Apocalypse Page 14

  Ahead lay the power nexus. It seemed a gigantic, floating beehive, its convoluted edges suffused with holes. Into them and out of them streamed bright points of light, the buzzing potencies that energized the vats. Motes whirled up from a deep, wide pit beneath the hovering nexus, a cyclone of light that held the central orb aloft. On the inner edge of the huge well, Urza had planted a soul bomb, one charged with the spirit of Szat.

  It had taken one planeswalker to set the bomb, another to charge it, and two more to detonate it.

  Placidly, the winged panther and the woodland queen drifted above the vats. So reverent they were, so watchful, they could not help seeing the sudden violent agitation in the vats underfoot. In wide rings, the disturbance spread out across the entire field. It was as if a massive fist had pounded the underside of the sphere—which was indeed what had happened. The charge that Windgrace and Freyalise had detonated two spheres below had reached its fiery hand up to smash into the foundations of this world.

  The vat priests sensed it too. They paused on their causeways to stare at the cells below their feet.

  The newts knew it even better. Anything that could shake the pillars of the world could destroy their glass-and-oil vials, and their very lives.

  They were right to fear. Their death day had come.

  A vat priest pointed to the two intruders. Its desiccated fingers clutched an amulet of teeth, and it spoke a violent word. Up from the red-robed creature rose a spell that turned the air to ropy lines of black. Mana squirted like cobwebs toward the two planeswalkers.

  Freyalise reached out almost casually and released a green cloud of spores. Macrophages flooded into the black webs and soaked them up, eating death.

  Farther on, gigantic insect arms reached skyward. From bays set among the vats, chitinous limbs rose.

  Lord Windgrace was ready. Ages of war across the face of Urborg had taught him the best counterspells to black magic—not the white or green sorceries against which these creatures were entrenched, but rather the blue or red spells that lay nearer the heart of blackness. From the panther warrior’s eyes emerged twin cones of azure that swept the field ahead. Segmented legs that once had groped skyward lashed out laterally. Instead of tearing the two planeswalkers from the skies, the limbs tore each other out by the joints. The radiance from his eyes was joined by a crimson glow from his claws. Red beams, as curved and cutting as those claws, sliced through more of the reaching legs. Where the fiery rays reached, carapace and white meat severed and fell away.

  Newts thrashed in their vats. They sensed their doom.

  In fury or pity, Lord Windgrace ran giant paws of flame across those vats. Fires ignited glistening oil. They burst with explosive force, flash frying the creatures within. Columns of blue flame erupted from the open vats. Each burned brilliantly while its oil lasted, while its occupant expired.

  “Don’t waste your spells,” advised Freyalise. They neared the buzzing nexus, and her eyes brightly reflected that place. She nodded toward the bombsite. Teams of vat priests had gathered to disarm the device. “We’ve bigger fish to fry.”

  Something faraway and fragile entered the panther warrior’s eyes. “I have spent centuries trying to restore Urborg. All that warfare to save an island. Today, I fight one more war, but this to damn a world.”

  Freyalise shook her head vigorously. “This is no ecosystem. This is a tyranny. Killers are bred here. In nature, even base acts are innocent. In Yawgmoth, even noble acts are guilty—”

  “A whole world,” interrupted Windgrace. “We are world killers. We are gutting a whole world.”

  “We are gutting one mind, one horrid mind that has spawned all these others. It is an evil tree, Windgrace. We pull it out at the root.”

  “You would as easily destroy all Urborg, wouldn’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she replied without hesitation. “I would drain every swamp, level every volcano, and fill the isle with a forest.”

  In his feline face, the planeswalker’s eyes glowed sharply. “Then what is the difference between you and Yawgmoth?”

  “The difference,” Freyalise replied as she swept down upon the crowd of vat priests, “is that Yawgmoth will lose, and I will win.”

  There was no more time for debate. They had reached the wide well at the center of the vat fields. Sparkling motes of energy whirled up from below and, in curving glory, rose to penetrate the great hive above. It was a brilliant spectacle, hypnotic and otherworldly.

