"Yes, ahead," reiterated Urza, nostrils flaring. "Is there an afterlife, and if so, what is it like?"

Squee grew wistful. "Yes, dere's a afterlife. It's a big bug fest."

Urza grunted. "I shall strive to remain alive."

An all-too-familiar sound came in the corridor- hundreds of booted feet approaching.

"Good luck," Gerrard hissed, wishing suddenly he had made good on their chance to escape. "Urza, do you still have that killing glare?"

"I've had that since I was a lecturer at Tolaria," the head replied.

"Good. Squee, you still have that ... immortal irritation?"

"All set," was the goblin's response.

"Let's let these bastards know who runs the Stronghold." Gerrard stepped down from the throne and lifted the head of Urza into the air. With his other hand, he waved his halberd, summoning Squee.

It was two and a quarter against who-knew-how-many? It sounded like a whole regiment. Some of those concussions came not from feet but from hooves-and worse things. The only hope for Gerrard and his hapless band was to get the jump on whoever was coming.

The moment the first three figures appeared in the doorway, Gerrard shouted, "Slay them!"

Running forward, he rammed Urza's head upward to give it the best possible angle of attack, but no killing beams spewed forth. With the flat of his halberd, Gerrard shoved Squee toward the horn-headed beasts. The goblin only fell to his knees and tittered nervously. Growling, Gerrard swung his halberd at this new threat. The soul-blade keened through the air and crashed against upraised steel, repelled by a resolute and skilled hand. Off balance, Gerrard fell back, crashing to his butt.

"Quite a welcome for your rescuers," quipped a familiar, feminine voice.

Gerrard blinked, and suddenly saw not a horned monster but a minotaur, not a mechanistic killer but a silver golem, and not a Rathi warrior, but Sisay. She panted, and her figure ran with sweat, but it was she.

"Wh-what are you doing here?" he asked, almost pleading. "Warding off deathblows," Sisay responded lightly. She reached out, taking his hand and hauling him up. "And saving a trio in dire need of saving."

Gerrard breathed, allowing himself to be pulled into her strong arms. "You can save me anytime."

Urza, whose head bounced ignominiously against Sisay's shoulder blades as the old friends embraced, said, "Yes, save us."

"Tahngarth!" Gerrard said happily, clasping the minotaur's four-fingered hand. "Thanks."

The minotaur nodded. "I remember a similar rescue, from this selfsame place."

Last, Gerrard went to the hulking silver man, Karn, whose much-scarred frame bore the telltale marks of Rathi blood and Phyrexian oil. Heedless, Gerrard wrapped the creature in a grateful hug.

Beyond the three leaders, a strange contingent arrived, tortured folk from every species-elf, human, minotaur, goblin, and other indefinite things. All were emaciate, sculpted by pain.

"A damned fine army you've brought," Gerrard remarked.

Sisay smiled proudly. "The damnedest. They've got nothing left to lose, and've got a few scores to settle."

Gerrard's smile was dazzling. "My kind of people. What's the quickest way out of here?"

Sisay shrugged. "Weatherlight awaits. Whatever way is free of guards is quickest."

As if the phrase had been a summons, the roar of soldiers came at another door.

Gerrard glanced apologetically toward the archway. "This is a busy place."

Sisay smiled, responding not to his words, but to the host that appeared in the doorway beyond-a certain minotaur, elf, and Vec.

Gerrard threw his arms wide in welcome-jiggling Urza brutally. "Grizzlegom, Eladamri, Liin Sivi! What a homecoming!"

The minotaur rolled his eyes toward the stalactites. "What a home!"

Behind the three commanders came another army, Metathran, minotaur, Keldon, and elf. They were as multifarious as Sisay's dungeon brigade, and no less thirsty for glistening oil. The two groups, trained warriors and tortured prisoners, melded into a single unit. All were folk who would face down hell to get out of this place.

Urza muttered, "This has suddenly turned from tragedy to comedy."

Ignoring him, Gerrard vigorously shook the hands of the arriving commanders. "The situation is grim. What am I saying? The situation is glad. We-" he estimated the gathering- "two hundred face off against two thousand Stronghold warriors. Our object-the ship Weatherlight. Let's go!"

Chapter 24.

Yawgmoth.

I stand upon the heights of bright Halcyon. My warships float crown-like above my head and cast down giant shadows upon the desert. I breathe the crisp air. My eyes are gemstone-not like the eyes of the stripling child Urza, shaped with the rough strokes of a chisel. My eyes reflect the ubiquitous facets of a city. No shadow shows itself to those eyes, for I am the city's sun and moon and morning star. I am her every lamp. Even my own shadow hides from me, turned traitor by the ache of darkness for light.

I am Yawgmoth. That was nine thousand years ago that I stood thus, in human figure, upon the heights of Halcyon. Nine thousand years, but time means nothing to me. I live in all times and no time. I have done all things and nothing. Every action I begin is one already done. Every hunger that arises in me has already been sated. No mere mortal can oppose me. Before they act, I know what they have done. Before the battle, I know I have triumphed.

