Weatherlight shrieked out across the city to the garrison grounds. Half the population of Kaldroom had dwelt within the barracks of that place. They remained. Minotaur warriors were laid foot-to-head, row on row across the ground. Their bodies were pristine, untouched by the fire that had destroyed the populace. Even their armor was polished, even their uniforms. Not one showed the wound that had killed him. Their eyes had all been propped open as hunters do to the creatures they stuff. What were these corpses? Trophies? Why would Phyrexians bother to chain corpses together?

"They're alive…" Tahngarth whispered breathlessly. The realization prickled his hide with a memory.

He is trapped. A red beam stabs down at him from a panel above. It strikes his flesh. It twists his horns and swells his muscles and transforms him into a monster.

Shaken by the flashback, Tahngarth suddenly knew why the Phyrexians had kept these warriors alive.

Without bothering with his gunner's harness, Tahngarth swung his cannon to the fore and was squeezing off his first shot before he had even glimpsed what must lie beyond. Red rays ripped the air, plunging toward a huge black building, as amorphous as a mountain. It was a flowstone laboratory, grown on Rath and overlaid on Kaldroom. Tahngarth's shot struck the side of the structure. It lit up a portico and bathed the scabrous priests that stood there. They burned like paper. The portico collapsed. A hole opened in the wall. Through it, Tahngarth glimpsed what lay within: torture chambers, vivisection tables, vats of glistening-oil. It was only a moment's glimpse before Weatherlight hurtled above the black rooftop, but it was enough to convince Tahngarth.

"We must destroy that building!"

"What is it?" Gerrard shouted as Weatherlight entered a long, sweeping turn to port.

"A Phyrexian incubation ground. They've killed the citizens and have somehow drugged the garrison. They're going to turn them into monsters. They're going to make them all like me. We have to destroy that factory."

A beam stabbed up from the structure and sliced across the sky. It howled so close overhead that the hairs on Tahngarth's head curled. Two more shots roared from other guns.

"They're on to us!" Sisay shouted.

Weatherlight dropped out from under the bolts. She spread her wings to catch the air. A sudden flare of her engines skipped her out along the lowlands. Flack burst in a tight trail behind her.

Gerrard, the amidships gunners, and Squee at the tail filled the skies with answering fire.

Tahngarth meanwhile clambered into his traces. "Bring us about so I can draw a bead!"

"I'm still being evasive!" Sisay hissed.

A plasma blast from the laboratory swarmed up toward Gerrard's gun. The energy did not seem to move, only to grow wider. Cursing, Gerrard shot a volley down the throat of the attack.

Energy met energy. The center of the plasma ball was ripped away, but its mantle still struck the ship. Plasma ate through the port gunwale and two of the ribs. It dissolved the rail on either side of Gerrard's gun, and flack arched over his head.

The speaking tubes were suddenly jammed with voices:

"Multani, hold us together!"

"Target those guns, Squee!"

"Tuck the wings!"

"Full power!"

"Bring us about!"

The shouts were echoed in blazing rays from the guns and roaring fire from the engines. Like an angry hornet angling toward its tormentor, Weatherlight shot above the trailing fire. Her port-side guns bled the sky. She turned her bow hard toward the laboratory.

At last Tahngarth could draw a bead. He unleashed a barrage that lit up the fields below. Flares overwhelmed Phyrexian fire and pulverized the gun that had flung it. A second blast obliterated another bombard along the structure's edge. Tahngarth shifted his aim toward the roof line. The other gunners could take out the weaponry. Tahngarth would destroy the factory.

A blast ripped a long hole in the roof. Another burned away rafters and gantries. The third punched past, to row on row of vats. The golden stuff in them was glistening-oil, the placental fluid of newts. The volatile liquid made one strike work like five.

Vats exploded. The miserable creatures within died in an instant. They would not bear Tahngarth's shame. Blasts rocked the structure and hurled metal and glass outward. Blazing oil lit more vats. They flamed and burst. A chain reaction swept through the incubation chambers. In manifold explosions, the core of the building went up.

Not pausing to admire the conflagration, Tahngarth hurled bolts of destruction into the adjacent rooftops. Vivisection laboratories were laid bare. Their inhabitants glared upward in startled dread in the moments before they were broiled alive. More shots ripped open the torture chambers.

Tahngarth stared feverishly down. A strange abstraction contorted the scene before him.

His gun is a flat panel in the ceiling. It pours a red ray down onto his flesh. The stinging strokes repair his deformity. They return his soul to its former, beautiful state.

Yes, he felt the shuddering of Weatherlight as she took blast after blast. Yes, he knew that by the time the factory and its defenders were destroyed, the ship would not be battle worthy, perhaps not even sky worthy. It didn't matter. Tahngarth would save them. He would save his people the fate he had endured, and in saving them, he would save himself.

Chapter 16

Nine titans towered above a blasted underworld.

The second sphere of Phyrexia was a scrap heap. The ground consisted of rusted iron and corroded brass. Inert machines lay like dead giants on the horizon. Here and there, smokestacks jutted from the ground. They spewed constant pillars of soot high into the air. The metallic waste spread into a churning black firmament miles overhead. Among columns of soot rose columns of metal. Girders and pipes ran like veins on their outer edges. As wide around as whole cities, the pillars extended from the ground to the smoggy firmament above. Here and there, the clouds parted to show not an open sky but a closed vault. It was the underbelly of the first sphere. Enormous trusses stretched column to column. Their metal was encrusted with carbuncles. There was no sun here, no stars. Were it not for occasional blasts of fire from the smokestacks, there would have been no light in this sphere at all. As it was, the red glares leant a flickering and lurid aspect to the landscape.

Planeswalkers did not need light. They could see heat signatures, and there were plenty of those. There were other signatures here too. Dead ahead, some five miles from where the titan engines stood, the bomb production facility lay. Each of the stone-charger shells in that factory gave off a null signature. Its mana-voided core warped natural energies. The total effect, even at five miles, was unmistakable.

Each of us has the capacity to take twenty warheads, Urza told his immortal comrades. Gather that number, 'walk to the master columns, set the charges, and rendezvous on the third sphere.

Taysir remarked, A simple plan-

From a simple mind, supplied Szat, kicking a shattered mechanism with the claw of his black dragon suit.

– but Phyrexia is not a simple place, Taysir finished. The multicolored gemstones of his suit scintillated in the eerie darkness.

Within the pilot orb of his own titan engine, Urza made final adjustments. Small lightnings scintillated on the energy fork at the peak of the suit. This sphere is a habitat, just like the first, except here there are only predators, only mechanical watchdogs-the Devourer, the Dreadnought, the Diabolic Machine…