J. King - INVASION

Just now, though, she arrived without her armada. They were busy hunting down the last vermin in Benalia. They needed her no longer, so complete was her victory. Her master had been pleased. The other commanders were still mired in combat in Yavimaya and Shiv, in Jamuraa and Keld. They hadn't even found Tolaria yet. Benalia was the first great victory of the early war, and Tsabo Tavoc was made second-in-command for the entire invasion. Her master had been wise to promote her-and wiser still to send her far away from him. Black widows have a way of eating their mates.

Soon Koilos also would belong to Tsabo Tavoc. She would stand before her master and ascend his throne. Then she would conquer even Lord Crovax.

The fighter skipped lightly above a desert rill and plunged into the slanting darkness on the other side. Tsabo Tavoc's legs moved in precise jabs within the piloting bulb. The ship leaped to her touch. It slid down into the belly of the dark terrain, following an ancient hollow.

This was an historic place, she knew. Megheddon Defile, it had once been called, the clearest overland route to the Thran city of Halcyon. Down this hollow, when it had been a narrow valley, had marched the Thran in their war against the Phyrexians. They had been utterly destroyed in that war, through the grand wisdom of the Ineffable. Somehow, though, they had managed to shut him away from his world, from Dominaria.

Tsabo Tavoc's fighter soared from the encroaching cliffs and out onto the wide, flat plains of Koilos. A distant outcrop appeared on the horizon.

It was all that remained of the once-towering extrusion on which Halcyon had stood. The caves beneath that outcrop-what had been called the Caves of the Damned-held a permanent portal to Phyrexia. That was the gate closed to the Ineffable when he was banished from Dominaria six thousand years before. That was the gate opened again by Urza and his brother Mishra at the beginning of the Brothers' War four thousand years ago. It had been closed again by the traitor Xantcha and remained that way- the Ineffable willed it so-until the invasion had begun. Now, the gate was wide open, the only land portal in the early war. It belonged to Tsabo Tavoc.

She was to keep it open, to bring through the vast land armies arrayed across the first sphere of Phyrexia. More importantly, she was to battle Urza Planeswalker, who would inevitably bring his forces to close the portal.

With a final few flicks of her barbed legs, Tsabo Tavoc sent her fighter screaming over the caves of Koilos. A beautiful sight opened before her. Rank upon rank, they awaited her arrival- Phyrexian troopers, witch engines, dragon engines, negators, gargantuas, shock troops, vat priests, sand crabs, raptors… One hundred thousand of them, they filled the desert like thorny crops and spread to the horizons.

As Tsabo Tavoc's fighter soared overhead, they welcomed her with an awful shriek of joy. Their leader had arrived, their great mother. "Tsabo Tavoc!"

In Yavimaya's darkest hour, Multani toured a lightless place. The Heart of Yavimaya was the eldest and largest magnigoth in the forest, a five-thousand-foot-tall tree. Its root bulb bulged above the nearby canopy. Foliage spread in four vast rafts up its manifold trunk. The tree's crown was a huge, lofty forest in its own right. Normally this was a place of eternal and holy light but not now. The Heart of Yavimaya was now a ravaged battlefield.

For two days, Phyrexian troop transports had hovered above the canopy. Down webby lines, monsters slid. They dropped from their cords atop the Heart of Yavimaya.

It was a sacred site, as large as a great city. In ancient times, Multani had excised a piece of the tree's core, gifting it to Urza Planeswalker. From that wedge of wood grew the hull of Urza's great skyship Weatherlight. No thinking creature dared live on the Heart of Yavimaya-not elf nor sprite nor druid.

That bark, too holy for the feet of fey, was desecrated by the claws of Phyrexians. Every branch became a roadway for the demonic army. Phyrexians swarmed it, bending every fiber of the crown with their black weight. They ripped the leaves off. They peeled back the green tendrils. They drove killing spikes down into the living wood. As they had done throughout the forest, the Phyrexians turned life to unlife.

To lose this tree-this most sacred tree-would be to lose everything.

No thinking defenders dwelt on the Heart of Yavimaya, so the tree defended itself. It transformed the spikes driven into it, infusing them with the ancient power of green. The killing shafts gained life. Black and green mixed and blended. The spikes that had cracked down into the tree's vast boughs shot suddenly upward. Each was as sharp as a spear, as stout as a lance. They drove themselves through the Phyrexians standing above. Ebony wood impaled monsters. First to die were those who sat upon or straddled spikes. Next to die were all the rest. Spikes grew rampantly. They jutted even from the healthy flesh of the tree. Once the secrets of death had been learned by the Heart of Yavimaya, they were whispered through every grain.

The Phyrexian city had become a sudden necropolis.

Victory.

Multani walked the battlefield among the writhing beasts. Not a Phyrexian remained free. Every last one had been skewered. They hung overhead. Their oil-blood rolled quiet and golden down the shafts. Barbed legs shivered in agony. Claws clutched air.

Multani walked onward. He approached a humanlooking leg, the pierced foot of a one-time man. Above the creature's hips was the shaggy body of a ram. Instead of fur, though, the thing was covered in spines that oozed poison like sweat. The bestial torso of the monster seemed strange above these strong, human legs.

Multani reached out, setting his fibrous hand on the riven foot. Through feverish flesh, his mind touched its mind.

He saw a vision of another place. The beast gazed in horror across a different killing field. He saw not treetops but a convoluted tumble of red-black ground, like muscle laid open. The sky seemed a reflection of the ground-a crimson mass of coiling energy. Between ground and sky hung impaled tens of thousands. They were not Phyrexians. They were men, and women, and children. The Phyrexians there walked quietly among the dying folk. In their midst sat a madman. He smiled and sipped from a delicate cup and sang songs to himself.

From the Phyrexian's mind, Multani gleaned a name for this horrible world-Rath-and a name for the madman- Crovax.

This was their foe. This was the man-the monster- who had assembled the armies of invasion. Crovax had slain tens of thousands of humans and elves on his own world. For them, the Heart of Yavimaya had exacted revenge.

Multani released the foot of the dying beast. His mind broke contact. The scene of horror in Rath was replaced by the scene of horror in Yavimaya. There was little difference. The Heart of Yavimaya had become as hellish as a hillside in Rath. Life had learned the tricks of death.

"Perhaps this is what must happen," Multani mused grimly to himself. "Perhaps to defeat these foes, we must become like them." What victory was that? Once they had become their foes, the Phyrexians would truly have won.

A great sadness swept through Multani. The Heart of Yavimaya was horribly disfigured. All that was green had been shredded. All that was smooth had turned to spikes. The crown of Yavimaya's most sacred tree had become a cemetery.

Feeling weak, Multani dropped to one knee. His vinelike hand settled onto the tortured bark. His mind fled inward, through the fibers. He sensed the tree's agony. Every spike that had grown rampantly upward had also grown rampantly down. When green life had allied with black death, it had formed a cancer that ate away living flesh. The Heart of Yavimaya was dying, impaled on the same spikes that slew its foes.