Rwby: The Inter-War: Arc 3: gathered armies and study of war
Hello and welcome to the next chapter of The Inter-War. And welcome to the prologue of Well you'll just have to find out.
Trigger warning Berserk this should not surprise you.
Key
Grimm-Apostle talk
Angry talk
Ozpin talk
{"Text Chat/ phone call"}
:text chat:
[Black Ink]
(Locations)
flashback/ memory/ dreamscape
"Skull knight talk"
Chapter start:
To battle and bravery born, to battle and bravery Tyvar Kell returns—with boasts upon his lips, and black tidings in his heart.
Skemfar welcomes its wayward son with open arms. After the ozone-laden atmosphere of New Phyrexia and the acrid safe house swamp in Dominaria, it is a welcome thing to breathe good forest air into his lungs.
But the moment he arrives he knows he is too late. It is not to welcoming cheers he returns but to the clatter of swords against metal, the howl of arrows in flight and the screams of the pierced. In the distance, a sanguine ophidian the size of a mountain strangles the World Tree. White armor, glacier thick, protects it. Pods fall—the shed scales of this foul serpent—and the ground trembles with every arrival, each one met with the hammer of war.
War drums beat in time with his own wild heart as he pushes his way into the melee. Glory drives his limbs. He ducks the scythe-like limb of an enemy, changes his own arm to metal, drives it through the thing's head. An instant later he's swaying out of the way of an axe as it takes out another. A cheer ringing out behind him gladdens his heart—the end of days has come to Kaldheim, and the elves of Skemfar meet it head-on.
Tyvar sees his brother fighting alongside his people, surrounded by skalds and banners.
"Here for the dregs?" Harald calls to him. "There'll be plenty."
"And more coming," Tyvar says. Something that was once a giant hurls a boulder toward them; the others scatter, but Tyvar plants his feet. From the earth he draws his strength—and with a single blow shatters the rock. He grins. "You must have been struggling before I returned."
Harald shakes his head. "Enough of that. Do you know anything that can help us? Who are these creatures?"
"Phyrexians," Tyvar answers. A scream takes his attention—one of the elves has found himself caught in the belly of a giant skeletal wolf. Tyvar winces. "See there—they'll bathe him in oil, and then he'll be more metal than elf. After that, the changes start. Won't be long before he'd tear off his own father's skin."
A dozen warriors meet the hound, two coming in on each side to flank. Hammers ring against steel.
"They won't stop until everything in Kaldheim's like they are. I've been to their home, brother—it is lifeless, without song." He swallows. The next part isn't easy to say, and yet it must be said: "This isn't an enemy the elves can vanquish alone."
The Cosmos itself reinforces his grim warning. The ground roars and shakes beneath their feet, white light leaking up from the opening crevices. Tyvar knocks against his brother. Harald steadies him, then points to the opening doomskar. "It seems we won't be alone for long."
Phyrexians and elves alike plummet into the hungry earth. Shifting lights render them silhouettes as the Cosmos claims them. Unsated, the light creeps higher and higher still—until at last torrents of water emerge. Tyvar scrambles, sinking to the ground, creating a platform for him and his people. His muscles strain under the force of his magic, shifting between rock and water, rock and water.
When he sees the first of the longboats cresting the water, Tyvar knows he's going to be at this for a while. Maybe longer than he can manage. If he fails, the elves will be washed away as surely as the Phyrexians. The lives of his people are in his hands.
He can't fail.
Tyvar Kell bellows a war cry. As his body battles the tides and the rock, he feels alive.
And while he's doing the simple thing, his brother handles what's more complicated. Omenseekers aboard the ships call out to the stranded elves, their captain leading, "It is the end of all things. Will the elves come and join the fight?"
"The elves will lead it!" is Harald's proud answer. "Onto the ships!"
Tyvar's shoulders tremble with effort and yet he holds fast to the earth. Each pair of fleeing feet shrinks the platform. Smaller and smaller, until only he and Harald remain on the rock.
He can hardly believe what he sees when he looks at the ships.
Dwarves and humans, ghostly fallen heroes, undead warriors, Karfell barbarians, fire giants wading through the seas, trolls beating war drums—has everyone on Kaldheim banded together? Tyvar can't recall seeing so many different faces in one place outside of a battlefield.
New Phyrexia planted the seeds of doubt and fear deep within him. The oil, and the changing of his newfound comrades, nurtured it. But this? This true unity?
This is an axe.
Harald climbs onto the ship first. He stretches out a hand toward Tyvar, who instead leaps onto the longship of his own accord. Beneath them the platform crumbles away into Skemfar's new river.
"Warriors!" Harald calls. The sigils and guides along the sides of the ship begin to glow. "Our grudges are ancient. A single battle shall not wipe clean the slate of old wrongs. When the morrow comes, all of us will once more be enemies!"
Tyvar's heart thrums in time with the beating drums, the sounding horns. Ships pick up speed. When Harald spoke even his most hated enemies waited to hear what he had to say. He does not know where they are going, but he knows that wherever they land, glory awaits.
White swallows them. For an instant, they enter the Cosmos, dazzling and infinite. Unearthly beasts lope alongside the boats—wolves, ravens, bears, even a squirrel.
"But that is only if we live to greet the morrow, my brothers and sisters in arms. Today, the valkyries will have their choice of heroes; today is a day the skalds shall sing of for centuries. Will your descendants name you a hero, or a coward?"
Light once more. Tyvar doesn't shut his eyes, no matter how the patterns sear at his irises.
When at last the light recedes, they find themselves above a churning ocean. Somehow, they're airborne—he leaves no time to question it, only lets it thrill his blood. Valkyries fly alongside them toward the sharp barbs of the Invasion Tree, yet to find their home. Divine arrows streak light across the reddening sky. The World Tree looms, its foul mirror descending down, down, down. From here he can count every bump of its spine, every pod nestled within.
There must be thousands. Tens of thousands, maybe, each with their own complement of soldiers, and each of those soldiers a fearsome foe. This was an enemy almost unstoppable: worse, those who died in defense of Kaldheim would rise, corrupted, to fight for the invaders who sought to destroy the land they once called home.
The odds, he knows, are not good.
"If Kaldheim survives, let it survive because we fought! If it dies, let it die a warrior's death, axe in hand, a boast on its lips, and mead in its belly!"
Beneath them the water bubbles. Just as the longboats erupt in a warrior's song, the seas too erupt.
The tattoos on Tyvar's shoulders tingle. All elves grew in the shadow of Koma. Ever changing, ever growing, quick as lightning and wily besides—is there any better creature to emulate than a serpent?
But that is not true of the serpent he sees now, the creature that rises from the depths of the sea. Sleek scales of metal, sharp bones along the ridges of its mouth, porcelain plating in place of eyes—whatever this creature once was, it is now unmistakably one of Elesh Norn's creations.
Already the eyeless monstrosity has snapped a longship between its jaws. Wood groans and warriors cry, tumbling great distances to their deaths. From others, a hail of arrows, stones, thrown axes—whatever they might get ahold of.
All bounce off the creature's strange carapace.
Tyvar takes a step onto the boat's railing. In the flickering light of what might be Kaldheim's last war, the edge of his blade gleams bright.
Below him, the mouth of the serpent: within it, New Phyrexia, and all his fears made manifest.
He doesn't like being afraid.
With the seething song of battle at his back and a cry from his chest, Tyvar leaps from the ship.
However the story of this day ends, the sagas will tell he was no coward.
Ruby was kinda shocked exactly how easy it was for guts to get the whole Planeswalking thing down. She knew she got it rather fast which is why she went after Guts alone once she unlocked her spark and found Guts due to becoming one with the multiverse.
