Prologue to Battle for Zendikar

Collected Stories

Compiled by Kimberly J. Kreines

PROLOGUE TO BATTLE FOR ZENDIKAR: COLLECTED STORIES

© 2015 Wizards of the Coast LLC.

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First Printing: September 2015

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6000 Years Ago

1

The Lithomancer

by Kelly Digges

Long ago, the world-devouring Eldrazi were sealed away on Zendikar by three Planeswalkers: the spirit dragon Ugin; the vampire Sorin Markov; and a third Planeswalker called the Lithomancer, about whom little is known in the present day.

Today, we look back in time, more than 6,000 years ago, to a plane whose name is lost to history.

Today, we meet the Lithomancer.

A rampart of stone rose out of the bare earth, encircling the small encampment on what had been an open and vulnerable plain. It was smoothly curved, with elegant crenellations.

Nahiri, called the Lithomancer, surveyed her work and frowned. It was well made, and under good conditions it would stand for centuries.

These were not good conditions.

There were perhaps a hundred refugees left. Tomorrow, they would move camp again, or risk being overrun by these…things, whatever they were. They were abominations, things out of nightmare, and Nahiri didn't bother to hate them. What difference would it make?

"May I have a word with you, Nahiri?"

The clipped, dry voice was right behind her, close enough that she should have heard the man walk up to her, should have felt his breath on her neck. But he walked like a cat, and he drew no breath, and the thought of his lips so close to her throat made her shudder. Vampire.

She'd known he was there anyway—he was walking on bare stone, after all—but he himself had told her not to let anyone know all her tricks. Not even her friends, which she wasn't at all sure he was.

She turned to face Sorin Markov—vampire, fellow Planeswalker, protector of the plane called Innistrad, and the closest thing she had to a friend in this place so far from the world of her birth.

They made a striking pair, and the refugees—human, dark-haired, and ruddy-cheeked—gave them plenty of space. His hair was as white as hers, but his skin was ash-gray where hers was alabaster. It was his eyes that unmistakably marked him as alien: black where they should be white, with bright, unnerving irises.

Art by Michael Komarck

They picked their way between the refugees' cook fires to the edge of the camp, where Nahiri's wall encompassed a low, rocky outcropping. They stood and looked out over the wall. The sun was dropping low over the hills ahead of them, and the hideous shapes in the valley were falling mercifully into shadow.

"You've made their camp for them," said Sorin. "Again. I think it's time we left them to their own efforts."

"No," said Nahiri. "We're here to save them."

"You're here to save them," said Sorin. "I'm here to stop these creatures, on this world, before they spread to others—to mine, or to yours."

Down in the river valley, dark shapes writhed. The sounds of camp life were muted.

"I can't stand to watch them suffer," she said.

"Then turn away," said Sorin, "and look at the bigger picture."

Nahiri glanced back at the camp. Some of the refugees were watching the two Planeswalkers.

"And what is the bigger picture?" she asked quietly. "Are we winning?"

Sorin stared down at the rippling darkness, still as a statue.

"No," he said.

His sharp features were shadowed. Was that guilt at their failure? Or contempt at their weakness? Did she even want to know?

"We could stand and fight," he said. "Together, we might turn the tide. But we couldn't keep these people safe at the same time."

"Not an option," said Nahiri. "For all we know, they're the last people alive on this plane. We have to save them. We have to try."

"Well then," said Sorin, too loudly. "Let's sit and hold their hands while they pass into oblivion, and let these monsters go on to devour other worlds. I'm sure they'll take a great deal of comfort in knowing that we tried."

She glanced back at the refugees. They were no longer watching the Planeswalkers, their eyes locked on whatever small tasks occupied their shaking hands. All except one.

The girl was about fifteen, and her eyes were cold.

Nahiri wanted to say something, anything, that might be of comfort. No words came. She could promise no salvation, and no victory—could promise nothing, except to try. And after Sorin's outburst, the sentiment rang hollow.

She turned away from Sorin and walked down off the outcropping. She stopped in front of young woman with the cold, hard eyes.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Lian," said the girl.

"Can you use a sword?"

Lian nodded. She was unarmed.

Nahiri reached out to a nearby stone and let an old spell awaken inside her, a spell she had learned when she was still mortal, and still young. There was metal in stone, and this stone was every stone. She plunged her hand into the living rock, which melted and foamed around her milk-white hand.

Some of the refugees gasped. Sorin frowned. The girl just watched.

Nahiri called to the metal in the stone, and felt her hand close around the hilt of a sword. She pulled, and an elegant blade slid free of the molten rock.

She held it up for a moment, letting it shine in the setting sun, drawing away the heat of its forging until it was cool to the touch. She offered it to Lian.

"This is your world," she said. "This stone, this earth, is yours to fight for. If you don't think you can rely on us, then don't."

Lian took the sword, tested its weight and its balance.

"We're all going to die, aren't we?" she said, quietly.

"I don't know," said Nahiri. "But if you are, you can at least die fighting."

Lian nodded.

Nahiri turned back to Sorin.

"Lovely," he said, this time softly enough that only she could hear. "I suppose false hope is better than none."

"Any hope is better than none," said Nahiri. "Always."

Sorin frowned, but before he could answer, the earth rumbled. Nahiri stumbled, but kept her feet. There'd been small tremors throughout the day, but nothing like this.

The valley floor lay in full shadow, with the writhing, sinewy bodies of the enemy moving within it, all sickly colors and twisted shapes. But they had fallen strangely still, for the first time in the weeks that Sorin and Nahiri had been fighting them. They turned to the west, toward the setting sun, and began to sway.

Then a figure, impossibly large, rose up behind the hills on the far side of the valley. It was massive, mountainous, strange and terrible to behold, all white bone and sinewy tentacles.

Art by Aleksi Briclot

The earth shook again. The massive thing turned. It was coming toward them. And when it moved, the teeming masses in the valley surged forward, like iron filings aligning with a magnet.

"Combat positions!" yelled Nahiri.

The refugees were still. They were all staring past her, up, into the infinite distance between what they knew to be true and what their eyes now told them. What use were arms and tactics against an angry and misshapen god?

"Move!" yelled Lian.

The refugees stirred to action, taking up weapons, breaking camp, preparing to fight or to flee. Parents clutched their children. A man with a broken leg pulled himself upright, leaning on a spear for support.

The shaking was constant now, the earth rumbling. Clouds spiraled inward toward the monstrosity on the horizon, and chunks of earth floated into the air around it and began to break apart.

The first wave of chittering horrors reached the encampment. They squealed and screamed, mewled and howled, all snapping jaws and swiping claws and flailing tentacles and eyeless, bone-white heads. The smallest were the size of dogs. The largest were as big as buildings, lumbering through the horde. The small ones piled up against the wall, their fellows climbing over them to scale it.

Nahiri drew her sword. Sorin took up a position on one side of her, Lian on the other, and they met the onrushing tide of flesh and madness.

Sorin waved his hand, and a dozen of the monstrosities withered into dust. Nahiri focused her will, and dozens more sank into the rocky ground. But there were more, always more, and the largest one out there was a vortex that tugged on everything—their bodies, their minds, even their magic. Nahiri could feel her mana spiraling away even as she gathered it.

The ground lurched. Nahiri's hair began to stand on end. The setting sun silhouetted the monster before them—no, more than the sun. Light, a terrible light, like nothing any world should ever see. A chasm opened, splitting Nahiri's wall, glowing with the same otherworldly light. Nahiri willed it shut, but nothing happened.

It wasn't a crack in the ground. It was a crack in the world.

The plane was coming apart.

"What is that?" yelled Lian. Her face was bloody, but she still stood, sword in hand.

"That," said Sorin, his voice oddly calm, "is the end."

The light grew unbearable. Faintly, as though from a great distance, the people they'd spent weeks safeguarding screamed, and stopped screaming, and were swept away. Nahiri felt her body rise upward as the earth itself began to unravel.

Art by Jason Felix

"Nahiri!" said Sorin. "It's over!"

Beside her, Sorin flashed away into nothingness. She grabbed for Lian's arm, but the girl was gone, snatched away by shadows in the light. The sword she had carried was still there, floating in the blinding air.

Silently cursing herself, Nahiri grabbed the sword and left the world behind.

Zendikar. Home.

It had been their agreed-upon rendezvous, a safe place where no other Planeswalker would interfere. This world was under Nahiri's protection.

Sorin hadn't offered Innistrad as a rendezvous. Probably worried that the monstrosities would follow. He was too cautious, but perhaps caution was the natural result of age. He was at least a thousand years old, and she wondered sometimes what it would have been like to know him when he was young.

They sat in silence at the edge of a temporary kor settlement in the rugged highlands of Akoum, resting, restoring the bonds that supplied them with mana. If Sorin felt any trace of regret at how things had gone, none reached his face. Nahiri clutched the sword, the last trace of a now-dead world.

Art by John Avon

"Nahiri," said Sorin. "We've got company."

She felt it too, a sort of pressure in the air that meant something was emerging from the Æther. She stood, heart racing.

"Did they—"

"No," said Sorin. "Not big enough. But big."

Then he was there with them: a massive, ethereal dragon, shining with blue-white light. Two flat horns curved around and behind his head, mist poured off him, and long wings folded elegantly behind his slender body. He was huge, easily forty feet long, but he had appeared some distance from them, and everything about his posture spoke of peaceful intent. Nonetheless, Nahiri drew her sword.

"You have noticed," said the luminous dragon, "that we have a problem."

"There's no 'we' here, dragon," said Sorin, rising. "There's us, and there's you. And Zendikar is under her protection."

"Hello to you, too, Sorin of Innistrad," said the dragon. "And on the contrary, when it comes to this problem, 'we' means everyone, everywhere."

He turned his great head toward Nahiri.

"I am Nahiri, guardian of Zendikar," she said. She looked up into the newcomer's inscrutable eyes and tried not to seem afraid. "Whoever you are, you're here at my sufferance."

"Of course," said the dragon, bowing. "Well met, Nahiri of Zendikar, and thank you for your hospitality."

He turned back to Sorin.

Sorin's scowl deepened.

"Nahiri, this is Ugin, called the Spirit Dragon. He's as old as time, and about as easy to argue with."

Sounds like someone else I know, thought Nahiri.

"I take it you know each other," she said.

"We have worked amicably together in the past," said Ugin.

"Not recently," said Sorin. "Ugin, what do you want?"

"Your help," said Ugin.

He raised a hand and conjured a small, ghostly image of the enormous thing they had seen on the horizon of that doomed world.

"You were watching us," said Nahiri, realization dawning. "And you didn't help."

"There is a whole Multiverse of people to help," said Ugin, "and a multitude of ways to help them. While you were trying to stage a grand battle, I was watching, and learning, so that these creatures can be stopped in the long run. This is a goal the three of us share."

"That's my goal," said Nahiri. "But I question the moral judgment of anyone who views the destruction of an entire world as a research project."

"What have you learned about them?" asked Sorin, ignoring her.

Wonderful. The grown-ups were talking. He had done this to her before, when meeting with other Planeswalkers. But she trusted Sorin's judgment, for the most part. She would hear the dragon out.

"They're called the Eldrazi," said Ugin, "and they devour entire worlds. They are not true Planeswalkers, yet they move freely between planes. They are living organisms, apparently native to the Blind Eternities—the only such creatures known to exist. If they are not stopped, they pose a threat to every world."

"They cannot threaten every world," said Sorin. "The Multiverse is infinite."

"You clearly don't believe that," said Ugin. "If there are an infinity of worlds, then why save any of them? Why not just move to other worlds, ahead of the Eldrazi? No. The Multiverse is boundless, but its contents are finite. To believe otherwise is to believe that nothing matters at all. And when you are as old as I am, you will understand that nihilism is an indulgence you cannot afford."

Sorin frowned, but said nothing. Perhaps he really believed all those things he said about wisdom coming with age.

"How do we stop them?" asked Nahiri.

"That presents a dilemma," said Ugin. "They are creatures of the Eternities. What you saw ravaging that plane was a projection, a shadow of living Æther cast onto three-dimensional space."

Nahiri tried to picture living Æther, but in her mind's eye saw only the thing that had blotted out the sun. It had seemed solid enough.

"Hence the dilemma," Ugin went on. "If we face them in the Blind Eternities, we face their full power in an environment where even we can barely survive. But if we defeat only their physical extensions—no mean feat in itself, as you have seen—still we accomplish nothing, for their true forms reside in the Æther."

"We must find a way to destroy them," said Sorin.

"That may not be possible," said Ugin, "and it certainly isn't wise."

"Worlds are dying," said Nahiri. She rested her hand on the hilt of her sword. "What wisdom could there be in leaving these things alive?"

"Do you know what they are, Nahiri of Zendikar?" asked the dragon. He lowered his enormous head to look her in the eye. "Do you know if they inhabit some unseen ecology, or what will happen if they are destroyed? Do they deserve death? Does your moral judgment extend only to beings you understand? Can you answer any of these questions?"

He peered at Sorin.

"And Sorin, you of all people understand the necessity of balance."

The remark struck her as pointed, but she didn't know enough of Sorin's past to say for sure.

"You're speaking in hypotheticals," said Sorin. "I cannot imagine you so sanctimoniously urging caution if your world were in danger."

That seemed pointed, too. And Ugin hadn't said the name of his home world, had he?

"What is it you're suggesting?" asked Nahiri. "You say you want to stop them without destroying them. You must have a plan."

"We can imprison them," said Ugin. He conjured another illusion, this one a blueprint of some impossibly complex network of thousands of nodes and hundreds of gently curving lines. "Bind them to one plane using their physical forms as anchors, and force them into dormancy. Unlike killing them, that might actually work. And it would give me time to study them without allowing more worlds to fall."

"You think you can imprison all of them?" asked Nahiri.

"All three, yes," said Ugin.

"Three?" said Sorin. "Update your field notes, dragon. We fought thousands."

"You fought extensions," said Ugin with an airy wave of his hand. "Mere organs of a larger being. There are three true Eldrazi loose in the Multiverse. In their absence, their brood will wither and die, as surely as a hand or a foot. We lure those three to one plane and trap them there."

"This plane would be sacrificed?" asked Sorin.

"Risked, certainly," said Ugin. "But the means by which we cage the Eldrazi will also serve to put them into stasis. If we succeed, the world that imprisons them would be damaged, but not destroyed. If we fail, then yes, it is doomed. But it was doomed anyway."

"And what plane do you intend to…risk?" asked Nahiri.

Ugin looked around, his horned head sweeping to encompass the rocky vista of Akoum.

Art by Véronique Meignaud

"It should be large," he said. "Rich in mana. Sparsely populated. Preferably a place where we can easily build a base of operations, a world that's not under the protection of another Planeswalker, and somewhere where one of us can keep watch on the Eldrazi as they slumber."

There it was. The ugly truth. After all that talk about doing the right thing…

"Innistrad doesn't meet those criteria," said Sorin. "Why not your home world, wherever it is?"

"It is also unsuitable," said Ugin. "We could search for such a plane, but it would take time. Time in which more worlds would fall. It would be better to begin immediately."

The two ancient Planeswalkers turned to Nahiri. Ugin was impassive. Sorin blinked his bright orange eyes slowly, like a cat stalking its prey.

She gripped the stoneforged sword, pulled from the earth of a fallen world.

"No."

"Nahiri…" said Sorin, in what she thought of as his aggrieved-parent voice. "You saw what they did to that place. You can keep it from happening again. You heard Ugin. If we succeed, Zendikar survives."

"Risked," said Nahiri. "Damaged. What gives me the right to put everyone here in danger?"

"What gives you the right not to?" asked Ugin. "I am telling you that we can risk one world to save all others. And all worlds, including that one, are already at risk. The choice is obvious."

He lowered his head to look her in the eye.

"If you would prefer not to put your own world in danger, we can take the time to find another plane that meets our needs. If it is defended by a Planeswalker, we convince its guardian to cooperate—by force, if necessary. If it is undefended, we simply begin."

"And what gives us the right?" Nahiri asked again. "Yes, fine, risk one world to save the others. If we can stop these Eldrazi, maybe…maybe that means we have to. But what gives us the right to choose which world must bear the burden?"

"What alternative is there?" asked Sorin. "Shall we take a referendum?"

"That is why I chose Zendikar," said Ugin quietly. "Because it does have a protector, someone who has already chosen to take its destiny into her hands. Someone who will do the right thing."

"And if I refuse?" asked Nahiri. "Will you 'convince' me by force?"

"No," said Ugin. "Because I also need your help."

Sorin and Nahiri looked up at the luminescent dragon.

"The two of you possess skills I lack," said Ugin. "And the job is too big for one Planeswalker alone, no matter how powerful. Three of them, three of us. Together, we can save everything that is."

Nahiri knelt and pressed her hand to the ground. Akoum was highly volcanic, and the ground pulsed with the heartbeat of shifting magma. She reached out further, to rolling Ondu and river-crossed Tazeem and boiling, sulfurous Guul Draz. She felt Zendikar, all of it. But its people were mysteries to her, their footprints silent against the rumbling backdrop of the living earth.

Art by John Avon

She thought of those cracks in the world, of white light spilling out of nowhere and nothing to draw all of this into the void.

They would come here eventually, if they were not stopped. They would come, and when they did, she would not be able to protect her world. And if she trapped them on some other world, to save her own, how would she forgive herself? The air of her beloved home would hold a guilty tang forever.

Zendikar was strong. It could withstand the Eldrazi long enough to trap them. Zendikar would be their prison, Nahiri their jailer, one world and one Planeswalker standing steadfast to protect all others.

She stood, gazing out over the rugged beauty of Akoum.

"What's the plan?"

Ugin's preparations had been thorough. He had worked out a way to trap the Eldrazi using a carefully shaped network of leylines and magical nodes. What he needed was someone to build it.

Nahiri was very good at building things.

It took forty years of near-constant work. One by one, she pulled carefully crafted stone shapes out of the earth—hedrons, Ugin had called them, and the name had stuck. She filled the skies of Zendikar with stone, and Ugin etched them with draconic runes that held them in the air and would bind the Eldrazi to this place.

The hedrons were lure as well as trap, sending out pulses of magical energy that drew the Eldrazi like the scent of blood draws sharks. Slowly, ponderously—and, Sorin reported, ignoring other worlds along the way—the Eldrazi approached Zendikar.

Nahiri spread word throughout the plane of what was coming, to the merfolk, the kor, the humans, the elves. The amphibian surrakar whispered to each other in the bubbling depths of the coming of monstrous gods, and the angels of Zendikar patrolled the skies between the hedrons with watchful eyes.

Art by Eric Deschamps

When the Eldrazi came, Zendikar was as ready as any world had ever been.

One Eldrazi titan in the distance had been monstrous, an abomination. Three, together, seen up close, were an impossibility.

The one Sorin and Nahiri had seen before, the enormous thing that Ugin called Ulamog, was in fact the smallest of the three. The titan called Kozilek picked its way through the hedron fields, great black blades of senseless obsidian floating around what should have been its head. And above them, in every sense, was Emrakul, a hideous tower of latticed flesh and grasping tentacles floating lazily over the shattered earth.

Ugin breathed his ghostfire, searing the Eldrazi brood with invisible flame. Sorin countered their life-draining power with his own, leeching their strength before they could take too much of Zendikar's vitality. Zendikar's people fought the titans' brood lineages, but it was clear that if the onslaught continued, they too would be overrun.

The titans were heedless, mindless, making their inexorable way to the nexus of the hedron network, the source of the call that pulled them here, the eye of the storm.

Nahiri was waiting for them, in the underground chamber that she and Sorin had named the Eye of Ugin. For Sorin, it was likely mockery. For Ugin, it might be pride, although it was difficult to tell. For her, it was a message: Remember, dragon. This was your idea.

There was a rush of mana, and then Sorin and Ugin were there with her. The earth shook, the crystalline walls of the Eye singing in sympathetic vibration.

"They are in position," said Ugin.

The three Planeswalkers focused their tremendous power on a single point, a nexus stone linked to every other hedron by invisible lines of force and mana.

Art by Sam Burley

Every single hedron on the plane glowed as they shifted into new positions. The network was taking its final shape. From icy Sejiri to the Silundi Sea, Zendikar quivered with effort.

Then it was done.

They sealed the chamber with a mystical lock, one that could only be opened by three Planeswalkers together, and made their way to the half-ruined surface.

Looming above the highlands of Akoum, the three Eldrazi stood petrified, surrounded by a web of floating hedrons. Nahiri knew the earth here. It was already reacting, growing around the great Eldrazi like a scab over a wound. The teeth of Akoum would swallow them, and the inhabitants of Zendikar would scour the plane of their brood. Zendikar had survived, ravaged but whole, and its people would learn to live in the shadows of the hedrons.

"Well done, Nahiri," said Sorin. "This was your work. Your sacrifice."

The three of them would test the strength of the lock, make sure the titans were secure. Perhaps Sorin and Ugin would help her scour the land of the Eldrazi broods. She hoped so. And then, sooner or later, the two elder Planeswalkers would depart, and Nahiri—and the Eldrazi—would remain.

She stared up at the silent, stony shapes. Ramparts of stone already crept up around them. Perhaps in a thousand years they would be forgotten, their destruction fading into legend. But Nahiri would not forget them, and neither would the land itself.

"This was our work," she said. "My work is just beginning."

Art by Igor Kieryluk

1000 Years Ago

2

Stirring from Slumber

by James Wyatt

Over a thousand years ago, one woman stood between her world and the brink of destruction.

The kor Planeswalker Nahiri, called the Lithomancer, helped imprison the Eldrazi on her home plane of Zendikar over 6,000 years ago. Planeswalkers in those days were ageless and virtually immortal, and Nahiri had no intention of leaving Zendikar unguarded. She settled in to keep watch over the Eldrazi titans' prison and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Until things changed. The Eldrazi stirred. Nahiri woke.

This was not the great reawakening of the Eldrazi seen in the storyline of Rise of the Eldrazi—the titans themselves remained imprisoned, even as their lineages ravaged Zendikar. This was around a thousand years earlier, and it might have led to a great rising…were it not for Nahiri standing in the way.

Nahiri was one with the world.

Eyes closed, she sat in a cocoon of stone, every inch of her skin connected to the bedrock, the solid foundation of Zendikar. Everything that touched the earth touched her, an endless march of meaningless motion as she and the world simply existed, being without doing. How long had she been there? How many generations of people and animals had come and gone since she retreated into this chamber and pulled the stone up around her like a cairn? It didn't matter. She was immortal, ageless as the world itself.

Am I even still alive?

She had not left Zendikar since the day she had brought Sorin and the Spirit Dragon here, when they began their fateful work of imprisoning the Eldrazi. At first, she had stayed to keep watch. Their plan seemed to have worked: the prison held, and the Eldrazi were all but forgotten. But Zendikar didn't like holding them. Akoum still quivered and shuddered around their prison, as though it were trying to vomit them up. If she left, she had thought, how could she know that her world remained safe?

And for those first few centuries, she had lived—really lived—among her own people, the kor. She had cooed at babies and wept at funerals, laughed around tables piled with good food, and fell in love…twice. She had taught lithomancy to a long, long stream of students, showing them how to use stone and the metal within it to form objects and weapons.

She had trained the kor to keep watch over the Eldrazi prison, leading bands of them on long pilgrimages across the plane. She showed them the focal points of the hedron network's power, and taught the stoneforgers among them how to test the walls of the prison, to make sure the—she had called them "gods," to help the kor understand—to make sure the gods did not emerge to ruin the world.

