J. King - PLANESHIFT

Days and nights scrolled away until at last the black island chain opened before them.

Eladamri stood at the prow, clasping Liin Sivi's hand. "The heroes of Keld will fight the final battle of Twilight on that island. There we will turn back the darkness."

Liin Sivi nodded. Her eyes were bright and stern, focused on the island. "That central volcano hides the source of all this evil."

"The Stronghold," Eladamri said, completing the thought. The two had lived all their lives in the shadow of that horrid fortress. They had fought against it, had even invaded it. Now, two worlds away, they rushed toward it again. "We will capture the land and plumb the fiery depths and destroy the Stronghold once and for all."

The Golden Argosy surged toward Urborgan shores. She crossed reefs that would have wrecked any normal vessel. She plunged through shallows that should have forbidden her massive draft. The beach swept up. Sand parted before her hull. The Golden Argosy clove through palms and swamps. Nothing could halt her.

"What will we do when at last the ship stops?" Liin Sivi wondered aloud.

"We will leap from her and fight," replied Eladamri.

Liin Sivi glimpsed a Metathran guard high in a cypress. He stared down incredulously. "Will we remember this- the ship, the journey, any of it?"

Eladamri gazed at the drowned forest through which they plunged. "No. We will not remember, or remember only as sleepers remember the waking world." He clutched her hand tighter. "But some things even sleepers do not forget."

Without slowing, the Golden Argosy suddenly stopped. Volcanic foothills rose ahead of her.

Eladamri peered up the mountainside. "Here is our battleground. Here we must depart immortal realms for mortal ones."

Drawing her toten-vec, Liin Sivi said, "I am ready."

"No," replied Eladamri, reaching across to her. He took her jaw in his hand, leaned slowly in, and kissed her. The heat of mortal desire passed through that kiss. They parted, and Eladamri stared into her eyes. "Now, we're both ready." He drew his own sword, set his foot on the rail, and leaped from the Golden Argosy.

One moment, Eladamri had lain half-submerged in an icy sea. The next, he landed on a gnarl of cooled lava. It was black and rough and hot beneath his hands. He couldn't quite catch himself. He tucked his head and rolled around his sword. Rock rasped his neck and elbows. He came up on his feet, his knuckles bleeding.

Liin Sivi rose beside him. Her toten-vec swept before her. "Where are we? What's happened?"

"I don't know," Eladamri responded, edging toward her.

There was sudden motion behind them. They whirled.

From the shrouded forest at the base of the volcano poured elves and Keldons. They weren't wet or bedraggled. All seemed to appear in midair, as if leaping from the trees. Their armor was polished, their skin clean and healthy. Steel Leaf and Skyshroud elves appeared beside Keldon warriors. They stumbled and rose in wary confusion.

"I dreamed of a golden ship…" Liin Sivi ventured uncertainly. "I dreamed we were to fight the final battle of Twilight here…"

"Yes," Eladamri said, taking Liin Sivi's hand. He nodded up the volcano behind them. "This mountain is familiar. Do you remember it?"

A bitter smile lit her face. "This is a Rathi mountain. This is the mountain that holds the Stronghold." She shook her head. "There is no battle I'd rather fight."

Brandishing his sword, Eladamri shouted, "Forward!" With Liin Sivi beside him, he climbed the volcano. Elves and Keldons in their thousands followed.

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.