Mishra stands upon the leafy verge of that hot forest, amid metallic foliage. He stares out upon the dragon engine, and he lusts for such power. I know he comes, and I know in coming he desires, and I know in desiring he is mine. As he crouches in a different world-my world, my Phyrexia-I see his life roll out like a long carpet, the warp and weft bristling with metal filaments. I see it all, and I know Mishra is mine forevermore. Even, four thousand years hence, I see Mishra beneath the grinders, struggling to keep his face out of them and pleading with his brother for release. I see Urza walk away.

This is not a game of chance. I know every rule, every exception. I know how you think you will win, and I know how you will lose. I know the inexorable mathematics of our duel, and I see your death.

So it is with Mishra. Even as he and his brother stumble unawares into the Caves of the Damned, my cables already crawl beneath his skin. So it is with Urza, damned to be as Phyrexian as his brother. Yes, he takes four thousand years to do it, cannot apprentice himself to a higher power as did Mishra. In the end, though, Urza is my machine. I see his creation, his elaboration, his destruction.

Yes, as he and his brother stalk into the Cave of the Damned, two hearty boys seeking adventure, I see Mishra enmeshed in mechanism and Urza with his head sliced from his shoulders.

I see the slicer too-Gerrard. He comes into being because of Urza. He is fostered to another family and loses them to Vuel's hate. He denies the death sentence his creator lays upon him, fights it angrily, bargains to reverse it, and finally accepts it-and cuts off the head of the creator. I see him hold that head high in exultation. I see him approach the balcony where I stand.

But who could have foreseen him stabbing the one he loves? There is something wrong with this Gerrard. He doesn't see the pretty pictures and hear the lovely lines. He sees the mathematics of the game and fights as his whims drive him. He is like me.

It doesn't matter what Gerrard will do. I have already seen his end. He will die in the final conflagration, as I spread across the world. He and Urza too.

It is enough. I know what they have done to Phyrexia. I know what I must do to Dominaria.

Watch my claw. I twist it thus. It is an easy, simple gesture, the beckoning of a father to his children. Come to me.

They do. Every last particle does. It is my victory over Dominaria. They rise, so multitudinous, so multifarious, my children. I do not mean the Phyrexians, for they live already. I mean every dead thing across the planet. They are all mine, and they rise.

Life is so arrogant. It believes it rules the world, any world. But for every blade of grass, there are a million dead blades that have turned to dirt. Life is only a weak parasite on all-encompassing death. Now, death will throw off its passive mantle and rise to take back what belongs to it.

Dominaria, you are mine.

In Urborg it began.

Swamps, bottomless in muck, boiled. The dead things beneath the waters rose. Things took form. They did not reconstitute into the trees that once stood on and beasts that once roamed across the islands. Instead, they formed into creatures of humus, hulking and monstrous things with hunched backs and twisted limbs and eyes like snake holes. They were monsters of black peat and bits of bone. They churned up through entombing waters and clawed their way onto land.

A hundred thousand, a hundred million, they were. Swamps sank. Killing things plodded out of the muck.

There, they met terrestrial comrades. The thick humus of forests packed itself into stone-toothed warriors. Cypress needles bristled across the things' backs. Slugs formed themselves into drooling lips. Eyes like blind mushrooms peered from faces of rot. They were huge, these shambling beasts, and they thundered toward the so-called armies of Dominaria.

They didn't have to fight, but only trample. Elven arrows peppered the beasts to no avail. Mudmen swarmed the elves and buried them alive. Watery silt ran into the lungs of the thrashing fey, and red tides gushed from their dying lips.

The Metathran fared no better. It did not matter that the blue warriors drove home their powerstone pikes or that they clung with ferocity to the mudmen who fell upon them. They could not breathe ground. Buried in living muck, they suffocated.

So, what of the minotaurs? They swung their futile axes. The steel could not find true flesh, but only sank and stuck. The horned warriors fell as easily as their fainter allies, covered in rampant decay.

Even the magnigoth treefolk-even those massive guardians of the forest, three thousand feet tall and ferocious-how could they do battle? They drew sustenance from the black ground. Now it rose up against them. No longer could they suck water and nutrients from the dead. For them, the loss of rich soil was like a loss of air. They languished.

Up sluggish roots and shuddering trunks, mudmen climbed. Their feet dragged life out of the sap. Their hands blackened leaves, blinding them to the sun. The children of Yawgmoth rose to slay the creatures they had once nourished.

No longer would the dead lie in easy graves, to be pillaged by the living. Death would be subject no longer. Death would reign forever.

Benalia City had long been a Phyrexian bastion, the staging ground of a million scaly monsters. Now its population grew tenfold. The dead of the city, slain by their invaders, rose from piles of dry meat and white bone. The long dead, slain by the march of time, pushed their way up from the tombing ground. Even the rich soil itself rose to join the monstrous legions.

Above the gutted shell of the military brig, the skeletons of Lord and Lady Capashen returned to life. They riled on their gibbets like worms on the hook. Their teeth gnawed the ropes that dangled them. They plunged to the cobbled courtyard. There, the two potentates of Gerrard's clan strode out in search of living flesh.