Art by Erica Yang

But her students learned and moved on. Her lovers aged and died. Birth followed birth, over and over, and one funeral followed another, and eventually she couldn't remember why it mattered…any of it.

So she had made her way back here, to the chamber of the Spirit Dragon, the place she and Sorin had called the Eye of Ugin in a sort of shared joke. Her footsteps echoing in the vast stone hall, she had briefly considered trying to summon Sorin, the one person she knew who had existed longer than she had, who might understand the bleakness she was experiencing. He hadn't come to visit her in decades, but they had agreed that the power of the Eye of Ugin was to be used only in case the Eldrazi prison was broken.

She had sat down, all those years ago, and closed her eyes. And felt the world move on, all its people desperately carrying on as if their brief lives meant anything. Now, she stayed on Zendikar because she couldn't think of a reason to go anywhere else.

How long had it been? It didn't matter. Why could it possibly matter?

When the world broke, it wrenched at Nahiri's gut like a blade.

Akoum thrashed like a hooked fish pulled from the water. Through waves of crippling nausea, Nahiri tried to find the source of the world's pain, whatever bite or sting had provoked this response. As Zendikar shook around her, her mind found its way to the brink of an abyss, an utter void—the prison of the Eldrazi. It was open.

It was all metaphor, of course. The Eldrazi weren't contained, they weren't physical beings that could be held. They were creatures of the Blind Eternities, and their manifestations on Zendikar were mere projections, like puppets' shadows cast on a wall. The great spell that she, Sorin, and the Spirit Dragon had wrought was not a simple cage. It bound the Eldrazi to Zendikar by holding their shadows, so they could neither move through the plane nor withdraw from it.

But something had shifted, just slightly. She sensed restless movement from the titans, as though they were testing the strength of their bonds, and the seething motion of their broods bubbling into existence around them. The Spirit Dragon had explained, once, that these teeming throngs of lesser Eldrazi were like extensions of the three titans, sensory and digestive organs that all connected to the same extra-planar beings. When the titans had first been bound, their brood lineages continued swarming over the world but, with the titans in stasis, the lesser Eldrazi were like bodies spasming in the throes of death, their heads severed. Eventually, the people of Zendikar had finished them off. And as long as the prison had held, no new Eldrazi were created.

Art by Jaime Jones

Now they were erupting from the ground, their every movement a prick of pain in Nahiri's flesh—a sensation she had not experienced in ages. She observed the feeling curiously, noticing the annoyance it stirred in her mind. She considered discarding those feelings and letting the Eldrazi free themselves, letting them annihilate Zendikar and its people and her along with them, letting them bring an end to the unchanging eternity of her existence and the meaningless passage of time.

But she was feeling pain, and annoyance, and with them came desire—a desire for those feelings to end.

So she scattered the rock that she had piled around herself and stood slowly, stretching limbs long unused. With the stone floor bucking beneath her, she took careful steps—anchoring each foot to the stone with her lithomancy as she moved—to the center of the chamber, where the great glowing hedron stood, the nexus point of the whole hedron network that formed the Eldrazi's prison.

Now, at last, it was time to summon Sorin.

The Spirit Dragon had worked some magic in the Eye of Ugin that surpassed her understanding, forging a special connection between each of them and that place—a connection that spanned the Blind Eternities. Any of the three of them, standing in that place, could send a message to the others, amplified by the Eye's magic, seeking the others out no matter what planes they were on. This spell was intended for exactly this circumstance, so that Nahiri could summon the others if the Eldrazi ever slipped their bonds.

Art by James Paick

Closing her eyes and shutting out the rumbling of stone around her, she sent her call into the Æther—a wordless summons, which the others would experience as an insistent pull, tugging them toward Zendikar.

Her message sent, she settled back onto the floor and pulled the stone back up around her, wincing as the stone carried the sting of the Eldrazi's movements across her skin. Blocking the pain as she waited for the others, she tracked the swarming hosts' advance as they spread out from Akoum.

She blinked once, and felt the pounding of running feet as the Zendikari fled, then the steady march of armies organized to face the Eldrazi.

She blinked again, and felt Zendikar writhe in pain as the greater Eldrazi of the brood lineages annihilated life and mana in their path, absorbing the energies of the lush natural world.

She blinked a third time.

How long have I been here?

The sudden thought jarred her back to full awareness. For a moment, she thought the notion of the Eldrazi breaking free had been a sort of dream, but the pain that crawled across her skin confirmed that the Eldrazi broods were still swarming across the plane—and they had spread far while she waited for Sorin and the Spirit Dragon.

They hadn't come. Sorin hadn't come. She was alone.

She wanted—wanted the pain to end, wanted to see Sorin again—and with some surprise, she realized she wanted to preserve Zendikar, the plane; and all its lost, meaningless, desperate people. But while she had been waiting, the situation had become so much worse.

She pulled her stone cocoon up over her head and disappeared into the rock, then emerged at the summit of a nearby mountain.

Eldrazi teemed in the valleys below her, turning the ground to chalky dust in their wake. Shuddering, she stomped her foot on the rocky mountain face and sent an avalanche to crush the abominations. Then she vanished into the rock again and emerged in Ondu, near a kor city she had visited many times in the early years of her guardianship.

The Eldrazi were there as well, but the city lay in rubble—dusty ruins, long abandoned, surely long before the Eldrazi emerged. With a wave of her hand, she closed the canyon to swallow the Eldrazi as she entered the city through a gap in its crumbling wall.

Art by John Avon

"I know this street," she murmured. Her voice was a crunch of gravel, so long unused. She remembered haggling in the marketplace, ahead on the left, to buy a—what was it? Something bright and blue that made her smile. Soft.

"A scarf," she said, and decided that it was true.

All the pleasure and heartache of life rushed over her in a moment. Memories flooded her mind—the sights and sounds and smells of the bustling marketplace, the laughter in her heart, the taste of her lover's kiss, the bitter sting of tears. This had been a place of life once, a place where she had lived, and she had missed its fall.

The city had changed, even before its abandonment. Taller buildings had replaced familiar ones here and there, and a whole block had been destroyed and rebuilt since her last visit. A huge stone structure now stood, mostly intact, in a place that had been tenements. Curious, she stepped through its front arch.

Just inside, she saw herself carved in stone, stretching her arms wide in welcome.

She stopped and stared. It was definitely her. The figure was carved in relief from the wall, one leg protruding as if she were about to step from the stone. It must have been a stoneforge mystic, probably one of her students, who drew her features out from the rock. She traced her fingers along the smooth cheek of her stone incarnation, then her eyes fell on the wall from which the relief emerged.

She stepped back to see it better. Engraved behind and around the relief was another figure.

"Kozilek?" she said. "What—"

But it wasn't the Eldrazi titan—at least not exactly. In its overall outline, the figure could have been Kozilek, but the features were those of a male kor wearing a strange geometric crown that mimicked the bizarre obsidian plates that hovered over the titan's alien form. The kor's arms were spread wide, above the stone Nahiri's, and each hand gripped the hilt of a sword whose broad blade extended back along his forearm to the elbow, suggesting the Eldrazi's bifurcated limbs.

Above the male figure's head, an arcing banner proclaimed the subject of the artwork: "Nahiri the Prophet, Voice of Talib."

She turned her back on the sculpture and strode out of the building. Outside, she raised her hands and clenched her fists, and a cloud of dust billowed around her as the building collapsed in on itself.

It was her fault. She had been the first to call Kozilek a god, and apparently the kor had remembered that word more than they had remembered her dire warnings about the gods destroying the world. She felt sick.

One by one, she visited the sites along the route she had taught the ancient kor, the focal points of the hedron network. Wherever she emerged from the stone, she found Eldrazi nearby. Each time, she opened the earth to swallow them up or sent cascades of rock down to bury them. Killing the Eldrazi broods was not the problem—any mere mortal could do that. But only she could stop them from coming into being—that was to say: only she, Sorin, and the Spirit Dragon. But she was alone, and she would do it alone. She would have to.

She almost didn't bother with the stops in Akoum. So near her resting place in the Eye of Ugin, she would certainly have noticed anything disrupting the hedron network, so there could be no point in examining those locations. But she decided to be thorough, if only because each site was an opportunity to revisit the world she had all but forgotten, to taste the memories that each place brought to the surface of her mind.

But then she visited a site high in the mountains near the Eye of Ugin. And in the very spot where she had taught the kor to test the strength of the hedron network, an unfamiliar stone building now stood. In contrast to the smooth stone of the kor structure, this one was formed of jagged, rough-hewn blocks with huge metal spikes jutting from the mortar and curving toward the sky. The ground was rippled, as though the building had sent out enormous roots that pushed the stone upward.

Even as she approached, she could tell that this was the point where the hedron network had been disturbed. Right under her nose, while she sat alone in the Eye of Ugin. Fury boiled up in her, directed as much at herself as at whoever had done this.

Fury—another feeling she had forgotten. It felt good.

She strode toward the building, each step shaking the ground and causing trickles of gravel and dust to run down the walls. As she drew near, three dark figures came around the building from the other side, crouching into combat stances as they spotted her.

She paused in her advance, falling to one knee and reaching a hand into the earth beneath her. The advancing figures slowed, wary. Then, with a shout, she pulled a glowing-hot sword from the ground and charged.

Art by Eric Deschamps

The figures seemed human, but she didn't recognize their clothing from any culture she knew. Flimsy gauze barely covered their chests, revealing the stark red paint adorning their ashen skin. Sharp hooks protruded from their shoulders and upper arms and, as they snarled at her approach, she saw slightly protruding fangs.

Vampires? she thought. There are no vampires on Zendikar.

Then she met them and her glowing sword cut through cold flesh, sending spurts of ruby blood steaming into the air.

She stepped over their bodies and tore her own doorway open in the rough stone wall. More of the vampire-like creatures scuttled away from her in surprise, then lay still on the floor in her wake, until at last she stood in a large central room.

At the center of that room, in exactly the point where the lines of the hedron matrix joined, stood a large stone altar. The worn slab that formed its top was stained with old blood.

Nahiri glanced around the chamber, spotting a few more vampires—could they actually be vampires?—scurrying out of the hall. To one side stood a huge stone statue, carved in a likeness that seemed like a half-remembered vision of Ulamog. It had sharp, human features beneath a helmet that strongly suggested the strange face-plate of the Eldrazi titan. Instead of legs, it had a mass of writhing tentacles, true enough to the Eldrazi's actual form. In its two human-like hands, it clutched the shoulder horns of a kneeling vampiric figure carved beneath it.

"More damned gods!" she cried. "Whatever you idiots thought a god might be, the Eldrazi titans are not that."

Even so, whatever rituals of sacrifice had been performed on this altar had been effective. Whether Ulamog heard the vampires' prayers or not, their rites had successfully disrupted the hedron network enough for the Eldrazi broods to spill forth.

Laying both hands on the stone altar, she stretched out her senses to assess the damage. It was a subtle change, the barest alteration in the network of the hedron prison. But it had allowed the Eldrazi titans just the smallest amount of room to move, to extend their presence into Zendikar once again. It could be repaired, of course, but it would take time. And it would be much easier if she had help.

"But no help is coming," she said aloud. "I'd better get started."

With a sigh, she looked around the building for a stone of appropriate size. Her eyes lit on the grotesque statue and she smiled. "Perfect."

She walked over to the statue and reached both hands high above her head, just reaching the hooks on the vampire's shoulders, where the bizarre Ulamog's hands were. Then she pulled downward and the whole statue changed.

It had taken forty years to establish the hedron network—what had seemed like a lifetime to her then, when she was still immersed in her connections to ordinary mortals. Crafting one single hedron would not take nearly so long, though she did it alone. The hardest part would be shaping the surface without Ugin's guidance.

What had been a statue became a formless mass of stone under Nahiri's hands, then eight triangular sides with sharp edges. Closing her eyes as she drew a deep breath, she tried to focus on the patterns she would need to scribe in the surface to properly redirect the flow of mana.

The pounding of footsteps on the surrounding ground broke her concentration and she sighed. More vampires surrounded her, advancing slowly with long, curved swords drawn.

"Do we have to do this?" she said. "It's getting tedious."

Art by James Ryman

One of them hissed. "You defile our—"

"Fine," she said, and brought the walls down on them, then returned to her work.

Painstakingly, she ran her fingers over every inch of the hedron's surface, shaping the precise patterns the Spirit Dragon had taught her. When a swarm of Eldrazi came scurrying over the rubble toward her, she pulled up the stone to form a solid dome around and above her, sealing her in and the Eldrazi out. When the Eldrazi's Aura of corruption weakened the stone and made the dome start to crumble, she tumbled it down onto them and raised a new one.

It seemed to take forever, which struck her as odd. She had no clear idea of how long she had sat in the Eye of Ugin, meditating as the sensations of the world washed over her. She had left her life behind and cocooned herself away in the rock. But now, with the Eldrazi teeming across her world again, she felt hurried. Partly, of course, she wanted to seal the Eldrazi prison before too many people lost their lives battling them. But partly, she realized, she wanted to finish this task so that she could get back to the business of living.

Perhaps she had been cocooned long enough and she was ready to emerge into a new life, like a fully grown geopede. Perhaps the taste of bitter memory—of wistful longing, and especially of passionate rage—had awakened her from her centuries-long slumber and sparked her into a new wakefulness. In any event, she wanted to finish this so she could set out on her life's next step, whatever it might be.

At last the hedron was finished. Spreading her arms, she shattered the stone dome around her and took a deep breath of fresh air.

Art by Sam Burley

How long was I in there? she wondered.

She shrugged off the passing thought and raised her arms, lifting the hedron stone high overhead in one smooth motion. A mere thought was all it took to turn it just so, to link up the broken lines of the hedron network and repair the Eldrazi prison.

She dropped to one knee and put her palms to the ground. She could feel the titans' movement slowing as the restored prison drove them back into torpor. Their broods still swarmed across the land, but that was a problem for the merely mortal. More troubling, Zendikar itself was still reacting—not just in Akoum, as it had since the Eldrazi were first bound, but all over. Quakes shook the ground and reshaped the landscape, surging waves changed coastlines, mighty winds scoured the canyons. Zendikar was twitching at the sting of the Eldrazi, and she suspected it might be some time before it fell quiet again.

She let herself sink into the earth and emerged once more in the Eye of Ugin. Placing her hands on the keystone hedron, she assured herself that the network was restored. She thought about calling out to Sorin and the Spirit Dragon again, but she had taken care of the situation. Zendikar was safe again, thanks to her own efforts. She didn't need the others.

That didn't alter the fact that they hadn't come, though. They had promised to return to Zendikar when called, to help her maintain the prison that she had guarded for countless centuries. But Sorin had abandoned her, and the Eldrazi had swept across Zendikar once more.

Other feelings she had all but forgotten, concern and anxiousness, swelled up in her heart and they made her smile even as they made her ache. They made her feel alive—the sensation of her heart pounding in her chest, the sound of it in her ears, the movement of her muscles as her brow furrowed and her jaw tightened.

What had Sorin been doing all the years she had been cocooned here in the Eye of Ugin? Was he still alive? Had he forgotten her and her vigil over Zendikar? Had he succumbed to the same apathy that had held her for so long?

She would go and find him, wake him up if she needed to, remind him of her and Zendikar and the friendship they had once shared, remind him what it was to live, to feel, to care. She had saved Zendikar, and now she would save him. And then she would return and walk among her people again, she would teach and laugh and love again, and it would matter again. It would all matter.

Nahiri laid a gentle hand on the wall of the chamber and it melted away as she opened a pathway through the Blind Eternities. The walls of the chamber became bleak cliffs in a desolate mountain range. She took a deep breath of unfamiliar air and stepped into this other plane, eager to find her oldest friend.

Present Day

3

Nissa, Worldwaker

by Adam Lee

The elf Planeswalker Nissa Revane has led a difficult life. She's been exiled from her tribe, the Joraga, on more than one occasion, and becoming a Planeswalker set her even further apart. She traveled to different worlds, seeking to understand the nature of elves' responsibility toward nature, but she always returned to her home plane of Zendikar.

Whatever peace she managed to find for herself came to an end with the rising of the monstrous Eldrazi. These vast, interplanar beings, devourers of entire worlds, had been imprisoned on Zendikar millennia before. Desperate to save her world, Nissa broke the lock that kept the Eldrazi on Zendikar. Her hope was that the Eldrazi, freed of their confines, would travel out into the Multiverse. Their threat would spread, but Zendikar would be saved.

It didn't work.

At least one of the three Eldrazi titans remains on Zendikar, threatening all life on the plane with annihilation. Nissa stayed to fight the Eldrazi, but she fears it's hopeless. To defeat the monstrosities that assault the plane, all of Zendikar would have to fight as one…

Nissa's eyes opened.

Smoke and ash swirled above her as she awoke to chaos. Nissa lay pinned on her back and she could feel earth rumble beneath her. She looked around, her mind trying to cling onto anything familiar. Nissa could hear yelling but it was distorted, as if she was hearing the ambient tumult through a long, echoing tunnel. There was a pressure that made her ears ring. She blinked her eyes hard. And then, piece by piece, she began to remember. Eldrazi had swarmed the Joraga. There had been a great blast of energy. Ulamog had returned.

Then it all rushed back into her mind in a sickening flood. Her tribe was under attack. Many had died.

As her vision cleared, Nissa could see the twisted bodies of elves amid the broken trees. Misshapen Eldrazi corpses were scattered about, the steaming remains of Ulamog's freakish spawn.

Art by James Paick

She had to move.

She moved to get up and was jerked back to the ground—her legs were trapped. A tree had been split in half and she was caught under it. She wrestled with the massive limb like a wild animal caught in a snare until the pain kicked in and she let out an involuntary scream. As she caught her breath, a series of irregular, staccato blasts tore through the ash-filled air from something high above the ground. Nissa clapped her hands to her mouth and lay as still as a stone as a low ticking sound clicked from all around her. She could only see a few feet in any direction, but she knew the source of the terrible sound was close. Its vocalizations vibrated through her bones. It was hunting.

She tried to pull forth mana to summon some form of aid, but she was drained. Planeswalking was out of the question. All Nissa could muster was a small glow of healing energy to ease the pain, but that was enough to sap her last reserves. She fell back exhausted against ground that had turned to mud from her own blood. In desperation, she called out a few times to shapes that fled the Eldrazi swarm, some humanoid, some animal, but no one answered. The taste of dirt and ash filled her mouth as she labored for breath, and she could feel her life as it left her with each heartbeat. Then she saw the massive silhouette of Ulamog grow like a dark cloud over the shattered trees, until it blocked out the hazy light of Zendikar's sun. As its shadow passed over her she heard the crystalline chewing sound it made as it devoured the life from Zendikar, leaving its signature path of destruction. She could smell the acrid stench of it and felt her stomach convulse.

Art by Aleksi Briclot

Tears streaked her cheeks as Nissa Revane looked into the swirling, smoke-filled air and waited for death.

A wild-eyed human face, streaked with dirt, looked at her. A calloused hand grabbed hers. Nissa was too weak to move. The human called out over his shoulder as the chewing sound of the titan closed in.

"Bahkut! Alira! Over here."

He turned to Nissa. His calloused hand touched her face, and Nissa could feel the life force as it flowed from him.

"Stay alive. We'll get you out of here."

"Khalni bless you," Nissa said and slipped into blackness.

Nissa awoke to smells and sounds unfamiliar to her. Her legs ached as she moved them tentatively and looked around. She felt weak but could feel a small bit strength returning.

She heard footsteps approaching. The flap of the tent lifted and the large, dark-skinned human who had pulled her from under the tree entered.

"You're awake." He smiled. "That's good."

"Where am I?" Nissa said.

Mistrust everyone. Even though the human saved her, the old Joraga instincts remained.

She felt vulnerable, naked under the furs, and she knew her full power was a long way from returning.

The human sensed her unease and held up both hands.

"Easy. You're still healing." He picked up her clothes from a nearby stool and set them by her. He moved slowly and deliberately as he spoke. "You're a day's travel from Jalesh. My name is Hamadi. You're safe here."

"My tribe…"

Nissa's mind recoiled from the memories. She forced herself to ask the question.

"Did you see what happened to my tribe?"

Hamadi looked at her and told her what she already knew. "Ulamog was there. The valley, the forest. The Eldrazi left nothing but ash. I'm sorry, but from what we saw, the Joraga are no more."

Nissa climbed through the woods. Her legs still felt stiff, but their strength was returning. It felt good to move and feel the forest flow around her like a verdant tapestry once again. Hamadi walked behind her and, for a human, he made little noise.

"Up there," he said.

Nissa looked through the thick forest and saw an outcropping of rock high up above them where the trees gave way to the granite of the mountain.

"That ledge way up there?" Nissa said. "You must really think highly of your healing, druid." She raised her eyebrows at Hamadi, who smiled.

"I think highly of your will, Shaya," Hamadi said back.

"That's a nice way to put it," Nissa said with a smirk. "Hey. What does Shaya mean?"

Hamadi chuckled. "I'll tell you later…Shaya."

They sat on the ledge overlooking the forest below and ate nuts, dried fruit, and chakri root. Nissa could feel vigor from the root soothing her tired muscles.

"You have been more than kind, Hamadi," Nissa said after a while. "Thank you."

"We are in different times now. Gone are the days when we Zendikari fight one another," Hamadi said as he handed Nissa more food. "It took creatures like the Eldrazi to teach us to live together in peace. Either they are good teachers or we are stubborn beings, eh?" He laughed.

"I guess it is in everyone, this tribalism, this need to isolate and separate." Nissa looked at the forest below. "The Joraga drilled it into us from the moment we were born. 'Trust no outsiders' was something I heard since…forever. I have come a long way since then, Hamadi. I have seen too much to have such a small view of life. The kindness you have shown me has played a part as well."

Hamadi smiled, then paused for a moment and looked at a piece of dried fruit as he turned it in his fingers. "I was from Graypelt, just outside the great forest of Turntimber." Hamadi popped the fruit in his mouth.

Art by Philip Straub

"I'm sorry, Hamadi," Nissa said. "I knew of your people. I traveled through your lands."

"Small world, Shaya," Hamadi said. "As you know, my people were good hunters and guides, but we made our living storing mana. Our magic was tied to the land and the trees gave to us more than we could ever repay."

Hamadi leaned back against a stone and took a drink from a water skin.

"Many mana-hungry expedition houses came to us for trade. Back then, our pouches and stomachs were full. Our tents were warm. We thought we had reached a summit, the summit, but it was a false one. My tribe, the expedition houses, we were all blind."

Hamadi set down the water skin and continued.

"We had heard the rumors of the titans' devastation but we didn't believe them. How could anyone have believed it was true unless they were actually there? Never did we think that the Eldrazi would come to our lands and annihilate our people." Hamadi sighed. "We are short-lived and short-sighted beings, Shaya. Now that I have seen the titans, I know that there are realities that exist beyond our wildest imaginings. How were we to prepare for such things?"

Hamadi hung his head for a brief moment, then looked at Nissa.

But Nissa couldn't meet Hamadi's eyes. As she listened to his story, a growing ache welled up within her body and lodged itself in her throat. She was responsible for all of it, all his loss and all of Zendikar's devastation. Hamadi had pulled her, a Joraga elf, from certain death. He had risked his life and had saved hers. And she was the cause. Dark memories started to crawl into Nissa's mind from all the worst places. All her failures, her foolish choices, her selfishness and arrogance, poured into her gut like a lead weight. She became tangled in the web of her past that was filled with the bodies of a thousand innocents who had fallen to the Eldrazi. She could have saved them all.

"Hamadi," she said, as she hugged her knees. "I'm so sorry."

