"Then don't breathe," Bo Levar replied. His eyes twinkled beneath the broad-brimmed pirate hat. Little lightnings on the plume shoved back snapping wires. Bo Levar extended an arm toward the commodore. "Here."

The commodore's mustaches bristled, wiping the glass. "What?"

"Not what, but where," Bo Levar insisted. He did not wait for the commodore to reach out, instead gripping the man's rubbery hand and launching them into a spontaneous planeswalk.

He was none too soon. Even as they stepped from reality, the pneumagog city on the horizon bounced once and came to pieces. Freyalise and Windgrace had detonated their first charge. White air turned into red liquid-a flood of ash and steam and lava and heat.

That reality ceased to be. Bo Levar and Commodore Guff appeared in another, equally daunting reality.

Here, fields of sparking wires rose into a pair of huge drumlins, lateral braces for a gigantic dynamo. The machine loomed a mile into the sky and cast a deep shadow across the two planeswalkers. It was a wind turbine that could spawn cyclones.

"I'll be damned!" Guff said, both interjection and prediction. If the engine started up while they stood there, the commodore and the captain would be sucked in, chewed up, and spewed out. "Damned!"

The tube-shaped engine was fronted by a series of nested fans around a central cone. The fan blades, each thousands of feet long and brutally sharp, could drag in oceans of air, superheat it, and send it jetting out the rear of the machine. Such devices, positioned throughout the mountains of the sixth sphere, provided its gale-force winds.

"This is a hell of a place," muttered the commodore.

"This is Phyrexia," Bo Levar agreed. He swept his hat off and pointed toward the base of the machine. In the wire-strewn hillside lay a dark hollow. Within stood support struts and sabotaged power conduits. "It was even worse before I shut down the turbine."

Guff goggled in surprise. The expression was grotesquely exaggerated by the monocle. "You?"

Bo Levar nodded. "I couldn't set the bomb at its base while I battled the wind. I had enough work to do, fighting off the machine's defenders."

"Which would be-" began Commodore Guff.

Figures rose into the air around the machine. They seemed huge, shabby jellyfish.

"Witch engines," Bo Levar supplied.

The horrid machines floated high and enormous like storm clouds. Titanic spines bristled across their backs. Beneath them dangled hundreds of articulated limbs, each tipped with a barbed claw that could snatch up a whole platoon.

Commodore Guff coughed discreetly into his monocle and said, "I believe you said, old chum, that you were spoiling for a fight, and I could do the bomb work?"

"I believe you said that," replied Bo Levar, "but I agree." He donned his hat again. With a thought, fabric hardened into armor. "Make it quick." Then, with another thought, he 'walked to the witch engines.

Bo Levar set right to work. He cast a net of blue magic out across a witch engine. As all blue magic, this took control of a foe's strengths and turned them to weakness. Where tendrils of power touched, the sharp spines of the witch engine shrank. They reached the pores that had spawned them, and then grew inward. The machine quivered and smoked as spines extended themselves through the vitals of the beast. Quills transfixed the engine, ripping it open. Innards tumbled out in a grisly hail.

Bo Levar spent no time admiring his handiwork, turning toward the next machine. His second spell summoned a storm of ball lightning. Globes of energy swarmed up to crash upon the witch engine. They slid down the spines to splash against the skin of the beast. As more jags raced across it, the engine began to cook. Fingers of lightning jabbed all across it, searing the skin and then ripping it wide.

"He sure made quick work of them," Commodore Guff said, impressed. The thought reminded him of his own task. He tried to snap his fingers, but succeeded only in fusing the rubber together. "Quick work. Damn it. What am I thinking?" He took a step and was there.

As daunting as the great dynamo had seemed from half a mile distant, it was horrifying here at its base. The machine seemed a titan squatting on the world. Its fuselage cast the structural work below in deep darkness. Massive footings, with steel struts as wide around as magnigoth trees, anchored the dynamo. Beneath the wire-covered surface, the support structures delved deeper. Power conduits ran in thick packs across the beams. Many of these wires had been hacked apart, clearing the way inward.

