Four guns fired, six ships obliterated. Weatherlight's arms were awesome indeed. Directly before her, a wide avenue had been cut, with clear air beyond it.

Weatherlight banked, swinging away from the vacant space and thundering toward a new line of menace.

"What are you doing?" Tahngarth barked before he could stop himself.

"I'm being captain," came the response over the tubes, "First Mate."

"My apologies, Captain," Tahngarth replied.

"I'm being captain, and I'm getting in on the fun," Sisay shot back. "Defensive fire. We're going to ram."

Flack rose suddenly before them. Enemy vessels disappeared behind a wall of black-mana webs and plasma bombs.

Weatherlight's forward cannons came to life. They hurled white fire across the heavens. It boiled plasma beams into oblivion. It churned black mana until the mixed charges exploded. The once-impenetrable wall of destruction was suddenly breached, and Weatherlight vaulted through.

An even more imposing wall loomed beyond: a plague engine. The most massive ships in the Phyrexian fleet, plague engines were called by the common folk "harbingers." When their scabrous outlines appeared in the distance, they foretold death-manifold and inescapable death. Now, the machine of death itself could not escape.

Weatherlight sliced like a scalpel through the heavens. The Gaea figurehead bore toward that mass of twisted metal. With Hanna's all-seeing eyes and defiant chin, she drove on. Like the world-soul herself taking revenge for all the injuries inflicted on her, the Gaea figurehead plowed into the plague engine.

She cleft through thick metal armament and plunged deeper. She hurled back flowstone as if it were an ocean wave. Weatherlight cut through the plague engine. Fetid cells showed in cross-section. In some, creatures stood at guard, too surprised even to flinch as the great ship tore past them. In others, Phyrexian crews worked great machines, also bisected by the tearing ship. Deeper, in the command core, shouted orders were drowned by the imperatives of failing metal and dying monsters. Unslowing, unrepentant, Weatherlight plunged deeper, a knife seeking the heart.

She found it. The engine was a huge thing. It straddled the central drive conduits and proliferated in endless matrices of cog and piston. Weatherlight tore through them all. Her keel punctured the engine's casing and cut a long trench along its top. Raw energy welled up behind her and spilled out through the room, dissolving everything. Weatherlight was too fast to be touched, though. As the core went critical, hurling fire in every direction, Weatherlight already rammed her way along the exhaust lines and out the stern of the craft.

She emerged in a shower of fragmented metal, which devolved quickly into a storm of energy. Metal melted. Air itself was spent. The harbinger bled smoke from its every manifold. It turned magnificently and began a shuddering plunge.

Sisay whooped at the helm and stood Weatherlight on end. The ship rose with eager speed, pulling away from the ring of destruction. She had destroyed seven ships now, but hundreds remained. They formed a sluggish iris below, tightening as though in response to some blinding light.

"This is fun, but there's got to be a faster way," Sisay said.

"Take us along the ring," Tahngarth replied through the tube. "Strafe them. They're too close to each other to draw an effective bead, and we'll have full use of our guns."

"They'll break formation," Sisay replied.

"They're too slow. We'll get most of them with cannon blasts. You can slice through any others."

Sisay's smile was audible through the tubes. "I'm game."

The ship leveled off and dived toward the Phyrexian line. Already, they had begun to break formation. They had thought to surround Weatherlight in a circle of death. Now, the circle had become their own death. Even though some ships sped inward and some rose to engage their mercurial foe, most remained in that long black arc that Weatherlight would erase from the world. She dropped like a hammer. Before her went fire from six of her seven cannons. Only her tops gunner couldn't acquire a target. The belly gunner laid down a white highway beneath the ship. Even the tail gunner stood in his traces, blasting away at ships to stern. But the greatest damage came from Tahngarth, Orim, and Karn. Their weapons blazed so hotly that the barrels were little distinguishable from the brilliant stuff they hurled.

Tahngarth's first shot doused the center of a Phyrexian cruiser, eating the ship away. It fell in separate sections, each trailing a severed part as gruesome as a crushed limb. Orim's blast clutched fistlike around a ram ship's bridge and wrenched the thing wholly from the superstructure.

Thus geeked, the ship listed and tumbled. With his starboard gun, Karn incinerated a squadron of fleet dagger boats that had been rising to attack Weatherlight. They dropped in spinning hunks toward the ground. Karn's port gun hurled luminous fire into the tail flukes of a cruiser that was turning to attack. The added power propelled the vessel into a neighboring craft. They crunched together, the cruiser digging a deep well in the side of its counterpart.

The next plague engine was Sisay's. She steered low, bringing the figurehead and keel in for a lethal slash. Undulled by the first assault, the keen edge of Weatherlight cleft the upper deck of the plague engine. She cut a deep, long laceration among spiny protrusions. She crushed Phyrexians on her way and shattered spore banks. As she passed, Weatherlight sterilized the virulence with her roaring engines. The mortal wound struck, Sisay pulled the ship up away from the bristling carcass. It was little more than that now, deeply gutted and failing in the skies.

