Invasion Cycle - Planeshift Part 3

"So that's it then?" she screamed. "You'll feed me to your dogs?"

Crovax called off the hounds, speaking a single command in a violent language. They ducked their heads and licked their jowls before loping away.

Stepping across the mess of legs, Crovax towered above her. "No. I will not feed you to them. Despite all your failures, you were a great warrior. It would be foolish of me to let a hound gain the courage of your heart, or the knowledge of your brain, or the wisdom of your liver. Those are delicacies suited for conquerors. And, whatever you once were, my dear, I am now your conqueror."

He set his boot on her throat and stepped down, crus.h.i.+ng windpipe and spine.

Crovax retired late that evening, after a perfectly prepared meal. The organ meats were, of course, the main treat, but there were also some fine steaks-sirloin, flank, shank, and chuck. The ribs would make a good lunch tomorrow, and he would have roast brisket for dinner. The rest was being stewed for later.

Crovax felt full and satisfied but not yet good. There was only one thing that made him feel good these days.

Retiring to his private chambers, Crovax dismissed the servants and locked the doors. He strode to center of the room and fell to his knees on the slate-black floor. Hands that had torn apart the spider woman now clenched in prayer.

"Great Yawgmoth, I have served you today. Tsabo Tavoc has been disciplined. My troops have locked down the central island. The battles in Keld and Hurloon progress perfectly. Ertai and Greven stand ready to destroy Weatherlight and bring her commander to me. Preparations for the final implementation are underway. I am paving your return to Dominaria, Lord."

He paused, breath hissing in his teeth.

"I beg one favor, only, and you know what it is." He stared up into the dark vault of his room. "You have her. She is yours. I wish only to see her a moment."

Shark eyes studied the emptiness above. Seeing nothing, Crovax bowed his face to the floor.

"Please, Lord Yawgmoth. Please, send her to me."

He lay there, not daring to look up, not daring to see the creature who descended, lest his eyes drive her away again. He did not need to see. In his mind's eye, he knew how she looked- broad-swept wings and willowy arms, slender form and graceful legs, alabaster skin, wan face, sad eyes ... Oh, it was always her eyes that destroyed him. Those eyes that had pleaded to be released, that had torn at him when she was stolen away by Yawgmoth, her true master, that had stared hatred at Crovax when he had slain her. Those sad, angel eyes.

She belonged to Yawgmoth now. She always had but especially now, when she was no more than a ghost.

Crovax felt her gentle hand upon his shoulder. It was warm. It had weight. It was real.

He lifted his head and opened his eyes. Through jagged teeth, he breathed a simple, sweet sound. "Selenia."

Chapter 4.

The Uniter of Keld.

As the overlay began, Eladamri and Liin Sivi stood at the head of a small but fierce host of Steel Leaf elves. In front, pikes tilted and swords jutted. In back, longbows were lifted, trained on the skies. The dust of Koilos slid across the goggles of the elves and settled in their savage shocks of hair. More dust rose ahead of them, flung into the sky by hundreds of thousands of Phyrexian feet.

Eladamri stared at the oncoming foes. His eyes were steely, the same color as his armor and hair. He should shout something, some battle cry. This was the moment of death. Elves always shouted defiance in the face of death. He could think of nothing. His tongue was a thick lump in his mouth.

Beside him stood Liin Sivi-no elf, but a Vec. Her eyes too were the color of her hair-black. They gazed with an altogether different emotion. Liin Sivi was not ready to die. Humans never were. She was ready to kill. Her wicked-bladed toten-vec was eager to swing out on its chain and harvest heads.

Bowstrings thrummed behind them. Arrows flocked into the sky. They shrieked over the elves and out past the two t.i.tan engines. One, a green machine composed in part of living wood, held the planeswalker Freyalise. She was a G.o.d to these elves. Glimpsing her engine amid the hailing arrows brought the war cry to Eladamri's lips.

"Freyalise!"

The Steel Leaf elves took up the cry. It roared out among the Phyrexian horde even as the arrows pelted into them. Shafts cracked carapace and lodged in eye orbits and sank into the folds of throats.