Nissa, followed Hamadi, Bahkut, Alira, and a pair of kor twins along a mountain path. She could feel Zendikar, restless beneath her feet, as if a great, unborn beast was moving within it. Nissa could see large chunks of the mountain floating and spinning over the trail far ahead.

"We have to rope up. Gravity fields," the kor named Khali said. Her twin brother Sha'heel never seemed to speak, preferring to use subtle hand signals or nothing at all.

Khali and Sha'heel removed their packs. Sha'heel pulled out ropes, hooks and straps, handing them to his sister as she outfitted Hamadi, Bahkut, Alira, and Nissa.

Art by Wayne Reynolds

"You ever been sky-climbing, Joraga?" Khali said to Nissa as she secured the straps of Nissa's harness.

"I hate being off the earth," Nissa said. "But I hate the Eldrazi even more."

"Then just think about gutting those bastards and you'll do fine." Khali smiled as she pulled the leather strap tight and snaked a twine rope through the metal loop which effectively connected Nissa to Sha'heel. "Sha'heel's got you now, Joraga, but don't think you're just along for the ride. Follow his lead as best you can." Khali left to see to Hamadi and the other two humans. Sha'heel looked over his shoulder, stonefaced, then winked at Nissa, and went back to tying knots and coiling rope.

Once everyone was secured, they moved into the gravity fields. Nissa could feel her body as it lurched and lifted, buffeted by the powerful gravity waves, until they finally went airborne. Nissa felt stiff and awkward, like a newborn gladehart, as she watched Khali float up and hook a line to a passing boulder, her movements smooth and relaxed. The party's anchor-lines went taut as, one by one, they all lifted off, held to the rock face by the slender but strong Kor ropes.

Khali led them through the maze of floating boulders. Nissa watched the brother and sister communicate with a series of intricate hand gestures as they made their way deeper into the gravity field. Dozens of massive boulders moved in apparent chaos as they collided and rolled. Khali and Sha'heel moved their party along, picking through the hazards with ease. Their ropes were like magical extensions of their arms, as they flicked out lines to catch passing rock faces or swung onto new boulders as they floated by. Nissa had seen Kor operate from a distance, but she never appreciated their skill and knowledge of Zendikar's pulse and flow until then.

As the sun reached its zenith, they paused, suspended on ropes between three boulders that floated over a canyon. Alira mentioned how silent and peaceful it was a moment before a scream echoed around them. Nissa swiveled her head to find its location but the sound reflected off of the rock; she couldn't get a bearing until Khali whisteled and pointed down. Far below, Nissa could see a Pathrazer—a spawn of the titan Ulamog—emerging from under the earth before a scattered group of adventurers. Nissa couldn't tell whether they were humans, elves, or kor, but it didn't matter. Her eyes were on the Eldrazi and she wanted it dead.

Art by Austin Hsu

Nissa looked over her shoulder to see Sha'heel pull out a knife and cut his anchor lines with one smooth motion. Nissa heard the ropes pop as Sha'heel plunged toward the ground in a free fall.

"That bastard's mine, Sha'heel!" Nissa yelled as she pulled at her buckles and wriggled out of her harness.

Energy surged within Nissa and vines writhed from the side of the boulder in an explosion of growth and sunk their roots deep into the rock. Nissa willed them to her and rode the tangle of vines down to the ground. Below Nissa, Sha'heel had opened up a kitesail and sped toward the Eldrazi, a hook-line in his hand, as the Eldrazi emerged in a cloud of dust and rock.

Ten travelers were strewn about. Some had been hurled to the ground when the Pathrazer lifted an immense chunk of earth skyward. Others stood awestruck. Some bolted in panic. Before anyone could act, the Pathrazer had grabbed several of the expedition and crushed them in its tentacled hand.

Sha'heel swooped low and set an anchor hook into the Pathrazer's rubbery flesh. The Eldrazi swatted at him as Sha'heel executed a series of tight spirals and let out a tangling line of rope. Then Khali streaked across the Eldrazi's legs and trailed another tangling line. The Eldrazi swiped at the Kor as the remaining expedition warriors shot arrows in blind hope of hitting something vital.

"This isn't going to hold it, Joraga!" Khali yelled as she ditched her kitesail into some rocky cover and rolled out of sight. "Do something!"

Nissa hit the ground running. She felt the power well up within her and a savage smile broke across her face. She was going to destroy that freak of nature. It was going to pay for everything. Twice.

Art by Peter Mohrbacher

The Kor's ropes popped as the Eldrazi freed itself, but all sounds were overwhelmed by the bone-shaking rumble of the land as it came to life. Green fire shot out from Nissa into the earth. She could feel her reservoir of power swelling and she emptied it all into her spell. A massive elemental emerged in several enormous chunks, tearing itself from the side of the canyon in a shower of earth. The Eldrazi turned, only to be grabbed by a massive hand made from rock, roots, and dirt.

Nissa pushed every ounce of energy into the elemental and, as it squeezed the Eldrazi, she crushed the pain of her past along with it. Nissa gritted her teeth. No more would she allow such monsters to exist. No more would she be a bystander on this plane—on any plane. Zendikar flowed into her being and its power focused her will. The Eldrazi struggled and clawed at the earthen colossus but the elemental only tightened its grip. Nissa willed two other elementals to emerge in a thunder of earth. The towering behemoths closed in on the writhing Eldrazi as it emitted a burst of staccato sounds that tore through the air, but its sounds were soon cut off as the other two hulks bludgeoned the Pathrazer into a wriggling mass of unrecognizable flesh.

Art by Eric Deschamps

As the dust settled around them, Sha'heel looked at Nissa.

"Whoa."

Khali, Alira, and Bakhut attended to the surviving expedition members while Sha'heel inspected the massive corpse of the Pathrazer. Hamadi clambered down the long trail of vines, and Nissa met him at the bottom.

"I knew the land spoke to you," Hamadi said with a laugh. "But I never thought it roared to you!"

"I can't lie, Hamadi," Nissa said, as she wiped the sweat from her brow. "That felt really good."

"Zendikar wants to be free of these things. It gives you its power like no other I have seen." Hamadi clapped Nissa on the shoulder. "It has chosen you, Shaya."

"Are you going to tell me what that means?" Nissa asked.

Hamadi smiled at her.

"It means 'Worldwaker.'"

4

Drop for Drop

by Kelly Digges

Merfolk Planeswalker Kiora came to Theros during the events of Theros block and the novel Godsend. She was—and is—on a quest to find the greatest denizens of the seas of many worlds. Kiora hopes to return to her native Zendikar and fight against the world-devouring creatures called the Eldrazi with the help of her summoned allies. But she will not return until she has found a weapon worthy of the fight.

Kiora arrived on Theros during the Silence, a time when the gods of Theros were magically barred from interfering in the mortal world. She took full advantage of this circumstance, posing first as an avatar of the sea god Thassa, then as the mythic rareal navigator Callaphe. The native merfolk, called tritons, were desperate for any sign of their god's return, and many of them embraced Kiora's claims.

Elspeth Tirel and Ajani Goldmane, meanwhile, sought to journey into Nyx to stop the ascended Planeswalker-god Xenagos. They recovered Callaphe's ship, the Monsoon, but they needed a navigator. "Callaphe" soon arrived, and the trio set out for Kruphix's temple at the edge of the world. Like Callaphe herself, however, their journey was not what it seemed. The Monsoon was a living creature, and it—not Kiora—knew the way to the edge of the world. Kiora had a different destination in mind, and instead urged the Monsoon to take them to the legendary lost city of Arixmethes—which she knew was not a place, but a massive living creature with an entire city built upon it.

The novel Godsend followed Elspeth and Ajani's path into Nyx, leaving Kiora's tale behind. When we last saw Kiora, she was locked in combat with Thassa herself, and the outcome of that battle has been unknown—until now.

Kiora's heart pounded as the prow of the Monsoon came to rest at the edge of a vast and ruined city. The surface did a fine impression of land, if you didn't look too hard, but it was too dark, too rubbery. She frowned at the ornate buildings dripping seawater, clinging to this great curved surface like barnacles. How could anyone mistake the great kraken Arixmethes for an island?

The human, Elspeth, asked something about Kruphix's temple, and the cat-man answered her, but Kiora wasn't listening. Finally!

"Welcome to Arixmethes!" she cried, leaping off the ship and onto the soft, pliable surface. "The sunken ruins! At last, I've found him."

"Him?" asked Elspeth. They still didn't understand. But she and the leonin, Ajani, stayed on the Monsoon just the same.

"You're not Callaphe, are you?" asked Ajani.

"Not even close," Kiora replied, smiling back at him.

The cat-man had suspected all along she wasn't who she said she was, but he'd come aboard the Monsoon anyway because she had something he wanted. They'd used her to get to Nyx, and she'd used them to get to Arixmethes. Now she was here, and they could take the Monsoon and go and get themselves killed. It was like a trade. Everyone got what they wanted.

Art by Tyler Jacobson

Behind them, the waves became turbulent, and there was a rushing sound deep below the surface.

Well…not everyone. Best hurry, then.

"Who are you?" Ajani asked.

"You can call me Kiora," she said. She didn't bother mentioning that she was a Planeswalker; he clearly knew. And Elspeth was hardly a Theran name. So she hadn't been the only one concealing her identity, had she? "I needed the Monsoon to find Arixmethes. I couldn't have done it without you. Good luck getting to Nyx."

"But where is the edge of the world?" Elspeth asked.

"Ask the ship," said Kiora, over her shoulder.

Thassa was close. Arixmethes would wait, and she no longer needed the drywalkers. What she needed were allies.

Kiora cast a spell to aid her swimming, and her arms grew longer with a cracking sound as she dove beneath the waves. The last thing she saw before the water closed around her was the Great Eye—the sea god Thassa in one of her many guises—bursting out of the water, fixing its terrible gaze first on her, then on the two drywalkers. Elspeth, the Betrayer, so people called her. Kiora had never caught the exact details of her crime—you don't get to ask many questions when you're posing as a god—but hopefully Elspeth's presence would draw Thassa's ire long enough for Kiora to prepare.

Art by Chris Rahn

She dove straight down, down and down, her elongated body propelling her through the water. It grew darker, and colder, and more silent. The pressure became immense, the water flowing through her gills shockingly cold. She could feel great shapes moving around her, but saw nothing—the darkness was total. Just when she thought she would have to turn back, her palm came to rest on the cold and silent surface of the sea bed. She paused, upside-down, and for a disorienting moment imagined that she was hanging from the ceiling of the depths, dangling precariously above thousands of feet of water and the hard, unyielding surface of the sea. She smiled and began a spell.

She sent a pulse of power outward, calling to the enormous animals she could feel moving all around her. These were the creatures she hadn't found on her arrival—the true colossi of the deep, the ones Thassa kept out in the deep ocean—like cattle, or tuna. But now she'd found them. She was in Thassa's secret seas, and the god herself, though nearby, was distracted. Hear me, Kiora told the krakens and leviathans. Heed me. I am not your master. But I will set you free.

They stirred in the depths around her, waking from their slumber. Spots of bioluminescence winked on and slowly brightened, bathing the murky depths in eerie greens and blues. Plates of chitin scraped together, claws snapped, and long, sleek bodies uncoiled. They were listening.

But that? That was the easy part.

Reaching out across the Blind Eternities, she gathered to her the essence of every sea-beast she had ever called her own. She pulled those essences to her one by one, manifested them in Theros's seas. The strain was immense. New shapes dove out of the darkness, and grating squeals and clicking rumbles sounded challenge. The newcomers and the natives circled and snapped, investigating, testing each other, trying to work out a pecking order. Good.

You've slept too long, Kiora thought at them. You are awake. You are hungry. You are mine. Upward, to feed!

They surged around her, eager, a hurricane of flesh and chitin. She grabbed the spines of a passing serpent, one with a long, straight horn, and nestled against its back for the climb to the surface. Not one of Thassa's, just in case that proved important. No need to spend any more of her own strength when these fabulous creatures had so much to spare.

Kiora no longer knew whom to pray to for good fortune. For many years she had prayed, in secret, to Cosi, the trickster god of Zendikar's merfolk. She'd never thought of herself as a trickster, a devoted member of Cosi's cult, but she'd prayed to him. And she silently scorned the devout worshipers of those useless figureheads Emeria and Ula. How little she had known! The gods were not gods, and the deceiver Cosi was revealed, with horrific irony, as a sham—a twisted memory of the Eldrazi titan Kozilek, passed down in an idiot's game of whispers. Emeria and Ula, likewise, proved monstrous and deceitful; Cosi, at least, had never pretended to virtue. Perhaps that was why she no longer feared gods, why she had steered this course in direct opposition to an angry deity of the sea. Praying to the gods, she reasoned, was for people who had never fought one.

The sea grew lighter around her, and at last she could see the armada she had assembled, massive creatures from a dozen worlds swimming together with the precision of a school of fish. They broke the surface in a boiling mass, and Kiora whooped from the back of her serpent. In the distance, she saw Thassa, in triton form, standing on the deck of the Monsoon. She bristled—even if she no longer needed the ship, even if she was happy to let Elspeth and Ajani ride it to the edge of the world, she'd be damned if she'd let Thassa have it.

Art by Tyler Jacobson

She willed a black, barnacled, titanic squid to surface next to the ship. The Monsoon pitched and rolled in agitation. Arixmethes had had enough jostling from the lesser leviathans, and dove beneath the waves. No matter. She would find him. But she had to deal with Thassa first.

Thassa stepped off the deck of the Monsoon, and a great wave vaulted the ship-serpent skyward, with Elspeth and Ajani clinging to it. Apparently they'd convinced Thassa to aid them, or at least to send them away. Kiora hoped they made it. They seemed alright, for drywalkers. And as far as she could tell, their mission was a worthwhile one. She waved a quick goodbye as they vanished into the sky and the great wave carried them away.

Thassa transformed back into the Great Eye in midair and floated toward Kiora over the water. Water swirled around her as she shifted between shapes—the Eye, a waterspout, a flock of seabirds, and finally her triton form, holding the bident that was her signature weapon and her power over the sea. This…was going to be tough.

The sea boiled. More krakens emerged, propelled from seas all over Theros, answering Thassa's call. In the distance, Arixmethes himself breached the water, his black bulk both beautifully sleek and impossibly massive. Even the largest of the other krakens were minnows beside him. He crashed back down, and the sea shuddered. He was perfect. He was also, for the moment, on Thassa's side.

"You'll never claim Arixmethes!" cried Thassa.

Kiora laughed.

Art by Jason Chan

She called her titans to her, and Thassa did the same. Thassa had far greater command of the sea itself, so Kiora focused on keeping her own little patch of it stable and let the sea god come to her. She arrayed her krakens around her.

Thassa and her attendants rose up on a great wave, Thassa's bident pointed straight at Kiora. A tide of saltwater and flesh crashed into Kiora's army. The serpent Kiora was riding bucked and twisted, snapping at a massive octopus that wrapped strong, slimy tentacles around it. It bit ragged holes in the octopus's body, and the enormous creature fell away into the surf.

Distantly, on the edge of the tangle of thrashing serpents, Kiora saw heads pop out of the water—tens, then hundreds. Tritons! How had they come all this way?

"Welcome, my children!" bellowed Thassa, in a voice that shook Kiora's bones. "Bear witness to the fall of the pretender!"

She'd brought them, used no small amount of her strength to pull them through the sea, just so they could see her fight Kiora. Was that just pride? Or was it…need?

"You're making an example of me?" yelled Kiora, trusting that the god of the sea itself could hear her through the waves, if not over them. "What's the matter? Has their faith in you flagged so much?"

"I will grind you into sand," said Thassa, a voice simmering out of the ocean itself.

Did she need their belief? Had Kiora taken that from her? Was that what this was about? If Kiora's little charade on her way to Arixmethes had actually weakened Thassa for their fight…how delicious that would be!

Kiora's serpent surged forward through the crush of enormous bodies and choking tentacles, pointed not toward Thassa, but toward Arixmethes. Thassa had to defeat her in order to win. Kiora just had to form a bond with that kraken. She gripped the serpent tightly, trying to balance between lending strength to her forces and saving her own for what was to come.

Art by Kieran Yanner

The serpent thrashed and twisted, sometimes swimming along the surface like a river-snake, sometimes diving below, even leaping out of the water—anything to get through. And she was getting through. Thassa had all the krakens of Theros, minus the few that Kiora had suborned. But Kiora had titans from a dozen worlds, things that Thassa had never seen, never even imagined. Many of them were larger than Thassa's largest children, save Arixmethes. Slowly it dawned on her: she was winning.

Arixmethes tore his way through the fray, biting Kiora's off-world krakens in half or swallowing them whole, and simply pushing the krakens she had taken from Thassa to one side. He was inexorable, impossible. He was at least as big as Kozilek.

Thassa rode atop Arixmethes without holding on, bident in one hand, staying effortlessly on his back as he pushed his way through. Kiora's little serpent, a hundred feet long, was dwarfed before him. Thassa smiled.

"Now you will learn," she said, in that same amplified voice, "what it is to defy me."

"Happy to teach your followers how it's done!" yelled Kiora.

This was it. Kiora stretched out her hand and poured every ounce of strength she had into Arixmethes's ancient, languid thoughts. She felt her other krakens begin to flag, saw a few of them go over to Thassa's side. That didn't matter. Nothing else mattered. Nothing but him. He opened his enormous mouth, big enough to swallow her and her serpent in one bite.

She and Thassa were as close as they'd ever been, perhaps a hundred yards apart, and whether through magic or divinity or just an overactive imagination, Kiora could make out every detail of the fury on the god's face.

She wouldn't normally try to wrest an animal away from the one who commanded them. It wasn't really her specialty. What she was doing wasn't truly mind magic, more like…instinct magic. And she knew the instincts of the sea better than any others.

You are not mine, she thought at him. You are not Thassa's. You are your own. And I need your help. Will you come when I call?

His great mouth closed again, and for a moment she dared hope. Come to me, she willed him. I need to get the sense of you.

Nothing happened. The melee around them grew quieter, too many of Kiora's allies killed or brought over to Thassa's command. Come on.

"You poor fool," boomed Thassa. "You truly thought to steal a kraken from the god of the sea?"

Then Kiora's own serpent twisted under her, rolled off to one side. It arced over the fighting animals, dove with astonishing speed downward and outward…

…toward the assembled tritons.

"No!" cried Kiora. But the serpent she rode was no longer hers to command.

She could only watch as the serpent scooped up a mouthful of screaming tritons, devouring dozens in one bite.

"You see?" boomed Thassa. "She does not care for you! She cannot harm me, so she lashes out at my faithful."

Behind Kiora, half her krakens had turned against her, even those from other worlds.

Thassa raised the bident and sent a great wave crashing toward Kiora and her serpent, to whelm them and "protect" her followers. The serpent reared back above the water as the wave sped toward them. Thassa was going to let it take another mouthful of her own followers before the wave hit, just to prove a point.

Kiora shook with fury. She pushed her hands against the serpent's great back and willed away, banished it back to the Æther from which it came. She sent more of her krakens with it, the ones that had turned against her. The great body beneath her vanished in a shimmer of turquoise light, and Kiora plunged toward the ocean like a stone, stretching her body out to turn an awkward fall into a smooth dive.

Art by Chris Rahn

The water began, horribly, to recede. Thassa's bident glowed brightly as she pushed back the sea in a great bowl, somewhere between a whirlpool and an arena. The remaining krakens were pushed outside the growing well of water, swirling around, and Thassa's followers became an audience arrayed around a sloping, circular wall of water.

"The price of treachery!" cried Thassa. And now her followers cheered her.

Kiora fell. She spread her body out, no longer diving but falling. She couldn't feel her army. Thassa had bested them, driven them off, or taken them from her. Arixmethes receded into the deep. Below Kiora, the well of air opened onto the blank and pitiless bottom of the sea.

She didn't think Thassa was going to let her hit the sea floor—the sea god clearly meant to make a show of it—but she wasn't taking any chances. She reached out with her magic to the newly exposed sea bottom, and did something Thassa couldn't: she pulled roots and vines up out of ground that had never seen the sun, a rush of new growth snapping and creaking to life. She closed her eyes, tucked into a ball, and slammed into the cushion of greenery at high speed, coming to rest upside-down in a tangle of vines just a few feet above the slimy earth.

She smiled. She was alive, at least. That was a good start.

Art by Rob Alexander

Before she could free herself from the vines, a wave of grasping hands made of sea foam rushed through her little forest, tearing the still-green branches apart, ripping the vines, and pulling her out of the greenery. The hands of water deposited her on her knees on the sea-bottom, Thassa's arena towering around her. Behind her, the wall of water surged forward over her forest, drowning it.

She stood up, arms and legs covered in gray, oozing mud. The water behind formed a sheer wall, rushing by so quickly she couldn't see through it. Around her rose flat-sided boulders like the teeth of some great serpent, although she was fairly sure they weren't. Thassa's arena had become an amphitheater. Along the sloping wall opposite, Thassa descended, gliding down on a pristine wave. The tritons gathered around their god, sticking out of the wall of seawater in a mass of silent, disapproving faces.

"You led my people astray," said Thassa, her voice echoing across the expanse of seafloor. "You stole my children. You besmirched the name of my devotee Callaphe and aided Elspeth, the Betrayer in her quest."

So did you! thought Kiora, but she didn't bother saying it. Her army was gone. Arixmethes had returned to the depths. She'd had high hopes. But this fight was over.

She dove for the wall of rushing water, hoping to get away long enough to planeswalk.

Thassa threw her bident, and it sailed through the air with astonishing speed, shrinking as it flew toward her. Kiora twisted in the air, but the bident followed her movement. It slammed into her and pinned her to one of the boulders that littered the sea floor, its prongs fitting snugly around her neck. She lay against the boulder, dazed, the coral-like surface of the bident pressing into her throat.

Art by Yeong-Hao Han

"Pathetic," said Thassa, her feet coming to rest on a carpet of clean water that flowed before her over the oozing muck.

Kiora wrapped her hands around the bident's handle and pulled, but it held fast. She choked and struggled, then went limp. She began to gather mana for one last, desperate spell, and tried to keep Thassa talking.

"You're right," she wheezed. She heard her own voice carried out over the seabed to the assembled tritons. "I was a fool to think I could defeat you."

"Oh, how kind of you to say!" laughed Thassa. She walked toward Kiora, the carpet of seawater expanding in front of her so her divine feet never touched the slimy sea bottom. "A simple triton is willing to grant that it was ill-advised to anger the god of the seas, who commands every ocean under Nyx!"

"There are more oceans than you know," said Kiora. Thassa frowned and gestured, and the bident drove further into the rock. Kiora choked and fell silent.

Thassa was close to Kiora now, leaning down, and she spoke for Kiora alone in a voice as cool and mirthless as an ice floe.

"What is that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"Thh—" said Kiora. Her vision swam. "Thhhh—"

Thassa moved one hand dismissively, and the bident's grip on Kiora's throat loosened. Kiora kept her hands wrapped tightly around its handle.

"Thanks," whispered Kiora.

"For what?" asked Thassa. "The lesson in humility?"

Kiora's silent, desperate spell reached its climax.

"The bident," she hissed, and melted away into the void, Thassa's weapon still clutched in her hands. The last thing she heard before she slipped between worlds was the anguished cry of an angry god.

In the space beyond space, Kiora clutched her stolen prize and laughed.

