeks.

As glorious as the angel choir behind him, as magnificent as the ideal creature beneath him, Barrin could not keep his spirits from slumping. He was sick of war, sick to death of it. He didn't mind killing Phyrexians. He minded watching Phyrexians kill angels and Keldons, elves and Metathran and humans. He minded knowing that lives were mere chess pieces in a match between Urza and Yawgmoth.

Barrin was tired of being a pawn.

"There," he murmured, looking dead ahead. Though he was still a hundred miles out, a gazing enchantment brought every detail in crystalline clarity to his eyes.

Beyond the alabaster wings of his mount, Urborg loomed up out of the sea. It was a black and awful chain of islands. Dormant volcanoes hissed sulfuric steam into the air. Pestilential swamps stretched beneath forests of dead trees. The air waved with nauseous heat and rattled with a billion billion bugs. The only solid ground was muck. The only water was poisoned. The only living inhabitants were allies of, or slaves to, or prey for the unliving. Ghouls, liches, zombies, wraiths-necromantic horrors all.

That was the normal aspect of Urborg. Since Phyrexians had moved into the neighborhood, things had gone significantly downhill. Now, the skies teemed with dragon engines and undead serpents. Like devil rays, they drifted in lazy circles around the isles-guardians and watchdogs for the forces below. There were plenty of forces below. Three Phyrexian cruisers had landed. They sat atop long pylons sunk in the marshes. These were the command centers. Troop transports in their hundreds had also landed, off loading Phyrexians especially bred for swamp combat. The officers of these units rode small airship through the swamps, wedge-shaped chariots with batwing airfoils.

Despite Urza's best intentions, the Phyrexians already ruled Urborg. Now Barrin and his angels would fight demons for possession of hell.

More than Barrin and his angels…

He glimpsed eight huge rags of sail stretched on the wind. Keldon longships. They tore parallel lines through an angry sea. Reaching full out, they seemed to plan a ramming attack on the main isle itself. Knowing Keldons, it was a surety. They would drive their ships up as far as they would go, perhaps a thousand yards into the salt marshes, ram whatever Phyrexian landing craft they could find, clamber up on the decks, and kill, kill, kill.

Oh, yes, the Keldons would have a grand time today.

Above them, seeming almost their reflection in the sky, soared a squadron of airships-Tolarian helionauts. Each looked like a galleon, its fore and mid decks encased in a dome of glass and steel. From the center of the aft deck rose a mechanical arm topped in whirling blades. Defensive spines bristled at prow, gunwales, and stern. Three pulser guns pivoted fore and aft, but the true weapon of the ship was the whirling blades.

Those blades proved themselves now. Darting down with the speed of eagles, Tolarian helionauts swarmed the island.

Dragon engines rose to do battle. Skulls craned backward to belch flame. Mechanical claws raked out. Tails scourged the air. On leather wings, Phyrexian dragon engines leaped into the sky and bathed their foes in a river of fire.

The helionauts plunged into the blazing flood. Flames licked across polished metal. Fire left a blush of steam in windscreens. Tolarian pilots rubbed away the condensation and shot through the flame. Pulsers spat streams of disruption fire. The charges jagged across the sky to impact dragon engines. Blue energy sparked and danced across their metal frames. It held them in a paralyzing grip, just long enough for the blades to come to bear.

With spinning scythes, helionauts sliced through dragon engines. Wings were sheered from the beasts. Heads chopped free. Even ribs ground to shards and dust. Hunks of dragon engine fell from the air.

It was not as easy as that, though. From a volcanic vent below, more dragon engines arrived like shooting steam. These were larger beasts. The others had been only keeneyed sentries. These dragon engines were decked for war. They jetted into the sky straight beneath the helionauts. Wings surged once last and folded beneath wicked shoulders. Dragons rammed helionaut hulls.

Planished metal buckled. Joints failed. Great holes gouged in the sides of the ships. Out spilled crews and ruined mechanisms. One craft was struck so hard it bounced upward and chewed the belly out of another. They both plunged from the sky. A third helionaut began spinning drunkenly beneath its whirling scythes. It veered like a gyro and dropped, destroying a dragon engine on its way to ground.

The remaining helionauts filled the air with pulser blasts. Charges chased dragon engines through the sky. Power lay hold of them, paralyzed for a moment. Before the ships could tear them apart, though, other dragon engines attacked. Helionauts hailed down.

Barrin suddenly regretted the gazing enchantment. What was the good of seeing a battle that was still miles away?

Then everything changed. Dragon engines tore each other apart.

Barrin blinked, wondering what he saw. Suddenly, he knew.

Down upon the Phyrexian dragon engines soared real dragons- Rhammidarigaaz and his dragon nations. The ancient Shivan wyrm led four other dragon lords, one for each of the colors of magic. They flew wing and wing, onetime foes turned stolid allies. In the wake of these five great dragons flew whole serpentine nations. They poured from the sky as the Phyrexians had geysered from the ground.

Darigaaz flew in the vanguard. Fireballs rolled from his claws and baked dragon engines. Lava spouted from his throat and melted them in midair. To his one side flew the green dragon lord, trailing spores. They clumped onto Phyrexian engines and grew rampantly, cracking their joints. The white lord of dragons followed. It only flew, its pure wings cleaving through Phyrexians like light through nightmares. The blue dragon lord meanwhile sent spells out to rip the air from under scabrous wings. The black dragon and his folk, though, were fiercest of all. They smashed atop their evil brethren and ripped them apart with bare claws. Hunks of dragon engine fell to crash spectacularly in the swamps.

