"Rutting lich lord bastards?" echoed Freyalise.
Commodore Guff found the monocle dangling before his knickers and lifted it to his eye. "Has Bo Levar arrived yet?"
"My Lady," Bo Levar said, appearing out of nowhere to bow before Freyalise. He was a sandy-haired young pirate with a mustache and goatee and a dangerous twinkle in his eyes. Clenched in white teeth was a fine cigar, emitting a thin blue coil of smoke. He managed to smile around it. "Gents?" Instead of bowing to Urza and Commodore Guff, he tapped the breast pocket of his tunic where a few more smokes waited.
Urza waved away the invitation.
Commodore Guff quickly skimmed the instructions for exhausting the pilot capsule and nodded. "Thank you very much, indeed."
Flipping a cigar to the commodore, Bo Levar said, "It's the only thing that cut the stink of Urborg." He waved over his shoulder to his titan engine. Swamp muck coated the mechanism's legs. The blue torso of the machine was spattered in mud, and its articulated joints were jammed with strange weeds.
Urza gaped. "What did you do with it?"
Bo Levar smiled. "There was a field of wild tobacco-"
"Oh, you didn't-"
"Look who's here!" Bo Levar said. "It's Kristina and Taysir. I didn't think they were still an item."
"They aren't," Freyalise replied. "Daria is with them."
The three new arrivals seemed a family-Taysir the patriarch in white beard and multicolored robes, Kristina the wise and mysterious mother, and Daria the wide-eyed and sassy young woman. Their titan engines were similarly tailored to their personalities. Taysir's seemed an ancient and solemn statue, Kristina's a powerful machine built to bear oppressive burdens, and Daria's an engine so lithe it could dance untouched among lightning bolts.
Dark haired and grinning, Daria bounded toward Freyalise. "Heard you had to go to Keld. Ugh. Still, it's better than Urborg. Leeches and liches."
"Rutting lien lord bastards," Freyalise said, hugging her young protege.
"I wish I could've gone with you," Daria said.
Freyalise nodded. "Soon enough we'll all be heading to a place worse than Urborg or Keld."
Daria rolled her eyes. "I know. Phyrexia. Ought to be a blast."
"Exactly," Urza said. "With the mana bombs you have and the implosion devices we will take from the fourth level, it'll be a blast."
The final two planeswalkers arrived.
The first had long been a resident of much-maligned Urborg, though he was no swamp-water snake. The panther warrior Lord Windgrace had lived on that isle when it had been a jungle mountaintop-before Argoth had sunk it. Though his land had died, Windgrace had remained. Though undead arose, Windgrace fought for the living. He remembered what Urborg had been and hoped to return it to its former state. On feline pads, he stalked into the midst of the company. At times, Windgrace took a humanlike form, or an amalgam between panther and man, but this day he went on all fours. His tawny titan engine was similarly equipped to stalk or stand, according to the will of its master.
Last of all was the black dragon Szat. His horn-headed engine appeared among the others, and his sinewy bulk paced impatiently.
"When do we start, Planeswalker?"
Without standing, Urza sighed. "Momentarily. You all know the objectives. You all know your engines. Stay within them. The caustic environs of Phyrexia can dissolve even us. Now, suit up, and we fight."
Next moment, he alone sat at the foot of his titan engine. Then even Urza was gone.
He materialized within the piloting harness of his titan suit. It was formfitted-with motor gauntlets for hands, battle boots for feet, and a sensor helm for his head. Every fiber of the suit responded to each impulse of his body. Urza felt the machine awakening around him. His senses extended into what had once been numb metal. All around, the other titans powered up.
In addition to mechanical armaments, each of the nine titans also wielded magic and the arsenals of planeswalkers. Perhaps they should have been called dreadnoughts, for they had nothing to fear.
Pivoting into formation with the other machines, Urza signaled them. As one, they 'walked.
The glassy ground of Tolaria vanished. There was no time spent in the Blind Eternities. Planeswalkers could step from world to world as children step stone to stone. Besides, they had plenty of work to do.
Tolaria was gone. A new, verdant land opened before them. Primeval forests spread thickly to glimmering lakes. Rugged mountains crouched on the horizon beneath a sunless sky. Gray clouds, pregnant with rain, streaked the red heavens. In gleaming waters waded dragon engines. Not scabrous fighting machines, these were living beasts- wild and free.
It was a beautiful, bountiful world. Urza staggered a bit to look at it. How could Yawgmoth rule such loveliness? Urza had fought in the inner spheres-nightmare landscapes-but he had never stopped to admire the first sphere. It was a dream. His brother had come here and told of its glories…
Mishra. He had always been the dreamer, the man who loved tales around the campfire. If Urza had seen this place too, had been with Mishra that day, maybe there would never have been a war. Maybe Mishra would live on.
Mishra… Barrin… Xantcha…
Hey, Urza, take a breath, there, came the voice of Bo Levar in his mind. Are we going to do this or not?
Within his titan suit, Urza blinked. He breathed. His thoughts slowly cleared. Yes, of course. Beyond that brake of forest is the city of Gamalgoth, first metropolis of Phyrexia. In it lie conduits that reach throughout the first sphere. There, we begin.
The joints of his titan engine felt stiff as he stepped toward the city. His foot struck the world like a mallet on a drum. Dust rolled up in clouds from that impact. In the dust were bits of metal. It was the ubiquitous component of this world. Metal in the soil, metal in the water, metal in the air. Another step and Urza began to run.
The other nine engines thundered after him.
Five more enormous strides brought Urza to the trees. Powerstone arrays imbedded in his helm optically enhanced the leaves, showing them to be living metal- veins like inlay and flesh like foil. That realization made the world only more beautiful. It was the dream of artificers to build a machine that lived. It was the dream of bioengineers to grow a creature out of metal. Here, on the first sphere of his world, Yawgmoth had again and again fulfilled the dream of ages. To destroy this world would be like burning a library. Urza ached to stop and stare and study.
This damned blasted exhaust system! It's filling my suit with oil stench! complained Commodore Guff.
Light up, friend, Bo Levar suggested. It'll dear the stench and remind you of Dominaria and all the things we fight far.
Urza clutched that thought to himself. Yes. Once the stench of Phyrexian blood made him ill. Now, he had not even noticed it. Urza had even gotten to like the smell. He wished he had one of Bo Levar's smokes.
Ancient trees snapped like twigs before Urza's titan engine. He cracked his way through the brake and stared down at Gamalgoth.
The city spread across the whole of a vast plateau. Gray mountains hemmed it in on one side and a forested rift on the other. Between them shone a gleaming city in bonewhite stone. The tight-packed buildings seemed enormous fungi- irregular domes, hanging plazas, conic buttresses, weird roof lines, mounded stories, citadels growing up out of the larger city. It was a grown city, an ancient city, perfectly suited to this primeval world.
Urza would not pause. He would not show weakness. He must lead the nine down to that glorious city and tear it up and set bombs and activate them…
Roaring a sound of deep dread, Urza ran toward Gamalgoth.
Rockets shot in spiraling paths from his wrists. Falcons shrieked in manifold fury from his back. Lightning leaped from his brow.