The commodore huffed. "Said he'd disabled the engine. Hacked through it like a man through cane, more like. Sloppy work." The commodore lowered himself into the hewn space. Stepping on a framework of beams over empty blackness, Guff strode inward. All around him, severed wires formed a spitting corridor.

"Don't even need to use my hands-"

The observation was cut short by the impact of a witch engine on the ground outside. The framework beneath Guff bounced. Gargantuan beams moaned. Maggot engines, loosed from the ruptured skin of the witch, scattered outward like spilled beads.

To steady himself, Guff grabbed a double handhold of ruptured wire. Energy snapped at his fingertips but couldn't penetrate the rubber bodysuit. He cast an irritable glance upward.

"All right. I'm hurrying."

Four more unsteady steps, and Commodore Guff reached the bomb. Like the others of its ilk, this incendiary device packed an amazing wallop in a small package. The bomb resided on the nexus plates of five separate load channels. Once this connection was blown, the machine would fall into the darkness beneath it, and a huge rent would open to the seventh sphere.

To set off the bomb would be a simple thing, a mere crossing of wires. There, beneath the brushed-steel shell, the backup ignition wire reached out around the powerstone. Merely touching the wire to the opposite bushing would set off the explosion. The difficulty would be communicating to Bo Levar just when the pirate should step away from his blazing battle. Too soon, and the defenders would swarm the commodore. Too late would be quite literally too late.

"Just have to go tell him," Guff said to himself.

The commodore turned away from the bomb and headed back up the corridor of hissing wires. All around him, narrow filaments emitted points of light, large tubes oozed hydraulic fluids, corrugated vents issued purplish mist, severed cables sparked- Another impact jarred the ground. Guff's foot slipped into darkness. He plunged. His hands reached out to grab something solid-those two thick cables- He did not lay hold of the cables. They laid hold of him, or rather the current in them did. Sensing a willing conduit, energy surged up out of the wires and into the commodore's fingers. It roared through the sinews of his being, sending lightning up his biceps, down his ribs, through his heart, and out along every nerve in his body. His hair stood on end. His mustache bled light. Power crackled across his irises, making them spin like miniature gambling wheels. These were only tangential detours. Most of the power poured through him and into the opposite cable.

Commodore Guff shuddered. His teeth rattled. He flailed, but could not break his hold. The surge was both excruciating and energizing. Despite the havoc it played with his senses, the charge at last cleared the fog from the monocle. His face glowed lantern-bright, and the monocle projected its image up the corridor and out onto the sky.

A sound took hold of the world. It was the unmistakable noise of an engine starting up.

Guff's sun-bright lips mouthed the word, "Oops."

Bo Levar clawed his way through a witch engine. He'd killed this one from the inside out. Now, he had to escape it before it killed him. His fingers tore open the outer skin. His hands grasped the wet membranes and hauled him upward. He flung off a pair of maggot machines that clung to him. With a surge of his feet- augmented by jets of flame from his toes-Bo Levar escaped the beast. It caught fire explosively as he fled into the sky.

There, in the white heavens, he saw a strange omen-a beaming sun with the face of Commodore Guff. If that weren't strange enough, the glowing orb seemed to be saying, "Oops."

Shaking his head, Bo Levar said, "Oh, no."

A quick glance toward the bomb bunker confirmed that the image came from it. The once-black space glared blindingly. Bo Levar tried to planeswalk there, but the turbine's power distorted the spatial geometry. He grasped the edges of his broad-brimmed hat, turned over in midair, and plunged toward the spot. His intent was to save his comrade, but in fact he saved himself.

The wind turbine suddenly began to spin. Gigantic fan blades gripped the air and yanked it into the deep cylinder. Faster, they turned. Wind sluiced into the engine like water down a drain.

