The Portal

“Stormscape Battlemage”
by Christopher Moeller © Wizards of the Coast

Zedor deflected the Phyrexian’s halbered with his spear, and ended his movement cutting off his opponent’s head with his battle axe. He immediately turned round and barely dodged a new attack. He kicked away his aggressor, who lost his balance and fell back on one of his fellows in a loud clanking noise. Seizing his advantage, Zedor leaped and brought his axe down with force on the entangled Phyrexians. Avoiding their metallic claws, he neutralized them in no time.
Rid of all his nearby enemies, Zedor ran towards his two last comrades that had just succumbed to the blows of the Phyrexians, after they had fought like lions and killed more than a dozen of them. The blue-skinned warrior kneeled near his fallen friends, to try to heal them… But life had already left them, and his healing powers were now useless.
“Farewell, my friends”, said Zedor, gently touching the rune on their forehead. Then, he concentrated to send back their souls to Urza, the runes tattooed on their face fading away.

“ Planar Portal ” (detail)
by Mark Tedin © Wizards of the Coast

Now the last man standing of his squad, the metathran battlemage picked up his weapons and set off at a run in the direction of the portal. Thanks to his intuition and the acuteness of his senses, Zedor could avoid the natural dangers of the Urborg swamp, and he was advancing fast. In his mind, he was feeling the portal’s energetic presence grow more and more, and he was tearing along towards its target like an arrow flying to the heart of an enemy. Unfortunately, this enemy had more than one heart, and the portal Zedor had to destroy was but one of the many entries through which the Phyrexians were invading Dominaria. But each time a squad sent by Urza and his allies would fulfill his mission, the invasion would be locally delayed, and it would earn the defenders a little more time to organize the resistance.
Zedor finally arrived to a vast circular area with a calcinated soil, like a nightmarish clearing. At the center of this devastated zone, about thirty feet above the ground, floated a huge black arch, spiked with points and articulated mechanical arms, frequently emitting energy arcs. The humming of the giant artifact was deafening, and the air was heavy with an acrid smell of overheated metal.
The portal was generating in its center a circle of bright light, from which were coming out all sorts of phyrexian abominations, grotesque and terrifying: armoured soldiers like the ones Zedor and his men had fought, mechanical spiders, strange dogs with oversized claws… No sooner had they arrived that the monsters headed towards the swamp to play their role in the plans of their masters. But the metathran was only concerned by the enormous creature patrolling near the portal, probably to protect it. About fifteen feet high, it had four metallic legs, four arms bearing pincers, and a mouth filled with sharp blades.

“Phyrexian Bloodstock”
by Mark Tedin © Wizards of the Coast

“Here we are…” muttered Zedor to himself, hiding his weapons in a bush.
Waiting a few seconds for the monstruous guardian to look in another direction, the metathran dashed towards the portal as fast as he could. He had already covered a good distance when the monster noticed his presence. The giant Phyrexian then let out a bloodchilling cry, a mix of metal grating and beast howl. When they heard this call, all the metal soldiers that had just came out of the portal froze, and came back to contribute to the elimination of the intruder. The guardian pivoted his torso over his four legs, and rushed towards the metathran, stretching out his long arms to shred him to pieces. Without slowing down, Zedor focused his mind on the talisman embedded in his armor, and magnificent blue wings appeared in his back. With a great leap, he rose in the air, flying towards the top of the portal.

“ Illuminated Wings ”
by Jim Nelson © Wizards of the Coast

The guardian stopped in his tracks, his empty eye sockets staring at his prey now out of reach. He then pointed an arm to the metathran, and shot a steel spike from his hand with a steam jet. Caught unprepared and less agile in the air than on the ground, Zedor tried to dodge but couldn’t avoid the sharp projectile, that passed through his side. Despite the pain, he managed to keep the control of his flight, and carried on his trajectory towards the artifact’s top. His azure wings flapping slower, he reached to his belt and grabbed the tiny destruction sphere Urza had given to him. As he passed over the guardian, it shot another spike, that missed the metathran by an inch. The humming of the portal was temporarily drowned by the monster’s shout of rage, and Zedor hit the arch’s metallic hull, tearing his left leg on one of the articulated arms. As if he was a fallen angel, his magic wings fell back over him like a shroud, and disappeared. Overcome by pain and the mind saturated by the portal’s energy field, Zedor held the sphere against the black metal and mobilized all of his remaining strength to activate the magic mechanism.
His soul would not return to Urza, and he would not be reincarnated in another metathran body ready to resume the fight. But his mission had been accomplished, and nothing else mattered. The sphere clicked, and the clearing was swallowed up in a titanic explosion of cleansing fire, that vaporized the portal and its guardian, the nearby Phyrexians, and the broken body of Zedor.

Glossary (click on the chosen word to return to the text)
Phyrexians: Evil metallic creatures from Phyrexia, an artificial and unstable world (or “plane”). When Phyrexia was about to disappear, they launched a large-scale invasion toward the plane of Dominaria.
Urza: A wizard who became a planeswalker (the supreme level of magical power), Urza devoted his life to oppose the plans of the Phyrexians to invade the plane of Dominaria.
Metathrans: Blue-skinned, white-haired humanoids created by Urza to fight the Phyrexians. To concieve these elite soldiers gifted with magic abilities, the planeswalker drew inspiration from the wisdom of the Thrans, an old and mysterious race that was technologically and magically very advanced that fought against the Phyrexians in the distant past.

Text © P.O. Barome

Illustration © Wizards of the Coast

This story was inspired by the Magic: the Gathering™ cards from the Invasion™ block.