"I have come to serve you, Majesty."

A querulous look filled the face of the Staprion king. "From all I have heard, I thought you would expect me to bow to you."

Eladamri raised his eyes and stared levelly at the ruler. "I expect nothing of any of you except that you fight when the fiends fall from the sky."

Smiling ironically, the ancient elf sighed. "Ah, yes, the prophecies-"

"They are not prophecies. They are only reports. I am not a prophet, only a man who has seen the armies that are coming. In my former world, I united three tribes and led them in revolt against these Phyrexian killers. Here, I do not wish to lead anyone, only to provide what help I may against a common foe."

"Really?" the king responded. "And what sort of help could you be?"

"I can tell you how they will fight. I can tell you that only warriors must remain above. The rest must abandon this palace. It and all other great structures in the canopy will be attacked first."

Multani was impressed. Perhaps Eladamri was not as pure as the elves dreamed him to be, but he was honest and bold.

"Abandon the palace?" echoed the king incredulously. "All go below?"

"Yes. I will stay here with your warriors, but you and the others must go below to survive," Eladamri responded.

King Fhedusil nodded once last. Then he stood. With a simple gesture, he sent his own guard from beside his chair to lay hold of Eladamri. Simultaneously, guards seized Liin Sivi and Takara. The throng beyond the high court fell to a shocked silence.

Into that hush, the king spoke. "It is a black hour for our world, yes, Eladamri. But blacker still when a man who has a sliver of foreknowledge uses it to rise to the top of a nation. To use a piece of gossip to become a false prophet-"

"I have never claimed to be a prophet," objected Eladamri as he struggled against his captors.

"Perhaps not a prophet, but a war-profiteer," snapped the chief. "You are not the Seed of Freyalise, as has been said of you."

"I dispute none of this," Eladamri pleaded. "I am a warrior, pure and simple. I have been dreamed by these people into something I am not."

Suddenly, Multani understood. The people of Llanowar needed a leader, and King Fhedusil, for all his age and wisdom, would not be sufficient to the task. Gaea had found a man, a sufficient man, and was dreaming him into divinity.

"We are done dreaming," the king insisted. "We are done listening to idle foolery. We will not abandon our palaces in the sky. ‘The kingdom of Hell is at hand!’ you say. We will not follow you!"

Multani saw it before anyone else. He saw it in the multitudinous vision of the living thatch. Portals opened above Llanowar. Thousands of small portals. Through them dropped tens of thousands of plague bombs.

Sliding down from the thatch into a great branch in one corner of the high court, Multani took form. Leafy brows and bristly lips, twiggy hair and spore-filled eyes- Multani charged into the midst of the assemblage.

"I am Multani of Yavimaya. Listen to this man! Even now, portals open overhead. Fiends are falling from the skies!"

"Guards! Arrest this apparition!" the chief shouted, finger jutting out toward Multani. "Take them to the stockade!"

"We must go below," Eladamri and Multani chorused. Guards dragged at them.

Something tore through the thatch above. Glimpsed in a flurry of straw, it seemed a small meteor, though it was a constructed thing-a spherical machine. The plague bomb smashed down. It cracked the hardwood floor as though it were an eggshell. The bomb struck King Fhedusil, slaying him instantly. It hit the far wall and bashed its way into the king's chambers. A moment of silent terror followed. Then from the hole in the wall, white clouds of plague spores spewed outward.

"Down to the roots! Down from the crown! We must go below!"

Chapter 17

Thaddeus stood at the head of his Metathran army and gazed across the desert of Koilos.

Koilos. This was holy ground. Here the Phyrexians had first been driven out of Dominaria. Here, Urza and his brother allowed them back in. These two events were father and mother to the Metathran-the only parents they would ever have. When Phyrexian bloodlust mixed with Dominarian terror, the Metathran were gestated. Over the last thousand years, they had one by one been born-as strong as rhinos, as tireless as fire ants, as loyal as hunting hounds, as sterile as mules. The Metathran were raised to maturity, trained in weapons natural and otherwise, and stored away like stockpiled arms. In slowtime caverns, temporal loops, and cryo-chambers, they were kept. Chill cradles, these had been, made less so by dreams of this hot desert and the battle over this holy place, Koilos.

Here, the Phyrexians would be driven from Dominaria.

Thaddeus breathed deeply. The dust of Koilos entered his lungs and, from there, his blood. The scent of Phyrexian glistening-oil filled that breath.

In well-ordered companies, the Phyrexian army filled the vast desert below. Scuta, bloodstocks, and troopers stood arrayed on the outskirts, ready for an all-out charge. Behind them lay the main encampments, fortified with miles of trench work. The ditches had been dug by giant

Phyrexian worms. Beyond it all was Koilos-a broad, dark plateau of stone above a wide cave. That throat descended into the belly of the world. From it issued a constant tide of monsters. Beautiful monsters.

Thaddeus ached to slay them. He understood and appreciated these foes. Their bodies were as huge and superbly twisted as his own. Thaddeus's own sagittal crest and brow-ridge were designs Urza had modeled after Phyrexian craniums. These modifications made the head a ramming weapon and allowed for powerful jaw muscles that could deliver a severing bite. Thaddeus's face was augmented with stronger bones, leaping muscles, and fangy teeth. His chest and arms bore the powerful benefits of bruin architecture. Equine implants bulged his legs. Thaddeus and his army were as unnatural beasts as the Phyrexians they had been designed to kill. There was but one difference. The Metathran fought for good. The Phyrexians fought for evil. Otherwise, they might have been brothers.

Lifting his hand in a visor over glimmering blue eyes, Thaddeus gazed out beyond even the Caves of Koilos. There, Agnate and his Metathran troops arrayed themselves. Agnate was his true brother. He and Thaddeus were biologically identical, trained together, meant to fight as an opposing pair.

Though a hundred miles of desert and a hundred thousand Phyrexians separated them, Thaddeus could hear his brother's thoughts as if they were his own. Advance?

Nodding in agreement, Thaddeus lifted his hand in a long arc. "Advance!"

He strode down the desert embankment. His boots pounded the ground. Dusty ghosts rose. In the next moment, forty thousand other boots stepped into the march. The ground trembled under their tread. The tremor rolled down the slope and beneath the feet of the waiting Phyrexians. In their midst, the wave of noise crashed against another wave sent from the army of Agnate. The Phyrexians would be caught in a war on two fronts, in the Metathran Pincer. They would writhe in that claw but never escape. They would die.

Thaddeus marched in the midst of his personal guard- eight warriors, four to either side. Each bore a powerstone pike, which could pierce even thick metal, shred whatever flesh lay beneath, and drag itself clean through. Powerstone swords rode their hips for closer combat. Daggers at their ankles awaited intimate engagements. Similarly arrayed Metathran troops spread all along the front line. They could receive a full-out charge if the Phyrexians made any move.