Chapter 1: Armageddon Page 1
Choking clouds of caustic black smoke filled the air and chemical fires raged across the endless fields of crackling wires and towering palaces of the sixth circle. Glistening oil rained in torrents from the cracked metal vault above and tortured prisoners poured forth from the hell below seeking revenge for centuries of agony. The entire world quaked, heaved and groaned – the final death rattle of a civilization spanning thousands of years. From atop a great parapet, the praetor, Abcal-Dro, gazed upon the beautiful albeit futile carnage below through myriad eyes as powerstones pulsated beneath translucent membranes and writhing tendrils wove frantic spells. He hurled inky black webs of corrosive darkness down to smite slavering hordes of black gremlins that even now scaled the crenelated walls to tear down their former master.
These inferior beings, who had toiled for countless generations to drive Yawgmoth's great war machine, had arisen in their multitudes after sensing the same thing felt by all Phyrexians: Their god was dead.
On Dominaria, the invasion force had witnessed Yawgmoth's demise first-hand.
Yawgmoth had cradled the world against his breast, slaying all that he touched – mortal and planeswalker alike, raising them up from death, re-forged in his glorious image. Every dead thing, every dead cell had arisen with a single, unified purpose - an unconquerable tide to wash away the old, flawed world and usher in a new age of blessed perfection. Phyrexia's victory was at hand; they would reclaim the world of their birth and from there the grand evolution would continue across all of the multiverse. They would expunge all weaknesses such as love and sentiment, and transform all of existence into a place of constant war and strife. Every lifeform would perpetually struggle to improve itself as they slay their way to the top of the hierarchy and the bodies of the slain would be broken down into their component parts for re-use.
Then, suddenly, a blinding light had erupted amid the all-encompassing blackness, spreading and devouring all it touched. The Phyrexians had stared up in utter disbelief as life left the dead and mud men crumbled back into soil, returning them to their graves. To the Phyrexians, Yawgmoth had been all in all, The Ineffable, perfection incarnate, he who had conquered death and become its master. How then, could anything slay him? Their existence now meaningless, most did not even resist as the ragged bands of surviving Coalition fighters slew them en-masse.
On Phyrexia, Yawgmoth's Inner Circle of demons and praetors had watched through a great extraplanar lens as their god entered Dominaria. The cataclysmic destruction wrought by Urza and the band of Planeswalkers calling themselves the Nine Titans was ultimately meaningless. Although countless Phyrexians had perished and five of the nine spheres had been all but gutted, they had no intention to rebuild. Phyrexia was an artificial plane, ancient, created in some twilight age by a planeswalker which time had long since forgotten. It had always been but a staging ground from which to wage war, to reclaim their birth-world from the World Witch, Rebbec.
She had cast them out of Dominaria, sealing them within Phyrexia, more than 9,000 years ago - preventing them from spreading Yawgmoth's glorious vision of Phyresis across all existence. She had clung to Yawgmoth's shadow, pretended to worship him, when in truth she still embodied all that which was base and weakness. Then, the brothers Urza and Mishra unlocked the portal at Koilos, allowing for their return. Although Mishra had come to bow before Phyrexia, Urza chose instead to fight. After the ignition of his Planeswalker's spark, he had dedicated his existence to mounting a seemingly futile defense against the coming Invasion.
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Yet, in the end, he too would bow. Yawgmoth, in his infinite benevolence, had granted Urza and his mortal champion, Gerrard Capashen, the opportunity to battle to the death in the ninth circle for the honor of ascending to serve at his side. Gerrard ultimately proved himself the fiercer fighter, severing Urza's head with a mighty blow and offering it as tribute. However, in the end, Gerrard too had proven unworthy. He had fought for the soul of a woman, Hanna, his lover and companion.
Yawgmoth had sought to stoke the flames of his hatred, to fill him with bloodlust and a desire for power. However, like Rebbec before him, he clung to his mortal frailties and base desires and was cast out. Still, his defiance was of little consequence to Yawgmoth. As he entered the world, all perished before his might. Even the surviving Nine Titans, who had cleaved and blasted their way through unending hordes of Phyrexians, perished in an instant at Yawgmoth's merest caress.
