A massive Phyrexian, a seeming gargoyle, lunged into a group of elves. It bit an elf in half and lifted its head back to swallow the torso. Swords jabbed the Phyrexian's neck, unintentionally pinning the corpse within. The gargoyle gasped, choking.
Elsewhere, another winged monster found itself swarmed with vines. The living wood drew stinging thorns across its hide, cutting to muscle. Moss crowded into the thing's mouth and air holes. Thistles raked wings to bloody rags. Vines constricted, strangling the beast. It fell on the bough and hissed to stillness.
Multani withdrew from the corpse. He pulled his bloodied vines off the shapeless figure and reassembled himself. The twin thistle blossoms that made up his eyes glimpsed a new atrocity.
Elf children fled backward over a sheer drop. They clung to rough bark and vines to escape a Phyrexian mob.
Multani ran for the mass of the creatures. He could kill one at a time, perhaps two at once. Still the monsters would slay the children.
A thought came to him. He dived into the wood. His vine-body sloughed from him into a pile on the surface. Multani sped inward along sap lines. Up through a fat bole and a twisted girdle he went. Spreading through a meaty branch, he possessed it. The thing swung downward, the arm of a colossus.
It struck the Phyrexian mob and hurled them from the tree.
Multani took no time to admire his work. Phyrexians filled the treetops. He lifted the bough again and brought it down to mash them. Leaves became blades. Tendrils became scourges. Branches became staves. Boughs became rams. All dripped with glistening-oil-blood.
This was how the forest fought.
Chapter 8
Engineer Karn had made good use of his time alone aboard the wounded ship. Outwardly, he crouched down, impersonating an inert engine module. The trick fooled Phyrexian crews. Inwardly, Karn activated the ship's healing routines. Once Weatherlight was skyworthy again, a jolting takeoff ripped her mooring lines from the ground. Karn rolled the ship to fling Phyrexians from her deck. He ignited her ray cannons and blasted his way into the brig. Together, he and Weatherlight had rescued the crew.
Now, aloft, Karn proved more powerful still. In flight, the ship was his body. In it, he charged across the heavens like a thoroughbred. A pack of Phyrexian ships howled in his wake, but none could even approach him.
Weatherlight ruled the skies beyond Benalia City. In a series of lightning attacks, she strafed troop transport ships and cruisers, pinning them in their deployment arc. None could get off the ground. The cruisers' heavy batteries hurled flack into the sky, too slow to strike the shrieking vessel. Phyrexians scrambled from damaged engines and melted cannonades. They were no match for Weatherlight's crew.
Sisay worked her own magic at the helm. She soared down the throat of Phyrexian cannonades, hopping Weatherlight away before plasma split the air. The incandescent stuff narrowly missed the ship, instead blanketing pursuers. Flinging off hunks of magma,
Phyrexian fighters collapsed and plunged from the sky. They impacted cruisers docked below or troops off-loading from them.
Hanna, meanwhile, pinpointed the Phyrexian vessels' critical sectors-fire controls, fuel tanks, power conduits, flying bridges… She plotted strafing runs that cut straight across numerous engine cores. In a steady stream, she barked out heading directions and blast coordinates.
"Target thirty degrees to port, the red 'midships manifolds. You're warm! You're hot! Bull's-eye!"
As flames engulfed the vast structure, Tahngarth shouted from the starboard prow cannon, "Stop calling them bull's-eyes!"
"Yeah," rejoined Gerrard at port. "That was my shot!"
"Get ready for another," Sisay warned. "A cruiser's lifting off."
Hanna growled out hasty instructions. "Three degrees left, vault over this next ship, and bring us in low."
"Low?" Gerrard called back. "It's lifting off."
"She's plotting a course beneath it," Sisay guessed.
Hanna worked out the vectors.
"Beneath it?" Gerrard echoed.
"The engines are exposed on the underside. The hull guns won't be operational yet," Hanna explained. "It's the safest route and the surest kill."
"What if we shoot it so well it falls on us?"
"Have a little faith in Karn," Hanna replied, smiling wryly at Sisay. "Three degrees to port, and dive, Captain."
The ship plunged above the smoldering heap of a grounded cruiser. Weatherlight raced over black mountains of mechanism, past splayed Phyrexian corpses, past shattered cannonades and batteries spewing corruption into the air. Weatherlight's plunging keel sliced through a cloud of plague spores, which rose in white canyon walls around the ship. The ship rocketed out of the killing tunnel.
Dead ahead, a cruiser labored into the air. It was a mountainous ship. Tangled grass and clods of dirt rained beneath it.
"Take us below," Hanna called.
With a gut-wrenching drop, Weatherlight plummeted. Her own keel sliced grasses. She left a wide-boiling wake of stalks behind her. A surge from her engines sent the ship screaming beneath the enormous cruiser.
Dust pelted down from convoluted pipework. It stung the gunners and anyone else on deck. Weatherlight arrowed beneath the huge black shelf and above the trammeled ground. Her spars cracked occasionally against the cruiser's belly. Her keel gouged lines in the dirt.
"Where's this exposed engine you promised?" Gerrard shouted through the tube.
"You'll feel it," Hanna said.
They did. Sudden, incredible heat tore across the deck. It radiated from a network of huge black cylinders, each bristling with thermal fins.
"Fire!" Gerrard ordered even as he squeezed off a few blasts.
The rays looked vermilion against the ship's dark underbelly. They tore outward, striking column after column. The huge cylinders cracked open, their hulls seeming as brittle as eggshells. Pure energy oozed from the engine cores. Tahngarth's own blasts mixed red power with black, blood and rot commingled.
"Cease fire," Gerrard called. "All power to the engines!"
Weatherlight leaped. Even her running lanterns dimmed.
The Phyrexian cruiser jolted, descending in a great rush. It fell like a mountain from the sky. The air trapped beneath it fled in roaring waves out of the way. Weatherlight was caught up on the currents.
Gerrard and Tahngarth clung for dear life to the hot chassis of their guns. The leather straps strained to hold them in place.
Weatherlight's masts scraped the cruiser's underside. The keel plowed through the ground. With a last shriek, Weatherlight vaulted from the collapsing space. She shot into clear air. The ruined cruiser smashed to ground.
The air was clear no longer. Pulverized ground rushed out. After it came shards of shattered metal. The cruiser exploded. Wild energy cratered the plains down a hundred feet. The fireball lashed out, toppling two adjacent ships. It flung them onto another. The blaze was so bright, it cast Weatherlight's streaking shadow before the cruiser.
"That'll keep them out of the sky for a bit!" Gerrard crowed. "Let's give the ground troops some help."
"I think we're a little late," Sisay reported grimly.
Gerrard's breath caught in his throat as he looked out beyond the rail. "Take us in slow, Sisay!"
The city was destroyed. While Weatherlight had slain ten thousand Phyrexians in their warships, a hundred thousand had overrun the city. Every house poured black smoke into the air. Every threshold was strewn with bodies. Some had been eaten half-away-the sweetmeats first. Others had been too badly burned to be consumed. They were little more than tarry skin stretched over black bones.