5

Limits

by Ari Levitch

Planeswalker Gideon Jura has a problem—there's only one of him. Zendikar is a world ravaged by otherworldly monsters known as the Eldrazi. Gideon witnessed their devastation when he first visited the plane, and vowed to return with help. No Planeswalkers heeded his call, and he refused to let Zendikar languish. On Ravnica, Gideon found kindred spirits among the disciplined Boros Legion, but the politics of the plane favor those associated with a guild, and Gideon finds that he must step in on behalf of those not under guild protection. Zendikar by day. Ravnica by night. Gideon cannot turn his back on those who need him, and trouble may be reaching boiling point on both planes.

ZENDIKAR

Gideon's muscles ached and his breath was labored. Dust burned in his lungs. It coated his nostrils and caused his eyes to water steadily. Grit had worked its way behind his eyelids, and he blinked desperately to flush it out.

He could even taste it on his tongue. What moisture he had remaining in his mouth, he gathered up and spat into the tall grass that poked up through the gathered dust all around him.

He had to end this quickly.

The Eldrazi monstrosity loomed over Gideon, almost twice his height, its torso rising up on a mass of thick, fleshy tendrils that slid heavily over the tall grass. Like so many others Gideon had battled these last few weeks, this one's face was encased almost entirely in a smooth, boney texture. Though eyeless, its head turned to follow Gideon's movements. It was an unsettling gesture, devoid of malice, or hate, or anger.

The Eldrazi were unlike other opponents Gideon had fought, at once graceful and lurching, willful and indifferent. There was no body language to read, no tells whatsoever, and it was all Gideon could do to stay beyond this one's reach.

Tendrils lashed out. But so did the four ribbon-like metal blades of his sural. Gideon yanked his arm back and the blades flicked out, severing a tendril. The gore was not blood, but a viscous, sticky muck that caught Gideon's flexible blades, interrupting the flow of his follow-through.

Clumsy.

Another tendril slammed into his ribs before he could angle out of its path. He saw it coming, but there was only enough time for Gideon to grit his teeth and anticipate the blow while ripples of protective light reflexively flared across his body to meet the blow, leaving him unharmed. For the moment, anyway.

Littering the tall grass all around him were rough chunks of a fallen, shattered hedron—one of the countless eight-faced monolithic stones that Gideon had seen while on the plane. There was something about them that the Eldrazi reacted to. Nobody could quite explain it to him, but many of the Zendikari carried small hedrons as wards, or replaced spearheads and arrowheads with them. The kor even painted their bodies with designs that matched the hedrons' intricate carvings. To Gideon, at that moment, what mattered was that the hedron chunks were heavy and jagged.

Art by Vincent Proce

He had to buy himself some time. A moment at least.

More tendrils. Gideon leapt to his right, contorting his body to slip between the writhing, grasping limbs. He rolled on the ground, and the Eldrazi monstrosity reeled its tendrils back for another barrage.

There it was.

A moment.

And in it, Gideon was on his feet. He charged flat out toward the unnerving being, and it descended on him, quicker than a being that size should move.

"Enough!" Gideon roared.

He sent the blades of his sural out to snare a helmet-sized, pointed piece of hedron that tapered at one end like a crude awl. As the Eldrazi swooped low, Gideon swung. Hedron connected with boney faceplate. No shriek of agony followed. No spurt of blood welled. Just a brittle snap, the combined force of Gideon's swing and the Eldrazi's own momentum driving the ancient stone deep. A moment later, the Eldrazi collapsed, unmoving.

Gideon untangled his sural and sank to the ground. Blood continued to pump furiously through his veins, and he was aware of how much the pounding in his temples stood out against the sudden silence of his surroundings. His dust-caked face was streaked with lines of sweat, but the sun felt good on his face and he was smiling.

To his right, something approached. Several things, moving swiftly through the tall grass in his direction. From his position, he saw a dozen or so figures nimbly making their way across the field of fallen hedrons. They were mostly kor, but Gideon noted elves, humans, and even a pair of goblins among them. At the head of the group was a particularly broad kor. Like others, his pale bare chest and bald scalp were covered in angular white tattoos, and he held a pair of hooked blades that were connected by a length of chain. He crouched as he ran, and the various climbing lines he carried at his belt bounced with each step.

"Munda!" Gideon called out. At the sound, the approaching group went to ground. All except the lead kor, who stood alert but still, his brow fixed in a practiced furrow. The kor cocked his head trying to make out the source of his name among the tall grass.

"Careful now, people," Munda called over a shoulder, his tone rich with amusement that struck Gideon as contrary to the kor's characteristic dourness. "A Gideon prowls these lands, and it looks to be guarding its kill."

They must have had a successful hunt. The thought made Gideon's smile widen. "It's good to see you, my friend," he said. Munda, called the Spider by those who have seen him in action weaving his ropes to trap and inhibit the Eldrazi, was both cunning and bold in a fight, and Gideon had liked him immediately.

Munda waved a blade at the Eldrazi corpse. "And you. Your timing couldn't be better," Munda said in what had become a running joke between them, as there was always some peril to confront. "Looks like you haven't wasted any time, either. Thank you for that. We just destroyed one as well, but there were four of them. Have you seen the others?"

Gideon casually pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, indicating the direction beyond the Eldrazi carcass.

Munda eyed Gideon suspiciously. "Ready yourselves," he said to the others before climbing the Eldrazi carcass for a better vantage point. Peering out over the plain, he spotted his quarry, two lifeless heaps of magenta and blue against the golden grass.

"Have a look, everyone. This is how it's done." He leapt off the carcass, and his soldiers scrambled around him to admire Gideon's handiwork.

Munda put a hand on Gideon's shoulder, and Gideon saw that the time for levity had passed. "We got word this morning that Bala Ged, the entire continent, has be overrun and destroyed. There's nothing left."

Gideon stared past Munda, watching the grass bend to the subtle wind. "Like Sejiri," he said finally.

"Just like Sejiri," Munda confirmed. "Survivors will be landing on the coast. Commander Vorik sent Tazri and her band to escort them to Sea Gate, but…"

"You don't think it will be enough.

"There's more trouble coming, Gideon."

It was a truth. Not some doomsayer's prophecy, but an inevitability that his drooping shoulders and bloodshot eyes had been screaming at him for days.

"I'll be there," Gideon said. Munda held out a water skin, a small comfort that Gideon took as an act of understanding. The people of Zendikar were realists, the product of a plane where survival depended on skill and will and wit. With that came a people who knew the value of the little things. A cool gulp of water rolling down a parched throat was a joy to be recognized.

Around them, Munda's warriors were setting up camp. One of the goblins knelt over the upturned shell of a scute, working to build a modest cook fire inside it, while others stood watch or took what rest they could in the cool of the grass.

"How long has it been since you last slept?" Munda asked.

Gideon didn't know for sure. The pleasure of closing his eyes and drifting out of consciousness had eluded him for quite some time, and the comfort of a bed suddenly seemed like a distant memory. "Days," was all he could say with any degree of certainty.

"Rest for a bit," Munda said. "It looks like you could use it."

"Thanks, but not yet." Trouble was coming. It was here already, and it wasn't just on Zendikar.

RAVNICA

The light drizzle that had been falling on Ravnica for more than a month did little to keep Tin Street from burning. Nor Foundry Street, when it went up the night before.

Art by Karl Kopinski

"A goblin gang war's a messy thing, Jura," Dars Gostok, a captain in the Boros Legion, had said as he and Gideon watched an empty warehouse give in to the ravages of angry flames. They had risked the inferno in search of survivors, but found only the charred bodies of six goblins. "This is the first reprisal of many," the captain continued as he wiped the film of ash from his face, "and the gutters'll carry away more than just rain water in the coming days, you mark my words."

That was two days ago and, as Dars predicted, the tally of dead goblins rose.

The whole thing started with a murder—Dargig, a black market weapons runner who specialized in explosives. He had a reputation for running his mouth, but he also happened to be the youngest of the notorious Shattergang Brothers.

The way Dars explained it to Gideon, Dargig had been found in an alley off of Tin Street in a pool of blood, stabbed in the throat. Word spread that the goblin criminal kingpin, Krenko, did the deed himself when a weapons drop went bad.

Art by Kev Walker

The following night, a series of explosions shook the district, and several of Krenko's warehouses went up in flames. It was the Shattergang way of declaring war. And Krenko obliged all too enthusiastically.

Gideon had personally petitioned the Chamber of the Guildpact to intervene, which essentially boiled down to adding his name and guild to the bottom of a very long wait list.

The Living Guildpact. Jace Beleren. Planeswalker.

The one who solved the puzzle of the Implicit Maze and became the embodiment of a magical treaty that kept Ravnica's guilds from devouring each other.

These goblins belonged to none of Ravnica's guilds. As long as it was just goblins killing goblins, most guilds were content to observe the conflict from behind the safety their guildgates.

As long as the fighting continued, the unguilded population—the gateless—was in danger.

Unacceptable.

Art by Richard Wright

It was just after midnight when the heavy iron doors of the garrison flew open, a commotion that had a dozen Boros Legionnaires shooting up from their places at the long wooden table that stretched across chamber. Some were reaching for weapons, and Gideon stood in the tall arched doorway with his wet hair clinging to his shoulders.

"At ease," called one of the soldiers, "it's Jura."

"And I come bearing gifts," said Gideon, and he shoved something into the room that had been obscured by his own silhouette. A goblin, bound at the wrists, was grinning with jagged, yellowed teeth that caught the dim lamplight. Krenko. The goblin surveyed the soldiers, his surroundings, and the soldiers again, each of whom gaped at him in disbelief.

"It's a fine garrison, soldiers," Krenko said, still grinning. "No Sunhome, to be sure, but it'll do."

Gideon limped into the chamber, his right foot leaving splotches of blood with each step.

"I'm going to assume that there's a mess somewhere out there on your account, Jura," said Dars who strode in from an adjoining chamber.

"I hope you didn't like the food over at The Millennial." The Millennial was a beyond-upscale restaurant that had been built on an exclusive observation deck of the same name. Since Krenko's rise to power in Ravnica's organized crime circles, he was known to spend his evenings there. So that's where Gideon went.

"Could never get a table," Dars replied. "I can't imagine you found him sitting there eating dessert by himself, though."

"Not exactly."

"You shouldn't have gone alone. But I have to admit that I'm impressed, and that doesn't happen very often."

"Don't be too impressed." Gideon unbuckled his greaves and rolled his right pant leg up above the knee. Gideon had tied one of the Millennial's cloth napkins around his leg, but it was now soaked through, and was doing little to keep the wound bound. "That grinning stain stuck a shiv in my leg."

"Twice," Krenko said, punctuating his triumph with a wheezing laugh.

Gideon's anger flared. "You stand here laughing while your fellow goblins die in the streets."

Dars put a hand on his shoulder. "You should get to a surgeon."

"Probably," Gideon replied, but his word was swallowed up by the sound of shattering glass as a small skylight in the high ceiling burst to pieces. Gideon and Dars turned in time to see a small oblong object falling toward the ground. As it tumbled end over end, Gideon noticed a small glowing red-orange bead that dangled off of one end.

A fuse.

"Bomb!" Gideon yelled, shoving Dars aside. He grabbed the explosive before it could hit the floor, pulling in toward him until he was cradling against his abdomen. Whorls of magical, golden light erupted across the entire surface of his skin in anticipation of the blast. He crouched there, eyes clenched for a long moment.

Nothing.

Slowly, Gideon opened his eyes and looked down to find his hands gripping a glass canister topped with a brass stopper.

"Secure the area!" Dars's command broke the silence. "I want answers!"

Gideon righted himself, turning the canister over in his hands to examine it.

"A dud?" Dars asked.

"Not a bomb. Look." Gideon removed the stopper, and extracted a coiled ribbon of paper from the glass tube. He unrolled it. A message, scrawled with a practiced hand, stretched across narrow strip in a single line. It was meant to be clear, its message unmistakable.

Gideon read. "Krenko murdered our brother. If justice is to be done, it is ours to exact. Turn him over to us, or we will reduce Boros territory to rubble. All of you and all you love will be fair targets if you disregard this message. Is Krenko worth that much to you? You have until this time tomorrow to decide. Kindly, Rikkig, and Gardagig, the Shattergang Brothers."

There was no time for this. Not now. Gideon had to return to Zendikar. He threw the empty canister against the stone-slab floor.

"Decision time," Krenko taunted.

"Get him out of here," Dars barked. "I want him behind bars."

"You see, Jura," Krenko said, as soldiers dragged him away, "the Boros won't turn me in to the Shattergang Brothers. What now?"

ZENDIKAR

Just as Munda said they would, survivors from Bala Ged landed on the coast. No more than three-hundred of them, by Gideon's cursory count. But they weren't the string of beaten and broken refugees Gideon had anticipated. They were fighters, hardened by what they had seen and by the people they had lost, but also resolved to continue. And as Munda said, they needed help.

But then, Gideon probably would too.

Shield scuffed, and sural unfurled, Gideon planted himself in the narrow path that twisted its way between the chalk cliffs rising up from the shore.

Art by Véronique Meignaud

The ground rumbled, and the vibrations woke the wounds that buzzed in his leg.

Stay focused. There would be time for Ravnica once this was finished.

Behind him, the survivors followed Tazri's vanguard up the path toward the open scrubland beyond. Movement above him caught Gideon's attention, and he took his eyes from the canyon floor long enough to see Munda and some of his chosen driving heavy iron spikes into the cliffs on either side, about twenty feet below the edge.

They'd have to hurry.

One of the kor on the cliffs stopped hammering suddenly and let out a shrill whistle, pointing frantically in the direction of the shore. The Eldrazi were here. He had one task—buy enough time for Munda's people to do their work. Slow the Eldrazi, destroy them—it didn't matter as long as the survivors could continue being just that.

Tazri said that there were Eldrazi experts among them heading for the Lighthouse at Sea Gate. If that was true, they had to get there.

The first of the monsters came into view where the path straightened out below. Gideon swung his sural blades back so that lay spread out behind him, poised to lash out when called upon. Here he was, between what remained of Bala Ged and a carpet of Eldrazi that raced through the canyon on countless scrabbling limbs and slick slithering tendrils.

Then they were on him.

Gideon let his sural fly, the steel ribbons extended to their full length, catching the air so that they hummed as a single razor sharp blade that cut several spawn down. He let the momentum of his swing bring his shield to bear, punching so the shield's toothed edge bit deep into the flesh of another Eldrazi spawn.

Gideon danced away from a heavy tendril on a course to crush his skull, and he countered by sending his sural blades to coil around it. He gave his wrist a quick twist. The blades bit into the soft flesh and Gideon moved with the spawn's weight, angling for a shot with his shield. But the entire appendage fell away as though jettisoned. The sudden release pulled Gideon off balance, and the pain above his knee surged. He lost his footing, and the sural blades sprung wildly. One slid across the flesh of his cheek leaving a line of deep red from the corner of his mouth to his ear as it whipped past.

Sloppy, Gideon cursed himself for the mistake. But he was tired. As the blood ran warm along his jaw, he cursed himself for the excuse. He should have seen it coming. Just like he should have seen Krenko's shiv.

He had to get back to Ravnica. This was taking too long. Where was Munda?

He really had to get out of his head.

The Eldrazi spawn pressed in on him, their pale faceplates filling his vision. He looked from one to the next, each one a featureless mockery of human skulls. The sheer blankness of the faces struck Gideon as somehow contrary to thoroughness with which the Eldrazi set about their destruction. It was a pure horror to behold, lacking any semblance of humanity. They were not brutes like Gruul ogres, or sadistic like Rakdos bloodwitches. They were not recklessly dangerous like Krenko's goblins. The thought fueled Gideon, it dulled the bite of his wounds, and breathed life back into his tired limbs. He didn't have to hold back.

Don't hold back.

The sural blades flicked out again and again, Eldrazi muck thick around Gideon's boots—where dozens of spawn lay. His muscles burned. His temples pounded. And the Eldrazi fell as fast as they approached. Gideon bared his teeth, an expression that was somewhere between grimace and grin.

Three sudden sharp whistles cut through the din of the fighting. It was time, and Gideon responded with three identical whistles of his own.

Above the carnage, Gideon saw a woman step off the edge of the canyon wall that rose up on the left. She floated there for a moment, and then rose gracefully above the canyon where he extended his arms out to either side.

"I'm afraid this is where I leave you, vermin," Gideon said, spinning out of a spawn's grasp.

Art by Raymond Swanland

There was a blinding flash as bolts of lightning arced from the mage's fingertips, finding the iron spikes that jutted out from canyon walls. The crackling energy rode the lengths of metal into the brittle, chalky stone, exploding in a succession of deafening pops. A sound like the splintering of an enormous bone filled the canyon, and cracks erupted from the various spikes until the tops of both cliffs gave way, and sheets of white stone tumbled toward the Eldrazi below.

Gideon vaulted off the canyon wall to get clear of the Eldrazi. A heartbeat later he was sprinting up the path and out from under the falling rock. When the stone crashed, the ground jumped. Gideon couldn't keep his feet, and he was thrown hard to ground. A great cloud of pulverized stone rose up, and as it washed over him, he had to bury his face in the crook of his arm to keep from choking on it.

Gideon heard skittering. Gathering himself into a crouch, he probed the haze through squinted eyes, straining to discern shapes or movement.

No time for this. He had to get back to Ravnica.

More skittering, accompanied by the slithering squish of Eldrazi tendrils. But other sounds as well—recognizable ones. War shouts. The ringing of blades. Munda.

Gideon rose, and though the chalky dust still hung in the air, shapes and colors were reemerging. He raced forward, sural ready. But when he found Munda, the kor was tethered to a climbing line, and he was dislodging one of his hooked blades from a lifeless spawn. The whole scene was set against a backdrop of shattered stone slabs that filled the canyon floor, completely obscuring the narrow path beneath, as well as countless Eldrazi. Accompanying Munda were a dozen other kor, who were at work finishing off the remaining handful of spawn that had eluded the ambush of stone.

"Your timing couldn't have been better, my friend," Gideon said through a tired smile.

Now he could get back to Ravnica. There was still time to stop the Shattergang Brothers, but not much.

However, when Gideon saw a grimness in Munda's face that was exceptional even for his friend, his own smile faded. "What happened, Munda?"

"A great host of Eldrazi descends on Sea Gate."

RAVNICA

Rain had saturated the bandage on his cheek and it sagged soggily, exposing the deep cut beneath. He'd have to take care of it later. There were prisoners down here somewhere. First things first.

Art by Michael Komarck

Gideon crashed into the old door. The hinges gave instantly, and he followed after the splintering wood that flew into the dark chamber beyond. The pain in his leg crescendoed with the impact, and to keep from crying out Gideon inhaled sharply. A scent that was both sweet and caustic filled his nostrils. It was the same odor that he smelled on Gardagig, when the goblin had given up the location of the Shattergang hideout.

Explosives.

Stay sharp.

"You haven't brought Krenko with you," came a voice, low and gravelly from behind a heavy, cluttered workbench. "Am I safe to assume that?"

"You're not safe to do anything, Rikkig, unless you come with me right now."

A staccato growl that Gideon took to be a laugh filled the chamber. He heard shuffling. A lantern that hung from the low ceiling revealed an awkward, bulky silhouette that Gideon didn't understand at first. But then a discernable shape emerged. It was a figure clad in a thick, heavily padded suit. On its head was a helmet not unlike a knight's, but with goggles fixed into the visor.

"Quite arrogant, you Boros. You pick up Krenko and try to deny us satisfaction." He was holding something. Glass, by the way it picked up the lantern light. A bomb. And he was wearing protective armor. "Krenko will be ours, only now the district will burn for –"

No more. This had to end.

Planting his wounded leg, Gideon kicked the workbench with all the strength he could manage, sending it sliding into Rikkig with such force that the goblin's breath escaped his lungs all at once in a rattling, punctuated moan. He doubled over the workbench and the bomb flew from his grip.

Gideon moved to intercept, but his limbs were heavy and slower than usual. In slow motion, the bomb sailed past his reach, and Gideon was only able to pivot so that his body was between Rikkig and the point where the delicate glass container shattered upon the floor.

When the explosion came, golden light flared up all across the front of his body, shielding him from flying debris. The sound was momentarily absolute, drowning out all else until only a high hum hung in his ears.

Flames had sprouted all around the room.

It was difficult to focus, but he heard Rikkig coughing and struggling to unpin himself from between the workbench and the wall. Gideon spun around, jerked the workbench back, and Rikkig collapsed to the ground. Gideon stood over him.

"The Boros didn't take Krenko. I did. Just like I got your brother. And now I'm here for you."

There was a muffled wail that Gideon first thought belonged to Rikking, who was raising his hands defensively. But another wail confirmed otherwise. "Help!" The prisoners. Gideon glanced around the room until his eyes settled on a dark wooden bookcase that was filled with what Gideon assumed were bomb-making tools and ingredients. Fire was caressing its base, threating to grab it and ignite its volatile contents. And of course, the wail he heard had come from behind it.

Reckless, he scolded himself. And stupid.

Gideon left Rikkig in a heap, and raced to the bookcase. He put his shoulder against it and pushed. Sweat collected at the end of his nose and chin, and every muscle begged for rest, but the heavy bookcase refused to yield even an inch. Gideon shut his eyes to the smoke that filled the room, and he struggled to gulp the necessary breath to continue.

His strength had begun to fail when, suddenly, the bookcase yielded and lurched forward. His eyes flew open, and Gideon saw Dars and another Boros legionnaire lending their strength to his efforts. Together, they pushed until the bookcase slid aside to reveal a narrow, round passage.

Gideon slumped against the bookcase in a fit of coughing. "Prisoners," he managed, and Boros soldiers filed past him into the passage.

Dars remained with Gideon.

"Rikkig?" Gideon asked.

The captain shook his head.

Gideon looked across the room. Rikkig was gone. His shifted his gaze to Dars. "You followed me."

"Clearly I had reason. You didn't have to do this alone, Gideon. We fight as a legion because some things are bigger than us."

"I had him, Dars."

"We'll find him. As a legion, we'll find him. You have a rest."

Not yet.

ZENDIKAR

When the attack on Sea Gate came, it came crashing down on the settlement with a speed and ferocity that simply overwhelmed its militia. The Eldrazi swept in from both sides of the sea wall. Some even surged from the sea to scale the face of the sea wall itself. There were simply too many. Commander Vorik had given the signal to evacuate, but it wasn't going fast enough. But then again, neither was Gideon. Four days without sleep. Or was it five? He did manage close his eyes for a few minutes as he rode here from the Commander's camp. So why was he so tired?

Not now.

Gideon strained against a thick wooden beam that pinned him to the floor of a building that was crumbling around him, but it was no use. The beam had fallen across his body when an airborne Eldrazi landed a powerful swipe that sent him crashing into the building.

No time for this.

His left arm was free as well as his head, but that was it. With his teeth, he unfastened the leather straps of his buckler. Once he shook it free of his hand, he wedged it as best he could between his breastplate and the beam. It just had to budge a little, and he pushed with everything he could muster. A grunt erupted into a roar, and the beam moved. Gideon shifted his weight, and the beam rolled free of him.

Wearily, he climbed to his feet. One of the wounds above his knee had reopened—perhaps both—and blood ran down his leg. He reached for his buckler, and as he worked it back onto his left hand he scanned the ruins around him. There were bits of broken furniture strewn about along with shattered ceramic plates. This was someone's home. And this was going to be the fate of Sea Gate. He had been told that Sea Gate was the largest settlement in all of Zendikar. It was a narrow strip of civilization clinging to the top of the ancient white dam that gave Sea Gate its name, and the Eldrazi had set about reducing the settlement, and all its people, to dust.