Then, there arose a light that stabbed out at Yawgmoth's heart with its beams of radiance. Like Yawgmoth, the Inner Circle recognized her as Rebbec – for what else could she be? While Yawgmoth had become a God in Phyrexia, she had become the goddess of Dominaria. She was the Gaea that its peoples had come to worship. She was the embodiment of all that was false, championing the natural cycle over Phyresis, love over hatred and light over darkness.
Yawgmoth would avenge his betrayal and slay her; Dominaria's peoples would see in that moment the folly of their ways. Then, the unimaginable transpired. The shock among the inner circle was just as great. However, demons who had held such a dominant status for thousands of years did not so readily relinquish life. Instead, Yawgmoth's death plunged Phyrexia into chaos.
It began in the seventh circle, where Yawgmoth condemned those who displeased him to unending torture. The great machines that flayed flesh, burned muscle and crushed bones only to endlessly re-knit them suddenly ground to a halt. Those who had been freshly vivisected at the time finally perished, welcoming the release of death that they had long craved. Among these was Mishra, whom Yawgmoth had strapped to a flesh grinder for 4,000 years after failing to defeat Urza at the climax of The Brother's War. As his eyes darkened for the last time, Mishra sensed that somehow Yawgmoth had been destroyed – but he knew his brother still hadn't forgiven him.
As Urza had descended to the bowels of Phyrexia seeking audience with Yawgmoth, he had paused upon seeing Mishra's torments. Avenging his brother had been the source of Urza's hatred of Phyrexia. However, Yawgmoth's hold over Urza at the time had been far too great. Mishra had begged and pleaded with his brother for release - Yawgmoth had promised to free him if Urza so desired. Without a word, Urza walked away.
Meanwhile, Croag, the former Inner Circle member who had appointed the first Evincar of Rath, writhed in a haze of pain and fury. For centuries, his favored weapon had been a semi-living cloak, grafted to his body and comprised of countless, razor sharp bands of metal. He had developed a talent for controlling these bands telekinetically to lash out at his foes. However, Yawgmoth's will was far greater. After Croag's negators failed time and time again to hunt down and slay Urza, Yawgmoth had bound him in the seventh circle using his own cloak.
The metal bands stretched, twisted and contorted his limbs, breaking them in new ways again and again - only for machines to heal them. Other bands wormed beneath his leathery hide, tearing sharply through the mutated flesh beneath only for it too to mend. Then, after nearly 800 years of languishing, Croag at last sighted his ancient quarry amid the torture sphere. Croag had begged
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Yawgmoth to release him; let him rise up and tear Urza to pieces with his own hands and avenge his failures. His prayers fell on deaf ears and his bands snaked down his throat and into lungs, filling them with glistening oil blood to choke off his screams. Urza walked away without so much as turning his head to acknowledge his longtime pursuer.
When Yawgmoth perished, Croag's bands suddenly ceased their movement. All around him, torture machines powered down and the endless chorus of screams was replaced by a great, shocked silence. Once he had regained his senses and the realization of what had transpired dawned on him, only one thought filled his mind: revenge. Croag rose, oil-stained bands carefully worming themselves free from his punctured body, delicately avoiding rupturing critical organs and arteries. His body once again obeyed his commands.
His compound eyes fell upon his fellow damned – most of them fallen demons themselves but none his equal, none of them former praetors. His teeth gnashed into a skeletal grin. He would lead a rebellion of these tortured souls and overthrow the rest of the Inner Circle. Phyrexia would be his, if he had to slay every last one of his brethren and rebuild them himself. With metallic tendrils dancing around him like tongues of flame, Croag called out to the hate filled masses "Yawgmoth is dead, I, Croag, declare myself the new Father of Machines. Join me, and reclaim your former glory!"
Croag was not alone in claiming the title.
