Invasion

Chapter 28

Thaddeus awoke, pinioned beneath the spider woman Tsabo Tavoc. Her compound eyes gleamed like twin gemstones in her pallid face. Her mouth segments twitched in concentration as she stared down at him. The massive weight of her body pressed on him in eight spike-tipped feet. Above her head, a smooth rock ceiling gleamed with myriad lanterns. They sent tendrils of smoke up across the wall to gather and coil in the vault. The swirling soot made a black halo above the spider woman's head.

"He awakens," she said in Phyrexian.

From birth, Thaddeus had learned languages both human and inhuman. He was fluent in Thrannish and so could parse out Phyrexian.

A seeming smile formed across the segments of Tsabo Tavoc's mouth. She withdrew slightly from him. Her fingertips were gory. A scalpel in her hand ran with blood. The red stuff steamed in the cold, wet air of the cave.

Again came her buggy voice. "How admirable."

The Phyrexian commander gathered her legs beneath her and shifted away. Her horrible weight remained on him. Only then did he realize it was not she who held him down. Spikes did. Driven through wrists and ankles, shoulders and hips, they pinned him to an examination table.

Thaddeus bucked on the steely block. Joints pried hopelessly against the heads of the spikes. None budged.

Thaddeus hissed. He should have been able to rip the spikes out. His arms were somehow unresponsive. An aching weakness filled his chest. Lifting his head, Thaddeus glimpsed the reason.

His blue flesh lay open to red innards. From the notch in his throat to the ring processes of his pelvis, he had been sliced open. Each layer of living flesh-skin and muscle and tendon-had been meticulously flayed back one by one. Pins identified important structures. Similar tags rested on his organs. Numbered slips of paper clung to his liver, his spleen, pancreas, stomach, viscera. Tsabo Tavoc had even sawn away one after another of his ribs, revealing gray lungs and flailing heart.

"Do you see how quickly he discerns his condition?" Tsabo Tavoc asked, her voice buzzing. She approached. The gory scalpel twirled deftly in her grasp. "Awake but moments, and he understands what we are doing here, understands he will never again be whole. He will die, and he knows it. See how quickly he calms? Truly, he is the pinnacle of humanity."

Thaddeus tried to respond. All that emerged was a red spray across his throat. He could produce no sound, could feel no breath between his lips.

Tsabo Tavoc loomed up above him. "Are you missing something?" she asked, holding up a larynx. "Quite a costly contrivance, this. A descended voice-box allows you to speak, but at risk of choking. It is too bad your master felt so tied to human physiology, retaining such weaknesses as this. Of course, you needn't worry about choking anymore."

Approving hisses rose from figures packed around the edges of the cavern.

Turning his head, Thaddeus peered past dissection carts and experimental apparatuses to glimpse the watchers. Red-robed vat priests stood five rows thick around the cavern. They leaned avidly toward Thaddeus. Their eyes gleamed beneath the folds of their hoods. Desiccated flesh clung to skull-like heads. Scabrous hands hung loose beneath priestly sleeves.

Tsabo Tavoc made a long slice in Thaddeus's thigh.

He twitched as each successive neuron was severed. His eyes rolled in his head. He would not have cried out even if he had the vocal cords to do so, but a raking sigh emerged from the stoma in his throat.

"Here, though, is significant improvement," Tsabo Tavoc said, neatly drawing back folds of skin to reveal muscles and their neural networks. "Do you see the myelin sheaths on these nerve bundles? They speed impulse. This nerve cluster travels to the base of the spine, where lies the cortex that processes sensory and motor information for the legs. At the base of the spine rests the innovation- a second cerebellum encased in the coccyx. It speeds response time, allowing Metathran extraordinary agility. It also prevents paraplegia. A Metathran can fight on, despite a broken back. A similar though smaller node controls the arms."

There seemed genuine appreciation among the vat priests. They produced an inhuman sound, halfway between the purr of a cat and the hiss of a roach.

"Compare to the original design," Tsabo Tavoc said, withdrawing from the table where Thaddeus lay. Her legs clicked across the stony floor.

Thaddeus turned his head to watch her. She reached another table where lay another form-a human woman. She had been tied in place instead of spiked, but she was similarly cut open. The woman shivered in dread at the Phyrexian's approach.

Tsabo Tavoc picked up one of the scalpels and sliced a long, deep line down the woman's leg. "Here, we have larger deposits of adipose tissue. These are not intended to power the skeletal muscles but rather to provision the whole body with food should famine occur. It is another concession to breeding ability. If this woman is bearing young, she will need extra fat deposits. The adipose tissue makes her a slower fighter. Her pelvis is inefficiently wide, as we have seen, and this bundle of leg neurons reaches not to the base of her spine but to her brain. The uterus- prone to numerous diseases and chronic breakdown-takes up an inordinate portion of the abdomen. All in all, this is a crude design, intended for child-bearing instead of war.

