Planeshift

Chapter 16

Nine titans towered above a blasted underworld.

The second sphere of Phyrexia was a scrap heap. The ground consisted of rusted iron and corroded brass. Inert machines lay like dead giants on the horizon. Here and there, smokestacks jutted from the ground. They spewed constant pillars of soot high into the air. The metallic waste spread into a churning black firmament miles overhead. Among columns of soot rose columns of metal. Girders and pipes ran like veins on their outer edges. As wide around as whole cities, the pillars extended from the ground to the smoggy firmament above. Here and there, the clouds parted to show not an open sky but a closed vault. It was the underbelly of the first sphere. Enormous trusses stretched column to column. Their metal was encrusted with carbuncles. There was no sun here, no stars. Were it not for occasional blasts of fire from the smokestacks, there would have been no light in this sphere at all. As it was, the red glares leant a flickering and lurid aspect to the landscape.

Planeswalkers did not need light. They could see heat signatures, and there were plenty of those. There were other signatures here too. Dead ahead, some five miles from where the titan engines stood, the bomb production facility lay. Each of the stone-charger shells in that factory gave off a null signature. Its mana-voided core warped natural energies. The total effect, even at five miles, was unmistakable.

Each of us has the capacity to take twenty warheads, Urza told his immortal comrades. Gather that number, 'walk to the master columns, set the charges, and rendezvous on the third sphere.

Taysir remarked, A simple plan-

From a simple mind, supplied Szat, kicking a shattered mechanism with the claw of his black dragon suit.

– but Phyrexia is not a simple place, Taysir finished. The multicolored gemstones of his suit scintillated in the eerie darkness.

Within the pilot orb of his own titan engine, Urza made final adjustments. Small lightnings scintillated on the energy fork at the peak of the suit. This sphere is a habitat, just like the first, except here there are only predators, only mechanical watchdogs-the Devourer, the Dreadnought, the Diabolic Machine…

Holding a rusted cog in her ivy-vined hand, Freyalise said, You seem all too impressed by those names, artificer.

Urza's titan engine almost shrugged. And why not? They are masterworks of design. Where Thran artifice ended, Phyrexian artifice began. Engines such as these have never been equaled on Dominaria- except in these suits, of course. And you would do well to show a little appreciation yourselves. Without these suits, the caustic atmosphere would rip your nerves to rags.

Daria coyly crossed the legs of her lithe and perfectly balanced titan suit-a feat none of the other engines were capable of, and said, And I suppose if we get killed, it's our fault, not a design flaw.

Urza peered out of the cockpit dome and gave a rare smile. And I thought you didn't understand me. With that, he turned toward the distant bomb factory. Let's go. Every

moment we wait is another moment for the Dreadnought to find us.

Above his piloting bulb, the energy fork flickered with an impending storm. Its blue reflection crazed the glass below. The bulb seemed a mad, glaring eye. Tripod feet crunched down atop piles of twisted scrap. Metal shrieked against metal. Two more steps, and Urza was at a full run.

Bo Levar surged up to one side. Clumps of Urborgan mud fell from the pounding legs of his titan engine. Tatters of tobacco dropped from the joints in his hand as he clawed past a metal pillar.

You ever done this before, Urza?

Attack Phyrexia? he asked curtly over the noise of the engines. No, attack an ammo dump, Bo Levar replied idly, because you're doing it wrong.

The words that returned were snide. And you're an expert because-?

The foes of free trade are known to assemble vast arsenals. I've made quite a few raids in my time. And what am I doing wrong?

Bo Levar reached down to the mud-encrusted knee joint of his suit and grabbed a clod. He shoved the wet stuff onto Urza's energy fork, diffusing the lightning storm.

First, you've got to remember that the ammo's not your enemy, the guards are. You go in there blazing lightning and rockets, we'll all be blasted to oblivion.

Stone chargers can't be set off that way.

But you don't know what other munitions can. Bo Levar let out a satisfied sigh, and the interior of his pilot bulb grew momentarily blue-gray. Windgrace and I will take point. Follow and learn. With a sudden burst of speed, Bo Levar outpaced Urza. Lord Windgrace's engine bounding up beside him. On all fours, it was the fastest titan. Side by side, Bo Levar and Lord Windgrace raced toward the installation. Urza followed shortly behind, with the other six in company.

It was only a mile away now, a roofless assemblage of demonic machines-toothy cranes, cobweb gantries, smelting buckets, smoking furnaces, rivers of molten metal, mounds of shattered crystal, and droves of artifact drones.

