The forces of the sea had never before aided their old foes, the forces of the forest. Why now?

Multani understood. Gaea was not merely a forest goddess. She was the world-goddess. Seas were hers and the creatures therein. As Multani had marshaled the dumb beasts of the forest, she had directed some other mind to gather the beasts of the sea.

This is why he had not allied with Urza. This was the way the forest fought. Exultation replaced dread.

Overhead, aerial troops leaped from their skyships. Wings of skin barked on the wind. Down soared Phyrexians in thick swarms. They swirled down toward the elven kingdoms in the treetops.

Multani gathered himself from the island's perimeter like lightning gathering itself from the sky. He vaulted up the hollow core of an ancient magnigoth tree. In the crown above, the largest of the elven kingdoms spread.

Multani emerged. He took his shape from a shaggy vine, bringing with it blankets of moss, a number of parasitic plants, and a section of loose bark. All these, Multani assembled into a vast, shambling form. He had no body aside from this forest, but in its flesh he had flesh. Multani climbed to the elven kingdom. En route, he dragged a venom-vine into his being. It spread through him, its poisonous thorns positioning themselves as fangs, horns, and claws.

Already, the elf warriors gathered in thorn brakes and atop lookout spires. They trooped like ants across the footworn branches. Some crucial bough-bridges had already succumbed to rot. They had taken on a wicked life of their own, lashing out at nearby troops. Crews busily doused rotten sections with pine spirits and set them ablaze. It was a horrible sight-elves torching trees.

Multani dug one foot into a sap channel and sent a signal to the heights of the magnigoth. There, vast seed pods opened prematurely. Soap-down, as white as snow and as slippery as ice, spewed upward. The stuff rose to envelope Phyrexian wing-troops. Oily fibers dragged across batwings and talons. The soap-down filled air holes and blinded eyes. Everything it touched grew slick.

Hissing and spitting, Phyrexians dived out of the choking cloud. They soared down to the leafy crowns and converged on the lookout aeries.

Elf sentries loosed slim shafts.

The arrows ripped wings and thudded into Phyrexian chests and skulls. A few fell from the sky. They cracked against branches in their long descent. Others reached the aeries, shrieking their attack. Wings folded. Talons gripped branches. They slipped, overbalancing. Elven swords were there to catch them. Impaled, Phyrexians writhed like bugs on pins. The wiser elves hurled their fouled swords from the aeries. Those who kept their blades lost their lives. Phyrexian fangs bit through skulls. Phyrexian claws ripped through chests and heads. It was impossible to tell the slayer from the slain.

Below, the main mass of the aerial troops landed in the kingdom's center. Those that came down atop elves got spears and arrows in their bellies. Those that landed on footpaths slipped to spill from the boughs. Elves crowded in tight companies and flung beasts off birch shields.

A massive Phyrexian, a seeming gargoyle, lunged into a group of elves. It bit an elf in half and lifted its head back to swallow the torso. Swords jabbed the Phyrexian's neck, unintentionally pinning the corpse within. The gargoyle gasped, choking.

Elsewhere, another winged monster found itself swarmed with vines. The living wood drew stinging thorns across its hide, cutting to muscle. Moss crowded into the thing's mouth and air holes. Thistles raked wings to bloody rags. Vines constricted, strangling the beast. It fell on the bough and hissed to stillness.

Multani withdrew from the corpse. He pulled his bloodied vines off the shapeless figure and reassembled himself. The twin thistle blossoms that made up his eyes glimpsed a new atrocity.

Elf children fled backward over a sheer drop. They clung to rough bark and vines to escape a Phyrexian mob.

Multani ran for the mass of the creatures. He could kill one at a time, perhaps two at once. Still the monsters would slay the children.

A thought came to him. He dived into the wood. His vine-body sloughed from him into a pile on the surface. Multani sped inward along sap lines. Up through a fat bole and a twisted girdle he went. Spreading through a meaty branch, he possessed it. The thing swung downward, the arm of a colossus.

It struck the Phyrexian mob and hurled them from the tree.

Multani took no time to admire his work. Phyrexians filled the treetops. He lifted the bough again and brought it down to mash them. Leaves became blades. Tendrils became scourges. Branches became staves. Boughs became rams. All dripped with glistening-oil-blood.

This was how the forest fought.

Chapter 8

Engineer Karn had made good use of his time alone aboard the wounded ship. Outwardly, he crouched down, impersonating an inert engine module. The trick fooled Phyrexian crews. Inwardly, Karn activated the ship's healing routines. Once Weatherlight was skyworthy again, a jolting takeoff ripped her mooring lines from the ground. Karn rolled the ship to fling Phyrexians from her deck. He ignited her ray cannons and blasted his way into the brig. Together, he and Weatherlight had rescued the crew.

Now, aloft, Karn proved more powerful still. In flight, the ship was his body. In it, he charged across the heavens like a thoroughbred. A pack of Phyrexian ships howled in his wake, but none could even approach him.

Weatherlight ruled the skies beyond Benalia City. In a series of lightning attacks, she strafed troop transport ships and cruisers, pinning them in their deployment arc. None could get off the ground. The cruisers' heavy batteries hurled flack into the sky, too slow to strike the shrieking vessel. Phyrexians scrambled from damaged engines and melted cannonades. They were no match for Weatherlight's crew.

Sisay worked her own magic at the helm. She soared down the throat of Phyrexian cannonades, hopping Weatherlight away before plasma split the air. The incandescent stuff narrowly missed the ship, instead blanketing pursuers. Flinging off hunks of magma,

Phyrexian fighters collapsed and plunged from the sky. They impacted cruisers docked below or troops off-loading from them.

Hanna, meanwhile, pinpointed the Phyrexian vessels' critical sectors-fire controls, fuel tanks, power conduits, flying bridges… She plotted strafing runs that cut straight across numerous engine cores. In a steady stream, she barked out heading directions and blast coordinates.

"Target thirty degrees to port, the red 'midships manifolds. You're warm! You're hot! Bull's-eye!"

As flames engulfed the vast structure, Tahngarth shouted from the starboard prow cannon, "Stop calling them bull's-eyes!"

"Yeah," rejoined Gerrard at port. "That was my shot!"

"Get ready for another," Sisay warned. "A cruiser's lifting off."

Hanna growled out hasty instructions. "Three degrees left, vault over this next ship, and bring us in low."

"Low?" Gerrard called back. "It's lifting off."

"She's plotting a course beneath it," Sisay guessed.

Hanna worked out the vectors.

"Beneath it?" Gerrard echoed.

"The engines are exposed on the underside. The hull guns won't be operational yet," Hanna explained. "It's the safest route and the surest kill."

"What if we shoot it so well it falls on us?"

"Have a little faith in Karn," Hanna replied, smiling wryly at Sisay. "Three degrees to port, and dive, Captain."

The ship plunged above the smoldering heap of a grounded cruiser. Weatherlight raced over black mountains of mechanism, past splayed Phyrexian corpses, past shattered cannonades and batteries spewing corruption into the air. Weatherlight's plunging keel sliced through a cloud of plague spores, which rose in white canyon walls around the ship. The ship rocketed out of the killing tunnel.