However Guts put her to shame.
Guts planeswalking looked as if a shadow fell upon him and with a mighty roar he vanishes across the planes.
And while neither Ruby nor Guts used any other magic they could definitely feel the magic now flowing through thirst worlds.
She just hoped the rest of her team is doing ok.
Pia Nalaar mother of Chandra Nalaar has spent the last ten years of her life fighting for a better Kaladesh.
Most of that work's been undone in one day.
No—the truth is it's been a week, at least. Saheeli warned her then that something like this might happen, that something was going to happen. The clouds held proof, she'd said. In place of the swirls that so often dominated the skies of Kaladesh, she'd shown Pia the new shape that had come to dominate them.
"We have to be ready for an invasion," Saheeli had said.
"Chandra and the others have a handle on it."
She was so confident. So certain. She didn't want to believe that it could be otherwise. After all that had happened, after all the struggles and wars—the Gatewatch must understand what needs doing. They must be able to handle it. Then one morning Pia spilled ink on her desk. When she grabbed a cloth to clean up the mess, the symbol—like an unblinking eye—stared back up at her in viscous black.
The memory was bad enough, but after the first spill she saw it everywhere she looked: in scrolls curled up on a shelf, in a plate of noodles she had not the stomach to finish, in trees and in currents of water.
Every day she awoke hoping that they'd fade, that she'd not see them, that Chandra would stroll back into her home for their monthly tea appointment with another story about how they'd snapped victory from the jaws of defeat.
But by the third day, she knew she had to act.
She and Saheeli addressed the consulate—but how could they convey the severity of what they knew? After Ghirapur had won its own freedom and safety? Addressing this threat would stoke fear within the populace, and how could they be certain it was coming? The House of Knowledge had no records of any Phyrexians. Yet Saheeli and Pia were not raving madwomen, a fact the consulate knew well. If Pia allocated the resources to fight, then fight they would.
Even if some of them had no heart in it.
On the fourth day the sky darkened to a deep, rusty red.
For the past three days Saheeli'd been working on something she called "Operation Golden Scales," something she said would keep the streets safe. Most citizens in Ghirapur had been evacuated, leaving only essential personnel behind. Skyships armed themselves with powerful experimental weaponry. Ghirapur's workshops and factories had never worked so hard in such a short time—but it was for the best.
After all, if the enemy breached the aetherflux reservoir, there would no longer be a Ghirapur to defend.
So the artisans hadn't slept, and Pia hadn't either. She'd fallen asleep in the entryway of her own home. Getting to bed was just too much effort.
When at last the portals overhead opened, when the great spines of invasion descended from the holes they tore in reality, when the aether around them began to crackle dangerously against her skin—all of this was like letting out a breath.
It was here.
They were here.
The time for preparation was long behind them. All they could do was hope it had been enough.
Ghirapur's streets are clear—or as clear as they're ever going to get—as Pia leaves her home. Three buildings away, a pod obliterates a building's facade. Shattered glass, distant screams, weapons firing—the sounds are close to and yet altogether different from the sounds of revolution. There is no chanting here, there are no throaty slogans, no proud horns or resounding drums.
Only fear and desperation.
Skyships overhead fire their cannons at the invading branches and explosions paint the red sky gold. Shards of porcelain rain down upon the streets. She seeks cover beneath a statue's outstretched arms only to watch as the shards rend furrows down its sides.
Pia looks back up at the sky—at the ship that so readily advanced against the questing branch. She met its captain two days ago. He swore that he'd do everything in his power to keep Ghirapur safe. A thousand and a half flights, he'd said, with no major losses to speak of.
She watches as the branch wraps around the ship, watches as its windows shatter as easily as those down the street, watches the oil slick its surface.
Pia closes her eyes. Her chest aches. A thousand thoughts fight to slip into her mind, but she walls them away. There's a rendezvous with Saheeli to get to.
Speaking of—looks like her operation's off to a good start. Deployment chambers spring up from hatches all along the street, and from those chambers emerge the fruits of Operation Golden Scales. Saheeli must have taken inspiration from some fantastic kind of lizard: the one lumbering in front of Pia is as big as the house that crumbled moments ago. The shining teeth along its jaws are each the size of Pia's forearm. When it stomps its feet, the stones beneath crack. And it is only one of many—all along the streets other bronze attack lizards spring up from the earth. Some are the size of small dogs, some take to the skies like thopters, but all roar their defiance at the coming Phyrexians.
And there are Phyrexians to deal with, even if the sight of these things is almost enough to distract Pia. From the broken house pour dozens of spindly porcelain soldiers—some of whom carry cages as big as they are.
The two forces are about to clash.
Pia doesn't want to be in the middle of it. She ducks under the bronze lizard's feet in time for a familiar face to pop up behind the Phyrexians. A cloud of thopters fly from Saheeli's cruiser. While the lizards descend upon the soldiers, the thopters conceal Pia's escape.
"Get in!" Saheeli shouts. And she's right to hurry—the soldiers don't take their duties lightly. Within minutes they've swarmed the largest of the lizards and taken it down. Oil seeps from its split mouths. It won't be long before the lizard rises against them, too.
Pia hops into the car. Saheeli's foot must be as leaden as the metal she's so fond of; the two of them jerk backward against the seats as the speed catches up to them. Wind whistles in Pia's ears—but they have to talk. "The flagship's down."
"I know," Saheeli answers. An explosion to their right sends them swerving; Saheeli only barely manages to keep them from flipping. "The smaller ships are doing what they can. The tendrils can't grasp them quickly enough to stop them. Of course, their firepower is lacking in comparison . . ."
Pia ducks as Saheeli takes them between the legs of a massive Phyrexianized lizard construct. Metal scrapes against metal; the cruiser's sides dent and distort despite Saheeli's best efforts. Oil drips onto the trunk's lid. Pia tries not to wonder how long it'll be before the cruiser is corrupted, too.
"Do you know what the situation is at the aetherflux reservoir?" Pia asks.
"We think the Phyrexians might understand its importance, or else feel a pull toward the aether stored there," Saheeli answers. "If you'll notice, they're all heading straight for it."
They turn a corner, and Pia sees the guards.
Her stomach wrenches at the sight. Like a sinister parody of Saheeli's design aesthetics, they are filigreed in white porcelain, half-metal and half-flesh. One of the men sports a large hole in the center of his head, one that Pia can see clear through. Only his ears, scalp, and chin remain. It looks as if he is a needle meant to be threaded—and the razor his arms have become only affirms the notion. Despite this hideous alteration, his chest rises and falls with unseen breath. His head, such as it is, is turned toward the reservoir.
Pia covers her mouth.
"We can't do anything to save them," Saheeli says.
"There has to be something."
"There might be, but whatever it is will take study, experimentation, iteration. Once the city's secure we can consider what shapes that might take—but not now."
Pia presses her eyes shut as the cruiser shoots over the newly converted Phyrexians. There are more of them to see when she opens her eyes again. Has she been ignoring them before now? There are so many, in so many different forms: Some share the same porcelain plating motif as the tendrils overhead, some have their organs replaced with glowing orange flame. She sees a street dog that has grown quills and tendrils twice its size. It'd be comical if the plane wasn't falling apart around her.
"Have you heard from the others?" she asks, before she can stop herself.
Saheeli's eyes don't leave the reservoir far ahead of them. "I have. The last time they saw Chandra, she was all right."
Pia's been around politicians long enough to know when she isn't getting the whole story. "And when was that?"
"Recently, very recently," Saheeli answers. She looks over her shoulder. "This might not be the best time."
"There isn't a good time when it comes to bad news."
"There are better times than this."