For more than nine thousand years, Phyrexia had possessed a strict hierarchy with Yawgmoth always at the pinnacle of power. None dared to challenge him, for he was the Ineffable, all in all, perfection incarnate. The Inner Circle of praetors had always reigned as a council of equals, directly below Yawgmoth, overseeing grand-scale projects he tasked them with. While lesser Phyrexians were granted little will of their own and were usually designed to fulfil highly specialized tasks, each praetor was a uniquely lethal creation in its own right. They were largely given free-reign to engineer their own continued evolutions and that of their subordinates and were challenged only after repeated failures proved them unworthy.
Yawgmoth's death created a vacuum of power which needed to be filled and for Phyrexians the only way to ascend was through bloodshed. The Inner Circle was splintered into numerous warring factions as Phyrexia's remaining armies fought among themselves. In addition to Yawgmoth's would-be successors there were those demons who believed their god was not dead and sought to defend his throne from all usurpers. Assailed on numerous fronts, these were quickly eradicated. Stranger still, there arose a faction who believed that since Yawgmoth had been killed by Rebbec, her ways were superior to that of Phyresis.
These heretics released hordes of enslaved gremlin workers. Now believing biological beings to be superior, they allowed the Gremlins to tear them to pieces. As they died, mutated limbs, organs and mechanisms were stripped from their bodies, which they considered their only possible repentance. In death, they would return to the proper cycle and nourish Phyrexia's natural life. The gremlins, for their part, no longer feared Yawgmoth's wrath and now knew demons could be killed. They revolted, filled, for the first time, with the hope of freeing themselves from their oppressors whose power was visibly slipping away.
All the while, Phyrexia crumbled. The Phyrexian civil war only brought further destruction to the already gutted spheres. Ruined cities were not rebuilt; instead, their components were used to construct additional war machines. Instead of laborers and diggers, Praetors converted their forces
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almost entirely into soldiers – desperately trying to defend their besieged territories. To make matters worse, Phyrexia was not a natural plane, and without Yawgmoth's spirit to sustain it, the nine spheres were slowly unraveling.
Those spheres that had been devastated by the soul bombs of the Nine Titans were the first to be affected by this entropy. Over time, the first, second, third, fourth and fifth spheres gradually vanished into the Aether. This only made the warring factions more desperate. Whomever arose through their conflict would attain the same power as Yawgmoth possessed – or greater. Only then could they bring stability to their world once more.
Abcal-Dro alone recognized the futility of it all. Phyrexia would rise again, but it would not be here. Phyrexia could progress no further here; Yawgmoth had done the best he could with a world possessing only black mana. Their foes on Dominaria had not prevailed through superior biology, technology, physical resources or battle tactics. They prevailed because they could draw upon all five colors of mana, combine them and wield them in ways Phyrexia had never anticipated.
They had evolved faster than even Phyrexia could adapt in its current incarnation. To progress, the Phyrexians must shed their old world and their old dogmas. They must evolve to integrate all five colors of mana; only then will nothing be beyond their grasp. It was not impossible, for even on Dominaria species evolved in every conceivable mana environment. He understood quite clearly that to unite the multiverse all must be made one.
A few of the gremlins managed to slip through Abcal-Dro's magical assault, rushing brazenly toward the towering mass of bulbous flesh that was the Praetor. His unconventional anatomy had been designed to maximize the mutagenic properties of the glistening oil. Most Inner Circle members had completely replaced their flesh with mechanism, using the oil merely to power the various machines that had substituted for their organs. However, Abcal-Dro had been intrigued by the effects of prolonged exposure of living flesh to the substance. His horrific form was the result of 500 years of mutation.
Its first evolutionary advantage was demonstrated as the gremlins raked their claws across him. No sooner did their dirty fingernails tear rivets in his body then they healed shut due to the oil's rejuvenating properties. Next, formless blobs extended themselves and solidified into tendrils, constricting and crushing Gremlins with wet pops. Others stabbed out as a forest of impaling barbs, tearing through lungs and boring through skulls. While other Inner Circle members selected their favorite weapons to incorporate into their designs, Abcal-Dro could shape any that he wished on a whim – a design he also incorporated into the Evincar Volrath.
