Szat was snide. Your world? You do not fight for your world. You fight for a mortal world, a world of humans and elves and dwarfs and minotaurs. A sadness entered the planeswalker's thoughts. Dominaria has not been our world for ages of ages.
I haven't time for wordplay, Darigaaz thought as he reached the peak of his climb. I have a war to win.
I agree. Let us be done with word games and begin our war.
Bolts of black power emanated from the titan engine and ripped the air all about Darigaaz and his flying folk. The energy literally tore the sky open. Through rents in reality, an unreal world of chaos shapes and hissing forms appeared. The tears grew wider. They joined. Holes opened in the sky. Serpents banked to escape the shredding reality, but the disintegration was too rapid. The beasts flew into chaos.
Just before the last tatter of sky disappeared, Tevash Szat in his ebony engine leaped in among them.
Darigaaz knew this place. The Blind Eternities was Urza's name for it. To Darigaaz it always had seemed the formless albumen of an egg, the seeming nothing out of which scale and claw, heart and brain would take shape.
I know your thoughts, Darigaaz, that these folk are your folk. I know your heart, Darigaaz, better than you know it yourself.
Why do you take us from battle?
I take you to a truer battle, to one you must win.
Suddenly, the Blind Eternities congealed into a coastal range of volcanic mountains. Lava pumped from dozens of cones. Steam and sulfur jetted into yellow clouds. Basalt channeled molten rock into the sea. Ash made false ground above boiling calderas. Obsidian glinted like glassy jewels in black hillsides.
The place had all the sights and smells of Darigaaz's homeland, Shiv, but nowhere in Shiv were there sheer cliffs beside the sea. Nowhere did the ocean cut so long and perfect an arc into the land. It was as though a gigantic spoon had scooped out a precise hunk of land, letting the sea flow into the space.
The dragon nations circled in confusion above the strange spot.
Here is where you must begin your true war, Darigaaz. Battle for your home.
This is not my home, Darigaaz replied.
Look again. This is what is left of your home, of Shiv, after Teferi took what he wished.
Teferi, yes. Knowing of the coming invasion, the planeswalker Teferi had phased out most of the lands of Shiv-the mana rig, the tribal territories of the Ghitu, and even many of the dragon kingdoms. This was all that remained. Down there, among those sea-shorn mountains, was Darigaaz's own aerie. This place was his home.
Teferi was wise, came the mind of Tevash Szat. His titan engine floated effortlessly in the midst of the circling beasts. A hundred thousand Phyrexians just now are shark food. Their portion of Rath overlaid not on land but in sea. But there are tens of thousands of others that ravage your homelands, Rhammidarigaaz. Will you let them destroy it, or will you fight for dragons as you have fought for mortals?
Only then did Darigaaz truly see. Figures marched across shoulders of pumice. They trooped like ants over crater rims and swarmed the boulder piles where goblins dwelt. They climbed cave walls to kill Viashino mystics. They marched up lava tubes to slaughter the dragon enclaves within.
Roaring again in command, Darigaaz led his folk in a long dive toward the land. The Shivan dragons soared with alacrity behind him. The others-this was not their home-hesitated. A glare from Szat sent them after their brethren.
Darigaaz angled down toward a column of Phyrexians. They marched across a narrow isthmus between two boiling seas of magma. At the far end of the land bridge lay a Viashino village. There Phyrexians slew lizard men with impunity. But not for long.
Darigaaz dived. His wings rattled with the searing wind. The pendants at his neck sparked scarlet energy. He gathered spells for the coming assault. In the elder dragon's wake, a score more of his folk sliced the air. Wind whistled from their scales. Their mouths gaped in exertion. Between spiky teeth glowed the fires they stoked in their bellies.
The Phyrexian column turned to look upward. They saw. Some stood their ground. Others stumbled back and fell from the sides of the isthmus. They plunged into the magma seas and their blood ignited immediately. Blue flames lined the land bridge. The rest of the column bolted for the Viashino village.
They wouldn't reach it.
Rhammidarigaaz swept low over their heads. From his mouth poured killing fire. It mantled the fleeing monsters. One by one, like com popping, they burst into flame. More ignited in a chain of azure. Black shells split to gush white innards.
Hearing the domed huts of the Viashino village, Darigaaz spoke an incantation. Power coalesced in the pendants around his neck. It shot out to the cuffs of his wrists and into clawed fingertips. Crimson beams stabbed downward. With utter precision, they found their targets. A Phyrexian trooper was torn in half while the lizard man beside him was spared. A mogg goblin turned to ash that sifted harmlessly onto two Viashino hatchlings. A slasher engine melted, its scythe arm unable to catch a fleeing elder.
Darigaaz came to ground at a run. He folded his wings and clutched up a scuta in each hand. They seemed only pill bugs, and then not even that. He flung the crumpled bodies away and thundered forward to where monsters ripped apart the village elders.
Lizard blood and hunks of skin bounded through the air. The Phyrexians snapped up what they could in greedy jaws, but most of the meat draped the stony dwellings. The monsters turned to find new victims.
Instead they found Darigaaz. He crushed two with his pounding feet and two more with his gory hands and another dozen with a powerful swipe of his tail.
Other Shivan dragons set to ground in the village and fought murderously. The rest of the dragon nations soared onward to defend a goblin village nearby.
Rhammidarigaaz had killed ten more Phyrexians before he heard Szat's voice again in his mind. Don't waste your fire on such lowly beasts. Your own folk languish.
Darigaaz lifted his head above the stone domes. Szat stood at the base of a distant volcano, beside a huge lava tube. A quick glance around the Viashino village told Darigaaz that most of the Phyrexians were dead. Those that remained could be dispatched by the lizard men. He roared once, summoning his folk, and leaped skyward.
Their wings cast huge shadows on the village as they ascended. Leathery skin barked in the air and then took hold. Darigaaz and seven other Shivan dragons shot above rumpled ground and glided down toward the lava tube where Tevash Szat waited.
This is no dragon nest, Darigaaz thought. There are no signs of daw marks, no wards against entry. Why do you bring us here? What is within?
Everything is within. I will lead the way. The titan engine turned toward the lava tube and climbed within. The cave was so huge that his horn-mantled head did not even scrape the ceiling.
Darigaaz landed on the cooled flow beneath the tube and ascended behind Szat. Seven other fire dragons followed.
Already, Szat fought. Rockets shot from the wrists of the suit and hissed into the dark. Spiraling trails of smoke followed them. One by one, they impacted the floor of the tube. Light flared, and bodies tumbled. The sudden glare reflected from countless scaly backs.
Phyrexians swarmed ahead. They seemed roaches clambering away.
Fireballs rolled from the titan engine. They ignited some beasts and baked others in their shells, but there were too many. Those that roasted fell away, revealing more monsters beneath.
Why are they so thick here? Darigaaz wondered.