"It's like shooting fish in a barrel!" she shouted through the tubes. "They aren't even firing back!"

"They can't," came the rumbled reply from Karn amidships.

"What do you mean?" Sisay asked.

Even as he unleashed a pair of blasts from the cannons he held, Karn said, "Look at them. Look at the Phyrexians on deck as we pass."

Within the glass-enclosed bridge, Sisay leaned toward the optics arrays that gave her a view from numerous angles around the ship. As Weatherlight hurtled low over a Phyrexian cruiser and laved white fire on her, the beasts that stood on her outer decks and rails made no move to fight. Instead, they stared up in awe.

"What are they doing?" she wondered aloud.

"It's one of Weatherlight's greatest defenses. Fear. Wonder. Awe. She is a god to anyone who sees her fly, who sees her fight. And what mortal is ready to fight a god?"

Sisay looked again. It was true. They worshiped the ship. Even as she slew them, they worshiped her. "How do you know all this?" Sisay asked reasonably. "Weatherlight has told me," Karn responded. He paused to blast another Phyrexian ship from the skies. "Her scans discovered it. They have discovered one more thing too." "What?" Sisay asked. Karn's voice rumbled with hope. "She's found Squee.

And where Squee is, perhaps we'll find Gerrard."

Chapter 14.

Rock Folk.

The coalition forces had dug in. There was no hope of sealing the main entrance to the Stronghold volcano. They had tried everything from frontal assaults to pincer movements to rockslides above the gate to suicide squads with incendiaries. Nothing worked. Though boulders would cascade down atop the passage, the Phyrexians would dig their way out and emerge fighting, as ubiquitous and tireless as ants.

The coalition forces had dug in.

Minotaurs and Metathran stood in pike arrays before the lines-a living bulwark allowing more permanent defenses to come into being behind them. Keldons and Kavu meanwhile cut parallel lines of trenches into the angry rock, hollowing out the porous stone between rills of basalt. Steel Leaf and Skyshroud elves established archery nests and defensive bunkers every fifty yards. Behind all this impressive work lay supply lines that stretched down over twenty miles of mountain and swamp to the sparkling sea. Only with this wall of warriors and warrens could the defenders of Dominaria keep the Phyrexians at bay.

As extensive as this digging was, it was shallow-six to ten feet deep. On the far side of the mountain, other diggers had been equally industrious, except that their shaft was now two miles deep.

Eladamri crouched in a lightless space beside Liin Sivi, Grizzlegom, and their elf, Keldon, minotaur, and Metathran troops. The tunnel was pitch-black to Liin Sivi's eyes, though her comrades could see heat signatures. Soldiers packed tightly into that alcove, in the lee of a ragged shoulder of stone. Sweat ran down their faces, and they fairly gulped for air. It was nerve wracking to wait this way, like shot in the belly of a bombard.

Just beyond the stony corner, Sister Dormet and her rock druids performed an ancient rite. The sibilant sound of their chants seemed the hiss of a shortening fuse. In moments, there would come a tremendous, mountain-shaking explosion. The cave would fill with flying rock shards. How the dwarfs survived the blast was an utter mystery. No one else dared watch to see.

"This will be the last one," Eladamri said quietly to Liin Sivi. "They say there's just sixty more feet of rock, and this blast will do it. Then you'll have light again."

"Yeah," she replied flatly. "The light of lava. And it won't be just lava in that central chamber. It'll be Phyrexians. They'll pour down this shaft just as they do down the main gate."

"It's our job to make sure they don't." Eladamri smiled in the darkness. "It's another assault on the Stronghold. Just like old times."

Liin Sivi shook her head grimly. "Too much like old times-"

"Plug your ears," warned Eladamri. "Here it comes."

They hunkered down farther, their ears covered and their eyes clamped shut. Even so, they heard the chant reach its fevered pitch.

The ground leaped. A sound shoved painfully against their breastbones, as if each warrior were being squeezed in a giant's fist. Light beamed through clenched eyelids. The shadows of the dwarfs were cast in stark outline against that blinding glare. Then the light vanished, blocked out by a swarm of rock chips filling the hall. Most of the shards pelted straight up the corridor. Many others ricocheted multiply against opposite walls. A smell like lightning charged the air, and dust crowded past. That brutal hail continued for some time. At last when it let up- blinding, deafening, gagging, crushing, suffocating-there had come a definite change to the passageway beyond. Liin Sivi opened her clenched eyes to see-light.

A red luminescence danced along the cave wall. It streamed through dust-charged air. The shadows of the dwarfs loomed large, making them seem the size of men and minotaurs.

