The blue-green sea welled up below. The black cruiser above it grew as well. It swelled to fill the whole world. Only when every gun turret and conduit showed clear across the horrid thing did Gerrard give the order.

"Fire!"

Red bursts leaped from his cannon. Plasma smacked against a canister engine, cracking through the armor shell and releasing geysers of sulfur. Tahngarth's gun spoke twice. The first charge ripped away a whole section of wall. The second painted the harpoon deck in killing fire. Phyrexians and their damned spinal centipedes writhed in agony as the blast burned them to nothing.

The amidships cannons added their fury to the battle. Red flack spread from all sides of Weatherlight. As she snapped out above the rankled mid-ridge of the cruiser, even her rear gun came to life. Squee clung there with savage glee. He unleashed a fiery barrage that stripped the Phyrexian's answering fire from the sky. The rest of the armada blasted away as well.

Explosions rocked the outer shell of the ship. Fires belched out from within.

"Pull up!" Gerrard ordered as Weatherlight shot fore of the craft. "Take her high in a rollover reverse. Prepare for a second attack run!"

The ship launched herself skyward. She climbed with the same eager speed with which she had plunged. The rest of the armada struggled into her slipstream.

Gerrard glanced over the rail. The cruiser was striped with destruction. Inky smoke rolled up from its rent hull. All across it, Phyrexians lay dead.

"That'll teach them-attacking defenseless merfolk!" Gerrard hooted.

Sisay stood the ship on end and rolled her over, climbing all the while.

"Not as defenseless as you think," Tahngarth barked.

Gerrard peered down again.

Huge columns of water blasted up out of the deep. They surrounded the crippled ship, overtopping it. The arcs of water broke and fell away from vast hooks and thick cables. A sheet of spray flung up, carrying in it an enormous net. With unimaginable force, every line that had snagged on the cruiser went taut. The ship struggled in vain to stay aloft. The force below was too great. The bow of the craft crashed into the waves. It sank with preternatural speed. Lightnings awoke across the cruiser as power cells contacted the water. Energy surges opened more cracks in the ruined hull. The pressure of the seas lengthened these fissures. Underwater explosions mounded water high.

In deep and boiling oceans, the cruiser sank with all hands aboard.

Gerrard stared in amazement. He gabbled, "Uh, c-call off the next attack,"

A heavy hand settled on his shoulder. Tahngarth's voice rumbled. "The seas can take care of themselves."

Nodding numbly, Gerrard said into the speaking tube. "Captain, let's maintain a high altitude. We wouldn't want to get too close to those nets."

"Aye."

Chapter 16

Victory.

From the Heart of Yavimaya to the seas all around, there was victory in the forest. Elves filled the crowns, their songs twining in freshening wind. Sprites drifted in swarms so thick they seemed chandeliers lighting the wood. Druids strode ancient paths amid deep root bulbs. Their songs of joy were basso drones that reverberated through watery grottos. Beneath even them, in the volcanic caves of the Mori Tumulus, Kavu lizards lay slumbering. They had gorged on Phyrexians and would be sated for years.

Many Phyrexians had met their ends in the bellies of Kavus or of the leviathans that swam the deep water tubes. Others had been blasted apart by druid spells or torn to ribbons by sprite pike swarms, or blown open by elven arrows. Their remains even now were being scoured from the forest. Elves tended pyres that turned the last of the monsters to ash. Burning brands set fire to the rot that riddled magnigoths. Black coils of smoke bore the stink of Phyrexian oil-blood away from the canopy.

Yavimaya would not lose all its taste of those creatures. Elves and sprites naturally purged what darkness they could, but the forest had knowingly taken some of the evil into itself. Yavimaya had gained a sort of immunity. She bore the memory of Phyrexia and knew its weaknesses.

The final battle for the forest had been waged by woodmen, the folk who had once been Phyrexian. They combined the fanatic power of their heritage with the patient strength of the forest. Eternal defenders. Once the battles were done, woodmen clutched themselves against the vast boles of the forest. They lingered there, immobile for days or weeks. They breathed through leafy stomas and were nourished on sun and rain alone. Herds of arboreal goats passed them unknowing. Wood spiders attached webs to their knobby heads. Should another Phyrexian descend into the forest, though, the woodmen would awaken to slay.

Victory. Multani breathed it in. He had often petitioned Gaea during this war, always receiving a silent but undeniable answer. Now was time for praises, not petitions. Multani spread his mind down into the great tree where he knelt. His consciousness expanded. Individual identity gave way to collective soul, to archetype, to divinity. He took on the body of the forest. Each tree was a single muscle fiber, each vine a neuron in a vast, thankful thought. Before that thought was full-formed, though, an idea intruded.

A perfect creature walked the land. He did not walk Yavimaya but another ancient forest across the sea- Llanowar. A perfect creature, his spirit had been forged in a great red furnace and was tempered in war.

Never had Multani sensed such a creature, not in all the billion creeping things of his forest. Here was a man- an elf-with the relentless perfection of a dream, but he was real.

Gaea, what is this walking vision?

Multani knew he was to be silent and still, to sense this creature in Llanowar across the sea.

Among the watchful blackthorns of Verdura, this perfect one had first appeared. A month ago, he came into being out of midair, trailing the stink of Phyrexian spaces.

Out of corruption, he was born incorruptible. Tall, with long silvery hair in numerous braids, steely eyes, and steely armor, the elf was mantled in glistening-oil and blood. Dust clove to him. He fell to his knees. The escape from his former prison had been desperate.

Eladamri was his name, called the Korvecdal in Rath- a uniter among his own people.

Behind him came a woman. She seemed to step around an invisible corner. She was born of the same dark womb as he, but was human. With hair of red flame and muscles corded over a lean frame, she was a child of Phyrexian furnaces. The elf had saved her from the hell where she had dwelt. Her name was Takara, prisoner of Volrath, daughter of Starke.

To Eladamri's other side stood another woman. As weary as her comrades, she did not drop down. A war woman, she kept her weapon-a chain and blade construct called a toten-vec-ready in the pulsing air. Her eyes and hair were dark, her face intense, her frame a taut coalition of muscle and bone. She, too, was an orphan raised in Rath. Wicked parents make monsters of some and heroes of others. This one was a hero, Liin Sivi by name. She would guard her companions to the death.

Gaea, these are not perfect folk. These are heroes, true, but not divinities. This Eladamri is no more pure than a Kavu, parented by leaf and flame in equal measure. This Takara is embittered by long imprisonment. This Liin Sivi-chains and blades are myriad already in Dominaria. What makes these three divine?

He knew he was to keep silent and still and sense them.

Up from Verdura they marched. They sought forest- Llanowar. Travelers' tales told of them. In every village they entered, folk asked them where they had been, how they had come to Verdura. Eladamri told their story, simple and certain. He warned of the hellish kingdom to come, of demons pouring down out of storm clouds, and of cataclysm tearing Dominaria apart. At first, he seemed but a brain-baked fool, wandering in dust with two other lunatics.