The defenders of Yavimaya rose toward its corrupt canopy. The tangle of roots below and the tangle of boughs above joined each tree to its neighbors, making Yavimaya one great organism. The forest was a thinking thing, and Multani was its conscious' ness. Rising through branches, splitting and reassembling himself, he knew the will of Yavimaya: Drive the Phyrexians back onto undead boughs, and destroy them and their ships.
Multani ascended. He felt the tickling feet of giant spiders across his back. Down their barbed legs dribbled armor spells, sent from the hands of elf mages. They gathered massive magics from the green darkness all around. Elf archers seated themselves in nearby crotches, nocking arrows and testing their aim. Great apes clambered into lofts where they could hurl themselves down on Phyrexian heads. Clouds of shimmering sprites darted through the air. They bore spears, swords, and daggers and had adopted the tactics of battleflies. They could strip a Phyrexian in moments.
The forces converged on a huge bough that teemed with Phyrexians. It was a staging ground beneath a landed cruiser. The ship was as huge and black as a thunderhead. It hung in branches that had been corrupted by Phyrexian contagions and resurrected as undead wood. A huge ramp lay open. Monsters in their hundreds coursed down. There would be no attacking them at the ship. The wood had become monstrous itself. This staging ground, though-it was living wood. The Phyrexians had not had time to corrupt it, but already they prepared contagions to pour into crevices and crotches.
Multani seeped into the vast bough. He slipped up just beneath the bark. There, in the quick of the tree, knotholes were plentiful. They were his first weapons- mines beneath monstrous feet.
The rest of his forces were ready. The battle would begin with Multani.
Spreading himself through the vast bough, he triggered the dilation of thousands of knotholes. They yawned wide. Claws and talons dropped into those knotholes. Wood closed to trap the legs.
Suddenly caught, thousands of Phyrexians thrashed.
A heavy rain began. It was not water that fell but arrows. Their stony heads smashed through carapace and rammed into chests and throats and guts. The juices there sank into the arrowheads and the magnigoth down packed within. It swelled massively. In popping succession, Phyrexians exploded. They burst like bugs. Plates gave way. Gray organelles spewed outward. Heads vacated shoulders. Legs separated from torsos. Scales ripped back, and skin sloughed off.
Where monsters slumped, Multani released them. The shattered bodies tumbled away. More beasts staggered into the open holes and were caught. Multani sent sucker stalks up through the bark. They wrapped legs in tenacious tendrils, which widened into inescapable branches. Up torsos they went and then squeezed. Like pinched sausages, Phyrexians burst.
The last of the exploding bolts found their marks. Phyrexians slumped and slid from the killing bough.
Out of the black night, shadows took substance. On giant legs they came. Globular eyes gleamed. Mandibles dripped venom. These were giant spiders. Aback them rode sorcerers-thin, elven, their fingers dancing with power. Spells roared out. Incantations lit rodlike legs before vaulting through the emptiness. Green light painted boughs and broke over Phyrexians. Green spores clung to every tissue.
Plants rooted themselves. Lichens ate away armor. Weeds sank their taproots into blood streams. Saplings split muscle and bone. Blossoms packed air holes. The invaders of the forest were in turn invaded by the forest. In mounds of leaf and vine, more monsters died.
A new rain began-muscle instead of shafts. From their lofted perches, great apes dropped in their hundreds. They hurled living Phyrexians after dead ones. They ripped limbs from Phyrexian troopers and bit chunks from Phyrexian heads.
This was all in the first moments, before there was a foe to fight. These were holes underfoot, arrows and spells out of darkness. With the arrival of the apes and the spidermounted mages, though, the battle had changed. Phyrexians knew how to fight such creatures. With howls of fury and hunger, monsters attacked.
Yavimaya's horrors were nothing compared to the terrors of Phyrexia-elongated skulls, fang-choked gobs, horn-tipped joints, clawed arms, leg pods, tentacles, talons, stingers. The black tide crashed against the spider mages. It was all bug flesh in those first moments. Then the spiders were shredded, and it was elf flesh and ape flesh flung on dark winds. Spells misfired. Wild magic jagged through treetops. It hurled up the hackled shadows of Phyrexians.
Multani entered vines, lashing them across the monsters. He plucked them up in ones and twos and threes and threw them from the bough. It was not enough. He could not open knotholes-not with elves and apes among the monsters. He could not grow suckers to grab whatever fought above. Behind the slain mages were ragtag armies of elf infantry. They died as quickly and surely as the mages had. There was simply no stopping these beasts.
Even as he fought onward, Multani sent his mind out to Gaea. Massacre. They cannot be stopped. We must withdraw.
Gaea did not speak to him. He knew what she would say. If you withdraw now, they will never be stopped.
Help us. Help your children. Bring the others. Bring every child beneath your canopy. Else, we are lost.
Why do mortals ever pray? Multani wondered to himself. Why do gods never answer?
The elves were dying like elves. Unflinching, they sacrificed centuries of life.
Phyrexian corpse crews followed in the wake of the advancing lines. They dragged fat chains tipped with long hooks. Wherever the monsters found a body, dead or alive, they would thrust the barb through the soft flesh of the ankle. Four or five elves would fit on a single hook before the corpse crew would swing it away to dangle beneath the cruiser. The chains cranked upward. The specimens were loaded on the ship for study.
Gods might never answer, but Multani would.
He emerged from the tree. He took his form from the quick of the bough. A huge hillside of living wood, Multani flung his fingers out in wooden spikes. They pierced Phyrexians in their scores.
The monsters writhed like spitted roaches. Multani gripped them, splitting them open. This was vengeance pure and simple. While he slew scores in his fists, hundreds flooded past him.
He was losing the Battle of Mori Tumulus. He was losing the Yavimaya war.
Then new allies came. From the volcanic caves beneath Yavimaya, they galloped upward. Never before had Multani's mind laid hold of such creatures. They lurked forever in the twilight world beneath the forest-half green and half red. Their skin was part scale, part rock, their bodies part saurian, part ground sloth. They had tigers' teeth and bulldog faces and feet that were claw and hoof both. The smallest were the size of a man, and the largest the size of two elephants. Most amazing of all were their tongues-longer, more powerful, more dexterous than elephants' trunks. They galloped up the tree boles as if charging across flat ground.
The druids had summoned them. Their enchantments had awakened the slumbering lizards. Kavu. These things were called Kavu-an ancient druid word meaning "ever watchful" and "carved from stone."
Up every bole, Kavu swarmed. In a heartbeat, they fountained out of the darkness and crashed into the Phyrexian lines. Lizard tongues lashed out, snatched up carapaced monsters, and drew them into fangy mouths. They crunched them. No sooner was one Phyrexian swallowed than a second was caught and a third…