Pia frowns. "Please, just tell me what's going on."
Saheeli glances around. "She's—"
"Renegade Prime! Long time no see!"
Pia turns. Along with the spritely voice comes the rumble of an engine. Hanging over the side of a skimmer above them is one of her old renegade contacts, Baji. "Need any help down there?"
"We can use all the help we can get," she says. "We're headed to the reservoir."
"Come on in, then!" calls the pilot. "You'll get there faster in this. And we've got better firepower, too."
Saheeli looks up. "He's not joking. Those weapons aren't legal."
The renegades were always great at securing contraband. Pia stands in the passenger seat of the cruiser, one hand on the seat and the other on the door. Saheeli doesn't slow down—not even when Pia offers her a hand.
"There's only room for one more in that skimmer," Saheeli says.
When one of the geniuses of Kaladesh tells you what she wants to do, it behooves you to listen. Besides, when it comes to revolutions and crises, you must be able to improvise. "Right," Pia says. "We'll cover you."
As Baji swoops lower, he reaches out for Pia. The skimmer's not the most solid thing in the world, not by a long shot. Now that they're in it she wonders how it's flying at all—nuts and bolts rattle around them, and the seat's little more than a strip of leather on hard, hastily shaped metal. The back seat's so narrow that the sides bite against her shoulders.
Baji angles the craft up, climbing higher, Ghirapur vanishing below the clouds as they rise into the sky. He flips a switch on his console and a glass dome slides over the open cockpit. "Helmet's under your seat," Baji says. Pia pulls the helmet on. She can't help but notice the chips and scraps on the cockpit glass. "Is this thing secure?" she asks.
"It'll hold," Baji said. "I put it together myself. Used only the finest scrap, straight from—"
Whatever he meant to say is lost in a gurgle when a javelin punches through the window and impales him through the chest to his seat, blood-soaked tip stopping only a hairsbreadth from Pia. Swooping through the air above them is something that might once have been a bird. Now it fights for Phyrexia. Realization sets in—that's no javelin, it's a quill. Alarms howl, drowned out by the air screaming in through the hole in the ship's cockpit. Slowly, it begins to tip to the side, and then twist nose first, plummeting toward the ground. Pia's stomach lurches at the shift in momentum, the nauseating weightlessness. Without thinking she squeezes into the pilot's seat, wedging the quill free from the leather. Baji's body has her half-pinned. There's no room to navigate, the console's an incomprehensible hodgepodge of welded together parts, there are two Phyrexian birds on her flanks and more ships all around.
This isn't good.
And that's before factoring in that Pia Nalaar has never even flown one of these things before.
But she isn't about to give up here. Not when it comes to keeping Kaladesh safe, and not when it comes to her daughter.
Chandra's going to come to tea next month.
Pia's going to be there to meet her.
If she can just get through this.
From the second Atraxa arrived, New Capenna drew its nails down her pristine carapace. A city built reaching ever upward, the atmosphere crackling with a disgusting energy, crawling with a horribly diversity of life. Everything about it is anathema to her—to Phyrexia.
How fortunate that her orders are to scour it.
But Phyrexia is not a beast that eats without thought. In all things there is the seed of greatness, no matter how base the material. To be Phyrexian is to allow yourself to grow, to change, to become something greater than you once were. The spire that so vexes her can be stripped of its accoutrements and rendered anew.
This is a place teeming with sin and filth, and Atraxa will be its savior.
The work alone is enough to fill her with ecstasy. All along the rooftops the organics take up arms. Their weapons will not serve them here: there are no dents in Phyrexia's armor. Nor will climbing higher save them. A single thought from Atraxa summons swarms of flying servitors. Tiny though they may be, they are hungry beasts—soon, those that climb are nothing more than bones falling to the earth. Those that take to the streets instead rely on their muscle and sinew to fight back. They are ignorant to the weaknesses of flesh. The war engines crash through storefront after storefront to fulfill their will. As they reach the street, they unleash clouds of caustic gas. Flesh melts from bone.
Harvest them. One glorious thought, echoed in a thousand minds. They take no prisoners here on New Capenna; there are no cages for the fleshlings. What the engines cannot melt with their gasses is shoveled back inside of them by servitors. Only these parts will remain.
Harvest. Them. How loudly the words ring in her mind! The organics try to fool the Phyrexians, disappearing into the dark and reappearing behind them, but it is no use. Nothing is going to prevent what is to come. Neither will the spells hurled in desperation, or the blades driven between the ribs of centurions. Phyrexia can never be defeated.
But flesh . . . flesh will always yield, in the end.
Norn's orders were clear: everything that draws wretched breath on this plane must be harvested for parts—and so they will be. But Atraxa sees a use for them before tearing them asunder.
After all, somewhere within this monstrosity of a plane are the remains of her predecessors. Finding them is part of her assignment here.
The minds of the newcomers open readily to her. Maestros, they call themselves. The thrill of their new bodies ripples through the entirety of the invading force, lending them strength against those who foolishly resist. Yet this is not the answer she seeks, not the answer Phyrexia needs. Deeper into their minds she ventures.
Within them, Atraxa finds something curious.
Beautiful.
Over and over, that word. That idea. It never comes alone—always with images or sounds or tastes. Paint on canvas. Stone shaped by a studious hand. Flowers opening in the night. A keening creak from a wooden instrument. These things, she surmises, must be beautiful, and what is beautiful must be important. Often it is the first thought they have when they look at their new forms, the first word that pops into their minds.
But what is that? Why are they so preoccupied with it? The strength of their conviction's spread through the invading forces, each mind amplifying the last. The word rings within Atraxa's skull until she can no longer escape it.
Norn warned her about this. She said there was something about this place that would try to infect her, something that her previous life might lend her resistance against. There are distant memories in her mind of beauty, of a pale imitation of compleation she once reveled in. This is the face and name of her enemy—and those who spent so long worshipping this false divinity must know where it lives.
Searching their minds provides another answer: museum.
The images that come along are clear enough. Surveying the city, she sees it not far from one of the conversion pods: a squat building festooned in marble shaped this way and that. She looks at it and wonders if it is beautiful. Those who were once Maestros tell her that it is. The columns, the statues, the carefully curated ivy crawling upon its facade: how could she ever think it was anything but beautiful?
The furor of their passion drives her on. Whatever it is they are hiding, she must be able to get a better idea of it there. As Phyrexia tears through the resistance, Atraxa lands upon the steps outside of the building. The doors are too small for her; with a touch, she corrects their already apparent failures. This place, too, shall embrace Phyrexia.
Inside there are more incomprehensible works. Fleshy beings stare back from canvases or panels of wood—a testament to the frailty of natural materials. So great is the arrogance of these creatures that they have shaped stone and metal in their image. The wretched inversion rankles Atraxa. All of this does. Why would anyone bother with any of this? These "paintings" often portrayed only a single individual; even those with groups did not portray more than a dozen. Why extol the virtues of so few when it is by many hands that great work is done? And these statues! Even more individual than the paintings!
Her spear makes short work of them. The newly formed scream in the recesses of the Phyrexian mind, but only for a moment; that part of them is dying and understands that this is for the best. All will be one. These works no longer matter.
And yet something deep within that same mind tells her that she must keep going. There is something here. At the very least she can see to the destruction of the heresy around her.
Deeper within there are more atrocities. Worse, if it can be believed. Here the works no longer represent anything at all: they are sharp, geometrical replications of organic creatures. Neither weapons nor bulwarks; she can imagine no purpose for them. These, too, she strikes down, her frustration growing.
It is the last room which answers her questions.
