She belonged to Yawgmoth now. She always had but especially now, when she was no more than a ghost.
Crovax felt her gentle hand upon his shoulder. It was warm. It had weight. It was real.
He lifted his head and opened his eyes. Through jagged teeth, he breathed a simple, sweet sound. "Selenia."
Chapter 4
As the overlay began, Eladamri and Liin Sivi stood at the head of a small but fierce host of Steel Leaf elves. In front, pikes tilted and swords jutted. In back, longbows were lifted, trained on the skies. The dust of Koilos slid across the goggles of the elves and settled in their savage shocks of hair. More dust rose ahead of them, flung into the sky by hundreds of thousands of Phyrexian feet.
Eladamri stared at the oncoming foes. His eyes were steely, the same color as his armor and hair. He should shout something, some battle cry. This was the moment of death. Elves always shouted defiance in the face of death. He could think of nothing. His tongue was a thick lump in his mouth.
Beside him stood Liin Sivi-no elf, but a Vec. Her eyes too were the color of her hair-black. They gazed with an altogether different emotion. Liin Sivi was not ready to die. Humans never were. She was ready to kill. Her wickedbladed toten-vec was eager to swing out on its chain and harvest heads.
Bowstrings thrummed behind them. Arrows flocked into the sky. They shrieked over the elves and out past the two titan engines. One, a green machine composed in part of living wood, held the planeswalker Freyalise. She was a god to these elves. Glimpsing her engine amid the hailing arrows brought the war cry to Eladamri's lips.
"Freyalise!"
The Steel Leaf elves took up the cry. It roared out among the Phyrexian horde even as the arrows pelted into them. Shafts cracked carapace and lodged in eye orbits and sank into the folds of throats.
"Freyalise!" Eladamri called again. This time Liin Sivi shouted it too, as did all the elves.
The third shout of that name seemed an invocation. Power swelled out from the insectoid engine. It blossomed from each line of armor, each spiracle and gun port. Like an opening flower, Freyalise's might spread to cover them all. In moments, Eladamri, Liin Sivi, the Steel Leaf elves, and even the other titan engine were subsumed into the body of Freyalise.
Koilos disintegrated around them, a sand painting on the wind.
Planeshift, Eladamri realized. She is taking us away from certain death.
The contingent hung unmoving in emptiness. It was not as if the ground had dissolved beneath their feet but as if the air itself had become solid. Within the planeswalker's envelop, all was still. Beyond it, all was chaos. This was the world between worlds.
Soon rampant energies spiraled into patterns and they into solids.
Trees took shape-tall, spiny, and ice choked. Ground formed. The rocky soil was carpeted with snow. The stinging heat of Koilos gave way to the stinging cold of a northern clime under frozen skies.
Eladamri breathed the air. It was wickedly cold. It jabbed chill fingers beneath his armor and tricked away the last of Koilos's heat. He sheathed his sword and wrapped his arms around himself.
Liin Sivi did likewise. "Where are we?" Her breath ghosted in the air.
Casting a glance around, Eladamri saw that the Steel Leaf elves had arrived in this algid wood as well. The two titan engines stood just ahead of him.
"I don't know, but I know who does."
"Freyalise," supplied Liin Sivi.
In silent accord, Eladamri and Liin Sivi strode up the snowy ridge toward the titan engines. Uncertain what else to do, his warriors followed.
Eladamri shoved his way through the prickly pines, alien and harsh to his fingers. He unwittingly triggered an avalanche of snow from the boughs. The white stuff slumped atop him and slipped into his collar. Growling, he shrugged it off. Behind him came snickers, which turned to snorts beneath more frosty assaults.
Jangled, the heroes of Koilos reached the ridge where the titan engines stood.
Eladamri set hands on his hips and looked up at the strange machines.
The titans' feet deeply compacted the snow. Wind moaned in their massive armor. Frost formed geometric designs on observation ports. The dome where Freyalise resided was silhouetted black against the aching blue of the sky.
Cupping hands to his mouth, Eladamri shouted, "Great Freyalise, Lady of Llanowar, where have you brought us?"
In answer, the titan lifted a massive arm and pointed to the forest that spread out below.
Eladamri turned to look. His eyes opened wide, and his jaw dropped.
Intermingled among the aggressive evergreens were tall, twisted trees from another world. The Skyshroud Forest. It was not there in entirety, but large portions mixed with the native foliage. Among pointed peaks of fir, the vast gray boles of cerema trees stood. Wintry sun dappled the waters that stood among their roots. Boreal winds moved veils of moss.
"The overlay," Eladamri realized. "It has brought the Skyshroud Forest here."
Squinting against the snow glare, Eladamri made out walkways curving along prodigious trunks, and aerial bridges joining tree to tree, and knobby dwellings in the hollows of boughs. Worse yet, he made out figures moving…
"The overlay has brought my people here. It has brought our nation to this frigid death."
Without a thought to the Steel Leaf elves in his command, Eladamri ran down the ice-choked slope. His leather boots, excellent for battles in treetops and sand, were treacherous on the snow. He slipped and fell. In a cascade of rock and ice, he rolled to the base of the incline. Scratched and bruised, Eladamri climbed to his feet and ran through a brake of pine.
Beyond, the Skyshroud Forest began. Eladamri staggered to a stop, his feet on warm soil. The forest had arrived here only moments ago, with the rest of the overlay, and it still held the heat of Rath, the smells of home. Eladamri breathed the air. Already it was cold, but the scents of humus and moss filled it. Tendrils of steam rose from the watery sea beneath the trees. A flash of scales shone where a merfolk fled from his gaze.
With sudden realization, Eladamri stooped, putting his hands on his knees. The water would freeze in this climate. The merfolk would die, so would the cerema trees, and every vine, every food crop, every elf…
Eladamri was moving again. He knew this terrain, these very trees. He leaped from the embankment and grabbed a dangling vine. Pulling his legs up beneath him, he swung above a palisade of huge thorns. Landing on the platform of vines beyond, he rushed to an ancient cerema tree. A walkway spiraled up the huge bole. He climbed. Generations of elves had climbed this very tree. Their feet had worn dark wells in the flesh of the vine. Eladamri's own feet had helped carve out these steps.
Oh, he had hoped one day to return home to the Skyshroud but not this way, not on its last day. By evening, the forest would be dead, the sea beneath it frozen.
Eladamri reached the spreading crown of the trees. Pathways led out along the boughs and into numerous bulb dwellings. Eladamri knew the families who lived there- the sons of Dalwryri, the royal line of Gemath, the storytelling clan of Dalepoc. He could hear them in their homes, adult voices fearful and querulous, children complaining of the cold, infants crying. He would go to them, yes. He must go to them but not yet.
He ran across a vine-work bridge that led to a nexus of other paths. Elves filled the trails, some of them struggling toward their homes and families, others standing and staring at the clear, cold blue overhead. A few recognized Eladamri, their long-lost Uniter, and they called out to him. He passed them in a blur. There would be time for them. He would be the Korvecdal again in moments, but just now he was a grieving man.
Another set of paths led to the most familiar tree of all. Its shape was etched on his mind. The green ivy that clung to the bark, the bulb houses clustered to one side of the main stalk, the arching canopy above. His steps slowed, and his hands trembled as he grabbed the walkway rail. The hammering of his heart seemed to shake the bridge.