J. King - PLANESHIFT

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 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 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 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?

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.