Drawing a deep breath, Barrin hugged his daughter's body. "The last time I saw you, you were heading into Rath. We fought, I remember. I'm sorry. We also said goodbye. I didn't think that good-bye would be our last. I was wrong about everything. Everything." Gently lowering her into the grave, he sighed deeply. "Good-bye, my angel."

He stood, watching solemnly as the lid slid back over the crypt. Darkness slowly swallowed up his daughter. The last of the water dripped from the edges of the lid. It grated quietly into place.

"Sarcophagus." Barrin whispered the old Thran word as he stared at the spot. "Flesh eater."

He would find his own sarcophagus in the sky.

Barrin rose into the air for the last time in his life.

In ancient days, Urza lost his brother to Phyrexia. In his rage, he had unleashed a blast from an artifact called the sylex. That blast had sunk continents and reshaped Dominaria. It had also made Urza a veritable god.

Barrin was no god. He did not have a sylex. He did not wish to sink continents, but he knew the spell Urza had cast. It would be enough.

Above him, massive ships floated like leviathans. Barrin made no move to hide. A single man rising through a smoky sky was hard enough to see, and those mountainous machines were oblivious to so small a threat. Barrin ascended in their midst. Black killing things. They would not know what hit them.

Closing his eyes, Barrin drew upon the power of his fury. Lava. Brimstone. Fire. He thought of Shiv and Rhammidarigaaz. He thought of the mana rig pumping redhot stone like a giant heart. Rage welled in him. He was its vessel. Hatred shaped the spell, but he needed more power.

Barrin drew mana from Tolaria beneath him. He remembered Karn's birth in the first Tolaria. He remembered the war with K'rrik in the second Tolaria. He remembered Jhoira and Teferi, Weatherlight and the Metathran, Rayne and Hanna. As blue mana coursed into him, Barrin tapped other lands as well-verdant Yavimaya, militant Benalia, undead Urborg. He drew all the power into himself and became a living sylex.

His insides boiled. Beams shot from his eyes and his fingertips. Power sought escape in every extremity. It crept its way up legs and arms, across face and chest. Hair stood on end and hurled energy from its tips. Pores opened and beamed. Every wound ever struck on his body burst open and shone. His flesh could not contain the radiance. Soon, Barrin glared like a second sun.

Those were not light rays, though, but power rays. They roared out red from him. The air sizzled with them. Beams struck the ships. They cut metal as though it were water. They turned Phyrexian armor to pudding and Phyrexian flesh to ash. They pierced to engine cores and cracked powerstones.

Cruisers and plague ships spewed smoke through a thousand sudden holes. Engines went critical. One machine blazed apart. Its own shrapnel melted in the energy it unleashed. Four adjacent cruisers lurched and exploded. They tilted on end. Daylight sieved through their riddled hulls. Ship to ship, destruction spread.

Not a cannon was fired, not a plasma burst unleashed, but there was holocaustal fire in the heavens. Below, it was the same. Oceans boiled. Trees flash-burned. Rocks melted.

Whatever creatures had stood on Tolaria were blinded by the flash, and deafened by the concussion, and dismantled by the raw power. Phyrexians, scholars, students, hinds, fleas-all died in that moment. Their struggles were done. Their bodies were gone. Even the ground on which they stood turned to wax and ran.

Only Rayne and Hanna were safe, sealed into their sarcophagi.

How like Urza had Barrin become.

At last the blast spent itself. It left a hole in the sky. No ships remained. No clouds either. The beaming sun seemed dim and gray.

Cold waves crashed into boiling seas. Whirlpools laid the ocean depths bare. Water churned silt as red as blood.

Where once had been a verdant island was now a molten slab of rock, hissing into the sea. Tolaria was gone forevermore.

So too was her onetime lord, Mage Master Barrin.

Eladamri strode at the head of his army, Liin Sivi at his side. He wore the elven armor and livery of his Steel Leaf warriors. He carried a powerstone pike, just like the tens of thousands of Metathran that marched behind him. Their belief armed and armored him. Belief made Eladamri the savior of elves and the commander of Metathran.

Lifting high his powerstone pike, Eladamri shouted, "Charge!" His folk took up the shout. It became a fierce war cry, mortals storming the gates of hell. Those gates were well guarded. The desert before Eladamri swarmed with Phyrexians. For a mile in every direction, monsters ranked. In deep trenches lurked Phyrexian throats-living stomachs that would swallow anyone who happened across them. In cannonades and bombard embrasures, Phyrexian gunners tested aim and range. In spell towers, sorcerers prepared black-mana magics. In sanctums, priests tended flesh eaters. They waited eagerly.

Not all waited. Other beasts marched forward. In sideby-side phalanxes, they advanced. Their claws and hooves flung up shimmering clouds of salt-dust in their wake. The vanguard bristled with scuta. Their cranial shields gleamed black under a merciless sun. Next came bloodstocks. Their metallic fore-hooves churned the ground. Phyrexian shock troops filled up the main body of the army, the most vicious fighters of all. They all advanced-not marching but charging.

Eladamri leveled his powerstone pike. His jaw clenched. His eyes gleamed like twin poniards.

Liin Sivi prepared her toten-vec.

The two lines approached-one blue and silver and the other black and iron.

A whine rose behind Eladamri's division. The noise intensified to a shriek. The air directly overhead suddenly thronged with gleaming birds-falcon engines. They cut the sky to ribbons. Bending razor beaks toward the Phyrexian lines, the birds dived. A manifold crackle followed as falcons smashed through scuta shields. From the holes they punched came a whirring sound and geysers of macerated meat.

The Phyrexian front lines crashed down. Over their scaly backs, bloodstocks galloped eagerly. They bore no shields except the bone armor beneath their skin. They bore no weapons except the scimitar claws that sprouted from their fingers. Their fangy throats were filled with roars as they smashed against Eladamri and his army.

Powerstone pikes rammed into bloodstock bellies. The weapons tore through bony plates and ate deeper. Bloodstocks clawed their way up the shafts that impaled them. Pikes chewed through Phyrexian spines. Their hind legs went limp. Mechanical forelegs bore the creatures forward. They sank scimitar claws into elf faces and Metathran necks.

Eladamri himself was almost torn to pieces. He released his pike-mired in a bloodstock's midsection-and ducked under a pair of swiping claws. With a roundhouse kick, he flung the claws back to stab their owner. The bloodstock impaled its own eye and tore its neck wide. Glistening-oil sprayed in a golden cloud.

Blanketed in the monster's gore, Eladamri raked his sword from its sheath. With one chop to the neck, the bloodstock fell before him. His powerstone pike clawed its way out the monster's back. Eladamri clambered past the beast and retrieved his pike.

A terrible creature reared up before him. It seemed a giant crab. A huge pincher clamped onto Eladamri, lifting him from the ground. Carapace cut into his sides. Biting back the agony, he hurled his powerstone pike at the thing's back. The weapon cracked off of chitin and rattled uselessly down among clicking legs.

The claw tightened. Eladamri felt his hip pop. He hacked at the claw's joint. The sword's tip imbedded between scissoring plates. Yanking sideways on it, Eladamri levered the pinchers slightly open. He could not escape, but neither could the monster cut him in half.