"Freyalise!" Eladamri called again. This time Liin Sivi shouted it too, as did all the elves.

The third shout of that name seemed an invocation. Power swelled out from the insectoid engine. It blossomed from each line of armor, each spiracle and gun port. Like an opening flower, Freyalise's might spread to cover them all. In moments, Eladamri, Liin Sivi, the Steel Leaf elves, and even the other t.i.tan engine were subsumed into the body of Freyalise.

Koilos disintegrated around them, a sand painting on the wind.

Planes.h.i.+ft, Eladamri realized. She is taking us away from certain death.

The contingent hung unmoving in emptiness. It was not as if the ground had dissolved beneath their feet but as if the air itself had become solid. Within the planeswalker's envelop, all was still. Beyond it, all was chaos. This was the world between worlds.

Soon rampant energies spiraled into patterns and they into solids.

Trees took shape-tall, spiny, and ice choked. Ground formed. The rocky soil was carpeted with snow. The stinging heat of Koilos gave way to the stinging cold of a northern clime under frozen skies.

Eladamri breathed the air. It was wickedly cold. It jabbed chill fingers beneath his armor and tricked away the last of Koilos's heat. He sheathed his sword and wrapped his arms around himself.

Liin Sivi did likewise. "Where are we?" Her breath ghosted in the air.

Casting a glance around, Eladamri saw that the Steel Leaf elves had arrived in this algid wood as well. The two t.i.tan engines stood just ahead of him.

"I don't know, but I know who does."

"Freyalise," supplied Liin Sivi.

In silent accord, Eladamri and Liin Sivi strode up the snowy ridge toward the t.i.tan engines. Uncertain what else to do, his warriors followed.

Eladamri shoved his way through the p.r.i.c.kly pines, alien and harsh to his fingers. He unwittingly triggered an avalanche of snow from the boughs. The white stuff slumped atop him and slipped into his collar. Growling, he shrugged it off. Behind him came snickers, which turned to snorts beneath more frosty a.s.saults.

Jangled, the heroes of Koilos reached the ridge where the t.i.tan engines stood.

Eladamri set hands on his hips and looked up at the strange machines.

The t.i.tans' feet deeply compacted the snow. Wind moaned in their ma.s.sive armor. Frost formed geometric designs on observation ports. The dome where Freyalise resided was silhouetted black against the aching blue of the sky.

Cupping hands to his mouth, Eladamri shouted, "Great Freyalise, Lady of Llanowar, where have you brought us?"

In answer, the t.i.tan lifted a ma.s.sive arm and pointed to the forest that spread out below.

Eladamri turned to look. His eyes opened wide, and his jaw dropped.

Intermingled among the aggressive evergreens were tall, twisted trees from another world. The Skyshroud Forest. It was not there in entirety, but large portions mixed with the native foliage. Among pointed peaks of fir, the vast gray boles of cerema trees stood. Wintry sun dappled the waters that stood among their roots. Boreal winds moved veils of moss.

"The overlay," Eladamri realized. "It has brought the Skyshroud Forest here."

Squinting against the snow glare, Eladamri made out walkways curving along prodigious trunks, and aerial bridges joining tree to tree, and k.n.o.bby dwellings in the hollows of boughs. Worse yet, he made out figures moving....

"The overlay has brought my people here. It has brought our nation to this frigid death."

Without a thought to the Steel Leaf elves in his command, Eladamri ran down the ice-choked slope. His leather boots, excellent for battles in treetops and sand, were treacherous on the snow. He slipped and fell. In a cascade of rock and ice, he rolled to the base of the incline. Scratched and bruised, Eladamri climbed to his feet and ran through a brake of pine.

Beyond, the Skyshroud Forest began. Eladamri staggered to a stop, his feet on warm soil. The forest had arrived here only moments ago, with the rest of the overlay, and it still held the heat of Rath, the smells of home. Eladamri breathed the air. Already it was cold, but the scents of humus and moss filled it. Tendrils of steam rose from the watery sea beneath the trees. A flash of scales shone where a merfolk fled from his gaze.