Bo Levar tucked his head and redoubled the thrust of his flight spell. Even so, the cyclone tore at his robes, dragging him toward the turbine.

The final three witch engines were in worse shape- nearer to the turbine and more voluminous. One engine hadn't a chance. It slid back toward the dynamo, struck the cone at its center, sloughed from it onto the whirling blades, and was chewed to pieces. Hunks of shredded leg tumbled through the vanes. They pelted the main body and scoured its bristles from it. The body tumbled across the blades until it split open and spilled its maggot machines.

The next witch engine angled against the wind. It made slow progress from the cyclone, and would have escaped but for its long, trailing legs. They swept around in its wake, tilting its body crazily and destabilizing it. It slipped suddenly into the turbine. Impacting with great force, the witch engine disintegrated.

The influx of shattered material clogged the dynamo for a moment. The wind slackened.

Bo Levar soared down to the bomb bunker. Unfortunately, so did the final witch engine. With every bristle intact, the monster pursued Bo Levar. Its claws thrashed the air just above him.

Bo Levar sneaked a glance beneath his streamlined hat, noticed his imminent peril, and, for lack of a better alternative, made frantic breaststroke motions.

A claw lashed down and caught him. Its tendrils pierced his captain's cloak and yanked him upward. Through a forest of other tentacles he passed, on his way toward the ravening gullet. He hadn't the power to slay this beast outright-he'd already single-handedly defeated four-but had the wit to defeat its claws. He reached up into the now pierced and rumpled captain's cloak and, from a special compartment lined with steel tubes, pulled out a cigar. A snap of his fingers awoke sufficient flame to light it. He puffed thrice. Blue smoke curled away from him and wreathed the tentacle. One last long draw, and he jammed the hot end into the creature's leg. No creature enjoys a cigar burn, not even a vasty Phyrexian nightmare, but the pain was only a gnat bite-at first. Bo Levar had selected a special cigar, one rolled with less tobacco and more gunpowder.

The explosion was a small one compared to all the roar and thunder of the turbine, but it was powerful enough to blast the leg in two.

Bo Levar tumbled through the air, his suit still pinned on the severed leg. He'd intended to hand the smoke to Urza after successfully destroying Phyrexia, a kind of planeswalker practical joke. This alternative was almost as pleasant.

If I see that bastard again, I'll give him more than an exploding cigar.

Bo Levar plunged toward the brilliantly glowing crevice where the bomb lay, undetonated. With characteristic finesse, he rolled over in midair and let the severed claw impact the ground. Bo Levar grunted and rolled. He gathered his feet and levered the claw off his clothes. It landed amid nearby wires. Its onetime victim caught a foothold and bounded free. He was lashed a half dozen times by the energies arcing wire to wire but counted these jolts as nothing to what Commodore Guff endured within.

Through the jagged slash in the panel, Bo Levar glimpsed the old fellow, transfixed on a bolt of lightning. He glowed. His hands were spread, and his body seemed a lantern wick.

Bo Levar hurled himself through the open passage. There was no ground beneath his feet, only a network of girders over darkness. As agile as a cat, Bo Levar leaped brace to brace, heading straight for Commodore Guff. He struck him without halting, and felt for a moment the agonizing ecstasy of the current as it sped through him.

The two planeswalkers hurtled on, smoldering like a meteor. They crashed onto a wide support and clung there, as much because of latent energy as from actual design.

Panting, Bo Levar turned his comrade over, grasped that ludicrous monocle, and ripped it open. Out gushed a cloud of steam, revealing a thoroughly manic face. Hair stood in stiff bristles, and the man's eyes rolled in bliss.

"Commodore. Are you all right?"

The fellow shuddered, coughed once, and said, "Let me have another go."

Grimly, Bo Levar nodded his head. "I thought as much." He stood up, hoisted Commodore Guff over one shoulder, and marched toward the bomb.

"Just one more go," the man fairly sobbed.

