Among scrawled pages, Bo Levar and Freyalise glimpsed sketches. Some were almost unrecognizable. Some were terrifyingly clear. A few showed the Nine Titans. One even showed Taysir dead. Bo Levar and Freyalise stared openmouthed as the commodore flipped to the page he sought, very near the end of the volume.

"Ah! Here!" he poked the open page. "The death of Windgrace. He gets blown up from within by a lich lord. Too bad, that. And you die." He pointed to Bo Levar. "And you." He pointed to Freyalise. "But only when Yawgmoth emerges and takes over the world."

"Takes over the world!" Bo Levar said. "You approved this?"

The commodore's confusion turned defensive. "What else? Yawgmoth's a right bastard. Who could believe that Gerrard could stop him? Ever hear of suspension of disbelief, old man?"

Bo Levar scowled at his longtime friend. "You can't do this. You can't destroy Dominaria-"

"I'm not doing it!" protested the commodore. "The author and his characters are doing it."

"A history that compels reality!" Bo Levar said. "We're the characters. You have to let us decide this. For once, just once, trust the characters to find their own way."

The commodore said, "I knew you would say that. It's written right here-"

Bo Levar jabbed the commodore's chest. Through clenched teeth, he hissed. "You start erasing from that passage forward. There's no time. You free us up to win this thing, or lose it-but lose it on our own terms-or I'll never speak to you again."

"Of course you won't. You'll be dead."

The pirate grabbed Guff's tunic. "Do it!"

"I don't have an eraser."

"You're a planeswalker! Conjure one!"

"No," snarled the commodore. "It's artistic integrity."

Lost for words, Bo Levar seemed about to pop a blood vessel. He jiggled, his face swollen with anger.

From behind him came a quietly sardonic voice. "I assume, then, you remembered to move your library safely beyond the Nexus. It'd be a shame for the Dominarian Apocalypse to destroy all your books."

Guff silently mouthed, "All ... my ... books ..." An enormous eraser suddenly appeared in his hand. "Bother!"

"Good," Bo Levar said. "Start with this conversation and erase all the way to the end. Make sure you don't miss anything, and don't stop until you're through. Otherwise- all your books ..."

"Every goddamned book," he echoed, nodding feverishly. "Every buggered befuggered one." With that, the commodore 'walked away from the midair conference.

Though he had utterly disappeared, the final two planeswalkers sensed that he was nearby, madly erasing. There came a sudden blurring of recent memory and the vertigo of doubt. The past became a sinking slough. The future became a soaring sky.

Bo Levar smiled as he felt his fate unwritten, moment by moment. He turned toward Freyalise, whose inscrutable visage had not changed a whit, and said, "Well, milady, let us be at it." He bowed deeply.

She who was accustomed to floating above the ground answered, "I go to aid my people. Where do you head?"

Bo Levar shrugged. "I'm a mariner. I fight best at sea."

"But the battle is on land," Freyalise pointed out.

"I'll see what I can do about that," replied Bo Levar enigmatically. Then he winked away.

Freyalise sniffed within her thistledown aura and said, "Sailors." Next moment, she was gone.

Freyalise reappeared in the midst of a vertical battle.

To every side towered the sluggish trunks of magnigoth treefolk. With roots plunged into rich, wet humus and leaves raking the bright sky, the forest guardians were nearly unstoppable. But their leaves had been shredded, and the shredders were warriors formed from the very ground that once nourished them. Even now, mud golems coated the boles thickly, clambering over one another to shred bark and snap branch.

The treefolk had defenders too-Eladamri, a platoon of elves, a small army of woodmen, saprolings, and the ever-voracious Kavu-but these mortal defenders died in their scores and could do little more than burst apart immortal golems. Some baked to clay. More-many more-reformed and rose again.

Freyalise was unglad. She had spent an ice age being unglad, and had become unwilling to spend even a few moments in the same state. This was soil, humus, ground- the dead stuff meant to give life to flora and fauna. Instead, it gave death. There was no greater crime, stepping outside the wheel, reviling the natural order. Mud that would not nourish. Freyalise knew a few tricks to bring this stuff back in line.

Her hands and arms, curled beside her heart, slowly opened outward like the petals of a flower. She extended her reach in silent splendor, and something that seemed yellow pollen drifted out from her. Where those glowing points of magic lighted, they burned through mud golems and penetrated until they reached the molds and lichens that dressed these magnificent trunks. Growth came abruptly to those tendrils. Mudmen lost hold of the boles. They plunged away in great clumps of twenty or thirty, still clinging to the flourishing lichens that had grown beneath them. The beasts struck the ground and spattered, but the moss was not finished. It doubled and trebled and rolled out until it had sucked every last water drop, every last nutrient from the mudmen. They turned to dust.

