J. Robert King - Invasion Cycle 02 - Planeshift

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PLANESHIFT

INVASION CYCLE • BOOK II

J. Robert King

Chapter 1

Every Claw, Every Fang

Multani traced the damage done by the ray cannon

blast. The bolt had struck Weatherlight's hull where the

figurehead should have been. It had torn a wide gash

through seven inches of solid magnigoth wood and had

vaporized the first forecastle rib. In the hold beyond, the

energies had hit an ensign's pack and burned it and its

contents away to nothing. If not for that pack, the bolt

might have ripped on through a bulkhead and into the

crew's berths. Even so, the damage was severe.

Multani did not peer at the hull breach as would a mere

man but felt it from the inside, for he was a nature spirit.

He had no true body outside of plant life. He took his form

from wood grain. Cellulose fibers were his muscles,

heartwood his bones, sap his blood. His true home was the

forest of Yavimaya, where he lived in the endless

magnigoth trees. That homeland had won its battles, so

Multani had taken up residence in the living hull of

Weatherlight. Her battles were only beginning.

Multani moved through the wood. The laceration

seemed a wound in his own flesh. It brought pain, of

course, but it also empowered him to heal the ship.

Charcoal sloughed from the edges of the breach. Sap

oozed out in golden beads. Dead wood grew green. New

fibers extended into the emptiness. New rings appeared

where old ones had been burned away. The growth of

centuries replenished itself in minutes. Soon, the first

Planeshift

forecastle rib was solid again, and the seven inches of

magnigoth gunwale above it had filled in. The rent was

healed.

Multani continued his work. What was a ship without a

figurehead? Wood flowed with waxlike ease, seeming to

pour itself into an invisible mold. A torso took shape,

feminine and muscular. A pair of powerful arms swept

dramatically backward. Wood formed a long mantle of hair

that twined vinelike about strong shoulders. A face—

beautiful, mysterious, and clear eyed—appeared within

those rampant locks. Any crew member who gazed on that

face would have thought the features belonged to Hanna,

former navigator of Weatherlight. Certainly, Multani had

used Hanna as a mental model. The woman he sought to

represent had Hanna's strength and courage and could

borrow Hanna's face, for she did not have a face of her

own. The woman was a goddess so had no face and all

faces.

Residing in every vital impulse of the living grain,

Multani shaped the likeness. He was sculptor and sculpture

both. In mere moments, the masterpiece was complete. He

did not need to step back to examine his work. He

inhabited it and knew its perfection.

It was just as well. He could not have seen the

figurehead anyway. Beyond the bow of Weatherlight was

only desert darkness.

The ship rested on her landing spines in the midst of

sandy Koilos. All around her spread a slumbering army.

The festival lanterns had been extinguished. The torch

stakes had long since burned out. Not a fire smoldered

among the coalition forces. Soldiers—Metathran, human,

and elf—slept in their tents. Dragons slumbered beneath

the canopy of stars. They slept like the dead, though these

were, in fact, the survivors. These mortals had stood

J. Robert King

against hundreds of thousands of Phyrexian monsters, only

later to be laid low by a three-day victory celebration.

Wine and revelry. Mortals must be allowed their excesses.

Multani was no mortal. While elves sang, Multani had

mended a shattered keel. While humans danced, Multani

had grown longer, stronger spars. While Metathran slept,

he had fashioned a glorious figurehead, which, in desperate

straits, could be a brutal ram for the ship.

Hanna, is it? came a voice in his mind. The words

rumbled like a distant waterfall. It was Karn, peering from

the ship's forward lanterns. As Multani lived in every

wooden part of the great ship, Karn lived in every metallic

one. A golem fashioned of silver, he was the ship's engineer

and, in some ways, the ship's engine. The face is certainly

Hanna's, but the hair... ?

Yes, replied Multani. Smooth, hard magnigoth bark

thickened across the figure. It is Hanna, and it is not.

Who then? asked Karn.

It is Gaea, the world soul, Multani responded reverently.

This is her war. It is she who is squared off against Yawgmoth.

There was silence for a time. Karn was as much an

immortal as Multani, and together the two had been

reshaping Weatherlight. Through intuition and inspiration,

they transformed her toward her final configuration. She

was to be the ultimate weapon in this ultimate war.

It is a good change, Multani.

Thank you. No sooner were these words formed than

something shifted in the gloaming darkness beyond the

ship, something massive. Did you sense that? Multani asked.

Yes, was all Karn said. There was no time for more.

Already he was drawing back from the main engine core.

Metal conduits slid free from the neural nexuses of his

hands. He broke mental contact with the engine. Massive

Planeshift

and slow, the silver man rocked back on his heels. He rose,

a bit unsteadily, and turned to climb to the deck.

Multani was faster. He withdrew from the figurehead

and coursed up through planks to rise on the forecastle

deck. He assembled a body for himself out of a splintered

rail and the living hemp of a frayed rope. Fashioned of

plant life, Multani stood at Weatherlight's prow. With

knothole eyes, he stared out across the desert of Koilos.

Around the ship in every direction spread dark tents

and drowsing soldiers. They numbered fifty thousand.

Their empty wine jacks and strewn armor told of the recent

revels. Beyond the encamped armies stood the nine metal

giants that had helped the army win the Battle of Koilos.

These titan engines seemed gods of old, poised at the rim of

the world. As huge as ships, as deadly as armies, the titans

had left their gargantuan footprints across this barren

wastes. Imbedded in those footprints were carapace and

bone, all that remained of the creatures that had opposed

them. Now the titan engines stood empty, staring darkly at

the camp they guarded.