Gideon filled his lungs and made for the crumbling doorway that led back to the carnage beyond. He was at the threshold when a figure rounded the corner, blowing past him into the building. He had to spin to one side to avoid a collision.

"Quick now, I need your help," the figure said in a manner that was more command than request. A merfolk. She was bleeding from a gash above her eye and she was holding someone, a human woman, who sagged limply in her arms. Both were clad in armor—the merfolk in the shell-like scale and plate armor that was typical of her kind, and the unconscious one in cobbled steel plate. The merfolk had a spear slung across her back. These two were not new to the horrors of the Eldrazi.

Gideon helped the merfolk lay the unconscious woman against the shattered remnants of a wall, and the two worked together to unfasten the crushed plates of that were supposed to protect her. Beneath the armor, the woman's skin was a desiccated, eroded husk that mirrored the spongy ash-colored, pitted bone texture of Eldrazi ruin. He'd seen it before. It's how the Eldrazi leeched energy from the world. It was not a wound. She died the moment the Eldrazi got to her.

The merfolk also knew what it meant, for she stopped, and sunk to the ground beside the still body, staring blankly at the devastation.

Gideon knelt. "What was her name?"

"Kendrin," she said, placing her hand on the dead woman's forehead.

"You'll have to grieve for Kendrin later. You have to get out of here now."

"You don't understand." She looked up, shifting her gaze from Kendrin to Gideon. "There's no time. We barely made it out of Bala Ged alive. We saw its destruction."

"You were among the survivors that landed yesterday."

"Yes. Kendrin was on the brink of a discovery. The 'puzzle of leylines,' she called it. The hedrons. The Eldrazi. The connection—she was so close. She said it all pointed to the Eye, and that she had to come here to see the Lighthouse's records on the Eye."

"You just have to get to the Lighthouse? You can get your answers there?"

The merfolk shook her head. "We were just there. There's nothing left inside. We were attacked trying to get out. Besides, Kendrin was the expert, not me. I was her escort on her expeditions…and I failed." She slammed her fist against the stone wall, and a moment later, the whole wall seemed to explode outward over empty space. The merfolk would have tumbled backward with it over the side of the sea wall had Gideon not grabbed hold of her hand. Enormous tendrils appeared, yanking away the remaining masonry so that their source came into view—an Eldrazi monster, faceless and terrible, at the end of its ascent up the vertical expanse. Tendrils continued their devastating course, threshing stonework until only powder remained.

Art by Vincent Proce

Gideon and the merfolk scrambled up a pile of rubble that had once been a second and third floor. From their position, Gideon could see the devastation that stretched out from one end of the sea wall to the other. Many of the buildings were in ruins, and many more had been pulled completely from the top of the wall so that the water on both sides ground the wreckage against the wall's smooth face.

The Zendikari were a resilient lot, and even now, he saw that many continued to fight in defensive pockets. They had been destroying Eldrazi all day, but it wasn't enough. The truth of it was Sea Gate was lost. This approach was not enough.

Art by Goran Josic

But perhaps it was as she said, though—Kendrin found an answer. The puzzle of leylines. The notion smoldered within Gideon, and suddenly burst into flames. Fighting to avoid something was not the same as fighting for something. Kendrin's puzzle was a possible answer. That was enough for now.

They just needed another expert.

"What's your name?" Gideon asked as they leapt to either side of a tendril that smashed down between them.

"Really? Now?"

"I'm going to find someone who can help. But I'll need to find you after."

She threw her spear at the Eldrazi as it slowly pulled itself over the edge of the wall into the broken dwelling. The spear found its mark with a crunch, sinking into the featureless faceplate. The Merfolk's eyes flash fleetingly with red energy, and the wound she opened began to hiss and steam. "I'm Jori En," she said through gritted teeth as tendrils flailed about furiously.

"Jori En, get to Commander Vorik's camp. You have to make it. I'll find you."

And the next moment Gideon's sural blades flew, grabbing hold of Jori En's spear, which had remained lodged in place. He hurled himself into the air, and at the apex of the swing he hit the toggle on his forearm to trigger the retraction mechanism of his sural. But instead reeling in his blades, the force jerked him toward Jori's spear and he rammed into the Eldrazi's face with such force that it was carried over the edge and back toward the sea below.

In a tangle of tendrils, Gideon fell with it.

Stay focused.

He had to get free of the Eldrazi, or it would drag him beneath the surface. His hands fumbled at the sural blades, attempting to release them from spear, but the Eldrazi was tumbling through the air fast, and Gideon lost his grip. He was free falling, but still anchored to the Eldrazi, and all he could do was ready himself for impact.

The Eldrazi hit first, and Gideon's entire body erupted in bands of golden light as he too crashed through the surface of the sea. The Eldrazi fell to pieces instantly, and Gideon was tossed around beneath the churning water. He struggled to orient himself in the midst of the slurry of sea water and Eldrazi bits.

At last he surfaced, gulping for air. With the last of his strength, he kicked his way over to the collection of detritus that lined the base of the wall. He found the remnant of a wooden table, and clung to it. From above, the sounds of slaughter could be heard over the surf and he tilted his head up to where Eldrazi swarmed over Sea Gate like angry ants. Gideon knew he had no time to waste.

He had an expert to find.

He closed his eyes, and he felt the world around him melt away. The coldness of the sea faded and he felt stone beneath his feet. The sound of lapping waves gave way to the din of the city. Sounds he knew. Sounds of Ravnica.

RAVNICA

Bruised and bloodied, Gideon stood at the bottom of the flight of stone steps that led to the Chamber of the Guildpact. Zendikar was still in peril. Force of arms alone would not be enough to achieve victory. There had to be some other answer. Was it, as Jori said, the puzzle of leylines? Who then was better suited for the task than the one who solved Ravnica's maze?

The Living Guildpact.

The Planeswalker, Jace Beleren.

Gideon ascended the first step, tried for another, but gravity had him, and he collapsed.

6

Catching Up

by Kelly Digges

The mind mage Jace Beleren is many things to many people. Chief among his current responsibilities is that of the Living Guildpact, the magically empowered arbiter of inter-guild conflicts on the city-plane of Ravnica. But he has made many other promises and taken on many other problems—and each of those unfinished puzzles tugs at his mind.

Some, perhaps, more than others.

Jace smiled tightly as the Golgari delegation shambled out of the room. He muttered a quick spell to clear out the fungal-rot smell of the esteemed ambassadors and their zombie attendants.

As soon as the door shut behind them, Jace's smile dropped, and he sat down on the large wooden desk he'd finally gotten around to installing. The desk creaked, and he frowned. He still needed a nice big chair to collapse into. Leather. Something expensive.

"Tell me that was the last for the day," he said.

"I would never perjure myself, even at your order," said his bailiff, Lavinia—rather archly, he thought.

Art by Jaime Jones

He groaned. It wasn't that the work was hard. Quite the opposite. It was a lot of work, and hardly any challenge.

"But," she continued, "as it happens, in this case I can say truthfully that that was the last of today's appointments. Of course, tomorrow's petitioners are already lining up."

No more sunlight streamed through the high windows of the Chamber of the Guildpact. When had he last eaten?

"They'll have to wait," he said. "Maybe I can solve all their problems, but I can't do it all in one day."

He turned toward her. She looked prim as ever. He scowled.

"You're not even tired, are you? People probably talk about Jace Beleren's illusionary bailiff . . . What human could stand for twelve hours in full ceremonial armor and show no sign of it?"

She turned and looked him up and down.

"You'd have more endurance if you exercised once in a while, you know," she said. She was smiling, but that didn't mean she wasn't serious.

"Noted."

He turned to leave.

"Guildpact," said Lavinia. He turned. "Get some rest."

Art by Willian Murai

"Coffee," said Jace. "The Living Guildpact rules that coffee is an acceptable substitution for rest, as specified in subsection . . . whatever."

Lavinia had too much discipline to roll her eyes at him, but she did shake her head as he walked out of the room.

Down several twisting corridors, Jace ducked through a secret hallway to his personal apartments. No one knew about the secret hallway except him and Lavinia, and even Lavinia didn't know how to open it. There were stories on many planes of tyrants who, to preserve the secrets of their tombs and castles, killed architects or cut out their tongues. Jace had cleanly excised the knowledge from his builders' minds—far kinder, he told himself, though it didn't always feel that way.

His apartments were a mess of diagrams, projects in progress, and half-eaten meals. An illusionary depiction of a Zendikar hedron hovered, its runes tauntingly undeciphered. Globes and maps of various planes were marked with pins showing locations of import. The horn of an Onakke ogre rested on a draft copy of some dull piece of Azorius legislation.

Art by Adam Paquette

Jace didn't have servants—too much risk, and it made him uncomfortable besides—but he occasionally summoned a menial illusion to clean the place up, usually when he was expecting company. And he did, occasionally, entertain, despite the secrecy of the apartments. The door was actually an Izzet-made teleportal, and he changed the location of its other end regularly. He could come and go as he pleased, could even have guests, and the mystery of the Living Guildpact only deepened.

He blinked, bleary-eyed. What had he been doing?

Right. Coffee.

There was a knock at the door.

Well, not really. But there was a knock on a door somewhere in the Seventh District, carried to his ears by the portal that linked his door to that one. And that was every bit as odd.

He pulled his hood up around his face, gathered mana, and carefully approached the doorway, keeping a spell ready to dispel the portal if necessary. In the meantime, he cast a spell that would let him see what was on the other side.

All of this paranoid preparation was probably unnecessary. It was probably just some confused citizen knocking on the wrong door down in the Seventh. At worst, it might be—

Art by Karla Ortiz

—Liliana?

He gaped.

Jace hadn't seen Liliana Vess since the day he'd realized she was playing him, and he'd skipped out on their rendezvous—after enduring mortal danger, the deaths of friends, and literal torture, all at least partially on her account. She was an amoral, self-serving death mage who'd sought him out on the orders of the dragon Planeswalker, Nicol Bolas. She was also the first real lover he'd ever had, and he'd tried, in the time since, not to pine for her. He knew better.

The necromancer stood before an unmarked door miles away, unattended as far as he could tell. She held herself proudly, but she glanced from side to side occasionally, as though she was nervous. Or wary.

Or betraying him. Again.

An illusion? Through the portal, it was difficult to tell. If so, it was entirely convincing, right down to an irritated tapping of her left foot.

He shouldn't answer it. Whether it was really her or not, it was almost certainly a trap—and even if she didn't have plans to betray him, again, life with Liliana had a way of turning to rot in a hurry. He knew better.

He sighed, rendered himself invisible, and summoned an illusionary duplicate. The duplicate opened the door, with a telekinetic nudge from him.

"Liliana?" he said, out of the duplicate's mouth, painting a surprised look on its face. "What are—"

She casually walked right through the illusionary Jace.

"Can I come in?" she said over her shoulder.

Jace frowned, shoved the door shut, and dispelled his invisibility, his confused-looking illusionary double, and the teleportal for good measure. He hurried after her.

"What if I said no?"

"You didn't," she said.

He walked around her and got in her way. She looked past him, surveying the apartment.

"Lovely place. Shame what you've done with it."

She looked exactly the same. But then, she would, wouldn't she? No less than four demonic contracts saw to that, etched in fell runes on her perfect skin. He'd always hated those etchings, tried not to—not to touch them.

Finally, she looked him in the eye.

"Hello, Jace."

Jace was not accustomed to noticing people's eyes. He didn't need them to read intentions, and while he'd learned to look at people's eyes when he talked to them, he'd never really learned to pay attention to them. But Liliana's eyes he remembered, old and violet-gray and full of the promise of danger. He tried to hold her gaze now, but found he couldn't stand the memories that stirred up. His eyes finally settled on her nose, the only place he could find that didn't make him some manner of uncomfortable.

"Nothing you can say will make me trust you," he said. "Not after you betrayed me."

She rolled her eyes. Her scent hit him, lilac and cinnamon masking the barest hint of something rotten and strange.

"You're the one who stood me up," she said.

"Yes, after you betrayed me!"

"That's ancient history," she said, picking up the Onakke horn and toying with it. "I'm not working for Bolas anymore, and I never meant you any harm."

"And shall I verify that?" he asked, taking the horn from her and setting it down. "Or do you still have your little protective measures?"

He had thought he'd read her mind when they first met, but she'd spoofed his telepathic abilities somehow. He had his suspicions, and the fact that she'd been secretly working for a millennia-old dragon archmage at the time was chief among them.

She said nothing, but reached out, slowly, toward his face. Part of him wanted to flinch from her touch. Part of him wanted to do very much the opposite. He settled for holding still. But she did not touch him, only took the edge of his hood between two fingers and pushed it back. She appraised him for a moment.

Art by Jaime Jones

"You look older," she said.

"I'm not sure how to take that."

"At your age, dear, it's an unambiguous compliment." She cocked her head. "Have you started combing your hair?"

He smoothed his hair self-consciously, just for a moment, then withdrew his hand. He had, in fact, started combing it. Not that his hair was any of her business. He scowled.

"I'm guessing," he said, "that you didn't go to the considerable trouble of finding me just to critique my appearance. So let's get to business. How did you find me, and who else knows?"

She sighed theatrically.

"I hired a very good spy at a very high price," she said. "And nobody else knows, because his corpse is currently shambling around the Seventh trying to find me."

"Damn it!" he said. "You're talking about a Ravnican citizen."

"Don't fret. I made sure he deserved it, just for you," she said. "He's got a file at New Prahv as long as your arm: murder, arson, theft, extortion—and plenty of awful stuff the Azorius don't even know about. I did your friends at the Senate a favor."

"A warrant is supposed to lead to a trial," he snapped. "Not a summary execution! I have to think about that kind of thing now. I am the law—I literally am the Law. I—Damn it, why are you smiling?"

"Lazlo Lipko."

He sucked in a breath through gritted teeth.

"Ooh, yeah, he's a real bastard."

"Was," she said, smirking.

He sighed.

"Fine. It's not like I've never worked outside the law, even as the Guildpact."

They were still standing, slightly too close to each other, in his messy front room.

"Well?" she said. "Is the inquisition over?"

"Not just yet," he said. "What did you do to Garruk Wildspeaker?"

Art by Chase Stone

"Oh," she said. "That."

"That."

"Can I at least sit down?"

He shrugged and gestured to one of the high-backed chairs that surrounded his table, but she walked around the table and flopped onto his couch. He didn't like looming over her, but he didn't want to sit next to her, so he dragged a chair over from the table and sat. She stared at him expectantly.

"Garruk," he prodded.

"Garruk." She frowned. "Not much to tell."

"So tell it."

"He attacked me," she said. "I won. I guess he's carrying a grudge."

"No."

She blinked those ancient violet eyes.

"No?"

"Tell me about the Chain Veil," said Jace.

"Oh," she said, looking away. "That."

He waited.

"It'll be easier if you tell me what you already know," she said.

"It'll be more informative if I don't."

In fact he already knew a great deal about the Chain Veil, its properties, and Liliana's run-ins with Garruk. But he was curious how much she'd be willing to tell him. And he did, if he was being perfectly honest, enjoy watching her squirm.

"Fine," she said. "It's a very powerful, very ancient artifact."

"Evil, too," he interjected.

"Yes, thank you," she said, rolling her eyes. "One of my demonic creditors sent me after it, as part of my servitude. I decided to use it to earn my freedom. The hard way."

Art by Jakub Kasper

"You honestly think you can take on four demons—"

"Two," she said.

"What?"

"Two down," she said, holding up two fingers and grinning. "Two to go."

"Oh," he said. "That . . . changes things."

"Doesn't it?"

He'd intended, long ago, to help her find a way out of her contracts—to learn who she really was, beneath the desperation and the lies. Now she was halfway out without his help . . . and mired in something that might be worse.

"What did you do to Garruk?"

"The Veil is cursed," she said. "It was created to turn someone into a vessel for the resurrection of a long-dead race. But that's too much power for one soul to bear. It kills its users if they're not strong enough, I think."

"You think?"

"What can I say? I've been so busy with all this demon-slaying, I haven't exactly had time to visit the library."

"Fine," he said. "You don't seem dead."

"Nope," she said. Her eyes twinkled. "I'm too strong."

"You know what happens to the ones it doesn't kill, right?"

Her face fell—maybe the only honest emotion she'd shown since she walked in.

"Yes," she said. "Demons."

The Veil's power was overwhelming, transforming even its strongest wearers into monsters.

"And that's what Garruk is becoming. Has become, maybe. But not you."

"Not me," she said. "I don't know if it was my contracts or my necromancy. Or maybe I managed to pass the curse to him, right after I picked the thing up. Whatever the reason, he's the one turning into a monster. And I'm not. No more than I ever was, anyway."

"Alright," he said. "You're still alive, you're still human, and you're down two demons. So what's the problem?"

She arched an eyebrow.

"Who said there's a problem?"

"Lili, what are you doing here?"

She pouted.

"Can't I just drop by to see an old friend?"

"Stop it," he snapped. "We've been a lot of things, but we have never been friends."

Silence, then. Her eyes hardened.

"I—"

"Don't," she said.

He shut his mouth.

"You're right," she said. "And for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what you went through. I'm even sorry for what's happening to Garruk, if that will make you feel better."

She flopped her head back on the pillow and sighed.

"I don't know, Jace. I guess I was hoping we could . . . start over."

She lifted her head. Her eyes held his.

"Starting over is the first trick I learned," he said, forcing a smile. He lifted one hand and set it glowing, like it often did when he worked his mind magic. When he erased memories. "Just say the word . . ."

Art by Chase Stone

"No," she said. "Not like that."

She frowned and spread her hands in a helpless shrug. He had a hard time believing she was genuinely flustered, but she was putting on a convincing performance.

"Just . . . this conversation, at least?" she said. "Start over?"

"Well, it's too late to start with you not barging into my home."

"Fair," she said. "So where do we start?"

"How about with you apologizing for barging into my home?"

Her demeanor shifted—demure and contrite, hands folded primly in her lap, expression carefully guarded. But her eyes were playful.

"I'm so sorry to barge in on you like this," she said, with exaggerated propriety. "I was in town, and I just couldn't resist dropping by. I deeply regret the unpleasantness of our last encounter, and I hope we can make a fresh start."

It was a game. Everything was a game with her, and he was tired of playing. He knew better. But if he didn't find out what she was up to, she would just get him into trouble some other way. And she wasn't the only one who could play games.

"What a pleasant surprise!" he said. "It's delightful to see you again—not at all suspicious or unwelcome. What sort of fresh start did you have in mind?"

She grinned wickedly.

"Buy me dinner?"

He snorted.

She smiled serenely.

"You're serious," he said.

She grinned.

"I'm always serious."

More games. More deceptions.

He knew better.

The pair strolled through Ravnica's fashionable Second District arm in arm. It was a warm night, and the streets were busy.

"So what's it like?" asked Liliana. "Being the Guildpact?"

"Exhausting," said Jace. "Everyone wants a piece of you. You're pulled in ten different directions, all the time."

Art by Dave Kendall

"Sounds terrible," said Liliana. "Four was bad enough. Hells, being pulled in any directions is more than bad enough."

"The guilds aren't my masters," said Jace. "More like . . . clients. I have more freedom now than I did when I was part of Tezzeret's Consortium, that's for sure."

"But you're not the king," said Liliana. "You don't make the law. You're bound by it."

He shrugged.

"I wouldn't want to be a king," he said. "But yes. It can be . . . confining."

"Sir!" said a round little woman holding a basket of roses. "Sir! Buy a flower for your girlfriend?"

"She's not my—"

"Say no more, sir!" said the woman with a wink. "But a flower's always a fine gift for a lady."

"She's not a—"

Liliana elbowed him in the ribs.

"Of course," said Jace. He handed the woman a zino, told her to keep the change, and presented the rose to Liliana with a flourish.

"Sir!" said the woman, already working the couple behind them. "Sir! A flower for your boyfriend there?"

Liliana took the flower delicately and stared at it. In moments, it withered and dried into a blackened husk. She tucked it in her raven hair and smiled at him.

"Do you ever get tired of being difficult?" he asked.

She flashed a dizzying grin.

"Never."

They arrived.

Milena's was one of the finest restaurants in the Second, seating by reservation only. Jace exchanged a few quiet words with the maître d'—an efficient, ratlike little man named Valko—and the Living Guildpact and his guest were escorted to a table for two out on the patio, complete with candles.

"Good to know you're not above abusing your power," said Liliana.

He pulled a chair out for her, and she sat.

"I spend ten hours a day listening to zoning disputes and damage claims," said Jace, seating himself. "A table at a nice restaurant on short notice is the least this city can do in return."

"And you have this kind of money?" asked Liliana, ogling the menu.

"They usually comp it," he said. He tried to sound embarrassed, mainly because he was. But being the Guildpact wasn't easy, and it wasn't safe, and he wasn't ashamed of taking advantage of the few perks of the office. Not very, anyway.

"Of course," she said. "It's the least they can do."

They ordered, and Liliana didn't hold back—nor had he expected her to. A bottle of an expensive red Kasarda, Decamillennial vintage, rounded things out, and Jace wove a quick spell of silence to give them some privacy.

"This is a far cry from the dives we used to hide out in," said Liliana. "What was that awful little place called? The Bitter End?"

He raised a glass.

"To leaving the past . . . in the past."

She took a sip, then set her glass down quickly.

"I heard about what you did," she said. "Trying to stop Garruk."

"Oh," he said. "That."

"It was risky," she said. "I didn't think you'd do that for me."

"I didn't do it for you," said Jace. "Garruk's becoming a threat to every Planeswalker."

"Listen to yourself," she said, shaking her head. "Jace Beleren, defender of the Multiverse. You can't admit you're worried about me without pretending to be worried about literally everyone."

"Should I be worried about you?"

Anger clouded her face. She reached into the folds of skirt at her hip, and Jace spent a panicked half-second preparing a counterspell before he saw what she was doing.

Art by Volkan Baga

The thing she withdrew could only be the Chain Veil. A cacaphony of unintelligible whispers filled his head, just for a moment, until he tuned it out—whatever that was, it was her business, not his. Its links were a burnished gold and exquisitely crafted, so fine it appeared to have the texture of silk. It looked heavy, and it took on an unnatural gleam in the dim light of the restaurant. It was beautiful, and enticing, and dangerous.

His hand reached out, almost reflexively. She jerked the Veil back, out of his reach, a sudden and undignified movement.

"Afraid I'll take it from you?" he asked with bemusement.

She met his gaze, and for a fleeting moment he saw pain and fear and pleading in those ancient eyes.

"Afraid of what it might do to you," she said quietly. "And anyway, you can't take it, even if I wanted you to. Do you understand yet? What it is?"

Can't? Was it bonded to her somehow? Or did it just have its hooks into her that badly? He'd believe it, in either case.

"I'm starting to," he said.

The way the candlelight flickered off the thing was somehow sinister.

"If you're not going to let me look at it, put it away," he said. "It makes my skin crawl."

She tucked it away again.

"Mine too," she whispered.

The candles flickered.

"It sounds like maybe things aren't quite under control."

He understood, now, why she'd come. Play on his emotions and his curiosity all at once. Herself in need, and a puzzle to be solved—two things she knew he'd have a hard time resisting. And maybe, just maybe, she was right.

But he was going to make her ask.

Her eyes were pools of darkness.

"Jace, I . . ."

There was a commotion at the front of the restaurant, where the patio opened onto the street. Jace turned sharply, ready to cast any of half a dozen protective spells.

