J. King - INVASION

She picked her way toward the prison. Some of the prisoners were so blind with panic, they fled into her legs, cracking their brains. Tsabo Tavoc dismembered a few, not intending to but not avoiding it. She must be careful. The blood would make her grip less sure, and in any web-even one's own-grip was life.

Reaching the base of the prison wall, she ambled up the sheer face of cut stones and hurled herself into the air. She caught one of the lines hanging above the bloody yard and climbed toward those pathetic little creatures. She climbed toward Gerrard.

Orim stood at the ship's gangplank. She had been the one who lowered it-after the first fifty prisoners had bloodied their fingers clawing to get aboard. They fought each other. One climber's back was sliced through with a broken bottle. Another had suffered a spontaneous amputation of his left leg beneath the knee. Countless legs had been torn bloody by hands below. Orim had tried to stanch all that blood. When she could not, she let the deck run red, lowering the gangplank lest there be more.

Now there would be more blood. Already Weatherlight had taken on six hundred prisoners. They would fill every hold and crouch in the bilge as she raced away. Gerrard had come to gather an army. Instead, he gathered refugees. Weatherlight could not safely hold many more. The others would fight. There would be blood.

Worst of all, Gerrard was nowhere to be seen.

"Cast off the plank," came a voice at Orim's shoulder. It was an ancient, wise voice. It brooked no disagreement.

Orim spun, looking at the blind seer. "I cannot sentence them to death."

"You do not sentence them," he said. "You grant reprieve to these others. But if you do not cast off that plank now, even those you have spared will die."

She was pale. "What about Gerrard, Sisay, Hanna, Tahngarth-?"

"That is why you must cast off," the seer said. "If you do not, they will die. Gerrard has saved all those he can. He has his army. Elsewhere, battles scream for that army. Let's save your friends and the world."

Orim drew a deep breath. She closed her eyes, sending her inner self down into that place of peace she had discovered in the forest of the Cho-Arrim. With bliss suffusing her, she reached down and flung away the plank.

Amid the angry shouts and screams, she calmly walked to a speaking tube, flipped it open, and said, "Karn, take us up."

Gerrard hung above the yard. He had nearly reached the wall- it lay fifty feet below and fifty feet ahead.

Suddenly, a huge, agile thing rose up before him. He knew her immediately.

"Tsabo Tavoc," he hissed.

The spider woman was a gigantic bundle of legs and poison. Her beautiful face made a wan smudge on the nighttime.

"I am glad you remember."

Gerrard shifted, pulling Hanna tighter against him. She was growing weak from blood loss and was slipping. "You cannot win."

"I already have. Benalia is mine."

"You cannot defeat all of Dominaria."

"I cannot, but my master can, and he will."

"You cannot defeat me," Gerrard responded, anger in his eyes.

"I already have."

Tsabo Tavoc lunged. Her barbed legs struck Hanna, hurling her away. Without a sound, Hanna fell. Gerrard struggled to grasp her. The spider woman intervened. She gripped the cord with four legs and flung Squee off with three more. With the last, she wrapped Gerrard as she had wrapped Tahngarth. This time, the joints of her legs bristled with blades.

"I don't know which to do, to take you back to my master, or to… enjoy you myself."

Gerrard canted his head. "I'll decide for you." He jammed his shackled wrist into her leg joint. The band forced the leg open. Gerrard yanked his arm free and dropped from her.

Tsabo Tavoc's limbs raked out to grab him from the air, but she was too slow. It little mattered. He would die in the fall…

Except that Weatherlight hovered below, catching them all. Soundless, the refugee vessel had nosed up under them. Now, with its crew safely aboard, Weatherlight streaked away.

Tsabo Tavoc glared after the ship. There would be no catching them.

Still, Gerrard was defeated, fleeing with his tail between his legs. Benalia was hers. Her objective was accomplished. Her master would reward her with the greatest command of the war- Koilos.

If Gerrard dared show himself there, he would be hers.

Urza and Barrin strode up a Tolarian hillside, toward a rocky prominence called the Giant's Pate. While battles raged the world over, this island was a place of calm. Tolaria was a tiny isle, distant from all trade routes. It lay within a tangle of winds that made it almost impossible to find. Swathed in magics and patrolled by helionauts, Tolaria was among the securest sites in Dominaria. It was also Urza and Barrin's home.

For a millennium, they had worked here, training new generations of artificers and preparing for the present invasion. Here, they had taught the precocious Teferi, who now was a planeswalker himself. Jhoira of the Ghitu also learned here. Multani had come to Tolaria to grow the hull of the great ship Weatherlight. Even Xantcha had dwelt here-in the heartstone that now rested in the head of Karn. This island had given birth to every great Dominarian artifact and artificer. It had also given birth to legions of bioengineered warriors-the Metathran.

That was why they had come today, to awaken the two Metathran commanders who would lead the Dominarian armies at the Battle of Koilos.

The planeswalker and the mage reached the Giant's Pate. Barrin panted. He was in superb shape for a severalthousand-year-old man, seeming only in his mid-fifties. Still, an ascent up the Giant's Pate could make a thirtyyear-old pant. Barrin's breath-lessness came in part from his memories of the place-of the deep black gorge below, once rife with Phyrexians. He had fought his first Phyrexian invasion from this hilltop, had once flown an ornithopter low over that fast-time rift to save the life of Urza Planeswalker.

Urza did not pant. He did not even breathe. He was too deep in thought. His gemstone eyes gleamed sharply as they swept the horizon. Behind him lay the vast sprawl of the artificers' college of Tolaria-blue-tiled roofs above curving white walls. Before him stretched the time-gutted wilderness.

Tolaria had suffered a cataclysmic explosion that left it a place of temporal scars. Time gashes, they were called- deep temporal chasms where time ran at a snail's pace and tall temporal plateaus where time fled away to eternity. Urza had caused the cataclysm, of course, and he had subsequently found ways to benefit from it. He set up laboratories in fast-time hills, where weeks of research could be done in days, where bioengineered generations could reproduce every year. As to slow-time sloughs, they were most useful for storing food, artifacts, and even creatures.

"There," said Urza pointing toward a series of tightly packed time shells. Some were nearly black, fast-time zones where sunlight was rapidly swallowed. Others were lightning-white slow time where radiation doubled and redoubled. "The Curtains of Time. That's where we stored the Metathran commanders."

"Thaddeus and Agnate," Barrin supplied. "You must remember that though it's been a century for us, for them, it will have been only a few hot minutes. They'll expect us to know their names."

Urza turned his gleaming gaze on the master mage. "And you must remember that these two are perfectly engineered for their roles. They have no expectations other than the ones I have given them."

Barrin shrugged, hiding the motion in a gesture down the far side of the Giant's Pate, toward the Curtains of Time. "Let's go get them."