With spinning scythes, helionauts sliced through dragon engines. Wings were sheered from the beasts. Heads chopped free. Even ribs ground to shards and dust. Hunks of dragon engine fell from the air.

It was not as easy as that, though. From a volcanic vent below, more dragon engines arrived like shooting steam. These were larger beasts. The others had been only keeneyed sentries. These dragon engines were decked for war. They jetted into the sky straight beneath the helionauts. Wings surged once last and folded beneath wicked shoulders. Dragons rammed helionaut hulls.

Planished metal buckled. Joints failed. Great holes gouged in the sides of the ships. Out spilled crews and ruined mechanisms. One craft was struck so hard it bounced upward and chewed the belly out of another. They both plunged from the sky. A third helionaut began spinning drunkenly beneath its whirling scythes. It veered like a gyro and dropped, destroying a dragon engine on its way to ground.

The remaining helionauts filled the air with pulser blasts. Charges chased dragon engines through the sky. Power lay hold of them, paralyzed for a moment. Before the ships could tear them apart, though, other dragon engines attacked. Helionauts hailed down.

Barrin suddenly regretted the gazing enchantment. What was the good of seeing a battle that was still miles away?

Then everything changed. Dragon engines tore each other apart.

Barrin blinked, wondering what he saw. Suddenly, he knew.

Down upon the Phyrexian dragon engines soared real dragons- Rhammidarigaaz and his dragon nations. The ancient Shivan wyrm led four other dragon lords, one for each of the colors of magic. They flew wing and wing, onetime foes turned stolid allies. In the wake of these five great dragons flew whole serpentine nations. They poured from the sky as the Phyrexians had geysered from the ground.

Darigaaz flew in the vanguard. Fireballs rolled from his claws and baked dragon engines. Lava spouted from his throat and melted them in midair. To his one side flew the green dragon lord, trailing spores. They clumped onto Phyrexian engines and grew rampantly, cracking their joints. The white lord of dragons followed. It only flew, its pure wings cleaving through Phyrexians like light through nightmares. The blue dragon lord meanwhile sent spells out to rip the air from under scabrous wings. The black dragon and his folk, though, were fiercest of all. They smashed atop their evil brethren and ripped them apart with bare claws. Hunks of dragon engine fell to crash spectacularly in the swamps.

More things crashed in the swamps. Keldon longships- dagger-like with their mainsails reefed and outriggers cut loose-glided with surreal speed through the salt marshes. Rams split dead trees in their path. Keldon great swords clove Phyrexian troopers clawing to board. Arrows poured out from the decks, from this distance seeming ripples spreading from the prow.

"Arrows?" Barrin wondered to himself.

The first longships at last ran aground, a thousand yards inland. From the rails leaped massive Keldons in their hundreds, but also others-lithe, quick, slender. Elves. Urza must somehow have arranged their passage with Barrin's Keldon warriors. Strange coalitions. Brawny and scrawny, arrogant and elegant, Keldons and elves rushed side by side into battle.

Beyond their lines, Phyrexian shock troops rose from rock grottos to slay. They were as thick as maggots on a corpse and outnumbered the Keldons and elves a hundred to one. At their head, gliding aboard wedge-shaped airchariots, rode black-armored commanders.

"They'll need help down there," Barrin decided. Helionauts and dragons ruled the skies, but Phyrexians ruled the ground. Barrin lifted his hand in an attack signal and sent his winged steed into a steep dive.

Angels swept down behind him. Their song rose an octave into a shrill whistle. The music lost none of its glory, only becoming more inhuman.

In moments, they had dropped from the blue heavens to the black swamps. Dead trees flashed past in gray stripes. Angels darted like silver blades in their midst. Depthless water churned below the hurtling hooves of Barrin's steed.

Ahead, a Phyrexian commander roared forward atop his air-chariot.

Barrin gathered the power of islands and seas and sent a blue enchantment ripping out from his fingers. It twined in air and grasped the chariot. The vessel flipped over and drove downward, ramming its driver headfirst into a mud embankment. The chariot bounded up to crack against a tree and rattle to ground. Only the driver's legs jutted from the mound, and they were broken and still.

The shock troops beyond continued their charge.

Angels jagged out before Barrin. Their magna swords sliced Phyrexians. Blades bit into spiky shoulders and cut clean through to hunched legs. They cleft heads and gutted chests. Magna swords ran black and golden with guts and oil. The angel song had become a bloody thing, part battle hymn, part requiem.

Barrin lashed out with a rainbow of sorceries. His first spell turned Phyrexians on each other. His next sorcery infected hundreds more with carbuncles of rust. Catching his breath, Barrin unleashed a simple but effective fireball, melting metal and bone and flesh. As he gathered another enchantment, Barrin's steed smashed hooves atop Phyrexian heads.

Still, there were so many shock troops-too many. Phyrexians rose from every hollow and every deadfall. Plague-infected claws sank into angel throats. Pincers ripped wings from their sockets. Stingers pumped venom into pure hearts. Serrans dropped like moths.

The Keldons fared even worse. They held a nearby ridge but were surrounded by Phyrexian slashers. Elven arrows did nothing against the metal beasts, all legs and blades. Keldon swords only clanged helplessly against them. Shoulder to shoulder, the strange allies were being ground to pieces.

"Break through!" Barrin called to the Serrans. "Break through to the Keldons!"

The battle shifted. Angels gathered up behind the winged steed. Barrin and his beleaguered troops rose from the swamp. Black-mana spells followed them up, claiming two more Serrans. The rest escaped. It was a tattered group, angry and wounded, that broke from one overwhelming battle only to enter another. They had lost many comrades already and would lose more in moments.

Barrin's winged horse punched through curtains of moss. Angel wings tore the rest to ribbons. Sloughs beyond teemed with mosquitoes. Leather-backed shapes moved darkly through the water. Perhaps they would keep the Phyrexians from pursuing.

The dead forest gave way to a stinking lake, beyond which rose the ridge where the Keldons and elves stood surrounded.

Barrin led his aerial units out across the inky waters. They would be too late. Shock troops and slashers closed in. Even now, the shores boiled with black figures rising to join the Phyrexian ranks. They surged up eagerly behind the pressing armies and lent their putrid claws to the killing.

Except they were killing Phyrexians.

Ghouls climbed in their thousands from the rank water. The remains of their former clothes and skin and muscle draped in tatters from their skeletons. They shambled with a hungry will up among the Phyrexian troops and piled atop them. Horns pierced their rotting flesh. It didn't matter. Blades chopped limbs from their bodies. It made no difference. Ghoul flesh clambered onto Phyrexians, gumming up every joint, choking every throat, burying every beast.

Mouth hanging open in amazed horror, Barrin diverted his troops up and away from the carnage. Angels jagged skyward behind the winged steed. As Barrin gazed down at the strange tableaux, he glimpsed, in the crest of a rotten stump, the black-garbed necromancer that had raised the ghouls. Its face was a patchwork of desiccated flesh over white bone. It was a lich, an undead creature itself-but it was Dominarian. It mustered its minions to fight Phyrexians.