Here there are no strange objects, here there is no paint, no mortal loudly announcing their own individual self. Instead, the shapes she sees are pale imitations of glory. A lopsided axe upon the wall, a mock war hound carapace upon a plinth, images that occlude the glory of compleation . . . Norn told her Phyrexians had once been here, but this speaks to the cruelty organics think themselves above.
Beautiful, that word again in her mind, that awful word, but there is nothing beautiful about any of this. Do these people worship failure? Do they look upon the bodies of those that came before and marvel at them? The memories of the Maestros are a battering ram: groups gathered around these remains, drinking and eating and chittering with their wet lips and glistening tongues.
"Can you imagine being the guy swinging that thing around?"
"I'll tell you something, I wish I could hire him to follow me around and just stand there looking intimidating."
"Say, how much do you think it's worth . . . ? I've got half a mind to buy it myself."
"C'mon, pal, there's no way you could afford it."
Her grip on her spear tightens. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This place, the Phyrexians who were too weak to see their mission through, the fleshlings who mock them. Beautiful, that awful word they have for this, cannot mean other than wrongness.
Atraxa will strike it down. All of it, everything that bears the name, must be destroyed. To allow it to exist only invites further mockery—and Phyrexia shall not be mocked.
As phyresis creeps over the building's facade, she obliterates everything within it. What purpose it will serve is not for her to decide. What is useful of them will linger and what is not will be stripped away. Tail, claw, spear, and scream: her weapons are unerring and untiring. Scrap and rubble are all that remain when she is done. What inhabitants she encounters are smeared across the rocks. In their last moments, they might imagine that they are beautiful.
But she never wants to hear the word again. If she could scour it from the mind of Phyrexia, she would, but that is a thing only the Mother of Machines may decree.
Still, Elesh Norn appointed her to lead these forces, which means she can strike down beauty here, if she pleases. Atraxa needs only think the order for it to go out. To her satisfaction, as she emerges from the museum, she hears weapons striking stone all around.
The satisfaction does not last long.
Across the courtyard there are angels staring at her—angels with faces of stone.
It is not a conscious thing that happens next—it is not a thought she has, but an instinct. At once she realizes that the stone seraphs of the cathedral are indeed beautiful, and that she hates them more than she has ever hated anything, more than she knew it was possible to hate. The chorus of minds falls away to the resounding note of anger hammering throughout her being. In a blur of white, she strikes the heads from the statues. When they crumble to the ground, she does not stop attacking them but continues bringing her spear down, over and over, again and again, heedless of the hazy energy that emerges from the rock. Though it sears her carapace and her sinews are alight with agony, she cannot bring herself to stop until nothing remains of the heads but a fine dust.
Only then does she stop. Only then does she hear Phyrexia again.
There are fleshlings climbing the tower. What must be done with them?
One voice speaks, and then another: harvest them, harvest them.
But this vapor pains us, and we ache.
Phyrexia does not ache. Harvest them.
Atraxa looks up at the headless figures. A deep calm comes over her. Beauty is dead, and she can turn her attentions once more to the front—to the beings on the outside of the tower, and what they might be planning.
She leaves the platform.
But the seraphs remain, watching her go, with their visitor hovering among them in a haze of color.
They, too, speak among themselves.
Why not stop her? asks the visitor.
It is not yet time.
It does not feel like the right answer—but the visitor cannot disprove it.
Have faith. It's almost here, the end. You'll know what to do when we've gotten there.
Elish Norn watched as her world tree grew.
It was beautiful.
Sitting in the Fair ballistica Elish Norn sat on her throne as she saw Nissa control the World tree.
Infact she found herself interrupted from her musings as said compleated Planeswalker approached her
"Mother." Nissa bowed
Elish Norn looked at her uncaring but with a smile on her face.
"Yes dear…what is it?"
I'm getting some…interference in spreading the world tree to other worlds." Nissa said
"What do you mean?" Elish Norn asked
"She means in terms of us!" A voice boomed
Elish Norn looked over to see 6 figures standing before her
Six figures incomplete.
Six plagued individuals.
"Who are you?!" Elish Norn asked
"We are the Godhand. And you Ms Norn have overstepped your bounds." Void said
Elish Norn snarled
"You dare challenge my rule, my authority? My grand dream!" She roared
"Your rule?" The fallen God of Darkness scoffed
"Your just a puppet." The fallen god of light said
"Using the remains of a greater dream for yourself." Conrad taunted
"Enough I will not have my rite be mocked by lessers diseased beings. Leave!"
Elish Norn looked to Nissa who forced the 6 Godhand to leave New phyrexia.
"We have not given you permission to leav-!" Voids voice sss cut off as he was severed from the plane.
However Elish Norn was no fool.
Those beings…those Godhand were the most powerful beings she has ever faced And they jeopardize everything she had been working towards.
It was time for desperate measures to ensure her role would be recognized forever.
She started heading Down the Fair basilica, opening up into a secret space a hidden vault where the one person could be that would insure her dream of Phyrexia was safe.
The vault was holding a figure said to have enough power to resurrect a dead god.
Karona.
Karona was the manifestation of all Dominarian mana, brought into being by the aggregation of Akroma, Phage, and Zagorka being slain by Kamahl's Soul Reaper. During her brief existence she further devastated the already war-torn continent of Otaria and disrupted the very fabric of magic on Dominaria. Her abilities stemmed from that of faith, that anything a being could believe of her, she could accomplish.
Elish Norn never knew how Karona got there but she had.
And all attempts to complete her had failed
At was however before Tamyo ensured the process was successful.
Now able to finally complete her great work Elesh Norn would finally be able to cement her legacy.
She would bring her father Back.
Yawgmoth would rise again.
Elesh Norn walked into the sepulcher that housed the "false gods" body
Her pristine skin unaffected by Phyresis
Until now.
Elesh Norn strode forward brushing her porcelain white skin against the dead corpse
Oh what miracle's will be accomplished.
Then with a sudden jolt Elesh Norn stabbed her hand into the chest of the corpse as she began to pump Ichor directly into her
Karona's mouth opened and the black Phyrexian oil started spewing out of her mouth like a fountain
The dead god still trying to reject Completion.
But it was too late
Elesh Norn could already hear her voice…
And she called her mother…
(Arcavos)
In the tunnels beneath Strixhaven collage one of the largest magic universities in the multiverse resided, where dwelled the relics of bygone eras, Quintorius a male loxodon and mage-student of the Lorehold college Quint's mind is piled high with facts and knowledge that might become useful. Being a Lorehold student, his magic usually comes from scrolls or a tome; blasting out like bladed sharp paper golden energy
He views the accuracy of historical accounts as extremely important. The truth is also a priority to him as it enables the preservation of facts rather than myths. It was this that made him announce what he did when he said, "I believe we're lost."
Groans met his announcement.
"It's our own school," Rootha growled, "we can't be lost. It should be a straight shot from the dormitories to the Biblioplex!"
"Think of it as practice for when we're actually in the Biblioplex and searching for the Invocation of the Founders," Dina said. "Remind me, how many expeditions have been formed to rescue lost students? About a hundred?" The pests in her shoulder bag squeaked and squirmed, and she slapped its side to silence them.
From the rear of the group, Zimone said, "I wonder if the invocation will really slow the Phyrexian invasion, like Professor Vess said."
Killian's head snapped up. "Better finding it late than not at all. My father can help. He was in the Biblioplex when the invasion began."
Quint flapped his ears but held his tongue. He wanted desperately to believe that professors other than Liliana had escaped the Phyrexian stranglehold—that there were others who hadn't been overtaken and forged onto the Phyrexian intelligence—but in the dusty, lantern-lit darkness, with red sinew snaking across the walls and shadows stinking of black oil, hope was thin. The invasion had burned through Strixhaven's defenses. With their professors captured and compleated, it was hard to believe that the school could repel their assault. The dormitories still stood, the students within protected by Professor Vess and an army of undead—yet she couldn't last forever.
