Weatherlight Gains a New Crew.

To any other race, this boiling sea of lava would have been hell. To Sister Dormet and her fellow rock druids, it was more like heaven.

They stood on the welling tide of molten rock. Their hands clutched the hilts of their hammers, which in turn rested on the bubbling stuff. From their mouths rang songs that summoned the power of the world and made the dwarfs indestructible.

All around, magma mounded. Columns of superheated stone shot upward. Some licked the flowstone core of the Stronghold. The lower mechanisms were half-melted, half-caked with basalt. New stalactites clung all across the base of the fortress.

For every glob of rock that struck the Stronghold, a hundred assaults came from above. Rathi beasts thronged the rails and hurled whatever came to hand-shattered hunks of wall, dungeon slops, even the occasional mogg. All cascaded toward the ring of dwarfs. Few of the attacks reached their targets. Most materials flash-burned to nothing as they fell. Only hunks of flowstone plunged onward to crack against the stony dwarfs and bound away. Other, more determined attacks came from artillery nests along the Stronghold's perimeter. They had been designed to put down riots in the mogg warrens and so consisted of heavy crossbow entrenchments. Bolts darted down toward the dwarfs, struck them, and pinged away like so many bothersome flies.

Sister Dormet raised her gaze, just in time to catch a quarrel in the eye. Its angry metal rang off her sclera and ricocheted down to plunge through the flood of magma. She glanced toward the teeming decks of the Stronghold.

A new group had arrived. From this distance, they seemed no less savage than the Rathi monsters, but there was something different about them: blue skin, elven angularity, horns too white and proud .. ..

Sister Dormet smiled through her song.

Eladamri and his coalition forces had emerged from the depths of the Stronghold. They fought on two sides, hemmed in by beasts. The warriors nearest the rail beckoned outward, as if summoning someone-or something.

The rock druid lifted her gaze higher still. There, in the yawning darkness, hovered a great red eye. No, it was not an eye, but the hull of a ship. It circled slowly, banking toward the coalition army.

Eladamri had heeded Sister Dormet's warning. He and his troops would escape the conflagration after all. The rock druids were prepared to die and slay any in the Stronghold. It made Sister Dormet glad her friends would live.

"We all gonna die!" shouted Squee, in the midst of the coalition forces.

It didn't take a military genius to see that he was right.

Gerrard's army was trapped. Minotaurs and elves fought off a blackguard of il-Vec warriors on the left. Keldons and Metathran battled a division of il-Dal warriors on the right.

The prisoners in the middle darted into combat wherever they could. Gerrard and Sisay meanwhile leaned precariously over a rail that glowed with blistering heat. They frantically signaled Weatherlight, which fought storms of volcanic air. The ship seemed hardly able to stay aloft, let alone fly to their rescue.

The most ominous sight, though, was reserved for Squee, in the rearguard. The coalition army had just ascended a long passageway, at the base of which rolled and coiled and coalesced a sooty cloud.

"What de hell is dat!" Squee squealed, pointing at the inky murk. No one listened.

In frustration, he kicked the dead body of a mogg. It tumbled patiently down the long flight of metal steps. Squee watched it go, seeing its blood paint patterns on the mesh. At the foot of the stairs, the body lulled into the black flood. Its flesh melted away from gray bones. Then the corpse sank to nothingness.

"What de hell is dat stuff?" Squee repeated to himself. He crouched, waggling his fingers before his face. "Melt skin to nothin' ... melt goblin skin to nothin'-!" His ruminations stopped as something rose from the brackish cloud. It was the mogg-or something worse, made out of the mogg's flesh. As ugly as the creature had been before, it now was downright hideous. Rotten muscle hung from chalky bone. Empty eye sockets glowed with unholy green light. Fangs seemed all the longer for the gums eaten away from them. Claws raked the steps as the creature ascended.

"Gerrard! Sisay! Anybody!" Squee called as he backed involuntarily into the crowd. "We gots trouble!"

They haven't gotten far. Look at them: saviors of Dominaria? Skittering rats!