  Freyalise cared nothing for it. Instead, she focused on the scab of red vestments below. Vat priests crowded around the incendiary like scar tissue over a deep infection. A wave of Freyalise’s viney hand covered those rotten figures with fungi. White roots dug into and through Phyrexian skin. Tendrils sucked dry muscle and dead bone. Mushrooms dismantled their prey.

  Yes, she would win. Oh, yes.

  Freyalise descended, with winged Windgrace beside her. Both reached ground on the sloping edge. Freyalise floated toward the bomb and set to with iron-hard fingers. Lord Windgrace meanwhile hovered above. His black pinions raked and slashed whatever creatures came near.

  “It’s set,” said Freyalise, suddenly beside him again.

  She clasped his paw in her hand and hauled him upward. The feuding planeswalkers slid through a tear in the world’s fabric. The slit closed behind them, and not a moment too soon.

  The bomb ignited. Its radiance eclipsed the energy motes. Globes of force reached in all directions. Below, the blast divoted the pit to five hundred feet. It shattered every vat and spilled half-formed inhabitants on the ground to flop and die like fish. The shock wave swept out around half of Phyrexia. Beneath it, the future armies of Yawgmoth lay crushed and shattered.

  Somewhere on the third sphere, Freyalise and Windgrace materialized. Beneath their feet, gigantic pipes shuddered with the power of the blast.

  Freyalise wore a bitter smile. “I got him. I got Yawgmoth. He thought he had won, but it was me. Oh, yes, I won.”

  CHAPTER 17

  In the Monsters’ Lair

  In the middle of a pitched aerial battle—these days, everything happened in the middle of a pitched aerial battle—Weatherlight at last found Gerrard.

  After sensing Squee’s presence below, she had flown a dozen strafing runs over the central volcano of Urborg, had hurled radiance out across the spectrum, had gathered in the energy and teased it into its separate fibers and discerned every runnel below, every room in the Stronghold, every creature in every room….There, in the monsters’ lair, she had discovered Gerrard.

  Weatherlight exulted. She climbed heavenward. Her planished bow ripped through a cloud and through the Phyrexian war machine hidden in the cloud. She shredded metal as easily as air. What her prow did not crash through, her seven guns blasted. They discharged with a sudden and simultaneous barrage that dismantled the cruiser. It came to pieces before the triumphant skyship. Weatherlight hurled away shattered plates and ruined creatures.

  Sisay, at the helm, was first to understand. Before the rest of the crew had felt their stomachs drop into their shoes, she had felt Weatherlight take her own wheel and choose her own course. Never before had the ship overridden her captain’s will, and never would she unless…

  “She’s found Gerrard!” Sisay shouted through the speaking tube.

  Unfortunately, the revelation was lost in the shriek of metal on metal in that emphatic climb. The crew could only cringe and hold on, watching in amazement as Phyrexian armaments cascaded around like autumn leaves.

  Karn did not hear, but he understood. He and the ship were soul-mates, come of age together, and he felt her joy tremble through the cannon fire controls. The very deck beneath his feet ached eagerly as Weatherlight topped her arc. The keel pivoted like a peaking arrow. The ship dived. Karn’s feet wanted to slip free of her deck, but his gunnery traces held him in place.

  Hands gladly triggering the cannons, Karn shouted, “She’s going to Gerrard!” Twin blasts of white energy ripped from t
he guns and fanned out across the sky. They drilled through Phyrexian ships and opened a wide descent toward the caldera.

  Even above the noise of the guns, Karn’s bellow rang clear. Orim, manning the weapon that once had been Gerrard’s own, stood in the traces and unleashed a fierce column of fire. It shot through enemy ships and drew a straight line down to the pit where the Stronghold lay.

  She raised her free hand and whooped, “Round up the herd—we’re headed home!”

  The bovine reference brought a baleful glare from her gunnery mate—Tahngarth.

  Orim explained, “Gerrard’s down there!”

  The minotaur’s lips drew back in an expression that was too violent to be a smile. He hurled white flame across the sky to mantle a plague engine. The lumbering craft answered with ropy lines of black mana, but too late. Tahngarth’s shots peppered the armor of the ship before they struck a lateral intake and plunged to the engine within. The ship bounced once. Its every curved plate expanded. Its every seam shone light. Then the machine came apart in a roaring fireball.