But Quint took a deep breath and said, "Killian is correct. There's little to be gained from despair." Lantern held high, he led the way down the tunnel. Really, it wasn't too different from exploring any other ruins, though prior expeditions hadn't carried the threat of capture and compleation.
It was difficult going. The devastation caused when the Phyrexian portals ruptured the sky and the Invasion Tree's branches stabbed into the earth had caved in many underground tunnels. In some places, the ceiling had collapsed. The students were forced to heave aside debris to continue or backtrack and find new paths.
Resting beside a branch of the Invasion Tree after breaking through a particularly nasty blockage, Quint spotted a statue behind a crumbling block.
"Ah!" Quint said. "I should have considered this sooner."
"Considered what?" Killian asked.
Quint crouched beside the statue and traced white-gold sigils in the air, for conjuring, calling, and regenerating. "Who better to guide us than Strixhaven's earliest professors? The statue is clearly venerable, based on weathering and discoloration patterns, so if we ask—"
The sigils trembled as Quint's spell caught. Dust and pebbles whirled around the stone figure, a whirlwind in miniature that grew increasingly solid. Glowing white stone accreted from dust. Limbs stretched through the whirl; luminous eyes blinked as the professor's spirit incorporated into its statue.
The spirit looked around, scowled, and said, "Strixhaven's gone downhill since my day."
"Almost as if we're actively being invaded," Dina said.
The professor's spirit glared at her. Before it could voice displeasure, Quint said, "I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience, professor—"
"Dean, thank you. Dean Herrian the Second of—"
"Please," Quint interrupted to a sputter of disapproval, "we're in a hurry. Do you know the way to the Biblioplex? We're somewhat—um—"
"Lost," Rootha said.
"Lost!" Dean Herrian yelped. "How can you be lost?" Glowering, Killian snapped, "It's a long story, and we don't have time to explain."
"I should say not! How can you be lost when you're under the Biblioplex?" Quint's eyes widened. Then, in unison, the students looked up at the Invasion Tree's branch, plated in carapace and pulsating with nauseating warmth, and the hole through which it had plunged.
"I'd rather we were lost again," Zimone muttered.
And Dina, grinning, asked, "Who's going first?"
Never again will I scale a structure without expeditionary gear, Quint thought as he climbed. Four pairs of hands grabbed his coat; four backs bent and heaved him out of the hole onto the Biblioplex floor. He wasn't the only one tired of losing his grip and slipping.
One glance, and he wished he could sink back down.
His lovely, luminous center of learning was gone. Red-edged portals squirmed overhead and bled lifeless, ruddy light. The Invasion Tree's branches cut through the air and walls alike, disrupting existing structures. And here was more red sinew, overrunning the furnishings in knotty columns, hand in hand with porcelain plates segmented like spinal columns. It seemed to feed off the very walls, dulling them, drinking in everything that gave the Biblioplex luster, and spitting out black oil and more tendrils of itself.
None of them spoke. The air felt so thick it choked the words in their throats. And yet light danced nearby, somehow, not the redness of Phyrexia, but motes like dust through a sunbeam, pale blue and frail. Without thinking, Quint reached for a mote . . . and his eyes widened as the mote seemed to melt into his skin. A sensation quiet, nascent discovery settle over him.
The invocation should feel new, Professor Liliana had said. It should emit traces of itself . . . what kind, I don't know. But Strixhaven originated with the Invocation of the Founders, and the spell will seek to oppose any invasion. Find it. Cast it. Help it drive Phyrexia from our school.
Quint glanced at his fellow students. More motes drifted around them, and their expressions shone as well with the same realization. These were traces of the invocation, awakened and struggling against the Phyrexian gloom.
Onward, Quint thought, and followed the dancing lights.
Even though the Biblioplex appeared deserted, the presence of the portals stifled Quint's desire to talk and turned his thoughts gray with uncertainty. Which was odd, he thought as he inched along a book-lined, sinew-bound aisle. The Invasion Tree's branches themselves hummed; the air throbbed with the heartbeat thrum of malignant expansion. Yet the red-lit Biblioplex reminded Quint of a sepulcher. Even the ruins he'd studied had felt livelier.
Then, creeping at Rootha's heels, with Dina, Zimone, and Killian behind, Quint looked up—and almost jumped. Another student, a dark-haired dwarf in Lorehold red and white, stared at them from atop a bookcase, wide-eyed and still very much uncompleated. Their breath shuddered from lips bloodless with dread, barely rippling the staleness.
The student caught Quint's gaze, and their eyes welled up with relief. "Help me," they whispered.
As if the student's voice were a thrown pebble and the Biblioplex a pond, the red sinew rippled.
Something coiled around the bookcase and snared the student's leg. They had time for one terrified shriek before the thing whipped them down a dark passage—and Quint glimpsed a figure covered in steel-bright feathers and razored talons. Where tongue and beak should be, there was instead a spreading web of metal filaments.
"No!" Quint shouted, unable to stop himself.
At once Killian grabbed his shoulder in warning and Rootha slapped a hand over his mouth, but his cry raced through the red sinew with the same awful, spreading ripple. Dean Shaile's head abruptly swiveled around.
They didn't even speak. They just ran.
The Biblioplex howled around them in a voice that made Quint want to tear off his ears. The shadows themselves seemed to grasp at him with blood-red fingers. Down the labyrinthine ways—past shelves monstrous with carapace and chitin—over moats murky, reeking, veined with black oil—silent no longer, for silence was gone, and what chased them now was fear and fury. The edges of Quint's vision skittered with too many limbs and proportions too twisted for recognition. Magic flashed: darkly green bursts as Dina ripped life from the pests in her bag and flung patches of treacherous, moss-slick footing behind them; Killian's lashes of ink that snared at their pursuers' limbs; Rootha whirling to fling needle-sharp ice spikes or fiery blasts. Zimone panted as she tried to keep up, and Quint hauled her along as gently as possible. On they ran, trampling over ancient tomes, and even with his heart stuttering in his chest, he felt a stab of remorse—
"They're slowing," Rootha panted, and hope churned through Quint. They were almost at an atrium, where they could dive into one of a dozen branching halls and lose the pursuit—
Feather and metal and web-mouth fluttered overhead. Before Quint could react, Dean Shaile dove. Her talons hooked into Killian's collar, and then she was pulling up from the dive, Killian thrashing in her grip and Dina and Zimone grabbing at his feet, trying to pull him back. Dean Shaile simply flapped her wings and rose higher. The web of her mouth wormed over Killian's skull and tried to creep beneath his eyelids, squeezed shut with horror.
"Where is your father?" Dean Shaile asked, and the web pulsated gently, almost lovingly, around Killian's head. White and black flashed along his hands, but whatever spells he was trying to cast fizzled inches from his fingertips.
Quint shook. He saw all too clearly the fate that awaited Killian, fetid with metal and oil. He couldn't let that happen. Voice high and cracked, he croaked, "We don't know. And since it's Dean Lu you want, you shouldn't waste your time on Killian. You don't need him. He won't be beneficial to you. To—to Phyrexia."
Dean Shaile's web-mouth fluttered wide for a second, showing Killian's terrified, ashen face, then closed again. "While I would have preferred the elder Lu over his inferior progeny, you're mistaken. Killian isn't wasting my time. All are welcome in Phyrexia's better, unalloyed Multiverse."