In their midst stood row on gleaming row of stone chargers, the most powerful bombs developed by the Thran. One stone charger could annihilate a huge city, scouring soil to bedrock and irradiating a hundred miles with deadly concentrations of white mana. It was rumored that Yawgmoth had used such devices to eradicate his rivals in the Thran-Phyrexian war. Now, those bombs would be used on Yawgmoth's own world.

The drones are no concern, Bo Levar advised. It's whatever watchdog guards the drones-

A huge and toothy mechanism rose suddenly before the titan engines. It had lain dormant amid piles of scrap, waiting for intruders. Now the thing lunged up from its well of metal. It had the configuration of a sea urchin, rods bristling outward from a central body. Each rod was tipped in a pair of jagged bear-trap mechanisms, ratcheted open. The vicious things swung out to clamp onto Bo Levar and Lord Windgrace

Without breaking stride, Bo Levar said, Here's what I meant. He leaped over the snapping jaws of the Phyrexian defender. Lord Windgrace did likewise. Both titans sailed through the smoky air.

Eschewing the advice of his lessers, Urza halted before the monstrous machine and loosed a pair of rockets. They surged from their wrist housings and corkscrewed toward the beast. The first missile struck a pair of snapping jaws and deflected upward to explode in clear air. The other passed perniciously through the forest of rods, screamed out over the intervening space, and struck a blast furnace. The detonation cracked away metal and brick, loosing a great river of molten steel. It gushed across an adjacent array of stone chargers, liquefying their shells and rendering them useless.

Clucking quietly in his piloting bulb, Bo Levar said, That wasn't so well done. With a nonchalant kick, he struck the back side of the defender mechanism, where none of the rods jutted. Like an urchin pried from its rock, the thing folded to one side.

Windgrace administered the killing Mow. Blue motes swarmed from the eyes of titan suit, struck the drive mechanism before him, and liquefied it. The mouths snapped a few more times spasmodically before they lay still.

Brushing the hands of his titan suit, Bo Levar said, Let's see what they've got for us next.

Look out! sent Kristina. Her weighty engine hurtled through the air above the destroyed mechanism and the other titans. She came down on the next guardian.

This monster was more muscle than machine. Like the dragon engines of the first sphere, its flesh was living metal. Unlike them, the thousand-legged giant millipede was too ferocious a predator to have free run of the first sphere. Its fang-studded mouth reared into the air.

Kristina ducked beneath the striking head. The titanium toes of her engine cracked into the back of the great beast. A quick spell made those toes razor sharp. Feet slid between folding plates of metal. With similarly honed fingers, Kristina crouched and grabbed handholds. She heaved, ripping open the back of the monster. Sparks spewed from ruptured wires. Pneumatic muscles groaned as she yanked again. Steel cables separated beneath the millipede's plates. Cords lashed.

Kristina was dauntless. She plunged her hands deeper. Titanic fingers grasped adjacent ribs along the millipede's torso. Spells heightened the tensile strength of her own gears. She pulled. With a pop and an acrid gray cloud of smoke, the nerve center of the beast separated. Severed halves of the monster flopped in biomechanical agony. Kristina continued her grim work until she had completely ripped it in two.

The joints of her suit steamed with exertion. Kristina rose triumphantly in the breach of the worm.

Commodore Guff arrived, his titan engine striking a dignified pose. Through a haze of smoke, he peered out of the pilot capsule and stared appreciatively at Kristina's handiwork.

By Belinus! You've got a way with bugs. We'd had critters like that back when I was a kid, and we ripped 'em in half too, but just to watch 'em grow a new mouth on both ends-

Kristina was too slow-they all were too slow. Both new mouths lunged for her engine. It seemed Yawgmoth had known the signature defense of living millipedes. The first mouth bit straight through Kristina's pilot bulb. Glass shattered and metal sheered. The bulb crushed like an egg. The second fastened onto the torso of her engine. In dynamic opposition, the two mouths ripped the head away from the body.

Had she 'walked? Had she 'walked? came Taysir's anxious thoughts.

With an animal shriek, Szat hurled himself between the two halves of the beast. He had learned from Kristina's mistake. You couldn't tear this beast apart. You had to kill it from the inside out.

Swallowing, one mouth lunged for Szat. He caught its jaws and roared, pouring fire down the metal throat. While the flame went from red-hot to white-hot, Szat also sent a cloud of corruption down the beast's gullet. Millipede teeth wept like candles. Metallic flesh melted from metallic bones. Neural networks turned to sparking goo. Szat's attack killed the brain of the thing. It went limp, settling like a long, deflated balloon.

