J. King - INVASION

Some prisoners fought bare-handed. Knuckles cracked chitinous temples. Fingers jabbed segmented eyes. Teeth bit through strangling claws. Feet smashed thoraxes. Phyrexians were flipped and thrown, knee-capped and bludgeoned, throttled and eviscerated. In the horrid spray of oil and blood, prisoners and Phyrexians were almost indistinguishable.

Gerrard and his comrades had their own troubles. The man ascending to release them had been slain on his way up. Monsters landed atop the tower roof. It buckled beneath their weight. Two had crashed through the windows to fight the shackled crew.

Gerrard ducked the scything claws of the first. He somersaulted across the floor of the tower and rose behind the second beast. It was a lumbering monster-a oncehuman head atop a lupine body fitted out with steel attachments. Luckily, the thing's neck was no canine thing. Gerrard wrapped his shackles around its throat. The chains bit in. The beast thrashed. Gerrard rammed it up against its comrade. The strangling Phyrexian tore the back out of its compatriot. Gerrard tightened his hold. His shackles ground against vertebrae, and the lupine beast fell dead.

Tahngarth quickly finished off the other monster. Hands cuffed behind him, Tahngarth kicked once to spin his foe around, and a second time to bury his hoof in its shredded back.

The Phyrexian convulsed and bucked, falling to the floor.

Tahngarth drew forth his hoof. Acid hissed on his leg and poured out across the planks.

The minotaur spat angrily. "That one burned."

"You must have punctured the spleen," Gerrard said, pointing at the corpse. White smoke rose around the body. "At least spleen is what I would call it."

Sisay knelt beside the fallen Phyrexian, draping her chains in the sizzling stuff. "You don't suppose-" She pulled her hands away, and the links shattered like glass. "I'll be damned."

"Let's hope you won't," Gerrard replied. He used his own shackles to scrape acid from Tahngarth's now-raw leg. His chains also grew brittle. He shattered them. "I've got a gruesome hunch…" Scooping up some Phyrexian oilblood, he laved Tahngarth's legs with it. The sizzling smoke ceased.

Hanna watched intently. "Their blood-it neutralizes the acid?"

Gerrard shrugged. "If I had this stuff in me, I'd want something that could neutralize it."

The minotaur broke his own chains. "Now, as long as the floor doesn't give way-"

Phyrexians suddenly crashed through the rafters. They fell in a frenzied black storm, striking the floor where the corpses lay. The weakened wood held for only a moment. It broke open and hurled the beasts down through the core of the tower.

Clinging to the windowsills, the crew watched as a score of Phyrexians fell to a twisted death on the collapsing stairs below.

"That was miraculous," Gerrard panted.

Sisay stared down grimly. "We'll need a couple dozen more miracles if we're going to get to the ship."

Holding herself up with one hand and clutching her bleeding side with the other, Hanna said, "And a couple more when we're back on board."

Gerrard's eyes were intent. "Orim's got miracles." He edged toward Hanna.

That movement was ill-advised. The stairway within the tower had provided not only access but stability. With the steps gutted, the tower twisted on its four posts. It seemed there was only one way down-one very fast, very horrible way.

"Hold still!" Sisay shouted.

Gerrard lurched to a stop. The platform lurched as well. Nails whined in warning. Joints slowly pulled open.

"We're going to fall, aren't we?"

All around, heads nodded ominously.

Sisay said, "The question is whether we can survive."

"The question is whether we can land on Phyrexians," Tahngarth interrupted.

Glancing toward the ruined roof, Gerrard smiled. "The question is whether we can do both."

He gingerly climbed the inner wall of the listing tower until he could stick his head through the ragged hole in the roof. Lunging, he yanked something down-a tangle of black cords left by the Phyrexians that had landed on the roof. Gerrard hung from the mass of them, his feet swinging free in the center of the wreckage.

Through gritted teeth, he said, "Thought we could… take advantage of… a few loose ends." He managed to free one of the ropes. Bumping into the far wall, he flung a rope to Tahngarth. "This is your old trick… hanging below Weatherlight in Rath."

Wrapping the cord around his arm, the minotaur swung free. "Let's hope the Phyrexians are safer pilots."

"Hey!" Gerrard protested. He flung a rope to Sisay. "I saved you, didn't I? Saved us all, and flew out-"

"To crash on Mercadia," Sisay reminded as she let go of the collapsing frame.

"I got us out of there too," Gerrard defended as he bounced against the wall beside Squee.

The goblin clambered onto Gerrard's shoulders. "Squee killed Volrath."

A shrieking moan came as the tower failed. Gerrard hurled himself across the folding space. He snatched up Hanna in his arms and took two running steps up the slanting wall. Squee clung miserably to his shoulders and let out a shriek of his own. Gerrard flung himself and his passengers out the shattered rooftop, now pointing sideways, and into the fiend-charged air. Sisay came just behind him, and Tahngarth brought up the rear.

They swung out beneath one of the great black cruisers that eclipsed the heavens. Below them, thick mobs of Phyrexians swarmed the yard. It was onto their heads that the guard tower fell.

It rushed down like a gigantic club. Monsters looked up and cringed. The tower smashed them to the ground. Wood splintered. The framework cracked. Beams bounded out in a killing storm.

"I was always good at crashing things," Gerrard said as they swooped above the yard. He lifted his gaze from the wreckage below. "Speaking of crashes-"

With a violent crunch, Gerrard, Hanna, and Squee smashed into a descending Phyrexian. The superior mass of the three heroes knocked the monster loose. It fell, legs kicking crablike until it struck ground. Its shell split wide.

Tahngarth executed a similar attack, though on purpose. His four knuckles had never packed such a punch. The minotaur's first roundhouse staved a monster's skull. It died on the vine. Tahngarth set his hooves on the beast and flung himself onward, knocking another beast free. By releasing the first strand and transferring his weight to others, he made a quick circuit of the lines, moving toward the prison walls. Each blow counted for two, fist followed up by shackle. Each kill slew another as the massive creatures crashed to ground atop their comrades.

Sisay attained the same effect with a bit more finesse. She used an acid-dripping shard of her shackles to burn through adjacent cords. Monster after monster plunged beneath her. The next few

Phyrexians down the line slid into sudden emptiness. She swung past Gerrard, Hanna, and Squee.

Gripping a new cord, she shouted "To the ship, then?"

"To the ship. Hang on," Gerrard told his riders.

He too switched his handhold. To drop down into that yard would be certain death. The only hope was to swing line to line until they reached the brig wall and could climb down to where

Weatherlight was docked below.

First, I fought you in a hole in the ground, Tsabo Tavoc thought gladly, and there you escaped me. I am not a creature for holes in the ground. Then I fought you aboard your own ship, and you drove me off. I should have known not to attack the heir of the Legacy ensconced in his Legacy. But now, she clicked her new legs on the rocky cliff where she stood-stronger legs, fitted with blades in their joints-Now you hang in my web, Gerrard.

Tsabo Tavoc waded through fleeing brigands. They seemed to think there was salvation for them beyond the cliff-or at least there was damnation in the brig. It did not matter to Tsabo Tavoc. On another battlefield, in another time, she would have allowed herself to float in the tide of agony that her troops created. Such was her right. This battle was different though. Benalia had been granted her, but one Benalish warrior thought to stop her. She cared nothing for the shouldering sheep. She cared only for that single strange man built out of all time to serve Urza in his war. Tsabo Tavoc had been similarly built-fearfully and wonderfully made.