Quint cried out and reached for Killian, futile, distant, even as Dean Shaile screeched in triumph and more Phyrexianized professors rolled toward them in a terrible gleaming tide—
Then someone whispered, "You left yourself vulnerable," and Quint reeled as, in a whirl of ink-black flutters, Dean Embrose Lu landed beside them. Dean Shaile's web-mouth writhed; she spat Killian onto the floor and launched at Embrose as the other professors leaped—and the whirl exploded outward, passing over Quint and his fellow students with the lightness of silk scraps—but where they touched the professors, flesh bubbled and metal cracked or melted.
The professors' screams of rage and pain echoed through the Biblioplex as the ink stormed around them.
"Father, behind you!" Killian shouted. He staggered upright, ink spilling from his hands and surging toward Dean Shaile, who arrowed at Embrose's back.
Then another curve of black knocked Killian aside—and a second later, a scythe-limb pierced the storm, slashing where Killian's head had been just a moment ago.
"You are so much weaker than you know," Embrose spat. The bookcases rocked back, books flying open as the words and wisdom of a hundred thousand writers ripped free and flew to Embrose's command. Arrows and darts pierced some of the attacking professors; shrouds of the stuff swarmed over others, choking them; still more ink flashed upward to shred the filaments of Dean Shaile's mouth. The onetime-owlin fell—
A scrap of darkness slapped over Killian's mouth as he summoned another slash of ink. As he clawed at it, Embrose said, "Run, Killian."
Killian's eyes flashed; he tore the ink aside. "I can help!"
"Yes. You would also distract me."
Dina snapped, "If you couldn't stop Phyrexia before, what makes you think you can defeat them now?"
Embrose's gaze flicked toward Killian—and to Quint's surprise, he caught the faintest wavering of the dean's normally stoic expression.
"I need not explain myself," Embrose said. "Now go."
And without warning lashes of black whipped around the students' torsos and flung them through a split-second hole in the vicious ink storm. Dean Shaile swiveled toward them—but another burst of ink ripped through her wings, and with a scream she refocused on Embrose, a shadow carved in human shape.
The ink dumped them unceremoniously several rows away. Quint scrambled to his feet as Killian leaped up, fire in his eyes—and Dina seized his arm.
"Let go!"
"You'll die," she said flatly, and the pests in her bag chirruped as though in agreement.
Killian's eyes narrowed. "I can't let my father be taken by Phyrexia."
"Right, sorry, you won't die. You'll only wish you'd died." Then, as Killian drew breath, Dina added, "What's more important, throwing your life away here or finding the invocation?"
Quint thought of the lashing ink. Though he knew it would hurt Killian, he said, "Dina's right."
"My father could help!"
Zimone reached for Killian's hand, then drew back, as though afraid to touch him. "Dean Embrose is helping."
"By making himself bait?"
"By giving us the time and space needed to find the invocation. You'd know best, but—would he sacrifice himself if he didn't believe you would succeed?"
Killian's jaw clenched, and Quint saw Rootha tense, ready to restrain him—then he nodded, just once.
But as they marched forward, Quint caught flashes of white magic—words to strengthen and support—flitting from Killian's fingertips in his father's direction.
The sounds of battle faded as they advanced through the Biblioplex. To Quint, the silence felt thicker now, as though punishing them for speaking even briefly. Even the invocation's wafting lights grew weak at times, forcing them to search until they found another drift of motes. The only consolation, if it could be called such, was that Embrose had attracted the professors' attention. The corridors were now clear—mostly clear.
Quint paused mid-stride. A metallic shape hung from the arch at the end of the corridor. The five students exchanged glances. Then, without speaking, they chose another path.
Unfortunately, it became clear that the upside-down professor was not the only one to have abstained from battling Embrose. The Biblioplex whispered with slithering and clacked with metal against stone floors. Twice—three times—four—more times than Quint could count—they scrambled behind stacks or wedged themselves into alcoves as professors stalked past, eyes sweeping the shadows and shelves. Strange shapes, limbs cracking and bending in ways that should incapacitate, but somehow didn't. Quint knew those appearances would haunt him forever.
How much of the Biblioplex have we searched by now? Quint wondered, trying to recall the layout as he scrunched behind a column of red sinew. The Biblioplex was vast and convoluted. Even Professor Vess, Planeswalker and scholar, had yet to explore its full extent. Still, thinking about the mazelike ways was better than listening to the professor shuffling nearby. The sound of its feet—however many of those there now were—scraped directly across Quint's brain . . .
The shuffling faded as the professor moved away. Across the aisle, Quint caught Dina's eye, and she nodded. It was safe to move again.
They were in a wholly unfamiliar part of the Biblioplex now, with dust thick on statues and books, and oil-slimed cobwebs twined with delicate strands of sinew. The students had to split up to pass through the narrower ways. They regrouped—the red, breathing silence made solitude repugnant—only to be forced by the aisles to diverge once more. Quint clung to those moments together, brief though they were, as the reddish shadows bore down upon them.
Then, as he slipped with Dina between two bookcases, the bookcase on his right trembled, and he spotted long, needle-like fingers curving over the top. He froze. A professor hung on the opposite side, waiting—watching. Quint exchanged a glance with Dina. It would spot them the instant they emerged.
Then he heard a gasp, somewhere to his right.
Zimone.
The bookcase creaked as the professor whirled around—
Quint stumbled to the end of his aisle and saw Zimone's terrified eyes barely peeking out from behind a waist-high bookcase, and Rootha and Killian's hands on her shoulders drawing her back—saw, in all its bizarre, twisted glory, the scythe-limbed professor slinking in their direction—but he also saw the statue against a far wall, shrouded in red sinew. His fingers flew through the motions, spilling out in one second a spell that normally took thirty. The statue's spirit coalesced in a flurry of dust and stone. It shot Quint a brief, fierce smile, raised its shimmering hands, and screamed, "No talking in the library!"
A shriek blasted through the air.
With a stiff, sweeping clatter, the professor spun and skittered toward the statue, now gleefully smashing every carapace plate and shredding every skein of red sinew within reach. Even dead, it seemed, Strixhaven's onetime professors could not abide the Phyrexian intrusion.
The students exchanged the briefest of glances—relief and terror and surprise all wrapped up together—then flew past the Phyrexianized professor's back, their footsteps obscured by the statue's defiant bellows.
Deeper they delved through the Biblioplex, always deeper, chasing the puffs of light, but they couldn't last. Quint could see everyone faltering under the brutal, unceasing dread. Killian kept flicking courage and hope to the others, the words flashing in Quint's eyes, but the redness of the invasion portals turned the white magic thin. He stumbled and barely kept himself from tripping over a chair. They were on the right path—the pale, downy motes glittered more intensely—but how far they'd have to go, he didn't know and didn't want to imagine—
Then his steps faltered; the other students slowed as well. Fear and fatigue seemed to slough off him like old bandages.
The light was stronger here: not just feebly withstanding the heavy Phyrexian murkiness but throwing it off completely in spots. Pockets of radiance hung between the bookcases, and when Quint passed through one, the freshness of the air itself was almost euphoric after so long plodding through darkness and distress.
Almost there.
Revitalized, they had to restrain themselves from rushing headlong. Patch to pale-lit patch they moved, each stretch becoming stronger, broader, brighter. To Quint, it felt like sunlight on unearthed ruins, or old words copied onto clean paper—
The aisles opened up, revealing a circular platform surrounded by a moat. Bobbing at the platform's center was a tangle of light like no spell Quint had ever seen—and no red sinew, Quint realized with a thrill. The platform was clean. It had to be the invocation. No other spell he knew of could defy Phyrexia's grasp.
With a sweep of her arms, Rootha crystallized the water into an instant, icy bridge. They dashed across, without a professor in sight.