Hurling the dead creature down, Szat whirled to attack the other millipede at his back.

He breathed fire. He poured out corruption.

But it wasn't the other half of the millipede that he slew. It was already dead, smoldering in blackness beneath the angry figure of Kristina. She had planeswalked away from her titan engine just as it was dismantled. Reappearing aback the second beast, she marshaled her full arsenal of planeswalking spells. The monster lay in dead runnels beneath her, but every last spell was gone from the woman. Battling the caustic air all around her, she had no time to 'walk again.

Szat's firestorm dismantled her. Skin, skull, and brain- brain was the thing, whether with a millipede or a planeswalker. If she couldn't think, she couldn't step away from danger, couldn't reassemble a new body. She was gone. Obliterated. An eternity over in an instant.

Szat stood gaping while another beast attacked. This was no Phyrexian but a more deadly mechanism-Taysir, onetime love of Kristina. He fell like a mountain on his fellow titan, hurling him to the scrap heap and landing on top.

You careless bastard! You damned vicious monster!

Taysir was proving himself little better, furiously battering the titan engine of his foe. It was his mistake. Szat was not helpless like Kristina.

Flipping over, Szat hurled Taysir's titan off him. She killed herself. She got in my way.

Both titans were knocked back by a sudden presence between them-Urza Planeswalker in the largest, most powerful engine of all. Hold, both of you. Have you forgotten our mission?

Taysir's suit flashed in rage. Have you forgotten Kristina?

Szat sneered. Urza always forgets the dead.

You're implicated in this, Urza. You're the one who insisted on bringing this… this… murdering monster. Maybe you needed somebody else who would love this place, Taysir roared.

Urza stared from his pilot bulb with bald incomprehension. What are you talking about?

Oh, don't kid yourself, Urza. You love Phyrexia like a man loves a woman. You love her lines. You love her machines. You love the perfection of design through constant war. You don't want to blow up this place. You want to take it as your own!

Enough! Urza shouted. Enough! This was an accident. It shows how vulnerable we all are without our titan suits. Keep them on. In the meantime, I will prove to you what little love I have for this world. On! On to the stone-chargers.

The three had been so immersed in their argument that they hadn't realized the other five had fought on toward the munitions factory. Bo Levar and Commodore Guff led the charge.

Have you seen this one? Bo Levar asked as new defenders rose in a swarm about him. The mechanisms had the configuration of tadpoles, though instead of tails they had single lashing wings. Their main body consisted of gnashing teeth. Bo Levar easily grabbed the wing of the first creature and swung it in an arc before him. The titan engine's glove glowed with a blue radiance that proliferated out across the body of the defender. It seemed to draw the other defenders magnetically inward. They con-verged around the first beast. The chattering jaws chewed each other to shreds of metal. Twenty in one blow.

I'll be jiggered, said Commodore Guff in genuine amazement. Combining martial sciences with magical ones…

The wave of the future, Bo Levar said. You watch. Once this business is done, this kind of stuff will be huge.

Let me have a go, the commodore replied. He grappled a huge, spidery construct that rose in his path. Various colors of magic flashed from the titan and raced along the rodlike legs of the beast. The first spell managed to produce an odd odor, the second to cover the spider in rampant ivy, and the third to send it floating away toward the smoggy ceiling of the sphere. Ah, perfect, little happy to write about that one.

As Bo Levar and Commodore Guff blazed the trail forward, the other titans loped afterward, Urza last of all.

Taysir had sounded so like Barrin. The mage master had once joked that the only difference between Urza and Yawgmoth was a four-thousand-year head start. Such comments were not helpful, and Barrin had been full of them.

Taysir and Szat had been wrong. Urza didn't forget the dead. Every day since he'd killed his brother Mishra-it was a mercy killing, yes-Urza remembered him. He remembered Xantcha and Ratepe, who had been Mishra for him and had helped him reclaim his mind. He remembered the students and scholars of the first Tolaria and of New Tolaria. Most of all, though, he remembered Barrin. That was a loss Urza would never recover from. Barrin, Xantcha, Mishra-they had all become a single beloved other lost for all time. Urza remembered all too well.

His dark reverie was broken by a bright vision. He and his team had reached the ammunitions factory. Before them, row on glorious, gleaming row, stretched thousands of stone-charger shells.

Beautiful.