"Yes," answered Bo Levar. "Just one more, and we go." He reached the bomb, grasped the critical wire, jammed it into the opposite bushing, and spontaneously planeswalked with his passenger.

All around, the air went to pieces.

Chapter 13.

Weatherlight Reborn.

Weatherlight flew above Urborg. She was a thing from another world. Yes, her hull was still magnigoth wood from Yavimaya. Yes, her fittings were still Thran metal from Shiv. But Weatherlight's new configuration was undreamed of on Dominaria, not even by Urza Planeswalker.

Only, perhaps, the silver golem Karn had foreseen this fresh glory. He was seeing a great many things these days, in Dominaria and beyond. His flesh shone mirror bright, counterpart to the gleaming armor of the ship. No longer did he crouch in grimy darkness in the engine room. Weatherlight did not need his mind, for she had her own mind. Now, Karn stood on Weatherlight's amidships deck.

She hadn't forgotten him. In her transformation, Weatherlight had moved the single remaining amidships gun toward the centerline, so that Karn could man it. Once there, the weapon had undergone mitosis, splitting into two identical guns, side-by-side. Both were meant for the silver golem to man. He stood now with one hand clutched in either fire control. The triggers, even, had mutated to fit his large fingers. Sighting arrays crooked inward to allow him a chameleon's split-eyed view of the skies around. The whole embrasure towered above amidships, giving him clear fire in two hundred seventy degrees of arc.

Weatherlight did not need Karn anymore, nor did he need her, but in a way they were more powerfully connected than before. Once they had been parts of a single organism. Now, they were twins born in the same oracular moment.

He was seeing a great many things, as was Weatherlight. The ship's lanterns had transformed into optic devices. They could beam light in chunks of the spectrum, even beyond ultraviolet and infrared. Soon, those lights would scan the chain of islands seeking a man and a goblin. If Gerrard and Squee remained in Urborg, the all-seeing eyes of Weatherlight would find them.

Weatherlight rose higher into the skies. Her engines hummed eagerly, not straining. The heights were her rightful home. She rose into them with silent ease, an air bubble escaping deep seas. The world plunged away. A white cloud descended on the ship. It broke around Weatherlight and whirled through her intakes. She seemed a veiled bride.

Karn nodded gravely. Everything felt right. Never before had the ship been so powerful, never so quiet. The guns in his hands were no longer overdesigned Phyrexian monstrosities, but sleek weapons that would shed air as easily as they hurled fire. Ahead, on the forecastle, two other such guns pivoted, one manned by Tahngarth and the other by Orim. She had put away her healing implements for the tools of war. What transformations! Even Sisay was a new creature. She stood at the helm with a new ferocity in her eyes-determination to see this ship to her destiny.

That destiny barreled toward them with inescapable velocity.

As the cloud fell away, a circle of black shapes took form- Phyrexian cruisers, plague engines, ram ships, dagger boats. They filled the horizon through the four compass points. Not since the opening days of the war had such an armada gathered. The Rathi overlay had made landing craft redundant-until now. Weatherlight drew them. Her power signature radiated across the globe and through the world. Every Phyrexian ship that remained on Dominaria converged on Urborg to rip her down.

Sisay's voice came over the speaking tubes. "Well, Karn, what do you think?"

"We have a destiny," rumbled the silver golem cryptically.

"Do we flee to save the ship for that destiny," Sisay replied, "or do we fight to find that destiny?"

There came a long silence. "Weatherlight has not found Gerrard or Squee. Until she does, she wants to fight. So do I."

Tahngarth's bellowing laugh came through the tubes. "I never thought I would hear you say that, but I am glad of it."

Orim spoke up from her side of the forecastle. "1 never thought I'd hear myself saying this either, but I want to fight too."

"Good," replied Sisay. "Then we're agreed." She gazed out at the new lines of her ship-the cleaving ram at her front, the sinuous balustrades, the lethal guns. "Any suggestions about tactics?"