Which was good, because as Quint neared the invocation, its glow wrapped around him in a soft, comforting blanket, and he could think of almost nothing else.
The tangle wasn't just light, but a prismatic confusion of letters so dazzling they warded off the red gloom entirely. Sentences looped out, sank back down, and reformed with new clauses and phrases. Single words burst like bubbles on the surface. Quint leaned forward, squinting to try and make out individual words—and a shining tendril coiled around his wrist. He almost jumped in shock. He'd thought the words would be intangible constructs of pure magic, but they felt like warm silk threads against his skin.
"It's alive," Quint breathed. The invocation pulsed faintly. His eyes widened. "Did you see—"
"It's responding to us?" Rootha asked, and the invocation pulsed again.
"Not just responding, I think." Zimone paced a slow circle around the tangle. Pulse, pulse, pulse, it went, in time with her speech. "Do you hear that?"
Rootha looked around. "Hear what?"
"Exactly. Nothing."
Nothing. No screams, no screeches, no scuttling, clicking limbs.
Killian let out a slow breath. "It's protecting us from Phyrexian attention."
They fell silent. A little shiver ran through Quint. Awe or fear, he couldn't tell. The invocation, Professor Vess had said, held the power of Strixhaven's five elder dragons, all meshed and melded together to construct the school and safeguard it from harm. Until now, though, he hadn't realized that to do so, it had become partially alive.
"How do we begin?" he asked, half to himself. It was easier to imagine raising a mountain than casting the spell that had built Strixhaven itself.
"Maybe—" Dina began, but before she even finished, the invocation unknotted, rearranging itself into neat segments. Not a tangle, Quint realized, but a five-petaled flower, each petal a seamless blend of two colors. The muddled words reformed into recognizable sentences.
"Five elder dragons," Rootha said, touching a blue and red petal. "Five parts to the spell. I have a hunch we need to follow the elder dragons' example and read all five parts together."
Zimone stood on tiptoe to examine the very heart of the invocation. "Outside, too. You see this conditional? We have to be able to see what we're affecting."
"We likely can't return the way we entered," Quint said. Even the thought of creeping among the sinew-strewn stacks again made him shudder.
Dina's eyes sparkled. "There's more than one way to catch some fresh air. We can always blame it on the Phyrexians."
"Oh, no. You're planning something destructive," Killian said, then added, with awful emphasis, "again."
"Depends on your definition of 'destructive.' Watch my back." Crouching, Dina pulled small pots of unidentifiable goo from her bag and began scrawling symbols across the platform.
Zimone knelt beside her. "I see. How are you powering it?"
"With my pests."
"That won't provide enough energy."
"Unless you're volunteering—"
"Let me add to the growth factors." Zimone's fingers, trailing bluish light, dabbed through Dina's scrawls, pocking the muddy-green sigils with spots of brightness. "The imaginary spaces between discrete physical features theoretically extend forever, the same way an infinity of numbers exists between discrete digits. If we apply Thale's Expansion Hypothesis to flip imaginary into real . . ."
The air above Dina and Zimone's rapidly expanding ritual shimmered, blue-green dark blending in a way that ought to have been muddy but instead looked animated. Patterns like twisting ladders twined between symbols gnarled like willow roots. The sense of energy trapped and waiting redoubled.
Then Quint heard movement.
He spun and flung out his hand, hot-white symbols striking nearby statuary and scrolls, but even as seven spirit-statues scraped themselves together, the professor leaped from the shadows. Its claws stretched toward Quint; its metal sides opened, and in the center of the gaping ribs a red-beating thing glared—
An inky needle shot past Quint and tore through the red-eyed thing. The professor reared back, ribs shuddering wide, and a spike of ice screamed from the moat, piercing its leg with a tremendous crack. Quint's spirits charged the professor in a grinding crash of stone; the professor reeled under their assault. Quint's heart leaped. They only had to last until Zimone and Dina completed their ritual.
Then the professor's ribs stretched open again. With another hiss, Killian speared ink at the professor—too late. The ribs swelled out in ribbons, fast as thought, and cleaved through Quint's spirits. Three of them dissolved; the other four reeled back, torn almost to nothing.
Fire thundered from Rootha as Quint grabbed the invocation and begged it to condense itself. The single thought ramped through his head: above all else, Phyrexia must not take Strixhaven's heart. Around him seethed ink darts and crackling ice—at the corners of his eyes flared the white of encouragement and the blaze of fire—as the invocation furled its petals and knotted down to the diameter of a soup tureen, a dinner plate, a teacup, and he grabbed it and rammed it into his pocket, out of sight—
Then, "Done!" Dina cried. She upended her bag of pests—and the professor bulled past Rootha and Killian, sweeping the pests aside as it lunged for Dina and Zimone. But its foot landed in the ritual circle. A shriek tore from its ribs, but it might as well have tried to shout the suns out of the sky. Its flesh was melting, shriveling down to leather on bone, and the red-eyed heart flared as the ritual absorbed its life energy.
Then Dina screamed.
It's too much energy! Quint realized as Killian scrambled to her side. She writhed, body burning with a dark-green fire—which erupted from her pores and splashed every bookcase nearby.
Quint never knew growth could sound like violence incarnate.
Polished planks splintered into razor-edged branches, lengthening so rapidly they slashed the professor's remnants in half. Leaves erupted with sounds like blades being unsheathed. In the span of a breath, roots thicker than Quint's body churned the floor into pebbles. The thunder of unshackled life drowned Quint's senses as bookcases exploded and tangled into a single tree above the invocation platform—and kept growing, boughs forming a perfect helix of steps and leaves thinning into infinity. The tree's crown shoved against the Biblioplex's ceiling, paused—and broke right through. Light and air and masonry showered onto the platform.
Quint's mouth fell open.
Then Dina crumpled.
"Not bad for overloading, huh, Zimone?" she panted as Killian and Rootha helped her up with awed expressions.
Zimone's smile was quiet but fierce. "Not bad at all. But be careful not to go too far from the main trunk. Theoretically, the branches have converted from imaginary to physical space—but past a certain length, they become more imaginary than real."
Dina laughed breathlessly. "And don't look down."
On the roof at last and wishing he hadn't looked down, Quint braced his hands on his knees, wheezed through his trunk, and thought, This time—I mean it—I will never again climb anything without expeditionary gear. After a few moments, he caught enough breath to straighten up and take the Invocation of the Founders from his pocket. In the open air, its petals unfolded, brightened, grew. Behind him came a sound like shuffling cards as Zimone released the imaginary boughs and the tree shrank back to a plausible height.
Killian, still supporting Dina, eyed the invocation. "We can't be disrupted while casting. That could lead to any manner of unintended results. The invocation probably won't create a massive swamp creature if that happens, but—"
"No guarantees," Dina cackled weakly.
"No disruptions," Rootha said, "got it," and she swept around the edge of the roof. Ice erupted in her wake, enclosing the rooftop and dampening the red, ruptured sky with its chilly purity.
Then, with only faint hesitation, they each grabbed a petal and began reading.
Shock ran through Quint. The words were so prosaic. The invocation simply described Strixhaven. Here, the invocation stated, the ground had this consistency; it sloped in this manner and contained these types of stones. The sky shuddered as Zimone defined the way the clouds moved and the air ebbed around the school. Rootha told the sun how it heated the school's roofs and lawns and the aquifers and springs where to flow. Dina grinned as she chronicled the flora: where they grew, how they died, the new life they fed. Through it all twined Killian's portion, cajoling the separate parts together as their words rose in pillars of light. They told Strixhaven what it was, and in that telling, there was no room for Phyrexia.