The sudden, massive shift had not occurred within the

sleeping camp nor among the titan engines. It had

happened beyond them, on the sere rills of Koilos. Though

morning was still hours away, an otherworldly red light

gleamed on the distant horizon. It lit the eastern hills, and

the north, the west, and the south. The full compass of the

desert glowed with that horrible light.

A word came to Multani, a word he had sensed in the

dying mind of a Phyrexian invader: Rath. It was more than

a word. It was a world. It was a twisted other-world built of

flowstone, forever expanding, forever mutating into a

perfect match of Dominaria. The Lord of Phyrexia had

made Rath and filled it with machines of war and demon

armies. But why?

J. Robert King

Karn strode up behind Multani. Weird light glinted

from the silver golem's burly shoulders. Eyes like fat

washers peered out at the feverish hills.

Karn rumbled, "It's the planeshift. It's the overlay."

"The overlay?" Multani echoed hollowly.

"The Rathi overlay. A world of monsters is fusing with

our world. Rath is overlaying on top of Dominaria," Karn

replied quietly. "We have no time."

Karn cupped thickset hands around his mouth. His jaw

dropped open. From the cold hollows of his chest came a

terrible sound. It seemed the toll of a gigantic bell.

"Awake, Dominaria! Dread is upon you!"

The sound tore out above the sleeping army. It riffled

the tents like a cyclone. Elves clutched their ears. Humans

lurched up from bedrolls. Metathran staggered into the

light of the unnatural morning. The roar crossed the camp

and echoed from the circle of titan engines, awaking lights

in their skulls. It bore onward over empty sands and into

the glowing hills. There it met another roar, more horrible,

more inhuman.

No one who had survived the Battle of Koilos would

ever forget that sound—a Phyrexian battle cry. When last

they had heard it, the noise had risen from hundreds of

thousands of fiendish mouths. This morning, it rose from

millions.

That second roar woke any whom Karn had not. Every

last soldier yanked on clothes and armor, belted on swords

and fetched up pikes. Trumpets sounded to-arms. Fighters

scrambled to their divisions. Metathran warriors formed up

on Commander Agnate. Elves flocked to the banner of

Eladamri. Humans and Benalish irregulars streamed toward

Weatherlight herself. The once-still camp boiled in

confusion, but one fact was clear. They would all be at war

again in mere moments.

Planeshift

From the chaotic camp rose a singular figure: Urza

Planeswalker. He soared into the air. His lightning-bright

robe trailed magnificently away beneath him. Under a

mantle of ash-blond hair, Urza's eyes beamed like twin

stars. In one hand, he clutched a gnarled war staff set with

glimmering gems. His other hand cradled a sphere of

shimmering blue power. That enchanted orb drew him up

above even the heads of the titan engines. It also sent his

voice out to the armies forming up below.

"Behold, Dominaria. The foe!"

The words were like a thunder stroke. The coalition

forces turned to see.

Beyond the shifting legs of the titan engines,

Phyrexians took shape. They resolved out of the red haze.

In the front ranks came shiny-shelled beasts that seemed

gigantic horseshoe crabs. Behind them charged

biomechanical centaurs with four arms and glinting pikes.

Next came enormous fists of muscle that galloped hungrily

forward, floating beasts the size of clouds and the

configuration of jellyfish, ambling artifact engines that

bristled with blades, and every other imaginable death. All

of them approached at a heady charge. They would reach

the encamped armies in moments.

Urza's voice rang from above. "Koilos is ours. We have

won it. We have destroyed the portal from Phyrexia. That

victory can never be taken from us. Koilos and Yavimaya

and Llanowar are ours. We have broken Yawgmoth's hold.

His world cannot overlay completely on ours. These are

our strongholds. Koilos. Yavimaya. Llanowar. From these

we will win back the rest of the world—for indeed, the rest

of the world is lost. Even now, the plane of Rath overlays

it. Even now, the denizens of Phyrexia are as plentiful as

the denizens of Dominaria. Every native claw, every native

fang must fight, or die...."

J. Robert King

A savage shout rose from the fifty thousand coalition

forces there—not a war cry but the half-shriek of a trapped

animal. As Urza continued his harangue, the troops rallied

as best they could.

The Metathran—who were forty of the fifty thousand

there—formed a wall of powerstone pikes and glinting

armor. Commander Agnate stood in the vanguard. His

pike was set and his jaw as well. The tattoos that marked

his forehead and cheeks were drawn in tight drums. He had

lost his blood brother in the Battle of Koilos, and now,

staring down the converging armies, he knew he would lose

himself.

The Steel Leaf elves of Staprion gathered around

Commander Eladamri. He was Agnate's equal in battle

prowess and strategy. Square jawed and sharp eyed,

Eladamri and his lieutenant Liin Sivi had fought their way

out of Rath once. Now Rath had come back to them. They

beheld old terrors. The savage-shorn elves around them

had never before seen the red and tortured world. They

nocked arrows to long bows and braced for the charge.

Through slitted goggles, the Steel Leaf elves gazed at their

coming doom.

The dragons had been slower to rise than their warm-

blooded allies. As they roused, the old antagonism between

the disparate nations had slowed them too. Only the

ancient Shivan fire dragon Rhammidarigaaz could unite

them. He stood in their midst, his wise eyes drawing them.

The staff he held shone with a crimson power that warmed

the cold-blooded beasts. The magic talismans around his

neck sparked with possibility. Rhammidarigaaz need not

speak a word. He only spread wide his wings and heaved

himself up into the air. A surge of leathery skin, and

another, and he lifted away from the ground. Like a startled

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