All around them was dead flesh. The whole city had died that horrible day when Tsabo Tavoc's forces swept through. Now they rose to join the army of their slayers. Skeletons came first, their bones picked clean. From deeper spots shambled revenants in tattered bodies. From deeper still came zombies, pasty and corporeal.

The ground itself, soil that had hosted millennia of grasses, lifted in sod monsters. Hairy with stalks, bleak eyed and massive, they marched across the land.

They all marched. Benalia had fallen. There remained no prey here. To the south and east lay the lands of Llanowar. There, undead could eat elves and the ground itself could eat trees.

Yawgmoth had surely won. Dominaria was his.

From the forest crown to the Dreaming Caves, Llanowar seethed with monsters. Every pocket of soil animated into a scuttling creature. Every mushroom cluster combined into pallid monsters. Aerial roots snared Steel Leaf warriors. Slain giant spiders returned to life and prowled hungrily across the lands. Even the elven dead, buried with plague spores across their breasts, stirred and rose from the embracing ground.

This was where the miracle of Eladamri had begun. This was where the miracle of Orim's Phyrexian inoculation had saved a whole forest. Now, what was it for?

Steel Leaf elves drowned in a wash of mud. Oriaptoric trees wilted beneath a black slurry. The memorial hall of Staprion caved and buckled.

Llanowar, once proud in its victory, languished in utter defeat. Death had come to the world of green.

These savage shores of Shiv, carved in perfect arc as by a celestial compass, were not immune either. Even clever Teferi could not save all this land from its ravishers.

Middens of bone and jerkied meat took new form. Dead goblins, Viashino, and dragons clattered up from mounds of their remains. They reconstituted themselves in wicked reflections of their former selves. Some were grotesque amalgams of all the beasts buried there. Slain dragons joined with the skeletons of their slayers. Even the first Rhammidarigaaz, entombed in lava, emerged. Riddled with holes, the monstrous Primeval shook out its ancient wings and lunged down the lava tube that led to the outer world.

Tolaria-that melted skull of an island-stirred with evil life. What Urza had given over for lost, Yawgmoth reclaimed as found.

In the molten hollows lay bones, Phyrexian and human and elf. They rose. Scholars and students cracked from the glassy ground that covered them. They lifted themselves, gaunt and alien, upon the hillsides. They stared out with empty-socket eyes at a world they could no longer comprehend. It didn't matter. Within their very bones, they sensed the truth. They fought for Yawgmoth now.

Wickedest of all were the three that rose from adjacent graves near the sea. Rayne was the first to emerge, lovely in middle age, the ageless wife to the ageless Barrin. He lifted himself next, only a specter. His physical form had been blasted away. Worst of all, though, was the blonde-haired corpse that stood beside him. Her belly was eaten away by black plague, but her face, even with sunken cheeks, still showed the beauty she had carried in life. Hanna.

Yawgmoth had denied her true life, had dangled her like a prize before Gerrard only to haul her away afterward. Now she lived again, if only as a dry corpse. She, her father, and her mother set out across the blasted landscape, looking for someone to kill.

All across the globe, they rose. Urborg, Benalia, Llanowar, Shiv, Tolaria, Jamuraa, Keld, Vodalia, Yavimaya-every land everywhere bubbled with the rising dead. None could escape the tide of Yawgmoth. His initial invasion, with plague ships and cruisers, had been only a preparation for the Rathi overlay. The Rathi overlay had been only a preparation for this worldwide acquisition of all black mana. And this worldwide emergence was but a prelude to the true, horrid, beautiful power to come.

It is time. I have waited an eternity for you, Rebbec. You closed me out of Dominaria ninety centuries ago. As I grew to become a god in Phyrexia, you grew to become a goddess in Dominaria. Don't think I don't recognize you, Gaea. Don't think I don't smell your scent and know who you once were and know who you once opposed.

I held you to my heart, Rebbec, thinking you loved me, but you made hate seem like love. It was a trick you'd learned from me. Now I reciprocate.

I open again the portal through which I flung Gerrard and the head of Urza. I follow them like a dog returning on its vomit. I fling open the portal and emerge.

Do you see me, gentle mind? Do you sense what I am? Your eyes no doubt will think me only a black cloud of soot. There is so much more to me, though. My very touch is death. My very scent is decay. My very sight is reanimation. I ooze out across the throne room, my soot fingers toying with the dead ash that lies there.

My soul drifts room to room. A mogg guard crumples onto its face and slowly settles like a melting dessert; an il-Kor cook slumps over his steaming griddle and allows his flesh to fry into place; an il-Dal warrior finds his armor turned to graphite and then finds nothing.

That's what I do. I roll out like the angel of death and decimate whole armies. They fall to bones on the ground and rise again a moment later.

Oh, it is good to rule Dominaria. And through the world, I will take possession of you, my sweet lady, my Gaea, my Rebbec!

Chapter 25.