What sacrifice must we make? Rhammidarigaaz asked Rith. Immersed in the soul symphony, he would have sacrificed anything to raise the final Primeval. How many must die? How must they die?

Rith's smile glinted like a dagger. You're beginning to think like us. But no-no mortal dragon must be sacrificed now. Only we four. Only we Primevals."

Darigaaz stared at her. We four?

All this while, you did not sense it? Even knowing your name?

My name?

What is the Old Draconic meaning of Rhammidarigaaz?

In dread realization, he whispered, "Conception."

You are the first Primeval. The Phyrexians only destroyed your corpse. They did not know you were already reborn. For a thousand years, you have lived, Rhammidarigaaz. For a thousand years, you could have awakened us. Why didn't you?

Her words pinched the sinews of his heart. I didn't know- Yes, you could not have known. You were hatched as mortal dragons are hatched. You had to learn to eat, to fight, to believe. You could not have known your destiny and should not have known it until the fullness of time. The invasion cut time short. Szat became your teacher. He showed you your grave and taught you the stories you had forgotten. He sent you out to awaken us, and you have.

I am one of you?

Yes. One of us four, who must die to raise the fifth.

Only a moment ago, Rhammidarigaaz had learned he was G.o.d. Now, his life-his eternal life-would be required of him. Hollowly, he repeated the thought, We must die to raise the fifth ...?

In dying, we will awaken our final brother. He is death and has dominion over death. He will raise us all as new creations. As new G.o.ds.

Even had he been in his right mind, Darigaaz could not have resisted, but he was nowhere near his right mind. He would sacrifice his life, yes. He would shuck his old flesh and don a new, immortal body. Rhammidarigaaz would become one of the G.o.ds.

Yes, Rith, he said. Let us complete the circle.

Rhammidarigaaz tucked his wings to his sides, leading the dive. It was only right. He was the first Primeval, the red dragon whose name meant conception. He would lead the four down to death. Wind whipped across his horns and down his red-ta.s.seled back. Rith fell in line behind him, and after her Treva, and Dromar. They dipped downward, away from the cyclone of serpents.

Black tar loomed up. Aloft, it had seemed placid. Now Rhammidarigaaz could see the steamy bubbles that burst upon its surface. They belched heat into the air. This would be no simple suffocation but a burning death. Darigaaz did not close his eyes. He wanted to face death head-on.

His face struck. The tar burned. He plunged into it. Goo encased his wings, his shoulders, his arms. It swallowed his belly and his legs. Darigaaz thrashed. He roared. Sound could not escape his mouth. Tar sucked down his throat. The symphony in his head ceased. There was only the mallet of his heart.

He was dying. He was alone, and he was dying.

They tricked me, he thought. His consciousness poured out like a wineskin. They tricked me into sacrificing myself. I am no G.o.d. I'm no longer anything at all.

He tried to drive toward the surface. It was useless, but life always fights, even when the battle is lost. Darigaaz fought.

There was no more time. Rhammidarigaaz was dead. He was suddenly, surprisingly dead.

At first, the notes were scattered and uncertain, as if the players were warming up. A tone here, a trill there, but nothing that amounted to music. Soon, there came a quickening, the pulse of a drum, insistent and irresistible. A drone joined it, the long strident breath of a bagpipe. The basal rhythm invited melody. Strings added their voices, then winds, reeds, and bra.s.s. They converged. They crescendoed. They sang.

In all its loud cacophony, life reentered Darigaaz.

He fought again toward the surface. The tar grew watery- slack and tepid. It could not grip him. His flesh was new and slick. He surged upward. Wings hurled back the muck as if it were air.

Rhammidarigaaz's head broke the surface. Tar peeled from his jowls and eyes and horns. It sloughed from shoulders and arms, wings and waist, legs and tail. With a mighty stroke, he shot from the blackness. It closed beneath him.

Darigaaz's roar was a volcano. It spewed straight up into the eye of the dragon cyclone. He followed the fire skyward. Life had returned and brought rage with it. He was done being subordinate. He was done being tricked, done suffering fools.

Darigaaz's body was new-scaled in rubies, youthful and lithe, quick and powerful. His mind was new too, bursting with the sorceries that are a G.o.d's inheritance. Even his soul was new, not the suffering spirit of a mortal creature but the unrepentant heart of a G.o.d. Darigaaz's time had come to rule-he and his sibling G.o.ds.

Rith burst from the black well of death. Her flesh was solid emerald. Voracious clouds of spores fountained from her roaring jowls as she took to the sky. Angelic Treva followed, a creature of white light. Radiance poured up past her teeth. Then came Dromar, who breathed a shaft of distortion that shook matter apart. And, last of all-Crosis.

The black dragon G.o.d had bat wings and a cobra's body. His legs were powerful, his talons were tipped in razor claws, and the whole of his being gleamed like onyx. From his mouth came a black column that slew anything in its path.

This was Crosis, the one the other four had died to raise. He had nullified death and raised them all again as G.o.ds.

