Chapter 13

Urza and Barrin strode up a Tolarian hillside, toward a rocky prominence called the Giant's Pate. While battles raged the world over, this island was a place of calm. Tolaria was a tiny isle, distant from all trade routes. It lay within a tangle of winds that made it almost impossible to find. Swathed in magics and patrolled by helionauts, Tolaria was among the securest sites in Dominaria. It was also Urza and Barrin's home.

For a millennium, they had worked here, training new generations of artificers and preparing for the present invasion. Here, they had taught the precocious Teferi, who now was a planeswalker himself. Jhoira of the Ghitu also learned here. Multani had come to Tolaria to grow the hull of the great ship Weatherlight. Even Xantcha had dwelt here-in the heartstone that now rested in the head of Karn. This island had given birth to every great Dominarian artifact and artificer. It had also given birth to legions of bioengineered warriors-the Metathran.

That was why they had come today, to awaken the two Metathran commanders who would lead the Dominarian armies at the Battle of Koilos.

The planeswalker and the mage reached the Giant's Pate. Barrin panted. He was in superb shape for a severalthousand-year-old man, seeming only in his mid-fifties. Still, an ascent up the Giant's Pate could make a thirtyyear-old pant. Barrin's breath-lessness came in part from his memories of the place-of the deep black gorge below, once rife with Phyrexians. He had fought his first Phyrexian invasion from this hilltop, had once flown an ornithopter low over that fast-time rift to save the life of Urza Planeswalker.

Urza did not pant. He did not even breathe. He was too deep in thought. His gemstone eyes gleamed sharply as they swept the horizon. Behind him lay the vast sprawl of the artificers' college of Tolaria-blue-tiled roofs above curving white walls. Before him stretched the time-gutted wilderness.

Tolaria had suffered a cataclysmic explosion that left it a place of temporal scars. Time gashes, they were called- deep temporal chasms where time ran at a snail's pace and tall temporal plateaus where time fled away to eternity. Urza had caused the cataclysm, of course, and he had subsequently found ways to benefit from it. He set up laboratories in fast-time hills, where weeks of research could be done in days, where bioengineered generations could reproduce every year. As to slow-time sloughs, they were most useful for storing food, artifacts, and even creatures.

"There," said Urza pointing toward a series of tightly packed time shells. Some were nearly black, fast-time zones where sunlight was rapidly swallowed. Others were lightning-white slow time where radiation doubled and redoubled. "The Curtains of Time. That's where we stored the Metathran commanders."

"Thaddeus and Agnate," Barrin supplied. "You must remember that though it's been a century for us, for them, it will have been only a few hot minutes. They'll expect us to know their names."

Urza turned his gleaming gaze on the master mage. "And you must remember that these two are perfectly engineered for their roles. They have no expectations other than the ones I have given them."

Barrin shrugged, hiding the motion in a gesture down the far side of the Giant's Pate, toward the Curtains of Time. "Let's go get them."

Marching down the Giant's Pate was always easier than marching up. The path was smooth, worn by a thousand years of foot traffic. It led down to a bower of wild grapes and up toward the Angelwood, a mild slow-time paradise. Urza and Barrin turned off the path, cutting through blackberry thickets. Beyond, they approached a gleaming white wall. It shimmered brilliantly, a barrier of energy. In the brightest fold of that curtain, the Metathran commanders waited. There, time was almost nonexistent.

Urza's gemstone eyes grew dark. He could shape and color his body however he wished. For Barrin, protections were a bit more elaborate. He waved one hand around himself, evoking a shroud of blackness that sank into eyes and skin. He seemed a man of midnight, his clothes hanging on personified emptiness.

The two strode, side by side, to stand before that brightest of spots. Through blackened sight, they could just make out two white capsules within the gleam. Each was ten feet tall and six feet wide-a living sarcophagus that shielded the commander within from a century of sunlight. Explosive charges would blast the capsule doors-and the men strapped to them-back into the main time stream.

Urza stood to one side, and Barrin to the other. It would be death to stand directly before those capsules when the charges blew.

"Are you ready?" Barrin asked.

"Bring out the commanders."

It was a simple spell, one with no gestures, no words, no components that partook in time. Such things would have halted the effect once it entered the time curtain. Instead, the spell was quick as a thought, as immediate as recognition.

Bolts exploded. They outlined the doors in a radiance brighter that the sun. Within the time rift, the blast was instantaneous, but in the normal temporal flow, the blast spread out through the air like bleach wicking through fabric. It formed a brilliant halo about the caskets. The doors left their frames. The gaps widened by inches. Thick plates of steel cleared the case. The figures strapped to the doors showed through. Enormous and mantled in fire, Thaddeus and Agnate rode, faces pressed against the padded inner doors. The Metathran were eight feet tall, blue skinned, and powerfully muscled. They seemed fiery demons as they soared out of the time curtain.

The first of the doors broke through the temporal field. Its metallic face burst the zone and dragged normal time in vortices behind it. The door brought with it the deafening roar of the explosion. Then came the clap of the temporal field closing, water after a diver. With the same fierce bellow, the second door crashed through the temporal wall. Vast energies spent themselves on that re-entry. This was by design, lest the doors fly for miles, killing their riders. Just beyond the time curtain, the doors toppled, side by side. They struck ground in a pair of terrible thuds. Steam and smoke hissed in circles around them, momentarily hiding their occupants.

Barrin cast a second spell. Wind leaped from his fingers, rushed beneath the steaming hunks of metal, and slowly lifted them into the air. The spell bore the doors away from the ravening curtain of time. Slicing through the blackberry thicket, the air-sleds and their occupants came to rest on the path to Angelwood.

Barrin and Urza followed. As they went, they shed the ebony protections they had donned. By the time they stood on the path, they had regained their common aspects. The wreaths of smoke dissipated, revealing the two commanders who would lead the armies of Dominaria.

They were gigantic. Each commander was three hundred pounds of muscle and bone. They were human, yes, but only barely so. Their rib cages were as strong as rhinos', their arms as powerful as gorillas', their legs as long as horses'. They were not body only. These two were great minds, trained in every strategy of war, honed from inception for their task.

Thaddeus rose first. Straps that held against the rocket blast of the door were no match for his flexing arms. They snapped, whipping back to flog the rocky path. Heaving himself up from the padding, the great gladiator rose. Two heads taller than most men, he seemed taller still because of the silver-white hair that stood like flame from his head. Thran emblems tattooed his cheeks and forehead, announcing his name and generation. Blue, armored shoulders towered over Barrin. Bright eyes gazed from beneath a jutting brow.