J. King - INVASION

The final battle for the forest had been waged by woodmen, the folk who had once been Phyrexian. They combined the fanatic power of their heritage with the patient strength of the forest. Eternal defenders. Once the battles were done, woodmen clutched themselves against the vast boles of the forest. They lingered there, immobile for days or weeks. They breathed through leafy stomas and were nourished on sun and rain alone. Herds of arboreal goats passed them unknowing. Wood spiders attached webs to their knobby heads. Should another Phyrexian descend into the forest, though, the woodmen would awaken to slay.

Victory. Multani breathed it in. He had often petitioned Gaea during this war, always receiving a silent but undeniable answer. Now was time for praises, not petitions. Multani spread his mind down into the great tree where he knelt. His consciousness expanded. Individual identity gave way to collective soul, to archetype, to divinity. He took on the body of the forest. Each tree was a single muscle fiber, each vine a neuron in a vast, thankful thought. Before that thought was full-formed, though, an idea intruded.

A perfect creature walked the land. He did not walk Yavimaya but another ancient forest across the sea- Llanowar. A perfect creature, his spirit had been forged in a great red furnace and was tempered in war.

Never had Multani sensed such a creature, not in all the billion creeping things of his forest. Here was a man- an elf-with the relentless perfection of a dream, but he was real.

Gaea, what is this walking vision?

Multani knew he was to be silent and still, to sense this creature in Llanowar across the sea.

Among the watchful blackthorns of Verdura, this perfect one had first appeared. A month ago, he came into being out of midair, trailing the stink of Phyrexian spaces.

Out of corruption, he was born incorruptible. Tall, with long silvery hair in numerous braids, steely eyes, and steely armor, the elf was mantled in glistening-oil and blood. Dust clove to him. He fell to his knees. The escape from his former prison had been desperate.

Eladamri was his name, called the Korvecdal in Rath- a uniter among his own people.

Behind him came a woman. She seemed to step around an invisible corner. She was born of the same dark womb as he, but was human. With hair of red flame and muscles corded over a lean frame, she was a child of Phyrexian furnaces. The elf had saved her from the hell where she had dwelt. Her name was Takara, prisoner of Volrath, daughter of Starke.

To Eladamri's other side stood another woman. As weary as her comrades, she did not drop down. A war woman, she kept her weapon-a chain and blade construct called a toten-vec-ready in the pulsing air. Her eyes and hair were dark, her face intense, her frame a taut coalition of muscle and bone. She, too, was an orphan raised in Rath. Wicked parents make monsters of some and heroes of others. This one was a hero, Liin Sivi by name. She would guard her companions to the death.

Gaea, these are not perfect folk. These are heroes, true, but not divinities. This Eladamri is no more pure than a Kavu, parented by leaf and flame in equal measure. This Takara is embittered by long imprisonment. This Liin Sivi-chains and blades are myriad already in Dominaria. What makes these three divine?

He knew he was to keep silent and still and sense them.

Up from Verdura they marched. They sought forest- Llanowar. Travelers' tales told of them. In every village they entered, folk asked them where they had been, how they had come to Verdura. Eladamri told their story, simple and certain. He warned of the hellish kingdom to come, of demons pouring down out of storm clouds, and of cataclysm tearing Dominaria apart. At first, he seemed but a brain-baked fool, wandering in dust with two other lunatics.

Then reports came of demons raining from the clouds over Benalia and Yavimaya, over Zhalfir and Shiv and Keld.

Villagers flocked to Eladamri. If this man had known of the coming monsters, surely he would know how to fight them. Eladamri did know. He told them what to do, how to make arrows that would pierce carapace skulls, how to mix glistening-oil poisons, how to stab all the hearts of a vampire hound. The people listened to every word. When he said he could not linger on the road to Llanowar, they heard that he had a messianic mission there. They followed him. They preceded him. Runners went ahead to the forest kingdoms, telling the glories of the elf who was coming, who had raised an army on the road and who would fight the monsters that came to destroy Llanowar.

Fhedusil, King of Staprion, sent Steel Leaf warriors to intercept this man and his army. Savage-shorn and tattooed, elves crouched at the forest eaves. Past Freyalisean eye-patches, archers watched the man approach.

Eladamri strode sternly. Sweat glinted on his brow. Eyes sparked beneath. Takara lingered at his right hand, allowing petitioners one by one to approach the man. Liin Sivi lingered at his left, keeping back the rest of the crowd.

The Steel Leaf elves emerged from the forest to bar the way. They were immediately surrounded by the believing throng. That is enough to sway most men, but these were elves. In the name of King Fhedusil, they demanded that

Eladamri halt his human army and turn them back to Verdura. His followers took great exception.

Eladamri himself did not. He said only this: "May you survive the coming plague." He turned to go.

The Steel Leaf did not allow it. They demanded in the name of the Staprion Elfhame that Eladamri accompany them to see King Fhedusil but that he turn back his human army. Again, Eladamri's followers took exception.

Again, Eladamri did not. He told his followers, "Go to defend your homes. I have an army of my own awaiting here." He gestured into the trees, where Steel Leaf warriors crowded in their multitude, peering through their stylized goggles.

Just now, Multani's senses traveled in the midst of the elf throng. They strode among colonnades of stately trees. They ascended spiral stairways that wound around trunks. Overhead, just beneath proud crowns of green, spread villages and cities of wood, with conic towers and widecurving plazas, lookout posts and cozy huts. At their center stood the exalted palace of the Staprion Chief.

I must go too, Gaea. I must see this savior of the elves.

Moving across the world was more difficult than moving through Yavimaya. At every edge of the forest, an ocean covered the land.

Multani leaped above the sparkling waves, riding on currents of pollen. The rarefied life of those tiny spores could barely hold him. It was a long leap to the nearest landfall.

Below appeared a great jungle of kelp. Multani swept down out of the pollen, skipping across the plants. Their leaves crowded atop the waves, ten miles of salty respite before he surged again into pollens on the trade winds.

Land appeared ahead, a black line too still to be water. Where there was land, there was green. In a mere thought, Multani reached it. He plunging into cliff-top woodlands as a child into a pile of leaves.

This was not Llanowar. These woods were but scrub on the edge of fanned fields, windbreaks and no more. Still, Llanowar was not far. A patchwork of hickory and sumac led across the undulating fields. Multani leaped through them. He moved with the quick surging motion of water. Beyond were redbud and alder, which led in turn to juniper and fir. Llanowar loomed on the horizon. Multani was there in a moment.

He breathed again. To be among these great trees-this root tangle and colonnade and crown-it was almost like his own Yavimaya. Magnigoth was replaced by quosumic, Gaea by Freyalise, the volcanic Mori Tumulus by the Dreaming Caves, but otherwise, this might have been Yavimaya.