With sudden realization, Eladamri stooped, putting his hands on his knees. The water would freeze in this climate. The merfolk would die, so would the cerema trees, and every vine, every food crop, every elf....

Eladamri was moving again. He knew this terrain, these very trees. He leaped from the embankment and grabbed a dangling vine. Pulling his legs up beneath him, he swung above a palisade of huge thorns. Landing on the platform of vines beyond, he rushed to an ancient cerema tree. A walkway spiraled up the huge bole. He climbed. Generations of elves had climbed this very tree. Their feet had worn dark wells in the flesh of the vine. Eladamri's own feet had helped carve out these steps.

Oh, he had hoped one day to return home to the Skyshroud but not this way, not on its last day. By evening, the forest would be dead, the sea beneath it frozen.

Eladamri reached the spreading crown of the trees. Pathways led out along the boughs and into numerous bulb dwellings. Eladamri knew the families who lived there- the sons of Dalwryri, the royal line of Gemath, the storytelling clan of Dalepoc. He could hear them in their homes, adult voices fearful and querulous, children complaining of the cold, infants crying. He would go to them, yes. He must go to them but not yet.

He ran across a vine-work bridge that led to a nexus of other paths. Elves filled the trails, some of them struggling toward their homes and families, others standing and staring at the clear, cold blue overhead. A few recognized Eladamri, their long-lost Uniter, and they called out to him. He pa.s.sed them in a blur. There would be time for them. He would be the Korvecdal again in moments, but just now he was a grieving man.

Another set of paths led to the most familiar tree of all. Its shape was etched on his mind. The green ivy that clung to the bark, the bulb houses cl.u.s.tered to one side of the main stalk, the arching canopy above. His steps slowed, and his hands trembled as he grabbed the walkway rail. The hammering of his heart seemed to shake the bridge.

He entered. The dwelling was exactly as he remembered it the day he left to attack the Stronghold. No one had ventured here. Wooden cups yet sat upon the table. The covers across his pallet were drawn up and ready for him to sleep. The battle plans he had made for the a.s.sault still lay in coils of bark on his desk.

"Home," Eladamri said.

Somehow it had not been real until now. This displaced forest, dying under daggers of cold, might have been some weird apparition, someone else's nightmare. Seeing his own home and all the things he alone knew made the nightmare real.

Eladamri sucked a breath. He staggered from the hollow out into the broad lap of the tree. He meant to catch his breath, but then his gaze slid across the crudest sight of all.

His daughter's bulb opened just before him. The wind muscled through the door and rifled her clothes, hanging on pegs along one wall. Frosted leaves tumbled through the window and onto her bed. She had been abducted from that very spot. An agent of Volrath's had abducted her, and Volrath himself had made her a monster. The Phyrexians had abducted Avila and killed her, and now they had abducted the whole of the Skyshroud and killed it.

Going to his knees on the foot-worn bark, Eladamri clutched his face. "Why did you bring me here, Freyalise? Why do you torment me?"

Footsteps came along the vine bridge. "Great Lord Eladamri, you have returned to us! We knew you would come. We knew that, in our moment of greatest catastrophe, you would come."

Eladamri lifted teary eyes to see who spoke to him. "Allisor." He breathed raggedly, unable to say more.

"We thought you were dead," the young lieutenant said. The skin was drawn tight across his jutting chin and prominent cheekbones, an expression that mix terror and elation. He knelt beside Eladamri and bowed his head. "That is, the others thought you were dead. No one who was trapped in the Stronghold made it out alive. But I didn't think you were dead. I knew you would survive, somehow."

More soldiers approached across the bridge. They whooped in excitement and called out to their comrades.

"He is here. The Uniter has returned!" The warriors of the Skyshroud converged on that single, ancient tree and the man who once had called it home.

Lieutenant Allisor lifted his head. His breath had condensed on his leaf-scale breastplate, and it began to freeze. "We will follow wherever you lead. We will obey your every command. Only tell us, Eladamri-what shall we do now?"

The Uniter kept his head bowed. What could they do? Move the forest, tree by tree, to some warmer place? Carry the sea in buckets down beneath the sun? He was a Uniter, not a G.o.d.