The five Primevals vaulted up through the vortex of dragons, rising faster than mortal wings could have borne them. They owned the heavens.

Except that there, beyond the coiling serpents, a ship dared to fly. She had a ma.s.sive prow ram and a sleek hull and shimmering wings of metal.

"The skies are ours!" shrieked Crosis.

"Who dares contest them?" hissed Dromar.

"It is Weatherlight," said Treva.

"We must drive them to ground," Rith determined.

Rhammidarigaaz was last to speak, but he spoke with the same fury as the rest. "We must destroy them."

Firstborn of the Primevals, Rhammidarigaaz led the dragon G.o.ds and their nations across the sky to destroy Weatherlight.

Chapter 33.

Where All the World Fought.

"Dragons, dead ahead!" called Tahngarth into the speaking tube. "They're flying an intercept course." At Weatherlight's helm, Sisay lifted her captain's gla.s.s. "One of them is Rhammidarigaaz! They're allies!" A cheer went up across the deck. The crew had needed some good news. They had fought in a shaken delirium since Gerrard and Squee had disappeared. No one knew where they had gone. It was good to see allies in the sky. Five beasts led up the dragon nations. Red, green, white, blue, and black, the serpents vaulted into the heavens. They climbed with an impossible speed. Their eyes blazed angrily. "They don't look like a welcoming party," Tahngarth said. Sisay stayed the course, one hand clutching the helm and the other the captain's gla.s.s. Through it, she could see the glint of fangs and claws, the spark of fury in draconic eyes.

"I think you're right."

Tahngarth pivoted his gun forward, drawing a bead on the black dragon. His hands sweat on the fire controls.

"You're the captain, Sisay. You've always been the captain. You have to decide. What do we do?"

Fire roared in a red-hot column from the mouth of Rhammidarigaaz.

"Hang on!" Sisay shouted.

She swung the wheel hard to port and yanked back on it. Weatherlight stood on end.

"Full power!" she called.

Weatherlight's engines hurled their own fire. On pillars of flame, the ship rocketed away. The Gaea figurehead tore through clouds. Her metal wings sp.a.w.ned cyclones in her wake.

Through swirls of mist, the five dragons ascended. They gained on the shrieking engine. As red as ruby, green as emerald, white as lightning, blue as sky, and black as death-the beasts spat killing blasts. They arced up toward Weatherlight.

Tahngarth yanked his gun about but couldn't draw a bead past the gleaming wings.

Next moment, those wings were mantled in fire. They would have melted except that the Thran metal was fortified by Karn. Even as flames fell back, voracious spores engulfed the stern. They rooted themselves and grew rampantly. Any other ship would have splintered beneath the parasitic plants, but Weatherlight's magnigoth wood was strengthened by Multani. A white shaft of light blazed out above Weatherlight's. It dropped to cleave the ship in two. There would be no defense against it-except an expert helmsman.

Sisay rammed the helm forward. The ship plunged. Her wings tucked. She slipped from beneath the killing beam. Engines drove her down toward Urborg.

The hurtling dragons overshot her. They turned in the sky above and folded their wings. Snarling and snapping, they dived.

"Tahngarth, get to stern," Sisay called. "We won't need forward guns while we're running."

Tahngarth nodded his approval and unlaced his gunnery traces. "Let's just hope I can fill Squee's shoes."

How glorious it was to cross Dominaria in the Golden Argosy. No hunger, no thirst, no weariness, no wounds- but these were only the beginning of the marvel. The ship sailed with impossible speed. She cut through water as though it were air, and through air as though it were nothing at all.

From the moment that Warlord Astor had debarked, the ship's sails had filled with an otherworldly gale. She had coursed like a comet across the world. Her path was straight and incorruptible. Where islands loomed up before her, she only breasted through them. Her prow clove into sandy beaches, soil, and solid rock. She cut through mountains as though they were but shadows and sailed out the other side.

Never did her company fear. Eladamri and Liin Sivi, the Steel Leaf and Skyshroud elves, and ten thousand Keldon warriors- none of them feared the ship would wreck. They were well aware of the world beyond her rails but knew their role in that world lay far ahead, at Urborg.

Days and nights scrolled away until at last the black island chain opened before them.

Eladamri stood at the prow, clasping Liin Sivi's hand. "The heroes of Keld will fight the final battle of Twilight on that island. There we will turn back the darkness."

Liin Sivi nodded. Her eyes were bright and stern, focused on the island. "That central volcano hides the source of all this evil."

"The Stronghold," Eladamri said, completing the thought. The two had lived all their lives in the shadow of that horrid fortress. They had fought against it, had even invaded it. Now, two worlds away, they rushed toward it again. "We will capture the land and plumb the fiery depths and destroy the Stronghold once and for all."

The Golden Argosy surged toward Urborgan sh.o.r.es. She crossed reefs that would have wrecked any normal vessel. She plunged through shallows that should have forbidden her ma.s.sive draft. The beach swept up. Sand parted before her hull. The Golden Argosy clove through palms and swamps. Nothing could halt her.