"Take us to them," Karn said simply. "We'll take care of the rest."

Nothing more needed to be said.

There was no violent lurch, no tremendous thrum of engines overeager to hurl the ship across the skies. Weatherlight was too powerful for that, too intelligent. With quiet grace, she gathered speed. The last remnants of cloud ripped to tumbling rags around her. She darted forward.

Tahngarth in the starboard traces and Orim at port swung about behind their guns. Momentum guided them naturally into position and drew their cannons to a bead on the ship dead ahead. Meanwhile, Karn at amidships stared through diverging optics, eyeing the cruisers to either side of the ship. At the tail, manning the weapon that had become unarguably Squee's, stood a young ensign, white knuckled and intent. He struggled to keep the crosshairs on the vessels aft. Weatherlight so outpaced them that they repeatedly vanished.

Tahngarth spoke for all the gunners. "When do we open fire? What's the range of these new cannonades?"

Sisay's response was wry. "I suggest a test. Select a target and see how close you get."

"Aye," replied Tahngarth eagerly. He lined up one ram ship through the sites. His fingers tightened on the fire controls.

The cannon spoke. It did not roar. It did not blast. It spoke, and the violent certainty of that utterance was death. A column of white-hot energy rolled from the end of the cannon. It cleft the sky like a flashing razor. So straight was the line it cut that it seemed the heavens would split in two.

Watching through the magnifying sight, Tahngarth saw the impact.

The beam crashed into the ram ship and blasted a hole into the thick metal at its front. Steel blossomed outward in broad petals. The energy not expended in that blast spattered out over the rest of the ship. It tore through the fuselage, segmented the superstructure, and struck a power core. An orange ball of fire awoke within. The ship blasted apart, sending out a corona of heat energy. The effect swept wide arms out to embrace two other ships nearby and ignite them as well. Spewing fire and streaming smoke, they edged lower and began a quickening plunge toward the volcanoes below.

"I guess range at thirty miles," Tahngarth said gladly.

Orim shrugged. "Might as well shoot." She might not have been as sanguine about the process as the minotaur, though with a will, she muscled the gun into line with her target and let loose a quick volley. Four short blasts came from the gun. The gleaming energy soared straight toward its target-a lumbering plague engine.

It seemed a black carbuncle in the sky. Through the sight, Orim could see the corrupting spores roll from the monstrous machine. Those were the same sort of spores that had slain hundreds of thousands in Benalia, and tens of thousands in Llanowar, and had killed the singular Hanna. Orim paid back the contagion in kind.

The four blasts slammed into the plague ship. The first struck the nose of the vessel and rolled like a crashing wave up its horny brow, dissolving the thing as it went. The second shot sped straight into one of the plague ports, meant to spew virulence upon the land. Now, the port acted like a scoop, shunting the blast inward to rip out the plague banks. White explosions peeked through the disintegrating shell. The third and fourth rounds impacted simultaneously, one to either side of the ship. They hit the lateral engine banks and gutted them. Cleansed of plague and cored like an apple, the black machine plunged. Even the winds tore it apart as it fell. Phyrexians tumbled out like fleas.

Karn was third to fire-though in truth his twin blasts vaulted away but a split second after the first two. In that split second, Weatherlight had crossed an easy mile, and the ring of foe ships had tightened. Port and starboard, Karn's cannons whooshed. Energy like bundled lightning coursed out toward two Phyrexian cruisers. The blasts spun as they shot through the air, eager to unload their deadly charges.

The first struck its target like a kegel ball, ripping through the cruiser's banks of mana bombards. Shorn conduits sprayed corruption. The ship digested itself. On the opposite side, the other attack vaporized a ship's lateral stabilizer. It listed hard to port and began spinning around its axis. A giant corkscrew, the ship spun and plunged. It augured into the ground and cut a deep, narrow hole.

Staring at both scenes of destruction, Karn nodded.