Still, for every Gremlin that Abcal-Dro slew, three more climbed up to take their place. Eventually, even he would find himself overwhelmed. The creatures soon surrounded him on all sides, inflicting wounds faster than they could heal and biting through tendrils as they extended. He could not outrun them – his gelatinous mass was not known for its speed. Instead, he would reclaim the dead gremlins as his servants.
Abcal-Dro released an explosion of black mana from all sides, instantly snuffing the life of those Gremlins within its radius. Moments later, they and all those killed earlier by the Praetor rose as a horde of shuffling zombies. With entrails dragging from their opened bellies and shards of bone jutting like spines from their broken forms, they turned on their brethren. They too would eventually be destroyed, but they would buy him the few, precious moments he needed to make his escape. Once he reached the portal, he would leave this dying world behind forever.
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Abcal-Dro slithered his hideous mass into a high vaulted hall, pulling a lever which caused a great, gear-like door to roll into place on a track and bar the way. The gremlins would break through eventually with battering rams, but by then he would be long gone. The palace had been designed to his exact specifications; with halls supported by structures resembling a metallic rib cage and walls of pulsating flesh stretched tightly over "veins" of cables beneath. The doors resembled the circular mouths of lampreys, filled with rows of metal fangs. Abcal-Dro could will them to gnash down on any would-be transgressor or retract their teeth to admit guests.
Abcal-Dro preferred to pass from room to room by seeping his body through the pores of the fleshy walls. The architecture was tailored to his anatomy and in here he could move about far more easily than his more solid peers. Those attempting to hack their way through would find themselves electrocuted by the cables running beneath. Casually, the Praetor oozed his way toward a chamber inaccessible through conventional routes. There, within the literal bowels of his palace, Abcal-Dro kept his personal portal.
Abcal-Dro knew precisely upon which world he would sow the seed of a New Phyrexia: Mercadia. Phyrexia's influence had already festered there for some time. The Overlord of the Cateran guild was a Phyrexian demon named Xarzhun and his chief enforcers were a species bred by the Evincars of Rath. Volrath had even constructed his personal invasion fleet in a subterranean hangar beneath the world's great inverted mountain. That fleet was never deployed on Dominaria, as the hangar was destroyed by Urza's champions and their skyship, Weatherlight.
Still, Abcal-Dro knew that this was not the only Cateran stronghold on the plane. They had almost certainly survived and were likely attempting to salvage and repair the fleet even now – unaware that the war had ended. They would make for loyal subordinates, obeying the will of a praetor unquestioningly. Their vast spy networks would allow him to subtly undermine and influence the rest of the world. Then, when the time was right, he would seize complete control.
Abcal-Dro's inner machinations came to an abrupt halt as one of the walls behind him suddenly exploded in a rain of gore and scrap. Through the cavity emerged Croag, his glowing golden eyes locked upon Abcal-Dro as they smoldered in their sunken sockets. Upon his shoulder, the praetor touted a ray cannon large enough to have belonged to a skyship the size of Predator. "Your reign here has ended," hissed the Lord of the Damned. "Submit before the new Father of Machines."
A bubbling laughter was Abcal-Dro's answer. "Submit? To one whom has already been deemed unworthy? You are nothing but discarded scrap. I am Phyrexia's future."
At this, Croag gnashed his metal fangs together and leveled the ray cannon at Abcal-Dro. A searing beam of red mana erupted from the barrel and raced toward Abcal-Dro. In response, the praetor rapidly shifted his form, creating an opening in his body which the beam passed harmlessly through. Instead, the ray melted through the far wall of the chamber, revealing Abcal-Dro's sanctum and the waiting portal beyond. "So, that is your plan," Croag taunted as his skeletal grin widened "To flee like fearful prey from the grand melee and reign over some backwater world?"