And Strixhaven listened. Even expecting it, the sight almost made Quint stutter. The portals overhead puckered as they fought being described out of reality, but they could no more resist than could water, wind, fire, earth, and light. Five voices rose as the invocation neared completion, and the pillars flared brighter—
The glacial wall shattered.
The explosion knocked Quint to his knees, and Zimone, Dina, and Killian flung themselves against the rooftop, hands still grasping their petals, mouths still reciting. But Rootha faced the person standing at the roof's edge, an elegant figure despite the way its body appeared to be one giant mechanical heart.
"Rootha," the figure sighed. "You always found flaws in your work that no one else could see . . . but somehow, you missed the weakness in your ice. I'm disappointed."
Don't! Quint tried to say; but he couldn't utter a sound without interrupting the invocation.
Rootha's voice faltered. "Dean Nassari?"
Her petal went dark.
The other students read frantically, trying to make up for Rootha as she flung flare after flare, spike after spike of ice, but Nassari evaded everything. Harsh words slithered from their lips—criticism without critique—and Rootha flinched and paled with each barb. The light overhead dimmed. The invocation was failing—
But Quint smiled.
Odd, how excited he felt. Almost like he had when finding the lost city of Zantafar. There was that same sense of bridging the lost knowledge of the past with the scholars of the future.
In this case, he was ensuring Strixhaven had a future.
Quint took a single moment to bask in this school and the glory of its existence. Then he reached over and grabbed Rootha's petal.
The others' eyes widened, but he couldn't spare them a thought, because every scrap of himself was focused on the invocation. It was impossible to speak two parts at once. Instead, he poured magic directly into Rootha's petal. The earth was his voice; the seas and suns were his bones; he powered the invocation with his life alone. The pillars of light flared brighter than ever. Even as his life drained into the invocation, he thought, I've never seen anything so magnificent.
A shock ripped through his core.
Quint gasped. The invocation . . . ? No. This light shone from within. Quint screamed as it tore through muscle and bone in savage coils. He tried to reach for his fellow students—his friends—but the invocation roared in response. The twin lights whipped about in fervent dance, cleaving through stone and steel alike. Dean Nassari was flung from the rooftop; the Biblioplex buckled and broke, crashing down as the light held Quint captive in midair; the stones of Strixhaven's outlying buildings came apart like sugar cubes in tea; the portals crumpled; the Invasion Tree's branches thrashed as the sky tried to close in on itself. And through it all, Quint burned—
Amid the conflagration, Quint's thoughts raced to Will and Rowan. His friends, too. He hadn't seen them since the invasion began. As the burning grew unbearable, he could only hope they were all right.
The light swallowed Quint whole.
Strixhaven's students emerged from the dormitory to find not a siege—not their former professors, ready to whisk them to compleation—but ruin. Some cried, but not for long, because the sky still bulged with invasion portals trying to force back through, and metallic figures still gleamed in the distance. Under Liliana's instructions, they built up what defenses they could, dug through rubble, pulled out survivors, and tried to identify any professors they uncovered, as Witherbloom students tended to the wounded.
"A poor effort, Merrow," Liliana said, examining the contents of a cauldron. "The blood-restoration potion requires powdered blackcrest pods. You haven't even sieved out the hulls. You're focusing too much on the obvious injuries, Frena. That poor boy's going to suffocate long before the arm you're splinting mends. What's this? The Sorlian Theorem? Really, Rinne? She's an owlin, not a loxodon, the Sorlian Theorem is hardly applicable . . ."
There was a crash; then multiple voices shouted, "They're down here!" Liliana had to force herself not to run. She was the one who'd sent them to find the invocation; she was the reason they were now injured, possibly dead. They had granted Strixhaven this reprieve, however brief. She owed them her attention and much more besides . . .
By the time she reached the remains of the Biblioplex, the students working there had dug out the injured. Despite her stern facade, Liliana's heart beat rapid as a drum as she looked over Dina, Killian, Zimone, and Rootha. Broken bones, contusions, gaping wounds, no doubt a myriad of interesting infections—it would be faster to consider the injuries they didn't have.
And she was impressed. Even bleeding from multiple gashes, Killian was staggering through the rubble. Ink snarled around him as he tore through stonework and carapace alike.
Trust Embrose's son to be a nuisance. "Sedate him," Liliana said, and a Witherbloom student descended with an ominously smoking potion.
But before the student could get within force-feeding distance, Killian yelled, "Father!"
Liliana drew in a sharp breath and peered into the hole Killian had excavated. There was Embrose, dusty and disheveled, bloody and blemished, surrounded by the remnants of a number of Phyrexianized professors—but alive, and himself.
"Well, Lu," Liliana said.
"Well, Vess," he returned, curt and dignified as ever. His attention shifted to Killian, standing stunned at the edge of the hole. "Help me up."
Liliana beckoned another student over. "Lend a hand to—"
"I don't need help," Embrose interrupted, but when Killian reached down, his father grasped his hand.
Liliana turned aside, her own heart twisting uncomfortably at the look on Killian's face. The others still needed her attention, anyway. Zimone had, sensibly, not tried to stand, with her broken leg and eyes glassy from sedation. Still, she grasped Liliana's arm and croaked, "Nimiroti . . . you have to save her . . ."
As gently as possible, Liliana unhooked Zimone's hand. She couldn't spare anyone to check on Zimone's grandmother. And Rootha—one look told her more than enough. The girl wasn't even attempting to move. She simply lay on her stretcher, broken as a child's doll, and stared blankly at the sky.
"Not bad for students, right?" Dina croaked.
Liliana glanced at the fourth stretcher. "I'd suggest there's no way you could have done worse."
Dina shrugged, then winced. What few patches of skin remained unbloodied bore large, painful-looking bruises. "Now we have plenty of room to remodel."
Liliana shook her head—then straightened, eyes widening. "Where's Quint?"
A cloud passed over Dina's face. "We don't know. There was a burst of light, and he just—disappeared."
Dead, Liliana thought; then she frowned as Dina's words echoed in her mind. Dead . . . or a spark? Kasmina suggested there was an ember among them, and it's clearly not one of these four. If Quint's spark ignited, he could still be alive . . .
Dina was saying something. Liliana shook her head. "What was that?"
"We should expand the swamp. I've always thought it needed to be bigger."
Liliana looked up. She looked at the sky, brightness warring with murky redness, and the pulsing, squirming, black-edged scars that used to be invasion portals. She looked at the branches puncturing the ground, bent and battered but still standing. She looked at her colleagues' bodies, some crushed by collapsing buildings, others with their metal parts torn away by the incomplete invocation, and knew that more were still alive, and they would never stop. She looked at the ruins of her home, her sanctuary, her respite disrupted by Phyrexia.
Then she stared up at the portals like open wounds, with the maggots of the Invasion Tree's branches already breaking through the invocation's incomplete banishment.
Liliana's hands dropped to her sides. Her fingers opened. Light spilled from her palms: not the murky blood-color thrashing overhead, or even the clear brightness that fought against it. This was her light, dim and grim. It sank like water into the ground. Far below, in the corpse-strewn ruins of the school—in the catacombs where ancient professors moldered—beneath even that, where the bones of unnamed, unknown thousands leached into the bedrock—her magic found bodies and gave them new life.
Skeletons and zombies erupted from the ground, and students screamed and scrambled to get out of their way. Empty sockets smoldered with purple fire as Lilliana's army arranged itself around the rubble of Strixhaven in obedience to her silent command, forming a barrier to hold off Phyrexia. It would stand as long as she had breath in her body.
"Remodeling will have to wait," Liliana said.
(Eoc)
Notes.
Kaldheim: A plane like dominara it's basised around Norse mythology.
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