J. King: INVASION

Barrin allowed himself a tired laugh. It had been an unconventional salvation but a salvation still.

His silent satisfaction ended too soon. Above the laboring wings of the dragon, he glimpsed another plague ship emerging from the portal. The Phyrexians were evidently shifting their forces from the portals Gerrard had shut down.

"Where's Urza?" Barrin hissed under his breath. "What business could be so pressing elsewhere?"

He knew he should not have been surprised. Urza had often left him to fight overwhelming odds. There was a time on Tolaria when Barrin had led an army of young students and old scholars against hordes of Phyrexians-all without Urza's aid. He had nearly lost that war. It was as though Urza would not fight a losing battle. He left those to the capable hands of the mage master.

Barrin thought of his wife, Rayne-another losing battle. Her death had ripped his heart out. It was almost a relief to fight Phyrexians. It was easier to close a hole in the sky than a hole in the soul.

Barrin stood in the saddle, signaling for the Metathran hoppers and Serran angels to form up behind him. They came with their customary alacrity. He drove his dragon engine up toward the plague ship. Perhaps he could muster another set of healing spells. Perhaps he could clog the contagion channels.

Perhaps it didn't matter. The Battle of Benalia might well be a losing one.

While Barrin fought to close the hole in the heavens, Phyrexian cruisers soared out across the ground, heading for distant Benalia City.

Beyond waving heads of grain rose columns of smoke. They vented from new mountains, hulking on the horizon. Those steaming peaks were not volcanic but Phyrexian- mountains that had fallen from the sky.

More mountains still soared there. Twelve Phyrexian cruisers glided above the grasslands. Stalks of grain trembled in their vast shadows. The underbellies of the ships were flat and plated, almost crocodilian. As quiet as predators, they coursed over the plains, seeking a spot to deploy.

Twenty miles beyond the portal, the cruisers fanned out across a wide field. They hovered until each of the twelve craft had reached its place in the giant arc. Sending forth sudden jets of steam, they eased themselves to ground. Grasses bent and crackled. The final impact of each ship shook Benalia. It was as though twelve gods had set foot on the world. Gigantic doors dropped outward, forming ramps. At the top of them were poised Phyrexian legions, ready to deploy.

They were figures out of nightmares-scaly and grimly powerful. Poison fangs, goring horns, blood-sucking shunts, acid ejectors, exoskeletal proliferation, pincers, barbs, paralyzing stings-every adaptation that nature had given the foes of humankind the Phyrexians had given themselves.

Out marched the first ranks of shield folk, the scuta. They were stooped creatures. Their skulls had been flattened and elongated into wide shields that guarded their scuttling legs. There was little room for brain anymore in that bony bonnet and little need. These fleetfooted beasts were bred on instinct to rush into unknown territories and flush out ambushers. They seemed giant horseshoe crabs, inhuman except for the vestigial faces, stretched and vacant, on their lower skulls. Shoulder to shoulder, they bounded down the ramp and swept outward, sniffing with enhanced olfactory cavities. Scuta were kept hungry, that they would seek their victims not only for sport but also for sustenance.

The next ranks were utterly different. Grown for brute strength, stamina, and savagery, bloodstocks had a second pelvis and a second pair of legs grafted across their stomachs. They leaned forward perpetually as if in a vicious charge. Steel beams pierced their shoulders, widening them by three feet and providing artifact arms above their natural pair. The bloodstocks pounded down the ramp and tore out across the field. They were as fast as wolves and charged like rhinos. If the scuta flushed out more forces than they could slay, the bloodstocks would paint the plains in blood.

After the scuta and the bloodstocks came phalanx after phalanx of Phyrexian troopers. These vat-grown troops were less specialized, with generally human configuration and intelligence. They were tall and lean, their shoulders bristling with horns, their faces taut like leather sacks. The ribs of Phyrexian troopers had thickened into a full-torso breastplate, and implants had developed into subcutaneous armor across their bodies. Mechanical talons replaced hands and feet. It was impossible to tell where flesh stopped and mechanism began. Phyrexian troopers were meant to march and haul and dig as well as fight. They were also meant to follow orders instead of instincts.

Order and instinct had their mutual apotheosis in the final figure to emerge. She did not come down the ramp among the shouldering hordes of Phyrexians. She was not one of the rabble. She was their leader, their god. It had been part of the indoctrination of these troops that when they looked up at Tsabo Tavoc, they saw mother and ruler and slayer, all.

Tsabo Tavoc's eight legs helped the image. They were mechanisms, silvery and knife shaped. Even in a crouch, they lifted her torso ten feet off the ground. Fully extended, they made her stand taller than a house. Between those massive legs rose a great, bulbous abdomen. It was a mechanism, as well. A four-foot-long stinger jutted beneath it, dripping venom. Powerstones within that abdomen linked Tsabo Tavoc to her every minion. She could sense everything they sensed.

Above it all rose a powerful thorax, half human and half machine. Brown robes draped from four massive shoulders and mantled a bald, young, strangely beautiful head. Tsabo Tavoc had once been a fair maiden with ivory skin and supple arms. Her beauty had somehow been only heightened by the torturous modifications she had undergone. Even her eyes, the way they sparkled, might have been alluring were they not so plainly compound.

Tsabo Tavoc stepped down from the prow of her command cruiser. Her legs picked gracefully forward among the waving heads of grain. She watched with all-seeing eyes as her troops lined up on the plains of Benalia.

Tsabo Tavoc loved them. These were her children. What seemed almost a smile formed on her segmented lips. She sent her children the sum of her will.

Welcome, my sweet ones. Welcome to Dominaria. This is our home. Do you feel it in your blood as I do? Do you feel how the hills call to us? They remember when we walked this place. They have longed for our return. We come to them, compleated and glorious, their worthy rulers.

There is another race here, though. They have ruled this world for these six thousand years, ruled wrongly. They are the remnant of us, those who would not ascend. They remained in squalor and have thrived here only because they had no natural predators.

We are their natural predators. We have come to take this world back from the soft-skinned, cowering vermin that have overrun it. We will feed upon them, as is our right, and claim dominion over Dominaria, as is our destiny.

Array yourselves, my children. This is the first great battle of many. Before the sun sets this day, we march upon the center of Benalish power. We march upon Benalia City.

From Benalia City above came muffled booms and sudden shouts. The cell floor shuddered. Iron clanged on iron. Sand sifted from the stony ceiling.

"Do you hear that?" Gerrard called to the brig guardsman. "That's the invasion we spoke of. Those are the monsters out of the sky."

The blind seer stood beside him, clutching the bars.

"They'll be calling you in a moment," Gerrard continued. "They'll need everybody to fight. They'll need us too. Let us loose!"