  As the ship plunged toward the caldera, heedless of the massed Phyrexian fleet around her, every last crewmember knew that the ship had found Gerrard. Skyfarers and ensigns, deck officers and cabin boys—all clenched teeth behind clenched lips beneath clenched eyes above clenched hands. They held tight, plunging from the blue heavens to the black hells.

  “Stay sharp!” Sisay shouted. “We’ve got a few dissenters out there.”

  Black mana webs stretched out across the sky, barring the way to the central volcano. They formed layers of death, turning clear air to coal.

  “On it!” Orim replied, bringing her cannon to bear.

  Energy poured from her gun, blanching the air. It burned through the first layer of filth, and the second, and the third. Bolts could do only so much, though. Weatherlight outpaced them.

  Tahngarth’s volley poured reluctantly from the weapon, little able to escape the ship’s velocity.

  Weatherlight cut right toward the web of corruption.

  Orim growled out, “Here’s where Gerrard would shout ‘Evasive!’”

  Sisay answered, “Here’s where Hanna would thread the needle.”

  Though she didn’t move a muscle, the helm surged forward and spun. Weatherlight corkscrewed violently. She tucked her masts and plunged through the interstices of the black-mana net. While killing corruption whooshed past her, Weatherlight soared through untouched. The Gaea figurehead seemed almost to smile, staring with Hanna’s eyes.

  Sisay shouted, “Did you get that, Orim?”

  “Aye,” she replied. “Just like old times.”

  Tahngarth cocked a querulous brow at her. “Get what?”

  “It’s a sisters thing,” Orim replied over her shoulder as she melted a Phyrexian ram ship out of Weatherlight’s path.

  Tahngarth raised a fist—two fingers and two thumbs—and said, “Hail the sisterhood.” With his other hand, he sent a lightning charge up into the belly of a Phyrexian cruiser. The volley eviscerated the ship.

  It was the last shot any of them would send skyward. In seconds, Weatherlight had pulled out of reach of her aerial foes and plunged into reach of the volcano. An igneous crater spread wide below, and at its center plunged a black shaft. That was where Weatherlight headed.

  “We already destroyed the guns at the edge of the caldera,” Sisay shouted as Weatherlight dived, “but who knows what they’ve got below?”

  Everyone on deck stared at that deep black, blackguard looking place. When last they had gazed on it, Tahngarth had slain Greven il-Vec and sent his ship, Predator, spiraling down the abyss. The minotaur had dubbed it a calling card for Crovax. Now, Weatherlight would pay her long-overdue visit.

  “In we go!” Tahngarth called.

  Karn’s voice resounded through tubes and over the polished deck. “There are guns in the shaft! Watch for the guns!”

  “How do you know?” Tahngarth replied.

  In answer, the great silver golem only stomped on the deck and fired his cannons. The portside gun reached out its white hand, gripped a massive Phyrexian bombard along the inner lip of the shaft, and tore it free. The bombard fell, spewing shot across the space it was designed to protect. Karn’s starboard cannon sent a sizzling blast into a gun bunker. Energy poured whitely across the figures that manned the guns. They burned to bones and ash.

  Karn knew because Weatherlight knew. The pit down which they plummeted was lined with a tight spiral of weapons, imbedded in the conic walls. Next moment, there was no doubting their presence. Every last one of the weapons blazed. The ship flew toward a sudden panoply of color, all of it burning, tearing, shredding, obliterating—

  The seven guns of Weatherlight woke to sudden life, but what were seven guns against an unholy arsenal? Even though the cannons destroyed twice their number of enemy ordnance and negated thrice the enemy fire, still a hundred weapons loosed killing force on her.

  Weatherlight was her own best defense. With mirror-bright hull and polished wings, she deflected rays and shrugged away plasma charges. Black mana bombs could only slough from her gleaming skin, unworthy to cling to her. And where there was no silvered hull, Weatherlight had breathed a protective aura about herself—the shift envelope. Always the gossamer pouch had risen involuntarily in the Blind Eternities, guarding the crew from raw chaos. Now that Weatherlight was a live and thinking thing, she could invoke the shift envelope whenever she willed it, and she willed it now. Black mana and red fire spilled across the membrane like paint spilled on glass—lurid and messy, but hardly deadly. As Weatherlight forged onward, the wicked goo slid harmlessly away.

