That bark, too holy for the feet of fey, was desecrated by the claws of Phyrexians. Every branch became a roadway for the demonic army. Phyrexians swarmed it, bending every fiber of the crown with their black weight. They ripped the leaves off. They peeled back the green tendrils. They drove killing spikes down into the living wood. As they had done throughout the forest, the Phyrexians turned life to unlife.

To lose this tree-this most sacred tree-would be to lose everything.

No thinking defenders dwelt on the Heart of Yavimaya, so the tree defended itself. It transformed the spikes driven into it, infusing them with the ancient power of green. The killing shafts gained life. Black and green mixed and blended. The spikes that had cracked down into the tree's vast boughs shot suddenly upward. Each was as sharp as a spear, as stout as a lance. They drove themselves through the Phyrexians standing above. Ebony wood impaled monsters. First to die were those who sat upon or straddled spikes. Next to die were all the rest. Spikes grew rampantly. They jutted even from the healthy flesh of the tree. Once the secrets of death had been learned by the Heart of Yavimaya, they were whispered through every grain.

The Phyrexian city had become a sudden necropolis.

Victory.

Multani walked the battlefield among the writhing beasts. Not a Phyrexian remained free. Every last one had been skewered. They hung overhead. Their oil-blood rolled quiet and golden down the shafts. Barbed legs shivered in agony. Claws clutched air.

Multani walked onward. He approached a humanlooking leg, the pierced foot of a one-time man. Above the creature's hips was the shaggy body of a ram. Instead of fur, though, the thing was covered in spines that oozed poison like sweat. The bestial torso of the monster seemed strange above these strong, human legs.

Multani reached out, setting his fibrous hand on the riven foot. Through feverish flesh, his mind touched its mind.

He saw a vision of another place. The beast gazed in horror across a different killing field. He saw not treetops but a convoluted tumble of red-black ground, like muscle laid open. The sky seemed a reflection of the ground-a crimson mass of coiling energy. Between ground and sky hung impaled tens of thousands. They were not Phyrexians. They were men, and women, and children. The Phyrexians there walked quietly among the dying folk. In their midst sat a madman. He smiled and sipped from a delicate cup and sang songs to himself.

From the Phyrexian's mind, Multani gleaned a name for this horrible world-Rath-and a name for the madman- Crovax.

This was their foe. This was the man-the monster- who had assembled the armies of invasion. Crovax had slain tens of thousands of humans and elves on his own world. For them, the Heart of Yavimaya had exacted revenge.

Multani released the foot of the dying beast. His mind broke contact. The scene of horror in Rath was replaced by the scene of horror in Yavimaya. There was little difference. The Heart of Yavimaya had become as hellish as a hillside in Rath. Life had learned the tricks of death.

"Perhaps this is what must happen," Multani mused grimly to himself. "Perhaps to defeat these foes, we must become like them." What victory was that? Once they had become their foes, the Phyrexians would truly have won.

A great sadness swept through Multani. The Heart of Yavimaya was horribly disfigured. All that was green had been shredded. All that was smooth had turned to spikes. The crown of Yavimaya's most sacred tree had become a cemetery.

Feeling weak, Multani dropped to one knee. His vinelike hand settled onto the tortured bark. His mind fled inward, through the fibers. He sensed the tree's agony. Every spike that had grown rampantly upward had also grown rampantly down. When green life had allied with black death, it had formed a cancer that ate away living flesh. The Heart of Yavimaya was dying, impaled on the same spikes that slew its foes.

Multani reeled.

Defeat.

The Heart of Yavimaya was dying. It was becoming Phyrexian. The forest could not be saved.

Gaea, hear me. In defeating these monsters, we become monsters ourselves. The forest is lost, slain as Argoth of old- turned from living wood into took of death.

Gaea did not speak to him, but he sensed that she also was dying.

That filled Multani with a new passion: anger. Yavimaya and Gaea would be saved by him if they would be saved at all.

Multani marshaled red fury. He had allied with red before^;- with lightning and fire, with Kavu lizards and lava. They had not destroyed the forest. They had been conformed to the power of life.

Ah, there-there was the great difference. The Heart of Yavimaya had conformed itself to the power of death. Instead, it should have transformed its foes with the power of life.

Multani smiled. The aerial roots that formed his teeth were a ghastly jumble. He knew what he must do to save the forest.

Closing thistle-blossom eyes, Multani sank down on the bark. His fingers twined themselves deep into the crevasses there. His mind followed into the agonized wood. He melted. His body of vines sloughed on the outside of the huge bough.

Pain suffused Multani. It might have slain him except that he tapped its power. He used agony to reach down past the cancerous crown and into the tree's immemorial bole.

Multani cascaded down the trunk. He took anger with him. Five thousand feet down, he reached the root bulbs and spread farther. Through the hundreds of trees that surrounded this forest giant, he went- through the thousands that touched upon them, and the millions beyond. To each, he conveyed his fury at the death of the Heart of Yavimaya.

He summoned them, the vast and endless forest. He summoned them.

Let's teach these black monsters the ways of life, he told them. Let death be swallowed in victory!

The forest rose to his call. The spirits within each tree took his fury into themselves. Ancient souls stirred for the first time since Urza Planeswalker had been trapped among them. A huge welling force-the forest itself-roused. Yavimaya had always been sentient, but now it was awakening. Tiny leaves of desire united. Individual surges of power gathered into a single column of green force.

The locus of that mana cyclone was the Heart of Yavimaya itself. Its wood flared phosphorescent. Its bark glowed as energy seeped out the creases. Green power whirled up through the aching tree. Rotten wood woke to new life. Rings lost to time renewed themselves. The surge of power fountained through the tree, blasting into the spike-filled crown.

Green strength rushed through deep-driven spikes. It flooded the stalks and washed away all darkness. Magic pressed into every space, every tissue. No room remained for corruption. The spikes turned healthy and whole.

Multani soared up the Heart of Yavimaya, glad for its salvation. What he sensed in the next moments, though, was beyond his dreams.

The power did not cease in the tips of those spikes. It flowed into the creatures impaled there. Through glistening-oil and acid lymph, it passed. Just as the forest's soul reinvigorated dead wood, it enlivened the monsters pinioned there. They writhed. They growled ghastly growls. The forest was not done with them. It formed cell walls. It thickened glistening-oil to sap. Veins hardened into vines. Bones became heartwood. Muscles became quick. Skin turned to bark. The warriors of Phyrexia slowly transformed to beasts of wood.

The forest was converting its foes.

One by one, the new army of wooden warriors drew themselves up off the spikes that had previously impaled them. They climbed down. Every last one was now made of wood. It was as though Multani had brought into being an army of his own offspring.