"What will we do when at last the ship stops?" Liin Sivi wondered aloud.

"We will leap from her and fight," replied Eladamri.

Liin Sivi glimpsed a Metathran guard high in a cypress. He stared down incredulously. "Will we remember this- the ship, the journey, any of it?"

Eladamri gazed at the drowned forest through which they plunged. "No. We will not remember, or remember only as sleepers remember the waking world." He clutched her hand tighter. "But some things even sleepers do not forget."

Without slowing, the Golden Argosy suddenly stopped. Volcanic foothills rose ahead of her.

Eladamri peered up the mountainside. "Here is our battleground. Here we must depart immortal realms for mortal ones."

Drawing her toten-vec, Liin Sivi said, "I am ready."

"No," replied Eladamri, reaching across to her. He took her jaw in his hand, leaned slowly in, and kissed her. The heat of mortal desire pa.s.sed through that kiss. They parted, and Eladamri stared into her eyes. "Now, we're both ready." He drew his own sword, set his foot on the rail, and leaped from the Golden Argosy.

One moment, Eladamri had lain half-submerged in an icy sea. The next, he landed on a gnarl of cooled lava. It was black and rough and hot beneath his hands. He couldn't quite catch himself. He tucked his head and rolled around his sword. Rock rasped his neck and elbows. He came up on his feet, his knuckles bleeding.

Liin Sivi rose beside him. Her toten-vec swept before her. "Where are we? What's happened?"

"I don't know," Eladamri responded, edging toward her.

There was sudden motion behind them. They whirled.

From the shrouded forest at the base of the volcano poured elves and Keldons. They weren't wet or bedraggled. All seemed to appear in midair, as if leaping from the trees. Their armor was polished, their skin clean and healthy. Steel Leaf and Skyshroud elves appeared beside Keldon warriors. They stumbled and rose in wary confusion.

"I dreamed of a golden ship...." Liin Sivi ventured uncertainly. "I dreamed we were to fight the final battle of Twilight here...."

"Yes," Eladamri said, taking Liin Sivi's hand. He nodded up the volcano behind them. "This mountain is familiar. Do you remember it?"

A bitter smile lit her face. "This is a Rathi mountain. This is the mountain that holds the Stronghold." She shook her head. "There is no battle I'd rather fight."

Brandishing his sword, Eladamri shouted, "Forward!" With Liin Sivi beside him, he climbed the volcano. Elves and Keldons in their thousands followed.

It was good to march again beneath the sun.

A hundred miles from Urborg, in seas a mile deep, something enormous moved. It might have been a school of whales, though even a hundred thousand leviathans could not have mounded the waters so violently. Whatever coursed beneath the surface was as ma.s.sive as a mountain and faster than a falcon. In its long trek across the globe, it pushed before it a tidal wave that traveled at awesome speed. It drove toward distant Urborg.

The thing was only seventy-five miles out now. The basin of the sea sloped upward. Just behind the rushing wave, kelpy ma.s.ses surfaced. They seemed Sarga.s.so. Leaves rattled as the foliage lifted above the waves. Twigs jutted forth, then branches, then boughs. Water cascaded from the widespread crowns of the submerged trees.

These were not just trees. Each was the size of an isle, each the height of a mountain, and they moved. Enormous boughs hurled away water. Vast knotholes glared over the flood. Hollows that could only be described as mouths disgorged the brackish depths. Enormous roots strode along the sea floor at impossible speeds.

The magnigoth treefolk had come all the way from Yavimaya. They were drawn not straight to Urborg but on a twisted path, following their stolen captive: Rith.

In ancient days, the green Primeval had been entrusted to them. For epochs, these treefolk had faithfully guarded their prisoner. Even before the forest of Yavimaya grew, they had kept Rith captive. The Thran-Phyrexian War could not shake her loose, nor the Argoth event, nor even the great Ice Age. Now, though, after ten thousand years, Rith was free. It was a small thing to march across the oceans of the world, seeking her.

At last, they had cornered her at Urborg. She would not escape again.

The treefolk had brought help. All across their bark cl.u.s.tered thousands of Kavu. The gigantic lizards blinked brine from their nict.i.tating membranes but otherwise remained motionless. The cold depths had sent them into hibernation. Now in the sunlight, they slowly awoke. One by one, Kavu opened their nostrils and stretched. Steam rose from armored hides. Blood began to run again. Scaly necks craned for sight of Urborg. Kavu lords-six-legged lizards that easily weighed ten tons-filled their wattles with long-calls. To these eerie battle songs were added the drone of Kavu stomachs. The beasts had awakened hungry and soon would fill their bellies with Phyrexians.

It wouldn't be long now. At fifty miles out, the magnigoth treefolk waded in fifteen hundred feet of water. Boughs dripped their last drops into the turbid ocean. Leaves rustled in sea winds. At twenty-five miles out, roots splashed through the shallows. In mere minutes, they clambered over reefs and up the sh.o.r.e. Treefolk rose to their full height. They were as tall as the volcanoes themselves.