Gerrard Capashen stands at the rail like a maiden beginning a voyage, waving tearfully to her beloved, hand clutching no phlegmy kerchief but rather the phlegmy head of a planeswalker.

There is Sisay, improved by deprivation in my dungeons. My, do her muscles cord as she gestures for help. How they will cord when my presence touches them. They will turn to jute strings.

What of Karn, the glorious silver man? I had made him into a ball-peen hammer to smash goblins. What a bloodless, feinting thing he was then. He seems to have learned my lessons- pulling arms from their sockets and heads from their necks. I taught him to damn the comfort of peace and wallow in the ecstasy of war.

Is that the mighty Tahngarth, so incompleat, so brawny and twisted and half-done? He should have let me finish with him.

Now I will finish them all.

I rise. My black heart is yet pouring from the portal behind me. The core of my being still emerges from Phyrexia. Enough of me is here, though-one talon is enough of me to slay these tiny things. Hatred boils up in me. Hatred and something born of hatred .. ..

Figures take form. They are no longer moggs or il-Vec or il-Dal. They have the pelts of vampire hounds, the black blood of spider women, the fangs of pit fiends, the claws of vat priests. Where their eyes should be are only holes lined with teeth. Born of my boiling hatred, they are my brain children, and they will tear apart these pallid heroes. I will feel every slash, every blow. I will taste every victory, as I taught Tsabo Tavoc to do long ago. And when they are felled, every last one, I will lick across their corpses. Their defeat will assure me the world.

I rise, and before me rise the howling hordes of my hatred.

Another jolt shook Weatherlight. Orim clutched tightly to the helm, in part to keep from being thrown down, but more because she wanted answers.

What is it? Plasma bolts? Bombards? I don't see anything hitting us. What's hitting us?

The ship replied, Thermals, off the magma below. Every second, another cubic mile of lava wetts up into this chamber, and a cubic mile of air roars out the top. As that air goes from cold to broiling, it grabs us and shakes us like a rag.

"Great," Orim hissed under her breath, not wanting the ship to hear.

Weatherlight was too busy anyway, bucking under a new assault. Her brave young crew dangled and jerked in their gunnery harnesses. Below decks, the other skyfarers were beans in a maraca.

Can't we do something? Orim asked, turning the wheel in a vain hope to bring the prow toward the Stronghold. Gerrard and Sisay and everybody are down there. They're dying.

The ship's response came with great effort. Could you fight a battle during an earthquake?

The analogy struck Orim. Air was Weatherlight's medium, as ground was the medium of human warriors, and water the medium of the Cho-Arrim. Air and water were both fluid, though, both dynamic, capable of great turbulence, and of great calm. If only Orim could use her water magic to aid the ship.

She spit on her hands, taking a tighter grip on the helm. Don't worry, she told the ship, the spittle is more conduit than anything.

Before a reply came, Orim, was deep in meditation. Her mind flowed out into Weatherlight. She was a gossamer presence, drifting through the core of the ship and bringing it the ancient wisdom of the Cho-Arrim. Orim evoked a memory of calm-the Navel of the World-where wellsprings sent pure water down over ancient stone. Here it was that Cho-Manno had hidden with his people from the onslaught of the Mercadians. In a place such as this, Weatherlight would hide from the buffeting heat that sought to destroy her.

The ship understood. Kindred souls need only a few words to share a great thought. Weatherlight remembered the lagoon and the Navel of the World. She made her own memory of that place into a reality.

A shift envelope seeped from the grains of Weatherlight's hull. In this envelope, Weatherlight created a calm, cool, placid sky all around herself. While the rest of the volcano boiled, Weatherlight floated in tranquil air.

Orim opened her eyes, somewhat surprised by the peace that filled the ship. The air even smelled like the forests of the Cho-Arrim-verdant and warm, laced with silver fire. The young crew hung in awe in their gunnery harnesses. They breathed again.

Weatherlight's voice was wry in Orim's mind: Well, Captain, now that we have such favorable seas, where do we fare?

