Unable to bite its foes, the Phyrexian began a retreat. It was too late. Keldons climbed it like ants devouring a worm. Their blades at last found chinks in the thing's armor. It fell to chunks beneath them.

Nearby, Astor fought aback his stamping steed. His eyes shone with the battle gleam of true Keldon warriors. A ring of bodies and oil surrounded him. Any creature that ventured into it ended up among the dead. Just now, a Phyrexian trooper charged him. Astor's axe chopped down between shoulder spikes and clove deep into the thing's ribcage. There, the blade jammed. Astor seemed not to notice. He hauled hard on the haft, lifting the trooper from the ground. The wriggling creature struggled to claw him, but he flung it off.

"They're breaking through!" Astor shouted, leveling his axe toward a spot on the distant battlefield.

Eladamri and Liin Sivi turned to see.

A Keldon long ship that had cruised deep into the Phyrexian lines had been captured. The beasts had turned the vessel, harnessing the winds and loading the catapults. With their own dead draping from the prow pikes, Phyrexians sailed the ship back toward the front lines. A monstrous infantry formed up on the ship. Already they reclaimed ice where their own troops had burned away. The vessel beat toward the heart of the Keldon army.

Oil bombs vaulted from its decks. Shrieking through the air, they dropped in a brimstone rain on the allies. A bomb that could kill a single Phyrexian could annihilate a whole elven squad. Even Keldons fell in the holocaustal onslaught. Those who fought on did so with their skin hanging in rags from their shoulders. They folded like paper before the Phyrexian charge.

"That's where the battle is!" shouted Warlord Astor.

He sent his colos bounding out across the ice, toward the skating ship. Astor's axe whirled in fury. He left behind a trail of twitching beasts. Liin Sivi widened that trail with the spinning reach of her toten-vec. Eladamri brought up the rear. He stood in the saddle and peered out across the glaring field.

As that black warship had drawn Phyrexians into a charge, it also drew Keldons into a countercharge. All across the battlefield, mounted warriors converged on the vessel. Eladamri glimpsed, in varied livery, the colors of Doyen Olvresk and Doyenne Tajamin. They came not only because the ship was breaking through their lines, but also because it was their ship, turned against them.

"Form up!" Warlord Astor called over his shoulder. "We'll go in tight! We'll take it back!"

Tucking her toten-vec, Liin Sivi drove her colos up beside Astor's. Eladamri came up the other side. More mounted warriors joined them, fanning out in a wide wedge.

The colos lowered their curled horns. They smashed into the Phyrexians before them. What monsters were not unmade by the horns were destroyed by blades. The colos cut through the flank of the Phyrexian charge and drove on toward the captured ship.

Astor bore down on the bloody gunwales. He did not slow. The ship loomed up. His mount's hooves bounded twice more before it launched from the ground. The mountain yak soared through the air. Wind ripped at its white fur. The colos cleared the rail. It came down atop an unwary Phyrexian. Hooves hammered the thing to the deck. Astor stood in the saddle and chopped another beast through the middle.

Two more Phyrexians died before the monsters recognized they had been boarded. By then, Liin Sivi's mount was landing and Eladamri's as well. The three warriors drove across the deck, hewing as they went. More yaks pounded onto the ship, bringing more Keldon warriors. The planks ran with glistening-oil. Shattered corpses fell from the rails. In moments, Astor and his warriors had taken back the deck.

"Get below! Cleanse the hold!" Astor shouted to Liin Sivi and Eladamri. They dismounted and went.

Astor meanwhile rode his mount up to the stern castle. He leaped from the saddle. Grabbing the ship's wheel, he turning it hard to windward. The ship lurched upwind, cutting into a bare section of ice.

"Back the main!" he ordered. Below, warriors hauled on the mainsail lines, cleating them off. The face of the sail caught wind and the ship slid backward. Spinning the wheel, Astor brought the long ship about. "Trim the main for a westward run! Load the catapults! Man the bows!"

Even as the sail caught wind again, the catapults were hurling fire back into the heart of the Phyrexian forces.

Eladamri and Liin Sivi returned from the hold. Their eyes glowed.

The elf commander said, "Not a beast remains below."

"Excellent," said Astor through clenched teeth. It wasn't clear whether he smiled or grimaced.

"Yes, excellent," came a new voice. Doyenne Tajamin rode her colos onto the stern castle and dismounted. Despite her words, her face was grim. "We need this ship. We need every ship, every grenade, every oil bomb."

The meaning of her words was plain. The allies were losing. Though Keldons and elves fought with furious valor, the Phyrexians were simply too many. Their lines stretched back across the glacier to the distant peaks. They flung themselves into the front with no regard for survival. Keldons could stand against almost every kind of warrior, but not this kind-not warriors without honor, without end.

In a voice of command, Doyenne Tajamin shouted, "Set a course for the Necropolis!"

Even as Astor turned the ship, the comrades saw the reason: the prize for which they fought was already in Phyrexian hands. Monstrous troops fortified their positions around the base of Necropolis Peak. The long ships that had driven toward that spot were mired at best and burning at worst. Colos riders could not smash through. Infantry could not slay them fast enough. All the while, out of reach of sword and catapult and spell, Phyrexians swarmed up the black cliffs beneath the Necropolis. The monsters climbed with preternatural speed. They surrounded the peak. They poured into the halls of the guardians.

"Atrocity!" spat Doyenne Tajamin. "Before this battle is done, we will all lie in ice graves." Her hand tightened on the grip of her cudgel. Something changed on her face. She lifted the ancestral weapon before her.

Blood-Phyrexian and Keldon and elf-draped the ancient runes. The tales of Twilight were obscured beneath the gore of battle. Indeed, the glistening-oil even seemed caustic to the symbols. It hissed. Tendrils of white steam crazed the air. Heat trembled through the weapon.

"What's this?" Doyenne Tajamin wondered aloud.

"Look!" said Eladamri, pointing.

Sudden light flared from the Necropolis. Fires blazed. They roared out of every window and door. The very mountain shook with that initial blast. Then came a second. A ring of force spread from the summit across the sky. The third blast was the most powerful yet. Blinding light beamed from the dead city. It swallowed fire, so intense it was, and swallowed the disk of cloud. All dissolved before its brilliance.

Doyenne Tajamin watched a moment more before she fell to her knees. She clutched the sizzling cudgel to her breast. Breathless, she recited the words of the Book of Keld:

And there shall come, in the darkest corner of Twilight, a light that will scour away the shadows. A new sun will dawn over Keld and draw into its compass all the clans and nations. As the warriors of Keld were firstborn from the hearth fire, so the new and true warriors of Keld will be secondborn from the burning sun. They will ride her golden bow from the world before to the world thereafter, and they will fight the final battle of Twilight.

As if in answer, dark figures emerged from the beaming windows and doors of the Necropolis. They were almost unseeable in that ferocious glare.

"The honored dead of Keld," Tajamin murmured worshipfully.

More plentiful than the monsters that had swarmed the peak, the ancient warriors of Keld emerged. They descended to do battle.