When he'd leapt after Aron Capashen, Jaya had worried. The Llanowar millenaries remember the Phyrexian invasion well, and they've already sent scouts to join us. There is good hunting here."Ījani offered her a fierce grin that revealed his teeth. I have been seeking deer to feed the camp. "Jaya!" Ajani strode from the trees' deep shadows, his white fur glinting in the light and his cloak rippling behind him.
Now that would be a relaxing way to pass a decade or two. Maybe with some chilled peppermint tea in hand. Well, maybe she was growing old, but Jaya could see herself relaxing outside a small cabin in a cedarwood tub in one of those shadowed valleys where war machines lay rotting, forgotten beneath emerald mosses and upright sword ferns, inert as boulders. Not that Jaya was the devout type, but those harsh jagged peaks with shale cascading down the ravines, white in the light, and the alpine blooms drooping from the meadows in sprays of purple and gold, and that massive androgynous statue of some hero whose story had been lost to time. The Red Iron Mountains were so beautiful that planning a war here seemed irreverent. Shanna looked to her crew, who had been listening patiently. "It's a good thing you don't sleep," Jaya said. "If I cannot view you, I will assume you have been compromised." "The scryer has difficulty focusing on Phyrexians," Karn said. "If we split up," Jaya said, her hair gusting around her face, "how will we tell if any of us have been compromised? Stenn didn't even know he was one of them." "I think I have excellent luck," Teferi said. "You do not have good luck," Karn said, regarding Teferi's wounds. I need time to recover, and I can also recruit our Shivan allies while the Mana Rig and the Sylex occupy you." I need to record that information for others to examine." I am the only one who has read and can remember the key I found to the Sylex. "I will go to the Mana Rig directly," Karn said, "to speak to Jhoira. I can go to them, to recruit them to fight at our side." "Yavimaya's been attacked as well," Jodah said. The crew from the Weatherlight had been quiet during this discussion, but now Raff sighed. "We recruit allies and bring them to the Mana Rig." We have to recruit all the allies we can to make our stand." With Argivia fallen, the most powerful armed force on this continent is no longer ours-it is theirs. "Still," Jodah said, "our allies are stretched across all Dominaria. Phyrexian tactics rely on dividing us, on the secret work the sleeper agents can perform in the shadows. "If the events at Argivia have taught us anything," Karn said, "it is that our forces are stronger together than apart. They're like ivy: you have to pull it early. "If we draw them out, if we win, we kill the Phyrexians at the root. I don't like the idea of you in such danger." Defeat would mean losing Dominaria's most precious artifacts-and you, Karn. Jodah looked to Karn, worry brightening his eyes. We will do this by baiting them with the three things the Phyrexians want more than anything else: the Sylex, the Mana Rig, and. "We must force the Phyrexians into open warfare," Karn said, "before they gain in strength and convert more populations. "I might be the captain, Karn, but you're setting the course. Shanna put out a fruit bowl Karn had thought to be ornamental and sat down. Tiana squeezed her wings in tight to her body to fit through the door. Slimefoot joined them, mushroom-like pups cavorting around its base. He'd splayed his hands over Teferi's gut wound and his magic's silvery sheen wafted from his palms like heat waves. Raff had pulled up a three-legged stool beside him. Teferi lay on a nearby cot, his eyes closed.
Arvad, his already white skin sickly with his vampire's pallor, hung back in the shadows behind her. Shanna stood near an oval table, her arms crossed over her burnished leather breastplate. Karn nodded, and Jaya fell into step beside them, her white hair streaming out behind her like a pennant. Only hours before, the four of them-Teferi, Jaya, Jodah, and Karn himself-had been pulled from the upper floor of Argive's watchtower one by one, dangling from a rope ladder like insects above the vast city below.
Golden light scattered among the white clouds below and glistened on the beeswaxed decks. Even though a different crew scrambled along its rigging, laughed as they worked on the deck, and tinkered with its shining mechanisms, the scents and sounds felt comfortably eternal. Being on the Weatherlight's deck made Karn nostalgic.