There, responded Orim, pointing past the glass of the bridge toward the crowded rails of the Stronghold. Take us to the true captain.

Aye.

"What the-!" Gerrard growled as he glimpsed the new monsters. He thrust through the crowd of prisoners. In one hand, the great commander held his halberd blade. In the other hand, Gerrard held the head of Urza. Prisoners parted before him, fearful of the things below. "What the hell are they?"

"Dat's what Squee said!" the goblin snapped as he backpedaled.

"Moggs," grunted Tahngarth dismissively. The striva in his hands glinted like a smile. "Easily dismantled."

Grizzlegom beside him seemed a mirror image. One had been bleached in the belly of a gargantua, and the other in the belly of Yawgmoth. "Especially when two bovine sons stand hoof and hoof."

"Don't be so sure," Eladamri replied. Advancing, he eyed the unnatural creatures. "These are undead."

"It's more than that, even," interrupted Urza. "These are the body of the Ineffable. These monsters are the claws of Yawgmoth."

There was time for no more. The beasts were upon them.

Fangs glinted hungrily. Claws sparked upon the mesh floor. Arms reached in scrofulous desire toward the Dominarians. Like rabid rats, the creatures hurled themselves on waiting flesh.

Gerrard swung his soul-reaping weapon. The halberd sliced air and then scab and then skull. It split the brain of one of the horrid defenders, cutting the left hemisphere cleanly away. Pustulant and pathetic, the monster slumped.

Nearby, Sisay slew one of the beasts with a thrust of her cutlass. The curved blade drove through desiccated skin and into nested organs and turned them all into ground sausage. The fiend crumpled. It fell like a bag of bones, but out of that wreck issued a black and sullen steam, like the venom of a viper.

Beside the captain, Eladamri fought furiously. Here was a man who had battled on and beneath the ice of a Keldon glacier. Now he fought in the heart of an Urborg volcano. His anger seemed only stoked by the heat. His blade darted like a stooping falcon. It decapitated one foe, and the elf's stomping boot removed the life within the severed head. His sword then switched back to drive through the empty eye of another undead thing. Unnatural teeth shrieked along the steel as he drove the tip through bone and brain and all. It fell to the ground. Eladamri leaped atop it. The Seed of Freyalise bashed her foes down to humus.

Liin Sivi fought with equal rage. Her toten-vec lodged in the breast of a Phyrexian trooper. Even as the monster toppled forward, Liin Sivi yanked the blade free. Its lethal chains rang bell-like as they tugged the edge from riven pates. She grasped the weapon out of the air and brought it chopping through the neck of another attacker.

In stark contrast to her elegant swordplay, Tahngarth spitted beast after beast on his twisted horns. He seemed to know that these monsters were the grasping limbs of Yawgmoth himself, and took great glee in goring them and whipping his head until their dead insides were mush.

Karn was perhaps the most amazing. His massive fists became tandem cudgels. Claws and fangs did nothing against Karn, only added hash marks recording his kills. One died as his fingers closed on its spine. Another ceased to be when huge palms converged on either side of its head. A third and a fourth expired under stomping feet. Whatever else he had become, Karn had learned the power of war.

It would not be enough, though. The black cloud disgorged warrior after warrior, an endless troop of them. Worse, still, the cloud itself rose. With each lapping second, it enveloped another stair tread, one step closer to dissolving Gerrard and his heroes whole.

"Done for!" shouted Squee.

Tahngarth hissed, "Not yet!" and his striva drew an exclamation point down through a monster.

Gerrard shouted, "What can we do? His supply of dead is endless." "We can fight and fall as heroes," Liin Sivi responded sharply. A quick glance at her hawk eyes showed that she was not kidding. Her hand-held toten-vec flashed like a machete. "We can kill them before they kill us."

A massive boom behind them preempted further discussion. Gerrard turned and smiled. Weatherlight had pulled up along the rail and dropped her gangplank. Prisoners raced up the striated wood to the relative safety of the ship. The coalition army dwindled between their pressing enemies.