He was not a G.o.d, but he was the scion of a G.o.ddess.

Eladamri stood in the midst of the throng. Already, the aerial bridges groaned under the weight of arriving warriors. Clear eyed at last, he gazed out at the gathering might of his nation.

"Skyshroud elves, I have returned to you, yes, in our most desperate hour. I have been called the Korvecdal, the Uniter of peoples. I shall need now to become the Uniter of worlds.

"Rath is gone. Our world-the only world we've known for a thousand years-has now melded with this world. Our home is now this icy wasteland. I do not know where lie the ranges of the Kor and the Vec. I do not know where burn the forges of the Dal. I do not know if they will survive this invasion of world on world. But I know that we will survive."

Lifting his hands to the heavens and flinging back his head, Eladamri called out in a loud, clear voice, "Freyalise, Lady of Llanowar, Matron of the Steel Leaf elves, I summon thee-I, who became savior of Llanowar, I, who am called Scion of Freyalise."

She did not so much arrive but appear. First her wide, beautiful, capricious eyes hovered in the midst of the bowed mult.i.tude. Then her lips took form, smiling wryly. Flesh filled in the rest of her face and rolled down her slender neck and out into shoulders. Graceful arms formed from those shoulders and a slim torso in foliage armor. Even when her legs took shape, she did not touch ground but floated inches above the wood.

Eladamri had glimpsed her during the revels at Koilos, but now, to face her here in his dying homeland, he could not stand. He sank to his knees and bowed his head. His folk did likewise. Freyalise drifted over to him. Her hand reached gently outward and stroked his braided hair. "You have summoned me, Elfchild?"

Lifting his face, Eladamri stared at her glimmering eyes. "Yes, my lady. I have called you to collect on a debt you owe me."

A flash of pique lit the planeswalker's eyes. She seemed both angered and amused.

"What debt could I possibly owe you?"

"You needed a savior for your people of Llanowar, and you made me that savior. You made me what I was not- your scion-that your people might be saved. As you have made me your son, I claim you as my mother. As you have used me to save your people, I claim the right to use you to save mine."

"Use me?" she echoed.

He could not tell if his statement flattered or infuriated her. "Or perhaps you haven't the power...."

"Haven't the power?" she repeated irritably. "Do you know that once I cast a spell to turn back the eternal ice? Once I freed the whole world from the grip of winter?"

Eladamri smiled, knowing he had her. "Then it would be a simple thing for you to cast the same protection over this single forest."

All the amus.e.m.e.nt was gone from her features. "You presume too much, Elfchild. You are wrong to think that I would be indebted to you or to anyone. You are wrong to believe that you could use me. You are wrong to suppose that being my scion was a duty rather than a privilege."

His head bowed, Eladamri said, "Forgive me...."

She waved away the apology. "It is the eternal burden of mothers to forgive-or so I have heard. I forgive you, Elfchild, and I will grant your request."

The air was suddenly hot and wet. The frost on armor melted and ran. Ghosts of steam settled back into the water below. The furnacelike winds of Rath moved once again among the cerema trees.

"You have saved us. You have saved us all," Eladamri said.

"I have not saved you," Freyalise said, "only protected you from the ravages of this place. Those ravages include the native warriors here-Keldon warlords. The Skyshroud Forest will be forever warded against them. But that is all I can do. You still must save yourselves. If the elves of Rath have arrived here, the Phyrexian armies have arrived as well."

"Could you ward them from the forest?" Eladamri asked.

"I cannot. They made Rath. It was their world. If you would save the Skyshroud from them, you must do it yourselves-or better yet, ally with the Keldons and do it together. After all, Eladamri, you are the Uniter." She smiled at him.

Returning the look, Eladamri asked cheekily, "Why ally with Keldons when I am the friend of a planeswalker in a mechanical combat suit?"

"Because I must return to the engine," Freyalise replied. Already, she was fading from view. "I'll remain as long as I can, but Kristina and I go for a worse fight." All that remained now were her eyes and lips. "You have quite a fight before you."