Freyalise did not yet smile. This was only the beginning. Her magic fertilized a hundred million aerial plants. Their long white roots snaked downward. It seemed the great magnigoths were letting their hair down. Each tendril descended hundreds or thousands of feet until it struck the crawling masses of mud. There, they burrowed like maggots, plunging through dead flesh to seek the living core and take over the whole. The slim fibers thickened upon their rich diet, dragging the vitality out of the ground. As thick as ropes, as thick as men, the vines dragged free, and golems sloughed away in flakes of emptied ground.

Freyalise still did not smile. Her spell had yet to work its greatest effect.

Golden motes of power struck the very roots of the magnigoth treefolk. Each tiny particle of light was like a season of sun. Each mote of magic was like a billion grains of peat. Each droplet of the lady's will was like a water table thousands of feet deep. The spell awakened the slumbering giants. Roots once stilled on bedrock moved. Fists of tree fibers opened into angry, seeking hands.

While below, the striding organs of these treefolk gained new life, the same miracle began above. Glowing particles of magic sank into the stomas of the last leaves and permeated their flesh. Irresistible magic coursed down the network of veins. From leaf to twig and twig to branch and branch to bough and bough to bole, vitality spread. The heads of the great trees shook. Broken boughs fused. Stripped branches budded and bloomed. Where once ruin had ruled, tender green shoots emerged to grab the sun and pull its power into the treefolk.

The wave of rejuvenation swept down from the treetops and up from the roots. Mud golems fell in ashen rain all around. The great defenders of Yavimaya rose from the sloughs that had claimed them and advanced across demonic lands.

Freyalise smiled. Then she was gone, 'walking to another dying wood.

It was a strange scene, but ever since Bo Levar had thrown in his lot with Urza Planeswalker, he'd gotten used to strange scenes.

Metathran fought below, blue shoulders rippling beneath clinging muck. They seemed creatures caught in quicksand, except that this swallowing earth was alive and had risen up a volcanic mountainside to slay a whole division. While a thousand Metathran thrashed amid mudmen, one Metathran stood in rigid attention atop a rocky outcrop.

Bo Levar stood beside him, caster of the spell that so thoroughly controlled the warrior. The sea captain smiled grimly, shaking his head at the Metathran's latest attempt to jiggle free.

"Relax. I'm on your side."

"Then why prevent my return to battle?" the Metathran gasped out.

Bo Levar blinked, and his expression showed that he had suddenly realized the simplicity of his captive. "Because if I let you join them, you would die with them. I want to save all of you-"

"Yawgmoth!" blurted the Metathran. "That's what Yawgmoth would say."

"Yawgmoth?" Bo Levar thumped his captain's uniform. "You think Yawgmoth dresses this well? You think Yawgmoth dresses at all? Listen, I just need to know one thing-can you guys survive water? Lots of water? A flood?"

"Never reveal a weakness," the Metathran recited.

Bo Levar could not help laughing. He gazed up into the empty heavens and sighed, "Can I get some help here?" Turning back to his captive, Bo Levar said, "Look, since you've got blue skin, I assume you can function in water- but I've got to know because I want to save you guys and kill these mud things. Oh, why am I wasting time-?" Bo Levar made a sign in the air, and magic energy drifted from his fingers into the gaze of his captive.

A light of belief twinkled in the Metathran's eye. "Part of our makeup comes from the blood of blue dragons." He flipped his eyes up toward the sigil tattooed across his forehead. "This is the name of the blue dragon sacrificed to bring us into being. We are told that we can always go aquatic to escape a futile battle and emerge again to fight elsewhere."

Bo Levar nodded and slapped the Metathran on the shoulder. "See? That wasn't so hard. All you needed was a little coercion." No sooner had his hand left the warrior's shoulder than Bo Levar stepped out of existence.

He reappeared in a nearby place-a depth of ocean a hundred miles away. Near Urborg, atolls kept the sea at a few trifling meters, but here, the water was a mile deep. Here, Bo Levar appeared a half mile down.

It was dark and cold, and the pressure would have instantly killed a mortal. These were Bo Levar's seas. He had learned to trust them. Ever since Argoth-ever since the mortal Captain Crucias had ridden out that horrible, blinding storm and become the planeswalker Bo Levar-he had never again mistrusted the sea. Now Bo Levar reached out with his hands, his power, to take hold of a cubic mile of ocean. It was twenty thousand tons of water-more than could be hauled by the combined armadas of the world, and yet a manageable payload for a single planeswalker. He took hold of that water. It welcomed him as all banal things welcome the enlivening touch of the divine. Bo Levar planeswalked back to the embattled hillside.

