J. King - INVASION

In the midst of the titan circle and above the happy throng hovered a ship that was hope to them all.

Weatherlight was resplendent in the night sky. Her every lantern beamed, casting a glad glow on the revelers. Festival lights traced out her healed hull and her backswept airfoils. Her deck held a glorious feast-pheasant and boar, eel and salmon, oat-bread trenchers and onion stew, cakes and puddings and pasties. All of it had been brought by Urza Planeswalker to feast the commanders of his victory.

In their ceremonial best, the dignitaries mingled about the board.

Tevash Szat animatedly narrated his exploits to Commodore Guff, who struggled to write down every word for his official history. Nearby, Daria, Taysir, and Liin Sivi sipped merlot from round-bellied glasses. Bo Levar had brought boxes of assorted cigars, one purportedly dating from before the Ice Age and another rolled from tobacco grown by Teferi on Tolaria. Freyalise and Kristina discussed matters in Llanowar with the head of the Steel Leaf warriors. The panther-warrior Lord Windgrace traded stories with Tahngarth about "human folly."

The rest of Weatherlight's command crew enjoyed the repast as well. Sisay split her time between the helm and the banquet table.

Karn between engines and conversations, and Multani between the ship's hull and her guests. Orim, in a Cho-Arrim robe and coin-coifed hair, listened politely as Squee described how he had saved "everybody's butts from de beginning till now." Laughter only encouraged the goblin-laughter and food and wine. They flowed in plenty on the amidships deck of Weatherlight.

A quieter group stood at her stern. Over cigars and rye spirits gathered the four men who had fought hardest and lost most in this war. Eladamri, Agnate, Gerrard, and Urza lingered in each other's company. They said very little. They laughed not at all. The merriment below was like music to them. They listened and appreciated but did not join in. A grim gladness gripped them, the sort that needed few words.

Urza spoke those few words. Lifting his glass, he said, "Here's to all we've lost, and here's to us."

Four glasses rose. They clinked quietly together. The four heroes of Dominaria drank.

The three-day festival was over. The revelers slept in their tents. Only a handful of guards remained awake that morning- they and the green-man from Yavimaya.

Multani heard a sound, a strange rumble. There was movement in the desert-vast movement.

Multani rose through the timbers of the great ship Weatherlight. He assembled a body for himself out of the living splinters and shards of wood he found along the way. On deck, the pieces piled themselves into legs, a torso, arms, and a head. Two knotholes made themselves into eyes. With them, Multani looked out.

Beyond the tents, on the morning desert of Koilos, strange, twisted shapes were imposing themselves. Hills like flayed muscle. Fields of tortured red. Across those lands were arrayed enormous armies-Phyrexians.

It seemed a vision-this coruscating red world-a premonition of evil. Yet, the tangled land seemed so solid, so real.

Multani had seen such a world once before. He had glimpsed it in the mind of a dead Phyrexian in Yavimaya. That monster had a name for the world that even now slowly overlaid itself on Dominaria.

Rath.