A tall, broad-shouldered man stood in the street, arguing with Valko. He wore armor, hard-used but well-maintained, and he was covered in blood and dirt and some unidentifiable muck. He pointed toward Jace. He was toward the edge of Jace's easy telepathic range, but a combination of lip-reading and surface thoughts told Jace what the man was saying: I need to speak to the Guildpact.

He flashed a Boros insignia, pushed past the flustered maître d', and walked up to their table. He was quite a bit taller than Jace, with tawny skin but strikingly bright eyes.

"Jace Beleren," he said. "I need your help."

The man matched the description of a Planeswalker Jace had heard about, one who was planeswalking on and off of Ravnica with unusual regularity.

Art by David Rapoza

Valko hurried up behind the man.

"Guildpact," said Valko. "I'm so sorry. He says it's guild business—"

"No I didn't," said the man. "I just showed you my badge."

"I'm off-duty," said Jace. Planeswalker or no, this man's troubles weren't Jace's to solve. "Come to the Hall of the Guildpact in the morning and get on the docket, and in a few days—"

"It's about a place called Zendikar," said the man.

Liliana looked like she'd swallowed a nail.

"Sir," said Valko. "Whatever your business, your attire is entirely unacceptable. I must insist—"

"He can stay," said Jace. "If you're worried about appearances, I'll slip an invisibility spell over this whole table."

"That," said Valko, "will make it exceedingly difficult to bring you your dinner."

"It won't cover the smell, either," said Liliana.

"I'll make it up to you," said Jace, and shooed Valko away.

"What about me?" said Liliana.

"My name is Gideon," said the man. He glanced at Liliana.

"She knows," said Jace. "Have a seat."

"I'd rather stand," said Gideon.

Jace stood up. It was an error. He still had to crane his neck to look Gideon in the eye, and now the size difference between them was glaringly obvious. He hated feeling small. Hated it.

"Now that you've thoroughly ruined my evening," said Jace, "how about you get to the point?"

Gideon's eyes narrowed.

"Have you actually been to Zendikar?"

"Yes," said Jace. "It didn't go well."

"Sea Gate has fallen."

"What?" said Jace. "When? How?"

"Hours ago," said Gideon. "Maybe less. I left before it was over, but the place was doomed. And as for how . . . What do you know of the Eldrazi?"

"They'd just emerged when I was last there. I saw one, shortly before I left," said Jace. 'Saw one,' that was one way to put it. 'Inadvertently released them from millennia of imprisonment to terrorize Zendikar,' that was another. Jace wondered if Gideon knew. "I know some scholars at Sea Gate. Any word of them?"

"Their archives were lost," said Gideon. "That's why I came to find you. They were close to some kind of breakthrough with the hedrons, something that could fight the Eldrazi. And you have a reputation for solving puzzles."

Art by Peter Mohrbacher

A quick dive into the man's mind confirmed that he was telling the truth.

"The hedron network?" said Jace. "What kind of breakthrough?"

"I don't know," said Gideon. "They called it the 'puzzle of leylines,' and they believe it’s connected to the Eldrazi. Will you come with me and solve it?"

"Leylines!" said Jace. His first instinct was to reach for his notes, but of course they were back at his apartments. "I'd never tied the hedrons to leylines. That has . . . implications."

He rubbed his forehead. The Eldrazi were his responsibility, in a way. He'd spent some time since then researching them, researching the hedrons. But he had so many other responsibilities!

"If you know Zendikar, and you've seen the Eldrazi, then you know how serious this is," said Gideon. "I know you'll do the right thing."

Liliana drained her glass, shoved her chair back, and walked past Jace.

"Lili, wait—"

She kept walking.

"Give me a minute," he said to Gideon.

He ran after her, matched her pace. He knew better than to try to grab her arm—that was a good way to end up at the healer's.

"Liliana!"

She stopped and faced him, eyes bright with rage.

"I seek you out after all this time," she said. "I open up to you. And now, after all we've been through together, you're ready to walk off with some undercooked side of beef from Sunhome, just because he asked?"

"What's happening on Zendikar . . ." he said. "It's my fault. Sort of. It was unintentional, and I suspect I was manipulated, but the fact remains, those Eldrazi things are loose because I walked into something without understanding it."

"So now you're going to dive right back in," she said. "What are you waiting for?"

"You could come with us," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"Come with us," said Jace. "Put your skills to use fighting some actual monsters. Maybe you can make an ally of this Gideon guy."

"No," said Liliana. "Some of us don't go borrowing trouble when we already have more than enough."

"I'm not leaving until morning," said Jace. "Think it over. Come to the Hall if you change your mind."

"No."

"You could wait for me on Ravnica, then," said Jace. "Whatever research he needs me to do, it won't take long. I'll come back. We can continue our conversation. And if you ever get around to telling me why you're here, we can talk about what happens next."

"You're out of your mind," she said. "I've got demons to kill."

"Fine," said Jace. "Good luck with that. And Liliana?"

She waited.

"He asked."

She plucked the dead rose out of her hair and tossed it as his feet, then turned on her heel and walked away.

Jace bent to pick up the withered flower as Gideon's heavy footfalls approached behind him.

"Finished?" said Gideon.

Jace turned, ready to snap at him, but Gideon's face was so earnest, and so haggard, that Jace couldn't muster the anger. Liliana was bad news anyway. He knew better.

Art by Michael Komarck

"Finished," said Jace. "Come on. I know a good healer who can patch you up."

"No time," said Gideon. "We have to go."

"I'm not leaving the plane until morning," said Jace. "I need to make arrangements, and I need to get my notes. And you! You can't help Zendikar if you drop dead of exhaustion. You need to get some rest."

Gideon stared down at him for a long moment.

"Fine," Gideon said at last. "Take me to this healer."

"Tell me about the Eldrazi," said Jace.

He took a step, but Gideon stopped him with one hand on Jace's shoulder. Jace reached up and deliberately pushed Gideon's hand off of him.

Gideon glanced at the withered rose that Jace was still playing through his fingers. "Do I have your full attention?"

"Of course," said Jace. "Tell me everything you know."

He dropped the dead rose on the cobblestones and fell in beside Gideon.

He knew better.

7

Unkindness of Ravens

by James Wyatt

Liliana Vess is perhaps the most powerful necromancer in the Multiverse, but her life has been haunted by mighty entities that seek to control her. The dragon Planeswalker Nicol Bolas, the four demons she bargained with to gain her power, and the mysterious Chain Veil have all exerted their powerful influence over her, leading her down paths of betrayal and murder. And the meddling of an even more enigmatic figure—the Raven Man—led to the death of her brother and the ignition of her Planeswalker spark. Her every effort now is directed toward seeking her freedom, with slaying her demon masters and breaking the hold of the Chain Veil at the top of her list.

But while she focuses on these masters, the other forces pulling on her won't simply leave her alone.

Liliana Vess waded into the teeming streets of Ravnica's elegant Second District. She strode through the crowd, which parted like water around her. She adjusted the top of one long glove, and the croak of a nearby raven just barely touched her awareness over the din of the crowds—the crowd of people in the city and the crowd of spirits pressing at her thoughts.

Did Jace hear them? she wondered. It was hard to imagine that he hadn't—the Onakke spirits were a constant hubbub in her mind, and Jace's telepathic abilities had surely picked up on the noise. But he'd given no indication that he had discerned their presence, or indeed that he had any idea what the Chain Veil was doing to her.

Do I have any idea what this thing is doing to me?

As if in response, the voices in her mind surged in volume. ". . .Vessel of destruction . . . root. . ."

"Oh, shut up," she snarled, giving her head a small, fierce shake that freed a single lock of hair from her headdress and left the strand hanging over one eye. A young vedalken's eyes widened at her outburst, and he ducked quickly out of her path. She tucked her hair back into place, and the voices subsided.

They had been strongest on Shandalar, of course. It was the Onakke's home plane. Here on Ravnica, or on Innistrad, or any of the other half dozen planes she'd visited recently, they usually remained at the level of background noise. In the context of her conversation with Jace, though, that background noise had felt more like a clattering of kitchen pots, and she couldn't quite believe he hadn't noticed the clamor.

Maybe he would have, she thought, if we hadn't been interrupted.

And if he had noticed? What then? Maybe he would have helped.

Liliana had come to Jace in search of a loophole, a way out of the mess she'd landed in. The power of the Chain Veil was immeasurable. It had allowed her to kill Kothophed and Griselbrand, two of the demons to whom she owed her soul—part of the pact she'd made to regain some of the godlike magic she had lost with the Mending.

But in the process of trying to free herself from one bargain for power, she had unwittingly entered into another. The Chain Veil's magic came with a cost, a terrible toll on both her body and her mind. In desperation, she had taken it back to Shandalar and tried to leave it there, but she found that she couldn't. It was bound to her, and her to it.

There has to be a way out.

Art by Volkan Baga

Jace was supposed to help her find it—some way for her to continue using the Chain Veil without being enslaved by it and the spirits it carried. Jace was nothing if not clever, and if the Veil had some kind of hold on her mind, she felt confident that he could help her break it.

Instead, Jace had asked her for help, after that soldier, Gideon, showed up. She scoffed aloud at the thought, drawing startled glances from the people around her. A well-dressed merchant met her gaze, then blanched and lost himself in the crowd. A goblin found himself squarely in her path and scurried quickly away, not daring to look up at her.

And a raven, perched on a wall nearby, fixed a glossy black eye on her. She scowled at it and walked on.

Gideon had come to the restaurant, interrupted their conversation, and practically begged Jace to come with him to Zendikar, some backwoods nowhere plane he'd said was being devoured by giant monsters. Liliana had almost laughed him out of the building—as if she or Jace could bother with such a place. As the Living Guildpact, Jace had Ravnica to worry about, after all; and besides, he was going to help her.

But he hadn't. Instead, he had agreed to help Gideon. "I know you'll do the right thing," Gideon had said—and Jace fell for it. And then he'd been ridiculous enough to ask Liliana to come with him. She scoffed again at the thought of it.

Then a sort of weight settled in her chest, and she frowned. She and Jace had shared some good times, had some fun together, and seeing him again had conjured up some surprising feelings. They had shared a house, and a bed, in one of Ravnica's poorer districts. She had helped him through a rough time, the dear boy . . . before sticking a metaphorical knife in his back and returning to Nicol Bolas, who she thought was going to help her extricate herself from the demonic pact that he had helped broker.

Art by Aleksi Briclot

What if this time could be different? What if I went with him and helped him?

Maybe they would have some more good times. Maybe she could enjoy his company, even if it meant putting up with Gideon's self-righteous arrogance—he's almost as bad as an angel, she thought. I know you'll do the right thing, indeed. But maybe taking on some giant monsters and raising up their huge corpses to fight for her would be . . . fun?

"Ugh," she said. Fighting Gideon's monsters would mean using the Chain Veil again, and she was right back where she had started.

A flutter of black wings in her face brought her up short. Another raven—

Raven Man.

The croak of a raven. A raven on the wall. Now a startled raven in her face. She had been oblivious, and she silently cursed herself as she looked around, finally noticing where her feet had taken her while she'd been lost in her thoughts.

She stood at the edge of a small, deserted courtyard. An old fountain, dry and crusted with lime, provided a perch for fully a dozen ravens, each cocking its head to turn an eye toward her. More of the birds hopped over the cracked cobblestones or flapped from roof to roof on the buildings surrounding the yard. One bird, stretching tall from its perch atop the fountain, uttered a short series of knocking sounds, then snapped its beak at her.

"All right, Raven Man," Liliana said. "Enough of your games."

All at once, the ravens perched on the fountain sprang into the air in a flurry of beating black wings. They formed a churning cloud of feathers and harsh calls just above the cobblestones, and then the Raven Man stepped forward from their midst—and the birds were gone.

Liliana clapped her hands slowly and drawled, "Oh, well done. Do show me another trick."

He looked no different than when she had first met him, back home among the trees of the Caligo Forest. The intervening century had left no greater mark on him than it had on her own features. Garbed in black and gold, with white hair and golden eyes, he seemed as much a vision from her past as a living man, but he reached out and placed a very solid hand on her shoulder.

Art by Adame Minguez

"You need help," he said.

Liliana shrugged his hand off her shoulder and moved a step farther away from him. No encounter with the Raven Man had ever ended well for her—or for those she loved.

"And I suppose you're here to offer it?" she said.

He scoffed. "Would you accept it if I did?"

"Of course not."

"I don't think you know how to accept help," he said, stepping closer again.

"I don't need it," she said. She planted a hand on his chest and pushed him two steps back. "Everything's under control."

"Ah, I see." He looked amused, and a sudden desire to blast the ridiculous smirk from his face seized her. "So what is your next move?"

"Scouring you from the earth and turning you and all your little bird friends into my zombie minions."

The Raven Man chuckled.

"Tell me why I shouldn't do it," she said.

"You make it sound so easy." He shrugged. "Maybe you should."

"It would be easy," she said, but there was no pleasure in it. It would be easy because of the Chain Veil. She could already feel its power surging up in her, as if it were anxious to be put to use. And with it, the Onakke voices grew louder in her mind. She turned away from him, shaking her head to clear them away.

She felt his breath on her ear. "Turning your back on an enemy, Liliana Vess?" Something pricked through her gown in the small of her back—he held a dagger.

"I don't fear you," she said, and a ring of darkness burst out around her, driving the Raven Man back.

"Of course you do," he said.

She wheeled around to face him again. "Who are you?" she demanded. "You're a Planeswalker—I met you on Dominaria, on Shandalar, and now here. You're a shapeshifter, obviously. And you spoke to me with the mouth of a corpse on Shandalar. Who—what are you?"

His lip curled into a smile more cruel than amused, but he said nothing.

Art by Chris Rahn

"You spoke of the Chain Veil as though the whole thing were your idea—you cultivated the root of evil, the Veil of deceit, the vessel of destruction." As she said the words, the Onakke spirits echoed them in her mind, with hissing whispers that resounded like the inside of a mausoleum. "But Kothophed sent me to fetch the Chain Veil for him."

"Yet you did not return it to him."

"I run errands for no one. Did you somehow give the demon the idea of sending me after it? You certainly planted the seed of his destruction if you did."

"You are the vessel for a much greater destruction than that."

His words sent a cold prickle running down her back, but she stepped closer to him with a sly smile. "Oh, yes," she said. "I bring destruction wherever I go. Which brings me back to my earlier question—why again should I not destroy you? Right now?"

"What about your own destruction?"

She scowled. "What are you talking about?" In her darkest moments, she had begun to fear that the Chain Veil did carry the seeds of her own destruction, that after fighting so long and so hard to avoid death, she had taken it into herself. But she wasn't going to admit that fear to the Raven Man—or, indeed, show him any fear at all.

"Look around you, Lili," the Raven Man said.

"Don't call me that."

He ignored her. "Death is staring at you from every side."

She did glance around, without meaning to. Ravens were everywhere, dozens of glassy black eyes fixed on her.

Art by John Avon

"Two more demons still hold you bound by the words on your skin, and those two are mightier than the first. The Veil you wear so brazenly at your hip takes more and more of your strength every time you use it. But without it, your demons will tear your heart from your chest."

"I haven't had a heart for a very long time." An unwanted memory of Jace flitted through her mind.

"And that's not all. The beastmage you cursed is still hunting you, killing more and more Planeswalkers as he searches for signs of your passage. Even your beloved Jace is inviting you to your death."

She opened her mouth to retort—then closed it again, furrowing her brow. "Oh, so shall we add mind mage to your list of accomplishments?" she said. "Get out of my head, Raven Man. There's no room for one more."

He ignored her. "Every side," he repeated.

"Yes, well, I'm quite accustomed to the presence of death."

"You're accustomed to murder," he snapped. "You're accustomed to corpses that are bound to your will. You're accustomed to using death as a weapon. But death is coming for you, Lili. Death you can't control. It is growing inside you, and there is nothing you can do."

"There is always—" She lifted her hands, and a blinding flare of purplish light streaked out from her—her hands, her eyes, the glowing whorls and writing engraved on her skin, and the little skull-shaped beads that adorned the Chain Veil—to engulf the Raven Man in a conflagration of magic.

"—something to do," she finished.

Art by Adame Minguez

Dead ravens and tattered feathers littered the cobblestones where the Raven Man had stood. A flurry of wings beat the air right behind her, and she whirled to see him emerge from another cloud of birds, his dagger bared. She grabbed his wrist and tugged at the vital energy that pulsed in his veins. The blade clattered to the ground as he dissolved again into a dozen croaking ravens, their wings battering her face and arms. Her hand gripped a single dead bird.

"Fine," she said. "I can make my own flock."

The bird in her hand squirmed and wriggled free, now a tiny zombie bound to her will. Around the courtyard, more zombie ravens lifted themselves off the stone, hopping and fluttering toward her. When another cluster of living birds began to form, her own little minions threw themselves into it, tearing with sharp claws and heavy beaks to rend the living flesh. She thought for a moment that she saw the Raven Man start to emerge from the frenzy, but he threw up his hands and was gone. A mere handful of ravens escaped the fray, fluttering high above the buildings and scattering to the winds.

Liliana felt a trickle run down her shoulder. Looking down at her skin, she saw blood welling up in all the places where the purplish lines of her demonic contract were fading from view. Just tiny pinpricks of crimson—but then, she had barely tapped the full power of the Chain Veil.

She sat down on the edge of the fountain to catch her breath and gather her thoughts. It was true—she was trapped. If she continued using the Chain Veil like this, it might drain the life out of her by the time she killed her two remaining demons. If she tried to face her demons without the power of the Chain Veil, they would tear her apart. Helping Jace fight Zendikar's giant monsters presented the same choice: death if she used the Veil, death if she didn't.

"I don't need help," she said aloud. Jace can go solve Gideon's puzzle. I'll solve my own.

She stood up, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Her stomach lurched a bit as she pulled open a door between worlds.

Just as she stepped through, she heard the mocking cry of a raven at her back.

Art by Aaron Miller

8

Offers to the Fire

by Doug Beyer

"Chandra, please chant with us," said the abbot Serenok, his heavy sleeve swaying as he gestured to her.

Chandra and the monastery's fire monks balanced on floes of solid rock in the lava field, miles from the Keral Keep monastery on Regatha. The air cooked and the landscape wavered with heat. A massive volcano loomed in the distance, belching smoke. Chandra wasn't sure if she was supposed to be here. This was the place where she came into her own as a pyromancer, but it also involved chanting exercises.

Chandra put her hand behind her head. "I am not a great chanter," she said.

"Then this will be the perfect challenge for you," said Serenok, and his slight smile wrinkled the skin around his eyes. As the abbot, the head teacher of Keral Keep, Serenok counseled the acolytes in the ways of fire magic. Like Mother Luti, the matriarch of the monastery, Serenok had pushed Chandra's talents in fire magic, prodding her to go further in her studies and her understanding of herself.

Art by Sam Burley

"You have talents that remind me of the one who inspired the founding of this Keep," Serenok said.

"I'm not her, Serenok," Chandra said.

"You can aspire to be," he answered. "One day."

He meant Jaya. Jaya Ballard—a famous pyromancer. But to Chandra she was a kind of myth, a presence that hung in the air of the Keep. Jaya's pyromantic sayings were on every monk's lips and carved into the halls, and her pair of heat-shield goggles rested on a pedestal inside the monastery. Some of Jaya's spells had become ritualized exercises that the fire acolytes practiced—like today, here, in the middle of a lava field. Chandra knew that the lessons had been useful. She could have done without the comparisons.

"We can all aspire to be more like Jaya," said Serenok to the others. "Let us begin the exercise."

He led the chant. The abbot's voice was clear, but his lungs sounded papery and thin. Chandra noticed his age in the effort of his movements—he had to fight the hunch of his back to lift his head and sing.

The other pyromancer initiates joined their voices together, and soon the air filled with sound. Teeth-clashing consonants punctuated low, drawn-out vowels. They moved in concert as well, their feet gliding over the surface of the rock floes, their arms flowing like the heat-distorted air. As they danced, tongues of fire rose from the lava, growing into a fiery circle around them.

The pyromantic dance was beautiful, and Chandra danced, too. She embraced herself, tipped her head back, and spun, whipping her arms out and spraying fire from her fingertips. As she moved, she looked up to watch the smoke from the lava field rise into the Regathan sky along with the chant of the monks. Chandra wondered if this was how Jaya would have felt. Did she bring this particular chant to Regatha? Mother Luti knew of Planeswalkers, and had told Chandra that Jaya was one. What words from far-off planes would she have sung to summon the fire? Chandra took in a breath and let out a sound that matched how the dance made her feel—a high, warbling song that rose and rose as she spun.

"Chandra," said Serenok. "The spell will fail if you don't participate."

Chandra stopped and looked around. The other monks had stopped dancing and were looking at her. The chant had subsided, and the circle of fire with it.

"I thought I was," said Chandra. Her hair sparked with flames, but she quickly extinguished them with her hand.

"You have to learn to channel that passion into the lessons," said Serenok. "Only together will the spell work and generate the strongest fire. You must dedicate yourself to it."

Art by Deruchenko Alexander

"I'm trying," said Chandra.

"Try harder," said Serenok, his voice ragged. "These are my final days. Show an old monk what he wants to see."

"Don't say that."

Serenok clapped his hands. "Let us start again. Chandra, remember what you've learned. The lessons are not meant to constrain you. They are meant to help you grow."

The abbot put his hands out at his sides and tipped his head back. Chandra saw a line of sweat roll down his cheek—was he casting a spell?

A cracking, crumbling sound from under the volcanic field. The landscape jolted, and Chandra and the monks stumbled on their slabs of rock.

"What is it?" asked one of the acolytes, whipping his head around.

"An earthquake?" asked another monk.

A mound of molten rock rose from the lava plain, cutting them off from the direction of the monastery. Something alive was rising out of the lava—something alive, and big.

"Quickly," said Serenok. "Let us chant again."

"Is this the best time to be practicing our singing?" Chandra asked.

"Raise the defenses, as I've taught you. Quickly!" Serenok sang out, and the monks joined him, resuming their dance. The ring of fire encircled them again and began to rise.

Something gigantic burst forth from the lava bed. A toothy, scaly head ringed with stony tentacles rose high, followed by a long pillar of a neck with crawling spikes along its edges. The thing was the size of a wurm, but was clearly adapted to swimming through volcanic rock.

Art by James Paick

"Hellion!" shouted one of the monks.

"Maintain the chant!" shouted Serenok.

The hellion roared into the sky, belching fire and sulfurous gas. It rotated its body to regard the monks, its tendrils wavering. Its mouth was big enough to engulf any of them in a single bite, but Chandra thought it looked like it would probably enjoy chewing.

The monks chanted and danced, and the wall of fire rose around them, blocking out the hellion.

As the flames rose, Chandra looked around to the fire monks and tried to imitate the sound and cadence. Let's go, Nalaar, she thought. This same chant is carved into the walls all over the Keep. You can do this. She looked at Serenok and tried to mimic his movements.

The wall of flame grew, but it was sputtering, and not reaching high enough. Chandra knew it was her fault—she was rushing the words, mixing up the sounds, stumbling on the dance. The hellion would be able to bend its head over and snap at any of the monks—

She saw the beast's head rear back over the rising wall of flames. Its mouth-tendrils flexed, and it roared.

Chandra gave up trying to chant. She turned to face the hellion, and her hair and hands erupted in a blaze. She whipped two missiles of fire at its belly, but its heat-resistant scales were barely singed.

The hellion attacked, its head slashing down through the flame wall, aiming directly at an acolyte. The acolyte dodged, leaping onto another floe of rock as the hellion crashed through the one that had supported him. The fire barrier's flames singed the hellion's scales, but again, the meager heat didn't even slow it down.

