It was good to march again beneath the sun.
A hundred miles from Urborg, in seas a mile deep, something enormous moved. It might have been a school of whales, though even a hundred thousand leviathans could not have mounded the waters so violently. Whatever coursed beneath the surface was as massive as a mountain and faster than a falcon. In its long trek across the globe, it pushed before it a tidal wave that traveled at awesome speed. It drove toward distant Urborg.
The thing was only seventy-five miles out now. The basin of the sea sloped upward. Just behind the rushing wave, kelpy masses surfaced. They seemed Sargasso. Leaves rattled as the foliage lifted above the waves. Twigs jutted forth, then branches, then boughs. Water cascaded from the widespread crowns of the submerged trees.
These were not just trees. Each was the size of an isle, each the height of a mountain, and they moved. Enormous boughs hurled away water. Vast knotholes glared over the flood. Hollows that could only be described as mouths disgorged the brackish depths. Enormous roots strode along the sea floor at impossible speeds.
The magnigoth treefolk had come all the way from Yavimaya. They were drawn not straight to Urborg but on a twisted path, following their stolen captive: Rith.
In ancient days, the green Primeval had been entrusted to them. For epochs, these treefolk had faithfully guarded their prisoner. Even before the forest of Yavimaya grew, they had kept Rith captive. The Thran-Phyrexian War could not shake her loose, nor the Argoth event, nor even the great Ice Age. Now, though, after ten thousand years, Rith was free. It was a small thing to march across the oceans of the world, seeking her.
At last, they had cornered her at Urborg. She would not escape again.
The treefolk had brought help. All across their bark clustered thousands of Kavu. The gigantic lizards blinked brine from their nictitating membranes but otherwise remained motionless. The cold depths had sent them into hibernation. Now in the sunlight, they slowly awoke. One by one, Kavu opened their nostrils and stretched. Steam rose from armored hides. Blood began to run again. Scaly necks craned for sight of Urborg. Kavu lords-six-legged lizards that easily weighed ten tons-filled their wattles with long-calls. To these eerie battle songs were added the drone of Kavu stomachs. The beasts had awakened hungry and soon would fill their bellies with Phyrexians.
It wouldn't be long now. At fifty miles out, the magnigoth treefolk waded in fifteen hundred feet of water. Boughs dripped their last drops into the turbid ocean. Leaves rustled in sea winds. At twenty-five miles out, roots splashed through the shallows. In mere minutes, they clambered over reefs and up the shore. Treefolk rose to their full height. They were as tall as the volcanoes themselves.
The treefolk strode inward across marshy lands. Saltwater sloughed from their bark. Roots that had traversed half a world tore up the ground of Urborg. They sank in the wet soil and ripped holes through to underground caverns. Seawater poured down these shafts, flooding the caves below. The bubbling channels of water soon were full. Decaying corpses in their thousands drifted from the inundated underworld.
Kavu cared nothing for corpses, but ahead, on the foothills of the central volcano, Phyrexians massed. Battle cries ceased as lizards scrambled down the trunks of the striding trees. They bounded to ground. Claws designed to sink into wood gripped cold lava just as well. Kavu hurled themselves along the mountain side. With mouths gaping, they galloped into the Phyrexian troops. The crunch of the first few only whetted their appetites. This was not battle, but feast.
Heedless, the treefolk strode on. They pursued another foe. Above the volcano flew a great ship, pursued by five roaring Primevals. One of those serpents was Rith.
Striding up the hardened lava, treefolk clawed amid the clouds. Boughs raked the teeming sky. Ships and dragons were but gnats to magnigoth treefolk. They hauled down branches draped with dead serpents. None was Rith. It was easy to kill countless gnats, but difficult to catch a specific one.
The treefolk lord that had held Rith captive all these millennia bellowed with fury. Wind ripped through its core. The exhalation hurled dragons from the sky. The inhalation afterward dragged more serpents in, wedging them in hollows and impaling them on slivers. None was Rith. The Primeval flitted away, along with her pantheon of dragon gods. The treefolk lord pursued its elusive quarry across the sky.
"What in the Nine Hells!" shouted Tahngarth. His barrage of cannon fire ceased as he gabbled at the huge trees that circled the volcano. They lashed out at Weatherlight. "Even the flora has turned against us!"
From the speaking tube came Multani's voice. "Sisay, fly closer to them."
"Closer?" she echoed in a near shriek.
"Yes," Multani replied. "They've come not for us but for the green dragon."
Tahngarth shook his head in dubiety. A massive bough swept violently past Weatherlight.
"We thought Rhammidarigaaz was on our side too. What's to say these trees don't want their wood back?"
"I'm to say," replied Multani. "I am, after all, their spirit. Take us close. Close enough to make contact. I'll coordinate the attack."
"You're not leaving us," Sisay insisted.
"Only long enough to marshal the treefolk. Then I'll be back. This is a fight I wouldn't miss."
Tahngarth felt his stomachs churn as Weatherlight plunged away beneath him. He held on tight to Squee's ray cannon. To port came lofty leaves, thrashing violently along the wing. To starboard was empty sky plunging down to a boiling sea. Directly before him, gaining on the ship's stern, were four angry dragon gods.
Ever since Gerrard disappeared, things had gotten crazy.
Chapter 34
Urza Planeswalker wandered through waving fields of grass. The stuff made a shushing noise under his titanic feet. A wind bore past him, eager to cross the hill. On the horizon ranged gray mountains. The sky was a shell in solid white.
It was a serene place, the sixth sphere of Phyrexia. To Urza, it felt like home.
True, it was not grass but twisted wire. Its barbs would rip a person apart before he moved ten paces. Its electrical impulses would cook his flesh instantly. The winds were equally unnatural, spawned in mile-high turbines among the mountains. They would pluck up a person like dandelion down and chop her to pieces and hurl her parts endlessly around the sphere. This was no place for humans, but for an artificer in a titan engine, it was a heaven.
Urza stopped walking. He wished he could crouch here and harvest wires and weave them into a wreath and charge it with the land's own currents. Power was everywhere, but more than power drew him. Beauty did. This place was beautiful.
Urza gazed down at his hand. It held the single ugly thing in the windblown place-an armored device with a riot of its own wires, bound around a powerstone incendiary device. A bomb, but not just any bomb. This was the master. Its blast would trigger all the others. It would set off the destruction of all Phyrexia.
The destruction of all Phyrexia. Urza could little bear the thought.