While Eladamri, Liin Sivi, Grizzlegom, and their troops breathed once more and eased themselves away from the jagged stone wall, the dwarfs who had enacted the spell stood stock still. It was as if they had expended all their energy in quickening stone and had turned to stone themselves.

"Now's ... our time," gasped out Eladamri. The air no longer smelled stale, but sharp with brimstone. "The Phyrexians will come soon. We must defend our diminutive brethren."

He stepped away from the wall and drew his sword. Liin Sivi came up beside him, her toten-vec considerably more compact than the blades around her. As warriors gained room, they armed themselves and strode toward battle.

Eladamri rounded the shoulder of stone and peered toward the origin of the blast. A long, ragged passageway extended from that spot to a place that glowed in red-the Stronghold cavern. Already, the dwarfs who had instigated the blast trundled up the corridor. They strode, heedless of the molten rock that clung to the ceiling, walls, and floor all around them. They seemed equally oblivious to the Phyrexian monsters that scrabbled into the far end of the passageway and bolted straight toward them.

"Vampire hounds!" Eladamri growled. He remembered the beasts from his first assault on the Stronghold-pony-sized canines with shaggy fur and teeth like poniards. "The dwarfs haven't a chance."

Blinking, Liin Sivi said, "Better look again."

The first vampire hound, its jowls painting the ground in drool, leaped at the lead dwarf. Instead of lifting a weapon or turning to flee, the stalwart fellow only stiffened and stood his ground. The vampire hound came down, its gleeful teeth spread wide.

A clang resounded. Teeth shattered. The hound's maw jammed on the dwarf's head. Momentum hurled the creature forward, ripping off its jaw.

The second hound did little better. With its head bowed, it crashed into the stolid dwarf. What little brain occupied the head of that dog was utterly scrambled by the impact. The beast went down, its clawed feet kicking spasmodically.

Advancing, Eladamri said, "How do they do it? How do they stand up to these monsters?"

"Rock is their element," reminded Liin Sivi. "When threats come, they merely turn to stone."

Eladamri nodded, hands tightening on his sword hilt. "An excellent defense, but we are running an offensive here."

"So are they," Liin Sivi replied.

A third vampire hound bounded around the corner and hurled itself down the passageway. It leaped the bodies of its comrades and the stony dwarf that had laid them low. Instead, it focused its ire on the second dwarf, who surely would not bear the same wards.

Not the same wards, but even more powerful ones. The second dwarf happened to be Sister Nadeen Dormet. Instead of ducking away from the assault, she merely lifted red-glowing hands. There was only one substance that shade-hot lava. Sister Dormet grasped the vampire hound by the throat. Black fur sizzled away. The monster screamed. Sister Dormet's lava hands sunk in until her fingers met around the monster's spine.

It slumped to one side, its tongue lolling from its mouth.

Sister Dormet flung away the hound and strode onward with quiet confidence. Soon, she and her comrades reached the end of the corridor and descended into the broiling space beyond.

"Stony statues and hands of hot lava," Eladamri said, marveling. "Who's protecting whom here?"

"Let's just get to the Stronghold," advised Liin Sivi. Close behind her, ducking to fit through the dwarfish passage, Commander Grizzlegom strode with axe foremost. "Oh, I've been waiting for this moment. A real fight at last!"

"There'll be a thousand real fights in the next few hours," Eladamri replied, though he strode forward with equal glee. He took a deep breath. The air smelled of explosions and power. He smiled savagely. "I'm ready for this too."

Liin Sivi quirked a grin, "I'm glad to be in such ready company. Here we go."

The mouth of the tunnel ahead was suddenly darkened by black shapes-triangular and terrifying. Piggish eyes, uncouth fangs, a thicket of claws, all set in motion by masses of green muscle.

"Moggs!" hissed Eladamri. His folk had eked out a noble existence in the shadow of these hunchbacked brutes, and Eladamri had developed a knack for killing them. "For the Skyshroud!" he shouted and charged the foremost beast.

"For the Vec!" Liin Sivi added, rushing up behind him. "For Hurloon!" Grizzlegom bellowed as he ran. Their troops added their own cries as they surged like lava up that tube.

The lead mogg-no doubt a sergeant, whose rank was based on weight and viciousness-launched itself with a roar. The thing's dubious honor required of it the first kill in its company, and a mogg believed a kill was best gotten by berserker attack. With claws thrust below and teeth spread above, the thing fell on Eladamri- Or on the place Eladamri should have been. He merely melted away from the onslaught, leaving the mogg to bite and maul the air. Sliding to one side, he slashed. The sword passed through ropy muscle, through entrails, through a cartilaginous disk and the spine within.