"The males are no better. They bear external genitalia that are extremely vulnerable to injury. Both genders are subject to intermittent madness caused by these systems. Humans and all the indigenous creatures of Dominaria still rely upon sexual reproduction. Such is the way for creatures that live beyond the salvation of Yawgmoth.

"Only these Metathran have ascended. They are nearer to Phyrexians than any other creature. They are in some senses lost cousins of ours. Urza has made them so." Tsabo Tavoc lifted her gaze from the gory thigh muscle. She raised the scalpel thoughtfully and set the red tip on her own cheek. "One wonders, had we not launched this invasion, how long it would have taken Urza to make all Dominarians into Phyrexians."

Absently setting the knife on the table, Tsabo Tavoc strolled to the middle of the floor. Her eyes gleamed philosophically in the lantern light. "Here is the great irony." She flung one bloody hand out toward Thaddeus. "This pinnacle of glory was created not for its own sake. The Metathran were created to defend humanity- squalid, imperfect, imperfectible larva." She gestured toward the woman lying beside her. "Urza has engineered a warrior that can be spiked at wrists and shoulders, ankles and hips, can be cut open without anesthesia, can withstand a multiply broken back and still fight. The whole reason this creature exists, though, is to defend beings too weak to escape simple rope bonds, creatures that must be heavily drugged to bear the rigors of vivisection. The cream of humanity came into being to defend its dregs."

Tsabo Tavoc could not have anticipated what happened next. Even in her compound eyes, she did not see it.

The flayed woman had found the scalpel Tsabo Tavoc had left. She had used it to cut the bonds on her arms. She lurched up from the examination table. With a swift motion, she cut those around her legs. Roaring, she lunged off the table, scalpel raised to stab.

It was a futile gesture. She could not have wounded let alone slain Tsabo Tavoc. She could hardly have stood with one leg sliced open. It didn't matter. The woman held a fury that could not be denied.

A vat priest caught her before she could reach Tsabo Tavoc.

Shrieking, she rammed her scalpel into the vat-priest's skull. It was her final act. Her abdomen disgorged itself on the priest's clawed feet. He collapsed. Together, the compleated Phyrexian and the incompleated woman fell, dead, to the floor.

Silence settled. Tsabo Tavoc stared down with mild interest at the bodies. The spiracles along her sides breathed slowly as she drew in the aroma of death. "As primitive and inefficient as these humans are, they fight all out of reason. It matters little. They die either way."

Thaddeus thrashed against his spikes, unable to escape.

Tsabo Tavoc once again turned her attentions on him.

Gerrard gently lay Hanna in her sick bay berth. She was no better for her sojourn in the darkness. Gerrard was much worse. Hope had fled from him. If Orim could not save Hanna, if Eladamri and Multani could not, she would not be saved.

"How will I fight unless you are with me?" he whispered, kissing her lightly. Her lips were as dry as paper. "What will I fight for?"

Hanna was more than his beloved. She was his heart, his courage. He fought for her. Before she entered his life, Gerrard had been a bitter young man. If he lost her now, what was he? There would be nothing left but fury. There would be no difference between Gerrard and the Phyrexians.

"Oh how I will slay them," Gerrard said bitterly as he clutched Hanna's skeletal hand. "I will be my own plague. I will rot them away. I've had enough of portal wars and serums. I want a fight, a real fight. I want teeth against knuckles and broken noses and knives in the eyes."

"I have a fight for you," came an elderly voice at the sick bay door. The blind seer hobbled slowly into the chamber. "Not I, but Dominaria. You have lost Benalia, and saved Llanowar. Now there is Koilos."

"Koilos? A hole in the desert," Gerrard hissed.

The old man shrugged. "More than that. At Koilos the Phyrexians were first driven from the world. At Koilos they first returned in the time of Urza. Now, it is their only land portal. If that hole in the desert is lost, all is lost."

Gerrard shook his head bleakly, gazing at Hanna. "All is lost."

"Grief can wait," the old man replied. "Koilos cannot. The Metathran have been beaten back. One of their commanders is captured and near death. They need you and your ship. They need the Benalish air fleet, the prison brigade, elf shock troops, and their leader Eladamri."

"Eladamri?" Gerrard blurted. "He has a nation to rebuild. He won't go."

The blind seer sighed. He eased himself to sit on a bunk. "He will go. Saviors are not builders. The heir to Staprion wishes that he go. No, Eladamri's work is done here but not so at Koilos. He and his elite warriors will go. Multani, too, will go.

"Multani!"

"He was present for the birth of this living ship. He provided her hull from the Heart of Yavimaya. He goes with us, in the very wood of Weatherlight. He will heal her every wound. In some senses, this is his ship." The old sage lifted an eyebrow. "In some senses, you are his as well. Multani trained you. He wants to see how his old student does. You cannot blame your masters for taking an interest in your doings."

"My doings?" Gerrard echoed.

"Yes. Your doings. Koilos is your fight, Gerrard."

Gerrard stared down at the dying form of his beloved. "Of course. It's a fight Hanna would approve." His mouth flattened into a bitter line. "And, besides, at Koilos there are plenty of Phyrexians to kill."