Barrin fought a futile, one-man fight over Urborg.
At first, Urza's coalition had held strong, but the Phyrexians were too many, too vicious. They slew the Keldons and Metathran to a man. They drove Serrans and elves and panther warriors from the isles. When the costs of battle mounted, Urza himself had summoned Darigaaz and the dragon nations away to Koilos, and enlisted Lord Windgrace for his titan corps. In the battle of Urborg, he left a single warrior-"My one-man army." Mage Master Barrin floated high above the rankling central volcano. He surveyed the wreckage of the past month. Helionauts burned on the ground. Longships sank in the brine. Angels lay dead in rainwater swamps and elves in saltwater marshes. Metathran were crucified to cypress trees. Keldons rotted in kelp beds. Muck made them all seem slain pigs. Bugs the size of fish fed on them- worse things too. Phyrexians clambered like roaches over the dead.
There were victories, of course. Two of the Phyrexian cruisers lay in broken heaps. The minions of the lich lord crawled into the fallen hulks like maggots into corpses. Ghouls and scavenger folk tricked away whatever they could and matched claws and teeth with the Phyrexians there. Barrin let them annihilate each other.
A worse battle loomed. This morning, a storm front had formed above the western sea. The clouds approached with slow confidence. All the while, they gathered steam and wrath above the churning ocean. The storm had rolled within a score of miles before Barrin saw what it hid. Along its advancing edge appeared the black prows of seven, eight… twelve Phyrexian cruisers.
"If I fight this fight alone, I will lose the island and myself," Barrin reasoned. "If Urza wants this stink-swamp saved-for whatever unfathomable reason-he will have to grant me more aid."
Closing his eyes, Barrin drew a long, deep breath of the brimstone air. He tapped memories of another island, of blue and beautiful Tolaria. Power surged through him, the azure energies of magical manipulation. Space folded. Barrin leaped from one wrinkle to another. Urborg vanished away beneath him, taking its envelope of steamy heat. Koilos formed, equally hot, but as dry as a furnace.
Barrin hovered above sand dunes and rills of rock. In the sheer distance, Phyrexians filled the world. They drilled and rested, fought for the best food and gobbled it down live, rode trench worms and burned their murdered own. In the near distance, coalition armies camped- Metathran, Benalish, and elf, with dragons sleeping in their midst.
Urza would be just beyond them, under that long line of canvas. The fabric hid a deep trench hewn from bedrock by artifact engines. It was Urza's secret bunker, a thousand feet deep, two thousand feet long, and a hundred feet wide. Within the bunker, he kept his secret weapons-the titan engines.
Drifting slowly down to the canvas, Barrin swept his hand over himself. He turned momentarily insubstantial and slid through the fabric.
Cool darkness filled the bunker. Titan engines stood against one wall, seeming watchers in an ancient tomb. In a few of the cannon-toting machines, planeswalkers fiddled, finalizing the settings of their command pods.
At the base of the trench, Urza worked. He had set up his folding travel table, a massive workspace that compacted into a slim panel of wood. Maps of Koilos lay neatly arrayed before the master artificer. He scribed confident lines across them, projecting angles of attack.
Barrin descended beside his old friend. Charred war cloaks settled about the mage's ankles. As Dominaria resumed its hold on him, Barrin let out an involuntary sigh.
"Hello, Urza."
The planeswalker glanced up, his eyes bright in the gloom. "Is the battle of Urborg concluded?"
Barrin bristled at this greeting. He replied just as curtly. "No. I need reinforcements."
Looking back down at the maps of Koilos, Urza said, "There are none."
Shrugging, Barrin pursed his lips. "Then Urborg is lost."
Urza snorted, "Then it is lost."
"So that's it?" Barrin asked heatedly. "A month ago, Urborg had to be saved at all cost, and now you lose it with a shrug?"
Raising his gaze, Urza said, "It is a strategically important site, second only to Koilos. But it is second to Koilos. If Urborg cannot be held without reinforcements- and we have no reinforcements to spare-then Urborg is lost."
Flinging his hands out in surrender, Barrin said, "Yes, lost." He leaned against the wall of the trench and folded his arms. "I see you have your final chess match worked out here-your armies, your war engines, your airships and dragons and titans. Was that Weatherlight I saw?"
"Yes," Urza replied simply.
"Good," Barrin snapped. "I'm going to go see my daughter-"
"No," Urza interrupted. Something like sadness-or guilt- entered his eyes.
"What do you mean, no?"
"Hanna died two weeks ago."
"What?" Barrin barked, laughing incredulously. "What did you say?"
"The plague overwhelmed her. There was nothing anyone could do."
Shaking his head in disbelief, Barrin said, "Hanna? My Hanna?"
"There was nothing anyone could do."
The mage master's face became a sickly white. He steadied himself on Urza's table, crumpling the maps there. He gazed blankly at those ruined plans. Color suddenly flooded back into his features-blood.
He spoke in a quiet, trembling voice. "There was something I could have done, Urza. I could have held her hand. I could have stroked her hair…" His voice failed, but his welling eyes stared imploringly at Urza. "Why didn't you summon me?"
"Urborg had to be saved."
"Don't say that! Don't for one moment say that!" Barrin replied, dashing the tears from his eyes. He lashed out, flinging the maps from Urza's table. They rattled in an angry flock of paper and landed in the dust. "Of course you didn't call me. Your work was always the most important thing. Of course I wasn't there when my daughter died. I wasn't there when she lived. You stole her from me, and that's not the worst of it-I let you steal her from me! Yawgmoth of the Nine Hells!"
"Don't say that name-" Urza said urgently, lifting his hands toward the titans-"not here,"
"Where is she?" Barrin demanded. "Where is she?"
"Gerrard buried her. She lies in the sands of Koilos."
"She wouldn't have wanted that. This desert was nothing to her. Tolaria was always her home. I'm taking her to Tolaria, to be buried beside her mother."
"No," Urza said, plucking the maps from the dust. "Tolaria, too, is lost. The gathering of planeswalkers drew Phyrexians. They attacked ferociously. We escaped with the titan engines and every useful device, and detonated the others. Even now, the Phyrexians solidify their hold on the island."
"Solidify their hold?" Barrin asked in angry amazement. "So some of the students and scholars remain?"
"Every battle has casualties-"
"And I have become one, Urza," Barrin said. All the anger had gone from his voice. Only dread clarity remained. "I have spent my life fighting battles I did not believe in because I believed in you. No more. The cost is too high. Belief is too rare. I've been a fool. I fought for things I did not love and let what I loved slip away- first my wife, and then my daughter, and now myself. I'm done. I'm taking Hanna back to Tolaria. I'm fighting for my home and her home and my wife's grave. I'm finally going to fight a battle I believe in-I'm going to fight a final battle I believe in."
Brow furrowing, Urza said simply, "You cannot."
"Good-bye, my friend," Barrin replied, and he was gone.
He had never teleported himself into solid matter before. It was ill-advised, of course. Barrin was through with advice-he was through with nearly everything. The Mage Master of Tolaria materialized beneath the sand of a nearby hill. He took form, his arms wrapped around the buried body of his daughter. When she was first born, Barrin had held her thus, had placed on her a beacon enchantment. It let him find her wherever she was. It had led him to her here, in her grave.