Tamiyo - Iron Scroll containing the story of New Phyrexia

There is a story.

***

Tamiyo knows this story. This is only the way it starts; there is more, much more. Years ago, she memorized every word. Afterward, just as Urza's metal heir had set himself upon the task of creating a plane, she'd set herself the task of recording it. Like the oil, she'd found the story had seeped into her mind, begun to change it into something she did not like. Something dangerous.

She'd sealed it away.

What a foolish thing to have done.

Hovering over the neon skies of Towashi, she holds the scroll in hand. Oil seeps from her fingers onto the parchment. Before long it will be impossible to read any of the characters—but that is no worry for someone like her, someone who knows these stories better than she knows her own.

***

There is an iron ring binding the scroll. Tamiyo slips it off. It plummets through the air, landing like so many other hunks of metal upon someone's unsuspecting crown.

The story continues.

***

As her eyes scan the scroll, the characters light up—even those now consumed with black oil. Each syllable she reads booms and reverberates, shaking the skyscrapers of Towashi. Trains careen off their crumbling tracks and dive to the ground. The earth tears itself apart, opening crevasses in the city that has space only for itself. Rivers pour in, taking boats and fishers along with them. Streaks of black color the water. Phyrexian symbols etch themselves onto the papers hanging on the buildings yet standing.

***

There is more to the story. There are the people driven from their home and trampled underfoot, their souls shucked from their bodies, their bodies altered beyond any recognition. A queen rising from among the muck to rule her people. A glorious, unending oneness—a life without war or conflict. The heir looks on all this with horror.

When Tamiyo wrote the story, she feared all of this. She didn't understand the peace that came with being part of a greater family. This is not the way she'd tell this story now. But it is almost done, and she will continue telling it.

Boseiju, the tree that once held this plane together, bursts apart. Like wine spilling from a cask, oil runs from between the splinters, dripping onto the thirsty earth. An unholy screech pierces the ears of all who will listen: kami, torn from their home, scatter out of the district. Some find their ends at the tip of a lance, some find them torn apart by compleated fishers joined with their catches, but the result is always the same: the kami dissolve into a fine mist. Tendrils of smoke rise from the blackening soil, from the bridges dissolving into nothing, until the whole district is swallowed by the fog of dead kami.

There is a distant part within her that is screaming at the sight of all this. A small voice ringing in her ear, a tingling at her fingertips. But she cannot say she is afraid. This is what is right for Kamigawa. After centuries of war, have they not earned peace? Is this not simply another step to become whole?

The scroll itself becomes oil in Tamiyo's hands, dripping between her fingers.

This is how the story ends, and how it has always ended: with Phyrexia's victory.

***

MARCH OF THE MACHINE | EPISODE 3: MOTHER, SON, AND STORY