Chandra gritted her teeth and balanced herself on the balls of her feet. As the hellion dipped its head down, she sprung onto its side, grabbed hold of its body spines, and clambered onto its back.

The hellion immediately bucked and shrieked, and its tendrils lashed out to try to grab at Chandra. She grabbed two of the tendrils, planted her feet on its ridges, and steadied herself on its back.

"I've got him!" Chandra shouted.

The hellion swiveled and twisted its body around, and suddenly its back was its front. Now Chandra was dangling from its tendrils, her legs flailing.

"Aim for its head!" said an acolyte, conjuring a fire spell.

"Don't aim for its head!" yelled Chandra, who was dangling from the beast's head.

Chandra held on, swinging. She angled her body to get purchase with her feet and kicked, flinging herself up and over to the top of the hellion's head. The hellion snapped and bucked, but Chandra heated her hands white-hot, and her fingers pierced into its rugged hide. She clamped herself on.

Chandra wondered what she had gotten herself into—not an unfamiliar feeling. The monster's tendrils were thicker here at the head, and they flailed at her, some of them striking pieces of armor, but others lashing skin. She grimaced at her white-hot hands, half buried into the monster's armor, and knew she couldn't sustain such heat for long. She needed more heat, more than she could create alone.

"I have a bad idea," she shouted to the others. "I changed my mind. When I say so, aim for me!"

Chandra timed her move with the next twist of the hellion's body. She released her grip and half-ran, half-slid down its belly, fighting off its lashing tentacles with a sweeping arc of fire. Once she reached its belly, near where it emerged from the lava field, she grabbed on with both hands and turned back to look it in the eye. With a grunt of effort, she punched her white-hot hand into its armor.

The hellion lunged its head down at her as a reflex, and Chandra leaped.

As its toothy maw came down, Chandra leapt out of the way, and the hellion bit hard into the ridged plates of its own belly. For the moment, its jaws were stuck.

Chandra landed on one of the rock floes. She turned to face the monks, beckoning to them. "Now!" she yelled. "Fire! Right at me!"

The other monks stood rigid, looking to Serenok. This wasn't any part of their teachings.

The abbot looked at Chandra in the eyes for an aching second, deciding.

The hellion shrieked and jerked, its teeth stuck in its own rock-hard armor.

"Now!" pleaded Chandra. "Do it!"

Serenok looked to the acolytes, and nodded.

The fire monks shouted, thrust their hands out, and unleashed a dozen separate fire spells at Chandra.

Art by Aleksi Briclot

Chandra had only a moment as the comets and spheres of flame raced toward her. She timed her move, then twirled around on her feet, guiding the fire spells with her hands as she spun. In one motion, she wove the strands of fire together into a needle-sharp streak of blindingly hot fire. She curved it around her body, feeling its skin-crackling heat as it passed, and guided it right into the hellion's head.

The spike of fire pierced into the armored hide of the monster's forehead and drilled deep, hitting tender tissue.

With a whip of its body and a shriek, the hellion thrashed itself free, finally dislodging its clamping maw from its plates.

It lifted its head, flared its tendrils with a roar, and then dived back down into the lava plain.

Waves rolled through the lava field, and subsided. No one said anything for a moment, until they were sure it wasn't coming back immediately to devour them.

Chandra leaned her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. "Sorry I ruined the chant," she said. Her mane of flame slowly abated, turning into her usual hair. One lock of hair stuck out crazily.

"That was it," said Serenok with a soot-smudged smile. He coughed into his fist, but it didn't stifle his grin. "You've done what I've only see one other person ever do. You're ready. You're her."

"Chandra, get up."

Chandra was back in her bed at the monastery. She had a sinking feeling that it might, in fact, be that time people call morning.

To make matters significantly not-better, she could tell it was Mother Luti's voice at her door.

"Chandra," Luti repeated. "Up. It's midday."

"How can you tell?" Chandra murmured, without budging. "From the inside of my eyelids, it looks exactly like sleeping time."

"It's Serenok."

Chandra sat up finally. "Listen," she said, sighing the sleep out of her brain. "If he wants to talk about chanting exercises, tell him tomorrow might be better—"

"Chandra. Serenok is dead."

The abbot's memorial was short, held on the rocky clearing just outside the steps of Keral Keep. They were the same broad, stone steps Chandra had ascended when she first became a Planeswalker. Many of the fire monks gathered there were among those who welcomed her here as a perplexed young pyromancer.

Art by Franz Vohwinkel

"We were all Serenok's acolytes," Mother Luti was saying. "All of us who knew him learned lessons from his life of flame and passion, and from his dedication as abbot of this Keep."

Chandra was crying—half in bewilderment, half in a kind of anticipatory grief. She could tell she wasn't feeling the brunt of the pain yet. She could feel it coming, like a presence moving toward her in the dark.

"Serenok's body gave out as he slept last night," Luti continued. "And in his passing—because he was a teacher to the end—he bestowed on us a final lesson. He showed us that in the time we have, we must choose a path and devote ourselves to it. We must find the fire within us, and let it grow, and offer our lives to it. And we must see that fire stoked in the hearts of others." She clasped her hands together. "Goodbye, Serenok."

The monks lowered their heads. Their hooded robes fell down over their faces.

When the ceremony concluded, Chandra did not return to the monastery with the others. She walked away from the Keep, deeper into the mountains. She heard Luti calling after her, but she did not turn back.

A relentless Regathan day became a roasting Regathan night, with smokestorms swirling in the skies like the snarl of emotions inside Chandra. It was dark enough now that she couldn't see the outline of the great volcano against the sky. But she could make out the thin lines of lava meandering down its side. At this distance, they didn't look like they were flowing at all—she could imagine the glowing threads trickling down, or if she changed her perspective, she could see them climbing their way up the slope and into its heart. Chandra settled down under an overhang of rock, below a nest of cindermoths. She watched a stream of the moths spiraling up into the night with tiny wings of flame.

She had always chafed at Serenok's expectations of her. But would it have killed her to learn the chants, and practice the exercises along with the others? Would it have been so bad to live up to what he saw in her? She cried and thought not of Serenok's lessons, but of his kindness, his encouragement. She felt a hollow place inside her, a deep well edged in pain. She had expected a wave of emotion at the teacher's death, something more tangible that she could lean against, something she could defy. There was no defying this hollowness. It was not something she could fight. She could only live in the empty space of it.

After a time, she wanted her bed more than solitude. She made her way back to the monastery through high-walled mountain passes, blasting fire spells into the darkness ahead of her. Cindermoths swirled in her wake.

It was morning when her footsteps finally brought her back to the monastery.

Mother Luti sat on Keral Keep's stone steps, a folded garment on her lap. It was Serenok's robe, the abbot's mantle, threaded with igneous filaments.

"Why would you greet me with this?" asked Chandra. Her muscles were weary and her heart was a hurricane, a storm swirling around an empty space. She had never seen the robe when it was not draped over Serenok's shoulders. Her eyes flashed. "Are you intentionally trying to hurt me?"

"Chandra, listen," Luti began.

"No, I understand," Chandra said, stepping in close to Luti's face. "Serenok is dead, but the lessons must go on! We all need to gather in the big hall before his robe has even gone cold, right? Because we need to fill that hole. That's what you're here to tell me, isn't it? That it's been hours, and we've moved on, and we need to choose a new abbot?"

"No, Chandra," said Luti, looking down at Serenok's mantle. "I'm here to tell you we've already chosen one."

"I can't," said Chandra, for what felt like the hundredth time. "I am no monk. I am certainly no head abbot."

She sat at a long granite table in the heart of the monastery, surrounded by elder monks with robes in colors of flame. Serenok's mantle lay folded on the table before her.

"As Serenok always said, you are one of the most talented pyromancers ever to grace Keral Keep," said Luti, her hands clasped together, her face kind. "He saw you as resourceful, creative, forthright. Your words and your magic always come from the heart, just like—"

Chandra winced.

"—just like Jaya. We could all learn from your example."

That was kind to say, but they weren't actually listening to her. She could feel a haze rising over her vision. "I could never take Serenok's place! I'm no teacher. I'm barely even a student. I'm sorry, but I have to refuse."

Some of the monks looked at each other.

Art by Joseph Meehan

"Chandra, it is a great honor to be asked to be abbot," said another monk, his long beard nearly touching the stone table. "If the mantle is offered, it is your responsibility. You must accept."

"Hey," Chandra said, slammed her fists on the table suddenly, on either side of Serenok's folded robe. Her hair momentarily crackled with flames. "Let me advise you now. Talking about what I must do is not a good way to persuade me."

Mother Luti's mouth was a thin line. "Serenok knew he was at the end of his life, Chandra. He was testing you. He saw something in you."

"Serenok believed I was someone I'm not," said Chandra. "Please believe me. You do not want me heading this place. I don't know the chants. I foul up the footwork. I'm not the best at anything you do here."

"Then, as Serenok was fond of saying, this will be the perfect challenge for you," said Luti.

The words jabbed her in the chest. She sat back, and her shoulders dropped. She squeezed her fists into her eye sockets—whether to stifle tears or to blot out what she saw around her, she did not know.

She opened her eyes and looked around at the faces of the fire monks around her. This place, these people who had taught her so much, wanted her to teach them. If she stayed, she could show them how much it meant to her, when they took her in that day all those years ago—when she came to them as a scared orphan from another world.

"Do you think I actually could?" Chandra asked.

The monks all nodded.

Mother Luti stood, spreading out her hands. "Chandra Nalaar, will you take up Serenok's mantle, and be our Jaya? Will you guide us in the principles of Keralian pyromancy? Will you teach us the ways of fire?"

Chandra stood, surrounded by her peers. Something about this hall felt safe, like the disheveled blankets of her bed. Maybe she could commit to this path. Jaya only passed through Regatha briefly—maybe she could be the Jaya who didn't just pass through, but stayed. Maybe becoming a fire-blasting abbot could be fun—and a way to start to fill that painful pit in her heart.

As she stood before the table, trying to find words, two men—dressed in distinctly non-Regathan garb—rushed into the chamber.

One of them was broad-chested and chin-bearded, in sturdy armor, and the other was slighter, smooth-cheeked, in a rune-covered blue hooded cloak.

Art by Jaime Jones

All heads turned to the two men. They looked right at Chandra, and she recognized them both.

Chandra sputtered. "What is—what is this?"

"It's good to see you, Chandra," said Gideon Jura. "We need your help."

"It's about Zendikar," came Jace Beleren's voice in her head.

Chandra brought the other two Planeswalkers outside, down the steps of the Keep toward the slopes of Mount Keralia. Two Planeswalkers from separate moments in her past—reminders of other planes, other times in her life—showing up here, just as she felt connected to the people of Keral Keep. She tried to find room in her brain for the entirety of the juxtaposition.

"So," she said. "Gideon. Coming by to enforce some laws? Who are you after now?"

"The Eldrazi," said Gideon.

"And you," Jace added. "We've got a mission. We could use a pyromancer."

"Well, your timing is appallingly bad."

"I'm sorry if this is a difficult time," said Gideon. "And if you need to be here, you need to be here. But we need you, Chandra. Zendikar needs you."

Hot air swirled in her chest. "Zendikar said that? Is that a direct quote?" Chandra paced back and forth, not sure what to do with the animated temper she suddenly felt. "How sweet of you both to think of me. How in hell do you two even. . . ?"

Gideon tipped his head at Jace. "Met recently, on Ravnica."

"So you're bouncing around from world to world, looking for people to uproot? Is that it?"

Gideon opened his mouth and closed it. In that silent moment, Chandra seemed to hear whispers of a world of tortures he had endured.

Art by David Rapoza

Chandra felt a streak of empathy for him fighting with her stubbornness. "Gideon, you know my history here. You of all people should know that I've made sacrifices for this world."

The pyre of the distant volcano glinted in Gideon's armor. "It's not the only world that needs a sacrifice."

Chandra rubbed her temples under her goggles. The only thought that came to her mind was: Jaya would go with them. Jaya wouldn't have hesitated to rocket off to a new adventure, to dive into some crisis where she could unleash her fire magic and blast everything in sight. The temptation made Chandra's heart quicken, despite herself. And when she thought of people suffering, that she could help—

"Remember," Jace added. "You have a hand in Zendikar's current state. We have a debt to pay, you and I. Like it or not, we have a responsibility."

Chandra's eyes literally blazed. She spoke slowly, with as much calm as she could muster through gritted teeth. "Can everyone. Please. Stop talking to me. About responsibility."

Gideon clenched his hands together. "Chandra," he said, and his hands touched his chest. For him, that small gesture was like open pleading, an expression of surprising need.

Jaya would go with them. Jaya would go with them.

"Go," she said.

Gideon looked at Jace, and back to her. He tried to step toward her, to reach out and touch her arm. But Chandra glared at him and a ring of fire grew up around her, encircling her with a personal wall of flame.

Art by Eric Deschamps

"This is where I'm needed most," said Chandra. She folded her arms. "I belong here. I've made a promise." And in her heart, it was true.

"Gideon," said Jace. "I think we're done here."

Gideon looked in Chandra's eyes for a long time. Then he nodded and said, "If you change your mind, find us at Sea Gate." He barely glanced at Jace's boots. "Let's go."

When they planeswalked away, the air smudged, obscuring her view for a moment. When they had disappeared, she looked beyond at the stone steps leading up into Keral Keep—and she saw Mother Luti standing there, looking on from the doorway, with Serenok's mantle in her hands.

Chandra nodded to Mother Luti, and walked up the steps toward her.

9

For Zendikar

by Kimberly J. Kreines

It has been many years since the world of Zendikar first reached out to Nissa Revane, sending her visions, entreating her to help remove the dark monster that was trapped inside its mountains. Though Nissa bravely faced the Eldrazi monstrosity then, she was not able to destroy it . . . nor its brothers. Since that first encounter, Nissa has devoted her life to fighting the swarms of Eldrazi that plague her world. She has met with many missteps and failures, but it seems that Zendikar still has faith in her; the world sends its power to her when she calls, and it manifests as a giant, tree-like elemental to aid her in battle. So Nissa continues to fight, all the while hoping that Zendikar was right to choose her.

Art by Wesley Burt

Nissa stood alongside Zendikar's towering elemental on a ridge overlooking the Vastwood Forest. From their height it was almost possible—if she relaxed her focus and squinted just a bit—to perceive only the greens and browns, the natural colors of the forest.

Art by Chris Rahn

But she knew the chalky parts were there; they ran in rivulets through the land like dried out riverbeds. Nissa wished that's all they were. A drought, even the worst drought, would be far preferable to what the world was facing now.

The crumpled, white trails of corruption that the Eldrazi of Ulamog's brood left in their wake were death. They were emptiness. They were nothing. The Eldrazi drained the life and essence from all the living things they encountered. Not a single blade of grass grew where they had traveled; even the persistent lion flies gave the corrupted areas a wide berth. At first, many of the Zendikari believed that the dead land would recover—that given time, life would return. But as the years passed, the swaths of Eldrazi corruption only spread. It seemed the damage that the Eldrazi caused was permanent. The life Zendikar lost was lost for good.

It was getting to the point where the world didn't have that much more to give.

"They want to take it all," Nissa said. "Sometimes I don't know if we can stop them."

She was talking mostly to herself, but also to the elemental at her side. She had taken to talking to it over the course of the last few days even though, from what she could tell, it did not understand what she was saying.

The only sign of communication Nissa got from the elemental was a gesture that it repeated a few times each day, reaching out with one branch-like hand to grasp something Nissa couldn't see or understand.

She had tried to interpret its meaning, but each time she guessed she seemed to be wrong. That didn't deter Nissa from talking to it though. Since they had left the company of Hamadi and the other elves, it had only been the two of them making their way across what remained of the Vastwood Forest, and Nissa found it comforting to use her voice for something other than battle cries.

"That was some good work back there." Nissa nodded over her shoulder indicating the section of the forest they had just cleared. Two Eldrazi corpses lay behind them, and the elemental at Nissa's side was responsible for ripping four of the tentacles off the largest one.

Art by Todd Lockwood

Nissa wanted to show her gratitude, but she was still learning how this was supposed to work. The first time she had summoned the towering elemental, she was just as shocked as those around her. The power of it, the might, the sheer size, it was overwhelming. Sure, she was used to battling alongside elementals, used to channeling the power of the land through them, but she was not used to this.

This elemental wasn't like the others. And not just because it was large enough to lift an entire mid-sized Eldrazi with just one of its branch-like hands—though that was definitely a positive quality. This elemental did not return to the land after the battle.

It stuck around, it followed Nissa, it watched her. And though it might not understand, it seemed to listen to her.

It had a presence, a personality. Perhaps even more.

Which is why it felt strange that it did not have a name.

"I would like to know what to call you," Nissa said, looking up through the elemental's branches to the lightening sky of a new dawn. "For times like this, when we talk, I would like to call you something. Do you have a name?"

The elemental made no move to respond, not that Nissa was expecting it to. Still . . . "If I gave you a name would that be okay?"

The elemental did not seem to resist the notion.

"Then how about Ashaya?" Nissa said. "Ashaya, the Awoken World." She had gotten the idea for the name from Hamadi. The first time Nissa had summoned the elemental, Hamadi had called Nissa "Shaya," which he said meant "Worldwaker." If she was the Worldwaker, then it only made sense that the elemental was the awoken world.

Art by Kekai Kotaki

The elemental's branches twisted and stretched. Nissa thought it looked as though it was trying on the name, testing it out. When its roots settled it seemed content.

"Okay then, Ashaya it is," Nissa said. The name felt right, it felt good. As the first rays of the sun's light stretched up over the horizon, she sighed. "So, Ashaya, what do we do now?"

It was a question that Nissa had been asking herself a lot lately.

What was one elf supposed to do with all this power?

One elf on this vast world . . . in an even greater Multiverse.

What was one elf supposed to do?

But then wasn't that exactly what Hamadi had been trying to tell her? She was supposed to save the world. She was supposed to use the power, use the elemental, Ashaya, and destroy the Eldrazi. Zendikar had chosen her.

But Hamadi didn't know the whole story. Zendikar had chosen Nissa once before. Back when she was very young, it had sent her visions and called for her help.

And Nissa had tried to help it.

But she had failed.

Art by Izzy

She had failed.

So why had the world chosen her again?

"Truly, I'm asking you." Nissa looked to the place on Ashaya's wooden front plate where the elemental's eyes might have been, if it had eyes. "What does Zendikar expect me to do? What do you expect me to do?"

The elemental gave no sign of having heard her.

"You are part of Zendikar, aren't you?" Nissa wanted to shake its branches, shake an answer out of its impassive wooden features. "Why are you here—with me? Of all the elves . . . all the people, the kor, the merfolk on Zendikar—you could have even picked a goblin. But me?" Nissa shook her head. "I failed. Last time you chose me, I failed. What makes you think this time will be any different? What makes you think that I'll somehow be better, stronger, more brave? This is all that I am. Right here." Nissa stretched her arms, exposing her full stature to the elemental. "This is it. And this is all I'll ever be."

Ashaya, the Awoken World, shifted; it lifted one massive hand, holding it open with its palm facing Nissa.

It was performing the same gesture, as it had countless times before. Nissa sighed "What? What does that mean?"

The elemental slowly formed a fist with its thick, branch-like fingers.

Nissa glowered. "I don't understand. I don't know what you're trying to tell me."

Ashaya pulled the fist in toward its chest, extended it again, and then, one by one, it unfurled its fingers, opening its hand palm-up.

Nissa knew that's where the gesture would end. She had seen it all before.

She had tried placing her hand in the elemental's hand. She had tried stretching out her own arm, palm up. She had guessed that it meant she was supposed to look up, to open herself, to reach out for Zendikar. And she had done all of these things. To no avail.

Ashaya made the gesture again.

"You're as stubborn as I am," Nissa said.

Ashaya tried a third time. And then a fourth.

"Enough." Nissa stopped the elemental halfway through, taking hold of its large thumb in both of her hands. With the touch, the tension went out of her own shoulders. She breathed in the smell Ashaya carried, the scent of the forest—dirt, sap, wood, and leaves. It was wonderful. It was powerful. "I'm sorry. I wish I could understand you." Her heart ached with the honesty of her longing.

Ashaya moved its other hand on top of Nissa's, clasping Nissa's small elvish hand between its two expansive branch-like ones. This was something new, something the elemental had never done before.

Nissa's heart quickened and her fingers tingled, anticipating whatever was to come.

The air between them became thick, and Nissa felt a powerful force radiating from Ashaya—and then from the valley below came a distant but desperate scream.

Both Nissa and Ashaya started. Together they turned in the direction of the cry, looking over the edge of the ridge.

A second cry pierced the dawning day, this one strangled.

"There!" Nissa pointed. Not too far off, the taut, unnaturally purple flesh of an Eldrazi shone in the early morning light.

From what Nissa could see, it looked as though the Eldrazi had just invaded a small encampment. There were at least two fires smoldering nearby, and what looked like a dozen or so tents interspersed between the trees.

Three figures had the Eldrazi surrounded; one looked like it was a kor, the other two might have been elves. The Eldrazi seemed to have trapped a fourth figure—maybe a human—under one of its bony elbows. The human cried out again.

Art by Izzy

As Nissa and Ashaya watched, the trees near the small encampment trembled. Then with three quick, echoing snaps, three trees crashed to the ground as two more Eldrazi monstrosities—one tentacled and one with too many hands—pushed their way into the encampment. Their wake of chalky corruption consumed the fallen trunks.

Three more trees gone from Zendikar forever.

The tentacled Eldrazi reached for the kor who was busy fighting back the original, purple monstrosity.

"Behind you!" Nissa called, but the wind carried her voice away from the valley.

The thickest of the Eldrazi's tentacles slashed at the back of the kor's knees, sending her to the ground and out of Nissa's line of sight. "No!"

Ashaya released Nissa's hand and Nissa raced down the back of the ridge. "This way." She tugged on the elemental, directing it to follow.

The brush was thick and there was no clear path to take. Though Nissa was proficient at moving through thick forest, her concern for the kor drove her forward faster than she should have gone. She stumbled twice on her way down, berating herself each time for losing precious seconds.

Once on level ground, Nissa oriented herself by the sun and pressed through the trees, urging Ashaya along with her. Branches slapped her face and brambles bit at her ankles, but she let each scratch remind her of the forest's strength, the strength she would wield against the Eldrazi.

Art by Jonas De Roe

By the time she and Ashaya reached the small encampment, the tents, supplies, and fallen bodies were splattered with blood and sticky with Eldrazi gore—or had been turned to hollow, chalky husks. In the center of it all the Eldrazi with taut, purple flesh was feeding on the corpse of an elf.

Nissa looked away for just long enough to swallow the bile that rose in the back of her throat, then she turned back and charged, willing Ashaya along with her.

She reached for the land under the purple Eldrazi, pulling a large swath of the ground—along with the plants, fallen branches, and other forest detritus upon it—up and away with a great yank. As the land tilted beneath it, the Eldrazi slid to the side, skidding down the small incline that Nissa had made . . . and straight into Ashaya's waiting arms.

Nissa pushed her power into the elemental as it squeezed the Eldrazi's neck, crushing whatever internal structure held the monstrosity up, until it hung limp and lifeless. At Nissa's command, Ashaya released the incapacitated Eldrazi. With a dull thud, the horror fell to the forest floor, coming to rest alongside the body of the elf.

With one Eldrazi down, Nissa pivoted, alert for the other two . . . but too late.