"Get aboard," Commander Gerrard shouted, waving his troops up the gangplank. Yes, it meant he was particularly vulnerable here upon the deck, but to one side stood Eladamri and Liin Sivi, and to the other Grizzlegom and Sisay. How could he wish for greater allies against evil? "Get aboard, all of you. We're getting out of this place."

The song resounded in Sister Dormet's throat, and her eyes filled with the glory of Weatherlight's departure.

Heavy laden as of old in Serra's Realm-even the rock druids knew that story-Weatherlight drew away from the Stronghold. So hasty was her retreat that the massive gangplank that had ushered all these refugees aboard toppled toward the lava below. Its wood caught fire only halfway to the magma and burned away completely before it struck.

Sister Dormet could only smile. The rest of Weatherlight and her new crew lifted away from the doomed Stronghold.

Already, lava inundated the lower levels. Flowstone nanites melted into the slurry of magma. The rising tide of red had engulfed the dungeons and laboratories, recently vacated of victims. Vat priests burned like wicks among churning tides of stone. With every second, another cubic mile of the stuff boiled upward, summoned by the chants of the dwarves. Soon, all the Stronghold would be lost.

Even in this moment of joy, as the horrid fortress sank beneath incinerating waves and Weatherlight fought skyward above, something terrible began. From every porthole, from every colonnade, a black cloud issued. It was darker than ink and coagulated the very air. Something emerged from the doomed station, something or someone who had planned this moment for millennia. It was unmistakable, the black cloud that rolled out and up and obscured all.

It could only be Yawgmoth, come to possess the world.

Sister Dormet lowered her eyes. The chant on her lips grew desperate.

Chapter 26.

Straggle for the Very World.

Weatherlight rose through a black, incinerating space. Though her lanterns sent out shafts of light, they extended only a few thousand feet before being swallowed in shadow. A cone of sooty rock surrounded them. An impenetrable cloud welled below. A disruption field lurked above.

Gerrard stood at the prow rail, the head of Urza lifted before him. "What do you see, Urza?" he asked urgently.

"1 see blackness," he replied raspily, "as do you."

To starboard there came a snarl. Tahngarth stood in his gunnery traces, shoving the fire controls upward. The barrel jabbed down toward the moiling cloud. His fingers squeezed. The cannon spoke. Its now-familiar radiance stabbed out. Blinding and blistering, the column of energy plunged to the cloud. It struck. Light splashed into the blackness, which seemed to bubble around it a moment. The charge spent itself. It disappeared beneath the tenebrous vapor.

"That will do no good," Urza said quietly.

Tahngarth glared at the head. "It felt damned good." Another charge plunged from his weapon.

Urza's voice was weary. "Natural light-no matter how intense-is no match for preternatural darkness. You can't kill him that way."

"Him?" Gerrard echoed.

"That is Yawgmoth."

Gerrard stared into the pit. His eyes narrowed angrily. "We escaped his world, so now he is entering ours." A smile spread grimly across Gerrard's lips. "I'm not out of tricks yet."

He strode to his radiance cannon, wedging Urza's head into its tripod base and strapping on the traces.

Into the speaking tube, he called, "Sisay, take us up through the disruption fields. Weatherlight, do whatever magic you did to get us through before. Everybody else- hold on."

"You heard that, folks," Sisay called back. She clutched the helm all the tighter. "Grab hold of something." She spun the helm and pulled back on it.

Weatherlight banked and ascended. From the Gaea figurehead, a scintillating aura emerged. It danced out along the rails and gleamed as it went. The energy traced every line of the ship, every fold of armor. Reaching the stern, power expanded outward into a shift envelope. Energy picked at the disruption field. It teased away the warp and weft of magic, tearing and tattering. Weatherlight clove upward into the field. Its riven strands dragged like fringe across the shift envelope.

On deck, Gerrard, Tahngarth, Karn, and Squee watched in slack-jawed awe as the ship moved through the barrier.

Their fingers lingered in the fire controls of their cannons, though their eyes roamed the hissing magic.