The mogg came to pieces. Claws and fangs ceased their work in the air. The fiendish light in those squinting eyes went out. By the time Liin Sivi reached it, nothing remained of the sergeant except two lumps of flesh. Eladamri's sword was not greedy, though. He left the next beast for her toten-vec.

The Vec weapon-a curved blade joined to a hand grip-was infamous for ranged attacks in a twenty foot radius. Only its wielders knew it was even more deadly while held in hand.

Liin Sivi met the mogg's teeth with a wickeder blade. Steel shattered enamel. The mogg roared through stumps of tooth. Liin Sivi rammed the blade in the palate and wrapped the chain around the creature's neck. She climbed its thrashing arms, stood atop the hunched shoulders, and yanked. The beast that a moment before thought to bite through her head now only bit the rock floor. Liin Sivi rode it to the ground and hunched over so that Commander Grizzlegom could leap over her.

The minotaur did, too eager to wait his turn. Unlike his two Rathi comrades, Grizzlegom was not well versed in the demeanor of moggs. Also unlike them, he could defeat his prey at their own game.

Grizzlegom lowered his head and charged a mogg. He struck the beast, goring it deeply, and then lifted his head. The impaled mogg smashed against the ceiling of the corridor. Grizzlegom strode on, letting the jagged rock grate the beast down to the bone. By the time he reached the central chamber of the volcano, the creature across his horns was a dead rag.

"Chamber" was too small, too casual a word for the vast expanse where the Stronghold resided. A conic cavern easily ten miles across and ten miles high, the interior of the volcano was lit by a volcanic glow at the center of its floor. Across that rumpled floor, the dwarf druids trundled, heading for the open lava. They had defeated all the beasts that had assaulted them and now passed beneath their notice en route to the column of magma.

Eladamri, Liin Sivi, Grizzlegom, and their troops had a different objective-the Stronghold. It hovered above them like the pelvic bones of a titan. The lowest level of the Stronghold was an arching mass of ivory that stretched into bristling clumps of horn. Atop it rested metallic decks affixed to more organic architecture. The whole of the structure, brutal and barbaric, occupied eighty cubic miles there in the heart of the mountain. The center of all that horrific power was the throne room of the evincar, the throne room of Crovax.

The smile on Eladamri's face grew only more vicious. He turned to Liin Sivi, who emerged with toten-vec coiling about one arm. "Do you remember doing this once before?"

Her teeth showed as well. "This day will not end as that day did."

"It will start much the same way," Eladamri remarked, pointing to the wide causeway that led to the gate called Portcullis. The flowstone bridge bristled with moggs and vampire hounds and il-Vec and il-Dal warriors eager to engage the invaders.

Grizzlegom charged out into the cavern and, panting happily, joined his comrades. "What's the prospect?"

"Excellent," Eladamri quipped, "if you like fighting." "Excellent," echoed Grizzlegom.

Nothing more needed saying. There was too much battle ahead. Already, the sloping wall of the volcano, from the flow-stone bridge to the outcrop where the three commanders stood, swarmed with unwholesome beasts. Eladamri, Liin Sivi, Grizzlegom, and their troops dug into the monsters like starving folk into a feast.

Eladamri's blade sang in the air. It chunked into mogg flesh. Metal rang on bone as it passed through the creature's rib cage. The monster fell. Eladamri, half a stride later, brought his sword up to split an il-Dal warrior from navel to neck.

Near him, Liin Sivi lashed out with her omnipotent edge. The toten-vec sliced air and muscle with the same ease. It cleft a mogg head from its brawny shoulders and continued on to bisect the traitorous brain of an il-Vec. She hauled on the chain, and it yanked its latest kill into the path of a vampire hound, which ran into it and sprawled. Winning her blade free, Liin Sivi stomped on the canine's head while simultaneously whipping her toten-vec out to the other side. The chain wrapped the neck of one mogg even as the blade severed the neck of another.

But even the fury of a woman scorned could not match the battle frenzy of Commander Grizzlegom. He whose homeland had become an inferno during the Rathi overlay fought toward the heart of the overlay. Some beasts he merely trampled, his hooves catching them in the chest and bearing them down and punching through like mallets into rotten wood. Those creatures beyond were caught and strangled in hands with two opposable thumbs. Past them were beasts that got gored on massive horns. With bodies draping his ivory, Grizzlegom started again with hooves.

The coalition forces fought just the same way, inspired by their leaders. Minotaurs and Metathran, elves and Keldons, they mowed down moggs like wheat and threshed il-Vec like chaff. In mere moments, hundreds of Rathi lay dead. The Dominarians, with but a handful of dead, had reached the head of the bridge.

"Slay them!" Eladamri demonstrated on one unlucky mogg. "Cast them over! On to the throne room of Crovax! On to victory!"

The shouts were taken up behind him, and the coalition forces surged across the flowstone bridge. There was naught but victory ahead.

Chapter 15.