A thick, red tentacle closed around Ashaya's leg. The tentacled Eldrazi, now with only three tentacles—the Zendikari at the camp must have managed to sever three others—pulled itself toward the elemental.

Art by Izzy

Rage churned in Nissa's chest. "Get away from Ashaya."

She summoned the strong, twisting roots of a nearby tree, directing them to wind around one of the Eldrazi's back tentacles. It was a tug-of-war: Nissa willed Ashaya to trudge in one direction as the roots of the tree pulled with the force of the land in the other. The Eldrazi would soon be broken, split straight through its blubbery, red flesh.

"Help!" A voice cleaved Nissa's concentration.

It had come from above. A kor—the one Nissa had seen from the ridge—was high in the branches of a tall tree. The third Eldrazi was grasping for her with eight bifurcated appendages that ended in sixteen eight-fingered hands.

The kor slashed at the nearest appendage with her hook, taking off three of the fingers at their fourth joint, but she winced in pain as she did so and collapsed on the nearest branch. She had been injured, most likely in the struggle Nissa had witnessed before. She needed help.

Art by Wayne Reynolds

Nissa reached out to the branches of the tree, commanding a dozen of them at a time, directing them to spool around the kor. But the barrier deterred the Eldrazi for only a moment. Each of the horror's sixteen appendages grabbed hold of one of the branches and yanked. Even the thickest of the branches snapped like a twig.

Nissa looked to Ashaya for aid, but her lack of attention on the elemental meant that the tentacled Eldrazi had had the chance to gain ground. It had overcome the tug-of-war and secured its grip around Ashaya's leg with another of its tentacles. It was pulling the elemental toward its chittering mouth.

"Help!" The kor called again. "Please!"

Nissa's heart raced. She looked from Ashaya to the kor. She couldn't be in two places at once. The fact was simple: she needed Ashaya's strength to rescue the kor. "Just hold on!"

She thrust all of her power into Ashaya, willing the elemental to pivot on its trapped leg and stomp down on the Eldrazi's tentacles with its other massive foot—once, twice, and again.

Art by Eric Deschamps

The impacts sent Eldrazi gore flying, and the result was that the Eldrazi had only one tentacle left. The injury seemed to be enough to throw it off balance. It slithered backward, retreating into the tree line, writhing and gnashing.

Nissa didn't pause, she pulled Ashaya along with her—severed tentacles and all—to face the third, too-many-handed Eldrazi.

But it was gone.

So was the kor.

Nissa desperately searched the trees, pushing branches out of her line of sight. Where had the horror gone? Where had it taken the kor?

The sound of rustling gave it away. Nissa parted the trembling trees, exposing the Eldrazi's path. It was already several hundred yards away, skittering agilely along on fourteen appendages; it had flipped itself over to make seven of its arms into legs, and its eighth appendage was bent at an unnatural angle to hold the kor up to its feeding cavity.

White, chalky corruption was winding its way up the kor's leg.

"No!" Nissa sprinted through the trough the Eldrazi had carved between the trees, but there was no stopping it; the Eldrazi consumed the kor's life, turning her still, pale body into dust.

The dust clouded Nissa's vision and stung her eyes; she slowed, blinking back tears. There was no more she could do for the kor.

With a long exhalation, as much to clear her lungs of the memory as her mind, she picked her way back to the encampment, back to Ashaya.

She crossed a trail of corruption on her way, most likely left behind by the maimed Eldrazi with one tentacle. Nissa's heart dropped. If that Eldrazi had left the camp that meant there was nothing left for it to feed on, nothing left at all.

Soon she saw that she was right; the small clearing had been lost to Eldrazi corruption. Nissa counted five corpses, but there was no knowing how many more had already disintegrated.

Art by Christine Choi

Ashaya stood in the center of the clearing, the only color—green and brown—against the unnatural expanse of white. The elemental appeared to be in mourning. They had lost this battle. Many had lost their lives. And the land had lost much, too. For that, Nissa was gravely sorry. But she had warned Ashaya. She had told it that she was not the right choice for Zendikar. Now it must finally see she was right.

"It's not your fault." The thin, dry voice startled Nissa. For the space of a heartbeat she thought it belonged to the elemental, but then she found the source: a vampire limping toward her from a section of thick trees. He was carrying the body of an unconscious human. "You did all you could." A few paces away from Nissa, he knelt and gently laid the human on the chalky ground.

The sight of a vampire caring so tenderly for another living being was bewildering. Nissa knitted her brow, looking from the vampire to the woman.

"Don't worry, she's not in pain," the vampire murmured. "I have made sure of that. She will pass shortly and then she can be buried," he surveyed the other chalky corpses, "with the rest." He stood, taking a step toward Nissa.

Art by Igor Kieryluk

Instinctively, she took a step back.

The vampire laughed, a low, sober laugh. "That is fair considering your history with vampires, Nissa."

Nissa drew a sharp breath. "How do you know my name? What are you—where . . . ?" She stumbled over her words, her mind reeling.

"So many questions. And I will answer them all," the vampire purred. "But first, I have a question for you. If you don't mind. Why are you still here? Why are you still on Zendikar?"

Nissa blinked, her confusion mounting.

"I would have thought you would have left long ago," the vampire said, "along with the others like you. When I took it upon myself to execute this mission, I assumed I would have to find one on the verge of sparking, one whom I could beseech before he or she had the power to walk away from this dying world. But finding a Planeswalker before the first planeswalk is even more impossible a task than it might sound."

"You know?" Nissa took another step back. The hairs on her arms stood on end. "Are you—?"

"Me? No. But I'm flattered you think that my kind has enough of a soul to nurture a spark."

"I don't think . . ."

The vampire held up his hands. "Uh, uh, no need to injure the goodwill you have just built between us. It is a solid foundation for the trust I am about to place in you."

Trust? A vampire? This creature was just as likely to be a servant of Ulamog as he was to be a slayer of elves. Nissa did not trust vampires. She grounded her feet, centered herself, and drew on the power of the land to clear her mind. "There is no goodwill between us. Give me one good reason not to end you where you stand."

"I have four very good reasons. I will give them to you in a moment. They are gifts. From Anowon."

Nissa shivered; she hadn't heard the old vampire's name in a very long time. She searched the shadows. Had he found her again? Was this an ambush?

Art by Dan Scott

"Don't panic, little elf. There is no cause for concern. Anowon is not here."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know where he is. He has been gone for many years. But before he disappeared he spoke of you frequently; told me of your powers, your abilities, your spark. You are the first I thought of when I began this quest, however I never expected to find you still here. I am so very glad that I did." He pulled out a small piece of folded gray silk and offered it to her.

"What is it?" Nissa didn't touch it.

With a second display of tenderness, the vampire peeled back the topmost layer, revealing four small seeds that rolled together into the center. He pointed to each in turn. "Kolya, red mangrove, jaddi, bloodbriar."

"Bloodbriar." Nissa's heart ached at the thought of the beloved plant from her home continent, but her instincts told her that he must be lying. "But Bala Ged was destroyed."

"All but this seed." The vampire carefully folded the silk back over, tucking it into itself. "You must understand what it is I am about to ask you to do, Planeswalker Nissa, you must understand how I hope that you will save Zendikar."

Nissa did. He was asking her to take the seeds . . . to another plane.

"I know it may seem an odd thing for a vampire to ask. But in these end times we will all find ourselves doing odd things. You see, I saw much of myself in the bloodbriars of Bala Ged—deadly, nettled, twisted." He smiled. "So if they persist out there somewhere," he waved dismissively up toward the sky, "then in some way so too will I. So too will all the rest of us." He offered her the silk one more time. "Please, take them."

Nissa narrowed her eyes, studying the vampire. She was having trouble understanding this creature; he was not like the other vampires she had known. "You are serious?"

"Nothing could be more serious than the end of a world."

"And you believe this is the end?"

"I know it is." The vampire leaned in closer and whispered, "And so do you, Nissa."

The accusation stung. The vampire was wrong. Nissa didn't think this was the end. Zendikar was still fighting. There was still a chance. "You're wrong," she said. "These are troubled times, yes. But there are many of us who are willing to stand up and go to battle. And the land itself fights back too. You've experienced the Roil."

Art by Sam Burley

"All valiant efforts, I am sure. Much like your effort today." The vampire swept his arm around the corrupted encampment; the woman he had carried back had since joined the ranks of the dead. "The problem is that effort is not enough. Especially when you are outnumbered as you are."

"We can change the numbers. There are three less spawn in this forest than there were this morning." Nissa countered.

"And how many more were sired across the plane today to take their place?"

Nissa started to speak, but realized she had nothing to say.

The vampire steepled his fingers. "It is not your fault. These are impossible odds. There are hundreds of thousands of Eldrazi and they will keep coming. It doesn't matter how many you kill. Not as long as the titans are still here. You are a smart elf, you know I am right. You have known for a long time."

Nissa bristled.

"I don't mean to offend. I am merely stating the facts. Even you are not powerful enough to slay a titan."

It was the truth. Nissa flushed. She had tried to tell Zendikar that she was not enough. If only it had listened.

"You are just postponing the inevitable. But you are running out of time to leave Zendikar."

"I won't—" The vampire cut Nissa off.

"You will. Which is why I am glad our paths crossed when they did." He pressed the seeds into her hand. "You are a powerful Planeswalker, and you care deeply for Zendikar. You were made for this task. Save our world, Nissa Revane."

She could. For the first time, Nissa felt that she could do what was being asked of her.

She took the seeds.

Immediately, her cheeks flooded with hot, guilty blood. She remembered the elemental standing behind her. She had still not adjusted to having an elemental that didn't return to the land when she ceased directing it. Ashaya had been there the whole time; it had watched her take the seeds.

Nissa turned, slowly, to face the Awoken World. The elemental stood tall above her, stoic in the face of her betrayal. The shame spread through Nissa's gut. "Wait." She looked back to the vampire . . . but he was gone. So too were the bodies of the fallen.

She made no move to search for him or pursue him. She could have, but she did not.

Instead, she stood there in the empty, corrupted camp in the shadow of the elemental, the silk turning sweaty in her palm. She could feel the lives of the seeds within, the trees they might someday become—each of them a small part of Zendikar. So why should she feel guilty for wanting to save them?

"Why shouldn't I at least try?" She looked to Ashaya. "I've been telling you all this time that I can't do what you want me to do." She paused, but of course Ashaya had no response. "But this, this is something I can do. At least this way you'll know," she tucked the silk into her pocket, "you'll know that Zendikar goes on. That will have to be enough."

Ashaya reached out, holding its open palm toward Nissa. Then the elemental formed a fist and pulled it in toward its chest before extending its hand again and slowly unfurling each finger.

"I still don't understand," Nissa whispered. "Maybe someone else will."

Nissa's words didn't stop Ashaya; the elemental preformed the gesture a second time.

As it began a third repetition, Nissa pushed on it, willing it to return back to the land, back to Zendikar. It was time.

But the elemental did not heed Nissa's direction. Its roots did not twist into the ground, its branches did not buckle.

Art by Raymond Swanland

Nissa pushed harder. "Go."

Ashaya inched closer to Nissa and stretched out its hand, performing the gesture yet again.

"Enough." Nissa gathered her strength and directed it at the elemental, forcing it away.

But it merely stood there, reaching and grasping, and opening its palm to the sky.

"Why do you keep doing that? I don't understand," Nissa said. "I don't understand what that means." She mimicked Ashaya's movement. "What is this?"

As Ashaya made a fist and pulled it into its chest, so too did Nissa. "Yes I see this, but . . . ." Nissa's breath hitched. She had just unfurled her first finger, and streaming out from it was a glowing green line, one that dove down into the land on the far side of the corruption and then emerged again further on, winding around trees and twisting through the leaves of plants. It shimmered with power.

Not daring to breathe, Nissa unfurled her second finger. Another line appeared. This one extending in a slightly different direction then shooting upward and weaving through the tallest branches of the forest.

Three more fingers, three more powerful connections. The world opened up before Nissa, glowing green and radiating power. These were the leylines; Nissa had heard of their power, the power of the land, of Khalni Heart, the power that flowed through the whole world.

Art by Jason Chan

A final leyline streamed out from her skyward-facing palm. This was the thickest of the lines, with the girth of a sturdy root. It stretched from Nissa's palm out to Ashaya, winding in and out of the roots and branches that formed the elemental's chest, arms, and legs. This was the line that connected Nissa to all that Ashaya was, this was the line that connected her to Zendikar's soul.

One.

It was not a word—not spoken aloud—rather it was a feeling that came to Nissa from Ashaya.

One.

The glowing, green power spread then from Nissa's palm up her arm and into her chest, and she understood. This power, these connections, they had been here all this time, they were what Ashaya had been trying to show Nissa. Now Nissa knew how to look.

Nissa moved her fingers one by one, feeling out the network. It was as though she had hundreds of new appendages, fingers that were trees, brambles for fists, the land itself for her arms and legs. The force of Zendikar surged through her . . . and pulsed from within her.

One.

She had been wrong. Hamadi had been wrong. Zendikar had not asked her to do this alone. It had not chosen her; there had been no choice to make. She was part of the world, connected to it like every other living thing. A tree does not choose a branch, the branch is merely part of the tree; it is one with the tree. When the tree grows, when the tree bends, or when the tree falls . . . so too does the branch. And when the branch rustles, when it sprouts leaves or bears fruit, so too does the tree. Nissa could not be chosen by Zendikar and she could not choose Zendikar, for she was one with Zendikar.

As long as Zendikar was in danger, so too was Nissa. And as long as the world was fighting back, so too would Nissa. Without question. Without hesitation.

For Zendikar. The sentiment radiated out from Ashaya.

"For Zendikar." Nissa's voice cracked.

For Zendikar! Ashaya's conviction filled Nissa and the glowing leylines that ran through her bubbled up with power.

"For Zendikar!" she cried

The whole world lit up, reflecting Nissa's intensity as she charged into the forest.

Art by Jim Nelson

She ran alongside the trail of corruption that had been made by the tentacled Eldrazi as it left the encampment; she had a target for her passion.

After just a few steps, it was clear that the forest was an utterly new place . . . and it was incredible.

Though she had run through the trees countless times before, she had never experienced anything like this. This, Nissa thought, is what it's like to be truly bonded to the land.

The world reacted to her presence. Each time one of her feet landed, it was on a clear patch of ground. Holes that might turn her ankle closed. Roots that might trip her instead cradled her foot and then launched her forward, propelling her to the next bramble that would spring her toward a branch, which would catch her and swing her to a gentle landing on a bed of moss. This was what it was like to be one with Zendikar.

Ashaya loped along at Nissa's side, her presence a given—Nissa did not need to exert any energy to will the elemental to move, nor to direct her on a path, for Ashaya knew. She knew where Nissa would go, she knew what Nissa needed, she knew what Nissa felt.

Ashaya knew Nissa's remorse.

And she knew Nissa's determination to make the world safe so that one day she could plant the seeds she now carried in Zendikar's own soil.

The vampire had been right to give Nissa the seeds. He had also been right that Nissa could save Zendikar. But he had been wrong that she would have to leave. He had been wrong to think that she could not destroy the titan. With the force of the world behind her, with the power of Zendikar coursing through her, there was nothing that she could not do.

She looked to Ashaya. The two felt the same. Bold. Powerful. Ready. Together they were enough.

A rock face parted to let Nissa through, revealing the tentacled Eldrazi. The monstrosity, undeterred by the fact that it only had one remaining tentacle, was skittering across a bed of flowers, leaving corruption in its wake.

No more.

Nissa rushed forward. Pieces of the rock face—the land along with the brambles and moss that grew on it—came along with her, tracing the glowing leylines that flowed through her arms, aligning themselves with her movements, becoming extensions of her own form.

Art by Rob Alexander

One.

When her feet hit the corruption behind the Eldrazi, Nissa wound up to strike. The land formed a spear around her hand, glowing from within. Beside her, Ashaya mirrored her movements. Their blows were focused, sure . . . and deadly. The spear of land sliced through the Eldrazi just as Ashaya's fist smashed its bony plate.

The horror let out a final deflating chitter as it collapsed.

It would never harm another blade of Zendikar's grass.

Nissa stood above its fallen form, her breath coming in great gasps. Not because she was tired—because she was invigorated, because she wanted more. It was time to stand up. It was time to fight. It was time to save the world.

Ashaya understood what Nissa felt; Nissa could feel the elemental, too. She lowered her massive hand, resting it on the ground just in front of Nissa's feet, open, inviting.

As Nissa stepped onto the elemental's branch-like finger, a gust of glowing green power swirled up around her, filling her to overflowing. "For Zendikar!" she cried.

Ashaya lifted Nissa and placed the elf in the saddle formed by the two thick wooden horns on the top of her head. The glowing leylines responded, weaving from Ashaya through Nissa and back. The lines secured Nissa as Ashaya took off, surging through the forest, one giant stride after another.

They were on the hunt . . . and their prey was an Eldrazi titan.

Nissa spread her arms wide, sending a call down the lines that ran out from her fingers.

Art by Chris Rahn

In answer, an army of baloth-sized elementals took shape. They fell in alongside Nissa and Ashaya, joining the charge, joining the fight to save their world.

10

Dreams of the Damned

by Nik Davidson

The demon Ob Nixilis is shrouded in mystery. We do not know his origins—where he comes from, or even whether he was always a demon. We do know this: He was once a Planeswalker, until he was stripped of his spark and trapped on the wild-mana plane of Zendikar thousands of years ago. Since then, he has slowly enacted a plan to regain his power and escape.

During the Magic 2015—Duels of the Planeswalkers storyline, one small part of that plan has come to fruition. Now, the former—and perhaps future—Planeswalker prepares to set the next part of his plan in motion...

Demons don't sleep.

I remember sleep, of course. And I remember how it felt at first, my little consolation prize, that I no longer needed to sacrifice a third of my life to my pathetic mortal limitations. This form feels little pain. It does not tire. But that just gave me more time alone with my rage. I was a conqueror. I am a conqueror. Yet I had suffered two defeats in succession. The first robbed me of my body. The second of my spark.

In my youth, I thought myself invincible. I thought I had proven myself invincible. Conquering your first world is the hardest, after all. My power grew as I moved from world to world, taking anything that would make the next taking easier. When I heard of the Veil, it seemed too great a prize to refuse. I was a fool. Such a weapon can only destroy the one who wields it.

Art by Volkan Baga

Deep beneath the surface, the demon worked in silence. The cavern was illuminated only by the faint glow of runic script, etched into the dozens of hedrons that lined the walls. He rotated a hedron a few degrees and spoke a brief incantation. The runes flared, orange and brilliant, but the light faded quickly. He rotated a second hedron, repeated the spell, and watched as the runes flared again. The light lasted slightly longer this time, an almost imperceptible increase in duration. The demon scratched notes into the stone floor with an obsidian claw and moved on to a third hedron.

To know the freedom of the Multiverse, and to have it stripped away—it is a tomb. To know that there are endless worlds to bring beneath my heel, to sip from fonts of power unimaginable...and then it's gone. All of it gone. And I am stuck on this disgusting little world, lolling atop this colony of scurrying insects, not even fit to be ruled.

When the fullest depth of that fact sunk in, that was the first time I wished for sleep. I wished to tire, to rest, to let the torment end, if just for a few fitful hours. That can never happen.

Art by Rob Alexander

So what to do to pass the time? The people of this world offer little amusement. The humans of this place are cowards and vagabonds. I've hunted them, toyed with them. So dull. The elves are primitive, but at least they'll stand and fight. Their bones snap like the game birds I used to hunt, so many centuries and planes ago. And there're only so many goblins you can crush before the act loses its charm. Well, most of its charm. They do make a very funny noise. Then there's the kor. They avoid me. I avoid them. Because in each of their smug, chalky faces, I see her.

Zendikar's self-appointed protector. Nahiri.

Deep beneath the surface, a power stirred. Lines of magic buried beneath countless tons of rock and dirt slowly came alive, and a passage opened. A pale green light escaped from the depths, and the demon curled his wings tight to his body so as to squeeze into the narrow path.

Could there be a more miserable place in all the Eternities? I was drawn to it like so many others. The mana here is rich and powerful. This place is a trap. I thought that with the power to be gained here, I could purge my curse, burn out this infection and restore my form. I never got the chance to find out. I had barely finished getting my bearings when she attacked.

She never showed a scrap of emotion as she did it. Maybe the slightest hint of pity. Her binding magic was like nothing I had ever encountered. It was never even a fight, and I couldn't even scream as she bound the hedron into me.

In that moment, everything ceased.

The walls of that passage lurched, and crushed stone rained down on the demon's back. The sides of the passage suddenly crushed together. The depths of Zendikar had detected an intruder, and the stone itself sought to purge him. He bought himself a moment by bracing himself between the walls, and he muttered a spell. The vitality of the stone was drained away, the animating force snuffed out, and the rock crumbled in a perfect sphere around the demon's crouching form. Through tiny cracks, the green glow beckoned him on. He began to dig.

My curse was stopped. The call of that faraway place just vanished. But all my power vanished with it. When I could finally rise from the ground, the bones in my shoulders crumbled. My wings were useless—they fell off a few days later. The thing she put inside me made me small. Weak. That is not something I can ever forgive. And for that, one day, I will have my revenge.

Art by Jason Felix

That was centuries ago. I have never seen her again. But I see her face in my mind as if it were yesterday.

Some of the vampires here live that long, but they have the good sense to either go mad or forget. Did she know that by doing this to me, she would preserve my mind? Over time, it became clear to me that the hedron inside me was an object of great power.

Power. The universal language.

The demon had clawed at the stone for weeks. He spent days slowly tearing through much denser strata. The air in the tiny pocket of stone was thin, replenished only by a small runed sphere he had taken from a merfolk trader. Twice, he had stopped, in order to let his claws regrow. The closer he came to the source of the glow, the faster he healed.

I studied the hedrons for centuries. I know their magic better than anyone save the one who made them. And when a Planeswalker would come to this place, I would make a point of making introductions. Visitors to a strange new place needs a guide; they need information. I was happy to help. There have been dozens over the countless years. I let them know about my condition. I let the information filter out past the boundaries of this cesspool. And sure enough, some arrogant child finally took my lure.

One of the most important lessons a conqueror needs to learn is that when others believe themselves to be smarter than you, you just let them keep on believing that. Right up until they stop believing anything at all. After all this time waiting, some proud Planeswalker whelp came to find me; to strike me down and extract the hedron. Hundreds of years of planning to make this day come about, and all I could focus on was putting up just enough of a fight so as to not draw suspicion. I never doubted that this day would come.

It was all I could do, lying there in the swamp, not to laugh.

Deep beneath the surface, the demon reached gently into the tiny sphere of life. He removed a small handful of soil and a tiny flower, glowing green and gold, in his palm. It radiated power, warmth, and health. The ancient passages snapped open, and he cradled it gingerly as he walked back to the surface, his laughter echoing off the walls.

The Eldrazi and their spawn rampage on. One can't help but admire the efficiency with which they exterminate and corrupt. From time to time, I muse on what I could accomplish with an army like that. No matter. Some misguided souls will come to fight the Eldrazi. They cannot help it, heroes are like ants swarming over a discarded sweet. When they arrive, they will need to know what I know. The hedrons were created for this—a weapon like no other, and I may be the only one alive who knows how they work.

But I know what else they can be used for as well.

Art by Karl Kopinski

The power is returning to me. I felt this world shudder when Bala Ged was destroyed. In that moment, I could smell the Multiverse again. My spark is within reach. I know what I must do. And that the only cost to regaining my spark will be the complete obliteration of the world I hate most among them all?

Demons may not sleep.

But we dream.