The Final Battle Against Gix in Koilos
This is it. The final chapter. And it’s devastating.
Before the Fight
The sun has just risen over the Kher Ridge. Xantcha and Ratepe are on one side of the mountain, waiting for Ratepe to recover from the three-step walk from Pincar City. Urza is already at the cavern. He’s sworn he won’t go after Gix until they arrive.
Ratepe sits on the ground, chafing his arms against the chill. He says, “You think he knows everything?” And Xantcha tells him what passed between her and Urza on the rooftop. All those secrets she carried. Urza knew them already.
Then Ratepe says something that cuts right to the bone of what this story is about. He says he got used to thinking of Urza as the crazed, foolish man on the other side of the wall. He forgot what Urza really was. “He was the man who came within an hour of destroying the world.”
There’s a moment here where Ratepe talks about feeling hollow. Happy about Pincar City, but hollow. Like after seeing his father dead. Like floating in the sphere on the ocean. He says if he asks himself what happens next, there’s nothing there. Not even a sunrise.
Xantcha brushes it off. She tells him Urza walked them under the sun, that’s why they missed the sunrise. She doesn’t engage with the deeper meaning. It’s the last time she’ll have the chance to, and she lets it go.
The Duel
They fly the sphere into Koilos. Urza is waiting near the glyph-covered walls, taller than any mortal man, wearing full battle gear with a war staff capped in blue-gray metal. His eyes are hard and faceted. He looks like a weapon.
“Gix is here, waiting for me.”
They enter the lower chamber. It’s empty except for Gix, standing just behind dead center. No speeches. No taunting. These are ancient enemies who’ve been alive too long for posturing. They came to kill or be killed.
Gix attacks first. A rubine beam from his forehead gem hits Urza. For a moment Urza becomes a bilious green boulder, then the boulder explodes and throws Xantcha against the wall. Urza fights back with spinning coils of fire. Gix counters with an ambulator-creature that sprouts a toothy mouth and viscous arms. Urza speaks a word and it becomes a smear. He slams Gix against the far wall and traps him in a crystal sarcophagus. Gix melts the crystal with purple fumes and Urza disappears in wailing sound.
They go back and forth like this. Flash and counter. Elemental ice, conjured beasts, ghosts of artifacts the brothers once wielded against each other. Urza melts one of Gix’s legs. Gix rebuilds it. Neither can deliver a killing blow.
Eventually they lock into a contest of pure will. A spindle-shaped web of blue-white and crimson light stretches between Urza’s powerstone eyes and Gix’s gem-studded forehead. No heat. No sound. Just two beings trying to overpower each other at the most fundamental level.
The Sacrifice
Ratepe sees it first. “Look at Urza’s eyes!”
Through the Weakstone’s influence, Ratepe can see what’s happening. Gix is dragging the powerstones through time. The Thran are waiting, just as the demon said. The chamber fills with shadows of the past. Metal columns grow along the walls. Thran machines appear on the floor. A platform rises beneath the spindle with metal prongs shaped like uplifted hands, ready to receive the stones.
If the powerstones reach those prongs, Urza is finished. The Thran will have their weapons back.
Ratepe shouts, “We can stop them!”
Xantcha resists. She’s terrified. She thinks the Weakstone is influencing Ratepe, that this is a Phyrexian trap. “I’m Phyrexian,” she says. “I can’t trust myself. I’m always wrong.”
But Ratepe is certain. “I’m not! And I’m never wrong about you. Meet me in the light, Xantcha. We’re going to end the war.”
She sheds her armor and pushes her hands into the spindle of light.
Gix screams at her. Begone! Listen and obey. The demon’s commands that were carved into her from birth. But she disobeys. She extends her arms to their fullest reach.
Time and space dissolve. She’s left her body behind. To the right, the Weakstone and Mightstone rolling toward her, losing their fight. To the left, the blood-red maw of Gix, pulling the stones toward doom. Straight ahead: Ratepe, son of Mideah, with a radiant smile and outstretched arms.
Their fingers touch.
Gix turns his wrath on them. It’s the last thing the demon does. The stones break free and destroy the enemy they were created to destroy.
Xantcha and Ratepe are together. Nothing else matters. And Rat’s joyous face is the last thing she sees before the darkness.
What’s Left
Urza survives. Of course he does. The powerstones protect him from the fireball that fills the chamber. When the fire passes, he calls out Xantcha’s name. It echoes off scorched walls.
He’s alone.
At the end, she chose Mishra. Charming, lively Mishra.
Urza reads the truth on the upper chamber ceiling. The Thran fought among themselves. He doesn’t know which side became the Phyrexians. He realizes he’ll have to go back in time himself, to the Thran era, to find out. But not yet.
This will be a cunning war. Gix is still alive in the past. Yawgmoth and the Phyrexians exist in past, present, and future. The real battle for Dominaria has just begun.
Urza moves toward the surface. No real body. No real need for light. Then something tugs at him.
Xantcha’s heart. The powerstones, his eyes, preserved it.
He wasn’t alone.
That last line. After everything. After three thousand years, after the betrayals and the obsessions and the madness. The heart of a Phyrexian newt who loved him despite everything he was. That’s what stays with him.