The Screaming Spiders Plan Against Phyrexia
Previous: The Phyrexian Portal Is Destroyed
Chapter 18 covers a lot of ground. Urza builds a new weapon. Months pass. Ratepe becomes a secret agent. And Xantcha walks straight into the demon she hoped was dead.
Urza Has a Plan (And It’s Actually Good)
So Urza covered every wall and surface of his workroom with maps. Towns, cities, the locations of every sleeper he’s found. He’s been busy while Xantcha was recovering, traveling across Dominaria and confirming Phyrexian infestations by trusting his instincts instead of demanding proof. For Urza, that’s huge growth.
His new weapon is inspired by the shrieking canister that took down the Phyrexian priest. Sound. Specifically, a tiny artifact the size and shape of a ceiling spider that makes a sound only Phyrexians can properly hear. The sound shakes glistening oil until it breaks apart. If you have oil inside you, it kills you. If you don’t, you barely notice.
He tests it on Xantcha without warning. Just sets it off in the room. She drops like she’s been hit by a truck. Her bones turn to jelly. Her mind gets shaken out of her brain.
Ratepe, who has no Phyrexian oil, stands there completely unaffected.
“It worked!” Urza says, beaming, before she can even stand up.
Classic Urza. Brilliant artifact. Terrible bedside manner.
The Plan
The plan is elegantly simple. Scatter thousands of these “screaming spiders” (Ratepe names them) across every city and town where Xantcha has scented sleepers. Each spider contains a tiny white-mana crystal floating in a drop of water. When the Glimmer Moon reaches its zenith, it tugs the crystal upright, and the spider screams.
On midsummer’s eve, every spider in Old Terisiare goes off at once. Every sleeper drops dead. Message delivered to Phyrexia: Dominaria strikes back.
It’s the best plan Urza has ever had. And Ratepe immediately spots the problem.
People won’t understand what happened. They’ll see their neighbors collapse for no visible reason. They’ll think it’s a god’s punishment or some kind of plague. Ignorance is dangerous. Ratepe is worried about what comes after.
Urza dismisses this. “Let men and women think a god has spoken. Phyrexia will know that Dominaria has struck back.”
And Xantcha is the one who says the quiet part out loud: “The sleepers will die.” She thinks about the newts on the First Sphere. Many of the sleepers don’t even know they’re Phyrexian. They’ll die without understanding why.
“They have to die,” she says, and her voice thickens with tears. “But it’s not true that no one will die.”
Ratepe’s Side Project
The seasons pass. They fall into a routine. Urza walks Xantcha to infested areas every nine days. She plants spiders. He walks on to plant thousands more. Ratepe stays at the cottage building spiders from Urza’s instructions.
But Ratepe hasn’t been idle. He’s been tinkering with the spider design. He’s modified some to produce a different frequency. One that doesn’t shake oil. It shakes stone. Mortar. Foundations.
He wants Xantcha to plant his modified spiders under the Red-Stripe barracks and Avohir’s temple altar in Pincar City. When the Glimmer Moon passes, the buildings come down. A visible sign for every Efuand that whatever strikes the sleepers also strikes the Shratta’s collaborators.
Xantcha resists. Lying to Urza is different from arguing with him or keeping secrets. She can yell at him, but she doesn’t know if she can flat-out deceive him. Ratepe doesn’t push. He just asks again each time they’re alone together. Eventually, she agrees.
Into the Temple
Xantcha enters Pincar City disguised as “Ratepe, son of Mideah of Medran.” She tells the Red-Stripe guard she’s come to pray for the fifth anniversary of her father’s death. He lets her through.
The temple sequence is tense and detailed. She joins a line of mourners shuffling toward the altar. A new priest in a red robe takes over at the dais. Black beard. Cowl drawn up.
She smells glistening oil.
A sleeper priest is running the show at Avohir’s altar. He touches her cheeks in the ritual greeting. She holds her breath. Then she climbs the dais steps on her knees, lifts the altar cloth over her head, and sticks Ratepe’s modified spiders to the dark stone.
Simple. Terrifying. Done.
But then she gets curious. She slips into the private corridors behind the sanctuary and the oil smell gets stronger. She finds a spiral stairway. Goes down. The smell is pure Phyrexia now. She’s found a passageway, wide open, connecting Avohir’s temple directly to the Phyrexian plane.
Gix
And then a voice from the dark.
“Meatling.”
Thirty-four hundred years since she last heard it. She knows it instantly.
Gix is here. Under Avohir’s temple. Surrounded by the desiccated bodies of a hundred Shratta leaders. He’s taller now, more human-shaped, with green-gold skin and a rubine gem in his forehead that’s almost certainly a weapon.
He remembers her. Of course he remembers her. He says he made the stone the brothers broke and made the brothers too and then made Xantcha. “Seven thousand, and only one like you.”
Gix tries to pull her back. Listen and obey. The old Phyrexian command. For a terrifying moment, it almost works. Xantcha is about to release Urza’s armor when she thinks of Ratepe’s face. Laughing, scowling, watching her walk across the Medran plaza. The memory lasts less than a heartbeat, but it’s enough to snap her out of the demon’s grip.
She runs. Gix chases her up the spiral stairway but he’s too big for the passage. A fireball catches her but the armor holds. She makes it to the sanctuary, releases the armor, yawns out the sphere, and flies for the coast.
This chapter is the pivot point of the whole book. Everything before was building to this. Gix isn’t just some distant threat. He’s here, on Dominaria, underneath a god’s altar, and he just told Xantcha that he made her. That she was special. That he has plans for her.
And she ran. Not because she’s a coward. Because the thought of Ratepe gave her the strength to defy the voice that was literally programmed into her at birth.
Love saves her. A messy, imperfect, mortal love between a Phyrexian newt and a boy from a burning country. It’s not elegant or cosmic. But it’s the only real thing in a story full of gods and demons who think they own everyone.