More things crashed in the swamps. Keldon longships- dagger-like with their mainsails reefed and outriggers cut loose-glided with surreal speed through the salt marshes. Rams split dead trees in their path. Keldon great swords clove Phyrexian troopers clawing to board. Arrows poured out from the decks, from this distance seeming ripples spreading from the prow.

"Arrows?" Barrin wondered to himself.

The first longships at last ran aground, a thousand yards inland. From the rails leaped massive Keldons in their hundreds, but also others-lithe, quick, slender. Elves. Urza must somehow have arranged their passage with Barrin's Keldon warriors. Strange coalitions. Brawny and scrawny, arrogant and elegant, Keldons and elves rushed side by side into battle.

Beyond their lines, Phyrexian shock troops rose from rock grottos to slay. They were as thick as maggots on a corpse and outnumbered the Keldons and elves a hundred to one. At their head, gliding aboard wedge-shaped airchariots, rode black-armored commanders.

"They'll need help down there," Barrin decided. Helionauts and dragons ruled the skies, but Phyrexians ruled the ground. Barrin lifted his hand in an attack signal and sent his winged steed into a steep dive.

Angels swept down behind him. Their song rose an octave into a shrill whistle. The music lost none of its glory, only becoming more inhuman.

In moments, they had dropped from the blue heavens to the black swamps. Dead trees flashed past in gray stripes. Angels darted like silver blades in their midst. Depthless water churned below the hurtling hooves of Barrin's steed.

Ahead, a Phyrexian commander roared forward atop his air-chariot.

Barrin gathered the power of islands and seas and sent a blue enchantment ripping out from his fingers. It twined in air and grasped the chariot. The vessel flipped over and drove downward, ramming its driver headfirst into a mud embankment. The chariot bounded up to crack against a tree and rattle to ground. Only the driver's legs jutted from the mound, and they were broken and still.

The shock troops beyond continued their charge.

Angels jagged out before Barrin. Their magna swords sliced Phyrexians. Blades bit into spiky shoulders and cut clean through to hunched legs. They cleft heads and gutted chests. Magna swords ran black and golden with guts and oil. The angel song had become a bloody thing, part battle hymn, part requiem.

Barrin lashed out with a rainbow of sorceries. His first spell turned Phyrexians on each other. His next sorcery infected hundreds more with carbuncles of rust. Catching his breath, Barrin unleashed a simple but effective fireball, melting metal and bone and flesh. As he gathered another enchantment, Barrin's steed smashed hooves atop Phyrexian heads.

Still, there were so many shock troops-too many. Phyrexians rose from every hollow and every deadfall. Plague-infected claws sank into angel throats. Pincers ripped wings from their sockets. Stingers pumped venom into pure hearts. Serrans dropped like moths.

The Keldons fared even worse. They held a nearby ridge but were surrounded by Phyrexian slashers. Elven arrows did nothing against the metal beasts, all legs and blades. Keldon swords only clanged helplessly against them. Shoulder to shoulder, the strange allies were being ground to pieces.

"Break through!" Barrin called to the Serrans. "Break through to the Keldons!"

The battle shifted. Angels gathered up behind the winged steed. Barrin and his beleaguered troops rose from the swamp. Black-mana spells followed them up, claiming two more Serrans. The rest escaped. It was a tattered group, angry and wounded, that broke from one overwhelming battle only to enter another. They had lost many comrades already and would lose more in moments.

Barrin's winged horse punched through curtains of moss. Angel wings tore the rest to ribbons. Sloughs beyond teemed with mosquitoes. Leather-backed shapes moved darkly through the water. Perhaps they would keep the Phyrexians from pursuing.

The dead forest gave way to a stinking lake, beyond which rose the ridge where the Keldons and elves stood surrounded.

Barrin led his aerial units out across the inky waters. They would be too late. Shock troops and slashers closed in. Even now, the shores boiled with black figures rising to join the Phyrexian ranks. They surged up eagerly behind the pressing armies and lent their putrid claws to the killing.

Except they were killing Phyrexians.

Ghouls climbed in their thousands from the rank water. The remains of their former clothes and skin and muscle draped in tatters from their skeletons. They shambled with a hungry will up among the Phyrexian troops and piled atop them. Horns pierced their rotting flesh. It didn't matter. Blades chopped limbs from their bodies. It made no difference. Ghoul flesh clambered onto Phyrexians, gumming up every joint, choking every throat, burying every beast.

Mouth hanging open in amazed horror, Barrin diverted his troops up and away from the carnage. Angels jagged skyward behind the winged steed. As Barrin gazed down at the strange tableaux, he glimpsed, in the crest of a rotten stump, the black-garbed necromancer that had raised the ghouls. Its face was a patchwork of desiccated flesh over white bone. It was a lich, an undead creature itself-but it was Dominarian. It mustered its minions to fight Phyrexians.

Just before the winged steed carried Barrin beyond a stand of trees, he glimpsed a small, acknowledging nod from the lich, the sort given by comrades in the thick of battle.

Strange coalitions.

Barrin leaned down against the glimmering neck of his mount and clutched it, panting sickly.