First, Tsabo Tavoc had gone to the fourth sphere of Phyrexia for the none-too-tender ministrations of the vat priests. They stitched closed the laceration in her gut. She commanded them to use silk, but they used leather thongs instead. Even vat priests could ignore her orders.
Sewn together like an old sack, Tsabo Tavoc went to the second sphere. There Phyrexian cogwrights replaced the five legs ripped from her thorax. The replacements were crude things, rusty and inelegant. As to the injuries to her spider abdomen, the cogwrights merely sawed away the infected half and welded a steel plate over it. Even cogwrights had dominion over her.
Yawgmoth was displeased.
Next, Tsabo Tavoc received an ominous assignment: Report to Envincar Crovax in the Stronghold, and give account of your failings.
On grating legs, Tsabo Tavoc ambled across the sooty wastes of the second sphere. She reached a portal to Rath. The gate guards-a pair of mogg goblins-dared to mock her shorn abdomen. One of her good legs thrust into the mouth of the first mogg, impaling him from tooth to tail. The other beast leaped on her-a miscalculation. With human hands, she gripped his neck and drove her nails through skin and muscle and windpipe until the flesh seemed only wet rope.
She was still Tsabo Tavoc. She would not be mocked by weevils. This was only a setback. Tsabo Tavoc would report to Crovax, would bear his wrath, and would rise again, one day to kill him.
She was still Tsabo Tavoc.
Painted in mogg blood, Tsabo Tavoc had passed through the portal to a volcanic hillside on Rath.
The ground beneath her feet was red and rolling. It was not lava but flowstone. Each speck of it was a minute machine clinging to those around it. As a whole, flowstone responded to the mental suggestions of the Evincar of Rath-Crovax. He shaped the world. The hills and plains around her bore the mad geography of his mind. They changed always, some- times slowly, sometimes violently, but always Rath changed- until now.
Even as she stood there, Rath overlaid itself on Dominaria. The flowstone world phased into being atop the real one. It brought with it the races of Rath, the Phyrexian armies arrayed across its surface, and even Tsabo Tavoc herself. She arrived on Dominaria by riding the Radii overlay, freight on a barge.
Tsabo Tavoc breathed the air of Urborg. It stank of death- not clean, metallic death but the fetor of decaying bodies.
"Of course Crovax brought his Stronghold here," she told herself. "Necrophile." She shuddered with distaste. How much more fun it was to torture the living than to play with the dead.
Nearby on the volcano's side lay a violent crack. Brimstone steam wafted from that space. Dominarians would have thought this a passage into hell. They would have been right. Crovax and his Stronghold lay in the heart of the dormant volcano.
Tsabo Tavoc ambled to the rough crack and climbed within. Through slanting shafts and narrow corners she went. The tortuous route would have killed a lesser creature, but Tsabo Tavoc had the grace of all arachnids. Even light abandoned her, but she could see in absolute dark. The spider woman clambered for miles into deep rock. At last, a new, red glow began ahead. It lit the sulfuric crack, and hot winds rolled up around Tsabo Tavoc.
She emerged in an enormous hollow, perhaps a dozen miles in diameter. When this volcano had been active, the cavern would have been filled with a mountain of lava. Now the vast subterranean chamber held only the Stronghold.
Despite herself, Tsabo Tavoc paused to stare in awe.
The Stronghold was massive-a mile tall and three miles in diameter. It floated in the center of the volcanic cavern and seemed the elaborate pelvis of some titanic predatory beast. It had been grown more than built. Walls and windows and floors all were formed of flowstone, which aped the properties of countless materials. In the superstructure of the city, the flow-stone had the consistency of bone. Ivory buttresses and arches connected processes and concavities. Horns jutted from each tower and rail. Slender ribs extended in walkways. Within the complex, the flowstone took the form of metal. Stacked tiers of balconies and inner chambers rose into the high vault above the city. Armored mechanisms dangled beneath.
For all its size and elaboration, the Stronghold performed one simple function: converting volcanic and planar energy into flowstone. The Stronghold had created flowstone and channeled it out the side of the volcano, creating Rath. Now that the plane was complete, the ancient flow of power was stilled. The Stronghold awaited its ultimate task.
Tsabo Tavoc nimbly picked her way around the interior of the cavern. There was only one bridge onto the Stronghold, and even a spider woman could not spin another way across. To reach the bridge, Tsabo Tavoc had to climb atop the mogg goblin warrens that lined the inner walls of the cavern. It was yet another indignity. The beasts emptied their slops out the windows of their warrens, leaving long slick trails.
They would pay, these goblins-they and everyone else.
Tsabo Tavoc crawled from stony sills down onto the main bridge. Her metallic legs chimed quietly on the rocky expanse. More moggs lined the structure. Brutish and mindless, they stood at what amounted to attention for a hunchbacked species. Tsabo Tavoc strode down the gauntlet of them. Her legs itched to knock them over the rail to their deaths. The beasts let her be. They could smell the blood of comrades on her.
Besides, Tsabo Tavoc was expected.
She reached the main gate, called simply Portcullis. It had once borne the stylized emblem of Volrath's face. Crovax hadn't removed his predecessor's likeness. He only added to it a set of grinning shark's teeth. At Tsabo Tavoc's approach, the great gears began to roll, and the gargantuan gate swung slowly upward. This was more like the reception she had expected.
She knew the way to the evincar's throne room. Tsabo Tavoc had memorized the route, intending to ascend to the throne. Through corridors that seemed vesicles in a giant's heart, Tsabo Tavoc wound inward. Windows gave views into the hydroponics gardens beyond. Pits dropped to laboratories and dungeons. Il-Vec and il-Dal humans moved through the passages. Some were guards in scale mail. Others were slaves in leather coveralls. None sought to impede the march of the spider woman.
She arrived. The throne room was huge. Once it had been the convocation hall in the center of the structure, but Volrath had claimed the site for himself. Crovax had then added his own distinct flavor.
The columns that lined either wall had been twisted by Crovax's mind. Above, the vault dripped stalactites, some of which held impaled bodies. Tsabo Tavoc pursed her lips, calculating how much muscle it would take to hurl a body that high. A few were relatively fresh, sending down a pattering red rain. Around these gory puddles crowded dogs the size of ponies. Hackled and muscled, the vampire hounds lapped blood past enormous fangs. They kept the slate-black floor clean and protected the huge throne, which was fashioned of obsidian, its back carved with blindly staring faces and motifs of death.
All about the room, il-Vec guards stood like hypertrophied statues. Among them was the court mage, Ertai. Spine-implanted and metal-trussed, the man had become a whipping boy. Constant desperation rimmed his red eyes. He stood there, statue still, even though his master was nowhere to be seen.
Tsabo Tavoc paused, expecting to be announced. The guards paid her no heed. Even Ertai averted his eyes. This was the most galling of all. Tsabo Tavoc strode toward the nearest guard, intent on slaying him. She was stopped short by a sound from behind the throne-words and laughter.