Taysir reached his designated spot. Mechanical feet pounded to a halt. Dust rolled up around the enormous, hunched figure. Powerstones of every color winked through the clouds. I am ready.
As am I, answered Kristina.
Looks like all of us, Bo Levar replied.
I've lost a cannon! Commodore Guff broke in. Blast! As if in answer, a bolt leaped suddenly across his frame, cutting fifty feet into the rock where he stood. Nope, there it is.
Charge! Urza shouted.
As one, the eight titans leaned into their strides and broke into a tectonic run.
Koilos rumbled like a drum struck by countless mallets.
Urza unleashed a volley of ray cannon fire and vaulted the Metathran troops. As he flew, he shot, and as he shot, he shouted-Charge!
These titans are a pleasant surprise, Tsabo Tavoc thought. The massacre of her folk moved through her. Deaths mounted up in great crashing waves that battered her heart. It was a thrilling sensation, the sort that, if indulged too long, would leave her without an army. The Ineffable had millions more, of course, but Crovax frowned on excessive massacre of his troops-unless, of course, he was the one doing it. No, as delicious as these titans were, they had to be stopped.
Awake, my children. The time has come to feed.
Urza was not the only one to have a few tricks hidden in reserve.
Tsabo Tavoc felt the vast, ancient creatures rise from the dusty barrows where they had slept.
Witch engines. They were engines, yes, but as alive, as fleshly, as any biologic beings. Headless, featureless, the enormous creatures consisted merely of a gigantic central body that bristled with quills. From their hunched and shaggy backs fell storms of sand.
They rose on impossibly thin limbs, white and thousands like the tentacles of a jellyfish. They did not use those legs to stand on- the hoary monsters could float or fly-but instead to tear ships from the skies and lift whole platoons to their fangy mouths. Best of all, the beasts could regenerate as quickly as a wound was struck.
Yes, my children. Welcome to the feast.
Through the compound eyes of her collective mind, she saw the arcane guardians loom high and soar toward Urza's titans.
Chapter 34
"What the hell is that thing?" Sisay shouted to no one. Hanna was gone, Orim tended injuries on deck, and Gerrard and Tahngarth fought in the caves. There was no one to shout to, but some things must be shouted. "What the hell is it?"
Weatherlight banked, soaring swiftly to one side of a rising hummock of bristly spines. It was a creature, a Phyrexian monster as massive as a cloud. Beneath its shaggy white body dangled thousands of long legs. With its legs, the beast plucked the battlefield. Writhing forms- Metathran, elf, and human-struggled in the grips of barbed claws. The limbs hauled them up into mouths beneath the creature.
Sisay cringed away. "Whatever it is, it's about to be dead." She wheeled Weatherlight hard about. The ship's keel skidded on buffeting air, caught hold, and cut a tight, clean semicircle.
The bristly creature swept up before the bow.
Mounting on her new course, Weatherlight blazed to life. Her engines roared.
Squee had moved to the starboard prow ray cannon. It barked. Energy roared in superheated shafts out from the gun. Rays plunged from the bow, struggling to escape the hurtling ship. They crashed into the spiny mass.
White puffs of smoke went up. Quills curled acridly. Pink skin split open to a muscle mass that seemed writhing maggots. Awash in yellow blood, the maggot-muscles ebbed down ragged hunks of bone.
"Die, monster!" Sisay growled through clenched teeth.
It was no good. The yellow tide of blood welled up over bone. White hunks of muscle fused.
"Those maggots are machines," rumbled Karn through the speaking tube. "I see them through the running lights. They fragment to absorb damage and then join together to regenerate flesh."
Weatherlight had not even passed the beast when its pink skin had closed. New spines jutted obscenely from the scar. Tentacles slapped at the stern of the ship,
"Damn it!" Sisay roared. "How're we supposed to kill that thing?"
From the speaking tube came a shout-Orim, on deck with a wounded ensign. "The anchor. We harvested Phyrexians with it before. Hook that beast, and we can drag it."
"Or it can drag us," Sisay replied.
"Do it," Karn said. "The engines will hold. The chain will hold."
Sisay shook her head. "It'll rip the hull in half."
Another presence spoke to Sisay out of a wooden boss in the bridge ceiling. "Do it," Multani echoed. "The hull will hold. It will heal."
There was someone to speak to. Sisay grinned eagerly. "Yeah. Let's do this. Orim, if you've got that gunner stabilized and strapped down, I could use you at the capstan."
"On my way." Beyond the wind screen, Orim picked her way to the prow.
Weatherlight cut a long smooth arc out over the battlefield. In her wake, Phyrexian cannons bled fire into the sky. A few bolts struck, ripping holes in the hull.
Multani worked quickly to regrow the sections. Where energy lashed the engines, Karn healed the spots with Thran metal. All the while, Orim hunkered by the rail.
The ship roared into her new flight path. Ahead, the witch engine rose. Its legs reached out toward Weatherlight.
"We'll have one shot at this," Sisay warned. "We've made it mad enough. This'll make it furious."
"This'll make it dead," Orim called back through the capstan tube. "I learned a little about fly fishing among the Cho-Arrim."
Sisay snorted. "Cast your line."
Orim pulled the pin from the capstan. It spun. Chain paid out loudly. The ship's massive anchor plunged downward through the boiling air. Ten fathoms, fifteen fathoms, twenty fathoms.
"Ratchet that off, Orim!" Sisay called. The healer hauled hard on the capstan's lever, and the rattling chain grumbled to silence. "Karn, I'm going to need your eyes on this one. I want to sink the flukes in that monster's maggot heart. And help me keep the ship trim. That thing could flip us end over end."
Instead of words, Karn answered in a surge of the engines. Weatherlight vaulted higher into the reeling skies.
A cannon blast clipped the starboard gunwale, cutting a trough through it. Another ripped through the port-side airfoil. The ship dipped, heeling to starboard.
"Fold them!" Sisay ordered Karn. She pointed the prow at the midsection of the beast and held her course. "Fold the airfoils. We're going in full speed."
With a loud clap, the wings folded. The ship's engines thundered. Weatherlight leaped out ahead of a volley of plasma bursts. She clove the air like an axe head, outrunning even ray fire. The anchor swung up beneath the keel.
"Bring us in low!" Sisay ordered. The ship plunged.
Below, the witch engine swelled out grotesquely. It had reared up. Its countless mouths gnashed the bodies of its latest victims. White arms groped toward Weatherlight.
Squee fired a series of bursts. They cut a swath through the forest of lashing legs. The ship soared down that avenue. More fire blazed from Squee's gun. Hunks of severed white leg pelted across the deck. Toothy mouths hissed fetid fumes at the fleeing craft. The anchor swung down, cracking across the hard jaws.
"Got a nibble!" Orim shouted.
Sisay hauled back on the helm. Weatherlight jagged upward. The anchor swung down, digging itself deep in one of the monster's mouths. It sank away.
"Make that a bite!"