A legion of Metathran had battled twelve legions of mudmen there. Suddenly, though, the battle was underwater. Metathran thrived in water-so he had just learned-whereas mud golems turned to silt and then nothing. The vast cube of water stood there a moment on the volcanic hillside, solid and transparent like a hunk of gelatin. Then gravity took its toll. The corners and edges of the cube turned to whitewater. The heights of it slumped and curled down in great waves. The sides bulged and broke upon the hillside. The vast belly of the wave remained intact and, pregnant with darting blue shapes, rolled gently toward the sea.

Bo Levar was within that lower half. He allowed his physical body to remain, to roll with the tidal wave as it sought its level. All around him, mud golems curled in silty ribbons, and the glad forms of Metathran swam. Even as Bo Levar and his benefactors rolled out to sea, he knew that he would bring such sanctuary to more blue folk.

While Freyalise awoke growth among her green minions, and Bo Levar awoke seas among the blue, Lord Windgrace fought with fire and death.

Any other planeswalker who had spent an eternity battling the black infestations of Urborg would have appeared among the Keldons with great speeches. Not Windgrace. He made but one utterance there in the midst of the battling army. He roared.

Lord Windgrace did not appear in his human incarnation. All the while that he plunged from the sky, he sloughed the characteristics of humanity-the upright posture, the broad chest, the long hind legs. By the time he had reached ground, Lord Windgrace was fully feline. He was more than that. He was huge. The average panther was a creature twelve stone and four feet high. This beast was twelve hundred stone and a hundred feet high. The roar that came from its jaws was incendiary. The sound began in a heart that had fought forever for the freedom of Urborg. The tone was deepened and broadened by the other heart beside it, the dead heart of Taysir. It rose up a mammoth throat and emerged from fangs gleaming to slay.

The roar itself did slay. The Phyrexians before Windgrace fell back and ignited and exploded in a narrow fan. Had these been mudmen, they would have instantly become terra cotta warriors. As creatures of scale and glistening oil, they became fireworks. Huge and hateful, Lord Windgrace pounced in their decimated midst. His fangs closed on and destroyed ten more Phyrexians. His forepaws crushed another score of the beasts. Even his lashing tail shattered the monsters all around.

But the roar was deadliest of all. With that roar, the Keldon army around Windgrace surged forward. They had always taken their strength from fire, and this was divine fire. They charged the Phyrexian host and hewed with axes and impaled with halberds and consumed them like a fire consumes dry paper.

Madly, he erased. Madly, yes, for what editor erases so fervently the words an author has written? What editor allows his author to write a hundred thousand words only to erase ten thousand of them? Only an editor desperate to get history right.

"Bother."

Commodore Guff crouched upon a gnarl of basalt and feverishly applied the massive eraser to the history of the Dominarian Apocalypse. There went a sentence about the death of Eladamri. Just after, Liin Sivi no longer died, for all the way through she had been paired to him as though she were his gimp leg. And what about this paragraph where Bo Levar lights a cigar in a swamp and is blown to smithereens? Guff didn't even erase that bit, but crumpled up the whole page and threw it into the lava that seeped from a nearby crack. What else had to go to make this goddamned trilogy work out? How about the legal material, and the dedication and acknowledgments? After all, who gives a goat's droppings for the editor of an epic? Commodore Guff hurled those pages aside and saw them catch fire. He threw out the teaser too. It had given away the destruction of Dominaria anyway, something that was completely undecided at this point.

Commodore Guff turned his face from the ravaged book in his hand and looked skyward. "This would never have happened when I was in charge of continuity."

Of course, he'd never been addicted to happy endings. You bring the Nine Spheres of Phyrexia to attack the single sphere of Dominaria and you want a happy ending? What idiot thought this up? Still, how could the commodore argue with Bo Levar? Bad ending, and he lost not only every book written about Dominaria, but every book that might be written about her-including a few bestsellers of his own. So, out with the eraser, and out with the doom.

"I can't kill Sisay after all," the commodore groused to himself. In mild consolation, he muttered, "She was always cooler than Gerrard anyway." He shook his head. "Why can't I kill Squee, though? Does the world really rely on that little poop?" Despite his sad words, he rubbed the eraser across pages of material.

With each swipe, Guff removed thousands of words of the future, leaving it open to the characters to decide for themselves. It was a horrifying experience, but he would endure it to save his library.

