Her voice buzzed like insect wings. "Such delicious hatred. You will make a fine Phyrexian." She withdrew deeper into the shadows. Only the thinnest sheen traced her legs. She seemed a mere phantasm.
Gerrard stalked dauntlessly forward. He himself had become a creature of shadows. "You killed her."
His sword lashed out. It caught one of the spider woman's legs in the conduits behind the knee. Wrenching his arm, Gerrard severed the leg. It rattled against the stone floor.
Tsabo Tavoc backed deeper into the shadows. The light from the burning corpses was faltering. The rear reaches of the cave were utterly dark. "You are powerful. Fearless."
"You killed her!" Gerrard bolted into the blackness.
He glimpsed a fish-white belly before him and rammed his sword up into Tsabo Tavoc's gut. Blood, black in that murk, sagged beneath the impaling blade. He lunged, intent on plunging the sword deeper.
Tsabo Tavoc's legs hurled him away.
Gerrard clutched his sword tightly. It ripped free of the spider woman's body. He tumbled head over heels. Stones bashed him as he rolled. The spider woman's gore looped him. Sprawling against the wall of the chamber, Gerrard panted.
He laughed. His thumb wiped some of the hot stain from his sword, and he tasted it. Salty, acidic-it tasted good.
Gerrard dragged himself to his feet and heaved a glad sigh. "Do you know, that wound I gave you-it's exactly where your plague bomb struck Hanna. That's where the rot began-the rot that ate her away." He strode into the darkness, sword lifted before him. "I'm going to tear you apart the way you tore her apart."
Tsabo Tavoc dropped on him with such speed and force, he was flung supine to the floor. His sword clanged and slid away. Three of the spider woman's legs wrapped about him, constricting tightly. She pressed his chest to her thorax. Blades in her joints cut into him.
Gerrard struggled. It was an inescapable grip. The gore from her belly wound ran down onto his face.
Tsabo Tavoc stared coldly at him. Her compound eyes gleamed in the last light of the burning bodies.
"You have the soul of a Phyrexian, Gerrard, a soul of hate. It makes you powerful, but infinitely malleable."
He felt a sudden, sharp pain in his back. Something gored him. It punched into his spine and poured out a hot, hissing substance. The stuff flooded Gerrard. His limbs shook. His skin blazed with fire. His vision grew acute- angry black lines slashed down around everything.
It was glistening-oil, liquid hatred infused into his spine. He had never known so powerful a passion. He wanted to rip Tsabo Tavoc apart, to kill everyone, to kill himself, but his body was not his own. Hatred burned away his nerves until he hung in hopeless, seething paralysis.
Good, my child, Tsabo Tavoc purred directly into his mind. Now you understand what it is to be one of us. Had you been my trophy, I would have fitted you with a mimetic spine, here and now. You belong not to me, though, but to Yawgmoth. This infusion makes you mine until we stand together before him.
Gerrard hung there beneath her, incapable of moving. He belonged here, clutched in his mother's legs.
She stalked forward a few paces. Her steps slowed, as if she were thinking. Think of your beloved, Gerrard. Think of Hanna, of how I killed her.
The pangs of hate cut deep, slaying Gerrard.
Mother was pleased. She purposefully crossed the cavern, scuttling past the burning Phyrexians and the Benalish dead. Reaching the door, she rolled back the stone as though it were a pebble and carried Gerrard away into the bowels of Koilos.
Karn, Sisay, Orim, and Squee followed the path of destruction carved out by the Benalish brigade. It led them ever downward, at last to a vast, deep chamber.
There, Eladamri and his Metathran troops had joined Tahngarth and the Benalish brigade. Together, they battled a horde of Phyrexians. Every moment, more beasts arrived. They filed through a huge, shimmering portal on the far side of the cave. The Dominarians were outnumbered two to one, and soon three to one. As long as the portal remained open to Phyrexia, there would be no hope of holding Koilos.
Beside the portal, surrounded by hundreds of Phyrexians, was a mirror pedestal. On it rested a giant book of glass and metal. Lines of power radiated from the spot, coursing into the portal.
"Where's Gerrard?" Sisay wondered as she hefted her sword.
"Lost, or dead," guessed Orim, drawing her wooden blade.
"We must destroy the pedestal," Karn said. "We must close the portal." He charged into battle along with Orim and Sisay.
On his back, Squee shouted, "What you doing, Karn? You don't fight."
With a voice like a distant waterfall, Karn growled, "They don't know that."
Chapter 36
Tsabo Tavoc scuttled down the dark reaches of Koilos.
It was simple from here. Gerrard was hers. He couldn't move, clutched in three of her legs and gripped in the implacable arms of hate. He was as helpless now as a newborn babe. He would cause no trouble.
Think of your beloved, my child. Think of Hanna.
Tsabo Tavoc's other children were far from helpless. They filled the cavern below, driving the Dominarians back from the portal. Her children would be glad to sense her approach. They would open an avenue through the Dominarian host. Her children would press both ways, and Tsabo Tavoc would walk, untouched, through the center of the battle. Anyone else would have called it a gauntlet, with foes and death on either side. For Tsabo Tavoc, it was a parade of coronation. At its end lay Phyrexia and her great reward.
Think of Hanna. You lost her to me, and she lost you to Yawgmoth.
It was a hopeless fight. Phyrexians poured out of their world and into the cavern. Through the portal they came, distorted like visions through rising heat. Beyond that shimmering gate, thousands more filed forward. Rank on rank, they filed into a meat grinder.
Eladamri was one blade of that grinder. He and Liin Sivi led the Steel Leaf elves in a furious drive for the mirror pedestal. Eladamri's sword rang like a bell as he hewed his way. Liin Sivi's toten-vec whirled in deadly circles. The elves did their vicious best, fighting for the Seed of Freyalise as if Eladamri were Freyalise herself. For all their fury, though, Eladamri and his troops could do little more than slay. Phyrexian bodies made walls before them.
Across the chamber was another blade in the meat grinder. Tahngarth's sword opened the belly of a monster. Entrails cascaded out. The beast trod on them and slipped. Tahngarth turned and chopped down into the head of another brute. The horned brow was no match for Hurloon steel. The minotaur wrenched his sword free, simultaneously driving his elbow into the eye of a third beast. It fell to the floor and skidded before Sisay.
She fought beside him with equal valor, though less battle lust. An efficient sword swinger, Sisay had time to defend herself and assist Orim. Though at heart a healer, Orim could kill Phyrexians, even with her wooden Cho-Arrim sword. She had only to think of Hanna. All around Orim fought Benalish irregulars, many armed only with their fists and sheer will.
The defenders of Dominaria brought death to hundreds of Phyrexians, but there were thousands. For half an hour, they had fought in this breathless, hopeless battle, and gained not an inch toward the mirror pedestal.
Karn had done the most in that regard. Without bashing in a head or crushing a spine-both of which he was physically able to do-Karn had simply waded into the Phyrexian troops. It had taken them mere moments to discover they could not kill him. It took considerably longer to discover he would not kill them. They mobbed him. He was halfway across the cavern floor before the weight of bodies mired Karn in place. Beneath a living pile of fiends, Karn and his goblin passenger were buried. Hopeless.