  The membrane gave as good as it got. While Weatherlight’s envelope shrugged off the horrors of mana bombards and plasma bolts, it emitted white-hot rays that stitched their deadly way along the wall.

  Twenty Phyrexian guns ruined, then thirty. They melted like candles in the sunlight. Where Weatherlight reached out her arms, the best weaponry of Phyrexia fell to puddles. Already, the cannonades above rained metal and superfluids down on their counterparts below.

  “This is the worst of it!” Sisay called encouragingly. “These are the gate guards. Once we’re beyond them, the Stronghold will be wide open.”

  Weatherlight knew this hope to be false, and the ship’s soul-twin, Karn, knew it too. “Where the guns stop, worse defenses will begin,” he called out.

  No sooner had he and his cannons spoken than the truth they told became apparent. Something new caught hold of Weatherlight—repulser fields. They began where the light failed, giving way to a deep, cold, sulfuric murk. Just there, an invisible hand lay hold of Weatherlight. The Gaea figurehead was shoved rudely upward. Her keel glanced off the unseen barrier and flattened to a level pitch. No longer did she stab down toward the unseeable heart of the mountain, but cut an oblique circle around the interior.

  Worse, the guns that remained above poured down their fury on the stalled craft. Black mana splattered the ship’s envelope, casting its shadow over the crew. Ooze ran reluctantly toward the gunwales and dripped below. Red beams meanwhile struck glancing blows, refracted by the envelope. Every third shot won through, burning a hole where it hit.

  A fangy beam impacted the membrane, bent toward the forecastle deck, and smashed home. It vaporized an irregular section of planks and tore through the braces beneath.

  Sisay felt Weatherlight’s helm reel in agony. No longer was this merely a warship in tight straits. Now Weatherlight was a warrior caught at the bottom of a pit, her tormentors hurling rocks down on her.

  Gripping the helm tightly and struggling to drive the ship deeper, Sisay soothed, “We’ll get you out of this.” Then, loudly into the tubes, she yelled, “Tahngarth! Orim! How about some counterfire!”

  “We’re on it!” came the barked reply from Orim.

  She punctuated the words with a full-bore blast from her cannon. The white shot blazed upward. It ate a descending column of ray fire, following the energy like a spar
k up a fuse. Even as the Phyrexian cannon disgorged its last crimson beam, Orim’s white blast dissolved the barrel and the chamber and the charges of the machine.

  Tahngarth’s response was no less deadly. He targeted a mana bombard, ripped the belly out of it, and laved its crew in black corruption.

  “What about you, Karn?” called Sisay.

  The silver man wasn’t firing. He’d dragged himself out of the gunnery traces and was heading toward the hatch. Though he was nowhere near a speaking tube, his voice came loud and clear to Sisay. “The others will stop the assaults from above. I’ll get this ship down below.”

  Sisay’s incredulity spoke equally loud through the windscreen of the bridge. “What?”

  “Weatherlight needs me.”

  Sisay could only nod to that.

  * * *

  —

  Karn hurled back the amidships hatch. He descended into the companionway. He had strode this path countless times before, though now it looked utterly changed. Thicker, wider stair treads gleamed with new polish, devoid of all the dents made by the silver man over the years. Streamlined lanterns clung to stronger walls, less likely to be cracked by an ambling golem. Everything was different—but Weatherlight called him. Karn had last climbed these stairs with the distinct impression that the ship would never need him again. Now, each step revoked that impression. She needed him, but how could he help?

  In a blur of uneasy speculation, Karn reached the engine room and entered. The space was dark—more so than before. The silver golem shuffled inward past new twists of pipe and revamped power exchanges. The engine labored but not with the boisterous shout of the old days. The straining groan of the dynamos had more dignity now, more grim solemnity. Even Weatherlight’s voice had changed.

  Unsure what to do, Karn followed the old trail he used to walk. He reached the place where once he would kneel to interface with the engine and control the ship. Even the twin divots that his knees had pressed into the wood were gone.