Croag then set his sights on the portal, but before he could fire, Abcal-Dro quickly lashed out. The praetor fired off several globules of his own body like projectiles. Croag's metal bands rapidly swatted aside those aimed at his body. However, these had been but a distraction. One glob splashed into the barrel of the ray cannon and from there began to digest itself, secreting a highly corrosive acid.
Sneering, Croag tossed aside the ruined weapon and pounced at Abcal-Dro like a jungle cat. Bands from Croag's cloak darted out, slashing wildly and effortlessly cleaving through the fleshly barbs and
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tendrils that emerged from Abcal-Dro's body as a defense. Then, one of them struck true, puncturing into Abcal-dro's body and recoiling with one of Abcal-Dro's numerous powerstone 'organs' in its grasp. The band then constricted around it, shattering it with a flash of black energies into a fine powder. As Abcal-Dro pulled his great mass back away from Croag, a portion of him sloughed free, collapsing de-animated into an oily pool between them.
"No matter how you alter your flesh, it is still inferior to my metal body," Croag boasted, advancing to close the gap between them. "Your flawed design is unworthy." With that, Croag's cloak appeared to further unwind itself, doubling the number of slashing barbs that danced around him. He would not allow Abcal-Dro to retreat, or the time to mount a counterattack. In the fraction of a second that it took Abcal-Dro to form a weapon, Croag had already severed the appendage and stabbed in at the gap with another snaking blade.
This was the advantage of having a single, stable form, thought Croag - his weapons were always at the ready. One by one, powerstones are plucked from Abcal-Dro and crushed in his grasp. He would continue to diminish the Praetor until all that remained of him was a greasy stain on the floor. His victory was inevitable. Or, so he thought.
As Croag's bands recoiled from Abcal-Dro, many of them suddenly crumbled apart. Croag took several steps back in shock, noticing that all of his bands showed signs of acid scouring. Knowing that he could not defend against Croag's speed, Abcal-Dro had begun to digest portions of his body that he knew would soon be lost anyway. Croag was equally caught off-guard as snaking tendrils of oozing flesh rose up from the floor to snare his legs, forcing him to his knees. Additional tendrils then rose up to constrict around his arms.
Again came Abcal-Dro's bubbling laughter. "Did you think all of those powerstones were crucial organs?" the Praetor taunted. "Several of them were simply minor stones, to act as decoys. When you crushed them, I allowed you to believe you were destroying parts of my body so that you would step into my 'lifeless' ooze. You took the bait and fell right into my trap."
Although his body had been reduced to nearly half of its size, Abcal-Dro still towered above the kneeling Croag. Screaming in fury, Croag struggled to pull himself free, but it was too late. The pool of flesh beneath him began to hiss and sizzle as it slowly digested itself into a river of acid. The tendrils restraining Croag would be the last to dissolve, after they had pulled him down to lie face-down in the corrosive substance. Tendrils of half-digested flesh then bound themselves around Croag's torso and his neck to seal his fate.
Croag's every nerve burned with pain, but it was a sensation to which he had grown accustomed during his time in the seventh circle. Where most beings would be rendered helpless as their deaths closed in – Croag spat forth a final curse. He would release every bit of his remaining life energy as a great cloud of black mana. If he was to perish, he would take Abcal-Dro with him. Where it touched them, the fleshy walls of the chamber rotted away, with even the metal supports rusting and collapsing upon themselves.
Were it not for his reduced size, Abcal-Dro would have been unable to slither away from the killing cloud. Even still, much of his flesh was devoured by the time he activated the portal. Gushing like a punctured artery, Abcal-Dro jettisoned his remaining mass and most vital organs through the gate. Moments later, the portal was destroyed. Soon after, all of Phyrexia followed.
Unbeknownst to the Inner Circle, the eighth and ninth spheres had already given way to entropy. Oblivion closed in upon the warring demons from above and below. The mechanical hell which had plagued the multiverse for eons disintegrated without a trace.