Why didn't I use the enchantment a month ago? Why not a year ago? Why not all those days of childhood when she was building box kites and damming the creeks of Tolaria?
"Hanna," Barrin whispered with his last breath, brought cold within him from Urza's bunker.
The single, quiet word emerged with the force of a blue gale. It blasted away sand, shooting it up through the press of soil. Grains spat from the grave. The wind redoubled. A vortex stripped away particle after particle. Sunlight stabbed down through the thick ground. The spinning shaft widened, carving out the grave. It scoured Barrin's face and mutton chops. It filled his bloodied cloak and cleansed the white cerements that wrapped his daughter. Barrin gasped in sadness. Hurloon myrrh had been used on the cloths, and it exuded the scent of sorrow.
"Hanna," the old mage cried.
The whirlwind tore away the last of the entombing sand. Without its weight pressing on him, Barrin marveled at how light she was. This had been no sudden death but the long agony that comes from chronic neglect.
How could I have been worlds away while she slowly died? "Hanna!"
Through the angry storm, Barrin rose. He bore his child in his arms. Beyond the circling curtain of dust, he saw the crew of Weatherlight. They had rushed to the grave site when they saw the sandstorm begin. Tahngarth stood nearest, his axe lifted to slay any beast that might emerge. Sisay and Orim stared in disbelief at the violated grave of their friend. Dust pasted tears to their faces. Only Gerrard, beyond them all, understood. He saw not the storm but the man in the storm. He saw Barrin's eyes and the guilt there.
Gerrard understood. He shared that guilt. Hanna had died while the two men she most loved were busy fighting Phyrexians.
It was more than Barrin could bear. With a nod to Gerrard, he took Hanna away from that sandy place.
The roar of the cyclone was replaced by the roar of the oceans. The sands of Koilos reshaped into the stony cliffs of Tolaria. It was the simplest teleport Barrin had ever cast. He knew the spot intimately-the unmarked grave of his wife, near the sea. Here, a young Jhoira once escaped the rigors of the academy. The teleport was as simple as returning home.
Barrin stood above the slab of rock where his wife lay. He ached to lay his daughter to rest beside her. He ached to die with them. Tears streaming down his face, Barrin dropped his head back. The sky above was dark, not with storm clouds but with Phyrexian ships. There were a score of cruisers and as many more plague ships. Smaller vessels peeled away from the main fleet to pursue Tolarian refugees in tiny boats. Beneath the crowded fleet, columns of black smoke rose from the ruined academy. Perhaps the Phyrexians had bombed the buildings to oblivion. Perhaps it had been Urza. Their works were often indistinguishable. "I have been a fool," Barrin told himself.
Without laying his daughter down, Barrin cast a simple water spell.
Beside his wife's grave lay another natural crypt in the stone. Barrin had always believed he would lie there when his time had come. He had never imagined his daughter's death. Beneath the stone lid of the crypt, the spell took shape. Tiny jets of water bubbled up, lifting the lid and sliding it slowly aside. Water wept down the stony walls of the tomb. By the time the lid had glided to one side, a small clear pool lay beside the stones.
Drawing a deep breath, Barrin hugged his daughter's body. "The last time I saw you, you were heading into Rath. We fought, I remember. I'm sorry. We also said goodbye. I didn't think that good-bye would be our last. I was wrong about everything. Everything." Gently lowering her into the grave, he sighed deeply. "Good-bye, my angel."
He stood, watching solemnly as the lid slid back over the crypt. Darkness slowly swallowed up his daughter. The last of the water dripped from the edges of the lid. It grated quietly into place.
"Sarcophagus." Barrin whispered the old Thran word as he stared at the spot. "Flesh eater."
He would find his own sarcophagus in the sky.
Barrin rose into the air for the last time in his life.
In ancient days, Urza lost his brother to Phyrexia. In his rage, he had unleashed a blast from an artifact called the sylex. That blast had sunk continents and reshaped Dominaria. It had also made Urza a veritable god.
Barrin was no god. He did not have a sylex. He did not wish to sink continents, but he knew the spell Urza had cast. It would be enough.
Above him, massive ships floated like leviathans. Barrin made no move to hide. A single man rising through a smoky sky was hard enough to see, and those mountainous machines were oblivious to so small a threat. Barrin ascended in their midst. Black killing things. They would not know what hit them.
Closing his eyes, Barrin drew upon the power of his fury. Lava. Brimstone. Fire. He thought of Shiv and Rhammidarigaaz. He thought of the mana rig pumping redhot stone like a giant heart. Rage welled in him. He was its vessel. Hatred shaped the spell, but he needed more power.
Barrin drew mana from Tolaria beneath him. He remembered Karn's birth in the first Tolaria. He remembered the war with K'rrik in the second Tolaria. He remembered Jhoira and Teferi, Weatherlight and the Metathran, Rayne and Hanna. As blue mana coursed into him, Barrin tapped other lands as well-verdant Yavimaya, militant Benalia, undead Urborg. He drew all the power into himself and became a living sylex.
His insides boiled. Beams shot from his eyes and his fingertips. Power sought escape in every extremity. It crept its way up legs and arms, across face and chest. Hair stood on end and hurled energy from its tips. Pores opened and beamed. Every wound ever struck on his body burst open and shone. His flesh could not contain the radiance. Soon, Barrin glared like a second sun.
Those were not light rays, though, but power rays. They roared out red from him. The air sizzled with them. Beams struck the ships. They cut metal as though it were water. They turned Phyrexian armor to pudding and Phyrexian flesh to ash. They pierced to engine cores and cracked powerstones.
Cruisers and plague ships spewed smoke through a thousand sudden holes. Engines went critical. One machine blazed apart. Its own shrapnel melted in the energy it unleashed. Four adjacent cruisers lurched and exploded. They tilted on end. Daylight sieved through their riddled hulls. Ship to ship, destruction spread.
Not a cannon was fired, not a plasma burst unleashed, but there was holocaustal fire in the heavens. Below, it was the same. Oceans boiled. Trees flash-burned. Rocks melted.
Whatever creatures had stood on Tolaria were blinded by the flash, and deafened by the concussion, and dismantled by the raw power. Phyrexians, scholars, students, hinds, fleas-all died in that moment. Their struggles were done. Their bodies were gone. Even the ground on which they stood turned to wax and ran.
Only Rayne and Hanna were safe, sealed into their sarcophagi.
How like Urza had Barrin become.
At last the blast spent itself. It left a hole in the sky. No ships remained. No clouds either. The beaming sun seemed dim and gray.
Cold waves crashed into boiling seas. Whirlpools laid the ocean depths bare. Water churned silt as red as blood.
Where once had been a verdant island was now a molten slab of rock, hissing into the sea. Tolaria was gone forevermore.
So too was her onetime lord, Mage Master Barrin.
Chapter 32