His hand paused only when he reached the fate of Yawgmoth. In the original draft, Yawgmoth had conquered all. Now, who knew? With two broad stokes, Commodore Guff removed the passages.

Tears rolled from the commodore's eyes as he wished for an editor who could save the world.

It was his last thought. The cloud of black death swallowed and obliterated him.

There was nothing left to stop him. No portals, no lava, no mountains, no heroes. No plug could hold him in. The plague engine jammed in the mouth of the caldera caved in on itself and fell. Yawgmoth rose.

He rolled across the skies. Yawgmoth spread into the world with the boiling alacrity of a volcanic eruption. Black and huge, his soul rolled outward from the crown of the Stronghold mountain. His simple touch liquefied the western face of the volcano, turning rock to ash. He obliterated a thousand Metathran in that first moment, and five hundred minotaurs. In the second moment, everything from the cone to the sea had been scoured of life. No warrior, no animal, no plant, no microbe survived. He rolled out over the sea, and the shadow he cast slew merfolk in their hundreds and fish in their thousands and plankton in their millions.

These feuding armies meant nothing. Yawgmoth would wipe them away like figures drawn in chalk. All that would remain was the blackness upon which they had been written, the blackness of Lord Yawgmoth.

In a mere moment, he had spread across a square mile. In two, he had engulfed four square miles, and then sixteen, and then four hundred fifty-six, and then two hundred seven thousand nine hundred thirty-six square miles. In mere minutes, Yawgmoth would encompass the world.

As he took the skies, so his dead took the lands. Soon none would stand against him.

What else can be expected when gods do battle?

Chapter 28.

Disparate Salvations.

Weatherlight cut apart the sky. She seemed an avenging angel. From her streamed a deadly glory that smote away blackness. She was a second sun. Where she shone, shadow creatures melted. Armies of mortal monsters could not withstand her awful presence. None could survive her.

Until Yawgmoth. The squelching cloud rushed out with uncanny speed, faster than Weatherlight. It spread in every direction, ink through water, turning all to black. It reached heavenward to tear down the sun, and landward to scoop the heart out of the very world.

The radiance of Weatherlight was nothing next to the darkness of Yawgmoth. Shadows slain by the great ship were resurrected by the Lord of Shadows. Armies saved by Weatherlight were destroyed by Death Incarnate. All that lay in Yawgmoth's path died. The crooked geometry of the volcanic cone had sheltered some few of the troops, but Yawgmoth soon would have them too, soon would have the whole world.

"That old bastard," Gerrard growled. "That old goddamned bastard!" Into the speaking tube, he shouted, "Sisay, you up for one last showdown?"

"I've already got the coordinates laid in," she answered. "To the heart of that thing, right?"

Gerrard's teeth glinted in the failing light of the world. "There's my captain!"

"It won't work," Urza interrupted. "You can't kill him by flying into the cloud and shooting."

"So says the decapitated head," Gerrard said. "Command crew, let's see a show of hands. Who wants to blast the heart out of this monster?" Gerrard glanced over his shoulder.

Tahngarth's arm jutted high in the air. Karn lifted both silver arms from the cannon he manned. Sisay brandished a fist above the helm, and Orim stood in the hatch of the main deck, giving the high sign. Even Squee, out of sight beyond the helm, made his wishes plain.

"Squee kill Yawgie for ya!"

Gerrard's brow canted. "Urza, you didn't vote."

"Always with you, it is jokes. Always cocky, devil-may-care, seat-of-the-pants flying."

"And who made me? Who bred the cockiness into me? And, let me tell you something, Urza Planeswalker-the devil does care, and the seat of my pants and a few jokes are all I've got to fight him. For that matter, they are all you've got to fight him. So if I were you, I'd shut up and enjoy the ride. We've got a god to kill."

Weatherlight swooped beneath their feet, pitching down toward the spreading blackness. The epicenter of cloud remained at the volcano's peak. Sisay had trained the helm on that spot, and the ship responded eagerly. The engines roared, adding their thrust to the inexorable pull of Dominaria. From the Gaea figurehead spread a gossamer envelope that would keep them all safe from Yawgmoth's corruption.

Gerrard pumped the treadle beneath his cannon and listened as it hummed with white-hot energy. Across the forecastle, Tahngarth's hooves woke the same fire in his weapon. Karn at amidships, seeming only another module of the massive weapon he wielded, charged up his gun as well. At the stern, Squee's cannon was so well primed it wept tracers of white energy in their wake. These would be the most important shots any of them ever fired. These would perhaps be the last shots, too.